The Long March

I stared down at the twinkle of city lights dotting the landscape below as the plane banked readying for a landing. I dreamily imagined it to be a million lamps lit up for a festive welcome. The touch down on terra firm and being back home after the last two weeks in Milan felt a relief.

I'd been on my feet for 9 hours on most of those days, manning a stall for a Textile Machinery exhibition. The evenings were spent with colleagues, drinking Grappa, Pastis and Perino while gorging on cheesy Penne, Pasta and Pizzas topped with ham and bacon. I'd grown thick in the midriff and my endurance must have plunged to a new low because I was unwilling to work off those dreadful calories  with early morning runs on Milan' freezing dark deserted roads.

The baggage retrieval and drive home took a while and by the time I'd unpacked and laid out the shopping for our eager beavers (and that includes our dear Daschund, who scampered excitedly from room to room), it was 2:30 am on a Saturday before I could grab some shut-eye. In barely 3 hrs the alarm went off and I had to get dressed for my stint at the NIKE RUN CLUB. It is in such an exhausted, torpid and sleep deprived state that I'd scheduled to run my first full marathon in 4 yrs the next morning. You know by now that I've lost all my marbles.

When the alarm went off at 3:30 am on Sunday I felt that familiar electric current coursing thru' the neural network in my temporal lobes. The warm shower brought some semblance of well-being to my world. I closed my eyes and let the needle spray dull my senses thinking, 'Dan, you ran a full marathon 4 yrs ago! Do you remember what those last horrendous 10 kms feel like? Are you out of your mind?' Maybe I am, I think.

And then I made the worst mistake I could as a coach; I felt hungry and so I ate a freakin' jam sandwich and munched on hazel nuts! I never eat before a race so WTF did I do that for! The first sign that something was not right came when I began burping at the race venue with the flavour of hazel nuts filling my senses. I wanted to bang my head on the pole holding the digital clock as punishment. I knew the race would come a cropper even as I took the first stride over the timing mat at the start.

I was assisting Punit, who along with Chittu Shetty had volunteered to be 5:30 hrs Pacers. I'd drawn up an elaborate pacing plan for us and we'd set up our Garmin watches accordingly. The first 10K saw us cruising at an average pace of 7:05 and I had to remind myself that our finish was planned for a 7:48 pace. So don't fuck it up Dan! Anyway, we slowed down for the next 10K and saw hordes of runners on the other side of the road, doing their half marathon and going in the opposite direction. The hooting, yelling, shouts and raised Hi-5s lasted for a while. It served as a chilling reminder to me that the we have two half marathons  to cover. The sandwich had now turned my gut into gassy wobbly knots and a Porta Potty pit stop would be bliss. But no such luck since the organizers probably found it distasteful to make contingency plans for runners wanting to take a crap. I trusted my sphincter to hold fort and trudged on with a grimace.

At the 29K mark I saw my heart rate edging up to the limit that my doc has allowed me. Heeding this advice I told the pacers at the 31K mark that I'd like to slow down as advised by my doc and that they were now well set to execute the rest of the race to perfection on their own. I began walking now and saw them eventually fade into the cloud of heat waves dancing on the concrete road. The sun shone bright and burned my shoulders. My lower extremities screamed for mercy even though I was doing a brisk walk now.

I thought of all those 28 full marathons that I'd finished without a walk break except for an aid station here and there. It saddened me that I was reduced to this state of a beginner doing their first marathon and having to walk the last 10K. I smiled thru' this ignominy and resolved that I had to somehow finish this race in under 6 hrs....much slower than the 4 hrs I used to finish in. Each mile passed inexorably and the pain had now numbed my mind and body. I provided encouragement to many strangers that were doing their first full marathon.

When the last km came up, my mouth felt woolly and my eyes were sunken. I stumbled across the timing mats that were being taken away and ensured it registered my 5:57:44 finish. Just like the other races, I'd dug deep and given my all in this one too. I needed water to slake my parched throat but I knew that I'd throw up since the sandwich, though digested by now, had left me queasy. I went to a spot away from the others and within a few gulps, the vomit spewed forth in a gush giving me instant relief. I thanked God for the gift of a safe and successful 29th full marathon..... although I must admit that attempting this one was probably a foolhardy venture.

“The fact is that in order to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.” ― Sydney Smith, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers