Marathon Woman

Okay, I know it's not a big deal to walk a marathon, not like it is to RUN a marathon, but I've known from the beginning that I'd eventually have to do one, so I've been keeping my eye out.  My criteria was pretty simple:   I wanted it to be 1) in a state I hadn't been in before, 2) in a place cooler than Texas, 3) NOT during the summer and 4) preferably someplace exotic, or at least hip.  

I'll be leaving for Omaha, Nebraska, on September 21.

The only story I can remember about Nebraska is from a woman I worked with in California, who drove through there with her six-year-old grandson.  After a couple of hours he said, not unpleasantly, "There sure is a lot of nothing in this state." I have visions of 26.2 miles of cornfields, but what do I know? Maybe that stereotype is as outdated as are the ones about Texas.

Why Omaha?  Because the places I really wanted to go, like Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, didn't have marathons at all, or didn't have them during a convenient time.  Nebraska's falls the week after my birthday, so Lynn and I decided to make a trip up there together and spend the weekend with our cousin Susan, who we grew up with in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, and who then followed us to Austin before taking off for Nebraska with her now-husband.  The more we talked about it, the more excited we got, and now I can't wait. 

When I was in college, I decided to deal with a bad breakup in a constructive and healthy manner. Instead of whining and regrets, I would pick an author and read as many books as I could, with the thought that I could temporarily leave my circumstances and get lost in someone else's. I'd just finished a Women Writers course and loved Willa Cather, so I polished off Lucy Gayheart, Song of the Lark, O Pioneers! and My Antonia. It was a brilliant idea, and it worked. I loved learning about life on the plains for these Swedish and Norwegian immigrants, and, years later, when I started listening to "A Prairie Home Companion," felt that I was way ahead of the curve on the whole stoic/Midwestern/Lutheran/self-effacing thing. I knew Willa Cather came from Nebraska and that her childhood home has been turned into a museum, and I can't tell you how disappointed I was to learn it was about 300 miles from Omaha. Not possible for a quick weekend jaunt.

President Obama is in town, not to far from my house, and I knew the roads would be closed or clogged, so I left work early with some reports to write from here.  I jumped right into the walk at 4:20, finished at 5:50, and the sweat ring around my neck is about four inches longer than it usually is.  I don't care.  My reward is that I'm clean and showered and ready to work.  Tomorrow I'm looking forward to telling you about a fabulous new book I'm reading to get myself psyched for the marathon.