The One About The Wind

The optimal weather for a runner isn’t an exact science but generally speaking, no one is complaining about 40–50 degrees, not much wind, and relatively cloudy skies. I assume this is why the bigger marathons take place in the Fall because it gives you the best shot at getting that kind of weather — not too hot and not too cold. I woke up this morning, and my iPhone actually read:

In my life, before running, I never considered the wind. It was just kind of there and I only really noticed it when it was extreme. I didn’t really understand headwinds or crosswinds. Like so many other things, running makes you cognizant of yourself and your surroundings. Now I know that if there is a strong crosswind, I will get punished when I travel underneath the overpass of the Hells Gate Bridge. I know that most of the time, I won’t actually feel a tailwind but just be aware of it when I make a turn, and suddenly I don’t feel the wind that was previously there.

I remember when I first started running I loved the heat. I was probably 25 pounds overweight. I didn’t even understand what my pace meant, and I probably didn’t care. Those first steps were not about a goal but a catharsis. I found something satisfying in being drenched in sweat when I finished those hot summer runs. It was the physical manifestation of what I convinced myself was an existential process. Somehow feeling drained was rewarding and every pound that slipped away was magnified by how inexplicably satisfied I felt during and after the run. When the summer turned to winter, I thought I would just go back inside to the treadmill because I wasn’t one of those lunatics who would run in the rain and the cold. But suddenly those treadmill runs weren’t the same. And suddenly the rain and the cold became my companions, offering a change and a challenge in the daily grind.

Fast forward to November 2, 2014, the morning of my first marathon. The forecast was for 25–40 mph winds. I did my best to ignore all of it leading up to the race. A general lesson on any race is that you are never going to bail out because of the weather so don’t go nuts worrying about it, just prepare yourself. But when I stood at the foot of the Verrazano Bridge, I couldn’t ignore it. During those first two miles suspended over the the gateway to New York Harbor the wind was blowing so hard that I thought my bib would blow right off of me. I ran with a big smile on my face, and my hand spread across my torso to make sure the race bib wouldn’t rip right off. I felt as though I cut through the wind that day. I remembered somewhere on 5th avenue (around mile 21) what the weather reports had predicted. At one point, as my legs felt like concrete, I thought the wind was going to lift me off the ground, so I had to hunch down and felt the muscles in my legs spasm. I think for a solid year afterward, whenever I would feel a strong wind, I would grin, grit my teeth and believe that no wind was going to beat me.

Now when I run I am distinctly aware of where the wind is coming from. I need to be cautious on how a pace myself into a headwind (also need to be careful when spitting and blowing snot rockets). I know when I run along the East River, the wind and the direction of the current aren’t always aligned. I know when I see the flags at the Con Ed facility on 20th Avenue, they will tell me at one point during my standard route will be harder than others. I also know the difference between 10 mph and 25 mph. I get that the wind I felt running along the shore of a Greek Island in the Aegean that has no barriers feels different from the cocoon of the skyscraper and bridges in New York.

The underlying miracle in all of this is how hyper-aware I have become of my surroundings. I notice the wind, the way the air smells at different parts of the day, or the way sunrise looks in the Winter versus the Summer. For all my searching for speed and the strain I put on my body, the irony of running is that one of the greatest gifts it gave me was observing all the things I took for granted before. And now that has stretched in all aspects of my life. It helps me understand that it isn’t always going to be the big moments that define my day but it could just be how the wind is blowing that makes all the difference in the world.

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