People talk about a runner’s high. Honestly I don’t know what that is. I’ve heard people describe it but personally I don’t feel I’ve ever experienced it. I just know it sucks running. It’s never been my favorite, I don’t enjoy it, but I’ve gotten better at it. If I have noticed anything that might be close to a runner’s high, it’s that music hits different when running.
As I’ve said: running for 3+ hours every other week burns up alot of time. Sometimes I’ve used it as an excuse as to why I can’t do something during the day. I am using it for training, but I also know there could be other times I could fit in the long run. It’s another form of escape, another distraction, another way to punish myself. It allows me to keep my distance from everyday life, an excuse to be alone, to run away from things literally.
“I’ll build a wall and we can keep them in the other side”
And so the marathon was underway. The rain let up, it was still cold but I had on enough layers to keep me warm. I’ve run a handful of 5ks, so I know at the start everyone is bunched up and it takes a while before everyone spreads out. I was keeping pace with the head of the pack, pulling away from the slower ones or the ones who already found their pace. We were running through a neighborhood, police blocking off streets for us, people cheering from the sidewalks.
“The destiny I’ve chose, all becoming clear…in the arms of undertow I will take my place, in the great below”
The rain came intermittently. Mist, to shower to mist and sometimes big drops I could feel on my hat. My gloves were soaked. They became heavy and cold, like I was holding a freezing wet towel in each hand. My head was getting warm, too warm. Even in the 40 degree rain I was starting to overheat. My body was getting warmed up and the sweat wasn’t able to breathe under my raincoat. A gust of wind flew my floppy hat off more than once. Worse of all, the duct tape was failing. I could feel it start to come loose. A big snaking ribbon was unraveling around my feet.
My comedy of errors was coming to a close. But there would still be a few things to fail me on the way.
At about the 5k mark, I stopped just past an aid station. I ripped the duct tape off both shoes. I took off my ridiculous hat, my cheap rain coat, my soaked gloves. I rolled them all up quickly and tightly as I could and shoved them in my small bladder free hiking backpack. A few people passed me as I was packing up. I was somewhat concerned about my time. I wanted something to be proud of, even if the goal was to finish, I didn’t want to be last.
My hands were wet but no longer heavy. The knit cap was keeping my head warm enough and soaking enough water and sweat so it wasn’t running down my face. I could feel my body able to breathe now that it wasn’t covered in suffocating plastic. I was no longer worried about wet feet, because they were wet anyway and nothing could have prevented that. I did start to feel a blister forming which worried me this early on in the race. Probably because of the wrong socks, but there was nothing that could be done now.
I had my wardrobe under control as much as I could. I had accepted the discomfort, accepted the rain and cold. I had found my groove, my cadence. Now I just had to push through to the end.
The pack thinned out as we ran out of town. We were now solidly in the country. The roads narrow with no center line. Cattle eyed us curiously behind rusty barbed wire fences dripping with rain water. I could see runners ahead of me and some behind. Everyone at a distance. During my 5ks I was always surrounded by people, but now, on the outskirts of a small town Texas, the runners spacing themselves out, I was finding myself more and more alone.
“Where is everybody?”
Aside from my pit stop at the 5k mark to throw everything in my pack, I ran past the halfway mark of the marathon. That means I ran 13+ miles without stopping to walk. That was a new record for me. I had a protein bar in my pack that I got out, but it was one of the worst bars I had ever tried. It was like trying to chew on chalk. I couldn’t even swallow a bite so I spit it out. I ran out of water with electrolyte mix in my 2 bottles, so every aid station I ate a banana and drank whatever Gatorade mix they had. I didn’t want to rely on the aid stations, but due to my ill preparedness, or shitty luck, I had to take whatever I could get.
Then my earbuds died. Running is boring and lonely without anything to listen to. The music keeps me distracted. The earbuds failing was something I did not anticipate. They had never died before on my long runs, and so the question of how long they would last was answered.
That was the last of the failures. Everything that could go wrong did or so I thought. As I shoved my earbuds into my pack, the sky opened up, and large cold drops of rain fell as a last insult to my misery.
“So many dirty little places, in your filthy little worn out broken down see through soul”
I kept thinking: this is what I asked for. Until that point the rain didn’t seem as bad as the weather prediction made it out to be. I kept thinking ‘This isn't so bad’ but I didn’t want to tempt nature. But it was bad. I found out later it was one of the hardest marathon courses in Texas. There were long gradual hills, there was about a 2 mile stretch of rocky muddy dirt road. It was shit weather. I was not prepared fully due to my overlooking of gear and supplements. Things failed on me the whole of the course. It was not ideal in any sense, and it was bad.
“The tears of regret frozen to the side of his face”
Even then, legs burning, rain dripping, the quiet cadence of my swollen feet on the asphalt. I kept going, too distracted by the multiple failures to get bored. Every once in a while on the lonely roads, the waft of a dead animal filled my heavily breathing mouth. The silent cows and their own odors filling my nose in the cold wind and quiet rain. The sky was bright now. Blinding light gray like a thin sheet. No variation in the clouds, no hint of the sun shrouded in the mist. And alone I kept running.
Now, about three quarters in, the pain and emotion welling, it occurred to me that I was running a marathon. I had been so distracted by the failures, the discomfort, it never occurred to me what I was accomplishing. Along the roads we posted the final kms and miles. It took until near the end for the emotion to catch up with me. I almost lost control realizing how close I was to the finish… but it was not the time, I told myself to save it to the end. Last km I gave it my all, a last sprint to the finish even after running 26 miles. Running is lonely, at the start there was a crowd of runners, but by the halfway point there was no one, and now at the end, the crowd, the runners who already finished the 5k and 10k, the smell of the brewery, realizing everything I had done up to that point was like coming out of a fitful sleep.
“Spiral out, keep going”
I ran across the finish line. No cheering crowds to greet me, just a camera man under an umbrella. Still waiting for the breakdown, still thinking of the 100 Ultra. After a miserable day, after 5 weeks of strenuous competitions and training, my fight was over. I did not break down, I did not collapse. I was not beaten. I’ve been looking for something to beat me. I don’t want my body to fail, for if I did I wouldn’t train and I’d let these things beat me outright. I want to find out what will break my mind. I almost felt it at Enchanted Rock when I had mild heat stroke and saw the phantoms of animals in the 100 degree heat. But even the miserable marathon was not enough to beat me.
“Never be enough to fill me up”
After the marathon, thinking that was only a quarter of the Ultra. Could I do that 3 more times? Speaking to people after the race, finding out that was one of the hardest marathons because of the ups and downs and dirt roads, but someone also suggested it was good training for the ultra. The Ft Davis Mountains are not flat, and the altitude is a mile high. Training on flat ground is one thing, but after the Spartan races and the marathon, having changing terrain is much different. Not to mention the rocky trail running which will not be flat and clear of rocks like the peppered asphalt roads of the South Texas Hills.
And so, after painfully changing clothes, putting dry socks on my purple feet and over a 2 inch blister that had formed, I drank my free beers fresh from the brewery and went back to my hotel with another 6 pack. I drank in my pain like I had before for 5 weeks in a row, but now I had no competitions to look forward to for several weeks.
And at the end, after the race, after the hotel bill, gas bill, pain in my legs lingering for 2 days, lungs tight, hangover; I still ask myself…why?
I am close to that answer dear reader. A few months later, in the darkness surrounded by friends, I realized I have been asking the wrong questions, looking for the wrong answers.
But that, dear reader, is a story for another day…
Comentarios