Virginia is for Plodders

Wanting to try my feet at thirteen miles before the holidays and fatherhood put a freeze on my traveling options, I recently headed down to Fredericksburg, Virginia to run the Blue & Gray Half Marathon. After viewing some of the footage shot by my lovely sidekick (who is celebrating her birthday today), I have begun to wonder if "run" is actually what I did. (And no, none of this footage is in slow motion.) In my defense, this first clip is from the halfway point where I was beginning to knock on the runner's wall--I had just slopped my way up a muddy hill, and I found myself at a part in the course where we were doing a loop around the athletic fields at some bucolic college that just looked like a bunch of puddles to me, and I could glimpse the miles ahead all crowded with women and children tiptoeing through the rain, bounding with joy into the distance. And this second clip at the race's end (none of this footage is particularly exciting, but what the hell, the blog needed some love) bears witness to the following facts: I did finish; it rained the entire f$%#ing time; I am still kind of fat; and I am sooooooooo sloooooooow. But running my life's longest distance in 34 degrees and pouring rain (notice that I'm the only one running without gloves--no, those aren't latex gloves, those are two frozen lumps of bloodless flesh stuck to the end of my forearms), and that I didn't technically walk a step of it feels like accomplishment enough, pace and place be damned (I actually had a decent personal pace going until the last two miles, all uphill, where my shuffle-stride had me nearly running in place -- I looked like I was busting a move instead of trying to move my body forward). Highlights of the race: A medal; Gatorade at water stations; Michelob truck at the finish line (my legs miraculously burst into a sprint at the finish as I bowled over spectators and elbowed my way through a sea of goobers waiting in line for their free banana, and I found myself standing before said truck where I made a cup of Ultra disappear like there was a hole in it). Lowlights of the race: Everything else. The notion that I would turn around and go run that race distance again is comical--nay, tragic--but thirteen felt that way not very long ago. As for running, it isn't getting easier, and I can't clearly articulate what I'm getting out of it. But as I sat (yes, sat) in the shower after the race, still clutching that cup and and feeling my fingers tingle back to life, I felt good. I felt really, really good. And how that happened at the end of a rainy, frozen morning that began and ended with me plodding my way through a strip mall parking lot, I'm not entirely sure.