After months of training for a marathon, answers to questions that once seemed elusive eventually become clear: What do I wear when it's 35 degrees? How much sleep do I need before a long run? What can I eat before setting out that will give me energy but not drag me down (or to the bathroom)?
Lessons gleaned are everlasting. About goals. About focusing. About your body, about your life, about the person you are.
And, for running buddies Patrick Pownell and Brad Gamble, about friendship.
Perhaps the cynics among us might sigh to hear their story, lamenting that the decision to stay with a friend _ not forging ahead to set a personal goal on a day filled with promise and with sunshine _ came at a cost.
But truly, waiting for someone who is struggling _ someone who has waited for you plenty of times _ and slowing your steps to theirs, and then crossing the finish line together, far eclipses any bragging rights, any notation on a website filled with results.
The race could be any; this one in particular was the TCS New York City Marathon where, around Mile 13 or so, Pownell reached the top of the Queensboro Bridge feeling strong.
"I knew I was a little ahead, but I thought he was right behind me," Pownell said. "I waited a few minutes at the peak of the bridge, and then he came struggling along."
"It was excruciating to lose his head bobbing in front of me," said Gamble, who has completed about 14 marathons. "I felt I'd catch him downhill. But he went out of sight. I had mixed emotions to see him on top of the bridge. I was relieved if he'd gone, sad if he'd gone. I felt responsible. It was a big deal to me."
In an email Pownell sent a week ago after the marathon, he explains what happened when the two saw each other:
"In all sincerity," he wrote, "what real difference is it to anything or anyone on the Planet Earth if I run a 3:30, or even a 5:30? Do we really need to have a PB (personal best) every time we strap on our shoes? My time with my buddy can never be replaced. The moment he struggled over that line meant too much more than shaving 30 minutes off my time."
Pownell is a plastic surgeon; he and I know each other because he grafted skin onto my nose after I had a tiny dot of a cancer removed. On subsequent follow-up visits, we talked only briefly about my nose before eagerly turning to our shared passion of running. Now, four years later, we email every few months about training and races.
He, Gamble and I arrange to meet on a recent Sunday night at Starbucks to talk about what happened in New York. Pownell arrives before Gamble, ordering a cup of dark roast for each of them. Then, in the 20 minutes before his friend arrives, he makes absolutely certain I understand two truths:
"He's a stronger runner," Pownell said. "He always pushed me, always watched for me. Always."
During Saturday morning training runs were where they honed their friendship, Pownell is notoriously three to five minutes late.
"I'll text him: '3 minutes late,' and I know he won't leave," Pownell said. "He's waiting for me, and he waits for me at every water stop. He showed me all the nuances of racing. I'm lost. I'm the guy who follows the crowd. He's strongest; he tells us to make sure we don't start out too fast, when I'm more, 'Let's get going!' "
The two knew each other professionally _ Gamble is an ear, nose and throat surgeon _ before ending up in the same pace group at five years ago. The miles have deepened their personal as well as professional relationship; they're as likely to talk about surgery as they are about running. (Conversely, in the operating room, they're likely to talk about running _ what hurts and what doesn't, whether to soak in ice or apply heat after a tough run.)
"A couple of times (while running) we talk about cases: 'Man, I saw this patient ... what do you think?' " Pownell said.
"Or it's 'Have you ever seen this?' " Gamble said. "Or 'What would you do?' It's kind of ..."
"For two to three hours," Pownell picks up, "it's like a counseling session."
"We don't have to tell everything at once," Gamble said. "We have plenty of time."
"So what was that with the family heritage question when we were in New York?" Pownell asks. Gamble knows exactly what he's talking about.
"We were going through Brooklyn and it's so multi-cultural," he answers. "There was a pregnant pause and I wanted something to talk about. There was an old church, and I just said, 'Where do you come from?' I've known you for years and we've been running for years and I don't know where you are from. That burned a good two miles."
Gamble explains he'd had issues with his Achilles tendon the week before the marathon. Still, he was up for the race. It's the one, he says, "where I was going to throttle Dr. Pownell to make sure he wouldn't start out too fast.
"But I started to feel it" _ "it" being what he and his friend call "the dwindles" _ up the bridge, Mile 13, a slow and steady uphill. "I offered Pat an out at 13, and at 18, and at the low 20s. It's funny, because all the places I was offering him an out were places he'd had troubles in previous races."
Pownell reiterated that he wasn't going anywhere without Gamble.
"When we were coming back from Miles 22 to 26, we were in Harlem and still had 50 to 60 blocks to go," Pownell said. "I would turn to him and say, 'We just ran 20 blocks,' and we'd gone five."
Anything to keep his friend going.
"He said, 'Just get me to 23,' " Pownell says. "If you can get to 23, you can get home; you just have a 5K left."
Crossing the finish line, Gamble said, "was a huge relief. While the last mile was weird, I fixed on a statement: 'I'm doing it for Pat. I'm doing it for Pat.' I felt like he waited for me."
Pownell was concerned his friend would fall when the race ended because he was so "wobbly. After the race, you still have to walk another three miles," he says of leaving Central Park. "It's like a death march. We kept having our conversation about everything and nothing."
Three weeks after the marathon, Pownell is starting to train again, this time for the Chevron Houston Marathon in January, which he'll run with his two sons. Gamble has put his shoes in the top of a closet until he starts training again in May _ this time for the Chicago Marathon.
I ask Gamble what he remembers when he looks back at New York.
"I remember my buddy waiting for me," he said.
As for Pownell? Here's what he wrote in that email:
"I look at these races like a small glimpse of life. Some parts, you are flying high, and at some you hit a point of struggle. Sometimes, you can 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps." But at other times, you are in a place where someone must help you and you must reach out for that help.
