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How to Lose a Marathon

A Starter's Guide to Finishing in 26.2 Chapters

Abrams Books

HONEST SELF-ANALYSIS

Pudgy, slow, lazy, Not a good personal ad, Yet sadly, the truth.

–INTROSPECTIVE HAIKU, JOEL COHEN, FREQUENT SELF-QUOTING AUTHOR

I'm not fast, but I am lazy.

I'd like to deal with these one at a time, since I am too lazy to deal with them both at the same time.

First, let's explore my laziness. I'm so lazy that before writing this book, I googled "how many pages does a book have to be." The answer suggested the bare minimum is forty thousand words. This book is not forty thousand words. Therefore, it may not even be a book; you may be reading a brochure, a flyer, or a long-winded fortune cookie. However, what you are holding is with certainty the product of a lazy person.

If you aren't convinced yet, let me tell you that I have an electric toothbrush, a product meant for people too lazy to move their hand in small circles for thirty seconds. I bought an electric toothbrush to avoid that torture and then, when the battery ran out, I was too lazy to reach over and place it in the small holder that recharges it. This extreme level of sloth is exactly why now, every night, I find myself moving my hand in small circles for thirty seconds. I'm so lazy I've chosen to do the "work" of brushing my teeth just so I can avoid doing the "work" of plugging in my toothbrush.

I am also not fast. Not even close. Not even close to close. I'm almost the opposite of fast. (If only there was a word for the opposite of fast — it would come in so handy right now.)

I haven't always been not-fast. There was a time where I would even have described myself as "speedy." In fact, when I was younger, I was the fastest runner in my grade school class.

Now, this section is called "Honest Self-Analysis," so let me be up-front about the fact that my grade school class was made up of only six people — four boys and two girls. You might think that's a very small class until I tell you that my grade school was a Yiddish language school in Calgary, Canada. Now you're thinking, "They managed to find six people for that?!"

As fast as I was in my tiny class at the I. L. Peretz School, I couldn't keep reality at bay forever. While the list of Yiddish-speaking Canadian sprinters is long and distinguished, I was about to learn that I would not join the esteemed ranks of Gordy "Lightning" Abramowitz and the great Doug "Flash" Mendelson.

My wake-up call came when I left this little academic shtetl and entered the public school system for grade seven. There, at John Ware Junior High, I went out for the track team and returned humiliated.

It seems that when you expand your class size beyond six, and beyond the children of parents who believed Yiddish was a necessary tool for success in the twentieth century, athletic competition becomes, well, competitive.

That first track practice at John Ware gave me a chance to study the backs of my new classmates as they sped past me. I also got to see their sides as they sped past me for a second time. Then, I watched them in profile as they passed me for the third and fourth times. It was very clear — I was a slow runner, and with all this watching my peers, a bit of a stalker. At the Peretz School, I thought I was the rabbit that greyhounds chase at the dog track. At John Ware, I learned I'm more like the guy who carries a scoop and picks up after the dogs when the race is done.

Once I came to terms with my lack of running aptitude, I began to look for other sports I could also be bad at. Luckily, I found several. Basketball — horrible! Football — below average! Jai alai — never tried it, but bet on it once in Tijuana before I realized it was fixed. Yes, I was even bad at betting on sports.

Aside from one forgettable season playing Little League Baseball, the only organized sport I played, and still play regularly, is ice hockey. When I describe this as organized I mean I play in a league that has games starting at ten thirty Sunday night and ending Monday morning. To give you a sense of the quality of play, the team I'm on started in the silver level, then dropped to the bronze level, and now the league is desperately searching for a metal less valuable than bronze so they can create a new tier worthy of our play. (My guess: It will be tin or possibly rust.)

Though I play hockey regularly, I still suck at it. I've been playing for more than forty years, and I clearly peaked the very first time I put on skates. As a proud Canadian, being a bad hockey player is a problem. Even now, in my league in Los Angeles, I try to hide that I'm Canadian so my hockey ineptitude won't reflect poorly on my homeland. In spirit, it's a very patriotic act. I don't know if anyone has ever been given the Order of Canada for denying they are Canadian, but this may merit serious consideration. Please write your local member of Parliament.

As bad as I am, I keep playing hockey because I enjoy it. I know I stink; I just like being out there, and making matters worse, I'm also a little competitive. Not the psycho competitive guy we all know and hate, but competitive enough that I try as hard as I can. The fact that I am trying to play well may come as a shock to my teammates on the Los Angeles Thunder, but it's true.

I know I'm bad at sports, yet I still love sports. I love them as much as I hate exercise. The only exercise I like to do is through sports, because I need the competition to make the physical effort interesting. That very illogical contradiction explains (or doesn't explain) where my head was at in the fall of 2012.

INSPIRATION FOR PERSPIRATION (AND EXPIRATION?)

"Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible."

–DOUG LARSON, JOURNALIST

(If this is true, my doofus cousin is on the cusp of doing something awesome! Probably after he finishes "learning" acupuncture by watching YouTube videos.)

In addition to suffering from an allergy to athletics, in 2012, I was also working as a writer on The Simpsons.

If you're not familiar with The Simpsons, Time magazine called it the "greatest television show of the twentieth century." I started working there almost exactly at the start of the twenty-first century, thus ensuring it would not repeat its title. If not the greatest television show, few would argue that The Simpsons is the most successful.

As I write this, we are in the middle of producing our six hundredth episode. The show is seen all over the world and has cranked out every piece of merchandise you could ever imagine. (Unless you're imagining a Moe the Bartender PVC pipe connector. We don't have those. Yet.)

I was incredibly lucky to even get a job at The Simpsons, and I am even luckier to somehow keep my job there. I work with an amazing team of people every day on a product that is loved all over the world, just like PVC pipe connectors. My workday there pretty much consists of sitting around a table saying things I hope are funny, while assistants bring in free lunch and coffee. In those rare moments when someone isn't bringing us calories, there is also a room full of potato chips, soda, and ice cream just a few steps away.

It's not like we are forced to eat sugary, delicious snacks. We can also eat salty ones. Or frozen ones. Yes, there are healthier options available, but to get to them, you have to pass the ice cream and chips, and who has the willpower to do that? The ice cream and chips are even closer to the writers' room than the bathroom is. I'm not always in the position of having to choose between the bathroom and a Creamsicle, but when I am, Creamsicles win every time.

With this setup, my workplace at The Simpsons is a far better environment for raising veal than raising athletes. Seeing this opportunity, greedy executives once actually placed a baby cow in the writers' room for a while. Sure, the cow was handy when we were looking for a line of dialogue for a bovine character, but other than that, it didn't work out. Things got really awkward when people ordered burgers for lunch or used the cow's milk for their coffee. You just can't have that kind of tension in the workplace.

Sitting all day, taking in high-fat foods and churning out low-quality jokes, I really didn't seem to be a candidate to run a marathon, but still, I did. Trying to understand how this happened, I examined the past with the fevered hindsight and desperation of someone trying to shore up an argument for their book. What I came up with was a lot of blame leveled at many external sources, with me ducking any myself. That's what heroes do.

Specifically, I identified several scapegoats to fault for getting me into running:

1) Every teacher I've ever had. This long line of perpetrators stubbornly taught me how to read, against my will. I was never consulted in the matter, and still, before I knew it, I had a love of reading. Oh, how I wish there was a book like this one that could have extinguished my love of reading, but there wasn't, and I consumed book after book. This literary spiral takes me to the next person I would like to blame — the author Christopher McDougall.

2) Were I blissfully illiterate, I never would have read the bestseller Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. The book details the fascinating Tarahumara Indians of Mexico. The Tarahumara can run all day without injury, with only the simplest sandals for shoes. This basic form of running really resonated with runners who suffer from chronic injuries and fueled the concept of barefoot running. The thesis behind barefoot running is that it employs the foot in the way it was intended to work in the human animal, and that the high-tech running shoes of today hamper that style and lead to injuries. An interesting idea, and certainly why you now see people out running in their actual bare feet or in the most minimal shoes possible. The exception to this is when you see someone in their bare feet running out of a sporting goods store carrying a pair of shoes. That is called shoplifting and is not covered in Mr. McDougall's book.

As interesting as the idea of barefoot running was, the part of Born to Run that really surprised me was that there are people out there who love to run. I honestly never believed people could actually enjoy running. Don't they know it's exercise? Accepting that running is something some people like, I, chunky and curious, was intrigued.

3) Lastly, as with any list meant to spread blame, I'd like to blame my parents, specifically, my father. My father was even less athletic than I am (hard to believe, I know, but true). He passed away right about the time I started thinking about running. Without being fully aware of it, I realize now that this reminder of our mortality made me a little more health conscious and contributed to my decision.

Those three forces merged just like the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers merge together in Pittsburgh. An apt reference since in 2012, my physical condition was a lot like ... well, Pittsburgh.

Now, before the people of Pittsburgh get insulted thinking this is a disparaging comment, let me be clear. When I compared my physical condition to Pittsburgh, I meant that, like Pittsburgh, my body is also slowly spreading out while at the same time trying to revitalize its core. I'm sure that soothes any hurt feelings. Phew.

I had thus decided I would try running. But before I could, I had a lot of procrastinating to do.

OVERTHINK AND UNDER-RUN

"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare."

–JUMA IKANGAA, 1989 NYC MARATHON WINNER

(This reminded me to prepare a will in case running kills me. I think I'll leave the Tetris game on my phone to my brother. I'm on level six, so I'm sure he'll be thrilled.)

Deciding to try running was only the first step toward running my first step. Wanting to set myself up for success, I decided to overthink everything. I wasn't great at getting started, but I was really talented at stalling. A prodigy. An Olympic-level talent. Therefore, I asked myself:

"Where to run?"

"When to run?"

"Who to run with?"

WHERE TO RUN?

There were two big options here: run outside on the street or inside on a treadmill. There may be someplace where people can run outside on treadmills or inside on streets, but thinking about both makes my head hurt, so let's stick to my reality.

When considering the idea of a treadmill, I had heard the common complaint that you buy them but never use them. This was not true in my house. We had bought a treadmill years ago, and we were using it every day to support several boxes of stuff that used to be in our garage. We had long ago forgotten what was in the boxes, but thankfully that treadmill saved them from sitting on the floor. Money well spent.

With hindsight, I now recognize there are some benefits to treadmills, aside from their potential to have boxes stacked upon them:

1) Weather: If you're running indoors, bad weather isn't a concern. I know about weather. I don't know about barometric pressure or cold fronts, but growing up in Canada, I know about bad weather. As a boy, when I would walk to school, I did everything I could to avoid the local bully. Unfortunately that was impossible, because the bully was the weather. It would blow a frozen wind in my face until I started to cry. Then it would freeze the tears right on my eyelashes. It would also make sure that somehow my tongue would get stuck to the metal of my ski jacket zipper, and finally, when I escaped inside the school, the radical change in temperature would make my thick eyeglasses immediately fog over. Eyelashes frozen shut, mute, and blinded, I was the Abominable Nerd. Oh, how I yearned to live someplace warm where I could wear shorts and a T-shirt to school, where the bully was just a troubled fat kid from a broken home.

Anyway, I know there's no way someone can risk running on snowy, slushy, or icy roads. If you live somewhere cold and it's winter, the decision has been made for you — you're running inside.

2) Data!: If the previous description of me as a child didn't convince you I was a nerd, I just put an exclamation point after the word "data." Even looking at it now, I feel obliged to wedgie myself. What I mean about data is that you will get your fill of it from a treadmill. Pace, distance, calories burned, even heart rate — all visible as you plod along.

3) TV!: You can run on a treadmill and watch TV at the same time. Pretty sweet, right? It really makes you feel bad, thinking of those poor rowers and skiers who have to look at boring old nature when you are running indoors, watching something way better, like the Nature Channel.

It's not all peaches and cream with treadmills, however. There are some drawbacks, such as:

1) You are running indoors. As warm and "not winter" as indoors is, running on a steady surface does not replicate the experience and conditions you will face when you run outdoors in a race. You won't feel wind resistance, changes in elevation, hills, dips, etc. You also won't get practice dodging hazards like potholes or angry dogs.

Most treadmills can elevate and adjust to mirror an outdoor course, and you can hire someone's rabid dog to bite you mid-run, but it's never exactly the same.

2) Treadmills are boring. Some runners even call them "dreadmills" behind their backs. Not me — I would never say something so mean, but I also didn't stop the other runners from mocking the treadmills, which, according to my mom, makes me just as guilty. I know that while running on a treadmill you can be entertained watching TV, or if you are in a gym, you can watch the people around you slowly grow sweatier as they watch TV, but running on a treadmill is still repetitive. While running outside you have the variety of changing scenery, passing cars, other runners, and grazing Peruvian llamas (NOTE: This last one is only for readers in Peru, or readers whose towns have recently had a security breach at their zoo).

3) Treadmills are expensive. Most decent ones cost at least a thousand dollars, and better ones double or triple that. If that's out of your budget, that leaves only one affordable, practical option — visit a place that sells treadmills and steal a piece every time you go. After just three hundred visits, you'll be able to build your own treadmill at home for free!

If you're one of those people who are nervous about being arrested and ruining your life, you can always join a gym and use the treadmill there. Not only does joining a gym cost money, too, but to run a marathon you'll need to go on some long runs. Runs that take hours. Hours. Of running. My limited experience with gyms (mostly me walking by a gym entrance, eating an ice cream cone) tells me that you can't monopolize a piece of equipment for hours.

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Excerpted from How to Lose a Marathon by Joel H. Cohen, Samantha Weiner. Copyright © 2017 Joel Cohen. Excerpted by permission of Abrams Books.
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