Did He Say "Sweden"?

“Recovering” from a marathon can be rough, and as many times as I’ve gone through it, it still takes me by surprise. I focus so much on reaching the finish line that my forward thinking doesn’t progress beyond that marker, at least not in a rational way. I may picture a postrace haze of gold, a celebratory atmosphere, a state of bliss in which all my problems will have slipped away.

The problems return though, after about 10 minutes of post-finish line afterglow. The day after a marathon, my postrace haze consists of a headache, a gnawing hunger, and a simmering irritability. During a long drive home from a marathon this summer, my mother, who had accompanied me on the road trip, pulled out some hard candy she’d purchased at an old-fashioned candy store the day before. My mother makes no apologies for the way she eats hard candy: she does not suck it, she bites. I’ve known her long enough to be familiar with this trait. I tried to focus on the road as I listened to the rustling of the candy wrappers. My muscles tensed at the first loud crunch. “I can take this,” I told myself. “It’s not a big deal. It will be over soon.” I tried to breathe evenly. More crunching followed. More crinkling of wrappers. Finally I burst out, “How long is it going to take to crunch that candy?” My mother confessed it was taking longer than she expected to bite through her stash in the otherwise silent car. We both ended up laughing about it. For the rest of the trip, I maintained a thin façade over the growly bear I felt I had become. I don’t think my mother ate any more of her candy.

I was in another one of those funks, puttering about my apartment with a scowl and feeling bleak about the future and the world in general, when a word from the TV that I had on for background noise penetrated the fog and caught my attention: Sweden. Sweden? Did someone say "Sweden"?

I turned toward the TV in earnest. A Rick Steves travel show was coming up, and he was heading to Sweden.

Earlier this year, I’d considered traveling to Stockholm for the June marathon there, but then I realized the event had sold out months before. So I put it on my radar for 2012. Still, at the point when Rick Steves offered me a preview of a Swedish tour, I hadn’t committed one way or the other; I hadn’t registered for the 2012 event, and the prospect floated at the back of my mind, seeming very far away.

Sweden. Suddenly the word had magic. Suddenly a 2012 trip emerged from the realm of the distant future and drew near enough to look alluring. For Sweden, I thought, it might be worth sticking around.

I sometimes think of a particular line from the movie “Steel Magnolias,” which I first saw when I was about junior high age and have watched several times since. The character played by Olympia Dukakis has lost her husband and is trying to cobble together a life without him. She’s a longtime football fan, and at one point she quips, “Well, I really do love football, but it’s hard to parlay that into a reason to live.”

Sometimes I understand just what she means. Sure, I really do love running and traveling, but it can be hard to parlay that into a reason to live.

And yet, somehow, that single reference to a travel show about Sweden was enough to pull me out of my funk.

Looking back, I realize that every trip I’ve taken has become part of me, part of my identity. Right before I went to Norway in 2008, the undertaking seemed like an awful lot of trouble. Now, I can’t imagine not having gone. I love the memory of walking back to the lodging around 1 am under an overcast but fully lit sky, sleeping on a bunk bed in a wooden cabin with the square window next to me never darkening. Traveling to Iceland got put off from 2009 to 2010, but on the trip that almost wasn’t, I fell in love with a new country that reminded me of my native state of Idaho, with its geysers and lava rocks and small, independent population. Dublin drew me back for a second visit, and now I’m wondering how soon I can manage to return.

Geyser in Iceland--or could it be Soda Springs, Idaho?

I’m registered now for the 2012 Stockholm Marathon; my entrance fee is paid, my place is assured. Anticipation comes in waves: at the moment, it all looks far away again. It’s hard to see past the holidays and the crushing darkness of winter. My next scheduled marathon, in Myrtle Beach in February, seems as unreal as daylight in the evening. But if I remember that bleak postrace afternoon when Rick Steves came on TV to talk about Sweden, I can call up that prick of hope, too. Yes, I think Sweden may be worth sticking around for.