I was struck by something I saw all around the waterfront at the finish line of the North Olympic Discovery Marathon.
First of all, a lot of people limping badly, literally barely able to even walk after running either the marathon or half marathon. A lot of people groaning in pain, leaning on others to help them walk. I saw it with young kids and elderly runners and even an elite marathoner who finished third.
And yet, I also saw almost all of them smiling and enjoying themselves.
It’s a strange contrast that probably a lot of people might have a hard time understanding. I guarantee you I will never run a marathon. May years — and pouns — ago, I cycled and did some pretty extreme distances — over 100 miles in a day. But, I’ve never run distance and will never have the urge to. Cycling is easy by comparison.
But, here’s where I “get it.” About 30 years ago, I got into mountain-climbing. About 15 years ago, I got pretty serious about it, climbing 100,000 vertical feet in one summer.
So, I know that pain and I know that joy I was seeing in the runners’ faces. And I know how they mix together in a weird melange. I’ve felt it myself. The pain and damage you do to your body running 13 or 26 miles … or climbing 5,000 feet straight up or forcing your lungs to try and suck oxygen at 12,000-plus feet.
That joy is the joy of accomplishment, of not beating others, but yourself. I’m sure some of the elite runners are competing against other runners, but the vast majority of marathoners don’t get into running to compete against others.
They’re competing against their own doubts. And their pain.
By making it to the finish line, those runners are breaking through not just the pain but the overwhelming urge to simply stop. Pull over. Give it a rest. It’s impossible to keep the thoughts pushed down of “why am I doing this to myself? What was I thinking?” I’ve had those same thoughts standing on some 10-inch-wide ledge on some 3,000-foot-high cliff with a 30-degree loose gravel trail the only path to safety.
It takes will to keep going to a finish line you can only see in your imagination. That you know is miles … and a lot of pain … still in the distance.
I’ve beat myself pretty badly on some mountains. Ended up with excruciating shin splints, I screwed up a disc in my neck climbing Half Dome in Yosemite, I’ve gotten stitches in my hand after taking a fall, etc.
My favorite mountain-climbing “war story” — realizing that my lungs were starting to fill up with fluid at 13,750 feet on a beautiful, little-known mountain called White Mountain Peak in the desert of Eastern California (you actually climb up a WW II Jeep trail to an old UCLA war lab at the summit). I was less than 500 feet from the top. I horrified an RN friend of mine by relating the story that, yeah, I kept going up to the top.
“Why would you do that?” She exclaimed.
“Well … because I was 500 feet from the top.”
I wasn’t going to give up when I was 500 FEET from the top, less than an hour’s hike. That fluid in your lungs is a really fun condition you can get at 14,000 feet called HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema), and it takes about four to six weeks to completely clear up. It’s the little capillaries in your lungs bursting from lack of air pressure. I simply told myself it takes a long time to die from HAPE.
Well, usually. All right, it will never go down as one of my smarter moments. But I made it to the top and obviously lived through it.
One thing runners have is an enthusiastic crowd cheering them on the trail. I was jealous. You don’t have that alone on a peak. Yeah, on Half Dome, there’s a lot of high fives at the top, but on most peaks, you are literally completely, utterly on your own with no cheering section.
So, why would you do that?
To stand in a place I know 99 percent of people could never reach? So I could say to myself that I did it? That I overcame my doubts and the yips from looking 2,000 feet straight down? Hard to explain to some people.
Probably not to a marathoner.
I keep planning to get back into mountain-climbing (I definitely have to lose weight), but will probably never go back to some of the hairy stuff I was doing 15 years ago. The damage done, which I particularly feel at 4 a.m., has gotten pretty difficult for me to keep ignoring. Yet, I can’t really say it wasn’t worth it. Beats sitting around watching TV all weekend.
Sure, these runners had a big cheering section, but I also know there’s weeks and months of training that goes into taking on a miles-long race. On your own. With no crowds. Just you and your pain and your doubts. And the accomplishment is ignoring them and soldiering on.
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Sports Editor Pierre LaBossiere can be contacted at 360-417-3525 or plabossiere@peninsuladailynews.com.
