“Everybody wondered where you were,” my husband mused as he moved around the kitchen. Taking laps from the stove to the refrigerator and then to the sink. It was nearly the lunch hour on a recent Saturday, and I had just walked in the door.
It took me a moment to register what he was getting at. I hadn’t eaten yet, and the sizzle of bacon was a welcome but distracting sound. As my stomach growled and saliva rushed to my mouth, I remembered that our normal weekend routine had been altered by divergent plans.
“Really?” I replied quizzically, scanning my memory for the identities of whom “everyone” might encompass. My husband had joined the walking contingent of the Saturday morning running club, so I just started naming names.
“I don’t know. Everybody. …
“I mentioned you were doing the Hudson Mile, but they just wondered why. They all said, ‘she’ll blow out her quads if she does that race’.”
I cocked my head to one side, as if the sudden shift in its pitch would send some blocked memory squishing forth or at least expel the quintessential sing-song refrain (‘You’ll shoot your eye out, you’ll shoot your eye out’) from A Christmas Story.
After all, I had assumed my friends knew what I had been training for all summer long, just as I knew the racing goals they, in turn, were hoping to meet this fall.
That’s when I started to spiral.
Maybe, I thought, THEY THOUGHT I had been nursing a quad injury? Or maybe they thought I was a delicate flower that shouldn’t push myself.
It certainly wasn’t a concern that I couldn’t finish one mile… anyone can finish a mile.
I’m not gonna lie: I worried my stomach into knots the night before … thinking about all the athletes – people wearing brightly colored singlets and teeny-tiny, short shorts – who had signed up. There were more of them than the mere mortal mother-truckers like me.
On more than one occasion, as I tossed and turned throughout the night, I even contemplated not starting the race to avoid the probability of finishing last.
When morning came, I pulled myself together for the sake of decorum and the seat in a carpool I’d also accepted as part of this pregame ritual.
I was relieved to see the tiny tent where the race volunteers were busy checking in a slow trickle of participants, many of whom were already warming up by slowly circling the block, then gaining their strides uphill toward the starting line.
Spectators gathered on the sidewalks where they had a full view of the historic street, now miraculously devoid of parked cars, which encapsulated the entirety of the race’s distance.
At the word “Go!” three waves of runners would take off. I would be among them, fighting and losing nearly every urge to go out too fast. The gradual elevation drop made my unadvisable speed feel almost effortless. To the point where, midway through, where the course leveled off, and I felt the need to slow down, it didn’t feel catastrophic. In fact, when I had enough kick left at the finish in a true sprint, I felt confident I had met my unmentioned goal – to attain a personal record.
I didn’t finish near the front. And I didn’t finish at the end. But I finished feeling strong. The endorphins lasted the whole day … and almost into the next when I woke up and felt the unmistakable tightness of my quads.
“That’s what they were all saying: the downhills do a number on your quads.”
No comments:
Post a Comment