How I Didn't Run A Marathon

*Content warning: Physical hardship and death.

When I turned 45 I started running. Not running-running, like sprinting down the street, but more of a walk-a-block/jog-a-block combo of gaits. As that became easier, I'd walk less and jog more. I celebrated as though I'd just won Olympic gold when I finally jogged a mile without any walking in between. I started trying to improve my timed distance. I bought running shoes and running clothes. I swallowed nasty-tasting energy gels as I ran. I was hooked. 

For years I had been a couch potato. I'm not what you'd call an overachiever in any area of my life, but especially not as it pertained to physical activity. I scoffed at exercise in general, and at runners in particular. But then one day, I got off that couch and for no specific reason that I can recall, I just ran.

I wasn't very good at it. I'd never had any track and field experience beyond failing to launch from a starting block in high school. (How do those things work, anyway?) I was a klutz from a long line of klutzes. It was understood in my family that we were spectators, not participants.

Undaunted by reality, I jogged three miles a day, usually in the morning, usually through fancy neighborhoods, so that I could surreptitiously spy on rich people. I started entering 5K races. I didn't really want the obligatory t-shirt, or the official record of my finishing time. I just didn't want to finish last.

Running with real runners, I soon noticed that I wasn't a real runner. I'd try to keep pace with a group I thought was about "my speed," only to have them rocket away from me the last 400 meters of a race. They had KICK, which I did not. With raised knees and feet that almost smacked their butts as they tore off, they finished their races as I was left panting in their dust, prancing my little pony prance of a jog across the finish line a few minutes later.

It didn't occur to me to get running advice or coaching help. I had no goals for my daily runs, and I honestly did not want to be compelled to improve. I figured what I lacked in speed I could compensate for with stamina. I wouldn't go faster, but I would go further. 

I started stretching out my daily runs, going four miles, then five. I was getting pretty good at convincing myself that I was improving, though as I look back, I'm sure any track professional would have disagreed. I psyched myself up with the rousing mantra, “The sooner you go for your run, the sooner you can come home and eat.” 

So without good form or good sense, I one day ran 10k without a break. I was a middle-aged woman with no athletic nature or nurture, but I had completed my furthest distance ever. My lower back was cramping, and I couldn’t stand up straight, but I didn't care. I was ready to train for a marathon! "How hard can't this be," I thought. "I don't have to keep up with the dudes from East Africa...I just have to finish." Even if I was one of the stragglers who finished after dark while crews were dismantling the finish line arch, by golly, I would finish.

The closest marathon was in Chicago. It would be held in early October, so I started running in earnest the preceding winter. I joined a training group who ran on Lake Shore Drive between Waveland Park to the north and The Shedd Aquarium to the south. The round trip distance to the Waveland parking lot was about 14 miles. We'd meet up early on Sunday mornings, regardless of the weather.  

Now, if you know anything about Chicago, you know there is always weather. There's a certain, death-defying camaraderie that develops between you and your fellow trainees when it’s 10ºF at 7am. You leap over icy patches on the sidewalks, and adjust your pace to avoid (the worst of) Lake Michigan waves that crash over the retaining walls.  

Whose sadistic idea was it to train on one of the country’s coldest lakefronts in January? I’m assuming that the idea was that the weakest of us would quit, and only those with the steeliest constitutions would make it to the marathon in nine months. We were separated into pace groups. I was somewhere near the back of the back. I could usually jog about half of the route before giving out. My girl math assured me that 6 or 7 miles with blue lips and icicles in my hair was probably the equivalent of a full autumnal marathon.

So come October, after months of jogging and foot blisters and leg cramps, I found myself at the starting line with 35,000 other runners who were ready to take on the 26.2 mile challenge that weaved its way through dozens of Chicago neighborhoods. (My pace group was so slow, we were positioned about a quarter mile behind the starting line.) 

I was excited, though somewhat nervous, and really not sure I belonged there. My brain then decided it was a good time to whisper, “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea….” 

Oh, really, brain? NOW you don’t think it’s a good idea? Where were you during the ice storm on Oak Beach back in February?? Or when I was hobbling with shin splints in March??? You had your chance. Just shut up. It is a beautiful day. A beautiful warm day. 

Actually, it is an unseasonably warm day: Sunday, October 7, 2007. In all my clueless glory, I am basking in the 7am seventy degree sunshine. “This feels great,” I muse. “I’m a summer person. I love summer. I love Indian summer.” 

I am an idiot. 

But as the starting horn sounds, we begin to move with gleeful anticipation. (Actually, the course is so crowded with runners we in the way back just kind of shuffle-jog for the first few hundred yards.)

We spread out a little as we head toward downtown. It’s cool in the skyscraper shadows and the sheer exhilaration of finally being here is overwhelming. People are hanging out of office windows, dangling from overpasses, cheering and ringing cow bells as we pass beneath them. I smile and wave. This is amazing, brain. I feel like a superstar!” I am energized by the crowds. "I can do this," I tell myself. "I am doing this!"  

At the first aid station, my adrenaline tells me I don’t need any water yet. Gotta wait, don’t want to over-hydrate. Don’t want to have to be the first person who needs a pee break. I’m positive a Chicago Tribune photographer will snap a picture of me entering a porta-potty. (“First entrant to stop and pee! Details at 10!”)

I’m still feeling good after the first five kilometers. (Five down, only thirty-seven to go!) As I approach the second aid station, I begin to hear the first discontented rumblings of other runners. 

“There’s no water!” 

“There’s no Gatorade!”  

“They’re out of everything. There’s nothing until the next aid station near Lincoln Park!”  

This doesn’t sound right, even to my novice ears. This is an elite race, right? They’re used to thousands of people running up and down the streets like this every October, aren't they? How can there not be enough water? What’s going on?

Weather. That's what's going on.  It is no longer in the seventies…now it’s in the eighties. It’s October 7th and it feels like August 7th. The temperature just keeps rising. I am flushed and thirsty, and the sun keeps climbing. 

By the third aid station, runners are enraged. No water, no energy drinks. The faster runners who got here before us grabbed multiple waters…drank one, poured twenty over their overheated bodies. They left nothing for us peons.  

Exhausted weekend warriors scream at wide-eyed, well-intentioned volunteers who thought this would be fun. Building superintendents turn on hoses full blast to cool us off. We of the Way Back Group were not in peak condition to begin with, so this is doubly hard on us. One guy jumps in a fountain. A woman who was running in front of me starts shaking and goes into seizures as she falls. Ashen, sweaty people are dropping to their knees. There are ambulances at the intersections, pulling out gurneys and IV poles with hydration bags.  

It is now forty degrees warmer than usual Chicago Marathon weather.  

“Hmmmm, this really wasn’t what I was expecting. Maybe your’e right, brain. Maybe this isn’t such a great idea. Freezing all winter, now on the verge of heat stroke. I think the Chicago lakefront is trying to kill us.”

The smart runners are quitting. The stubborn ones are continuing. The bank thermometer says it’s 85ºF.  

“We’re going to die out here,” panics the older woman to my left.  

“Just quit,” I respond. “No one is holding a gun to our heads. We don’t have to do this.” 

And just like that, it finally dawns on me: I don’t have to do this. I make it about seven miles to the fifth aid station (that is also devoid of aid). It occurs to me that seven miles is about my limit in any weather. This is nuts. My husband is sitting in a nice, air-conditioned Wrigleyville bar watching a sportsball event. I can duck out, have a beer and a brat, and fake-cheer for some team on TV that I don’t care about. Sounds awesome.

As if in agreement, police cruisers start to crawl along the race route, megaphones blaring, “The race is over! Stop running! Conditions are too dangerous to continue! The race is over!” It is not yet noon and already 88ºF.

With no compunction whatsoever, I quit. 

I hang a left down Ashland and head to the Cubby Bear to join up with my hubby. “Hey! Why aren’t you running?” He asks in surprise. “Yeah, darn it. I wanted to, but they cancelled the race.” If I’m honest with myself, I wouldn’t have finished, regardless of the weather. But now Mother Nature and the City of Chicago have given me an excuse, so I’m going with that. I try to look disappointed. “Oh, well. May I have three glasses of water and a beer, please?”

We watched some baseball game on the big screen, and the end of the Marathon on a small TV above the bartender. The East Africans finished, along with about 25,000 other diehards. I was one of about 10,000 who didn’t finish. As I gulped down my second beer, a marathoner from Michigan died out there at Mile 18.  I wish his race had ended like mine.

It’s funny how quickly three miles flies by after you’ve been forcing yourself to run at least twice that far every day for months. I'm done with that. I never have, and never will, run the 26.2 miles that a marathon requires. I’m okay with that. 

I enjoy my three mile pony prances through the rich people neighborhoods. I peek in their windows and smirk at the couch potatoes.