It’s 26.2 miles to the finish, we’ve got a hastily put together table of Dunkin Donuts, half a pack of goo lies on the ground, it’s dark… and I’m wearing sunglasses.
Hit it.
***
It’s a little after 5 AM in Ormond Beach, FL. I got here in decent time, leaving my house around 3:30-ish and even found time to stop and fill my gas tank. I used the address for the Osceloa Elementary School they told us to park at and found myself waiting behind a line of cars blocked by a gate to the school. It all felt… off. And not in an “Amazing Race” kinda way where teams race to some location only to be told they don’t open until 8 AM the next morning, virtually assuring all the teams will catch up and level the playing field once more. No, this just felt… wrong. I flicked on my dome light and pulled out the information email they sent. I try and remember to print these things out when I’m headed to a race as sometimes I need to re-read the info before hitting the course. Such was definitely the case here. Because just underneath the address for the school, there was a long paragraph that essentially said ignore the address, don’t use your GPS, because you’re supposed to park BEHIND the school in an open field and the way to get there is to take a side road just after a bridge. I didn’t share this information with my fellow waiting cars. If this was the Amazing Race you don’t always share the route info, right? Unless you’re in an alliance? I haven’t watched it in ages but that used to be how it worked. In truth, I just didn’t know how to explain the need to turn around and go back to the main road so one could take a side street to get around behind the school to park in some desolate empty field. (Hell, even typing it up now, hours after the fact, I don’t quite know how I found my way back there.)
But the fact is in short order I wind my way through the side streets and finally find signs directing me to runner parking. Sure enough, it’s behind the school and sorta near this playground recess area with one of those giant maps of the US painted on the blacktop. Me being a 50 State Marathon Club Member, as well as a 50sub4 guy, I am particularly drawn to this artwork and try to capture it with my phone. As would soon be a constant refrain throughout the day, my efforts prove mostly ineffectual. The photos are poorly framed, blurry, and fail to measure up to what I hoped they would be.
It’s about a half mile from the parking lot back through the maze of side streets to the start line and packet pickup. At the large white tent, I grab my bib (Number 166) and my t-shirt. My first thought as I look at the shirt is that I recognize the blank they used. Just the other day I had some RunKevinRun.com sample merchandise printed (more on this in a later post) and I *almost* used this grey with colored flare accents as the blank shirt to print my logo. Funny how things come round and round.
We were promised Dunkin Donuts at the pre-race pow-wow but the DD personnel are running late. Despite unpacking massive amounts of munchkins from large tupperware containers, they refuse to let anyone have a sample because, “we’re not ready yet.” Not sure what they need to do to get ready — they’ve got donuts, in tupperware, they’ve got plastic gloves on to handle the food. Seems kinda like they’re ready to go. But the DD manager/boss/dragon lady hisses at anyone who approaches that they’re not ready and won’t be ready until 6:15. The race starts at 6:30. I had kinda hoped to grab a bagel or something before the race and let it settle a bit before running but the best laid plans… I do wander back at 6:15 and grab a single blueberry munchkin because, ya know, it was either “free” or more accurately “included in the amenities of my race registration fee.” In some ways I like to think I spent $85 for that munchkin and the rest of the day was “free.”
The national anthem is a canned recording… complete with cheering crowds. It’s a surreal moment to hear an applause/whistling track to a pre-recorded and not-particularly-stellar rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. But we do what we do. The race director comes out to give final instructions — there’s a chance of rain for later in the day and lightning occurs we should all seek shelter until it passes. But that’s a worst case scenario he says and the overcast skies in the meanwhile should help. Unfortunately it’s so humid already, even before sunrise, that just standing around has a lot of runners dripping wet. I’ve been in worst humidity (Singapore chief among them) and find it a nice change of pace from the last marathon I did (hey — no wind, no sleet, no mud puddles — hooray! But also no penguins — boo!).
The race director reminds runners to thank the volunteers who have help make Tomoka Marathon one of the top three marathons in Florida, besting Disney and various other bigger names in the running game. I make a mental note to google the list of the other two. The final countdown is on as the RD turns things back over the DJ. Inexplicably, he counts down from 37 seconds. I don’t know if there’s a significance to this but, um, when in Ormond Beach…
The starting horn is what I imagine the seventh trumpet would sound like if God had run out of money and needed to start the rapture with an Army/Navy surplus hand cranked air raid siren. In the pre-dawn darkness, sporting my sunglasses, I’m having trouble seeing the road. I remove the sunglasses and realize it’s just really, really dark and not a lot of artificial light to help us out. Potato, po-tah-toe, ya know? So I keep the shades on as it’s one less thing to carry.
Sweet pete is it humid! Now I’m dripping wet as the miles pile up. The course itself is a giant circle. We essentially run 10 miles out, make a left turn, run three miles to the halfway point, turn left and then run back, taking a minor in and out detour through Tomoka Park to get the required mileage for a full marathon. And the course in actuality as we’re running it is… fine? It’s… nice? Ultimately, I find myself thinking it’s just kinda boring. There are few if any spectators and I wonder if this is because it’s still early. The sun rises, or at the very least it gets brighter though the sky is still grey and overcast.
The road is the road is the road.
I try and grab a few selfies to show what I’m looking like as the humidity takes a toll. I kinda love that they are turning out horrible — blurry, disjointed, jumbled effects created in camera due to a shaky shutter release. Frustratingly, and I’ve encountered this in other supremely humid events, I’m having trouble sliding my phone to unlock to get to the camera app. Scrolling up from the bottom proves equally non-responsive. I try and wipe the touchscreen on my shirt or shorts but the moisture wicking material just seems to smear the water over the screen protector without making a lick of difference in being able to unlock the phone and get to the camera. I curse myself for not bringing a small baggie and a lens cloth… albeit the one time I did this, I just got the lens cloth soaked with sweat and hydration station water.
Around mile 16 the rain comes. It’s later than was forecast but is mercifully short-lived. And because I’m already dripping from the humidity, the water from the sky has minimal impact on my tousled hair. But it makes trying to open the camera app that much harder. I’m lucky to snap even hilariously awful shots of me along the way… and yet I persist and snap what I can when I can get the damn camera to come up.
As I said, everything is a bit off today. Last night I suddenly realized I didn’t have a shoe wallet on my running shoes. It’s a velcro pouch on thread through my laces that I put a couple of bucks in and more importantly my car keys when I’m at a race. I distinctly remember taking it off my shoes before heading to Antarctica and putting in a safe place. But I can’t for the life of me remember where that safe place is. So I’m running with my keys jangling in my pockets and I feel… off. And as I look at my Garmin watch for pace and time, I am once again feeling… off. I was on pace for a solid 3:25 chip time but somewhere around mile 20, amidst the Tomoka Park in-and-out segment, I am passed by the Marathon Maniac pace team for 3:30. For some reason, an earworm enters my consciousness and all I can think/hum is the Jo Dee Messina country song, My Give A Damn’s Busted. I guess I just don’t care that my targeted finish time slips away into the grey haze of the overcast morning.
I rally though and push through, pounding the miles and getting ever closer to the finish line… until around mile 25. That’s when I realize that we have to go over the Granada Bridge. It seems cruel after a pancake flat course to throw in this kind of bridge incline crossing int he final mile. Cruel and unusual. I realize now more than ever that my sub 3:30 is worthy of Don Quixote de la Mancha — it’s an impossible dream. But you know what they say about impossible dreams — we run where the brave dare not go.
So I set my jaw and take the climb. Adding to the cruelty, I can see the finish line off to my right at the crest of the bridge but only then realize I have to turn left and go under the bridge to circle around to it. It’s fine. It’s nice. It’s ok. But I wouldn’t call this a top three marathon moment for me. Maybe I’m the one who is off. Regardless, I make my turn and still try and snap a few pics along the way… rubbing the touchscreen of my phone with my semi-dried palm, willing it to clear just enough so I can grab a pic of me under the bridge. I have no idea what I do differently but this time I am able to slide the camera app open and snap a few blurry pics befitting the whole moment.
A gentlemen passes me in the home stretch and I hear the announcer say the guy is from Chino, CA, a city I will always associate with Ryan Atwood on Fox’s The OC. But this guy is no Ryan Atwood. He’s 58 years young, the announcer says, and he crushes me with a final kick that I’m envious and jealous of but respect the hell out of. I finish a few moments behind him and the announcer butchers my name. “Kevin Handma!” he says. I don’t quite know how he gets that but he follows it up with, “And he wore his shirt the whole time! The humidity didn’t get to him.” Little does he know that me shirtless would be akin to Donald Duck wearing pants. They only time it happens is when I’m in the water (just like Donald — he’s a duck but if you ever see him drawn at the beach or at a Disney pool, he’s wearing swimming trucks. What’s up with that?).
Strolling through the finish area, I grab a bag of pretzels and hunt the free pizza I was promised in the informational email. I find the Mezzaluna Pizzeria cheese slices in the white tent and grab one for a photo op. Have to post a pic to Team Pizza Racers after all. And as has been the case all day, my luck remains the same when I ask somebody to take a photo for me to “prove to family and friends I didn’t melt or die.” The photo turns out just a little… off. When he asks me to check it, I laugh and tell him it’s perfect, but I don’t explain why. His finger in the frame is an ideal capper for the day.
I grab a quick victory selfie standing at the water’s edge with that infernal Granada Bridge in the background then head back to my car. I don’t know if I placed in my age group though I suspect not given the aforementioned Non-Ryan-Atwood finisher. I’m fine, nice, ok with my time of 3:35 and just happy to be heading home. I’m soaked through to my core and feel like I smell as if I went to the beach and left the damp towel balled up in my car for a few days before remembering it and pulling it out, still damp, only now damp and odorous. I just want to go home but feel compelled to try once again to snap a shot of me with the US Map on the playground. Even as the sun finally breaks through the hazy grey, I am unable to get a good angle that I like. It’s just one of those days…
And as I drive home, I am confronted with phantom traffic problems. Despite waze telling me my route was the fastest available and my route was clear, I find myself in a crawling snail’s pace at three separate moments. The first crawling traffic is due to leaving the marathon parking lot. This is inevitable as roads are restricted/closed and sometimes you have to drive by the course as runners continue their quest for the finish. I’m cool with that… except once I pass out of that area onto a 45 MPH stretch, I cannot fathom why the red VW bug thinks the speed limit is apparently 12 miles per hour. Nor can any other car on the road as we try and get around the guy… only to have him change lanes without any kind of signal. Near-misses abound. The next slow-down is on I-4 South and is due to rubber-necking over an accident on the opposite side of the divided highway. The opposite side mind you and a tow truck has already cleared the car to the shoulder.
The final mess in my “clear” route is a merge between two freeways, one that I ALWAYS seem to run into around the Mall of Millenia and its neighbor the Holy Land Experience. I have to assume more folks are headed to the mall but I did once visit (for free) the Holy Land Experience Theme Park/Church for Christmas lights. It was… fine? Good? Ok.
Truth be told, it was a little off.
But I’ve finally made it home and am downing a celebratory Diet Coke.
I just got an automated email from the marathon. Turns out I did perhaps a little better than fine… good… ok. I placed third in my age group.
So to close out this post, what better way than with a song:
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not goTo right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable starThis is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how farTo fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly causeAnd I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my restAnd the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star–“The Impossible Dream”
from MAN OF LA MANCHA (1965)
music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion