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Word clouds, when they were used as part of the recent Fox-Google Republican presidential debate, officially jumped the shark. But in anticipation of the Fifth Avenue Mile, I couldn’t help but imagine one last word cloud. The oversized word in the middle was “pain.”

The mile is more singularly defined by pain than any other race, including the far more grueling marathon. Perhaps this is because while the marathon is understood by most as an experience best left to hard-core runners or the temporarily inspired/insane, the gym-class mile run is an inescapable trial of youth.

Even the elites appeared terrified at this year’s Fifth Avenue Mile. Check them out on the New York Road Runners video before the start of the race. Bernard Lagat, who was about to win, looks like he is awaiting the verdict of a murder trial. Freshly mohawked David Torrence is the only runner who seems to be having fun.

There is likely a physiological explanation for pre-race anxiety. The mile is a short enough race to necessitate a fast start for a good performance. The mind thus subconsciously generates anxiety to get the blood pumping faster through the body, to reduce the shock. But why must we suffer before the race even starts?

One reason I run is that I never regret doing it. It represents delayed but guaranteed gratification. But there’s a flip side. The pre-run and specifically the pre-race is not gratifying. In the fifteen minutes before my heat of the 5th Avenue Mile, I, like the elites, stood pee-faced in the pen.

Would it help to get a mohawk?

A question circulated among running friends after the race. If a deal were offered whereby a mohawk would enable you to run certain times in the mile and marathon, how fast would those times have to be for you to accept it? My mohawk times are 4:10 for the mile and 2:35 for the marathon, safely out of reach. I’d rock a mohawk if it made me run a 4:10 mile. Failing that, I’ve got a family to consider.

Without actually taking a mohawk, I’d like to adapt the pre-race attitude of the mohawk. In discussing this issue, a fellow runner noted the adage that running is 90% mental. It is not. It’s 90% training and 10% mental. I hope to be in better shape for the mile next year, and to swap pre-race jitters with the smirk that Torrence wore at the start line. And why is Torrence the model and not Lagat, who, after all, was the most fit of all? Because Lagat may as well live on Mount Olympus, and for us mere mortals who willingly suffer this sport there’s no reason for the pre-race not to be fun.

Last year at the 5th Avenue Mile I ran a 4:49. This time I was hoping to beat that. I’m in modest shape, no better now than at this time last year when I was starting to ramp up for the marathon, but I recently set a half marathon PR of 1:22:48 in Rochester, and low-to-mid 4:40s seemed possible.

During the mile I didn’t hit my watch at the start and I didn’t check the clocks on the side of the road at the quarter mile mark. Those clocks in races tend to find us, though, and as I crested the hill at about the half mile mark I saw the truck way out front saying 2:30 something, which was discouraging, as I hit 2:27 for the half last year. On the other hand, I wasn’t certain exactly where the 800 mark was, and I had pulled alongside teammate John Milone, who I knew was capable of 4:30s. I kicked hard during the third quarter and John sped up too. With 400 to go, hanging on Milone’s shoulder, I was well spent and my legs were tingling. I fixed on a runner 10 meters ahead and made the decision to accelerate and get him (inspired in part by a recent blog post where curiosity gets the better of a struggling runner and he speeds up). I caught him, and perhaps a few others, though I didn’t catch Milone, who beat me by one second. I successfully explored the pain cave. But did I lack the ultimate killer instinct to take the sword to my teammate? It doesn’t matter. He was a better runner that day even though he didn't run his best, and there will be more races.

My time was 4:54, five seconds slower than last year. I was again 13th in my 35-39 year old age group. The goal for next year is to beat my high school PR of 4:41 and to finish in the top 10. A year is a long time, and for a mile so is 14 seconds.

As for the Rochester half, there were two highlights. Turning the corner of Frontier Field and coming down the last straightaway, I accelerated past a runner who I had been reeling in over the past five miles. I saw the clock at 1:22 and change, knowing that a sub 1:23 would qualify me for the New York City Marathon and half marathon, lotteries be damned. It was a most enjoyable finish.

The lasting image of the race, though, was near the five mile mark, where the race passes by the home on Highland Avenue in which I was raised. As my infant son Oscar watched me pass by, open mouthed in my sister’s arms, my mother shot bubbles from a battery-operated whale-shaped bubble gun I had gotten for Oscar as fun-insurance on the eve of Hurricane Irene’s arrival in New York City. Later, I heard from my mother on this subject. “We were trying to encourage the runners with the bubble machine. The elite runners were too focused on the race to notice the bubbles, but in the next wave, the runners were trying to grab them. Some were leaping up to swat the bubbles as they ran by. A couple of runners said, ‘More bubbles!’”

In high school, as the weekend drew near, a friend would ask, without fail, “What’s the plan?” I didn’t like the question one bit. I was first of all bothered by the presumption that the friend be included in whatever would take place. And planning undermined the joy of not worrying about planning, of simply gathering with whoever was up for hanging out and seeing what would happen. “What’s the plan?” was too controlling a question. I dreaded hearing it, which of course made it worse when it was asked again at the start of the following weekend.

One winter night the question popped like a zit. A group of us were in a car driving aimlessly. Squished in the backseat, the friend who needed to know the plan repeatedly asked where we were going and what we were doing. There were no answers, just muffled laughter and adolescent non-sequiturs. “Fine,” said the friend, “Just take me to Wendy’s and take me home!”

The request was obliged, and a solemn burger was eaten at Wendy’s that night. We then dropped off the friend at the end of his driveway, and he may or may not have given us the finger as he trudged over snowbanks and slipped on the ice towards the side door of his house.

I think of that episode from time to time when I hit the local Wendy’s, and I thought of it when I realized that despite what became a lasting aversion to planning, an answer to my own personal “What’s the plan?” struck me with unexpected clarity, and it has altered my approach to training.

When I have committed to marathons in the past, it has enforced a plan upon me, as I have no interest in running a marathon ill prepared. Without a marathon on the schedule this year, my motivation and training have slipped. I've enjoyed not running in extreme conditions, but a time comes when not improving becomes depressing. I needed a plan to address this. So I have decided to train for next summer’s London Olympics.

I have zero chance of competing in the Olympics, but I would like to be in great shape while watching them from my couch, and I’d like to set new P.R.s on the way. If I can run consistently from now until then, with workouts, long runs, and occasional races thrown in, I’m confident that I can improve dramatically and enjoy the ride. The baseline is forty miles a week, but I’d like to average more than that.

Unlike the marathon, the Olympics make for a loose endpoint that I shouldn't have to recover from, so I'd like to think my training will continue in earnest after that. A few goals I'd like to accomplish before the end of 2012 include a sub 4:40 mile, a 1:23 half marathon, which would automatically qualify me for the NYC Marathon, and a sub 3-hour marathon. Though I will be running the Fifth Avenue Mile next month, I'm already looking forward to beating whatever time I run next month when I run it again next year.

I’m two weeks into the plan, having logged 41 and 51 miles. I’ve attended a few workouts and have been getting spanked by runners I was beating last year when I was in marathon training. I’ve taken some chutes since then, and it’s time to start climbing the ladders.

When Pheidippides raced from Marathon to Athens 2,500 years ago, he ran without a D-Tag to record his split times. Given his death at the end of the run, one can assume he gave maximum effort, though without his splits it is impossible to judge whether he ran as quickly as he could have had he taken into account the wisdom of another ancient Greek, Aesop, who lived 2,600 years ago. What distance runner has not heard Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare, and is not versed in its moral, that slow but steady wins the race?

Aesop’s lesson remains undigested by the masses. Despite marathon training involving countless hours of running, thousands of miles logged, feelings emoted through runner blogs and bottomless conversations with fellow runners, well over 9 in 10 New York City Marathon participants last fall ran more like the hare, slowing down over the course of the race, than the even-splitting tortoise.

If you take the top 100 finishers in each age group, 8.2% of women and a scant 3.4% of men ran negative splits. The percentages are likely lower for the entire field, as faster runners generally ran more evenly than slower ones.

The winners ran negative splits. Winner Gebre Gebremarian ran the first half in 1:05:20 and the second half in 1:02:54, for a negative split of 2:26. The first woman, Edna Kiplagat, ran a 3:16 negative split. Eight of the past twelve NYC marathon winners in both the men’s and women’s races have run negative splits. But these pros are the exceptions. The average breakdown for marathoners who ran sub 3 hours was about a 5-minute positive split, those who finished between 3 and 4 hours averaged about a 9-minute positive split, and those between 4 and 5 hours averaged a positive split of about 15 and a half minutes (these data stem from evenly distributed samples of runners within those time ranges).

Older runners were not wiser. Those most likely to post negative splits were the 25-29 year old runners for both men (9%) and women (20%). Of the top 100 men in the 50-54 year old age range, only one ran a negative split. There was a kink in the data. Runners who finished between 3:00 and 3:30 actually had a slightly higher positive split than those who finished between 3:30 and 4:00. This may be due to blow-ups among those trying to break three hours, and/or the relatively high number of women in the latter sample, as women ran more evenly than men.

The second half of the New York City marathon course has slightly more elevation gain than the first half, and the difference in terrain is estimated to cause a 1-2 minute positive split given evenly distributed effort. If one assumes that a runner would achieve his or her best time on any given day with an even effort, the data still suggest that runners ran inefficiently.

The 800-meter race is one in which world records have been set by positive splitters, but not the marathon. The three fastest marathon times ever posted resulted from negative splits. Of the world’s 28 fastest marathon times, 16 were run with a negative split.

The inability of the body to store enough glycogen for 26 miles of racing and the buildup of lactic acid are common explanations for why marathoners run positive splits. When I slow down in these races it is because my body is stiffening, not because I am gasping for breath. I posted an ugly positive split at the New York City marathon despite blogging about the very topic of pacing beforehand, and despite running with a track club that races marathons under the philosophy of running 10-seconds-slower per mile than the goal pace for the first 10 miles of the race. When I ran the race in 2006, I bonked to the tune of a 21 minute positive split. This time, I ran the first half in 1:28:43 and the second half in 1:39:29, for about an 11 minute positive split. My goal had been 2:55, and my secondary goal was 3:00. I finished in 3:08:12. In all other races from the half mile to the half marathon, I generally run even or negative splits.

If I had held back more at the start, would I have been able to break 2:55, or 3:00? I doubt it. Of the 938 runners who broke 3 hours for the marathon, including 95 who finished between 2:59:00 and 2:59:59, only five ran the first half of the race slower than 1:30. To run an evenly paced race, I probably would have had to take it out in 1:31 or 1:32.

Aesop’s simple fable is so hard to apply because the marathon is not so much a race as an anti-race. The way to run the fastest marathon is to run more slowly than you want to for a long time, and, of course, to be in great shape. After all the training, keeping that competitive urge in check requires bottomless patience. The silver lining to the massive failure to adhere to Aesop is that most of the 45,000+ finishers of the New York City Marathon could shave minutes off of their time by simply being more like the tortoise and less like the hare.

Running up First Avenue during the New York City Marathon on Sunday, I thought I saw the 19-mile marker ahead. As I got closer, I realized that the 9 was actually an 8. It was like sipping curdled milk. But though the psyche is delicate at that stage of the race, I quickly recovered and approached the remaining 8 miles as a tempo run, like those I had completed with CPTC on Thursday nights over the preceding months. My primary goal of running 2:55 was unrealistic, but breaking the three-hour barrier was still a worthy and formidable challenge. At that moment it defined the drama of the race, and with it the possibility of personal glory.

In John Parker’s “Again to Carthage,” Frank Shorter is noted as saying that every one of his marathons, even the good ones, featured a bad patch. My first bad patch on Sunday took place on the uphill of the Queensboro Bridge, fifteen miles in. But I thought of Shorter’s words, and I was able to recover on the downhill and into Manhattan, keeping pace with those around me. It was a thrill to still be racing at this point, in contrast to the last time I had run New York in 2006, when I had been toast before even reaching the halfway mark.

Shortly after the actual 19-mile mark, as we approached the Willis Avenue Bridge, I felt a wave of dizziness and slowed down, before recovering again, though at a slightly slower pace than I had been running before. At the twenty mile mark, I was at 2:17, still on pace for 3 hours, and at the 21-mile mark, I was at 2:24 something. There was still hope.

The approach to the marathon preached by the track club is 10-10-10. Run the first 10 miles a bit slower than target pace, the next 10 at target pace, and the final 10K a bit faster than target pace. The general idea is to run more conservatively than you otherwise would, allowing you to finish with dignity and to avoid hemorrhaging minutes per mile towards the end. When teammate Glen Redpath warned about the first two miles of the race, it fit perfectly with the general theory and solidified my approach.

In the first level of the green corral behind the local elites, I serendipitously ran into a teammate named Gerd, whose goal was also 2:55. The pre-race chatter helped the time pass. Soon, though a little after the official starting time, came the thud of the cannon, and twenty-five seconds later my race officially began. A cold wind blew across the bridge, and you could hear the sound of many bibs flapping. I held back as Gerd and others surged ahead.

Once on Fourth Avenue the sun trumped the wind. I warmed up and focused on form, imaging myself running like Marilson Gomes dos Santos, if not quite so fast. I reeled in teammate and work colleague Chris Donnelly, whose goal was sub-3. We ran together on Fourth Avenue and up Lafayette Avenue. On the downhill we passed Robert Reese, whose blog tobadwater makes for good reading, and whom I knew would likely run sub-3. Shortly after turning onto Bedford Avenue Chris dropped back. Near the Williamsburg Bridge, where a number of my sister’s friends and where my wife and son were cheering, it all seemed to make sense. The race had been entirely fun.

As I had anticipated, the fans in Williamsburg were raucous, and there were far greater crowds in Long Island City than there had been in 2006.

Ryan Hall’s advice for running New York, on the back page of the Nissan marathon booklet, runs counter to conventional wisdom. Hall says, “…everyone told me to be cautious on First Avenue since it’s easy to get carried away by the loud crowd. I was so cautious, I didn’t allow myself to have fun and ride the energy. Next time, I’ll enjoy it more, and let myself run a little faster.”

I appreciated the crescendo of sound coming off the Queensboro Bridge this time. I steeled my resolve on First Avenue, with a second wind after the difficult uphill on that bridge. And though the spectators lining that street seem to be rooting for their special someones, while the spectators in Brooklyn and Queens seem to be roaring for everyone, the relatively flat terrain, and simply knowing you are on First Avenue is somehow a lift. Or was a lift, until that eighteen mile marker, which is also about the time that Robert Reese passed me back. But, I told myself, Reese had run 2:53 at Boston, and so he likely had room under three hours to spare.

The twenty-one mile mark, the 2:24 something, was the last time during that race that I was on target to break three. There was no single moment of hitting a wall, there were simply diminishing returns on the feeling-better parts, until there was just a steady state of struggle, with sharp back and foot pains thrown in. Before the 22-mile mark I felt a hand on my shoulder – it was my teammate and colleague Chris, whom I had run with in Brooklyn. The extent of my deceleration became obvious to me at this point, as there was no question of keeping pace with Chris. I thought of how earlier in the race, while running with Chris, I had wanted to tell him how good I felt, but how I had bitten my tongue so as not to jinx that feeling.

I knew that another teammate, Gregg, would be at Marcus Garvey Park, and it saddened me that he would see me in this condition. Prior to the race I had envisioned asking him at Marcus Garvey Park who was winning the race, as certainly he would have been there to see the pros. When the time came I couldn’t summon the energy. But as Gregg gamely cheered me on, telling me I looked good when I knew and I knew that he knew that I didn’t, a funny thing happened. A guy running just ahead of me turned around and said “Brenn? Brenn Jones? It’s Gordon Roble, from Swarthmore.” Lo and behold there was Gordon Roble, with whom I had run cross-country at Swarthmore, and from the looks of things, he wasn't moving that quickly either.

The rest of the race was spent trying to keep Gordon in sight. At one point he walked, but then he ran again and by Central Park South I had lost sight of him. A guy dressed as Minny Mouse passed me, but another man dressed in a pink unitard, who had passed me earlier, was walking and came into view. I was thankful to hit Columbus Circle and of course the finish line, mustering the most meager of kicks. After a quarter mile of walking, I was slammed into a wheelchair and into the medical tent with crippling pain in my lower back and a low body temperature. I’d soon experience the worst leg cramps of my life.

Among those finishing before me were Gerd in 2:57:15. Robert Reese in 2:58:09, Chris in 3:02:07, Gordon in 3:06:58, and Minnie Mouse in 3:07:26. My time of 3:08:12 is a PR, beating the 3:11:58 I had run in 2002. It was about halfway between my train-wreck of a race in 2006 and my goal of 2:55. I beat the guy in the pink unitard, who ran 3:11:19.

I set the goal of 2:55 for a few reasons. There are men and women in the club who have run in the low 2:50s, and whom I have kept up with in workouts. Two fifty-five is obviously below three, which is a natural goal. Two fifty-five also happens to be the qualifying time for the New York City Marathon. And finally 2:55 would be a bit faster than my friend Dan’s father ran when he was alive, rest in peace.

As Captain Hindsight, the latest superhero on the comedy series South Park, would say, 2:55 was too ambitious a goal. Or if I had held back more early in the race, maybe I could have finished faster. But Captain Hindsight, as the show makes clear, is an ass.

Right after a marathon, running another one is not the most appealing thought. It is a hard race. I would like to experience what it is like, however, to run through Central Park at the end of that race with a little momentum. The half-marathon qualifying time for New York is 1:23. Perhaps if I can run that, I’ll give three, or even 2:55, another shot.

In “Again to Carthage,” the sequel to John L. Parker Jr.s “Once a Runner,” heroic miler Quentin Cassidy takes on a marathon. In the latter stages of the dramatic race, he recalls words spoken by his coach “Frank [Shorter] says, ‘the marathon is a race of attrition.’ You’ve got to understand that … No one really wins a marathon. You just survive it better.”

During this week of tapering I have been reminded of the feeling I had as a boy climbing the ladder to a high dive at a swimming pool in Louisville, Kentucky. Halfway up the ladder I looked down and there was a line of kids waiting. There was no turning back.

I spoke with two fellow marathoners today, both of whom were finalizing the details of their uniforms. One was choosing between a hat and a headband. Another was deciding between a LiveStrong bracelet and a Team Continuum bracelet. I’ve been trying to figure out whether to wear a nose strip. They are in the goodie bag, and Meb, Paula, and Marilson Gomes dos Santos wore them in winning the marathon over the past two years. It seems like cheating, though certainly nose strips aren’t as effective as, say, blood doping.

The larger decision I had to make this week was which shoes to wear. Swayed by the minimalist arguments by author Christopher McDougall in his book “Born to Run,” I’ve been training in light shoes and bought a pair of 4.7 ounce Asics Piranha SP3s that I’ve been considering racing in. I also bought the 7.2 ounce Asics Hyper Speed 4. The Piranhas, with very little cushioning, feel faster. The Hyper Speeds offer more shock absorption. I watched the press conferences on Wednesday and Thursday with the American and international runners, but nobody was talking about shoes. Given the importance of shoes to the runner and the debates about shoes in running circles, it surprises me that what shoes the elites wear and why doesn’t get more attention. McDougall will be running the race barefoot.

Ryan Hall was at the Nissan booth of the marathon expo yesterday. The devout runner was supporting the sale of the electric plug-in Nissan Leaf. I waited in line and got him to sign Nissan’s marathon brochure. He asked me what I was hoping to run. I told him, 2:55. I asked him what shoes he had worn at Boston. Hyper Speeds, he said.

Good enough for him, good enough for me.