High Anus Half

Today was my chance to save myself from the confidence blow at my half marathon 2 weeks ago. Two weeks ago you could tell I was pissed from the finishing photo. I looked like this:

I look pissed. I look like I've just thrown down the gloves and I'm coming over to beat the living shit out of the photographer. (The other photos are even worse, but I'll save that humiliation for another post). Today I rallied for a rematch at the High Anus half marathon on Cape Cod. Okay, okay, Hyannis (pronounced hi-YAN-nis), but that's no fun. Mindy was going to be there, and the forecast was for sun and New England beach weather (barely above freezing), so it promised to be a good day.
Just as I pulled off the highway into standstill traffic, Mindy, who had shown up super early to the venue in order to get a good parking spot, texted me saying, "I got a killer spot! Right across the street." I should have known something was up when I pulled into a parking lot that clearly belonged to a strip mall and not a convention center. I followed some other runners about a quarter mile up the road, readying myself to murder for a toilet if need be. When I walked in the door I didn't see too many people, but the crowd got thicker and thicker as I elbowed my way through the hallway. I passed a line the length of a long course swimming pool, thinking that it must be the packet pickup and soldiered on into the thickening crowd. HOLY SHIT! It was the bathroom line! I later found out that there were over 3,000 runners there for the marathon, half marathon, and 10k distance, along with their spouses, kids, mothers, coaches, and any other kind of race groupie jetsam crammed into the tiny "convention center".

Just a few feet beyond the bathroom, by some miracle, I ran into Mindy. After a short hello I said, "Mindyyyyy, I've gotta pee soooooo bad!" She offered to stand in line for me while I went to pick up my number. Mindy rocks! I pushed on up the hall like I was swimming upstream. Nobody seemed to be getting anywhere in a hurry, and then suddenly the sea parted. Dick and Rick Hoyt wheeled past me amid a thousand murmurs of "Good morning, Dick. Good morning, Rick." Had I not been thunderstruck I would have hopped into the slipstream left in their wake, but of course I've sat sobbing in front of youtube videos set to cheezy music and wished I could thank them for the inspiration and let them know the emotion that they inspired in me. So I said nothing, just stood aside like a dummy, and then when I'd recovered, pushed on ahead to pick up my number. On the way back out of the ballroom, some woman was bent over, hanging onto Ricks hand, and sloshing through a fawning, sentimental monologue. It made me glad that I had decided not to say anything. It made me wonder if Rick ever resents his disability for the sole reason that he can't get away from these people when they come up to him, or tell them to fuck off and come back when they have something more original to say.

Dipshit face!

When I had pushed my way back Mindy was still waiting in the bathroom line, now bearably close to the front. Once I'd relieved myself in one of the three, count them, three stalls, we staked out a square yard of space to sit while we waited to pass the time before the start. Then, after snapping some pictures of my John Rocks!!! t-shirt, it was off to do the stuff dump and line up at the start.

Mindy, who kicks ass in more ways than one, filed herself away among the 8-minute milers, while I moseyed on back to my place among the more "colorful" pack farther back. Next to me was standing a 6-foot tall man in a garbage bag held together with duct tape. I could understand the garbage bag if it were raining, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky. He looked kind of like a fucked up hobo muppet. Behind me there was a guy whose nerves (or perhaps a sense of superiority reserved only for those who are superior to no one) compelled him to fill every silent second with cynical, condescending comments. "C-V-Surf," I heard him read off the back of my shirt (cvsurf.blogspot.com), "there are so many blogs out there, and so many of them are bo-ring!" And then he went on to go off about how boring most people's lives were. I had an urge to point out the obvious, that no one was forcing him to read them, and that I thought his incessant blabbering was pretty fucking bo-ring too, but unlike him, I was being forced into enduring it. Unfortunately I'm only a bitch in my head, the rest of me is pretty nonconfrontational. I contented myself by mentally tearing him a new one, telling him all about how I could tell from his voice, diction, and what he chose to talk about that I thought he was a pretty big fucking loser himself, and if he was back here with the 9+ minute milers he could just get down off his high horse, because he was nothing special and probably never would be to anyone who had to endure his pretentious blabbering. Meanwhile, inexplicably the people in front of us started pushing back. And then HE TOUCHED ME. He put his hand on my back and said, "don't worry I've just got my hand here so you don't back over me," or something like that. Like I was going to break his toe with my 130 lb on top of a heavily-padded shoe sole Ugh! I couldn't wait for this fucking thing to start to get away from this guy. I'd made someone fall over and roll down the street once by cutting him off in a crowded start, I wondered if I could do it again.

To my relief, my Garmin, which had been chasing its tail for over 10 minutes finally caught a signal just before the national anthem started. Back where I was we couldn't hear anything over the PA system other than "Mmmmh mmmh, mmmh mmmh mmmmh", so the national anthem sounded like, "mmh-mmh mmmh mmmmh mmmmh mmmmmmmh..." The asshole sang every verse or two, and when it was finished, deemed the singer fit for American Idol. I deemed him fit for a swift kick to the nuts. Then we heard a "mmhmmh, mmmh, MMMH!" that sounded a lot like "Ready, set, GO!", and we stood still for a little while. Then we moved forward a couple of feet and stopped again - because that's what you do at big starts - and then we began running.

Mile 1: I'd done a 3-hour ride the day before, and my legs felt a bit crusty. Although people were pretty good about seeding themselves correctly at the start, and we were able to start running right away, it took awhile to get the not-so-fresh feeling out of my legs.

Mile 2: I have no idea what happened here. It was so crowded that I couldn't see the side of the road for mile markers for another several miles.

Mile 3: My legs finally started to loosen up. I felt warm. I felt sweat trickle down my face. Why can't I seem to get this winter clothing thing down?!


Mile 4: "Yum, smell that bog smell!" I heard someone say behind me. Yep, it smelled like a mixture of sulfur and methane: that bog smell.

Mile 5-6: Dum-de-dum-de-dum. I'm running down the street. Dum-de-dum-de-dum.

Mile 7: We're running down the street, minding our own business, when this guy comes by on a bike in the other direction and YELLS, "GET ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD" in the same voice that cops yell, "PUT YOUR FUCKING HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!" in the movies. And then I said the one thing I uttered to another living soul during the race, "My goodness!" I said. The woman next to me chuckled, and that was it for human contact until the end.

Mile 8: I decided that rather than count down miles I would just imagine that I was running on a familiar 6-mile out and back I do at home. That way I would have a way to rationalize the distance I had left. Right now I was 1 mile in, right by the train station.

Mile 9: Somehow I had Edith Piaf's Mon menage à moi stuck in my head. I breathed to the words, inhaling to "tu me fais tourner..." and exhaling "la tête..." and striding with the Pum, pum pum pum pum pum PUM. (If you want to hear what it sounds like click here.) It was weird running music, but it's what was stuck in there, what can I say. I was beginning to think I should start running with an iPod.

Mile 10: I heard a spectator yell out something about a 9-minute pace. What? Was he crazy? What was wrong with his watch? I was running pretty easy, just singing songs to myself in a language I barely understood. Could I really be going that fast? That made me want to drop the hammer a little bit. But then again, when I try to drop the hammer, I usually wind up having to slow down and pick it up again later. So I just kind of dangled the hammer a little bit, so it would feel like maybe it was in trouble. There was this woman in front of me with the most unfortunate butt I've seen in awhile. It stuck out but was soft-looking and kind of boxy. Not that it's my place to criticize, but this was a new kind of butt I'd never seen before. I marvelled at it in horror. If this woman knew how ungainly her butt was, she wouldn't have chosen those pants, that's for sure.

Mile 11: Wait, is that girl wearing... ghettophones? Sure enough, there was a girl running in front of me in studio-style headphones, a zip-up hoodie that looked like it came from Aeropostale, and red valuer pants over... the nicest butt I have ever seen! I didn't look back up at her headphones even once. It was spectacular, nicely shaped, just big enough, but not even the smallest perceptable jiggle. I wanted to pull old boxy-butt over and make some constructive comments. Instead, I swore to do more lunges.

Mile 12: I'm back from the lake now in my imaginary run, running past the middle school and the library. I'm almost home. I willed myself not to think about anything. I still felt fresh, let's keep this under control. There was still a steady stream of people in front of and behind me. I had just as many people around me now as I had at mile 2. This was ridiculous!

Mile 13: The half marathon runners veered off to the right and into the convention center parking lot. There was this hill, about the incline of a parking garage ramp, leading the .1 mile up to the finish line. I thought that was a pretty lame trick. I sprinted as fast as I could, but still got out-kicked by about a dozen people. The last I saw the clock, it said 1:59: 55. I threw my hands up in the air. I'd done it! I'd broken 2 hours! But now that I'd stopped, I felt like I was going to puke.
I walked around in circles to keep the blood moving so I wouldn't yack all over the crowded finishing area, then I leaned over to untie my chip. This messed with my lungs which sent me into a spastic cough, which almost sent me over the edge into puke territory again. As I was re-lacing my shoe, a volunteer came over and picked my chip up off the pavement, which was a good thing, because I probably would have forgotten it there if she hadn't. And when I stood up again, there was Mindy! "Did you win?!" I asked. Mindy wasn't thrilled with herself, but she'd logged a time that would have sent me to the hospital around mile 1. I told her that I'd set a new PR and she hugged me. As we walked away I checked my garmin, "Hunh, it says I went 13.3 miles."
"I think yours might be a little bit off," said Mindy.
"Nooooooooo! I ran farther and faster!" I corrected her. Clearly, Mindy doesn't know how these things work. GPS is NEVER wrong, unless it says you're going slower than usual, silly.

We went inside where I ate the world's nastiest bagel (I think it might have been older than I was). Dunkin' Donuts was giving away free donuts, and I couldn't believe how many runners were walking away from the table with a donut hanging from a finger on each hand. Talk about things that would make me puke! We then went to a diner where over french toast Mindy and I tried to decide who was more annoying: pretentious, know-it-all newbie triathletes or rich, attention-seeking, stay-at-home triathlon moms.

Unfortunately Mindy still had to check out of her hotel, so as soon as we finished our french toast, she took me back to my car. She yelled something about, "Have fun in your shiny new car!" as I was shutting the door. I made a whaaa? face at her, then a oh yes, I understand gesture that a Japanese tourist might make when they have no clue what you just said, but want to please you. I mean, my car was covered in salt. As she pulled away I realized that she probably said, "Congratulations on your PR." Oops.