Whidbey Island- Part II

I keep catching the drift of sunny blooms, and remembering last summer: the food bank and the Mormons and the Rock and Roll Marathon.

It is not possible to carry this one around with me without remembering the despair of last July, the four slow weeks that followed the painful failure of that particular run. In the weeks leading up to the Whidbey, I did everything I could to suppress the memory: the hot, long miles, the impossible clamp around my throat, the frantic short breathing, the burning in my gut, the swimmy-buzzy panic in my head. And now that it has past, and the thrilled, relieved whirring has calmed, I can't stop thinking about that hot, mid-summer day.

In college when I ran my last cross country meet a similar feeling of despair ensued. In the crucial moment, I had given up on myself and in the following days could only dwell on the concept of not being able to gain that crucial moment back. Though we lofty thinker-beings oft feel able to rise above the primal notions of mere time and space, we live and die by them, too. And a swell mile isn't the same as a swell mile at the crucial moment. You can't get it back: it is a conditional gift of a single place and time, and you either deliver or you don't.

In the third mile of the Whidbey Island last Sunday, we ran through a Hawaiian-themed water station and they tossed leis around our necks as we ran past. I caught up to my running partner and we laughed about it and compared times. We were going quick- our third mile put us around a 9:10 average our excitement at this small achievement carried us a few happy miles. I wasn't familiar with this pace, certainly not at this distance, but as I told C., I felt great and why not go with a great thing while it lasts? (note this odd optimism. something very strange was happening.) We passed and were passed by a man several times with whom we exchanged several jokes as we powered up and over smallish hills. "Good luck" we called out each time, "Good job!"

At mile seven the real hills started and my stomach rumbled with hunger. I can't remember ever feeling hungry in the first marathon and I wasn't sure what to do. I pulled a honey-gel shot from my pocket and chewed it slowly, but my stomach still felt empty so I told myself the half was right around the corner, and truly felt that it was so. Again, this strange ability to not be overwhelmed with the distance. It must have been luck- or Imogen Heap who was now being piped into my thrumming brain.

At 2:03, we clocked in for the half marathon, our quickest half yet. (1:57 makes a perfect 9 minute mile pace) I knew that Mom, Christy, Pat, along with a few other close friends planned to meet us at the halfway point, but upon crossing the marker and seeing nobody around I seriously considered that I might have taken a wrong turn. Though I wanted to see them and had been looking forward to the friendly faces, I also desperately longed for the food. I knew that mom was armed with bananas and plumbs and nut-and-date bars and wanted to take as much as I could hold.

Nearly to mile 14, I saw them. My mother handed me two plums, a banana and half an energy bar, and I turned down a 1.5 mile path, what's known as a 'turn-around' so-called because at the end you simply turn around and trot back the way you came. On the way back, I spotted my running partner half a mile behind me, and met my friends and mother again on the other end, right around mile 16.