My alarm went off at 5:03 am. It needn’t have bothered as I had been up all night. I couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning in the darkness.
It wasn’t the street noise – it was no worse than stays in NYC with screeching cars, sirens, trucks and the like. Besides, Salvador provided ear plugs for just such annoyances… but those always give me a headache regardless of their auditory muting benefit.
It wasn’t the cat which occasionally snuffled into my room during the night. As cats go, she was nicer than most. But I was able to shoo her out easily enough.
It might have been the mosquitoes. Salvador had also provided bug spray which I used at some point to ward off the blood sucking creatures. They’d dive bomb my ears and bzzzzz around. Maybe I should’ve used those ear plugs. But I think it was more psychological warfare than anything. I’ve been reading David McCullough’s history of the Panama Canal and all I could think was, “the mosquitoes! Malaria, yellow fever, berri berri! This is how I go out … in some AirBNB in Ciudad de Mexico.” I tried reminding myself though that a Myanmar fortune teller told me I’d die at 67. But he didn’t say if I was sick or injured for years on end leading up to it. I’m not immortal… nor impervious to harm. I just apparently don’t die until 2044.
As a side note, the prognosticator also said I’d find true love this past February or March. Unfortunately… or perhaps fortunately in this case… that didn’t come to pass. So maybe this fortune teller’s proverbial crystal ball is on the fritz. Could a fortune teller be wrong? The mind boggles!
Ultimately I just lay awake counting the hours until the dawn. Little did I realize the 7 am start time was only for the fastest runners.
My AirBNB was only 0.7 miles to the start, so I ambled down at what I thought was a relatively early hour… only to be confronted with throngs of people an hour before the start.
I tried my embarrassingly poor Spanish to ask, “donde esta rojo?” indicating the colored sticker on my bib. They kept waving me further and further back into the corrals. I noticed other people were waving wristbands to gain access to corrals and I dug out my “azul” band. I never figured out where that was either. Ultimately I slipped through a barrier about halfway down the corral chutes. I felt a little guilty but, hey, the Mexico City Marathon is world famous for cheaters, so…
I’m not sure what happened. Some countdowns happened. Some groups crowded in ahead of us. I spotted a pacer at 3:40 in my group so I thought I was reasonably self-seeded (oh, how wrong I wound up being). The crowd grew restless, demanding to “vamanos!” It all felt like we were one moment from an insurrection… and honestly as we stood around for 10, 15, 20 minutes I was ready to join the rebellion.
We finally took off around 7:30 am. I can understand why they did a rolling start – there’s a ton of people running this thing each year. I think it’s something like 35,000-plus. There was a lot of ducking and weaving in the early miles, trying to find a pace. And sadly toward the end there was a lot of ducking and weaving around me as I faltered and flailed, slowed and shuffled.
I was hurting from the word, “Vamanos!” Had there not been that Frito Bandito song playing I wouldn’t have felt like going. My left hip is apparently out of alignment and hurt with every ball change footfall. Fortunately there’s only, what? Fifty-five thousand steps in a marathon? Yeah, I’m an idiot.
I don’t know if it’s age, wear and tear, lingering Pikes Peak-itus, or combinations thereof. I recently had dinner with my college thesis advisor and her husband and I mentioned I was an old dog even as a young pup… but these days I really do seem to be one old dog. And I’m certainly not learning from my mistakes… there are after all a whole heap of marathons on the calendar.
I also haven’t learned how to dig myself out of a self-fulfilling failure hole. Running today, pain shooting through my hip, exhausted from lack of sleep, and oblivious to much of what was said as my Spanish is as I’ve said atrocious, I couldn’t help but wallow in a sense of disappointment in me as a person. I found myself reliving many of my greatest failures: academic, personal, financial, romantic… and all in between.
As my garmin clicked off the miles and route markers clicked the kilometers done, I just couldn’t muster much in the way of enthusiasm for the run or for me. It was a nice day out for running; the rain held off and I think the previous evening’s thunderstorm helped clear the air. The folks along the course were friendly, offering water, beer, bananas, Nutella and more. There was, as I said, a mass of people running at every moment. I often love big marathons, but I didn’t really know how to cheer people on at this one, how to engage other than to say, “gracias” to the volunteers and “lo siento” in apology when I inadvertently blocked a runner trying to pass me. Who was it that said I’ve never been more alone than in a crowd of people? Google says it’s Charles Bukowski, who I’ve never read, yet know that quote.
Things always seem harder, bleaker, and infinitely worse when you’re nursing an injury.
***
Below are a bunch of photos from the run to give a flavor of the event. I only saw two people cheat, cutting a down and up section of the course by crossing the road’s median and merging into the moving mass of men and women. That sample would seem to indicate there was significantly less cheating than last year. I don’t know if I’m happy about that or sad that I wasn’t a party to history.
