💾 Archived View for tilde.club › ~winter › gemlog › 2024 › 9-20.gmi captured on 2024-12-17 at 11:09:48. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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It's a Friday morning; I've got an hour till work. Behind me on the kitchen counter are two bags, both for this weekend. Bib numbers, instructions, a medium t-shirt, an athletic towel: several months ago, I decided to run, twice.
Tomorrow's run is a 3k, and the most manageable. If I want (and I probably should), I can take it at a training pace. Treat it like any of the 3-5 km runs I do around the neighbourhood with my dogs, and hit the finish line with a time of Who Cares. I signed up for this one because it's my neighbourhood run; I can literally roll out of bed, get into my running clothes, and walk to the start line in five minutes. It's not the most beautiful course I've ever been on, or the most interesting, but it's close, and that's not nothing.
Then on Sunday, the big one: a half marathon, my self-imposed maximum distance, my partner asking me years ago if I'd ever want to run a full (the answer then, as now: nope, nope, nope). By my count it'll be my 14th. I do one a year, missing the two years from 2020 to 2021 because of the pandemic. And while that's not a lot compared to some runners (most of whom are mildly unhinged to begin with), I have to remind myself that most people will never run one, let alone two. To show up on race day is an accomplishment. 14 times, a little deranged. 13.1 miles is not a short distance.
My first half was run partially out of fear: back in 2009, I needed major surgery to repair a lifelong hernia that had been getting progressively worse. In the back of my mind, I thought, _might as well run a half in case I die_. My conscious mind knew I wasn't going to die, but my conscious mind also knew that I'd be done running for the year after my recovery, and I decided to make the jump in distance from the 10k I'd done the previous two years. That race was a different half - local (a 20 minute drive instead of an hour and a half), flat as a pancake, thousands of runners. I loved it, and have been doing the distance once a year since.
But ten years ago I switched halfs on a whim, thought I'd try this rural one, and it turns out, this is the one I always wanted, the one I keep coming back to. The course is largely rural, snaking out of the small town it's held in to meander down gravel roads, a nice, leisurely run past corn and sunflowers in the early morning until you turn right at roughly the 4 mile mark, and your heart stops for a moment: a hill, yes, but not the gentle, rolling variety, a hard, steep incline up the gravel road for a couple hundred feet that leaves even the best-prepared (of which I am not) gasping for air at the top. And not the last slope, either, the course front-loaded, the hills coming over and over until just over halfway, when, wind or not, despite the burn in your legs and the persistent thought that you prepared for this, so why isn't it easier, the downward slope, sudden and welcome, begins to lift you, and then it all feels so easy, you forget for a second the hateful trek up the last hill, and you're feeling fine, now, so what were you worrying about? And you're tired, yes, but there's just three miles to go, and on one of the nearby farms, someone's set up an enormous hose if you want a quick, cold shower before the end, and you do, so you take it.
In town, the last water station sits comically close to the finish line. After I pass it, and make the turn around the last residential street before the community centre, I try, as every year, to determine when I can turn on my last reserves, pick up my pace, leaving just enough for a sprint to the finish. Inevitably at the end: waving off the people who check to see if I'm okay, my face turning red-to-purple at the end of a long run, I'm told. Chocolate milk, fruit, muffins baked by local church ladies. A ticket for a hamburger or two hot dogs turned in for the latter. And there's a voucher for a little soft-serve place just off the highway, the sort of seasonal place ever staffed by local teenagers, and the ice cream is something I think about for the entire run. How I'll pull into the gravel lot, slowly get my aching body out of the car, get a twist cone; and then try to dart back into the car before the wasps get a sniff.
Then several days of feeling old and broken, before my legs start to feel a little less heavy midweek. Extra walks with the dogs to keep my legs moving. Cold showers. An ice bath if I can handle it. Hoping I added enough cream to hold off chafing. Inevitably, I never do.
And it all starts tomorrow. I want to do better in the half than my time last year, my worst ever. But I want a good tempo for the 3. If I was any good at this, it'd be reflected in my times. But I'll find out midday Sunday just how well I did.