The dudette endures, and for now that's enough

It was around mile six of the 2013 Providence Marathon when my ideas about long distance running and who I wanted to be began changing. My stomach wasn’t doing too well. My throat had been on fire since around mile 3. I still don’t know exactly why, but I suspect it had something to do with the five pounds of homemade granola I’d chowed down on the day before, an early Mother’s Day present from one of my daughters.

The music on my headset was doing nothing to soothe my tummy. There were high school kids running all around me, laughing and yammering, bumping into me, not paying attention at all to anyone else on the road but themselves. How irritating. It was obvious they were having a blast, which made me even more miserable because the only blast I was experiencing was the one from the furnace burning deep in my belly.

To take my mind off the annoying happiness all around me, I started talking with a curmudgeonly looking runner two decades my senior, who I’d been trailing for most of the race. Turned out, he was a really nice guy. He told me he hoped to finish in under six hours. He wasn’t too concerned about time. After all, he’d just done a fast marathon in DC the week before. We chatted together for awhile about other races he'd done. He dropped back after awhile. I moved on, marveling at the idea of being well past retirement age and running marathons every week or two. I soon met another older guy. He was limping a bit. He told me he’d run marathons in every state in the country except Nevada, and he was planning on getting to that one soon. I had to shake my head and smile. Yet another knucklehead dreamer. 

When I started training for Providence, I hadn’t run a marathon in more than two years. My previous marathon, Manchester City in 2010, had given me an even dozen, a nice solid number to finish with.  After Manchester, I’d pretty much convinced myself that my marathon career was over. I was done with the time-consuming training, the blisters, the foolishness of it all. It is pretty silly when you think about it, all the time and effort we spend chasing after these stupid dreams just so we can feel good about ourselves, drop one more piece of hardware into our medal shoe box, add yet another braggy post to our facebook page. 

I’d decided it was time to focus on other aspects of my life: my family, my friends, my writing. And guess what changed? Not much. Turns out, all those years of marathoning had gotten me pretty good at organizing the other areas of my life. Now, without a focus, I was a little lost. Instead of all that moving forward I anticipated, I was pretty much running in place. 

So after two years of mediocrity, I signed up for Providence and began training. As my long runs progressed to longer runs, I started to feel more like me again. I was moving forward. 

Then there was the horror at Boston.

Three weeks later was Providence. I remember the starting line at Providence. All of us thousands of runners wearing some symbol of our love and fealty for our Boston Marathon family, blue and gold ribbons, Boston hats and shirts, messages marked onto singlets, arms, legs, faces. I remember the sharp shooters on the roofs of surrounding buildings, heavily padded police officers and their sniffing dogs walking among us as we stomped our feet and waited for the starting gun, soldiers on the sidewalks, grimly watching the crowds, long rifles packed on their backs. 

I remember thinking that this was not how I wanted to live my life, guarded and afraid of what was to come. 

I think a lot about those two older guys I met at Providence last year. I remember cheering them on as they finished. Even though between the two of them their marathons numbered in the hundreds, the smiles on their faces were as big as the smiles on the faces of every other finisher that day. I think about all every runner I've known has endured while pursuing their own particular versions of happiness.   

Before Providence, I always associated the word “endure” with a spectrum of negatives, like boredom, pain, abuse.

The Providence Marathon, and the folks I met while running it, gave me a new perspective on endurance. I saw lots of runners, joggers, walkers, limpers out there that day. They saw me too. We didn’t have long conversations or anything. In some cases, our communication wasn’t much more than a nod or a thumbs-up, maybe a grunt every now and then. 

But now, when I think endurance I think something different. I think of sharp shooters and of who I do not want to be. I think of how life ends way too quickly. I picture weathered skin and squinting laughing eyes. I think of small kindnesses and big pictures. I imagine rising up to face challenges, one step at a time -- on roads, in classrooms, at the keyboard.  

A whole lot of hooey? Maybe. 

We all live within narratives we’ve at least partially created for ourselves. For now, my idea of endurance is part of mine. Last week I ran marathon number 16. The creaks and aches, what few there were, have passed. My legs are again alive and kicking. That finish line smile? It’s still here too. What can I say, other than what's true for me right now? I endure.