Half the marathon, all the fun

As late as Saturday evening, I still didn’t feel certain that I could run 13 uninterrupted miles, even though it was less than twelve hours until the start time of the first half-marathon for which I’d ever registered.

I was fairly confident. I’d set my sights on a half-marathon back in November, and for the past eight months, I’d been doing weekly runs of 10-12 miles, along with daily runs of about 2-4 miles. I was within spitting distance of that 13.1-mile mark; I just had never actually done the entire distance.

“The problem,” I told my friend Nicole, herself a distance runner who only recently started competing in half-marathons, “is that when I finish these ten- or eleven-mile runs, I always feel okay. But I never feel like, ‘Gee, I really feel like going another mile or two. Or three.’ I’m just really glad it’s done.”

Nicole assured me I needn’t worry. “You just take your longest comfortable distance,” she told me. “Then you add another mile for the confidence that wearing a race bib gives you, and another mile on top of that for the boost from the spectators.” If she was right, that would put be right up close to the 13.1-mile mark, and knowing it was an oceanside course made me think that by 12.5 miles, I’d be able to see the finish line. Surely once I could see it, I could reach it.

All of this sounded plausible to me. Sure, I could probably run 13.1 miles. Probably. But I couldn’t possibly know for sure until I tried.

So on Sunday morning, I tried, and I’m very happy to say I succeeded. I didn’t run it fast or particularly skillfully. In fact, out of a field of 2,189 runners, I came in 2,007. “I prefer to think of it as 182 runners still behind me when I finished,” I told my sister.

But even as I said it, I knew that was the wrong attitude. It shouldn’t matter that there were nearly 200 people who ran the course slower than I did. It shouldn’t even matter that there was anyone who ran the course slower than I did. It should matter only that I finished.

And even that, as I often remind myself, doesn’t matter all that much in the greater picture. Running may be good for you physically, but it’s also, to some degree, frivolous. I’ve maintained a daily running streak of more than 2,500 days – next month I’ll hit the seven-year mark – but as I often say when people congratulate me for that, there are far more worthwhile things I could try to do every day.

Yet even frivolity may have its purpose. I’ve run only about a half-dozen races in my life – a mix of 5k’s, 10k’s, and five-milers until Sunday's longer route – and one thing each race has in common is that once it begins, I feel a sense of liberation from all other cares. For the duration of the time I’m running, I give myself permission to think only about the run. Not work assignments; not family issues; not national or international political conflict. Just putting one foot in front of another, that most primal of actions.

Sunday was no exception; it just lasted longer. For more than two hours – okay, I’ll admit it: two hours and 39 minutes – running was all that mattered. Yes, that’s frivolous, but it’s also healing. The rest was waiting for me. I had plenty of opportunities on Monday to catch up on work and family and national headlines. Sunday morning, it was just me and the race course. And the blue sky and the sun. And the cheering spectators. And the sparkling ocean. And all the oxygen I needed, in the air around me every time I breathed in.

As the race ended, I almost wished I wasn’t quite at the finish line yet. Miles 9 through 12 had become a little bit arduous, but the final mile melted away. I almost felt like I hadn’t savored it quite enough before it ended.

Frivolous. Yes, that’s true. But also magnificent. And I was so very happy to have reached this personal goal.

Thirteen-point-one miles....maybe

Thirteen-point-one miles.

Oh, I haven’t actually run it yet. But I think I might.

The idea began germinating last Thursday when my friend Nicole joined me for my usual weekday two-mile run. One of the many things we had to catch up on, having not seen each other in nearly a month, was the half-marathon she ran last month in St. Louis, and at some point in the conversation she mentioned there was one coming up next month in New Hampshire.

“Send me the info on it, if you could,” I said.

She was surprised and actually so was I. I’ve been in the same running pattern for several years now: two miles on weekdays, four or five, and very occasionally six, on Saturdays and Sundays. It’s been working well for me.

My daily running streak is more than six years long. Why change anything?

But as soon as I told Nicole to send me the information, I started noticing omens.

Just a couple of days earlier, my friend Leigh had given me an unexpected gift, a pair of fancy padded running socks. Late last month I’d gotten together with a former co-worker whom I hadn’t visited with in over ten years. She told me she had recently become an ultra-marathoner, completing distances of 38 to 52 miles per race. “But how do you do that?” I kept asking. “First I ran a marathon,” she said. “Then I realized after 26 miles, there’s no difference in what you can do physically; it’s all psychological."

Well, I began to think, if she could make the psychological jump from 26 miles to 52, then I could probably make the same jump from my usual six to a little over twice that.

There was the fact too that I’ve been thinking a lot about aging lately, and this felt like something that might make me dwell a little bit less on what it meant to be just a few years from fifty.

It just started to seem like something I might be able to do. And once I started to think that way, I began to feel like it might be something I really wanted to do. 

I’m still not fully committed to the idea. For that matter, I’m still not even registered for the race. At the time Nicole and I first discussed it, the race date was six weeks and two days away. I knew I could do six miles. So with five weekends before the race, I reasoned, I’d do eight miles the next weekend and then build by one mile each week, which would bring me to twelve miles the weekend before the race. If I could manage to do each of those distances as the respective weekend arrived, I’d feel like the half-marathon was worth a try. If I found the training too difficult along the way, I’d stop. Six weeks isn’t really long enough to train for a half-marathon. If I couldn’t do it, I’d reconsider in the spring, when there would be more races to choose among.

But I did do the eight-mile run last Sunday. It felt good, and not all that difficult. Now I’ve told a few people I might do the half. And I found the race website myself even before Nicole sent me the information.

So it could happen. I’m not sure yet. I probably won’t make a decision for another two or three weeks. But the idea is somehow tantalizing. The possibility of conquering a new challenge is close at hand. Little lies at stake; I won’t feel bad about it if I end up backing out. There will be other chances for other half-marathons.

But this just might be the one. All those omens, after all. Time will tell just what they all signified.

Running for the Red Lantern Prize, yet again

On Saturday I ran the annual Carlisle Old Home Day 5-mile race. Back in 1991, this same event was the first road race I ever ran; I’ve done several others in recent years, but this one is always my favorite.

I have such mixed feelings about participating in races. And here I should point out that the copy editor in me wants to change the three-word phrase “participating in races” to the singular and simple “racing,” but that’s just my point: “racing” seems like a hyperbolic word for what I do. Every race I enter these days, I go into with the expectation that I’ll likely finish last. I never actually do finish absolute last – usually I fall in the bottom ten percent of finishers, regardless of the size of the field – but I’m always braced for the possibility.

Lots of people have tried to boost me out of this rather defeatist mindset, reminding me that it’s about competing and finishing rather than winning. And when I say “lots of people,” I of course mean my mother. Fortunately, no matter how often she tells me it’s wonderful that I race at all and I need not worry where I finish, there’s always my 11-year-old son to represent the counterpoint to that argument. “I’m just afraid I’ll finish last,” I admitted to him once on the way to a race. “Oh, Mom, I’m pretty sure you will!” he responded cheerily.

It’s easy to say that since I’m obviously not a competitive racer, it shouldn’t matter to me where in the field I finish, but there’s something that causes me an almost primal anxiety about being last. Even though road races take place in safe, well-populated, festive venues, toward the end of the run I often develop this irrational concern that I’ll be left behind. I know it’s not a literal worry: being alone on the course would not in any way be a problem any of the places I’ve ever raced (which include Concord, Massachusetts; Valley Forge, Pennsylvania; and Bath, Maine). But toward the end of a race I seem to revert to a grade schooler on a field trip, believing I’ll come out of the bathroom at the Museum of Science to discover my class’s bus has already departed from the parking lot. As my oxygen level thins slightly and my brain capacity diminishes a little, I become afraid in a childlike way of being left by myself.

In Saturday’s Old Home Day run, fears of being left behind were particularly ridiculous since at no point in the race was I farther than three miles from my own house. But more importantly, I know it sounds self-pitying to say I worry so much about coming in last. I know how lucky I am to have the physical ability to run five miles; surely there are countless women my age suffering from any number of disabilities who might read this and say “If I could participate in a road race, I’d never think about complaining about my finish time.”

On a rational level I agree with them, but there’s more to it than that: sometimes I feel compelled to ask myself why I bother to sign up for races when I’m sure to be one of the last people to cross the finish line. (At the race I’ve run twice in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, it’s a field of 1,000, so being in the bottom 10 percent still means nearly 100 people are running behind me, but my focus is always on the 900 ahead of me.) Race results are usually posted by name and hometown; when I take part in races in other states, I often picture people reading the results and saying “I can’t believe this woman traveled all the way from Massachusetts just to finish last in our race.”

But, indeed, there are other ways to look at finishing last than, well, finishing last. My friend Nancy Cowan reminded me of something we both learned when our children were second-graders studying the Iditarod, Alaska’s legendary sled dog race. “You’re not the last-place finisher; you’re the Red Lantern Award winner!” she said to me one year. And maybe the Iditarod organizers have the right idea. As written on the official Iditarod website, “Awarding a red lantern for the last place finisher in a sled dog race has become an Alaskan tradition. It started as a joke and has become a symbol of stick-to-itiveness in the mushing world.” In that sense, I’m the sweep: bringing up the end to confirm that the race both began and ended safely for all of us who stuck to it.

So I won’t give up on road races just yet. I’ll keep working for that Red Lantern Prize. Someone gets to be first; someone has to be last (or very nearly last. Last among those who actually ran the whole course.). When you see me cross the finish line, you know that another year’s road race has been successfully run. Time to start looking ahead to next year. Who knows, maybe a slower runner will have moved to town by then.