Less Than

November 12, 2011, had to be one of the most beautiful days of autumn in Richmond, Virginia. I went out into blackness that smelt of winter, but by the time runners had gathered at the start of the marathon, the sun was there to touch them all with gold.

The predawn chill softened into crispness. The sunlight embraced us, but gently; trees with bronze-colored leaves tempered the glare. I would get so tired, so spent, and then the shadows would fall across me, the breeze would caress me, the river would gleam at me, and it felt like rest.

I noticed the banners advertising loft apartments. I saw the retro buildings of Richmond neighborhoods, and around mile 3, I mouthed a few lyrics of “Kryptonite” as a live band pounded their drum beat into our hearts and feet: “ ... with my superhuman might ...”

But all the time, I was falling into that void of darkness and pain. I wasn’t the same runner I was in Dublin. My ankles had been swollen for days. My head hurt. I couldn’t keep track of the doses of ibuprofen and daytime cold medicine I’d taken.

Mindfulness, I could hear my therapist saying. A marathon has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I called up my old stand-by words of encouragement: time does tend to pass. This is long, but finite.

I tuned in to conversations around me. Two women talking about a friend with a new baby. It was happy and sad. “I might always be baby hungry,” one of them confessed. But she was OK, she added. She was OK with not being at that place in her life. Was her acceptance a goal, a wish, or the truth? It melded with the pain. My feet kept rhythm with hers for a long time, until gradually we floated away from each other.

I saw the skyline of Richmond outlined in azure. I heard my friend call to me from the sidelines. “Moab, Moab!” she shouted. It was our code word. It penetrated finally, in time for me to look and wave. I managed a real smile. I might come alive again.

The thing here, I told myself, is to keep going. Keep moving. And pray.

I prayed without saying "Amen." I didn't want to hang up. I pled for a lifeline, and somehow it came. For a while the course that had seemed so difficult felt easier. I didn’t study the elevation map beforehand. When I needed a rest, it was there.

“I am crawling,” I thought. So, crawl to the finish. The thing here is to finish.

A cop at an intersection cheered us on. “You all look like you haven’t run more than two miles!” he lied.

There was a quote I’d been trying to get hold of. Something from President Hinckley, something about life being like an old-time rail journey, with lots of … with … keep moving, keep moving, keep moving … with … with …

The idea drifted through somewhere between words and impression. But there was one word I wanted; I knew it was in there.

Life is like an old-time rail journey, but sometimes … “thrilling.”

Mile 26. Thrilling, thrilling, thrilling. The course dropped steeply. I put on speed. I could see the finish line. I could see the finish clock. Down, down, down. My feet moved of their own accord.

Almost there, almost there, and then over the timing mats. Volunteers waited with their arms full of medals. I bent my head to let a girl hang a medal around my neck. The gold ribbon caught the orange flare of the trees along the street.

And I tried to remind myself how hard it had been. How the words of Pink had driven me: “Pretty, pretty please, don’t you ever, ever feel, that you’re less than …” I happened to hear her song on the radio when I was driving down to the expo. I never expected to be inspired by Pink. But it was like the Katy Perry song I heard on my way into Myrtle Beach: “Baby, you’re a firework, come on show them what you’re worth.” Right words at the right time.

I collected a Mylar blanket and managed, with my fingers clumsy from cold and exertion, to get it around myself. It felt like a royal robe. The leaves overhead crowned me.

I say I do all this for the T-shirts. I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe for the medals? I don’t know.

Mindfulness, my therapist says, is a suspension of judgment.

In a marathon, I am so vulnerable; I am aware of things I don’t ordinarily notice. I feel my own weakness, but also my strength. Is it the body or the spirit that ultimately pulls through?

Or do those elements suspend their war temporarily, and prove that they are both essential? The memory is there, in the blue of my Richmond Marathon T-shirt: “You almost stopped, but you didn’t stop.” The thing here is to finish, in order to have made the journey.