There’s something not-quite-right about running a marathon, which is a dandy 26.2 miles long and, as much as I can imagine, what it must feel like to give birth through your thigh muscles.
There’s something not-quite-right about it, and unfortunately, that doesn’t seriously occur to you until you’re 20 miles into it.
Why not a year ago when I first hatched this plan? Or six months ago when I started training? Or why not as I approached the start line, when there was still time to fake the recurrence of an old soccer injury?
“Ohhhh, my groin! Someone get me to the beer tent, stat!”
But no-ooo! I signed-up, trained, walked up to the start line, accepted the challenge, ran off down the road with a bunch of deranged lunatics and got 20 miles into the thing before I realized it was an extremely bad idea.
What was I thinking?
I ran the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C. this past weekend, along with 28,000 fools who started, and 20,000 crazier-fools who actually finished.
I finished, dang fool that I am, and came in No. 3,019 with a time of 3 hours and 48 minutes. Honestly, that doesn’t sound too bad — and really kind of good. Only problem is it was 18 minutes slower than I wanted, and three minutes off my first marathon almost a decade ago. And in that earlier race, my foot fell off mid-way through and my spleen imploded. Aside from a few hills, there was no excuse for running slower.
The first 20 miles went great. It’s unbelievable that a sane human being could say that running 20 miles was good or enjoyable, but I loved it. Amazing crowds lined the streets for miles. It snaked down along the lush Potomac and back along the banks toward the monuments, the capitol and the Smithsonian. I was pumped, and got an absolute surge around mile 13 when I saw my wife and daughter cheering for me.
It’s hard to explain, but when you’re running well, feeling good, on pace, surrounded by lots of sweaty and sometimes smelly people, you feel on top of the world.
I felt like an Olympic athlete, and was so confident I could hold my pace the whole way, I started stopping to give tourists directions and once even to help a squirrel bury a nut. There was no stopping me.
And then it happened — blasted mile 20. That’s when it all started to unravel and spiral horribly out of control.
My pace fell off (a cliff) and my legs started to tighten up and cramp. The rest of me felt fine. But when your legs start mumbling things back and forth like, “Well, if we just stabbed him in the kidney …” or “hey, flag down that cop and tell him we’ve been kidnapped,” you know it’s not going to be easy.
I remember stopping once in front of the Pentagon, thinking that if I just stretched my quad for a second, it might help. As I grabbed my foot to pull it back behind me, a cramp shot down from my buttocks to the tips of my toes like a bolt of lighting. I thought I had been electrocuted, or that my muscles had turned to concrete.
“Ohhh-K,” I muttered to myself. “Let’s just put that foot down and keep going. Nothing good can come of this.”
And I trudged off down the road. Hey, if it’s going to hurt more to stop running than to keep going, you keep going! When you’re faced with adversity, you suck it up and run. Who cares if you can’t lift your feet off the ground more than a hair’s width? Keep going until you can raise your arms triumphantly across that finish line, which is exactly what I did.
Sure, there might not be something-quite-right about running 26.2 miles, but when you’re 20 miles in, you just stay focused and head for that beer tent … even if your thigh muscles do give birth along the way.