Sometimes a Rainstorm Works Like Rose-Colored Glasses

All the weather forecasts promised scattered thundershowers. Was it too much to hope they’d scatter around the marathon course and not on top of it? A brief downpour pounded my windshield as I drove to the marathon start, but the steady drops gave way to a drizzle, and then to a mist. When I ventured outside after picking up my race number in the Ellerbe Springs Inn, the precipitation had stopped, and only the cloud cover remained.

But I heard the thunder a few miles into the run: a far off rumble at first. Stay far away, I wished silently. The thunder answered me, closer this time. Pass on by, I thought at it. It answered me again, closer still. And then the rain broke through.

Scattered showers, I reminded myself. Don’t be a wimp, I told myself. This will pass. You can get wet.

The rain pelted my forehead and ran down my face. My contact lens shifted. I shut my eye like I do in the shower when I turn my face into the stream of water. I shut it tight to hold in the lens. I stopped worrying about being a wimp; I stopped noticing the way my socks sloshed in my shoes. Because the truth is, I have good vision only through one eye, and I forgot to bring an extra lens for that eye, and oh, as I was leaving my apartment complex I thought about going back in for the eyeglasses I’d meant to stick in my bag, just to be safe. Only I didn’t go back for them.

Well, you are going to have to settle down here in North Carolina, I thought. Because if anything happens with this contact lens, there’s no way to get home.

I ran on in the rain with one eye shut. I passed mile 11. And I knew I was approaching the BIG HILL I had heard the other runners talking about, the one called “Hannibal” because, in the words of a marathon alumna and aid station volunteer, it will eat you up. The world appeared blurry and far away. I could make out the road immediately ahead of me and not much else.

I surprised myself by feeling amused. Here I am running in the rain, half blind, I thought. And I’m always worried about so many things, like this big scary hill that I can’t really see, but I never worried about my contact falling out in the rain in the middle of the marathon.

Now, my theory is that rainstorm was nature’s version of rose-colored glasses. I didn’t see much of the big scary hill, but soon the rain tapered off and the hill was behind me, and I was running in a cool breeze with my contact still in place. The thunder stopped rumbling at me, and my lens stayed in and didn’t make any more trouble and I was able to see to drive home.

In fact, it turned into a pretty great day. Thanks to the rain?

It's Ellerbe

So here’s the deal: I will drive approximately 6 hours to a small town near the southern border of North Carolina, west of I-95. After picking up my race packet, I will check into a hotel in a nearby city, because the marathon town has only one inn and it is full. I will try to stay focused and centered and maybe even detach myself from prerace anxiety enough to stroll around and take pictures ... maybe. Saturday morning I will drive the 12 miles back to town and join a small crowd of runners at the start of the challenge. The Challenge--hills, solitude, weather that threatens to turn too warm. And then? And then ...

I'm in!

Can you believe it, I had to register by mail! But it's official--I'm in. Heading to North Carolina for a run on March 24!

Roo and Piglet (and Greece) Forever

Marathons are powered by … a whole host of magical factors. Magical, I say, because I’m sure it all goes just beyond science. There’s the physiology and physics, the weather, the predictable and unpredictable conditions that training prepares for, but in the end, it comes down to magic.

The Myrtle Beach Marathon was powered by … volunteers with smiles and yellow T-shirts. Magic. I’m betting those volunteers don’t even know how awesome they are. Most of them probably never noticed me as I sped past them, fired by the energy of the friendly sparks they gave off into the atmosphere. “This is so much fun!” I heard a high school-age girl say after she handed off a cup of sports drink to a runner. I saw other volunteers talking and laughing with one another. It was a beautiful day, and the volunteers in their bright shirts were dressed like sunshine.

Actually, some of them did notice me. They had already been standing around for a while handing out numbers/shirts/drinks/medals before I arrived, and they still looked at me without letting their eyes glaze over, as if I were the first and only one they were serving. The teenage girl at the expo on Friday night who gave me my T-shirt and other goodies had a script to recite. She was careful with the words to get them right. Shirts were running small; did I want to change sizes? She held up an example of the size I had ordered. Then she showed me the arm warmers, which she and the other T-shirt volunteers were wearing for purposes of demonstration. (Imagine the creative repurposing of those long cloth tubes in the absence of volunteer guidance.) I’ve gone to lots of expos and picked up lots of T-shirts, and sometimes the volunteers are tired (no wonder) and bored (also no wonder) and want to just toss you your stuff so you’ll go away. But in spite of the scriptedness of her words, this girl spoke to me, not at me.

I already carried a smile inside when I got to her table. My first stop inside the expo had been at the number pickup desk, where my welcome came from friends of Winnie the Pooh. I had forgotten that the marathon registration form invited entrants to list a name or nickname for display on the number bib, so I figured the volunteer who retrieved my number from her stack of runner bibs was psychic when she remarked to the woman next to her, nodding at me, “This is Roo.”

Roo who? Roo is me. “Any relation?” the second volunteer asked. Well, yes. My childhood nickname has something to do with a pair of purple sneakers branded “Kangaroos,” but it’s the Winnie the Pooh gang who gave the name meaning. So I said “yes,” and in return I was informed that I had just met Piglet’s grandmother. Such a friendly reunion! Of course, this grandmother’s “Piglet” was obviously still a child, whereas from an objective view, I am not. Nevermind that: Roo and Piglet are forever.

What do you do when you leave a marathon expo feeling welcomed and happy? You have a great race. That’s the rule! And at the end of it, after I ran by all the miles of spectators cheering for “Roo” (thanks to my bib), more volunteers waited to top off the experience with the ultimate reward: the finisher’s medal. Among the line of medal givers, one of the volunteers read the words on my T-shirt. “If you’re ‘Running the World,’” she said, “I’ll meet you in Greece in two years.”

Well, that gives me a little time to plan.

Waiting ...

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was too late to sign up for the National Marathon scheduled for March 17. How am I going to get through this month without a marathon, when I'm supposed to be in the midst of my 2nd annual spring marathon blitz? Hmm, I don't know. I'm thinking about a race in North Carolina on March 24, but it's, uh, a bit hilly. So I don't know if I want to commit to that.

In the meantime, I was spurred on to sign up for a May marathon in Brookings, South Dakota, which will be a new destination for me, and for the Charlottesville Marathon in April. I've run the Charlottesville race a couple of times before, but the course was different the second time, and I hear it's changed again for this year. They say it's flatter. So maybe I could manage the North Carolina self-torture event a couple of weeks before that?

Finishing a marathon gives me such a high, it is hard to wait to experience that again. I'm trying to remember the way I felt the Sunday after the Myrtle Beach race, when I was packing my bag at the hotel and listening to the interview on a local TV show and thinking, "A triathlon, sure, why not?" I felt strong and happy, ready to dive into a new challenge. I'm hoping at least my memory of that energy can last me until April 7!