This could only happen to me.
Susan and Lynn dropped me off at the starting point. It was 36 degrees. I had on shorts, a long-sleeve T-shirt and a heavy hoodie. I can't really estimate how many people were participating -- a couple thousand? -- but I knew that the numbers under 1,000 (mine was 477) meant you were doing the full marathon, and other numbers meant you were either doing the half-marathon or the 10K. I got a little nervous as I noticed that virtually all the under 1,000 looked like serious runners. No walkers. I started making conversation with those around me huddled towards the back. Most of them were running the 10K or walking the half-marathon. Was no one else walking the full marathon? Someone told me she had heard another participant make that claim.
So the gun went off and we all shuffled towards the starting line. It was fun watching the tops of everyone's heads, seeing wave after wave of them start to bobble as the reached the starting point. It was so cold at the beginning that that was all I was focused on. After about mile 2, I could feel my feet.
If I thought my daily five miles gave me an advantage, I think I was wrong. I had to fight to stay in the middle of the walking pack. I picked a few people whose stride I liked, and would shadow them. If they started pulling ahead, I'd jog to keep up.
At about mile 7, a woman about my age caught up with me and started making conversation. Was I walking the half-marathon? Actually, the whole thing, I said. Had I EVER walked a half-marathon? No. "Then why are you walking a marathon the first TIME?" she shrieked. I smiled and said I just felt like it. I put my head down and walked a little faster. "This is my third half-marathon. I'm proud to walk a half-marathon! I don't feel like I have to PROVE anything by walking a full marathon!" Good God. I flashed another smile, and kept moving.
A mile or two later, a very friendly volunteer on a bike pulled up beside me to make sure I was doing okay. I was. I said "Am I the only one in this thing who's walking the full marathon?" She looked at me blankly. "I didn't know you were allowed to walk the full marathon." I looked at her equally blankly. "Well, that's what I told them I was doing, and nobody said I couldn't." She was very sweet and very supportive. "Well, they'll be pulling up the cones and the roadblocks pretty soon, but as long as you stay on the sidewalks, I don't know why you couldn't do it on your own."
My first instinct was, I don't care, I WILL do this on my own. I came up here to walk a marathon, not a half-marathon.
My second thought? There were few walkers as it was -- sometimes there would be a quarter mile between me and the person in front of me -- and as the miles pulled up, the route, which was not spectacularly marked in the first place, got a little confusing. There would be cops or volunteers at major intersections and I would have to say, Do I go this way? What would happen if I tried to do the whole thing on my own, with my sense of direction?
But here's the kicker: I don't know if I could have finished. By about the 9 mile point, I was hurting. I had pulled a muscle in my groin (do women have groins? You know what I mean), and my left everything was hurting. And I know why. The people that I was pacing myself against? They were walking the 10K! No wonder they were going so fast. I overdid it right off the bat, in the near-freezing cold, and I was paying the price.
What if I had been allowed to finish the marathon, and there were hundreds walking with me? As much pain as I was in, I don't know if I could have handled just giving up. Maybe I would have just walked very slowly; I don't know. But as I got to mile 12, I decided I was more relieved than disappointed
Lynn asked me if I still plan to walk a marathon. Yes and no. I will walk 26.2 miles before the year is out, but I won't do it in an "event" setting. Once was enough. Just as I get up every day and walk five miles, and sometimes get up very early and walk 10, or 12 or 15, one day I'm going to get up and just walk for seven hours. At my own pace, on my own route. I'll either walk the Austin marathon route, or I'll make up my own. But I'll do it.
After it was all over, I freaked! I just remembered that I'd built my whole week around the 26.2 miles, and I'd only done 13.1. How many miles would I have to make up? None, as it turns out. I'd walked 2.5 on Thursday, took off Friday and Saturday, and got up this morning (still very sore) and walked five with Lynn. I'm right back on track.
Right now I'm in the Omaha airport. My plane has been delayed 3 hours. I'll be getting into Austin at 10-something rather than 8-something, because I'm going to miss my connecting flight in Dallas. At least they gave us a meal voucher.
And tomorrow I'll show you some pictures of the amazingly wonderful time I had with my cousin and her amazing family, including four dogs, four cats, a parrot, a cockatoo, two cockateels and a couple of aquariums full of fish.
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