New Years Eve 2006 changed things. Like many other stories (few of which are about kick starting a person’s running career), this one begins at Club Iguana in Miami, Florida. Wake Forest University was scheduled to play in the 2007 Orange Bowl, and I, along with many of my college friends, made the trek for the game. As we discussed our new year’s resolutions, a friend mentioned that he (along with his brother and a couple other friends) was going to train for and run a marathon in March. Before I knew it, I had jumped on the bandwagon, surely if an accountant could find time to train during tax season, I could find time too!
I returned home from Miami, secretly hoping the race wouldn’t fit in my work schedule, or that I could find some other excuse to get out of it. That wasn’t the case. The ING Georgia Marathon fell during one of my school breaks, a perfect time for me to make the trip, and there were plenty of witnesses who heard me say I would do it. I was in. I laced up my running shoes and went for a 9 mile run, the longest I had ever run. It felt surprisingly good, and before I knew it, my Saturday mornings (sometimes rolling into afternoons) were devoted to long runs.
The weekend of March 25th finally arrived and I could only hope that the training plan I made for myself paid off (or at least I didn’t collapse in a heap somewhere along the course). Saturday afternoon five or six of us went to the race expo. Along with thousands of other runners, we wove through the maze to collect our bib numbers, t-shirts, and other goodies.
I slept as well as I could the night before the race, wondering what I had gotten myself into. Before I knew it, we were on our way to the race; numbers pinned on, ready (as I was going to be) to run. Seas of people gathered at the downtown starting line and I prepared for my foot tour of Atlanta. Slowly, the masses started moving, before I knew it, we crossed the starting line and the race had begun.
The next 26.2 miles wound through the streets of Atlanta, a city I had never visited before. It was a learning experience for me, I learned how to pace myself, that water and Gatorade alone are not enough energy for 26 miles, and that along with the other beautiful sites, there are hills in Atlanta, lots of hills. I’m pretty sure we ran up all of them, and down none of them. A sign held by a spectator at mile 18 was hand written in marker and read, “What were you thinking?” At this point I had asked myself that question at least 100 times. If the first 19 were not enough, miles 20-26 brought even more of a challenge. I was out of energy, had little feeling in my legs, and was mentally exhausted.
Somehow I made it, and all of that disappeared when I finished the 26th mile. After what I had just been through, the last 2 tenths of a mile were nothing. Somewhere inside I found the energy to push myself across the finish line (at which point a friend who ran the half jokingly told me that if I had that much energy left, I hadn’t run hard enough the first 26 miles hard enough).
I had never been as physically exhausted as I was that day. We joked about being so tired we were willing to sit on the floor of the MARTA station; not caring about what else might have been there before us. At dinner, we sat across from my friends’ parents, who looked across the pizza and told us we were the sorriest looking bunch they had ever seen. But that was fine, because I ran a marathon. The first dinner (and countless pitchers of water that went with it) was apparently, not enough. After a quick nap we were ready to eat again. For this meal, we headed to Chipotle to enjoy the weather and our second meal on the patio. In fact, we enjoyed it so much that none of us wanted to leave when we were finished (or maybe we fought about who would stand up first and help the other two get out of their chairs). I will never forget how sore I was, but more than that, I will always remember the feeling of accomplishment after running 26.2 miles.
As I drove back to Raleigh the next day, making frequent stops to walk around and make sure my legs still worked since I still could not feel them, I knew I would run another marathon, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be anytime soon, but it would happen.
