Glass Half Marathon
February 17th, 2024. 11:50 PM
I’m sleeping on the opposite side of my full mattress, while my dad is on the regular side. I do this because he snores loudly and I need to sleep as much as I can before this Half Marathon that I signed up for, in haste, a couple of months prior. It’s the night before and my dad, brother, and Quyen helped me carbo-load with a generous dinner at one of my favorite pasta places in Austin - Artipasta. Everyone is asleep, but I can’t seem to quell my anxiety (Perhaps my racing thoughts got a head start).
I think about the lack of preparation I made for this race. A feat that I have no qualifications for except in running a 5k in college that I struggled through. For training, I ran a few miles here and there, but there were some days when I would get winded just running a quarter of a mile and then would walk the rest of the way. My confidence in this race is rightfully low. I begin to resign myself to the fact that maybe this will be another one of my failed projects. One where I say to myself that the attempt will be the crowning achievement itself. So here I am, resting on a laurel that hasn’t even happened yet. However, I, as delusional as I may be at times, cannot convince myself that this race will be the accomplishment that I hoped it would be when I first thought about completing it.
I try to distract myself from my thoughts and my dad’s snoring with my phone, but I don’t want the screen lights and doom-scrolling to affect my sleep. My eyes lock onto a poster above my bed of Rocky Balboa. I bought the poster when I visited Los Angeles in the summer. The display poster was the movie poster of Rocky standing on the steps in Philadelphia with his iconic raised fists pose. When I got back home to Austin, I excitedly unraveled it but was let down when it revealed itself to be the wrong poster. The poster had half of Rocky’s face while training and half of the following quote:
“Going in one more round when you don’t think you can. That’s what makes all the difference in your life. “
I hung up the poster regardless because I thought maybe I’ll need it one day. Especially to get out of bed during cold mornings. The night before the marathon, I stared at that poster until I fell asleep.
February 18th, 2024. 6:59 AM
Running never occurred to me as something I wanted to do, and it still isn’t. I won’t lie, like many other adults in their late 20s who are still children, I was faced with the idea that there will be an eventual end to this first leg of life called “youth” (Although to be honest, my youth ended probably sometime around the age of 18). I thought more about this finality and came up with the idea that there’s a chance I’ll always be mentally erratic or immature in some aspects of life. I see it in older people all the time. They act like children because they still are. Everyone is on some level. So, I decided that taking advantage of my youth while I still have it, is more of a physical pursuit. Maximizing my time with my health and pushing my body out of its comfort zone are ways to enjoy the privilege of my living body. I certainly wasn’t thinking about these ideas while jumping in place trying to warm my frigid body up before the start. In a flash, the hecticness of scrambling to get to the line, the negative nightly thoughts leading up to this day, and the hard and half-assed training done for the race, fuse into a feeling that I compartmentalize and store away. All I have now is “Go”.
8:10 AM
Work has been hard. Life has been harder. I had gone more days than not in the past few months indulging in all of my self-wallowing thoughts. There were days when nothing was enough and mornings were unforgivable. I had let myself suffer through a relationship with someone that had felt like I was training for an ultra marathon in itself with how much I had to hold it together. There’s a scene in Rocky II where Rocky’s coach Mickey makes him chase a chicken for speed-training, and when he can’t he says “I feel like a Kentucky Fried Idiot”. Well, after chasing this chicken around for months, I can relate to the Italian Stallion. I found out she signed up for the same half-marathon with another guy she had been hanging out with. Great, another reason to hate myself if I don’t finish. All of this to say, I see the Mile 6 marker and nothing is on my mind except “Holy shit, this is the longest I’ve gone without stopping ever in my life”. My calves are starting to get stiff and my hamstrings are starting to get concerned about why they’re being worked for this long. That phrase “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” is starting to make a lot of sense, so I begin to walk. Three things happened as I began to walk. First, I start to feel bad that everyone is passing me. Second, my body feels relieved and starts to relax and get a little too comfortable. Third, the melancholic thoughts start seeping into my sweaty head. With all of the hoopla during the marathon, it’s hard to distinguish who is cheering for whom during the race, but for the sake of my race, I pretend they’re all on my team cheering for me. And my team needs me. I also have to keep going because the aforementioned chicken is still running. Probably not even breaking a sweat. Just one more round will make a difference.
8:50 AM
Loneliness plagued me while I was in the middle of my dark episode (I still am, but on season 2 now). I isolate myself too much in times of duress, I know this. However, I made it very clear to anyone who would listen that I would be running this half-marathon. While struggling to muster up a few more miles, I received texts from those who listened and wanted to see something go well in my life. During my venture, I passed by three of my actual non-paid friends who went out of their way to cheer for me while running. Five minutes after I passed them, I realized that this was probably more fulfilling to my goal of satisfying my youth than the run. What makes you feel more like a kid than a bunch of other kids screaming your name for just moving your legs?
9:23 AM
The last mile was an absolute breeze. I’m running on my mental at this point. Running on the fact that I’m going to finish a project I started. Running on the fact that I could care less about the time I get because I knew I am overperforming in my little cloudy world. Running on the fact that my dad, my brother, and his girlfriend were all waiting for me and had been waiting for me for hours. Running on the fact that there’s finally a difficult accomplishment I can point to and say I did and am proud of. Crossing the finish line was less climactic than I thought. I thought I would be overwhelmed with emotions because I had seen it in YouTube videos. I feel a contentment with life that I hadn’t felt in a while. Because of this achievement, I have no right to be depressed or guilty for the rest of the day and maybe a couple of days. As I wait for my family to get passed the horde of people waiting to hug their runners, I’m standing there alone with my medal. I feel good about resting on my laurels today. I did something really difficult while going through something personally that felt as difficult. There is more to me than I think, I know this now.
