My motivations for tackling the marathon were all very
selfish. As training continued, they grew to be more selfish; I was taking me
time, I was working on my fitness, I was trimming down, I wanted to eat more
cake. It was all ME, ME, ME!!! I didn’t talk to many people at work about
training, but the Phys. Ed. teacher, a Bulgarian Fencing Olympic medalist, made
a point of asking who I trained with one day. Trained with? Nobody. I told him
it was ‘me’ time, and I explained that I was sure I was too slow for any Dubai
running group to accept me. Yeah, my distances were increasing, but I was no
pace monkey. Between that and my errant running schedule, dependent on the
demands of school and life, I really wasn’t a reliable running partner. So, I
continued on with my excuses as to why I ran alone, continued pumping up the
volume on my iPod and traipsed on past the couples running along the Marina,
with sparse glances to the other single runners on my track. Yeah, you heard
me. My track.
This attitude, that I had do to it by myself, that I was the
best driver of my own endurance, that it was all ME that was going to be a star
in my first marathon, followed me all the way through to race day. Nervousness
gave way to excitement the night before the race, building up to an intense
adrenaline-loaded rising on race morning. I arrived at the start of the course
by myself while teams and pairs were busily chatting away and getting excited
about the race together. Me? I switched on my iPod and tried to deal with the
rush of hormones pumping through my veins. I wasn’t handling it too well, and
as I had predicted, I got caught in the wave of people pushing forward to get
clear and forge a steady starting pace with the siren. I can run a 10-minute
mile; heck I can pull a mile in 9-minutes if I really want to, but I can’t keep
that business up for 42 kilometres. We were nearing the second kilometer already
and I knew I had to slow down. I kept trying; trying to pull back, ease off and
find my rhythm, but the only thing that kept pushing into my head was ‘why can’t
I keep up with these people?’ I trained, I’m fit, I’m young and healthy – why do
I keep finding myself overtaken by everyone else, and why can’t I handle the
fact that it’s happening? Why is that old guy forging ahead of me? WHY?! It was
one of the most challenging 8-kilometres I’ve run to date. This psychological
rut that I couldn’t get myself out of scared the hell out of me, because I knew
that if I didn’t shake it soon, I’d never have a hope of finishing the race.
Now, thanks to Harry destroying the last remaining set of
headphones I owned (that’s three pairs since August), I was running with Andrew’s
Sennheiser noise-reduction headphones. I couldn’t hear anything but my music
pounding at, what I now know was far too fast a beat. I thought it would help
me, as it had helped in my training runs. It would help me form a rhythm, push
me through the tough times, and keep me motivated for the whole 5-hours or so.
Yeah. Not so much. At the 11-kilometre mark a guy in his forties pulled up
beside me. He said something, but I didn’t hear, so I took out an earphone. Glory
be, I could hear footsteps. I could hear bodies, and breathing, and cheering,
and clapping. I could hear all of the bleary-eyed residents who’d emerged from
their villas early to check out the whole event. I looked at the guy again, and
breathed out a ‘pardon’, and he repeated “Are you ok? You look like you’re
doing it tough.” I busted out something related to taking it slow and kept on
tracking along. Both of us did so; side-by-side. We never spoke a word for next
4-kilometres, but neither of us moved an inch ahead of the other while we kept
a neat, yet seemingly comfortable 10:20-mile pace. I also never put that
earphone back in.
Now, there’s something that can happen during long runs to
both novices and elites. I’m sure you’ve seen the photos, and the effect of a
whole lot of sugar, salts and bouncing around can do. One is always grateful in
this situation when there are toilets dispersed along the track and you channel
all your energies into making it through to that 5-kilometre interval in one
piece. There’s nothing worse than trying to keep some sort of pace with runner’s
diarrhea, but I managed, and at the 15-kilometre checkpoint, I stumbled out a “good
luck if I can’t catch up” to my random running partner and tried to ease my
pains. Aside from the cramps, the run was still an easy cruise; flat, cool and
a little drizzly at times. The overcast day made for stunning running
conditions I felt like my head was finally in the right space after accepting
someone else into my ‘zone’. I rejoined the race and felt positive about where
I was again; I had accepted my own speed, my own comfort and was finally just
in it to finish. I would see the green flouro stripe up ahead, across my buddy’s
back, and decided it was an awfully long way to try and catch up. So I kept on
plodding at my own little pace. Within five minutes I dropped right down to
some miserable speed and was struggling once more. It was then that I knew: I
couldn’t do this alone. This isn’t a race for one person; the hundreds of
volunteers handing out water and Gatorade where a huge testament to that.
I bit the bullet and pulled my knees up. It took me the
better part of 2-kilometres, but I cought up to my new buddy who was chatting
to someone cheering him on from the sideline. The lucky devil had a personal
cheer squad! I pulled up beside him, heard a notable “well done” and we kept on
going like before, step-by-step in tune; a cheer squad in the simple rhythm of
someone else’s shoes. I don’t think we started speaking in sentences until we
hit 18-kilometres. A fellow first time marathoner, but regular half-er, Mark
was a Zimbabwean pilot based here in Dubai. A friend of his, and past runner joined us
for a brief spurt to explain the track to the halfway point, and said he’d meet
us on the return loop with an energy boost. More and more people kept coming
into my experience of the race, changing it and reshaping it, making it a
possibility once more that not only would I finish, but I would do it well. At
20km an incredible woman stood out in the middle of the track, arms
outstretched with an unwrapped mini Mars bar in each hand. I could have kissed
her, but instead told her how incredible she was, and ran on with Mark exclaiming
at how amazing a Mars bar really could taste. It was just the sugar kick we
needed to boost us over the half way check-in feeling confident and great! We
both knew we could pull half-marathon distances; that’s a given. Then, there
was less than a half to go, right? Right.
The u-turn on the track came at around 22-kilometres and
amazing Dubai residents were lining the course with applause, encouragement and
reassurance that we were doing well. We kept grinning and powering on at our
consistent pace, feeling strong and confident, knowing there was less than a
half-marathon to go. Yeah. Normally, you haven’t run a half before that half…but
we stayed strong. At 25-kilometres, the scourge of Gatorade and sugary energy
boosts got the better of me again and forced me to use my kicks in catching up
to Mark. We kept on running with the support of so many people around us;
accepting drinks, some concoction of Red Bull, Coke and water, lollies, energy
gels and sharing the odd-story or glimpse of information. Never much, but always
just enough to keep your mind off the pain if it started to take over. Mark’s
veteran marathoner friend returned with a banana and an outline of what to
expect when that notorious wall comes racing at you, ready for you to crash
into.
I think it hit it at around 29-kilometres, though it’s a
gradual “I’m screwed” rather than a “WHAM! You’re screwed”. Sugar rushes couldn’t
keep me up anymore and my calves were desperately tight. We slowed. We slowed A
LOT. The Dubai Police, in some brief moment of thought, decided to open up the
roads, two and a half hours early, and we had to begin the battle of nearing
traffic as well as fatigue. I can’t explain what it takes to keep your mind
focused on lifting one foot at a time when you’re battling traffic and the fact
that you’ve been running for over three hours, but I did it. It was largely a
blur, and I can barely remember the following 6- or 7-kilometres. I would NEVER
have been able to do it on my own, but with support by my side I broke through
from no-man’s land, that great expanse between 28 and 36 kilometres, right up
to the Burj Al Arab and back into quiet, closed down streets.
Only 8-kilometres remained. Each time we hit a marker, we counted
down. These were training run distances; weeknight stuff. Easy. We should
barely need to motivate ourselves. That’s what we kept saying. Eight kilometres
is NOTHING. Those last 8-kilometres were officially the hardest
8-EFFING-KILOMETRES OF MY LIFE. Every kilometre hurt. Every muscle was drained.
My calves were desperate, ankles aching, hips sore and swollen. No pain of
injury, but my body was doing its best to tell me that four and a half hours of
running was enough. We refused to stop. Power walkers strode by faster than we
were shuffling at times, but at no time did we stop to walk. The kilometres
began to count down; 6-kilometres, 5-kilometres, 4-kilometres. So incredibly
slow, but our hope and assurance that it was nearly over increased and each
time we passed a marker we looked to the distance to find a new reference
point. People began to visit us on bikes, riding past just to tell us we were
doing so well and that we were so close. One legend had a megaphone. Again,
more and more strangers were the people that urged me to stay strong; to keep
going and power on. I could do it. I could.
One-kilometre remained. It seemed so close. I knew, at
worst, we were a little over seven minutes from the finish line. It had to be
close. Why couldn’t I see it? The police’s genius road openings left us having to
cross a three lane highway at about the 800m mark, and Mark, in true Zimbabwean
form, nearly got cleaned up by a car in his continued resistance to the oblivious
nature of the force’s decision. He scampered past as the car locked up on the
brakes, and I made my way across when the road cleared. Surely only 700-metres
left? Surely. I could almost taste the sweetness of finish line as we crossed under
the Adidas signage into Media City – we were in the precinct. Great sobs began
to burst from inside of me; I had already run 41-kilometres and I was about to
run to my own cheer squad at the finish line. My breathing became erratic and I
had to regain some sensibility or I’d completely lose myself in a tsunami of
emotions. Three children came racing onto the track, and I heard Mark’s cry of
relief; his own little cheer squad came to run with us – their energy and speed
pushing us forward and motivating us towards the finish. They darted in and
around us, telling us the finish line was just ahead. I still couldn’t see it,
but it felt so damn close. The kids were pushed off the course by officials, but
they ran alongside the track.
We could see the home straight and we couldn’t help but yell
out. Hands went in the air and sheer, unadulterated bliss overwhelmed me as we
neared the 100m mark. My god, it was so close, and then I saw Andrew in the
grandstand. I struggled to hold back the tears for just a little longer, and
Mark and I crossed in perfect sync; we made it. Neither of us could have made
it without the other, and we both made sure the other knew it. We may never see
each other again, but that day, a stranger changed my race and helped me
achieve one of the most incredible goals of my life so far. My dear Andrew
greeted a sweaty, bawling girl on the other side of the finish line, complete
with a marathon medal. Then I knew that I had never even for a moment prepared
for the race alone. Andrew had been there, pushing me forward from day one, and
I could not have gone the race distance without the support of Mark. No matter
how much I had told myself I could have done it, and regardless of whether or
not I had tried, the biggest lesson I learned that day really was that nobody
runs a marathon on their own steam. Nobody.
