I woke up feeling worse for wear. My leg was cramped up, my head felt like an entire adolescent soccer team’s dirty gym socks had been shoved up my nose and into my brain. But I had paid 30 euros to enter and flown far, far from home… so of course I was going to go to the start line.
My AirBNB was ridiculously close to the start line — maybe two blocks? And even knowing that I got there way too early. I wasn’t the first, nor really even the middle of the pack, but I was there early enough that people kept asking me directions to gear check and starting blocks. I guess I just have one of those faces — benign and non-threatening and maybe with a perpetual question mark hovering over me.
Speaking of hovering, it’s about time for me to head out of Europe. I say this because 75-80% of the population I encounter in Europe, be they local or tourist, seem to be sucking down cigarettes like their lives depended on it, even though in reality every puff they take seems to me to make their lives that much shorter. When I’m in any crowd of human chimneys, I often think of Charles Schulz and his Peanuts character PigPen. Only instead of the character surrounded by an ever-present dirt cloud, these folks are all wafting through a carcinogenic tar haze.
This is all the more at the forefront of my mind as numerous officials and spectators at the Larnaca Start Line were puff-puff-puffing, causing me to huff-huff-huff before even taking my first step. How much of my head cold is germ related and how much is it tied to the copious second hand smoke I’m stuck inhaling?
I’m just in a mood. A not very good one because honest to goodness everything hurts. And there is zero cloud cover. And it’s already 80 degrees at the start. And I’m tired. Oh, so tired. So I’m grouchy. And not really in the mood to run. But I will, because that’s what I do.
Yeesh, I’ve already swapped from past to present tense and back again. Sorry about that, Lisa E, my English teacher of yore. I’m not 100% with it, even now after showering and downing a doner gyro with chips.
The race was bland — I hadn’t realized it was a two-loop thing until I saw the flag markers displaying 1/22km, 2/23 km, 3/24 km and, well, you get the idea. I think I finally realized it at the 5K/26K mark but let’s chalk that up to the gym socks on spin cycle in my skull.
Point is, while it was nice to be running along the sea and an inland sea (complete with white flamingos off in the distance), it also made for a ho-hum vibe. Coupled with limited spectator support (but oodles of volunteers and aid stations), I found myself oddly de-motivated. Folks were either way faster than me, pulling ahead and disappearing around the bend or the horizon, or were just slower than me that they were back a bit. It was a lonely run, me against the Cypriot road. And the Cypriot road kept winning.
Things got only worse the second loop as the half marathoners who started with us finished and those of us doing the full were a smaller field. There was a bizarre cattle chute for the second loop and I felt like I was holding back folks behind me… way too much pressure on my chicken legs floundering in the heated air. They passed me just as soon as we exited the chute… and I never saw them again.
There was a “better careful what you wish for” moment in that 2nd loop. At one stage we caught up to the 10K runners heading back to the finish. It was about 38K for us and we merged in with a group of folks who were walking or bunched up. While it was nice to be around people, I found myself ducking and weaving when I had the energy as I just wanted to be finished. But that sapped what little energy I had left. Blessing and curse… and a lot of under-my-breath cursing to boot.
Physically my body was shutting down and my heart certainly wasn’t in it… but mentally I just will powered myself to the end. If I were in West Side Story, I would NOT have Maria’s song — I did NOT feel pretty in any way, shape or form.
In the end, I did finish… which is a dumb way to phrase it. In the end, whatever the end was, even if it was a DNF, I’d still BE finished. But whatever. It was a better time than I deserved given all the ill feelings and setbacks. and yet, given the relatively flat course, I would’ve expected to be able to do better than Athens’s challenging route.
So I’ll conclude the photos with this shot of a guy obliviously walking in front of my attempt to get a photo with a Cypriot Ronald McDonald. It kinda sums up the day with a thousand words in visual form.
