Rain splattered the windows of the bus as it drove from the
Stockholm airport into the city. I peered out at the dense gray sky. Somehow, whenever I had imagined my trip to
Sweden, I had pictured
Stockholm sunny.
Outside the bus at the Central Terminal, the cold penetrated my two jackets, making me hunch my shoulders and scurry for shelter—as much as it is possible to scurry with luggage. I guess I blame the cold for distracting me so that I missed the sign pointing from the bus terminal to the adjacent train station. Whatever the culprit, it seemed to take me as long to travel from the bus dropoff point to my hotel as it had taken to fly to
Sweden.
By the time I reached my hotel room, I had no desire to go outside again into that inhospitable weather, especially to brave the crowded train system once more and find my way to the marathon packet pickup. But I didn’t want things piling up for the morning, when my anxiety would already be high. I went back out into the storm. The rain had lessened somewhat. Still, I walked as quickly as possible from the train station to the marathon expo. I kept telling myself it would be better tomorrow … anyway, there was no point in thinking otherwise.
The next morning dawned early, around 3 am. I kept my eyes on the window. No rain, at first. And then a few drops. And then a few more. By the time I left for the marathon, the rain fell steadily. I had received a white baseball cap labeled Oasics Stockholm Marathon with my marathon packet, and I decided to put it on. It afforded some relief, deflecting the drops out of my face. But in the first miles of the run, I felt the wind snatching at it. I should have tried to fasten it with my barrettes. Too late—near the 5-km mark, the wind got greedy and carried the cap off and away.
I held out hope that the rain would let up, only it didn’t, and the wind blew cold, and the sky framed the world in bleakness. I didn’t believe that the sun had ever shone on
Stockholm. Around the halfway point, I glimpsed a row of port-a-potties and decided to stop (not a poetic detail, but real). The storm sounded even worse from inside the little box. The wind ripped at the roof and the rain pounded at it. I found that my hands had frozen into claws. I listened to the elements swirling inches away, and I knew: I could not go back out there. I was stuck. I was alone. I couldn’t go on, but I had to.
Because I was in a port-a-potty …
in a park …
in a foreign city …
on the coldest June day in 50 years …
with no money on me (lesson here?) …
and there was only one way out of my nightmare.
I burst out the door and hit the pavement running, and I did not stop until I reached the finish line inside the Olympic stadium from the 1912
Stockholm games. Even then, I permitted only brief delays. I exhaled heartfelt thanks to the volunteers who cut off my timing chip and handed me a yellow “Finisher” T-shirt (to stand in for the sun, my mother said) and a recovery packet containing fluids and snacks. I gushed even deeper thanks to the volunteer who retrieved my bag from the bag check. I pulled out my two jackets and my subway card and hurled myself toward the train station. On the subway, I stood shivering. Someone asked me about the marathon, about how I did. I couldn’t really answer.
“Too cold,” he said.
“Yes.” But I was finished—in the better sense.
 |
| Night of the marathon, still standing |
The next morning, I was still alive. The air had less ice in it and fewer rain drops, but I rode the train to Gamla Stan, the
Old Town, out of a sense of obligation. After consulting the map in my guidebook, I navigated toward one of the narrow streets that twisted up from the modern stretch outside the train station. At one point, I looked back to orient myself … and I gasped … and smiled. The view was beautiful.
I whipped out my camera. “This is cool!” I said.
Then I turned down one of the old streets. “This is so cool!” I said.
And it was still cold and damp all that day, although the sun peeped out, and the next day was just a little better, and the last day, the day I left, might even have turned out warm in the afternoon. I wasn’t there to know.
Even with my two jackets, I had not expected Stockholm to be quite so cool. And then again, even in my pretrip excitement, I had not expected Stockholm to be quite so cool.
