ababy alligator being fished out of the Harlem Meer, a lake in Central Park.

In contrast to scenes in the more affluent parts of town were those in the upper reaches of the west side, Sugar Hill in the 140s and Washington Heights farther up. Dirty but not dangerous is how I thought of it back then, but sometimes it was both. I found more than my share of stray animals in these areas and they were never in good condition. A kitten, much too young to be separated from its mother, was huddled undera bench on the sidewalk. The vet informed me she was so flea-ridden that she was anemic, in addition to being completely filthy.

Another time, in the same area, I came upon a group of young boys circled around a Rottweiler puppy. The tallest among the group was thrashing the dog with a fishing pole. I confronted him and he defended himself, saying, “She wasn’t acting right. It’s my dog and I can do what I like,” to which Iresponded that wasn’t true and that he should never hit a dog like that.

I also found three chickens on separate occasions. They are used as sacrifices for practitioners of Santeria, a Caribbean religion. I’ve heard that in certain parts of the city one can buy livestock. I had no idea that this was such a common occurrence until I found my third chicken in a span of just a couple of months. I turned them over to the ASPCA, wondering whether that was a worse fate than life on the street.

My morning route took me througha very gritty section of Riverside Park in the 130s where, unless the weather was prohibitively cold or rain was pouring, people would sit on the park benches and get high. Crack vials littered the sidewalk and you would hear them crunch under your feet as you ran past. One summer morning around 6:30 a.m., I saw a woman dressed in a filmy bathrobe trimmed with marabou feather and wearing a scuba mask teetering around the cobblestones on plastic high heels. Surprisingly enough, I never had a problem with the people gathered here. They never even acknowledged me, nor I them.

Like the majority of 9-to-Sers, I was primarily an early morning runner, but I was fascinated with a bit of local running lore about a group that trained together in Central Park in the wee hours of the night. I heard this from a reliable source, who himself had been known to hit the park at unusual hours, but never having been out in the park at 2:00 a.m., I never witnessed it myself. Still, sometimes in the moments before I fell asleep I would think of them out there, mere blocks from my apartment.

Besides the New Year’s Eve run in Central Park, my only other late run in the city was an overnight event. The Broadway Ultra Society held its annual Joe Kleinerman 12-hour on Roosevelt Island, an island in the East River off midtown. We circled a twomile loop from 9:00 p.m. until 9:00 A.M. Fortunately, Roosevelt is a safe

November/December 2002

residential area, so personal safety was not a major concern. In the wee hours of the night, however, some kids with pellet guns decided to use the passing runners as targets. I remember the stench of a garbage barge in the sultry summer air and how irritated my eyes felt. It was about 3:00 a.m., andI gazed longingly at the windows of a wellkept brick apartment building thinking how nice it would be to be asleep inan air-conditioned bedroom. Atthat moment, automatic lawn sprinklers kicked in, and the cold water jarred me back to reality.

love spring and fall in New York almost equally, although the former may have the edge. Once the crocuses make their appearance at the north end of the park, it feels like winter is over. Nature begins to renew itself. Things slowly begin to turn the vivid bright green of spring, and soon the apple trees that ring the reservoir start to blossom and the magnolias and dogwoods behind the Met are a riot of flowers. When the apple blossoms lose their petals, the dirt bridle path appears to be showered with confetti. The tulips planted on the malls along Park Avenue create a vivid stripe of color that stretches as far as I can see. The days get longer and more people come to the park, many training in earnest for the Boston Marathon, others just getting back in shape after a winter layoff.

Now, and for the foreseeable future, fall in New York will bring up other feelings. This fall, especially, the first anniversary of September 11

November/December 2002

will have particular gravity. People will remember how the day began as what many would have described as one of the 10 most beautiful days of the year, portending nothing of the horror and chaos about to descend on lower Manhattan.

A friend who works in the city saw one of the planes fly over as he walked down lower Fifth Avenue to a meeting. Like almost everyone, I sat glued to the television for about three straight days feeling stunned, watching the same news clips over and over to try to comprehend what had happened. A lot of people talked about running in relation to what had happened—whether they ran or didn’t run—whether they raced that weekend—and what it meant. I felt it was just a personal choice and not something that needed to be justified. I didn’t run for a couple of days because I was so drained that it was the last thing I felt like doing. If I could have, I might have. Maybe I would have felt better.

Fall in Manhattan is beautiful in a somewhat melancholy way. Bidding good-bye to the long days and the ease of shorts and T-shirts would always make me a bit wistful, but the cooler, drier days were a relief, the fall foliage beautiful, and the hometown marathon on the horizon brought an undeniable air of excitement that would begin building. As the date gets closer, in the evenings you could see the finish line area, near Tavern on the Green, lit up with klieg lights fueled by humming generators. The

ON THE ROAD WITH ELLEN MCCURTIN 17

finish line is repainted every year, and if you ran in the evenings as I did you would see a man on his hands and knees carefully putting the finishing touches on the line. That sight was momentous. I would think about the history that would be made that day and the dramas that would unfold and the experiences of the thousands of people who would cross that line, some good, some great, others awful. And then it would be over for another year, and life in the park would go back to normal, and the bright colors of the finish line would fade under millions of footsteps and tires.

One of my favorite memories is running in the park one evening with a friend, close to the marathon date. The finish line had been painted and the klieg lights illuminated the area. As we approached the line, a man— by all appearances homeless—who had been sitting on a nearby bench jumped up and started running in our direction. I waited to see what would happen next because I sensed we were in forashow ofsome sort. Arms raised high as he crossed the line with exaggerated steps, he laughed and knelt down, putting his hands on the ground and said, “I’d like to thank my grandmother, my kindergarten teacher . . . my [fill in the blanks].” I had to give him credit; he had the whole thing down perfectly.

One of the good things about working near the park, as I did in my last job at 53rd and 7th, was that I could squeeze in a run at lunch if I played my cards right. It felt like recess to be out there, away from the computer and paper and other office trappings and coworkers. Fridays were often a good day for this since tensions usually ran lower. St. Patrick’s Day fell on a Friday acouple of years ago, and I made a plan to rendezvous with my longtime running partner, Ralph, to doa loop of the park. We met at the south end, Columbus Circle. As we circled the park on that wet, gray day, it began to snow. Huge, wet flakes swirled before us and blanketed the trees and melted on the ground. With spring officially four days away, it was winter’s last hurrah.

As we approached 86th Street on the east side, we could hear the drums from the parade and look down on the marchers on Fifth Avenue, but no one was inside the park save the occasional dog-walker. Every once ina while this would happen; you would be out at a perfectly normal hour of the day and yet have it all to yourself. To think that there are millions of people out there, but through some alignment of the stars they did not have the same idea as you to go running at lunch. What are the chances of that? Moments like that are rare and wonderful, and though I have never kept a log and the years are largely a blur of miles, runs like that are indelibly etched in my memory.

Ellen McCurtin, one of America’s top ultrarunners, recently won the Vermont 100 Mile Endurance Run.

November/December 2002

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