We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Blog

*I will resume my Paleo posts tomorrow. But let's just say I didn't exactly follow a Paleo diet during marathon weekend!*

This is Mavis. She is the one responsible for orchestrating my crazy last-second trip to run the Tacoma City Marathon without even a step of training (I haven't run more than 3 miles in 8 months. And the number of times I ran that distance was less than the miles themselves.  Like I said, no training!). Of course in my attempt to blame her for the pain and misery I'm feeling the day after said marathon, she is quick to remind me I'm the one who agreed to do it. Fair enough.

So while Mavis was the mastermind, she's not what this post is about. It's about the kid wearing this pack:

This is Nick. Nick is a 20-yr-old soldier in the army, stationed at Fort Lewis. It was hard to miss a soldier in full uniform toting a massive pack among scantily dressed runners. And while we started together, he left us in his dust from his very first step. That gave us the opportunity to vocalize how cool we thought he was for doing what he was doing, and to speculate as we jogged the first couple of miles about how much his pack weighed, how fast we thought he'd finish, and if he ran these ridiculous races often. When we caught up to him a few miles later, we struck up a conversation and got answers to all of our questions.

His pack was 50lbs, his goal was to finish the marathon in 5 hours, 30 minutes, and although he ran cross-country in high school and track in college, he had never gone more than 12 miles before.

Mavis promptly declared our new goal was to finish with him in 5 hours and 30 minutes. Um, what? I had agreed to walk this crazy race with her only when she assured me we'd be WALKING the entire thing. And not quickly either. Our original goal was to finish in 7 hours. I wasn't doing this marathon for time. I wasn't crazy enough to think my body would tolerate running for 26 miles straight without a lick of training. I suspected that if I was being chased by robbers and feared for my life, the muscle memory from my former running days could probably carry me 13 miles, but never 26. And certainly not at a 12 minute mile pace.

"Um, Mavis. Did you not hear that part about how he ran for a college team? As in, he is such a good runner that they paid him to run for them? And we are totally NOT runners. Have you lost your mind?"

She clearly had, but she had put her mind to it. It was happening and I needed to get on board.

I joked about maybe putting an extra 10 pounds in his pack at each mile marker to slow him down, or lining up cheeseburgers along the route to distract him. I even mentioned the possibility of tripping him so he'd sprain an ankle and then MAYBE I could keep up with him. Clearly I was joking. Clearly the karma Gods don't have a sense of humor.

We fell into a pretty good rhythm. My muscles aren't conditioned to speed walk (if we're being honest, they're not conditioned for much these days), but that's how Mavis preferred to do the race. So I jogged VERY slowly at a consistent pace, while Mavis speed walked & then jogged at a faster pace. Nick chose the slow walk for a bit combined with a full on sprint every few blocks. Oddly enough, as differently as we were proceeding along the course, we always ended up right next to each other time and time again. Our individual paces were consistent until karma came calling.

It was right before mile 10 and the course was winding through a residential neighborhood. On and off sidewalks. Up and down curbs. I took a step wrong coming down off one of those curbs, caught the edge of my shoe, heard a pop and immediately felt pain shoot up my leg. Because I had sprained/broken this particular ankle more times than I have fingers to count on, I was familiar with the pain. I knew it wasn't sprained, but suspected I had just pulled some of the scar tissue that currently holds that ankle together. It was starting to swell a little in my shoe, but not ballooning up like it has in the past. I could put weight on it, but not without feeling like I had nails running through my veins, up my leg.

But I was determined. I was there to finish a marathon and that's what I intended to do. I slowed my pace. So slow in fact that when Mavis finished up her walking leg and started her running leg, I never caught her again. Lucky for me (but unlucky for him) we had befriended that soldier carrying a 50lb pack. And that pack was growing increasingly heavy as the miles dragged on.

Nick was in pain. I was in pain. And the next 10 miles were spent talking about everything and anything to distract us from that pain. We talked about his desire to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan instead of his impending deployment to the Philippines. We talked about his little sisters and my daughters and gun control and how to maintain a good marriage. We talked about ducks and alcoholic college freshman and criminal justice careers and roller coasters and everything in between.

And every time I wanted to complain about the pain, I looked over at Nick and his 50lb pack and shut my mouth. Every time I wanted to plop down on the side of the road and refuse to go on, a runner would pass us, pause to shake his hand and thank him for his service, or the spectators lining the streets would start to cheer for him. The inadvertent support fueled me. I never stopped. Not even once.

At mile 20 he stopped to change from one pair of boots to another. Because I was certain my ankle was slowing both of us down, I told him I'd walk at my miserably slow pace up ahead a bit and he should catch me in a few blocks. Well the blocks turned into miles. No sign of him. I was alone with my thoughts and my body began to physically and emotionally fail me.

Every step became progressively harder than the last. The pain in my ankle was getting so severe that I almost hurled my Cliff bar. Without my camo-covered cheerleader, I began to curse every inch of that course. I called my husband and he did his best to pep-talk me from a different state. I hung up resolved to finish, but unsure of how.

Then Nick tapped me on my shoulder. "I finally made it back."

"Bout time," I said. "This race sucks alone." I had never been more happy to see a stranger.

Nick commiserated when I complained, but he didn't really dwell on how much he was hurting. And when I started to, we'd change the subject and the new conversation would almost make me forget how miserable I was. My ankle started giving out when we had 1 mile left and kept buckling under me. So we launched into a one mile tirade about every last food we'd like to devour when we crossed the finish line. Cinnamon rolls. Pasta. Cheeseburgers. Strawberry milkshakes.

And then suddenly, we were crossing that finish line.

I'll probably never see Nick again. After a brief lunch consisting of some of the items on our must-have list from the previous mile, we parted ways. But I'm so grateful to him for what he did for me that day. Not only did he push me to finish that brutal race, he was a reminder that there are great people all around us. Kind people. Courageous people. Exceptional people. I was lucky enough to rub shoulders with one for almost 26.2 miles.