Marathon Runner

Just put one foot in front of the other. How could it be so difficult, to do something so simple? It had sounded so doable the night before, lying awake in bed at 2 AM, unable to fall asleep, yet again. Ellie really needed to stop drinking coffee so late in the day. That was the problem.

She plodded along, trying to concentrate on the soreness in her legs rather than the sloshing cramp in her stomach that she knew would really be her limiting factor. Half a mile down, one and a half to go. Why did she ever think this was a good idea? She was six minutes- had it really taken that long to run half a mile?- into the training plan she had signed up for last night: couch to marathon in six months. She was well-adapted for the couch, no question about that. She hadn’t run longer than about thirty consecutive seconds since the last day of sophomore gym class way back in high school, and she could feel it. Her body begged for her to stop and walk, for any small reprieve, but she couldn’t give up that easily. She had signed up for a marathon the night before, too; she actually picked the marathon before she picked the training plan. She’d paid her three hundred and fifty dollars, and that was far too close to her half of the month’s rent to back out already on day one. What had she been thinking when she signed up, though? She must have been out of her mind with exhausted delirium to think she could actually do this.

The road pitched up and she tipped her body forward, trying to find every last advantage she could. Her breath tore in her chest as she crested the hill and with it, put mile one in the past. She tried to remember her motivation from the night before, digging deep to find any inspiration to keep running.

It had been a video from her cousin that got her started. A video from the sideline as her cousin ran down the road in a giant crowd of runners, people cheering and screaming from the sidelines. She wanted that, for herself. She wanted to be cheered on by impressed and awed onlookers. And from the comfort of her bed, all wrapped up in fuzzy blankets, she figured that a marathon would be in reach for her, if she just started running a little every day. How hard could that be?

Ellie had watched the video over and over again, trying to decide what made those people so much better, so much more capable and athletic than she was. She had rolled over in bed, flexing the muscles in her legs as she did. She could run a marathon too, right? Her cousin had always been the type to wake up early and run, something which Ellie herself had never done. Ellie was more of the type to sleep in until eleven before grabbing a cup of coffee and settling in at her desk to get some work done. She’d never exactly been unathletic; she enjoyed leisurely hikes and going for the occasional meandering bike ride or walk, but a marathon had never been on her horizons. She hated running, and doubted that even training for a marathon could change that. But when she watched the video of her cousin running, she couldn’t help but feel inspired. She zoomed in, trying to figure out why the man next to her was smiling at mile eighteen, and how the young woman jogging behind him had the energy to pump her fists in the air, whereas Ellie doubted that she could run a single mile without throwing up.

But she had. She just had run one mile, and she was still struggling forward through the second. According to the marathon training plan that was now taped up on her fridge, the first and only training plan she had bothered to look at, she would have to run three miles the next day before she could enjoy her first day off.

Ellie struggled to keep moving forward. She had turned around now and was heading back down the hill, and as she chugged along she wondered if she would even be able to get out of bed the next day to start the three mile run. If these two miles were hard, they would be nothing compared to the three she had to run the next day, and especially compared to the long run at the end of the week- four miles.

It seemed impossible. Unlikely, at best. But Ellie kept plodding along. Maybe if she could run a little faster or a little further, she would get better at other things in her life, too. It had been easy to lie in bed, thinking about how much better of a person she would be if she could just run 26.2 miles as easily as the people in that video had, and cozy, inspired, Ellie in bed was the version of her that had committed to this. The version of herself now, the one with sweat pouring down her neck, stomach cramps getting worse by the second, chest aching, legs feeling like blocks of lead, was starting to doubt that such a transformation would be possible.

The sun was beating down on the back of her neck, and Ellie wondered if she would be able to find the motivation to get out of bed earlier the next day to run before the scorching heat had settled down in her town. There was also something intriguing about the thought of waking up and exercising straight away, instead of sitting at her desk and dwelling on the coming bout of exercise that afternoon. She hoped she could convince herself to get up earlier the next day, but those sorts of lofty goals always felt so much more attainable at night when she was falling asleep than in the morning when the blaring alarm offered the easy out of a snooze button. But that would be tomorrow’s problem, not today’s. For now, she would just have to suffer the scorching heat radiating off the pavement and directly into her face.

Now that she was heading downhill, she could feel the cramp in her stomach growing. She thought going downhill would be easier, but if anything, the cramps hurt more, now. And her quads were burning with each step in an effort to keep her from tumbling straight down to the bottom. That would be faster though, Ellie reasoned. Maybe a tumble wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

In an attempt to pull her thoughts from her immediate pain, she decided to focus on the long-term goal, like she had the night before when she was feeling inspired and ready to conquer the world, in that delusional drowsy-but-not-able-to-fall-asleep state. The marathon was in six months, to the day. It would fit in perfectly with the six-month training plan she had found. With four days of running and one day of cross training every week, that meant that after today she would only have…one hundred and twenty-nine days to go. That couldn’t be right, could it? And she wasn’t even done with the first day yet! She tried to remember her cousin’s video from the night before and her crystal-clear realization that her life would not be complete unless she experienced the thrill of running a marathon herself. But the notion fell rather flat, now. Her life was good enough the way it was. Why did she have to run? What did she have to prove to anyone? To prove to herself?

But she couldn’t back out. None of it mattered anymore, except that she had paid the entrance fee already, so she had to do it now, no matter what. Even though she hadn’t told anyone her plan yet, she was determined that she wouldn’t back out. Ellie cranked the volume up on the workout mix she’d found on Spotify. She needed something to distract herself from the pain now shooting out from the stomach cramp. She should’ve drunk less coffee this morning. Did most athletes drink coffee before their workouts? Probably not a latte with whipped cream like she had this morning, at the very least.

The music pounded in her ears, but it still wasn’t enough to drown out the pessimistic thoughts fighting for her to stop running. She’d done the math last night. It had helped her fall asleep actually, and the number at the end of the calculation had worried her far less than it should have, because she was dozing off practically before she’d seen the final screen on the calculator. But it was coming back to her, now. If she followed the training plan to a T, then she would run 563 miles over the next six months, in addition to the one day a week of cross training. And what was she supposed to do on those days? Lift weights? Yoga? Both options seemed unlikely to happen. She’d never stuck to anything for that long, six months or 563 miles, and what were the chances that this plan could hold her attention for longer than a week or two? She needed some sort of way to force herself to keep running, or she would never keep up with it.

Her legs were positively screaming in agony, now. She would give anything to stop and lie down on the side of the road in defeat. She had heard her cousin talk about a runner’s high before, but doubted in its existence. Nothing that hurt this much could ever make Ellie want to do more of it. She must have been a lunatic, to sign up for this.

“One and half miles down, just half a mile left, now. If this were race day,” Ellie thought, “I’d still have 24.7 miles left to run. Must’ve been a lunatic, to sign up for this.”

What was keeping her to this plan, really? She hadn’t told anyone. And really, three hundred and fifty dollars wasn’t that much to lose, when she thought about it. And when she really thought about it, there were other things, other hobbies, that her time would be spent more wisely doing. Why bother running and putting herself through all this pain? Just to prove she could? That was silly, since she already knew she almost definitely wouldn’t be able to. To challenge herself? To put herself outside of her comfort zone? She had already done that though, with the last mile and a half. Was she really expecting herself to wake up the next morning, too sore to get out of bed, and then just put on her running shoes and go off for another run? Doubtful. Ellie knew herself better than that.

This was it. She was calling it. She would finish this two-mile run just to say that she did it. She had set out to do it and despite all odds it turned out she could, but she had accomplished enough to be happy with. As she felt a blister pop on the back of her left ankle, she made the final decision. She was calling the race off. Maybe if she made a call tonight, she could get the money back since it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours. They really shouldn’t let people sign up for marathons after midnight, anyway. It was their own fault.

Ellie was in the home stretch now. She had a quarter of a mile to go. Almost done, and then she’d call it quits on running forever. No more pretending to be someone she’s not; she’ll save the marathons for her cousin.

Ellie’s right shoe landed on a pointy rock and her ankle rolled to the side. She heard a loud crack and went down like a sack of flour. Pain immediately shot up from her ankle like pins and needles. She looked down and saw her foot pointed at a grotesque angle. There was no way it wasn’t broken.

***

In the hospital an hour later, after her roommate had driven to her rescue, a doctor was talking with Ellie as he lined her up for an x-ray. “And you said you tripped while you were running?” Ellie nodded. “Do you run much?”

“I was training for a marathon, actually. I guess I’ll have to back out of that, now.”

“Oh no, that’s horrible!” the doctor said sympathetically. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Ellie shook her head. “And I’d been training so hard, too. I had a whole schedule made up and everything. I was really looking forward to it.”

***

Hours later still, Ellie lay on the couch with her ankle encased in a cast and propped up on a pillow. She held her phone in front of her, watching her cousin’s video again. The runners all looked so inspired, so invigorated, by their run. That could have been her, if she hadn’t had such bad luck. “Well. If only my ankle weren’t broken, that would be me, soon,” Ellie said aloud to the empty room. “And I was really starting to get excited for it, too.”