Where moment meets eternity

So why can't I describe the way I feel about it?

It's been all I've been thinking about for six months. Or even longer: since I was twelve and Mom dragged us downtown early one sunday morning, and I watched the Kenyans speed by with something in their eyes that I didn't understand, or that lady with the tiny veil, running right next to the man with a matching t-shirt, proclaiming, "Just married." All those smiling faces parading past, all running towards something I couldn't see or didn't know, just knew that I wanted to work for it, too.

And I have! I have for so long. Every humiliating, dog-tired day of cross country in college, every terrifying track meet. Every inch of success has given me another taste, every failure has only increased the burning for the ultimate thing: the marathon!

I remember just a month or so ago, the first time I ran fifteen miles and felt, for the first time, a true sense of despair about it, like it was something that I maybe just couldn't do. I have an insatiable optimism when not in the precise moment of trial. And though I have a great capacity for fear and panic in the moment, beyond it I am determined and sure. So it shook me that day when I came home and said to my mom, "You know, I just don't know..." But the following long run was longer, and I felt fantastic at the end of it. 18 was thrilling because I'd never been there before and I felt that the marathon was truly finally within my grasp, that the massive number 26 was something I could and would do.

But yesterday, in the hot sun, on the hill, 18 was not thrilling, it was miserable. For that matter, 8 was miserable if only just because I knew there was still so much to go. My mind was just ...off... from the beginning. I was so full of fear you could have wrung it out of me. Even my running partner kept looking at me in disbelief. "Kristin, this isn't like you..." At the time, I didn't feel too bad about it, because I felt that the pessimism would be outweighed by the result, that when I finished the pessimism would seem justified. After all, no one says a marathon is easy. The better you are, the more you want to try, I imagine.

But by mile 13, C. was slipping away. She had been pushing past me since the first mile, though I'd brushed it off as race-day enthusiasm, something we'd traded between us on these longer runs. As we rounded the 14th, however, I came to know that she just had more in her than I did. More: skill, training, mental capacity? I don't know; just more. By 19, I couldn't see her anymore, and when we passed each other on a turn around, we cheered, and I noticed she still looked fantastic. Where was my confidence? Where was the hard work I'd put in? Earlier that day I'd talked to another runner before the race and we'd agreed how scary it feels to taper your mileage right when you feel that you need it the most. "You'll be surprised how much your body remembers, though," she promised me. But whether or not my body remembered, I have no idea. My head completely forgot. I, at no time during the race yesterday, had the notion that I could really accomplish it, and purely because of that, I feel today that I did not.

Right before mile 19, something strange happened that's never happened before, and my throat closed, like I was breathing through a straw. The more afraid I felt, the tighter it closed, and I knew something was wrong. Finally, a man in front of me turned and told me to stop because he was worried about my breathing. And that's when I started to cry. Which, of course, only made my breathing more laborious. A few seconds later, it went away as quickly and strangely as it came and I didn't think a lot of it, but looking back at it, its obvious that I was absolutely seized with fear. My throat closed again a mile later, but I closed my eyes and concentrated on relaxing and it opened again without much trouble.

At the water station between mile 21 and 22 I sat on the median and sobbed, because I knew I just didn't have anything left. You might think to yourself that 22 is so close to 26 and that I was pathetic and that four miles is no big whoop if you've just run 22. And you'd be right about the pathetic part, but four miles IS long- its forty minutes-- actually, longer at that point, sadly, and my legs felt like they were make of machine gears and nerves.

And then out of no where, I heard someone say, "Hey, hey, you're okay, come with me. We'll walk to the end together."

When you first meet new people, you always want to present the best side of yourself. That is just the way the world works. But not in a marathon- everyone you meet is like family, like the man who made me stop when my throat closed and only went on his way again when I'd promised to take care. When I met M. on the course yesterday, I had my worst, my ugliest, weakest foot forward. And she didn't leave me till we'd crossed the finish line.

We ran every few minutes, and stopped every few minutes, too. This was her sixth marathon, but this time around she was injured, she told me, and I looked down to see a brace on her leg all the way from her knee to her ankle. We talked about running, and about goals and we met some others along the way. One man I'd passed at the beginning, pushing himself in a specially designed racing wheel chair came by and now cheered us on at the 25th mile. The course began to look different, slower, the people less consumed with the fire of what was ahead, but full of something else now I didn't recognize. My legs throbbed and shook and my stomach threatened to upset, but I knew M. and I would stop if we needed to, and we did, a lot: sometimes for me, sometimes for her, and I didn't mind.

Finally, I saw a long, steep decline, at the bottom of which was a large cardboard number 26. So we ran to the end, slowly, gaspingly and smiled into the camera that broadcast my finish to my family 2000 miles away, huddled around Shea's computer, who made bets whether or not I would throw up right then and there.

M. and I stopped to have our pictures taken together and then after exchanging names and facebook accounts, parted ways. Ten minutes later I threw up every cup of water and cytomax into a plastic-lined carboard box marked 'Recycling,' while Pat and a friend from the store turned modestly away and waited.

I don't really know why I feel so heart-broken now, but I want so badly just to go for a nice, easy six mile run by myself and think about nothing. I just want to see some beautiful scenery and be quiet for a while, but my legs are so broken and sore I can hardly sit in one position for more than ten minutes.

I know it seems selfish to cry over a marathon time, when there are so many people in the world experiencing real loss, or who wish they were healthy enough to stand or walk for long distances or even run, but its more than my disappointment over the results that aches. It is the loss of myself at the crucial moment. I should have been there, I should have scraped up some resilience from the deep of me. But I didn't. I just felt empty and panicked.

I want so much to try again and succeed, but you can't just recreate the 23rd mile of a race. The entire meaning of a the 23rd mile is the 22 that come behind it. The secret of the success of a 23rd mile just isn't that easy. It's really long, and really hard and takes a lot of faith. and 22 other miles.

So, tomorrow its back to the grocery store. 5am. But I guess that's the wonderful thing about disappointment and marathons. Life just goes on and on anyway. So in the words of my new favorite line of running gear: We all run on.



We can only hope.