Surviving My First Marathon- Part 4

“Keep going- we’re almost done.”

My brother’s voice was like a tether for me, and I latched on to it desperately as I ran through the agony in my legs and the somewhat painful spasms in my lungs when I breathed in too deeply. Everything in my body hurt now, but I wanted nothing more than to see mile marker twenty-six and to know that we were done.

Twenty more minutes, I told myself. In twenty more minutes you will be done with your first marathon.

I honestly don’t know if I would have finished the race if it wasn’t for my brother.

Before that day, when I told people that my brother was running my first marathon with me, they were duly impressed. I know very well, though, that my brother didn’t have to run this marathon at all.

He was doing it for me.

Who does that? Who willingly undergoes the training, sweating, physical exhaustion, and interminable toil of twenty-six point two miles for a little sister?

My brother did.

When he found out via Facebook that I’d signed him up for the race he could have ranted and yelled (more than he did) and then told me to go stuff it.

He could have told me flat out that he wasn’t going to do it.

He could have laughed in my face and scheduled something else for that weekend, leaving me to eat the entry fee.

But instead, after a few choice words about me being impatient and him not sure he would be ready to run right after tax season, he immediately took out his calendar and began to make plans with me for the longer training runs on the few Sunday mornings where he didn’t have tax appointments.

That’s how my brother is.

We were on what remained of the boardwalk in Long Branch by then after hitting mile twenty-five, the home stretch, but the finish line was nowhere to be seen. Mentally, I knew that it was just a mile away, but it felt like the boardwalk was never ending, like it didn’t matter how many steps towards the finish line we took because the distance would somehow keep growing in a surreal way.  

Ten minutes later, my Garmin beeped. I peeked at it, amazed that it showed 26 miles.

I laughed in sheer excitement, suddenly finding a reserve of energy in my legs that I hadn’t known I possessed. My brother paced along side of me, smiling broadly, but I hadn’t seen the twenty-six mile marker yet.

“What’s going on? We should be at twenty-six by now!” I exclaimed.

“It might be off a little,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ll get there.”

It occurred to me that not once during the entire five hours we’d been on our feet had he been anything but supportive and positive.  He ran with me the entire time, pushing me through each mile by his own example, giving me the strength to ignore the burning and tightening of my thigh muscles with each step.

I also realized that I might run other marathons, but there would never again be a ‘first’ marathon for me. That made this experience with him that much more special.

I looked around. The ocean was so blue, the sand glowing brightly in the sunlight. I took a deep breath of the salty ocean air, wanting to both savor these last moments of my first marathon- and get them over with, too.

Suddenly, I saw the blue banner of the finish line a half mile away. “There it is!” I yelled. “Whoot!”

I began to run faster, the final spurt before the end. After an initial protest that I was going too fast, dammit, he caught up to me. Spectators lined the boardwalk, cheering for each and every runner that went by. A few shouted my name and I grinned at them as I blew by.

The atmosphere of excitement made me go even faster, wanting more than anything in the world to zoom across that blue bump under the banner at the finish.

As I ran over it I put my arms in the air in victory. Right after that, I put my hands on my thighs.

“Ouch, ouch, ouch!”

I accepted the medal from one of the volunteers and proudly draped it around my neck, walking in a circling around the boardwalk to try to ease out the stiffness in my legs. Once again my eyes were blurry with tears, not only because we’d finished the race but because my legs hurt so badly.

My brother called me back for a picture, and we stood against the fence, his arm slung over my shoulders, the beautiful blue ocean our backdrop, smiling brightly at the camera, identical looks of elation on our faces.

Then he pulled me into his arms for a bear hug. This time, neither one of us bothered to hold back the tears.

We made our way eventually to the shuttle that would take us to the car. Each step was excruciating, my leg muscles defiantly reluctant to move any further much less lift my body onto sidewalks and over the grass, but finally we were at the car and on our way home.

That night it was extremely difficult to sleep.  My legs ached with every movement of my body, and I couldn’t roll over or shift position without waking up and gasping with pain.

The next day at work was worse, even after taking a healthy dose of Motrin. I work on the third floor of an old building that doesn’t have an elevator.

The best part of the day was the congratulations from my colleagues and students as I hobbled about.

The worst part was climbing each flight of stairs, one step at a time, blinking back tears with each upwards movement.

I did my best to stay upstairs most of the day, and when I brought my class down to lunch, they waited patiently as I gripped the stairwell and went down one step at a time.

By the next day, I was feeling more normal and I ventured out on a short walk with the dog. After twenty minutes, I turned back, not willing to risk straining my recently overused muscles. The following day, I made it to forty-five minutes, and a few days later I hiked up a mountain.

I will always have this special memory of the time when my big brother guided me through my first marathon. It was an experience that will never occur again, although I will definitely be joining him in more training runs.

From this experience I have learned that running a marathon is not just about the glory of being in that exclusive group of people who are crazy enough to run 26.2 miles in one shot.

It’s not just about the shiny medal, or the moisture wicking race t-shirt, or the other free goodies that you get when you sign up for it.

It’s not even about finding the perfect outfit to wear on race day, or the color coordinating socks to go with a hat.

It’s not about who is going to be cheering for you, whether at the course or at home, waiting for you to succeed.

It’s about finding what I was made of when push came to shove and my body was screaming at me to stop moving while the voice in my head- and the one running next to me- was insisting that I could do this.

It was about pushing through the pain and discomfort and finding that I could, indeed, set a goal and achieve it. It was about training my body for months, sticking to a grueling training plan that required runs of 10, 15, and even 23 miles, overcoming self-doubt and finding the confidence inside of myself to succeed.

Will I ever do another marathon?

Actually, yes, I will. I signed up for the Atlantic City Marathon in October. My friends who ran the Long Branch half marathon have also signed up for Atlantic City Half and we are actively trying to recruit more people to venture down with us to run.

I wonder what my brother will be doing that weekend...

The end.