Adventures in Distance Running:
The Gentle Art of Self-Sabotage

The need to put oneself through grueling ordeals is a strange and awful compulsion. I don't feel good unless I'm frightened, in pain, or just recovering from one or both of those things. In my endless quest to find new ways to suffer I let Flipperson convince me to run a marathon. I'm not really a runner so we embark on a four-month training program to prepare. We fail to train quite as regularly as is recommended - long runs are done selectively; mid-week running is often spoken of, seldom bothered with. Being adventurous sorts, we decide to run the marathon anyway.

I don't feel good unless I'm frightened, in pain, or just recovering from one or both of those things.

Friday, Oct. 6 - We fly into Victoria, capital of British Columbia, home of the retired. We go for a couple of beers at the Charles Dickens pub in spite of the fact that most people won't drink for a month or more before running a marathon. The beers go down well. 12:15am - a conscious decision is made to go on a bender.

Saturday, Oct. 7 - It's the day before the marathon and I'm hung over (words you'll never see in am Olympic athlete's biography). It makes me uneasy and I drink water incessantly to try to compensate. Over lunch we learn that the finish line is going to close at 1pm, five hours after the 8am start. Our options are to take the 6am start for slow people, which would buy us more time, or try the 8am start and gamble on being able to finish under 5 hours so we can get an official finish and race time. What few training runs we've done indicate that if all goes well 5 hours will be tight. We decide to gamble and go with the 8am start to give ourselves extra incentive to keep it under five hours.

It's now the night before the marathon and we attend a big pasta dinner at the Harbour Towers hotel. The food is good but we are horrified to discover that just as we are finishing our dinner the speakers begin - before we have a chance to flee! A series of semi-inspirational speeches are rolled out; some good (he said generously), some distinctly not good. A folk singer begins regaling us with songs about running. He plays the same tune over and over, with different words. He calls it different songs. After an hour and a half we bolt for the door while a fresh speaker is making his way to the mike. That night at the hotel I notice that the soles of my running shoes are showing telltale signs of having collapsed from overuse, ensuring that my feet and legs will take an unreasonable amount of pounding during the race.

Sunday, Oct. 8 Marathon Day/Day of Reckoning - After months of semi- lackadaisical training I experience genuine nervousness about how I'll do. They announce one minute to the start and I mention to Flip that we should try to remember what this moment feels like and maybe it'll help to motivate us next time we try to blow off training. On a more pleasant note, we notice that there are a sizable number of babes in the race!

First Kilometre - The crowd moves out on-masse; it takes over a minute for things to thin out to the point where we can actually break into a run. Many babes are to be seen.

3rd Km - We start to notice an absence of babes and a preponderance of grandmothers and fat people. We begin to suspect that we are slow, slow men.

5th or 6th km - We round a turnaround where the course briefly doubles back on itself and see that at most two dozen people are behind us. It's an unhappy time. We reflect on our lack of training, chances of getting under the 5 hour wire, and potential methods of cheating.

10 km - I'm not getting the hang of drinking from a cup while running. Gatorade may not be in me, but it's on me. We pass a race marshal wearing a long trench coat, but apparently no pants. I'm suddenly reminded of how popular the west coast is to the mentally adrift.

14ish km - I start to feel the first signs of the happy phase - a weird euphoric phase that you go through on long runs. During the happy phase your body generally tricks you into going faster than you should by pretending that it's enjoying itself. For the first time we find ourselves starting to pass a few people as our pace picks up a bit. Flip bums a mouthful of coffee from a race marshal that he knows as we pass him. Spectators seemed stunned by it. I'm stunned that there are spectators.

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