Virgin Marathon

I generally hate group anythings, and I only attended my first session at Austin Fit because I was hounded into it by my running buddy, Lisa. And it was only with the understanding that even though it was costing me ninety bucks, my tenure with the group would likely be a one-meeting affair. I liked running, but truth be told, I wasn't really sold on the idea of slapping my soles for 26.2 miles of pain. So why I needed to belong to a group with the express purpose of preparing me for that grueling goal was beyond me.

But the first run went okay, so I gave it another meeting. Then another. Pretty soon, much to my dismay, I was in. I even started to think in terms of preparing for a marathon, for the marathon. I have no idea how that happened.

It might have been because my first few runs with Amy's Hombres (yellow, 8:30) convinced me that I had a lot of room to grow. On one particular jaunt, a five or six miler, if I remember, we held a sub-8:20 pace up the hill toward St. Ed's--at least I tried to hold that pace--and I saw very clearly that any idea I had that I might be ready to run a marathon, at least at the pace I was aiming at, was still very much a concept. I bonked three miles from home and walked much of the rest of the way.

But as the weeks went by and the runs grew longer, I was making progress, hard progress. At home I complained, half joking, about James, whose given name my wife really believed was "That Bastard James." He was a machine, a veritable one-foot-in-front-of-the-other

-regardless-of-the-steepness-of-the-terrain-or-the-length-of-the-run machine. How he did it, I had no idea. But he did, so my job was to hang on to the group like they were my lifeline, working as hard as I could to keep up for fear of losing them and my will to keep the pace. And James seemed to know exactly where that line was, and he pushed it to its limits on every run.

And mostly I succeeded.

But it was tough.

The worst was our 18 miler. We started on the marathon course, up South Congress, right on Lightsey up towards South 1st. By the time we crested the hill and made the right turn down, I knew I was in trouble. I held on, though, and made it to Cesar Chavez, out Lake Austin and to Enfield. By the time we topped out at Exposition, however, I was seriously hurting. As we attacked the three big hills on Exposition, I fell a little, then further, then hopelessly behind. I walked the last half of that last hill, watching my mates grow small in the distance as they made the turn up ahead. Light-headed and demoralized, I stumbled up the grade. As I finally made the turn onto 35th, trying to remember what the route was, where I was going and what I was going to do on my own now, I saw a figure running back toward me over the narrow pedestrian bridge over MoPac. It was, of course, James. For the next five miles he ran with me, walking when I needed to, encouraging me to run when I could. And by the time we were approaching the hill on San Jacinto, that last hill on the marathon course, when I couldn't run any more, I made him go on. He made me promise to walk as much as I needed to, and to take the shortest route back to TexDot.

But I didn't. Though it wasn't fast, I ran most of the way, and I took no shortcuts. I made the big turn out to I35 and back onto Riverside. It was brutal, and I got in a good 35 minutes after the rest of the group. I was convinced that I would never, ever be able to run 26.2. No way, never. I whined, I ranted, I moaned. It was hopeless. My coaches and teammates offered encouragement, but they had no idea. It just wasn't going to work. It just didn't add up. I couldn't do it.

For reasons that still defy me, our next two, shorter runs were amazing. On the second, our last leg was down Congress, and we flew down it, moving over the stone sidewalks past the storefront windows, inches off the ground. As we crossed over the South Congress Bridge and back to the trail, we felt our sneakers hit the gravel. Four of us went for it, running for the end like it was the easiest thing in the world, faster than we thought we could and for longer too. And when we got to the lot, past that iron gate that means the run is over, we hunched over, grasping our shorts to catch our breath, smiles and nods of understanding, of knowing a kind of joy that only people who run ever get to know.

A couple of weeks later, our 21 miler--well, for our group, it was a 22.5 miler; we never did anything merely to code--was the best run of my life. And when we got back in, James teased me mercilessly about my former pessimism, then stopped and pronounced me ready to run the long run, the real long one, that one that ends in the midst of a big cheering crowd.

And finally, I believed him.

A couple of days ago, despite a lingering virus, I was there. I bobbed out among a sea of brightly colored bodies and went at it like a guy who knew he was going to be able to do it. And when I got to 18 and I was hurting, I thought about the lessons I'd learned, the endless tips, the strategies, the tricks, and I started thinking like a runner. I slowed down when I had to, but not too much, I watched my breathing, and I recovered on the run, and I watched my pace and I made small goals. And I thought about the goal.

And it was working. I wasn't going fast, but I was making progress. The miles fell behind me, 22, 23, 24. I finally saw my family on 15th and San Jac, just before that last hill. I got quick kisses and smiles--it was the best 20 second investment I've made in my life--and I jumped back on the course, ran the hill strong and turned right and down, and it just kept it flowing, a great last half mile, pumping and believing all the way in, a cruise to the finish, crossing as though I was the first across the line and not the 1,053rd. It was absolutely as awesome as everyone had told me, though I never believed it, until then.

So that's what that big bear hug was all about. For a terrific coach who understood how crazy hard a marathon is, and that I could do it too. Who knew what I was going through and what I needed to get me to where I was headed. And it was there for my new friends, too, for Dan and Chris, and Scott and my buddy Amy, and to Lisa, who talked me into the whole crazy idea in the first place.

And it was really all about the sound of 12 pairs of fancy sneakers crunching down the brown gravel trail in the low light of early Saturday mornings, some of us knowing a lot about what it meant and how it would go from there, and some of us, like me, just figuring it out.