Goal: Marathon! Not yet set: the goals within the goal, those to be measured by calendar and stopwatch and map. These will be left for the days ahead. They will br noted on these pages from time to time, as they occur to me, but I want this journal to mark the course of that larger more singular project. Indeed, in these first pages let me put aside the history that got me here, my present position, the odds I might give myself. I will worry about these asides tomorrow, even as I set and tweak those other calibrators, but for today...
Let me just chew on that word for a moment: Marathon... Mmmm! The epitomal run. A distance to brag about, the messenger’s challenge, the body’s approachable limits. A number for the bumper, a medal for the wall, just for finishing. A dedication of time and an appreciation of place. An opportunity and, appropos this journal before me, a journey. And yet, not even a full day’s journey, barely a morning’s effort.
And yet again, how many hours, days, months will precede that effort and how long, how much more than a day, might it take to recover from that morning run? Honestly, this will be a luxury of time, a bold claim to stake, especially for someone of my age and station with all that I already have on my calendar and map and watch. But let me make it that, a luxury. Let me take it as such and hold on to it and own it as one might own prominent portfolio items or value it as one should value things that matter most. I have a home, I have family and a career and faith to get me by, but for the next stretch of the way let me also have this: Marathon! A course to run, a race to prepare for and work towards, a distance to rise up to, a goal to pronounce. May 27, 2015, consider it declared: I will be running 26.2 miles, all at once.
It is hardly a unique ambition, this. Four days ago, just last weekend — a little bit of history here — I ran a precedent challenge, a combination 10 kilometer run on a Saturday night and a half marathon the next morning. Not everyone running was there for the one-two punch, but I was hardly alone, and of the two separate races, significantly more people had signed up for the longer 13 mile run. And not all the half-long runners will take the double down dare later this year, but I am sure many will. Many of us!
Based on what I saw last fall, when I had last (and first!) run a halfway race, there were thousands who ran the thirteen miles with me but 1,200 more who signed up for the greater double distance that day, runners like me who had decidedly set their goal and built themselves up to the challenge. And this was just one race in one city, among many others throughout the world assembling thousands upon thousands of runners from early spring to late fall, some running with experience, many experiencing the race for the first time. This time, I will be one of them. And however sore and weary I may be on that day, I will be happy, thrilled to be part of the crowd.
I have come to this decision only today, after a relatively short three mile morning run. Time and circumstance may have me ponder and rethink the decision, but that is why I am writing this down right now. Journals have helped me get to and though previous goals, so here I am again, holding myself to my word. I think I just gave this new journal a name: Accountability. Less the accountancy of daily details, more a running account of my journey, noting what it takes to get to that capital G, the Goal, the biG run the Mega run, the Marathon.
Mmmm... I am still chewing on that word. Eight letters, 26.2 miles long. Nine times the distance I ran this morning. More graspable, only twice the stretch of last Sunday’s run, although that is still as long as I have ever run at one time. But let me keep grasping: my two day race was six miles closer and just seven miles from where I am setting my one day sights: two days, 19 miles will not be the same as a one morning marathon experience, but hold me to this: I will keep reaching...
So, when Persia was dust,
all cried “To Acropolis!”
Run Pheidippides, one race more!
The meed is thy due!
...He flung down his shield,
Ran like fire once more,
And the space ‘twixt the Fennel0field
And Athens was stubble again,
A field which a fire runs through.
— from Pheidippides,
by Robert Browning (1879)
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