In retrospect, it was a weekend of failed personal initiative and imagination, perhaps best exemplified by my decision Friday night to skip sightseeing in the Macon/Warner Robins area and instead go see Liam Neeson’s THE COMMUTER. That movie failed to live up to even my meager expectations and might actually be terrible. But this isn’t my Movie Kevin Movie website (URL and patent pending). This is about the running.
So here’s the thing about the running – it was a weekend of meh-ness. Normally I take this road trips a an opportunity to see strange and unusual things because I’m kinda like Winona Ryder in BEETLEJUICE; I myself am strange and unusual. So despite having a list of the MOM-ument to mothers in Macon, or a school’s ursine mascot who if you pose right makes it look like you’re recreating a scene from THE REVENANT, I went to see THE COMMUTER. I could’ve seen THE POST but really I feel like I’ve already seen THE POST thanks to a tell-all trailer.
Sorry, sorry. Again with the Movie Kevin Movie Dot Com thing.
I’ve already posted the starting temperatures at Warner Robins on Saturday, January 13, 2018. The wind chill made it even rougher and a lot of the race was along the Air Force Base runway, meaning there wasn’t a lot of natural or man made wind breaks because, well, you don’t want to take off or land in a labyrinth of obstacles, right? As a two loop course on a base, it meant the only spectators were the officially authorized and cleared volunteers permitted onto the base proper. They were great, don’t get me wrong. I always appreciate folks volunteering and cheering/supporting runners, and especially when they do it in less than ideal weather conditions (rain, sleet, cold, dark of night… they’re stuck standing in one place, enduring the misery while we runners at least get to move and hopefully warm up a bit). But because of the security concerns, which already had prompted the event to start 30 minutes late, it was a lonely road. Supposedly there were 800 people doing all events, with 77 of us doing the full marathon… meaning that second loop was particularly lonely as we all spread out to our respective paces.
Two side notes —
I ran into Henry of many a Mainly Marathons race and we both agreed that all things being equal maybe we would have preferred the sunnier climes of the concurrent MM Aloha Series.
But that was before the false alarm of a ballistic missile launch there. Yeesh.
Back to positive notes — I was wearing a TravellingFit beanie to keep my head and ears warm and some fellow TF Aussies who I met the previous weekend at Disney spotted me to say hello. As we were bundled up once again against the cold, I once again apologized for the weather. Winter in the south is always a bit unpredictably but this was truly unseasonably cold. Still, better than a lot of the US still reeling from record lows and disastrous conditions.
I didn’t take a lot of photos because my gloves made it difficult to open the camera app on my phone. And because there wasn’t much to see. But here are a few shots that I think convey the rather boring course.
I will say I thought the jughandles the route took marathoners on versus the half marathoners made it seem like we were running long. In the end I don’t think that was the case; I think my Garmin was just off by a few tenths of a mile per tradition. But as I was running it sure *seemed* long so I composed in my head a poorly phrased, Mr. Ed-style tune to pass the time:
A course is a course, of course, of course
And no one can run the course but the course
That is, of course, unless the runner is the famous Rosie Ruiz.
I know, I know. There are PLENTY of other (in)famous course cutters I could’ve used. And it’s a stupid song. But I warned you it was a weekend of failed initiative and imagination, so, ya know, what do you want?
***
Mobile, Alabama, is a surprising town. I didn’t realize its history and import until the night manager of the Holiday Inn near the start line was kind enough to invite me into the lobby to keep warm before the start. He told me Mobile is one of the oldest incorporated towns in the US (founded in 1703 I think he said), and is older than New Orleans. Once Mobile was established, the King eventually decreed the people go west and set up another place on the Mississippi delta… so maybe it’s not so surprising to find out that Mardi Gras actually started in Mobile. It also helps explain why the city’s Dauphin Street looks like NOLA’s Bourbon Street. A surreal thing… but this is the original and the Big Easy is actually the copycat.
It was colder both in temperature and in wind chill in Mobile on Sunday, January 14, 2018. But even with the weather, folks were out and about cheering us on. Not as many as there could have been, less I hear than in previous years but who can blame people for staying inside and curling up under the covers when it feels like 17 degrees outside?
I bumped into Vincent Ma at the start line. He had driven in from a marathon in Charlottesville, SC, the day before. Shooting for 1000 lifetime marathons, First Light put him at 930 (!!).
My hands were frozen and I was once again wearing gloves so I had trouble getting my camera app open. But on top of that, I just wasn’t really in the mood to snap photos. I wasn’t really in the mood to do much of anything. I mentioned this the other day in that I was haunted by ghosts, regrets of the past, present, and future. Mistakes I’d made, wrong turns and roads not taken. I found myself thinking, as my breath huffed and puffed into the frigid air, that *this* is at least one of the reasons friends think my running marathons week to week is crazy. And they’re right. That’s what I kept thinking – they’re right and I’m wrong. It was as if I were on a frozen lake, cracks forming, me falling beneath the surface and panicking as hyperthermia set in and water filled my lungs. But it was more than that — it was an overwhelming sense of what’s it all about, of Alfie-ness. An existential crisis along 26.2 miles makes for a long, long day indeed.
In the end, my chip time was just a bit slower than the day before… but it sure *felt* interminable, like I was never getting anywhere, trudging along, relay runners and marathoners passing me as if I were standing still, or worse, sliding backwards. I was a mess that day; I remain a mess today.
Driving back, the 7 and a half hours or so travel time was marginally extended thanks to a “shortcut” recommended to me by a Mobilian (it WAS shorter mileage wise thanks to the Pythagorean Theorem… but the road went through towns and thus had some slow-to-stop-and-go traffic meaning it didn’t really save me time at all).
The time alone in the car, the same crappy pop tunes or repeated NPR shows regardless of locality station (I swear if I heard one more time that same episode about a kid cult on This American Life I’d go insane), made for a continuation of that memory palace stroll, a navel gazing examination of the mistakes and missteps, with me consumed by lost opportunities and a sense of directionlessness.
This was a tough weekend.
Double, double, toil and trouble.
