Maybe I shouldn’t have worn the thin anklet socks. One layer long sleeve and unlined windbreaker. Thankfully there’s no wind to speak of. But plenty cold. From my “cattle” stall, the eight-plus-minute milers, I can see the CNN sign south in the pre-dawn light: 14 F. The same temperature as two years ago for the Manhattan Half, two loops of Central Park. In 2009, it did warm up to 18 F by 10 a.m., said S, a Park Slope neighbor who traveled with me to the 8 a.m. start. To the east, across the Sheep Meadow, the sun is finally rising. How freezing it must be for the young girl her voice trembling as she sings, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” S and I exchange “Good Lucks!”, she in a scarf and three layers of long sleeves and waist-hugging thermal windbreaker, setting in her earbuds, turning on her iPod, saying she’s off to her zone, and we slowly move along in the mass of 4,358 runners, it’s long past the official starting line before we pick up any pace at all, and I lope ahead because I could have stood waiting for the start in a stall for faster runners but I was enjoying S’s company, but now I’m in my zone, a 13.1-mile race in cold like I haven’t been in since I ran in North Bay, Ontario, twenty-four years ago.
