The Ultimate Runner by Tom Green

Author:Tom Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9780757394034
Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.
Published: 2010-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Marathon Thoughts

by Perry Perkins

Portland Marathon. October 9, 2005

• 26.2 miles is a long way. A long way. Way longer than our twentymile practice walk, infinitely longer than the ten-mile run from work to home.

• 26.2 miles is an odyssey of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Grinding, thudding pain, and hysterical laughter. It’s joy at the miles behind you, despair at the ones still ahead.

• Miles one to five are euphoria. It’s the crowd jostling for position, the starting gun, and the cheer of 13,000 people roaring down a skyscrapered canyon and washing over you in the semidarkness. It’s the one-man rally squad at the first turn who I wish would come to the Xerox parking lot every morning and cheer me from my car to into work. “You look great man, you’re doing awesome! I’m proud of you!” It’s passing through the gauntlet line of cheerleaders, each of them posing for the camera. (I’ve waited twenty freakin’ years to hear a dozen high school cheerleaders screaming my name from the sidelines; it was worth every penny and every step!)

• Miles five to ten: It’s tossing your sweatshirt aside to join a thousand (ten thousand?) jackets strewn along the sidewalk like dead leaves fallen from a forest of Walmart trees. It’s trying not to look ashamed that you are only walking, instead of running; from then on it’s just hoping you can keep walking to the end. I mean, it’s just walking, right? Good Lord, how hard can it be to just keep putting one foot in front of the other? Toddlers can do it! You’re not even carrying a backpack! People do twenty-five miles a day on the Pacific Crest Trail for five months! What kind of a wuss is depressed at the sight of a long slow upgrade after just fifteen miles of walking?

• Mile eleven is retaping your feet as the first blisters start to appear. It’s joking with your friends about whose stupid idea was this? It’s cheering the sweaty, oblivious runners who are passing you coming back, and your heart breaking for the woman struggling at the very end of the walking pack, a police-escort car and a long line of traffic following her at a crawl. You can hear the revolving lights of the cruiser whispering “loser . . . loser . . . loser . . .” as she hobbles along. It’s cringing and looking away.

• Mile thirteen is just unfair. After that gut-busting climb up to the bridge you discover that it’s the slow walk down the other side that really hurts. It is unjust.

• Mile fifteen is the memory of six hours of nasty-tasting power bars, stomach-turning glucose drinks, and some horribly sweet sludge called Honey Stinger. It’s reminding yourself to post a warning on your blog: if you ever decide to slurp down a packet of Honey Stinger, don’t ever wash it down with two Red Bull energy drinks. Ever.

• Mile eighteen is the best rendition of “Free Bird” you have ever heard, or maybe you’re just low on glucose again.

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