Suddenly it doesn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.
When did it? I’m having trouble thinking back to that time, trying to pin the blame on a moment, when I said to myself, “Sure, dopey, let’s go run 26.2 miles for fun, not because a bear is chasing you. For fun!”
Rational people don’t say things like that, and rational people can’t really relate to why a sane human being would run a marathon again. Years after running my first, I’m now training for October’s Marine Corps Marathon in D.C.
And I know there was moment, months ago, when this seemed like a good idea. I must have forgotten about all the pain, and just how grueling it can be. Memory is short, and common sense even shorter.
So I signed up and stood around a lot in a Superman pose thumping my chest.
But that was before the training began. Now I’m seven weeks into this 18-week program with the heat bearing down and the miles stacking up. “Why did you want to do this again?” my wife asked me over lunch the other day.
I sounded like a bad politician fumbling over some phony answer. The truth is, I don’t know. Is it fun? Well, not really. Does it make your body feel better? With all the chafing, and the three inches of skin rubbed off body parts I can’t mention here, I’d have to say “negative.”
Is there a sense of accomplishment? I guess that’s it.
But those were the reasons in the beginning, back when it seemed adventurous, like a noble quest, a test of wills, a great mind-over-total-body-shut-down chess game that you play with yourself. Truth is everything looks prettier, more appealing, and more exciting when you view it from a distance.
But drop down on it in the middle of August, then run 16 miles, and reality is a whole different picture.
I’m in the thick of it now, and I really want to find the me from a couple months ago to give him a swift kick in the pants. What was I thinking? By next month I will be running 50-mile weeks, with a 20-mile long-run on the weekend. I’m thinking of outsourcing some of those runs to India, but it might effect my time in the race.
My longest run so far has been 16 miles, and that’s still 10.2 short of a marathon. What do you think about while running 16 miles? That it’s still 10.2 short of a marathon. That’s it, and what an idiot you are.
Oh, and if you have a kid, you sing songs from Sesame Street over and over again. (I sang a soul version of the “ABCs” for 10 miles last weekend non-stop.)
I now have an iPod on order to help me deal with the mind-numbing boredom. But I’m not going to play music. It’s just going to repeat these words over and over again at 15-second intervals: “Keep going Yes, it’s still like 10 miles to go Don’t sing the ‘Elmo Song’ No, you don’t have to pee Yes, that is a squirrel over there laughing at you Yes, you did sign up for this and paid money already. Keep going.”
It might be easier if I ran with a group, but I like to train alone. I like to be by myself, at total peace with my burning thighs and throbbing calves. I like that moment when I stop for a drink, ring out my tank top and notice that half my body weight is down there on the pavement trickling away. It’s almost spiritual.
I like getting up at 5 a.m. on a Saturday to go run. I hit that first mile and say to myself, “Dude, no one’s looking. Let’s fake an injury, go make coffee, and watch soccer the rest of the day.”
Yet, for someone reason I shake it off and keep going. “Nah!” I say, “it’s only 10.2 more miles. Keep going.”