The Marathon - Gerlinda

My Asics sneakers lie on the ground, one bowled over on its side with the laces flapping. There is something I should have perhaps learned by now, something solemn and hallowed – but those sneakers defy me. They’re so light, with their orange piping and dayglow threads.

They ran a marathon last Sunday.

I put them on at 4AM, in the amber light of Disney’s Contemporary Hotel. My training partner, Abby, and I both had tension rising off our skin like steam, as we posed for pictures on the predawn balcony. We ate bananas and double checked the ticky red cable ties that bound our champion chips to our shoelaces. We talked about how we were clearly insane.

The monorail belched us out half a mile from the starting line. The air was liquid and velvet, perfect for lazing in a hammock at the beach – except it was shot through with portable streetlamp light and cluttered with laughing and footfall and the chatter of thousands of ordinary people.

Runners. Reedy, thready, ropey anemic runners. Outsized santa-bellied, Garmin-watch sporting runners. Runners looking out of place without their baby joggers. Tanned, muscled, compression shirt wearing runners. iPod Runners. Nervous, over-wrung runners. Tell-you-a-thing-or-two runners. And then, Me and Abby – two unlikely, songwriting, over-thinking, fish-out-of-water runners.

We told each other we’d be fine.

The lines at the port-o-potties were half an hour deep. At 15 minutes to race time, we abandoned the queue and joined the renegade bush-squatting contingent, even though it felt slightly sacrilegious to be relieving ourselves on naturally manicured landscaping in the Happiest Place On Earth. At least it was only #1.

We made our way to Corral G – the 2nd to last corral, home to those of us who predicted we’d finish in 6-6 ½ hours. Abby was there out of sympathy to me. When I’d registered, the only race I’d ever run was Disney’s Family Fun Run 5K the previous January, which took me almost 45 minutes to complete.

Since then, however, training for this marathon, bored one November day on the treadmill, I’d logged a 27:13 5K. The leaps I’d made were amazing, actually. I ran the Virginia Beach Rock n Roll half marathon in September (2:22:12) but, more recently I routinely ran 13.2 miles in just over 2 hours – if the spray painted mile markers on Atlanta’s Silver Comet Trail were accurate. (Authors Note: they are decidedly not accurate.)

True, there had been setbacks. For one thing, my band had a show the night before my 20 mile training run, and I forgot to eat dinner. I couldn’t understand why running was such a horrible drag the next morning. “Why” I asked myself, “Are you doing this?” And suddenly it was very clear how idiotic I was, how I could be nestled under a blanket on my couch, reading. I never recovered from that training run. Since early December, my training had gone to hell. I was terrified to lace up the Asics sneakers. What in the hell had I been thinking? Obviously, I would never be able to run 26.2 miles. I would collapse. I would cry. I would give in. I would give up. The last 3 weeks of my training were riddled with potato chips and holiday chocolate. I went out with friends, stayed up late, slept in, missed my training runs. My weekly mileage dropped to 15, then to 10, then to 5 – and not because I was tapering, but because I was scared out of my mind and doing everything within my power to numb myself, psych myself out, ruin everything.

But, I had trained too well for that. Until that terrible 20 miler in early December, I had trained relentlessly. If I missed a run, which was an extreme rarity, I made up for it later in the week. When I absolutely had to do a run on the treadmill, I punished myself by making myself run it faster than I’d ever run before. I didn’t think of it as a speed workout. I thought of it as payback for being a pussy. And I didn’t think I was being tough either – I thought I was a ridiculous sham of a runner, weak and slow. It made me feel like pounding my chest and roaring, to force myself to run to exhaustion, until my heart rate topped 180 and my head was light from panting.

I had a vague sense I was doing something good for myself. I got panicky sometimes, wondering what exactly that “good thing” was – that something solemn and hallowed I felt I was supposed to learn. After a long run, I wiped salt off of my skin and touched my toes while my leg muscles quivered and shook, and I felt calmer, for having tried, at least, to listen.

And now, here I was at the starting line of the 2007 Disney World Marathon, with everything happening in slow motion. There were fireworks. Corral G began walking forward. Abby leaned over and said, “What if this is, like, a death march? What if we’re all about to be lined up and shot dead?”

I looked at her and smiled, relieved that there was – at least – someone weirder than me in this world. We reached the starting line and broke into a jog. Way back in Corral G, it was a very easy jog indeed. It calmed me down. As Abby pulled away from me, I felt like maybe I would do this after all. As the 1 mile marker approached, I wasn’t even breathing hard. But then I looked at my watch – 11:56. Egad! I wasn’t even on a 5-hour pace to finish, and I would be damned, after all that work, if I didn’t finish in under 5 hours!

I started passing people. It wasn’t easy. Folks were walking and chatting, sometimes 4 abreast in the road. I said “Sorry” without looking at anyone, as I squeezed myself in and out of little breaks in the tide. I felt like I was spreading bad karma. I told myself to be nice, to get outside of my head, to look around, so that I would remember, so that I would feel a part of this experience I’d chosen to have.

But the first 6 miles passed in an utter blur. By mile 7, I was on pace to finish in 4:40, but I knew I needed to slow down. The down comforter was creeping in: the voice that says, “Why in the HELL are you doing this?”

But, I couldn’t slow down. I couldn’t look around. I couldn’t smile. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t take it in. At some point, the sun came up and it was an unwelcome thing – hot and beating down, illuminating mile after mile of pine tree barricades planted alongside highway cloverleaves. We did run through Cinderella’s castle, didn’t we? I don’t really remember anything until Mile 18.

I’ll call Mile 18 “The Lost Mile.” I think I walked almost half of it. I’d been trying, fairly successfully, to keep my pace, but suddenly I realized I had choice: I could kill myself trying, but I was still going to fail. Or, I could slow down, get out of my head, and try to remember why I signed up for this race in the first place:

My father was dying.

I don’t know what it felt like to him, but to me it felt just like this race. I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t stop to take any of it in. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t think. I knew there was something solemn and hallowed that was happening to me and my father and everyone in my entire family. I trusted somehow that one day I would understand. For now, I was showing up. I was putting one foot in front of the other. I was doing the best I could, and if it wasn’t good enough, it felt right – at least - to try.

That was three years ago. Dad died three years ago last November, and I still haven’t figured out the solemn, hallowed thing I’ve felt like I’m supposed to be learning. I’m still numb and scared, and I’m still hopelessly myself – with a fondness for potato chips and feather comforters and fiction novels. But somehow I know now, whether I want to or not, that it is up to me, to take matters into my own hands. My hands, after all (and I mean this metaphorically,) are a gift from God to me, and to the world.

It would be nice, perhaps, if God could be a bit clearer. A girl like me could use a set of instructions. Left to my own devices, I’m apt to do something overdramatic and crazy, like attempting to run a marathon.

Midway through Mile 18, I force myself into a trudging jog. It occurs to me that I have an Alleve in my pocket. I’ve never taken a painkiller on a run before, but what the heck? I pop it in. I open my eyes, I look around. There are a lot of other people walking. Most of them don’t look particularly dejected. In fact, they seem to be rather enjoying themselves. There are conversations, even giggles. One girl is dressed as Tinkerbell.

As Mile 20 comes and goes, and I realize I’m now running further than ever before, I do a gut check. After all, if I’m about to have a heart attack (there was that heart murmur, after all, that they detected in college and which I haven’t had looked at since,) I should really just stop this nonsense. But, truthfully, I feel fine. I feel good, actually - relatively speaking, of course, as my clothes are wringing wet and I can feel a sunburn taking root on my skin.

At Mile 22, I strike up a conversation with a guy who fell off training when he had to spend a month in Costa Rica, and is “paying for it now.” But he seems cheerful enough – I know he’ll finish the race.

Around Mile 23, I chat with a crazy woman who ran the half marathon yesterday and now is running the full marathon today. She’ll get a Goofy medal in addition to her Donald and Mickey medals. She, clearly, is bonkers. But she has a nice smile and we chat our way past Mount Everest in the Animal Kingdom.

At Mile 24, I’m drafting off Tinkerbell who has visible knots in her calves. We jog past the Boardwalk Villas, where I sat the previous January flush from completing my first 5K, and watched the marathoners go by. I remember I saw an apple-shaped woman jogging determinedly along in her purple Team in Training shirt, and I thought to myself, “I could do that.”

Who is looking at me now, I wonder, thinking the same thing? Wearing my own white-and-purple Team Hope, Pancreatic Cancer Action Network singlet, I am crossing over into Mile 25 of my first Marathon. Abby and have raised over $4,200 for PanCAN: Me in honor of my father, and her in honor of her Uncle.

We enter Epcot. I notice my breath is suddenly thready and slightly gasping, even though I am still jogging slowly. I feel invincible. I barely hurt. But maybe this marathon is taking its toll on me after all. I decide to walk a moment and a kind, older gentleman asks me if I’d like a gel. I break into a jog and pass him. I round Spaceship Earth and head out of the park, and suddenly, there is the finish line, straight ahead.

I take my Dad’s picture out of my pocket and hold it in my hand as I cross. I’m crying. I’m pressing my fists to my eyes. But I feel good. 4:57:43. Never once did it cross my mind that I wouldn’t finish.

Someone clips my champion chip off my Asics Sneaker with the orange piping and dayglow threads. Someone puts a medal around my neck. Someone hands me a bottle of water. I get a banana. I stretch. I wander through the tents, and there is Wendy – Abby’s partner – grabbing me by the fanny pack, seeming gleeful that I’m still alive. She guides me to Abby. We look at each other and look away, because we’re shy like that, and we haven’t been shot, after all. My hair has stiffened into a salt bush, and hers is a mass of curls in the back.

Just put one foot in front of the other, I guess. You’ll get somewhere soon enough.