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!

"Recalled to Life" (or, The Stream-of-Consciousness Account)

Saturday morning: beautiful, cool, still dark at a few minutes after six. I turned off the ignition in my parked car, silencing the double comfort of a news radio station and the heater, and peeled off my coat and jacket. My body stiffened. I opened the door and stepped out into the air, unflinching. A sign at the end of the row of cars read “17.” I noted landmarks to the right and left, knowing that at an unimaginable future time, somewhere in a newly formed, postmarathon dimension, I would need to remember where I parked.

Clutching my car keys, which I always carry in my right fist, I merged into a stream of runners flowing across the parking lot toward a dark field, and beyond that, converging into the bright, flowing throng of runners dammed up in the street before the starting line. I was cold in my shirt sleeves, but I found it warmer among the crowd. With my arms wrapped around my body and my legs dancing in place, I could tolerate the chill, the wait, the ticking moments. A couple of runners around me remarked on how cold I looked. “But you’ll warm up fast,” they assured me in a friendly tone. Or maybe it was really the Southern accent that pushed away the chill.

Time does tend to pass. That’s my mantra on long runs. The starting gun went off a couple of minutes late. I heard a reporter from the local news team explaining to viewers that a last-second fuse problem had caused the delay. I was hopping over the starting line, noting the new-style chip sensors suspended in a string above my head, when another miked voice intoned, “If a blown fuse is the only problem we have in a marathon …”

I breathed. I moved with the field of runners spreading out around me. I tried to coach myself: not too fast, not too slow. Not too much significance at any one moment. Not too much feeling. Steadiness. Calm. The night faded. The sky promised a clear morning. Happiness pricked at me. I wanted to embrace it.

Mile 1, mile 2. The sun tinged the world in gold. We ran past a fountain shooting up in a landscaped shopping complex. We turned down Ocean Boulevardwith its bank of palm trees and its pastel hotels and the new SkyWheel towering over the boardwalk to look out to sea.

Would it be marathon magic or pain? Would I be "recalled to life"* or fight despair? So many miles. I read the names of the hotels and the signs advertising vacation rentals. My body felt good. I was scared. I could see, as if I’d taken a ride on the SkyWheel: FDR was right about fear. A dark mass hovered somewhere between me and the sky, shifting and ephemeral like a haze of mosquitoes in summer. That was the real danger. I could give into it, let it swallow me. Or I could let the happiness in. It doesn’t always look like a choice. So that was the marathon magic. The dark mass remained visible a long time, but it weakened and faded. On the last stretch before the finish line, I couldn’t see it.

Moment by moment. Breath by breath. Sometimes the sun was in my eyes. Then came welcome shadow. Sometimes I pushed, then glided. Time does tend to pass. We ran by more fountains. Happiness never sprung up as freely as the sprays of water. But in the end, I did feel resurrected. I could smile into the sun and air and sea. The miles had been finite. The fear looked finite too.

And when I got back to my car in parking section 17, having made the journey to the new dimension where the sun was shining and the cars were lined up in the same order they had been in the dark predawn cold (everything changes and nothing changes, that’s how new dimensions work, I guess), my jacket, my radio, and a stash of diet Sunkist were waiting for me. Happiness can be simple.

*Awesome phrase courtesy of Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

MB 2012

Awesome weekend in Myrtle Beach! More to come ...

I discovered today that I'm too late to sign up for the National Marathon taking place March 17, so now I'm looking for another race in March. Sigh, maybe it's for the best--I've already done National three times, which is my limit for one race so far. Maybe I need to find a new event. I just have to consider those pesky limitations of time and resources. I'm saving up for a possible trip to South Dakota in May, and of course Sweden in June. I must find a way to manage a spring marathon blitz!

I'm so in love with Myrtle Beach that I'm entertaining the idea of returning in October for a triathlon, even though I keep reminding myself that my last (and only) triathlon was fairly disastrous. One of the Myrtle Beach race organizers appeared on a local show Sunday morning while I was packing up to leave the hotel, and oh, he tempted me. I mean, he gets it. He even talked about the medal, the "BLING"!

Didn't I start this post by pretending I was saving my longwindedness for later?

In contemplation

Marathon Musings

It’s February, and the marathon year is wide open. I decided not to list any marathons on my calendar until I had actually registered for them, so the calendar looks pretty blank right now, with only the Myrtle Beach Marathon coming up next week and the Stockholm Marathon in June. But I’ve had several others in mind, close ones that are easy to get to. As much as I enjoy the travel theme, it requires resources; I’ve toyed with the “50 marathons in 50 states” idea, but I haven’t decided to pursue it. Maybe 50 marathons in 50 countries? We’ll see! What I do know is that it’s time—past time!—to do some planning for this year’s “away games.”

In the meantime, I’ve held onto the assumption that I’ll run in a couple of nearby events this spring. Last year I ran eight marathons. I get preoccupied with precedents. I feel compelled to keep the number of marathons high, even if the number of new courses has to stay a little lower. In March 2011 I planned NOT to participate in the local marathon, and then one evening I was driving home from work when I noticed an electronic sign along the freeway alerting drivers to road closures over the weekend. Road closures associated with the National Marathon. I drew in my breath. My heart raced. And I realized I couldn’t stay away from a marathon going on in my city: I had to run it! I signed up at the last minute. Whew, that was close! I would have been so disappointed if the event had been sold out.

Speaking of which … anyway, I’ve got Myrtle Beach coming up, and I’ve been thinking of adding a new page to the blog that’s focused more specifically on reviewing the events and some of the travel resources I end up using. This whole blogging project is still new to me. I may as well explore the possibilities! I generally read a lot of reviews when I’m choosing a new marathon or planning a trip. Sometimes reviews help steer me toward or away from an event or a hotel. Sometimes they make me crazy and I have to force myself to stop reading them or I’d never dare leave the comforts of my own apartment. The first time I went to Myrtle Beach, I read dozens of hotel reviews on Expedia. I ended up in a panic thinking that any hotel I booked would have fleas, bed bugs, and some mysterious goo seeping from the walls or coating the lamp shades. Sometimes you have to shut your eyes and jump. I finally booked a hotel in North Myrtle Beach, and now I always stay there. I guess for all my traveling, I have a limited taste for adventure.

The Ocean Drive Beach and Golf Resort is satisfactory, but the Myrtle Beach Marathon is awesome, a great kickoff to a fresh marathon season. The course is flat—woohoo! I have no qualms in confessing my appreciation for flat running surfaces. Especially when you are just getting back into marathoning and your brain hasn’t tackled the 4-hour challenge for a while, a lack of rise in the pavement provides a psychological boost. Also, you get to run by all the hotels you didn't choose on Expedia. You could probably even stop and take a tour if you wanted to get a jump on planning next year's trip.

I like this place enough to keep going back.

Myrtle Beach also gives out some of the best goodies around (although I’m afraid of jinxing things for this year by writing that). I have a red beach towel from 2009, a lime green beach towel from 2011, two tote bags, one of which I use almost daily at the gym, and two luh-ve-ly medals: my 2011 MB Marathon medal hangs around the passenger seat of my car. The medallion is shaped like flip flops. Ah, makes me smile.

There, I’ve put out my musings. Look for a new tab on the blog site with access to reviews. Coming soon. As soon as I write some.



Beautiful!



Turns out the marathon sponsor Bi-Lo is a grocery store (I wondered)--there's one down the street from the hotel

Across from the grocery store is the Barefoot Community Church with lighted marquis