Running Out

The 2012 Richmond Marathon T-shirt is pretty cool—I think. It has long sleeves and a dark background, midnight blue or black. I’m not sure because I haven’t looked at it in daylight.

I have a few superstitions when it comes to marathons. One of my Very Important Rules is that I don’t own the T-shirt until I do the run. These days, T-shirts are almost always handed out ahead of time, at packed expos where runners steer through tangles of merchandise to pick up their race bibs and timing chips. But I don’t look at the shirt or handle it any more than necessary to stuff it into my “goody bag.”

Of course, I would never, ever wear the shirt before the run.

It’s too bad: I may never know exactly what the 2012 Richmond Marathon T-shirt looks like. It is lurking behind the chair in my living room, wadded up inside a bag prominently labeled Anthem, for the marathon sponsor. I’ll have to figure out what to do with it at some point, but I know for sure it can never belong to me, because I never did the run.

What happened? I kept asking myself on Sunday … why couldn’t I pull it together in the darkness of my bedroom on Saturday morning? How could I lie there and watch time moving forward, until it was finally, indisputably too late?

I made the prerace trip down to Richmond and back Thursday evening to pick up my race packet (and, thus, the T-shirt). For an event that offers no race-day packet pickup, it seemed like the best strategy—I didn’t want to drive down Friday and then again Saturday morning, and even the expense of gas for two trips didn’t justify booking a hotel room. I keep thinking of songs I heard on the radio on the way home Thursday night. I keep thinking.

If I could back up a few days, I could fix it all. I’d back up past Saturday morning, because my plans grew endangered before that. If I could redo Friday, maybe … Ugh, Friday, sitting in a meeting at work imagining crackers with cheese—no, wait, crackers with peanut butter. Crackers with cottage cheese? Peeling off the wrapper on a piece of Halloween candy made to resemble an eyeball. Part of my brain kept screaming, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” And another, matter-of-fact part remarked, “You have bigger problems than this piece of chocolate.”

So, yeah, Friday didn’t go so well. But if I were really backing things up, I should go further. What about Thursday, when every minute of running strained me—not physically, but mentally, because my mind felt so tired. Hang in there, hang in there, it insists half-heartedly. And I just don’t want to hang in there any more. What about all the days before that, or the nights really, awake and miserable. Hmm, maybe I don’t want to go back that far after all. I’m not sure I could figure out how to fix that.

It’s hard letting go of the plans I had, even now that I’m left with no choice. But I’m telling myself to move on, direct resources toward the next marathon, on Kiawah Island. It makes me tired to think of traveling there. So then I worry, are my iron pills not working, is my “Be Positive” failing (see The Agony and the Ecstasy)?

Or am I just tired of running and running and never reaching that elusive finish line labeled “ENOUGH”?

Wow, think of the T-shirt they’d give out for finishers of that race.

Not to be