Blitzing

It’s been almost 2 weeks since my last marathon—it must be time for another one! It’s the Spring Marathon Blitz, and I am registered to run in Charlottesville, Virginia, this Saturday.

This will be my third Charlottesville Marathon but I will also be running a third version of the course. Do the race organizers change it every year or only when I’m running? I don’t know, but last year I kept dreading a hill I remembered crushing me around mile 24, and then the second half of the course turned out to be completely different. Which I’m not complaining about, because during my first running of the Charlottesville Marathon, I kept comforting myself with the thought that I never had to run that course again. (It was, um, hilly.)

How sheepish did I feel, then, when I registered for a second running of the marathon. Hallelujah for a new course—I got to keep my word to myself after all. And this year, I’ve gleaned from the event website that yet another version of the marathon awaits. The description includes the word “flat,” but is that relative to past years? We’ll see!

A new feature last year was the prominent sponsorship from Miller Lite. The brand logo is hard to miss on my T-shirt and the medal. Funny that I ended up sitting in a bar waiting for the race to start. The bar was adjacent to the venue where I picked up my packet on race morning, and it was warm and cozy and only a few steps from the marathon start. So hanging out in a bar early on a Saturday morning: that’s where my life intersects with the party scene. But I was at the beginning of my wild fun, not the end.

I’m pretty high going into this race because of my great experience in Ellerbe, but I’m trying to manage my expectations. Physically, I’ve taken a downturn this week. I’m running tired. It seems like the Ellerbe hills exacted their toll long after I crossed the finish line.

So in spite of my past marathon experiences, I’m going into Saturday not knowing what to expect. But you know all I really want is a good T-shirt.

A Tale of Two Marathons

Last night as I browsed online to prepare for my trip to Sweden, I happened to read that more than 21,000 runners are registered for the 2012 Stockholm Marathon. Twenty-one thousand: about five times the population of my hometown when I was growing up.

Last week, I completed a marathon with about 80 other participants. While I could usually see a runner or two in the distance ahead of me, I trekked through much of the course in solitude.

The Ellerbe race was a “gut check” marathon, one of the runners told me last Saturday morning. Because most of the time you’re on your own—well, it’s you and the livestock.

No doubt the Stockholm Marathon promises a contrast. This year it will host more participants than ever before. But picture a city street flooded with runners, and the image could come from almost anywhere. They’re popping up all over now, these Big Marathons with their thousands of entrants. I’ve come to expect the chaos of convention center expos; on my way to pick up my race packet, I navigate nonchalantly through tangles of vendors seeking to profit from the running vogue.

And speaking of expectations, how about a nicely stocked goody bag, pace teams, the latest in chip technology, a crew of professional photographers … and throw in some chocolate milk at the finish line if you can manage. In return, I will submit to being placed in a “corral” as I wait around for the start of the race. I will divert a few brain cells from the effort of endurance to the skill of maneuvering around other runners without making the marathon a contact sport. This is the world of the Big Marathons. Maybe sometime soon it will get profiled on a reality TV series, slotted after “Toddlers in Tiaras” or “Dance Moms.”

Last week, the day before my 27th marathon (I think), I pulled into the circular driveway in front of the Ellerbe Springs Inn, ca. 1857, and walked up the steps to the porch, where a small group of people lounged on rocking chairs and porch railings. I could hear snippets of their friendly talk as I approached. “You get to that last one and wonder, why did they do this to me?” one man joked, and I knew he was referring to a hill on the course. Another man stood behind a folding table at the far end of the group. “Are you registered?” he asked me.

Ellerbe Springs Inn, sans runners on porch

I said yes, and he handed me a fluorescent green T-shirt. Then he informed me that the timing team would hand out race numbers in the morning. I felt a lack of closure, maybe, some odd desire to draw out this “packet pickup” ritual that didn’t involve a packet at all, so I took the opportunity to ask for directions to the town where I planned to spend the night. The genial group on the porch offered counsel. And then there was nothing more to do but get back in my car and drive away.

The next morning I returned to the inn to receive my race number and a plastic bag full of coupons and flyers for other races. I kept looking for a timing chip. No chip. “Am I supposed to have a chip?” I asked someone in the lobby.

“No, I don’t think so,” she replied. “There’s never been one before.”

Huh. No chip. Weird.

I pinned on my race number and checked the time: 50 minutes to go before the start. I began to curl into myself, into my anxiety. The morning outside looked bleak. More runners arrived with family members and friends in tow, and people began to speak to me. I got drawn into conversation in spite of my initial reluctance, and before I knew it I was trading stories and plans and then looking back at the clock and realizing it was time to go outside.

Such a small race presents some ironies: you spend many miles alone, but you cannot be anonymous. You don’t run by someone in silence. All the volunteers at every aid station watch you approach and hold out paper cups to you because you are the only runner around at the moment. And the scenery on this course was beautiful, with colors at once muted and intense: purple blossoms, green fields, burgundy trees, the blue silhouettes of hills blurring together as they met the gray sky. I dropped out of time. It was the ultimate runner’s high.

See, a burgundy tree

I considered how this race had challenged my Big Marathon expectations. I’ve done small runs before; I remember thinking I preferred them. But it’s been a while. I’m used to the super-expo-size events now, like the National Marathon in DC, where last year I crossed the starting line more than five minutes after the front of the pack let loose—that’s where you need a chip!

It’s two different marathon cultures, I decided. I felt the Ellerbe crowd fit into a tough class of runners, the kind who run because they can, the type to go chasing into thunderstorms in search of adventure. They don’t need cheering spectators to know they can get the job done. I admire that independence. It also scares me. I knew I was the wimp in the bunch. But when the rain hit me out on the course, I thought back to another small race I’d run in the rain, and I knew I could do it. I knew because I’d done it before.

The two cultures seemed very distinct to me when I first arrived at the Ellerbe Springs Inn, and when I drove into the town of Ellerbe and found one stoplight, which seemed completely unnecessary, and when the timing volunteer didn’t give me a chip and the race organizer warned the runners about a dog around mile 20. But in the end, I got a pretty cool medal that even a Big Marathon would be proud to hand out. I won a piece of pottery (a teal plate) for coming in third among women overall. I visited again with a few of the runners before I got in my car to head home.

Downtown Ellerbe

And looking back, I can see where the two cultures converge. Because the conversation on the porch of the inn when I walked up to get my T-shirt told me I was in the right place. The talk in the lobby the morning of the race pulled me out of myself because I was part of it. I’ve encountered this truth before as I’ve traveled for marathons in other countries: some things are different, but many things are the same. There is a language of running, and it goes beyond speaking. That’s why, whether running through the fields around Ellerbe, North Carolina, or flowing with the crowd through the city of Stockholm, I’m part of something larger than myself. In the end, the race is mine to run, the struggle is my own. And yet, as a runner I am not alone.

Why not start a race across from a restaurant called Pork Belly?

And anyway, before I finished school and got a job in the nation’s capital, I grew up in a one-stoplight town.

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!