Given the season, the best way to sum up today might be this clip from “A Christmas Story” (1983):
What had started out so well, ended off the rails. And while that may be a bit of a mouthful, it also could very well be the title of my autobiography.
I’ve run Jacksonville before. You can read about it here and here. The course remained the same today; I felt fairly confident as we gathered like lemmings at the starting line. Today, I thought, might be a BQ kind of day.
I didn’t take many photos on the run as I was trying really, really hard to just focus on the miles.
The opening 19 miles I was on a rock solid pace for a 2020 Boston Qualifying time, a sub 3:10 or just barely sub anyway.
But then the “oh, fudge” happened. I felt my pace slowing, I felt me slowing, and as I did the math, I realized I was going to finish over 3:10. It was a demoralizing moment and once the time kept ticking and my steps kept coming up short mile after mile, once I found myself in the hole so deep I wasn’t going to be able to rally out of it, that’s when things got really ugly.
As calculations danced in my head like mocking hyenas on the plains of Africa, I found myself slowing ever more. What was the point? I wasn’t going to make it in the time I needed. Once you miss, does it really matter if you’re over by a few seconds or a few minutes? This defeatist attitude worked its way through my psyche, emotionally and mentally draining forward momentum and pace, and proved physically debilitating.
As is true every time I run Jacksonville’s marathon, the mile 24 detour off the main road into a neighborhood broke my spirits. I even had warned a fellow runner about it at the start line. “It’s a real mind fudge,” I told him, though I didn’t say “fudge.”
And yet, even with my passing vigilance, I mucked up big time in that suburban sprawl. Only I wouldn’t say “mucked.” My BQ time scrolled past on my watch and I still had a ways to go.
I finished, though it felt little more than a stopping than an accomplishment. What had begun with promise and hope ended in ennui and worn-down shrugs of “whatever.”
That too is far too much of a mouthful, but it might be my description of the world in 2018.
This was my last marathon of the year. I’m off for the next few weekends. Maybe that’s for the best.
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Post Script: My new Samsung phone takes pretty good photos which is the primary reason I switched from Apple. Well, that and Apple’s ever increasingly crashing iOS made me want to scream into the darkness of space; no one would have been able to hear me but it might have made me feel better. When I was out with some friends the other night, it’s the most disappointed they’ve been in me; I know at times we’re all “the cult of Mac” but I didn’t realize how much I’d feel like a Suppressive Person (SP) in Xenu’s World. On top of that ostracizing, I’m having tech issues with uploading images to this website. So while I can see my selfie-finisher photo on my phone for some reason I can’t get it uploaded to runkevinrun.com. I’ll try again later but in the meantime, here’s a video of dogs in bear costumes: