26 Days to 40. It’s marathon not a sprint.
Despite having played team sports throughout my entire childhood and into high school on some exceptional basketball teams, some adequate to moderately good baseball teams and a championship caliber intramural softball team, my greatest athletic achievement actually happened as an adult in the individual sport of running.
I’m being a bit loose with the terms “running,” and “achievement.”
What actually happened was, I kept my body in motion either by jogging, walking or even a brief stint of crawling for 26.2 miles one Sunday morning in San Diego in the summer of 2008. And it only took six hours, 6:23 to be exact. That was good enough for me to place 1,351st… in my age category of 25–29 year-old men.
Overall, I came in 14,197th place. To give some perspective to that number — Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence seats 14,000. Just imagine an entire arena full of people (something we haven’t seen much of in 2020) plus another 196 people working the concessions, the ushers and the parking lot attendants, and they’re all crossing the finish line before me.
And here I am, drenched in sweat, moving like someone whose been on his feet for nearly six-and-a-half hours, crossing the finish line triumphantly with my hands held high and a smile on my face.
It doesn’t even matter that enough people to fill up Rhode Island’s largest indoor stadium and then some finished before me. I completed a marathon. Me. This guy. This is my greatest athletic achievement!
That’s something I wouldn’t have been able to say had it not been for my good friend, fellow marathon participant and the person whose idea this was to run 26.2 miles, Joe, who despite a knee injury that cut his training short was in much better shape than I was and stayed with me every painful step of the way, and our friend Chris who was waiting for us at mile 19. Because that’s where I was going to call it quits. That’s also where I did the aforementioned brief stint of crawling, and maybe some crying too. Hey, running makes you do some weird stuff, like put band-aids on your nipples, so yeah there’s a lot going on, including maybe some tears.
I had nothing left at mile 19, because, for one thing, it’s 19 miles, which is far in any mode of transportation that’s not a plane or jet pack, and secondly because the training program I used capped at 18 miles a couple weeks before race day. So that 19th mile was brand new territory for me.
Thankfully Joe and Chris convinced me to keep on moving and cross that finish line. There was a handful of loved ones, including my brother and future sister-in-law who made the trip all the way out from Connecticut, incredibly patiently waiting to see me cross that finish line. I did not want to disappoint.
So yeah, I ran a marathon.
And I got a hilarious sunburn out of it too. Look at that!
I say hilarious because comedy is tragedy plus time. On that day and for the next couple days after, it was tragically painful and not nearly as funny as it is twelve years later.
In case it’s unclear, I was wearing a headband. The one and only time in my life I can ever remember wearing a headband.
In the days after, those who knew I completed the marathon would ask, “are you going to do another one?” and the answer was always an emphatic no. I was happy to finish that one race. I can say I did it. I don’t need to say I did TWO marathons.
And then six years later, I got crazy and decided to do another one. This time in Vegas baby! At night on the Las Vegas Strip. I trained to run the full marathon, and actually did an awesome job with my training. I felt way more confident going into that one than I did in San Diego. I was much better prepared and bonus points, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting another epic sunburn.
Unfortunately, I didn’t hit the 9-mile checkpoint on time to run the full marathon, because Vegas doesn’t like keep the strip closed for too long, and I ended up only getting to complete the half marathon. But I definitely could’ve gone all 26.2 that night.
So I tell people I trained for two marathons, when the topic of running and marathons comes up, don’t worry I’m not one of those 26.2 bumper sticker people who always finds a way to bring up marathons just so I can brag about having done a marathon and another half-marathon. But I guess I just did that with this blog post that will live on the internet forever.
Tim Hammill is a communications professional in the nonprofit sector. He’s turning 40 on October 20, 2020. He’s writing about the final stretch to this milestone age in 40 Days to 40, a collection of stories, thoughts, reflections and whatever else comes to mind each day. In addition to writing a blog, Tim has also decided to donate his birthday to This Is My Brave, an organization he very recently learned about that brings stories of mental illness and addiction out of the shadows and into the spotlight. If you’d like to support Tim’s birthday fundraiser, go here.
Additionally, there are three other organizations that are close to Tim’s heart: Save the Children, Stand Up To Cancer and the Bridgeport YMCA. Click on each to learn more and to support their work.
