Running Older, Slower and More Persistent than Ever
As expected, the last 5 miles of the Seattle Marathon were completely unbearable and all I wanted to do was stop and die. But I didn’t have enough energy for dying. Oh, I also wanted to kill that annoying cheering lady with a poster “Looking good!”; she was screaming that I’m almost done and the finish line is right around the corner. Geez, I know exactly how far the finish is, I just don’t know if I can make it all the way in one piece! I want to stop, I want to rest, I want to quit! Then I remembered my granny and her stoic approach to athletics, life and everything: “if you are not puking and nothing’s broken, just get going”. So. I. Kept. Going. One step at a time, one breath at a time.
You see, the real marathon actually begins after mile 20; that’s where the unspeakable nightmares start. You begin the race all naïve, without any pain, and the first 5 miles are pure joy, springiness and happiness! Then, towards mile 15, things become intense, deliberate and focused — that’s what we trained for. But then, after mile 15, all the pain rushes in and things get really bad really fast. I mean really bad. Like, hell-on-earth bad. Feet hurt like hell. Legs hurt beyond words. Lungs hurt so much that you forget how much the knees hurt and they hurt more than your butt hurts. The whole ordeal becomes really hard and unbearable. Until you come to mile 20, that is. That’s when stuff happens. Yeah. Stuff. After 10 marathons I still can’t tell you what exactly the stuff is, but it is not humane and my memory blocks it out for each of my past races. Marathoners refuse to talk about post-mile-20 stuff as it is not to be remembered. Pushing your body past what you thought it was capable of is easy and you are doing it up to mile 20; the hard part is pushing yourself even further, past what your mind wants to let you think is your physical and mental limit. And you emerge on the other side victorious.
When I hurled myself over the finish line, I was both delighted and disgusted. Delighted that it was finally over and there will be no more crazy cheerleaders encouraging my obese misery and no more dragging my swollen feet mile after mile towards the finish. And I was disgusted that I finished this race so horribly behind my personal best marathon time — proof that I’m older and slower than ever before. And to add insult to the injury, I had to pay for this! Marathons are this crazy place where the athlete pays to participate and the spectator watches for free. Go figure!
I know what you are asking yourself: at what point in my life did I go completely insane and decided that it would be super-fun to occasionally participate in pain, misery and suffering (also known as endurance running)? Let me try to explain how I ended up here — but in a nutshell, I blame Jim.
Allow me to elaborate.
Like most people, at some point I realized I could walk. And then — and this is the big one — I discovered I could run. Not run fast, but run long and slow. And I enjoyed it. A lot. So I started to run with my friend Jim. I enjoyed that I was much younger and much faster than Jim — and we now frequently run together. Except, Jim is a grizzled running machine. 10 years older than me, but with a 30 year head start in running. So, he pushes me to run longer and longer, making runs more and more difficult and painful. His favorite run is called “Milk & Cookies”, where we are so destroyed and tired at the end, we call our mommies and beg for our glass of milk and cookies to dunk in.
Jim and I run a couple of marathons per year together; it is not just a sign that we are still alive and kicking, it is a sign that we can still endure the blisters, cramped legs and raw bleeding nipples.
If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience a different life, run a marathon. [Emil Zatopek]
Each and every marathon we finish, we swear that this was the worst one and clearly last one for us. “Never. Ever. Again.” And three months later we are part of another endurance race, cursing how much older and slower we became. What we don’t admit freely is that endurance running makes us experience a very different life, full of suffering and misery. Without running, we wouldn’t know what good and joyful life actually feels like and how lucky we are for who we are and what we have. Endurance running builds our humility, perseverance and respect. Of course it also pulverizes our knees, blackens our toenails and rubs our nipples to a raw and bleeding mush. And we love it. We are in it for the long haul. Literally and figuratively.
Not to mention that my doctor told me that running will add many years to my life. I think she is right, I feel at least twenty years older already, after merely a dozen of finished marathons! Couldn’t recommend it more!
