Concerned bystanders and heavy hills

Accidentally running the sort of third-hardest half marathon on the internet

Sternal Journalists!

Let me just start by saying that at the end of this post, there will be a picture that might make some people a little blegh. It is not sad at all—it is very funny actually—or super gross-out, but it’s not a picture everyone necessarily wants to see. I’ll put a bar of text that looks like this before it—

THE BLEGH PICTURE IS AFTER THIS; THE BLEGH PICTURE IS AFTER THIS

—and it will come after the recs, but I just wanted to make sure in case you were scrolling willy nilly that I gave you a fair warning.

Onto the story. This weekend, I ran my first half-marathon in quite a few years. Maybe 5, maybe more—I can’t remember. I ran in high school and for one year before I was kicked off the team in college (some say it was because I was too slow, other because I was too drunk. I know that the truth is it was because I was both).

But I never really gave up running. In my 20s, I got into marathons and half-marathons with some of my very best friends and put down times that I was proud of, but I didn’t let running take over my life in the time between ramp-ups to races. While I tried to do a big race or two every year, sometimes I let it go a year and a half.

During one of those year-and-a-half stretches, five years passed. For years, I’ve been saying “I’m not training for anything right now, but I’m looking,” without actually doing anything other than navigating runningintheusa.com’s absolutely awful UX to try to find some race near me at a convenient time.

Recently, I decided that, since on my recreational long runs, I can sometimes get up into the double digits anyway, maybe I should train for a half marathon instead of the much more daunting and kind of stupid-to-do-without-seriously-training full marathon.

So I made the plan to run a beautiful trail race a little north of Los Angeles at the end of June. As you may have noticed, the end of June hasn’t happened yet, and yet I started this all by saying I ran a half marathon this weekend. Exactly, yes, so at the beginning of this week, I realized I’m gonna be out of town the weekend I was supposed to run the planned half and almost every other weekend in the near future, so I pulled an audible and signed up for a nice local half in LA’s quaint, beautiful Griffith Park.

I was excited, I felt good. I knew I wasn’t going to have the best race of my life and was actually almost certain to have the slowest race of my life, so I went into the week trying to set an intention of just having a nice, relaxed time.

And then the night before, I decided to check out the hills by looking at the race’s elevation chart:

For reference, here is the elevation for the last half marathon I ran in Charleston, South Caroline:

So this was a big mmm-gulp moment especially to have about 10 hours before the race was starting. I did a little more digging and realized that the Griffith Park Trail Half Marathon—which is not the one I did this weekend, but is in the exact same place as the one I did this weekend, over essentially the same terrain—is on halfmarathon.com’s list of hardest half marathons. And who are you gonna trust for that more than halfmarathon.com for a thing like that?

So the idea of having a nice relaxing run was no longer an option, but I realized that I could get something even better: a recent PR that I could almost certainly destroy as soon as I wanted. Whatever I ran this weekend, I knew that my time would be so bad, I could definitely run faster essentially as soon as I wanted to.

That was the energy I had as I slathered my body in anti-chafe BODYGLIDE¹ and chugged my 6am-pre-race-b-m-inducing-cuppa. The energy of a new beginning.

I drove to Griffith Park in the rare early morning traffic-less LA which always feels like you’re breaking a curfew of some sort. I had my 7am bm at the race expo because the coffee had taken a little longer to kick in. I found my place in the starting chute ahead of the definitely slow people and behind the definitely fast people.

This is where you find people who are definitely good at other athletic activities, but are maybe just doing this race as a bucket list thing. The spindly lifetime runners look down on these day-trippers whose properly-nourished and aesthetically-muscled bodies are not optimized for the task at hand. I, though formerly spindly and/or between spindly phases, am still a lifetime runner; and therefore I look down on these jocks too.

I pick out a guy who probably played soccer at a NESCAC school in 2018 and is going to get a job I wanted 8 years ago in the next six months. He’s wearing headphones and laughing with his friends. He’s a fool who will go out hard and obliterate himself by mile 4. I tell myself that the best reason to take this race slow and steady is that it will give me a front row seat to his personal anaerobic catastrophe.

The race starts and I am so wrong about him. He leaves my sight by mile 2 and I never see him again. Or I’m wrong about myself. Even though I’m able to keep a respectable relaxed 7:45 pace on the flat first 3 miles, once the four mile 6-10% grade incline hits, I am a slug. People pass me and I pass no one.

STILL. I keep it easy. I force myself to take what feels like a comfortable pace no matter how embarrassingly slow it goes. I cheer on everyone who passes me. I hope that one of them will be headphones guy because perhaps he had his breakdown and I missed it. But I still never see him.

I won’t take you through every twist and turn of the race. Long-distance races are a bamboozling experience of remembering every single moment of a long event in which nothing really happens, so I could, but I think it would be boring. But three things of note did happen:

1. When I was between miles six and seven—right at the halfway point—I heard some jingling coming up behind me for a very long time. I was annoyed. Who is jingling during a half marathon? When he finally caught me, it was a young man who I will call A². The jingling was his keys which he just had nonchalantly dangling on a lanyard from his right hand.
   
   When I cheered on A as he caught me, he cheered back. We had a great conversation which is a testament to how seriously I was taking it easy, but also was just a very nice thing. He told me he had just started racing, I told him how I was getting back into it. He told me he was graduating from a local college next week.
   
   I asked if he knew his plans after and then profusely apologized for asking because, as I told him, I feel like I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing past-graduation and he certainly shouldn’t feel any pressure. I also told him, truthfully, that many hard times in my life have been made much easier by the mental toughness I’ve developed from distance running. I assured him again that he did not need to know a single goddamn thing about what he’s dong after graduation.
   
   And then, as he opened up the distance between us a bit, he looked back in a kind of “is it okay if I go ahead?” way, and I bellowed, “Of course! Go! I’ll be with you whether I’m there or not!” Which is an extremely dramatic thing to say to someone you just met and it is also exactly the kind of shit you say at the halfway point of a particularly grueling trail half marathon.
   

2. I absolutely did get my Terrible Time That I Can Certainly PR From Tomorrow If I Want.

   

   Again, I was going to be proud of any time, but this is a certifiably bad time for me. I don’t remember every one of my times, but I’m pretty sure my second slowest is a full 30 minutes faster than this. But the winner only got 1:34 which, if you know running at all, is crazy slow for a half that even had the couple hundred participants this one did.

   
   I’m excited to do another half soon—hopefully one that isn’t listed on half marathon.com’s hardest half marathons—and utterly demolish this time.
   

3. But finally, the thing of most note happened, and here’s where it gets a little funny gross (though I won’t share the picture yet). After striding in a strong (for this race) finish, I did the normal thing of walking around like a zombie as I collected water and banana pieces.
   
   I almost immediately saw A, who was taking a picture with his friends, all in their graduation regalia covering their sweaty race outfits. I only knew him for five minutes, but I was proud of his race, his graduation, and everything I’m sure he’ll accomplish. I briefly said hi to him and his friends, and then kept walking.

   
   A few moments later, a man who had that spindly elite look and so I figured had not been around me at all came up and said, “Hey man, congrats.” He had a focused look on his face that I couldn’t totally deduce.

   
   I said thanks and congratulated him as well. “Are you okay,” he asked with genuine concern. Ah, I thought. Maybe I look light-headed. It’s not uncommon for someone to need medical attention after a distance race. I felt fine, but figured I might look a little more delirious and didn't have anyone around me, so he wanted to be sure.
   

   “No, I’m all good,” I assured him with a smile. “Thanks for asking.” He gave me a once-over. “Okay, I’m only asking because…” and he gestured at my chest, which I had not once looked at over the prior two hours.

   
   Looking down, I saw that I—despite body-gliding every surface of my body with friction potential to the point of nearly using up the BG—was nipple-chafe-bleeding more than I—someone who has nipple-chafe-bled quite a lot over the course of my running career-have ever nipple-chafe-bled. He was worried I had fallen and torn my entire chest open, when really, it was just torn open in two tiny places.

   
   ”OH,” I said. “Well, that’s just… my nipples.”

   
   ”It looks painful,” he said, concern refusing to dissipate.
   
   ”I can’t feel it yet, but it will be.”

   
   ”Should you put anything on it?”
   
   ”I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed.”

   
   ”You can put anti-chafe stuff on it, you know.”
   
   ”Trust me, I know. I body-glided. Just um I have big nipples I guess.”

I said that to him. I ended a conversation with “Big nipples, I guess.”³ And there’s no moral or grand tying up of this journey I went on. But even though it was hilly and bloody, I loved every second of it and really appreciate that, no matter how long I stay away, running will always be there for a daunting challenge, some camaraderie, and wildly awkward and hilarious social interactions.

So okay, you wanna see the picture of the chaffage-drenched shirt? Scroll past the recs!

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Recommendations

Sprinter. Song. This catchy choon from Central Cee and Dave (not to be confused with Lil’ Dicky aka Dave) was stuck in my head for half of the race even though I can barely understand it.

Dave Season 3. Television Show. One day, I will make up a term for it, but there’s a point in every autobiographical TV show where the show starts to catch up with the place in life that the person is actually at in real life. It can be good or bad. I think it was very good for this show.

Streets Are For Everyone. Nonprofit. This was the nonprofit that put on my race this weekend! They are an advocacy group trying to bring traffic fatalities to zero. This is a great cause, and if you’re a pedestrian, biker, or conscientious driver, consider checking them out!

girlfriends. Song. I saw a clip of this on TikTOk and it’s very catchy. I went to try to find another TikTok account that was very cinematically interesting, but then I realized it was way too scary to suggest right before I go to bed, so text me if you want to know about that one.

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THE BLEGH PICTURE IS AFTER THIS; THE BLEGH PICTURE IS AFTER THIS

“You should put something on that.”

And you should have a great week!

Sending love!

Julian

1. Would love a sponsorship and honestly deserve one.

2. There was nothing super confidential about out conversation, but I don’t know who does or doesn’t want to be written about by name in a random Substack.

3. I wish I could tell you that the nipple chafe guy was headphones guy, but I truly never saw him again.