"It'll Be Fun," We Said...
About a year ago, Lindyne and I agreed to walk the Music City Marathon together. Then, when we got back from Italy, and it was time to register for the event, reality hit us and we said, “Let’s walk the 1/2 marathon instead. It’ll be fun.” So, that’s what we signed up to do.
And today, it got real.
In the last month, Lindyne and her family have also lost a beloved, senior pet. She also works a lot, has a child who is active in Scouts and Soccer, volunteers with our church extensively, and has a life to live and a family to care for.
Suffice it to say, Lindyne and I didn’t have the time nor the energy to put toward training, much. In fact, if she had said to me at any point in the last week that she’d prefer for us to just walk the 5K, I would have been happy…thrilled…to agree.
But, instead, we decided that we’d attempt this crazy thing; being loving to ourselves and each other, and see what happened. We managed to walk one time together as part of our training, for about 20 minutes, before lightning and rain drove us indoors, and we have been friends long enough now to know we’d love to spend hours in each other’s company, and being of similar height our stride and pace should match up well.
She arrived here at our house right on time around 5:10 a.m. this morning. I drove us downtown in the dark, and we decided to park in the spot where Buds and I park for work, rather than fighting the traffic and closed roads going to the stadium where other parking would be. We felt brilliant in this choice since it put us toward the beginning of the race, but more on that later. (Spoiler: The end of the race is not by the beginning of the race.)
We were so early that we stopped at Union Station Hotel to use the bathroom and to see if they had a coffee shop where we could fuel up. Then, we walked over to see where our starting spot would be, but we were still so early that no one was even around the corral area. Then I decided my jacket was going to be too heavy, plus it wasn’t even raining yet, and probably wouldn’t rain, so could we walk back to the car to drop off the coats?
After we locked up the car, again, we walked back toward downtown in search of coffee. About two blocks from the car, the rain drops began. We had the chance to share funny “this time we were on a hike and got soaked” stories, which we enjoyed.
After asking multiple people where they had gotten the coffee cups they were carrying around, we blundered across a Panera and got some nice hot coffee.
As we made our way back toward the starting line (We’d put a couple miles on by this point.), the heavens really opened up, and we were laughing.
“Aren’t you glad I suggested we get rid of those pesky jackets?!” I asked my kind-hearted friend. True to her good nature, she kept on smiling.
We stood by our starting corral number for awhile:
Then, when the thunder began, as the rain continued to fall, we decided a restroom break at the McDonald’s was in order. Bless the poor McDonald’s folks’ hearts, they had put up signs all over the place saying, “Restrooms are only for McDonald’s customers.” This was ignored by 100’s of people.
Lindyne and I were near the front of the line to the women’s restroom, when two early 20’s-looking young women came in, looked at the line, looked at us and said, “Is there anyone in the men’s?” Lindyne and I had been having this exact conversation about using the men’s shortly before this, so we filled the young ladies in on our reconnaissance. They looked at each other said, “Let’s do it,” and we all turned to watch them go into the men’s room, the Manager/Owner hitched up his courage, stepped over to block the path and said, “I can’t let you use the men’s.”
The ladies took it gracefully, and then, later after the race start had been postponed for 35 minutes, the line to the women’s had stretched clear around the restaurant, and dripping wet folks continued to pile in, that same gentleman, recognizing that the race was going to be starting soon and over 30 desperate women were still waiting, he waited until the men’s restroom emptied, then blocked the door so that women could use both rooms.
When Lindyne and I paused to thank him before we left he said very sincerely, “My pleasure.” It was a lovely slice of life moment.
Back to the race line we went. When you have 30,000+ people in a race, it takes awhile to get everyone moving. We were able to see the elite athletes run by in the shoot next to the corral where we were lined up. Lindyne knew what the fellow looked like who has won the last three years (and he won again this year), so we did see the eventual winner start off. (We were around mile 5 or so when his victory was announced.)
A few more thousand of our new best friends out here with us now:
How it looks from the back of the starting line:
It took us a little over 4 hours. We stopped at the spa where Lindyne works when we walked past it to use the clean restrooms. (One highlight of the day for me is knowing I made it through the day without using a port-a-potty.) We made another stop to apply gel bandages to bloody spots and blister-in-training. (Lindyne stumbled across these gel bandages yesterday when looking for mole skin, and they were truly life savers. My bloody foot thanked her.)
We kept a consistent pace, though we often felt that other folks were moving at warp speed. (How did those women hula hoop AND go faster than us?!)
There were lots of bands, whole neighborhoods of people out to cheer, a cheer squad actually doing cheers, and a group of girls dressed as Barbies in boxes, to help keep people’s spirits raised. I saw two friends at various places in the race, which is always fun to find in a huge crowd.
After about mile 10, Lindyne and I got pretty quiet. We knew with little doubt that we would finish, but both of us had hips that were aching and feet that were barking. Step by step we got there, and we were so grateful to cross the finish line, claim our beautiful medals, and pull up a bit of grass in the shade.
After some beverages, snacks, loosened shoe laces, and a look at the map to confirm that, yes, we were going to have to walk 1.7 miles back to the car, we stood up with some moans and groans, and made our way across the beautiful pedestrian bridge in downtown Nashville, and ambled our way back to the car.
We had both decided that sushi would be our victory meal of choice, so I was thrilled to head home, clean up, and be joined by two of my favorite people for a delicious meal.
Lindyne and I are so shockingly proud of ourselves. Imagine next year when we will know not to park nearly 2 miles away from the finish line, not to wear cotton socks and cotton shirts, and possibly we will even train.
New records will be set.
Post-publication notes:
After a good sleep, I awoke with thoughts of other powerful images from the race yesterday floating in my head.
Lindyne and I traded the lead with two best friends who were walking together in matching yellow t-shirts. The back of the t-shirt on Abdi’s shirt said, “I’m fighting cancer and Celiac disease. Keep up!” And the friend’s “T” said, “My bestie is fighting cancer.” The friend’s t-shirt probably said more than that, but I had a difficult time taking my eyes off Abdi’s t-shirt. We passed them for the last time around mile 11, and I was gratified to see them after the race in the “snack corral,” looking hearty.
We passed, and were passed by people of all ages, sizes, and gates. Bow-legged, hobbling, taped, strapped, sweating, smiling, frowning, focused, laughing, struggling, stretching…we saw it all. An event like this brings up many sides of human nature. It also reminded me how difficult it is to reach out to other’s when we are ourselves in pain.
I offered words of encouragement and praise to the folks we passed, but didn’t ask, “How are you doing?” or “Are you okay?” because I wasn’t prepared to help if the response was a dire one. I don’t mean that we wouldn’t have stopped to help if someone had fallen, or looked ill, or was in distress. We didn’t see anyone like that. We did see folks who were having a hard time, and I suspect I probably looked like that to other people at some points in the journey. In some cases, you dig deep and decide what the outcome is going to be. And that is a decision only you can make.
People are good. Yesterday reminded me how good and amazing and driven they can be.
