Halfway

I’ve been running since I was 14. I got started when I found out that you didn’t have to try out for the cross country team and if you went to summer practices you got to go to Myrtle Beach for a weeklong trip with the boys team. SOLD. But then I fell in love with distance - I’m not the fastest, but I’m steady and a glutton for punishment. I’m also one of those people who just feels really good after a run. I’ve heard all distance runners are head cases and so far it checks out. So running is something I’ve had in my back pocket for a quarter-century now. It’s a part of my identity and it’s one of the only things I’m better than my brother at.

My oldest brother possesses a manic energy - he’s one of those people that can accomplish more in a day that most people do in a week. When he was younger, he used that boundless vitality onstage as an actor but nowadays he puts his fervor into his career, his family and, most recently - you guessed it - running.

At first, I was quite excited to hear my brother was running. Who doesn’t want a shared passion with someone they love and admire? He started with community 5k’s and his local running club and seemed to really enjoy his treks through the Minnesota winter getting to know his new neighborhood. For my 40th birthday, I asked him to run a race with me and he flew down for a rainy half-marathon. We chatted the entire way, taking water stops and pee breaks, without any thought to time or speed. When he reached out months later to ask me to run a full marathon - his first - with him on his home turf, I enthusiastically agreed. I hadn’t run a full marathon since before my children were born, but can’t one do anything with enough time and training?

My training season was plagued by illness and injury. I’ve had knee pain since an ill-fated long jump in a Crossfit class when I was pregnant with my daughter. I get periodic injections to relieve the symptoms but this time around, when I really needed the respite, it didn’t take. So I sat on the sidelines for six weeks waiting for ache to dull to no avail. Then a sinus infection, then a bout of stomach flu. My six months of training was halting and overall ineffective. By the time the race arrived, I hadn’t made it further than eight miles on a training run. He, on the other hand, was killing it. He made a pair of running spikes out of old trainers and some wood screws to brave the snow and ice, he joined a speed club and downloaded a training app. He sourced advice from seasoned runners and cross-trained in his basement. Basically he did was he always does - which is not quitting halfway.

My parents and I flew out together for the race. I hadn’t traveled alone with my mom and dad for nearly two decades and it was lovely. They bickered about turn signals and where to park, we laughed at our ineptitude at everything from sourcing a rental car to locating our terminal and generally had our usual fair amount of merriment. When we arrived in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, we picked up my sister-in-law and niece and headed east to meet my brother who had already arrived at the race site.

The race is huge - nearly 10,000 marathoners. The town is a modest college town, but the marathon weekend nearly doubles its population with all the runners, crew, volunteers and spectators. The restaurants and hotels were jam-packed so my brother and I roomed with a friend of his and his wife. Months of preparation and the anxiety of his first 26.2 mile race had my brother jittery. He tossed and turned and huffed and puffed all night, which meant, despite a double dose of sleep medicine, that I tossed and turned all night too. We both greeted the morning with grunts and dread.

It was also cold. I wasn’t anticipating cold. I had packed my marathon outfit with summer vibes in mind since, well, you know, it was JUNE. I had a tank top, running shorts and brand-new socks - in all neon of course - and I knew I was about to freeze my ass off waiting at the start line. I rummaged through my bag and found only one long sleeve item. My favorite cardigan.

This was a dilemma. I bought this cardigan from Target many years ago. It is the perfect shade of beige to go with damn near everything and it has been washed so many times as to be of ideal thickness for it’s primary use which is keeping me warm in the grocery store. It has lived in my car for as long as I’ve had it so that I am always prepared for the refrigerated section. I happened to grab it at the last second so I wouldn’t be overtaken by the concentrated blast of the airplane air conditioning, and now, here she sat as the only solace between me and what the midwest tries to pretend is a season separate from winter. I put her on.

The race is one long straightaway, beginning 26.2 miles from the center of town. Runners board busses and trains for the slog out to the start line and I sat with my brother in my fetching neon and beige combo. They dropped us off at the start line with an hour to spare. We went through the motions of jogging and stretching and taking sips of water. I tried to silently will my body into being capable of running nearly twenty miles further than it had been in years. I adjusted my new socks that suddenly felt very small. I encouraged my brother and his friend to run without me. I figured I could finish by sheer will alone, but I knew I couldn’t keep up with them. The National Anthem played, Eye of the Tiger began and we were off. I had to make a decision - do I carry my favorite cardigan for the next 5 hours or do I drop it at the donation box as I cross the start line? I did my best Marie Kondo goodbye and left her in a box with hundreds of much-more-appropriate-to-discard tops and felt an intense forboding.

The first five miles were great. I got cocky. Maybe I’m just a natural marathoner, maybe I don’t even have to train because I’m just THAT GOOD. Maybe I’ll catch up with my brother, maybe I’ll beat my brother! Without training! I won’t rub it in, I’ll be cool about it.

I notice a slight burning sensation around my ankle bones. Just a little raw.

Mile 6. Really raw, really really raw.

Mile 6.2. Something is very wrong with these socks.

Mile 6.5. These are definitely blisters. I will walk.

Mile 7. Walking doesn’t help, blisters are getting worse.

Mile 7.5. I will take off my shoes and adjust my socks. Nope, too late for sock adjustment. Time for sock adjustment was a while ago.

Mile 8. Med tent for band aids.

Ah sweet relief!

Relief is short-lived. Band-aids do not stick to sweaty feet.

Mile 9. Med tent for band aids.

I do my best to hobble along but I can’t focus on anything but the holes being bored into my skin from my shoes. My socks are useless and I hate them. I call my Dad.

“I don’t think I can finish.”

“I’ll pick you up. We’re at the halfway point. Traffic’s really bad.”

“I’ll get there as soon as I can - but leave if you need to. I can take an Uber.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

That’s my dad. I knew that timing was going to be funky because at this point I had to have been miles behind my brother if he was still running. I’d lost so much time from limping along on wounded feet. And I still had miles to go.

Those last three miles to the halfway point were brutal. Everything hurt at that point from my throbbing knee to my now-bloodied feet. I found my Dad in the crowd and burst into tears, from the pain and from the humiliation. They’d come all this way and I’d quit. I’d quit exactly halfway.

My dad filled me in on our situation. My brother had passed through a long time ago and they had missed him. The traffic was so bad with all the spectators trying to get to the same place along the same small stretch of road, that by the time they arrived, he had already gone through. My sister-in-law wanted to catch up with him, so my mom had left my dad there to wait for me and was driving them to the next spectator point. My Dad and I were on our own for the foreseeable future. Without food or water. He said he had seen a gas station out of the highway that we could wait at and maybe get a Coke. “And a Snickers?” I asked. “And a Snickers,” he said.

The gas station was nearly a mile away so we plodded along, me in bare feet at this point. We eyed it across the highway and it shimmered like an oasis in the desert. As we closed in, we both got a sinking feeling.

“It doesn’t look like there’s a store there,” I said.

“Maybe there’s a vending machine,” he said.

There was no vending machine. Or store. There were just unattended pumps and a piles of firewood stacked next to a sign with a QR Venmo code for a guy named Jake. We found a curb to sit on. We talked about the race. We talked about blister prevention. We talked about my decision to wear untested socks. A guy pulled up and asked us for directions. We didn’t have any but I looked them up on my phone and wrote them out turn by turn on the back of the directions he already had. A group of fishermen pulled up and asked about a restroom. We explained that the unmaintained porta-potty sitting in the dirt was their only option. Someone pumping gas tried to pay us for firewood in cash. We politely explained he’d need to Venmo Jake and we made a suggestion for the best bundle - we were experts on them by then. We took pictures next to the Sinclair dinosaur sculpture in the parking lot. My dad put his sunglasses on the dinosaur’s face. We waited for my mom for three hours. My dad didn’t complain once.

My brother and his friend both finished the race. They were exhausted. My brother kicked total ass and got a great time. I’m really happy for him - he’s turned out to be a way faster runner than me. We all limped the rest of the day.

I don’t think I have another marathon in me - I obviously didn’t have this one. But I’d do it all again - the sorry ass training, the flight out, the sleepless night, the envy/admiration of the people who finished, the quitting - for three hours uninterrupted with my Dad. Halfway wasn’t half-bad.