ever-fixed mark

I had three goals for the big ten-mile race this year:

Let’s see how I did, shall we?

We started off slowly enough, thanks to the crowd. I had vowed to try to stay with my friends for at least a few miles, with a stretch goal of running at their 10-minute mile pace for the whole thing. So when they picked up the pace, so did I. I was feeling a bit winded already by the half-mile mark, when I told them I wanted to run on the right side of the street for a bit so I could wave to the kids as we passed my house. I moved to the right: no kids. I moved to the left: no friends. I picked up the pace even more, hoping to catch up with them, but they were nowhere to be found in the crowd. At the one-mile point I marked the split time with my watch and goggled when I saw 9:17:59 — much, much faster than I wanted to be.

I slowed down a bit but felt pressured by all the runners passing me. I knew from experience that by mile 7 many of them would be walking, while I would still be running, but I still didn’t feel like I could slow down to a comfortable pace. For mile 2, my pace was 9:30; mile 3, 10:11. I felt the worst between mile markers 3 and 4, just like last year, and finally decided I was going to have to slow way down or I wouldn’t be able to finish. I was hot and thirsty and rubber-legged and felt just generally weak and awful. I was cheered here and there by the appearance of my friend C., the one who said to me in April 2007, “We’re doing the 10-mile race this year,” who had run the race with me last year but damaged her ankle so badly during the race she hadn’t been able to run since. She was dashing around on her bike intercepting the runners here and there, shouting encouragement. I ran mile 4 at 11:09 and started to feel more of a rhythm. I finished mile 5 at 11:50 and panicked a bit — too slow! — but by then I was rounding the corner to The Hill and my only concern was getting up without stopping.

Hills have never bothered me; I grew up running hills, and I always treat them as something to get over as quickly as possible. I felt physically awful going up that hill, but I didn’t feel intimidated. When I got to the top, this sense of relief washed over me, but at the same time I felt like quitting. I wasn’t having fun. Running alone was not exhilarating; it seemed pointless. By now I had learned, through C., that one of my running buddies was about five minutes ahead of me, and the other about five minutes behind. At this point I thought seriously about running back to meet my friend. I turned around to see if I could spot her winding around the course, but my body recoiled at the thought of retracing a step.

My splits were getting slower and slower, but I still felt like I was working hard. My left foot and leg started cramping, something that had never happened to me in 25 years of running. Suddenly, I remembered that I had given up bananas that week in an effort to cut some calories. Now, I’ve eaten a banana almost every day for most of my life, and it wasn’t until that moment that I realized that the potassium was the only thing preventing my muscles from knotting up into big painful charleyhorses. Idiot!

I had reached the cool, shady part of the course where last year I had gotten a second wind. It was about this point that C. caught up with me again. She could see that I was hurting, and she rode alongside me for the remaining four miles, keeping up a steady stream of conversation and organizing all the people she recognized along the race route to cheer for me, personally, by name. Might I have finished without her? Maybe. Would I have had any fun without her? Definitely not. She totally got me through it, and I was grateful that I got a chance to “run” it with her again.

I finished in 1:50 and change, an eleven-minute pace. When I got home and looked up the results, I saw that this year I was not dead last in the Middle Aged Fat Lady division; I was 88th out of 91. Whoo-hoo! Also, I beat one of the deputies that C. and I smoked during the Frigid Fiver two years ago, and this year I had the pleasure of beating the county sheriff as well.

I may be a Middle Aged Fat Lady, but I can still outrun the Law.