At Its Best

At its best, a marathon is a transcendent experience.

It almost always leaves me thinking, “Again, again!” Just like when I was a little kid coming off a favorite carnival ride. Only a marathon is even better.

I could list a number of reasons I find the marathon experience compelling, but I suspect they all have to do with being taken out of myself—removed from my normal routine and surroundings, freed temporarily from many of my chronic concerns, liberated to an extent by the extreme nature of the task at hand.

It is in this place away from myself that I come to myself, that I see things for a moment the way they really are.

At its best, a marathon is a spiritual experience. I am completely alone, because no one else can finish the race for me, and yet I am not alone. I feel connections that elude me under more routine circumstances. The world around me seems different. The very air is changed.

In a marathon, I am part of a whole group of runners. I have conversations with complete strangers about running shoes and the quantity of port-a-potties at the start line for Boston. In Kiawah, I watched a prerace yoga-style warm up. I didn’t join in, because I had to photograph it instead. It was beautiful.

I am a few days out from Kiawah, and I am thinking, “Again, again!”