[I need to fix the awful spacing later...not sure what's going on this morning.]
Prologue to the author's preferred edition, written in October of 2012:
This is a story that I wrote back in mid June of 2007 to be distributed as an email. It set in motion a chain of events that has led us to where TRY is today, and where my life is today. I have distributed it to "dozens" of people, and occasionally forwarded it on to new people, especially as TRY grew the first couple of years. But the last couple years of TRYers have only heard a teaser about it, if that. Up until now, it has only existed as an email, so I'm glad to give it a more permanent look, a permanent home, and to present it as I would have wanted to present it back then.
The version I "found" seems like it might have been one revision back from the original, final, version, but it is close enough. All I have done to the text with this publishing is to fix a couple typos that I noticed. It still has the original disclaimer, comments, references to itself as an email, contains now dated content, etc. The upgrade is the addition of the links, embedded photos, and embedded audio/visual components (almost all of which are youtube clips) that were previously only referred to. It does make it obvious that some of my quotes and memories of the movie scenes were slightly wrong, but close enough. The text is what my mind remembered them as and what I used during the race. The story was written to be consumed by non-runners and runners alike, so it spells out some running information that helps it make sense to non-runners.
Once you read through this, you will realize that TRY has come full circle. "Escalade", as we call her, was in no way sought out to fulfill this prophecy so directly, but just like in the story, life just has a way of working things out and putting people in the exactly right place at the exactly right time. To my knowledge, Escalade does not have any idea about this story until this updated publishing, or certainly has not read the contents of it. I hope she enjoys it and that the rest of you enjoy what became to be known as "My Marathon Marathon Story", though the embedded story was and still is called "This One Is For Mary". For those of you who have read it in the past, the video additions should liven it up for you, but there is no need to spend the time reading the text again, you can just play the clips if you want to save time. If any of you do find it worth sharing with people, feel free.
-Tbone
My Marathon Marathon Story [from this point on, it is 99.9% original textual from 2007]:
Warning on the disclaimer: It is never a good sign when an email starts with a disclaimer.
Disclaimer: Since I probably should be a blogger and I don’t have a blog, this is me making up for a couple years of holding back biweekly blog entries. I’m not going to lie to you, this ended up being rather long (a marathon entry, if you will). So treat it as a blog entry and read through if you like it, or stop reading if you get bored. I am sending this out to a lot of people that I owe email to. I would have liked to have been able to personalize it for everyone but I just don’t have the time for that right now. Instead of not sending an email (which I’ve done for far too long) this is my attempt to catch up with a lot of people with a recent story from my life. Some of you haven’t heard from me in a year or more and I apologize for that. It is a New Years resolution of mine this year to do a better job of keeping up with people (especially long distance ones) and I have had limited success with that so far. Hopefully this email will kick start my ability to keep up with relationships that I have let slip away.
I doubt all the stuff in this letter will make sense to everyone. If not, don’t worry about it…read/understand what you want to and ignore the rest. If you receive this email from me then you know that I at least think about you from time to time and cared enough to entertain/bore you with this story. I was debating coming up with a normal version of this story that would be much shorter and make more sense to everyone and then the extended, directors cut, like version with the geekier/more personal stuff in it, but I was too lazy to pull it off. So, seriously, just skip/ignore the parts/jokes that don’t make sense. It’s not you, it’s me.
This one is for MaryI recently completed my second marathon. I did the Rock-n-Roll Marathon in San Diego, California on June 3rd. I hope this story captures my feelings and emotions from that day and is something that I can read 10 years from now and take me back to the moment. I’m going to put in a lot of my thoughts and internal dialogue [internal thoughts will be in the square brackets] that I had throughout the race…for the non-runners out there it might give them an idea of what goes through a runners head. It will also be good for me to be able to read this stuff in the future so that I can look back and see how much of an idiot I was at this time in my life. My first marathon (ran about 20 months ago) taught me how physically demanding a marathon could be as I struggled with an injury and muscle cramps for the last 9 miles. This marathon taught me how emotional a marathon can be.For those of you that don’t know, a marathon is 26.2 miles and for an average runner like me, a typical goal time is 4 hours, which is a little over a 9 minutes per mile pace. If you think about it, 4 hours straight is a very long time to do any single activity. Boredom becomes an issue so I find myself playing a lot of mind games to keep myself going. My first marathon was the Wineglass marathon which finishes in Corning, NY. It is a small marathon with stretches where you feel like you are out there almost by yourself (or only a few other runners around you) and is run on country roads. The crown on the side of the roads aggravated my hip injury which I thought hurt my ability to run near the end. I ended up with a 3:56:32 (9:02 pace) which just met my goal, but I felt the race had “won” because I was a beaten man at the end and had to walk some. My thought at the time, was that if I did do another marathon, my goal would be to improve my time as well as to finish it on my terms, without having to walk to survive. I picked that San Diego marathon because: I had never been there so it would make for a good destination marathon It is voted among the most fun marathons to do by participants It is where “Anchorman” was based After a small marathon, I wanted a big marathon experience (close to 20,000 runners in this one) Being a big marathon I figured there would plenty of crowd support Being a big marathon, the roads would be shut down, so I wouldn’t have issues running on the sides of roads and getting bothered by the crown This time around my training was rushed (because of the late start to spring that we had and having to get ready for an early summer marathon) but had gone well and despite my continued hip issues, I did not have any injury concerns. So, at the start of my trip, my stretch goal was a 3:40 finish (8:24 pace), my realistic goal was a 3:45-3:50 finish (8:35-8:45 pace), with my fallback goal being to break 4 hours again. (With the fallback, fallback goal of finishing the race).I suppose this is my paragraph of excuses…but I’m not using them as excuses, just putting this information out there for future reference when I forget and begin to wonder what went wrong with my race: I don’t travel well and despite being in California on Thursday morning, it wasn’t until Saturday that I felt somewhat normal. On Wednesday morning I had woke up with a head cold (or allergies) of some sort and spent the next week plus blowing my nose and coughing. I was taking allergy medicine (including some I’ve never taken before) from Thursday through Saturday to try to clear my head. With the time difference and the excitement of being in a new place I was averaging 4-5 hours a sleep per night…despite wanting/needing to sleep more I’d be totally awake by 6 (Cali time, 9 NY time) every morning with no hope of falling back to sleep. In order to try to take advantage of our time in southern Cali, me and my running/travel buddy went to Tijuana, Mexico the day before the race. And while I behaved and barely drank and left Mexico by sunset, it wasn’t the ideal way to spend the day before a marathon and I certainly didn’t carbo load or rest up the way I should have.
[This looks like ideal marathon prep to me.][Follow your heart, it's what I always do.]I might have yelled a couple times before my buddy took off, but once he left I definitely started to fall into my rhythm for this race and the theme ended up being “More Cowbell”. I’d hear someone ringing one and would yell “I really love that cowbell”. “Gotta have that cowbell”. Or, soon I started to listen for someone just barely rattling theirs and would find them in the crowd, point and yell “I gotta have more cowbell”, “We need more cowbell”, or something along those lines. My various cowbell yells almost always at least got the ringer to ring harder…and often got a chuckle out of the crowd or runners around me and I’d usually hear murmurs of recognition as someone would repeat it quietly and I could tell they got the reference. So, from miles 2-10 I was working on my crowd skills. [I will win the crowd. (Think Gladiator)].One memory that stands out was a long climb approaching mile 10 (the longest, biggest uphill of the race) where the course took us onto some highways. There were barely any people cheering because we were on real highways with little or no access for spectators, so for the first time all race it was dead quiet. And even though the hill wasn’t too bad compared to the Mountain Goat run in Syracuse, it was still physically and mentally draining…so I yelled out to my fellow runners “Where are the cowbells? I gotta have my cowbell!” That one didn’t seem to go over too well and I attributed that to people being tired and struggling with the hill…and I figured that they all thought I was crazy for continuing to play to the crowd when the crowd wasn’t even there. It was then that I made a vow that I had to keep doing this, just to prove that I could for the entire race. To non-runners I should probably add a note here that even though a race like this has 20 thousand people in it, when you hold a steady pace during a race you tend to stay in the same general pack of runners…so I had been in and around some of these runners for several miles already…it helped to make this obvious because I was near the 3:40 pace group (they had bibs on their back saying so). When we finally got to some spectators again I was chomping at the bit for more cowbell and the crowds were still thin because we weren’t in populated places yet, so when there was a stray cowbell ringer I made a point to acknowledge them “I love that cowbell”. At some point there was a little kid holding 4 cowbells, so I drifted over to his side and broke out the grand-daddy of them all “I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!” Well, that just served to scare the poor kid (in retrospect he was a little young to understand) but his parent got him to start ringing harder after I had passed him by a few seconds…perhaps to make the scary man in orange go away?Other stuff going through my head from mile 2 – 13: The occasional cheer for Syracuse which I would always acknowledge by finding them if I heard them in time, or at least give them a thumbs up if I was past them. I was thinking that this race was the “perfect storm” for me. Most of you know my ability to beat a joke into the ground so I was kind of laughing to myself as I was yelling about cowbell for the 100th time while still in the first half of the race…I was thinking the stars had aligned – allowing me to totally beat a joke into the ground with a captive (but ever changing) audience, so they didn’t get sick of it and I could keep amusing myself with it. That said, I did it so much that even I was starting to get tired of it. You read that right, I (almost) got sick of my own joke, which to my knowledge is the first time that has ever happened. That should give you some idea of how often I was using it… I also realized that those runners running near me the whole time might be REALLY getting sick of it, so I did start to curtail my use for a while and save it for those special occasions when people were only only half-heartedly ringing theirs or if I was starting to lose it mentally and needed a boost. When a weird leg twinge came in on some slanted roads I went with [HOLD!!!! HOLD!!!! (Gladiator when he was organizing them when first in Rome)]and an oldie but a goodie that I use whenever I need to hold a line to keep from drifting from side to side on wide roads [Stay on target. Stay on target. (From the original Star Wars)].[That was so nice of Bernie Fine to pay for my outfit and my trip. He sure is a friendly guy. I think I'm going to take him up on his offer to sleep over next time.]It had been coming the entire race, but when I crossed that halfway marker I was still quite surprised…if you had told me I could run a 1:45 half-marathon and feel fine I wouldn’t have believed it. But, there I was, doing just that and I seriously felt fine. The only problem I had in the first half was a quick right calf twinge while on a weird angled downhill around mile 12 [Uh-oh, really early for that to be happening] but that quickly passed. Around 14, I did start to tire a little and I think I noticeably dropped a few seconds per mile off my pace…nothing to worry about at the time but the first time that I had to truly back off from those 8:05s I had been running. But, I had banked a little time in the first half so slowing slightly was expected and fine. Around there I caught my running buddy. I came up behind him and said something about “more cowbell” and ran with him for a few seconds. He was struggling at the time and I told him to come catch me…I was still doing ok but was starting to fade finally and didn’t know how much longer I would stay strong. I pushed on but catching him that early (by rights I shouldn’t have seen him until late in the race, if at all) perhaps made me question what I was doing and if I could hold it. The next mile I was mentally struggling and I did some of my hardest crowd winning of the day…waving my hands up for more crowd noise, pointing out cowbells on the left and the right and saying stuff like “Syracuse can’t hear you”, “I NEED MORE COWBELL!”, “I came a long way for you guys just to stand there!” “I GOTTA HAVE MORE COWBELL!” and at a couple of those points I seriously did gotta have more cowbell. I was fading faster and faster and the only thing keeping me on pace was the adrenaline that the cowbells and the crowds were giving me. I didn’t understand it at the time, but me playing games with my adrenaline might have fueled my demise. (More on that later.)Then, suddenly, just beyond mile 16 I was done. Within about 3 miles and less than 30 minutes after finishing off a great half-marathon (for me) I was walking and a broken man. It really hurt me that I didn’t make it past my initial breaking point in my first marathon (17 miles).A little explanation…some of you have heard this but some of you haven’t since I’ve been hesitant to talk about in the past…but now that I understand it, there is no reason to be quiet about it anymore. Less than 2 years ago (just after my first marathon) I started having some health issues (out of the blue) that after several doctor visits, various testings, pokings, and proddings was diagnosed as “vasovagal syncope” which in simple terms means I am prone to passing out (fainting). My problem is in the same category as people who pass out when seeing blood or straining while on the toilet (yes, it is true that some people apparently pass out while trying to squeeze one out). So, I think I’m fine when seeing blood and I don’t plain on collapsing on the shitter any time soon, but I have had 20 or 30+ times in the past couple years when I’ve been close to passing out during/after working out. Up until this race it had never happened under any other circumstance besides when I was lifting weights. But I’ve also been careful not to put myself in positions where I’m pushing my limits that far physically. I’ve never actually fainted except for during a test when the doctor intentionally pushed me that far, but I have no doubt that I’ve been within a few seconds of fainting if I had not laid down. At this point I am very used to the “prodromes” that I have warning me that an episode is near at hand. (Prodome is just a fancy word for early symptom). Vasovagal syncope is thought to be caused by incorrect interactions between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous symptoms…which as far as I’ve been told deal with adrenaline and anti-adrenaline release in the body. In my case, I’ve been told that my parasympathetic response comes on too strong and that causes my heart rate to drop and/or get too shallow, my blood pressure to drop, and for me to drop soon after. (Fainting is the bodies way of making sure that it can get more blood to the brain…since the brain is laying on the ground next to the heart, it is very easy to get blood flowing too it.) This is where me getting my adrenaline elevated may have led to my problems…the anti-adrenaline response may have floored me, so I’ll have to be a little smarter about this next time. (If there is a next time.)Where was I, oh yes…at some point soon after mile 16 I started to experience my prodomes and immediately had to shut down and began walking along the side of the road. (It was a slow build and a bit of a surprise but I think it is why I was slowly fading from 14 on…my blood pressure must have been dropping until the point that it was obvious to me what was going on.) Since this had never happened to me while running before it was a surprise and a kick to the crotch. Instead of worrying about my pace and my attempt at 3:40 I was thinking about making it the next 100 yards and what would happen if I had to lay down to try to let the episode pass. In my mind I was thinking of how I’d be able to convince the medical people to let me stay on the course for a while to try to get through this and was already getting upset at the thought of them not believing me and making me quit the race. Even though I was quite warm by this point, I had the chills, I was getting nauseous, and starting to see spots. I didn’t get too close to actually passing out (I never was close enough that I had visually picked out a point to lay down) but I couldn’t have been too far either. I would think that my blood pressure had dropped 20-30 points down from normal…but obviously was high enough to keep me going. My running buddy caught me soon after and said something behind me about needing more cowbell…which was probably the funniest moment of the race. He did a good job of staying with me for a while and encouraging me to run again but each time I felt a little better and I tried to jog it was a pathetically short attempt and the prodomes quickly returned. I explained to him that me running was an all or nothing thing now because my legs/breathing were still fine but if my fainting spell didn’t go away there was no way I could run and if it did go completely away I could probably go right back to a sub 9 minute pace run again. After a while he did take off and I continued to mostly walk. I was overdoing my GU packs (quick energy gel), drinking all I dared to drink (slow marathoners have to worry about overhydration too), and kept hoping to get my second wind. I forgot to mention that I finally had figured out that the medical tents had salt packets and since sodium can help with blood pressure I started pounding salt packets too, hoping for something to finally have an effect. (I took my first salt packet after I grabbed it and after I had gotten rid of my water…so I dumped the packet in my mouth and realized what I had done. [I immediately regret my decision].That was one of the longest stretches I’ve ever endured during a race (a mouthful of salt with no drink for almost a mile). I don’t recommend it. As I continued to try to salvage my marathon and make the 4 hour mark I would try to jog and pick a point to get to and invariably I kept stopping short of my goal. Even as my symptoms seemingly faded, I couldn’t seem to crank it up again. I was beating myself up mentally for being weak and for letting down myself and the person I was doing this race for…but all the tricks I had up my sleeves kept failing.I think this is the first time I’ve mentioned this to anyone…not that I keep it a secret but I haven’t talked to the appropriate person/people recently that would have cared about this to share this with them…but in my mind I was running this marathon in honor of Mary Siedsma. (A mother of a friend of mine who herself had become a family friend. She passed away this year and the last several years of her life had been spent using a walker and a wheelchair/scooter to get around after some complications from a leg surgery). So, in my mind I was running this one for Mary and when times got tough during training or when I got especially tired during the Mountain Goat Run, I would remind myself of Mary and what she would think and what her attitude would be…and that was usually enough to get my mind off the pain and push on. I don’t think that Mary herself was a runner but some of her kids ran in school and she was a big (and apparently vocal) fan at their races. The three things mentioned at her funeral that got to me the most were 1) That she kept up her great attitude while being limited mobility wise near the end of her life and never complained to people or used it as an excuse. 2) That she was an inspiration to everyone around her for her faith and her giving back (just one example is that her and her husband had taken in I think it was 40+ foster children over the years) and less importantly but especially 3) That someone made a point to put in a memory of Mary at cross-country races shaking a plastic jug filled with pennies as she was cheering for her children and their team. So, while I never saw it myself, I could totally picture her doing that and can totally hear how distinctive/annoying that must have been for the runners and the spectators. It would have been a homemade cowbell. So, the cowbells and my yelling for them also had the hidden meaning for me of reminding me of my inspiration for running this race – Mary and her jug full of pennies.Now that we have that background I can explain that while I was trying to get myself running again I would remind myself of Mary’s memory and the lessons from her life and why I am running marathons to begin with (Because I can run when others cannot and to be an inspiration to those who have been an inspiration to me – I know Mary would have been one of the people most proud of me (outside of family and my closest friends) and could imagine her making a point to cheer me on at the Utica Boilermaker if I had made a point to tell her I was running it…because that just the kind of person she was. Anyway, when I had completely bottomed out and could not even force myself to get to the next banner or the next water break a couple of times I was as mean as I’ve ever been to myself while running. I was totally tearing into myself for being weak, being a loser, being a failure, letting Mary down, etc… It was not a pretty time in my life. I was a broken man. Then one of those times when I just stopped jogging for no good reason I felt my prodomes kick in pretty hard again and it finally sunk in that I was at my limit cardiovascularly [Oh, that’s why I suck right now. I have no choice…I can’t play mind games to get myself through this one. I’m tapped out…I just need to survive.] Once I had that revelation I was more at peace with my plight. I changed my plan to jog when I felt able, whether it was a quarter mile or 20 steps. Meanwhile I was still pumping in the drinks, the GU packs and the salt packets. Even though it felt stupid to do so, I was still playing to crowd while walking and jogging slowly. I definitely had scaled it back but I had to keep my end of the bargain to keep up…and my legs were fine (mostly…my right calf was starting to cramp occasionally while jogging but the salt should take care of that). I started to mix in more “Stay classy San Diego’s” and “Syracuse can’t hear you” along with the various versions of the cowbells.While running a marathon there is plenty of time to think. While walking a marathon there is even more time to think…and I was on an emotional roller coaster [I’m trapped in a glass cage of emotion].It became obvious that I couldn’t salvage a 4 hour marathon and that I’d finish worse than the other one…and that my 3 ½ months of training (which is actually rather short for a marathon, but still) had been wasted…all that planning and rearranging my schedule for my runs this spring was all going down the drain on the side of a highway in San Diego. I didn’t even have the mental wherewithal to time any of my miles from 16 on. Even though I tried multiple times my concentration was so shot [perhaps not enough blood flow was getting to my brain?] that I didn’t manage to time any of those miles. I would look at the clock or my watch and plan to remember it for the next split but by the time I got to the next mile mark I would have forgotten the previous time so it didn’t matter. Finally I stopped trying and did the last few miles off the clock completely (which is rare for me and a sign of just how out of sorts I was).Finally, at the 23 mile marker I felt like all my recovery drinking and eating had helped and I convinced myself that I could jog (not run, but jog) the last 5k and finish this thing with honor. A 28 minute finish would leave me beyond 4 hours (that dream was gone) but it would send me out on a good note. I started jogging, turned a corner in the course and in what couldn’t have been a quarter mile down that stretch, my right calf which had threatened to cramp on me before (and in other races near the end) completely locked up on me…which had never happened before. So, I blew out a tire and literally had to hop on one leg back to the side of the course…looking down at the calf muscle it was stuck in the fired position and was quivering and completely flattened out. (For those of you that have seen the infamous picture from the newspaper of me playing kickball you may recall that my calves tend to have quite a bulge in them and became part of the joke of that picture…so to see that calf muscle completely flattened out across my leg and quivering was a bit of a visual shock to me.)[Boom goes the dynamite.]I tried to stretch it out and got it to release, then put some weight on it and it clenched again…and I was just staring down at it thinking…[Wow…this is really cool! I didn’t know it could do that. But this isn’t the time!] After a little more stretching I got it to relax and stay relaxed and if I walked carefully I was able to move on…after a little while it went back to where I could walk normal without immediate fear of it seizing up again…and I mentally shut down. [That is the final straw. I’ve jogged my last step in this marathon. The last 2.5 miles will be walked, I can’t risk completely blowing out my calf muscle in my attempt to save face…this is a complete failure now…there will be no honor in my finish…and finally, in a thought to my inspiration – “I’m sorry Mary, but I can’t do it anymore. I’m done, today is just not my day.”In truth, it was a bit of a relief…no more worries about passing out, no more worries about time, no more worries about a leg cramp. I would walk as slow as necessary and I would finish. No more, no less. I stopped at the next medical tent and took my time downing two salt packets and got my drinks at the water stop and slowly moved on. While cutting through runners to get out of the way I almost walked into someone stopped doing an obvious calf stretch so I said something like “Calf cramped?” “Yeah” “Me too, I’m done. I’m walking from here”. She started walking alongside and she continued “Not me. I’m not giving up, you shouldn’t either”. “Too late, my calf is gone, I’m done”. “You shouldn’t give up, we don’t have far now…I’m going to try running again”. She started to jog and I wished her luck and said something again about me giving it a try. As she jogged off I annoyingly was shaking my head thinking [why did that have to happen…I was fine with my decision?] But she got me rethinking things and I kept thinking about my quivering calf muscle… For no good reason I had carried my cell phone with me that day and as I was thinking about my calf I wondered why I didn’t take a picture…and then thought that I really should have a picture of it as proof to myself of why I shut it down during mile 23. And then I remembered that my phone can take videos and that I could capture a video of my calf freaking out as a nice keepsake from my marathon. So, I put my camera into video mode, closed it again to protect it and then started to jog with the intent of going until my calf seized again, getting a video of it and then walking the rest of the way. I started gingerly at first and then with a little more confidence and as luck (and 10+ packets of salt) would have it, my calf didn’t seem as bad. Before I knew it I had caught up to that woman who had stopped to stretch again and I slowed up next to her and I said “Come on, you got me going again, I’m not leaving you here.” She started jogging with me and I matched her pace and we started chatting. Her name was Jen from New Jersey and she was one of the team in training people so I asked a bunch of stuff about that (They raise money for Leukemia/Lymphoma and then get a free trip and perks out of it…and get cheered on all the time because there is a big support crew for their group). One of the first things that I did was warn her that I was going to be obnoxious and yell at all the people with cowbells on the course “I gotta have my cowbell”. She didn’t know about skit but said she didn’t mind. And there is something about events like this that make talking with a complete stranger seem to make sense. A shared goal and some camaraderie helped us both take our mind of our injury issues. I was in an all or nothing situation again. My threat of syncope seemed to have passed so it was just a matter of whether my calf behaved or not. If it was fine, then I was fine…if it locked up then I was walking in. She was having back and leg pain and was worse off than me. She had done more marathons than me but since she was hurting more than I was, my big brother-ism had kicked in and it was like all those training runs I have done with Tracie (my little sister) where I would encourage her/distract her from the pain and the distance. It seemed like a fitting way to end my marathon. We were doing around a 9 pace and it seemed pretty easy at the time, but around the 25 marker, she was getting a lot of cheers from the T-n-T group and must have been feeling well because she took off pretty fast again...probably a low 8 pace and I started to struggle to keep up. I remember thinking that the pace was going to ruin my calf again because we were really moving for about half a mile.We turned the next to last corner into a park and one of her coaches saw her and joined in…leaving me as a third wheel…kind of broke up the team. She started struggling and really slowed down and I was debating whether I should keep going with them or not…but there wasn’t much left and I felt I owed her hanging around for helping me out. Then with maybe a third of a mile to go, she completely stopped, in obvious pain. Her back had locked up on her and she was trying to loosen it up… Her coach and I were trying to convince her to go on and to at least walk…she took a couple walking steps and stopped again saying she couldn’t go on. At this point I started to look at the corner ahead (and knew the finish was just beyond) and I totally looked back and forth a couple times from the finish so near at hand and to Jen -- the person who convinced me not to walk on mile 23. I came very close to leaving her but I couldn’t (since she had her coach right there anyway, it was an option but what it came down to is that because she convinced me to try jogging again I was several minutes ahead of where I would have been…so I wouldn’t have even been there at that spot yet without her and couldn’t just let that go). It seemed like a couple minutes total were spent at the spot so agonizingly close to the end trying to help her start up again, but it was probably less than that…maybe 30 seconds? Maybe it was a full minute? Eventually she was ready and started to jog again, the three of us made the final turn and someone right behind me asked me “how much longer?” to which I half turned and kind of weirdly responded “The 26 mile mark is right there” [It is right there, duh!] “So about a quarter mile”. In a few steps he had ran up near me and bumped me/tapped me and asked “Can you help me finish? I can’t see. I’m blind”. I glanced at him in disbelief but could see that he was struggling [maybe he’s blind from exertion?]. I must have asked something about how he got there because he said something about “I left my helpers”. I told him something like “I’ll help you, we’re almost there”. I asked if he needed an arm and he said no but then stumbled and ran into Jen who looked like she was about ready to say something about being run into (and rightfully so) so I quickly said to her that he can’t help it, that he’s blind and that I’m going to help him and for her to go on. I grabbed him and pulled him away and told him to grab my arm but he tried and said he couldn’t…so I asked if I could grab his and he said yes. He kept asking “how much further?” multiple times so I knew he was really struggling (and was stumbling some still) and I kept saying stuff like “half a lap of the track”, “100 yards”, “50 yards”, etc...Meanwhile I should back up just a little bit, when we made the final turn we got into the final gallery where a bunch of people on our right were just sitting there. It seemed like the deadest crowd of the day…so as this other stuff was going on, I kind of lost contain and truly started yelling. “WE NEED MORE COWBELL” “I CAN’T HEAR YOU” “I GOTTA HAVE MORE COWBELL” “COME ON PEOPLE – DON’T JUST SIT THERE” “SYRACUSE NEEDS MORE COWBELL” “WE NEED MORE COWBELL”. Hopefully my buddy was too incoherent from exertion to notice me because I probably would have scared him otherwise. Since I was holding his arm, I was kind of turned anyway, but I swear there were points where I was almost turned sideways, totally pointing and screaming at the crowd “WE NEED MORE COWBELL!” then he’d ask “how much further?” “200 yards” “WE CAN”T HEAR YOU!!!” “150 yards, just a little longer” “DON’T JUST SIT THERE!!!!” etc…I swear that I was within about 10 seconds of grabbing a sword, cutting off a race officials head, throwing my arms in the air and yelling “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!!!!”. I was genuinely pissed off.I’m not really sure who I was for that final stretch, I just know I wasn’t me. When we crossed the finish line and stopped moving he asking innocently “Did we finish? Is this it?” I responded that “Yes, you’ve done it, congratulations”.him. Here was one of the most inspirational runners of the day and his blindness kept him from seeing the finish line, so of the 17000+ runners who finished that day he was the one (or one of a few) who deserved to FEEL the finish line. I should have given a version of Morpheus’ speech in Zion…[ LET US TREMBLE THESE HALLS OF EARTH, STEEL, AND STONE! LET US MAKE HIM REMEMBER! LET HIM FEEL THE GROUND TREMBLE, SO THAT HE WILL KNOW THAT HE HAS FINISHED!]He proceeded to tell me that he didn’t know where to go and if I could help him find someone? His faith and his trust amazed me. I didn’t even like my chances of finding someone in a huge finish area meant to support 20 thousand finishers but I told him that I would make sure I found someone and that he didn’t have anything to worry about. [Even if I was worried about it.] Within 50 feet a medical person called his name and told me that they would take him from there. I congratulated him again and gave him a pat on the shoulder. It was then that I saw his race bib and it did indeed say something about “blind runner”…so apparently he is truly blind which still amazes me. [How did he get that far without help?]Once he walked off with the medical person everything sort of hit me at and as I walked forward to get my medal and my iced towel I started crying…it was a strange cry…it wasn’t truly happy nor truly sad…the tears just came fast and furious and were dripping right off my cheeks to the ground. Normally I would have been really embarrassed but in that moment I wasn’t really. Jen came back looking for me and I was kind of laughing and crying at the same time (I said something about excusing my tears but the emotion of the moment had gotten to me and I couldn’t help it.) I don’t even know what truly caused it…most likely a combination of all these things -- The failed marathon…the wasted 3 months of training…the mental and emotional and physical drain of the race. The amazement of a blind runner finding me at the 26 mile mark and needing my help. The amazing trust of finding a stranger to help him finish and find someone to help him after finishing. The incredible odds of me being in that exact spot at that exact time to be the person who he asked to help him…after all the stops and starts I had done in the race those last 10 miles…and being 30-40 minutes behind where I should have been. But I was in the perfect place for him…there I was, someone who didn’t care about my own time any more…with plenty of energy to spare because I had walked so much. He could not have found a person more suited to help him that last quarter mile. It is something I’ll remember the rest of my running career. And for the two of you who read this that have actually read “The Celestine Prophecy” this will make more sense to you…but some other stuff had already happened that weekend that had me thinking about my lot in life and being a less selfish person and becoming a more giving person…and just like in the Celestine Prophecy, what I was looking for was drawn to me when I least expected it…and against incredible odds I was able to help someone just when they needed it most. Also, having already resigned myself to failing on my private quest to honor Mary, it turns out that I honored her memory more than I could have hoped to. I had thought that my best honoring of her would have been to run a strong race and come across the line with arms raised at the 3:45 mark…but here I was 30 minutes later crossing the line with arms raised while holding some complete strangers arm in my hand. And Mary couldn’t have been more honored. Right at my moment of failure, life intervened and gave me a moment of triumph instead. This one was for Mary after all. And so I stood in the middle of a parking lot 2500 miles from home with hundreds of strangers milling around me and I just stood there for a moment and I cried.
The end.For those of you that haven’t heard from me in a while and don’t hardly see me, you can know that I am more of a freak than ever. I spent 4 hours setting a new course record by yelling variations of “more cowbell” about 300 times (seriously that is my best guess on how many times I said something about – let’s see someone try to break that record) and I end the run by thinking about The Celestine Prophecy. [I am bizarre.]I almost forgot to say -- I went to the medical tent to get checked out before we got on the shuttles back to our car and they confirmed what I already knew: I had a fever…and the only prescription was more cowbell!!!!!!P.S. Most of you probably already do this often, but this is my reminder for you to do something nice for someone this week. (Someone you normally wouldn’t do something for.)
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