Yesterday I ran the race I trained for. I’m shaking my head, still in awe today. What
a great gift it is, to run the race you trained for.
I’ve gone into many things with big hopes and plans, only to
have everything crash down around me: various jobs, a marriage, some
friendships. Granted, sometimes all the hard work pays off. You get to say, Yup.
I worked my butt off and I won. I got the accolades. I got the prize. And I
should have. After all, I worked hard. I deserved it.
But life is not always fair. You don’t always get out of it
what you put into it. That’s how I see it sometimes. There have been far too many
times when I did my best and got the rug pulled out from under me. Maybe
instead of pocketing a payoff, I’d learned a lesson I wasn’t expecting and most
definitely wasn’t prepared for. I’m talking big, life-changing things, like sickness and divorce
and financial earthquakes.
But even in running, you can’t often predict the end
result. I’ve trained well for many races, only to get injured at the last
minute. I’ve trained just right, and ended up slogging through heat waves and
snow storms, my finish time far off from what I'd hoped.
Yesterday, I had two hundred sixteen minutes to think about
process and baby steps and meeting goals and claiming victory. I was running an
18.6 mile race. I was less prepared than I wanted to be, and I knew it. I also
knew this: That I have certain goals and if I want to reach them I’ve got to
put on my big girl pants and get out of my comfort zone.
Yesterday, I got exactly what I deserved.
I started slowly. I ended even more slowly. I smiled the
whole way. I thanked every wonderful volunteer. I sang out loud. I swore, but not
that much. I exchanged rasping quips with my fellow athletes: Looking good! Way
to go! Sucks doesn’t it?
At mile one, the sweeps truck drove by me for the first time.
The sweeps truck picks up injured runners. The driver’s job is to check in with
the back of the packers too, my people, and make sure we’re good. The driver, with
a moustache like a hair brush and a voice that boomed like God’s, yelled out
that I looked strong. I asked him if I was last. He looked behind me and
squinted. He shook his head. I gave him
a thumbs up. He puttered off.
I must have seen him a million times yesterday, as he drove back and forth along the course making sure we were all okay. Though the temps hovered near freezing, he never failed to roll down his window to tell me I looked awesome. Sweeps truck drivers are
notoriously bad liars. But I’m okay with that.
Near mile nine, the top of a ridiculously long monster, a friend
showed up to cheer me on. Liz runs laps on our tiny gym track. One mile is
nineteen laps. Friday, she ran an astounding nine miles. That’s 171 laps. And she thinks I'M tenacious?????
On race day, she helped me climb the last part of that
blasted hill, holding in front of me a T-shirt from an Ian McCulloch concert.
The shirt was the carrot, I was the sluggish wascally wabbit. Ian McCulloch is
the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen, a group that made it big in the 80s
with Lips Like Sugar and Killer Moon. Liz is a big EATB fan and
has gotten me hooked too. I believe in stealing inspiration when I can’t muster
it. I figure, if Liz's favorite group can pull her through almost two
centuries worth of indoor miles, then maybe there’s some magic there that I
could use. So, I gamely went along and
chased cotton T-shirt Ian. Plus he’s hot. Why wouldn’t I want to chase him?
The next three miles were the toughest for me, which is
weird because they were relatively easy. They were moundy, not mountainous. Yet,
my legs were quaking; my hip pulsing. Doubts attacked. I considered walking. I narrowed my gait and grimaced.
I’m taking baby steps, I thought.
Then of course the deeper meaning hit me. Duh. Of course they
were baby steps. I hadn’t run this distance in nearly thirty months. I wasn’t exactly
starting from scratch, but I wasn’t in my comfort zone either. Today was
supposed to be hard and it was.
I took inventory. Yes. Everything hurt. But nothing hurt
more than it was supposed to. Everything hurt exactly the way it should.
And then I realized too that I only had six miles left to
run. I could do six miles. I’ve done plenty of six mile runs. I picked up my pace.
I eventually met up with a runner who waddled like a duck. I don't mean anything insulting there. Different runners have different gaits, some quite distinctive. I was shuffling like an old grandma. This guy was waddling. We got a tag team thing going. Sometimes
I followed him. Sometimes he followed me. Each time we met up, we checked in with
one another.
Me: How you feeling?
Him: My legs aren’t working right.
Me, nodding: Mine are meatloaf.
Every now and then, through gaps in the pines, I’d catch a
glimpse of the finish line neighborhood, across a whole continent of frozen
reservoir. It was discouragingly far away, so I mainly focused on the pavement directly
ahead.
At the second to last hill I pretty much ran in place. I don’t
know how I made it to the top. I passed the waddling guy one last time. We never
met up again until after the race, when we traded war stories in the high
school’s cafeteria, in between gulps of bottled water.
Him: I did better than I thought.
Me: I was just glad to be out there.
As I jogged past the red brick buildings of Clinton, I made
sure to smile at the police officers who held back traffic like I was the Queen
of England, or maybe the mama mallard in Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings.
The last mile of this race is a doozy. You’re finally on
flat stuff for the first time in seventeen miles. It is glorious. You’re thankful
because you are almost done done done and your legs are screaming that they
need to stop. Then you turn left and face the last, most intimidating hill of them all.
“Pray for me!” I shouted that to the police officer directing
traffic at that intersection. I hadn’t shouted anything in several hours, but
that’s not why my voice was thick.
“I got you girl!” He
gave me a Pepsodent smile and a point and wink and I swear to God that right then I could have run up
Everest. So I did. Very slowly though, of course.
Yesterday, I got to
run the race I trained for. What a glorious gift. I wonder what next weekend
will bring? More baby steps? Oh, I hope so.
Last I checked you were still going��
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