We rose before dawn and drank smoothies and small cups of coffee and danced our way from our sleepy Seaside inn to a bustling Port of Astoria. We boarded a yellow school bus that sent my memory rolling back to high school basketball away games, the sound of tennis shoes scuffing newly polished gym floors while crowds cheered loudly through popcorn kernels in their teeth. We saw the bridge we were going to run up close for the first time, realized just how steep an incline, amended our goal times. We watched the sun rise brilliantly over the Columbia River and we stretched and we waited. We realized we probably should have brought more layers as October 2nd cupped its cold hands around our faces. We kept waiting. We decided waiting for the start is the worst part about races. We found ourselves repeatedly wishing this particular race started hours before 9am, that there were more bathrooms, that the women leading the group warm-up we were watching hadn’t seen fit to include “Moves Like Jagger” on their playlist. We got excited. We huddled together with other runners and grinned and bobbed on our toes in eager anticipation of being set loose. We ran quickly when it was finally time. Probably too quickly, but the bridge was so alluring, such a short mile from where we were bobbing and weaving, jockeying for position, remembering to start our watches this time.
I ran the first mile in sub-8 minutes, which for my goal pace was undoubtedly ill-advised, but was also just too exhilarating to avoid. My 5K split was right around 27 minutes, which is a full 2 minutes and 29 seconds faster than the 5K I ran two weeks’ prior (Race for the Cure). Then came The Incline That Tried To Eat Me, and my pace slowed more than I wanted it to. I watched a woman being proposed to at the top, which was unexpected and amusing (Is it strange the first thing I thought was, “But wait, you’re ruining her overall race time right now”?), and then merrily crested into a steady half-mile of thrilling downhill. I made the mistake of kicking a good half-mile too early (Word to the wise: Know your course, and your mile-marker placements), but still finished right around 60 minutes.
Cayly is fast (see also: badass), and as such, was waiting for me at the finish line. Her arms were open and her smile was wide and I ran straight to her, and before I had time to say a word we were wrapped in a sweaty bear-hug, rocking back and forth and I was laughing even as I was crying, and she wouldn’t stop telling me how I looked amazing, how well I did, how proud of me she was. For the briefest of moments everything around me seemed to fall away and left standing in its place was this vivid, stunning, painfully euphoric reality that was once (as my dear friend Sizz so aptly put it) just a fuzzy dream, blurry and seemingly impossible, and now so doable as to be almost laughable. And I did laugh, a lot, and cried more, too, and then I just sat cozily with the day and reveled in the bridge I just crossed, in the truth that my body can always do more, can always be better, will–if I help it, teach it, and then just let it–triumphantly carry me through any endeavor.
I reveled in the quiet truth that, from the inside out, I’m a runner. A runner who can’t wait to push her legs farther, to make them climb higher, to send them happily careening along steeper downhills.
I suppose that quiet truth settling comfortably on my shoulders like a warm blanket shouldn’t have felt as surprising as it did Sunday. I was born into a family of runners, my dad and his five sisters all at one time avid and competitive distance-lovers (this is my aunt Nancy on 1981′s Bloomsday shirt). My sister rocked cross-country in high school, and then a half-marathon, and then a full. Watching her finish 26.2 miles here in Portland remains one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen.
Running’s in my blood, I suppose you could say, but to me it feels like a gift. One I never really knew I possessed, never really owned until yesterday, having spent the entirety of my running career up until this past year a sprinter, dashing from place to place with a lightning-is-best mentality, ever skeptical of my ability to enjoy miles stacked upon miles like beautiful pain pancakes.
Sunday I ran 6.2 miles hard, and admittedly probably not even as hard as I could have (I’m consistently finding I always have more to give even when I think I’m done), but I pushed, and never once–not even when I was convinced the incline in between miles three and four was actually an infinite loop, and as such, I was going to be relegated to running uphill for all eternity–did I want to quit. Never once did I even stop smiling, which I’m fairly certain perplexed a fair bit of people, because seriously, who is this crazy girl who seems happy about this NEVER-ENDING HILL, even as it’s clearly putting her in her place and ruining her three and four-mile pace?
Such a gift. One for which I am exceedingly thankful. One I intend to enjoy for as long as I’m able.
Which is why November 5th I’m going to run 13.1 miles, and for the very first time there isn’t a doubt in my mind I’m going to finish. There also isn’t a doubt in my mind about the sweaty bear-hug that’ll be waiting for me at the end of those wooded miles, and I can’t tell you how much knowing Cayly will have triumphantly run each mile I have, how that bear-hug after close to but hopefully still less than two hours of running will spur me forward, ever forward, even when my legs might have all but declared mutiny.
For the first time in my life I’m not weary of consecutive miles looming on the horizon; I’m eagerly anticipating them. Because these miles, they feel like freedom, feel like peace, feel like coming home.