The Human Race

Racers in Prospect Park on Saturday, October 24, 2009.

I was going to be late. I didn’t get up early enough. My half of a whole wheat bagel with peanut butter and banana felt like it was lodged in my esophagus. I didn’t make one last bathroom stop. It was 7:50 a.m. The race was starting at 8. I was half of a mile from the start and I still needed to drop off my backpack at the bus that would meet us at the finish. My backpack contained a dry shirt, a water-resistant shell and extra goo, all post-race necessities. “Goo” comes in palm-sized rectangular foil packages that are impossible to tear open with sweaty hands. The anxiety this can provoke in the middle of a race – I need fuel right now, RIGHT NOW – makes me feel instantly faint; the relief and stamina that the sugary, slippery substance can provide might as well be on the inside of Gramercy Park’s locked gate, so close and inaccessible. The trick is to make a tiny tear in the package before the race, but not big enough to allow it to leak into the pocket of my lined running shorts. Goo is the consistency of the gel frosting that Carvel uses to write “Congratulations!” in cursive on its ice cream cakes.

This particular ten-kilometer running race was sponsored by Nike and held in Prospect Park on Saturday. Nike calls it the The Human Race. It’s an annual event with races taking place in 25 countries on the same day. Instead of passing out Tyvek race numbers, Nike provides Human Racers with identical, synthetic, sweat-wicking t-shirts. Our individual numbers were printed in yellow on the shirts. The race date, “10-24-09,” was also branded there, like a reminder of apocalypse or a horror movie release.

Not surprisingly, Nike had done lacquered marketing for the race, pointing entrants to an unhelpful but beautiful website that featured photographs of toned runners mid-stride in Milan or Berlin. (Read: We are all part of the human race and we are all running the Human Race!) I picked up my race packet at Niketown on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, the juice-colored gear cooing promises of better split times. The pre-race presence of Swoosh was grating.

But then I was running. I was in the race. The morning had been rainy and it was still overcast. The foliage popped against the gelatin print sky. Ahead of me were the backs of hundreds of runners all wearing the same primary red t-shirts. They streamed around the curve in the road. We looked like Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates, set in motion and fluttering in crimson instead of saffron. We were in bas-relief to the park.

Running races are like therapy sessions held en masse and outdoors. Running is largely a sport defined by the individual. Its fuel – its “goo” – are personal rituals, neuroses, preferences, wishes. Its boundaries are defined by an individual’s weight, height, muscle tone, mood, attitude, genes, training, and ability to convert fuel to energy and maximize oxygen. Normally, all of this becomes a slurry of one’s own making: 6 a.m. or noon, a glass of water or juice and half of a banana, a threadbare cotton t-shirt or compression tights, the Dirty Projectors or an inner monologue about an argument the night before. Runners indulge specificity and the self. At a race, neuroses get a stage. We observe each other’s ticks and read anxieties. We take part in a false battle, charging ahead as group in order to feel part of a group, but with as many individual enemies as we are runners. For 46:32 or 1:06 or 3:36 we are alone together, spitting, or breathing loudly, or imagining we are water over stone, water over stone, like the Tao says. After the finish line, public catharsis and coffee. Or Gatorade.