Running

Fat Girls Finish: Training for the Missoula Marathon, Final Installment

By Jule Banville, 7-18-11

	A poor facsimile smile of how I truly felt at this moment... But still. Done.

When last I left you, I was anticipating finishing the 5th Annual Missoula Marathon, now more than a week into what almost seems a distant past. And speaking of distance, 26.2 miles never seemed so long.

It’s taken me, truly, this entire week to not only recover what’s physically barking at me (my gnarly toes, my stretched hamstring, my urge to sleep, like, all the time), but to walk (slowly) through the mental ups and downs of the race enough to write about it.

It’d be more encouraging to any readers out there thinking of a full as a goal to tell you that, after six months of training, I breezed through it and crossed the finish in an elated state of being, akin to Lady Gaga entering the Grammys in an egg held aloft by gold-painted men.

But it wasn’t like that for me. It was grueling and emotional. And there were no painted men. And the theme from “Chariots of Fire” didn’t ring in my ears. And it was hard, just plain hard. And if it wasn’t, I’m told, everyone would do it, which does, in the end, make the marathon a worthy goal. Fewer than 1 percent of people do this weird thing.

But it’s not a goal I’m likely to attempt again.

My race started pleasantly enough in Frenchtown, in the back, away from the real runners, as the sky beautifully lightened on the mountains. Mullan Road, a good 10 miles of it before the next big turn, stretched out as we spread out into small, natural pace groups. This is not New York or Boston: Missoula’s race gives marathoners of all abilities plenty of room to take it all in. It’s a gorgeous course, which I was thinking even as I approached The Hill.

Oh, there is one, and it’s a doozy, folks – up, up, up, up Big Flat Road, which is a cruel irony for a road name if ever I’ve heard one (and I grew up on Brooklyn Street in a town with one red light, so I’m familiar with the concept). What the hill lacks in direct steepness, it makes up for in the fact that it’s possible it will never, ever end.

Volunteers and race watchers encouragingly told us “almost there!” Liars, all. But no matter, push on. And I did, even as my right hammy crafted signs in protest. Even as it was clear my gastrointestinal system was also uncapping its metaphorical Sharpie. 

Finally, descent to River Pines Road along the beautiful Bitterroot, where things started to go south for me. I’ll spare you the details of said gastrointestinal fussiness and say only it resulted in losing companionship: The gal I’d been training with and stayed with since the start at 6 a.m. rightly, perhaps, chose to run her own race and move on, leaving me in the john. I thought I could catch up and I did, eventually, but spent too much energy in the offing—energy, as it turns out, I needed later.

We stayed together another couple of miles, keeping up the interval we started with: run a minute and a half, walk 45 seconds. We’d made good time (for me, anyway), but it became clear at around Mile 19 that I was scarily running out of gas with seven long ones to go.

I opted to face the rest on my own, encouraging her to keep her pace.

There are low points in every marathon, I know, but I started to feel that if I was going to get out of this particular Death Valley Formerly Known As West Third Street, I might have to crawl. Instead, I walked. I spent some more quality time in Port-A-Johns. I kept thinking about my dear, bearded husband and my single-dimpled daughter waiting for me at Mile 22 or so.

I died a little before I got there, although I was able, from the not-yet-covered grave, to tell my spouse it was not time for a gel or a granola bar or one of his cute signs. It was time for a pep talk. A real one. And he gave it to me. “Only four miles,” he said. “You can do four miles.”

Pushing the stroller down Fourth, my very own neighborhood, he did a few run-walk rounds with me at 45 seconds each, the interval I had trained with and what I returned to when I decided to make like Jesus and resurrect.

He turned off at a trail that runs along the railroad tracks, a shortcut to the end of the race, so he could be there when I finished. Mentally, he left me in a better place, even as the sun hit higher and hotter as noon approached. Four miles. I could do four miles. Then it was three miles. Then it was two miles.

Between Mile 24 and the last, long mile, something in my brain broke. I still don’t know if it was a good ("I’m going to finish this fucker") feeling or a bad ("This fucker is going to kill me") one, but I just ran and walked and wept that second-to-last mile, caring little about the open sobbing on view to smiling, clapping onlookers. It was not Julie-Moss-1982-Ironman, but it was not pretty and I’ll not forget it. Ever.

In the last mile, I put it slightly past me as I tried to overtake a red-headed girl who’d been in my sights for awhile. I inched closer and then saw how much she, too, was struggling. So I told her to stick with me on my run/walk plan. She was grateful. She hadn’t trained much due to a recent injury. She kept saying this was the hardest thing she’d ever done. She said she might not make it.  She told me I should be a motivational speaker.

I told her that once we got to the Higgins Bridge, it’d feel great. We’d sprint to the finish to the cheers of our adoring fans. Or something like that. At any rate, we pushed on, slowly, together, and we did get to that damn bridge.

That’s when we switched roles and she told me to run faster toward the clock and the balloons and the end to all of this. And I did run faster and I did want to puke and I did look up at the clock to see I’d made it under 6 hours, at around 5:50. This moment – crossing the bridge to finish – was the one that kept me going all these months of Sundays. I visualized how fantastic it would feel, as it did when I ran the half last year. I pictured the seeds of all that training blossoming into some sort of fireworky flower in my chest. Instead, I bawled. Like a small baby. Mainly because it didn’t feel that way. I felt like I had nothing left, no good feeling, no bad feeling. Nothing. Empty. Spent.

I mustered a smile for a photo or two (see above). I tried to be nice to people I love. But really I just wanted to be alone or to throw something, maybe the medal around my neck, just to feel something other than whatever the hell it was I was feeling.

I do believe that if I can finish a full marathon, just about anyone can. I’m no athlete. I’m short and overweight and my competitive spirit is more like a faint whiff of maybe getting another pie piece if life was like a game of Trivial Pursuit. But, make no mistake, marathons are hard and I hereby admire anyone who, having gone through the emotional coaster of one, attempts another. I doubt I will.

But I did it, goddamn it. I did it. 

Think you want to relive the past? What are you, my mother?

Part 5: In which I talk myself into it.

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By Jule Banville, 7-18-11 | comments (10) | email story | print story