I thought I’d finally take the time to sit down and write about my race last weekend.  The concept of running in the Denver Marathon all began at a bright and cheery graduation celebration in May; the race was actualized on rainy, windy, cold day in October.  A bait and switch of the worst kind.  Lesson: one should never make decisions about running when they are eating at a dessert buffet, because everything seems like a good idea while eating an eclair.

We were entered into the team marathon, which was basically 4 people dividing the race into more manageable chunks.  Kind of like a funsized Snickers sans the chocolatey goodness.  Anyway, I was the anchor leg of the relay, also known as the part curse part blessing leg.

Curse:  It was a constant slow rain, not really too heavy but just a never-ending downpour of cold.  I was downtown by 7:15 to drop off our first runner, and then we spent most of the race driving from spot to spot to transfer the runners.  I found this to be difficult because 1) I was the designated driver for most of the drop-offs and pickups.  I don’t know if you’ve ever tried driving around downtown when the majority of the streets are blocked off by runners, but I don’t recommend trying it.  2) You can’t expect the runner who’s finishing the race to know where to come find the car, thus you have to get out to find them.  My feet were completely soaked before the first runner was done.

When it was finally my turn, I was quite wet and ready to go home.  This is the perfect way to start a race, it turns out.  Not being cold anymore is excellent motivation to run.  Not only do you run to stay warm, but you run as fast and as hard as you can to finish and end the misery for good.  But even better motivation was all the people cheering — this was my favorite part of the race.

Blessing:  You see, the relay teams run the same course as the actual marathoners, and I was the last leg.  So as I was struggling along with my 7 miles, I would get these people yelling “YOU ARE SO AWESOME! ALMOST THERE!  KEEP GOING!  YOU’RE ABOUT TO FINISH!  LOOK AT THAT PACE-WAY TO GO!”  Turns out that people running marathons get some serious support, and I was intermixed with those all those people about to complete this major accomplishment.  I seriously enjoyed that enthusiastic yelling, even though I knew that they thought they were cheering for someone running the whole marathon.  But I didn’t want to stop liking all the cheering by thinking about the fact that at my mile 5 I looked like I was in a similar state to someone at their mile 24.   So the way I dealt with this cognitive dissonance was by pretending like I was in fact finishing a real marathon instead of a 7 mile run.

And man, that was the best marathon of my life.  Clearly, I am born to run.   But even people who are born to run need to take recovery days.  I think my recovery days shall occur during the months of October to March.  I’m re-dedicating those months to the glory of the dessert buffet — that’s an important kind of training too.