Sitting in one of the 22 medical tents on the course I set in for a long wait. The rather sheepish looking young chap sitting on the stretcher next to me confessed he had already been there for half an hour, when the medical workers had told him a shuttle would be by in 20 minutes. The buses and ambulances were over loaded with the number of runners needing care, this one tent had already sent 18 to the emergency room. The runner looked sad - everything about him drooped. He had blisters. The soaking wet state you needed to be in to survive the race had cost him his feet. To console him I blithely mentioned that atleast the training had been fabulous, so what if the race was a wash, I wouldn't give up the months of happy times on the trails and the mild winter for all the tea in China. He looked at me balefully and said "I hate the training, its the race I enjoy. Normally that is'. Turns out he had a flight to make, he had never given up on a race nor had he missed an international flight, and he was convinced he would make it if he dropped out. He was ridden with anxiety - should he have gone or should he have stayed.....
Glynnis showed up, tan and fit, running for a Boston Running Club. Each year she qualified for Boston and had run it 8 years. For the first time in her running career she had turned to her husband and totally shocked him with the words: 'give me the $20 - I'm not going on', she said he wouldn't believe me, but I peeled off. He had incredulously given her the emergency cab fare they always carried and the rest was done. She had achilles pain that she had never had before and decided she couldn't finish - regretful, and hard to explain to her husband. She was also unsure if she would run it again as it was the only marathon she ever did, and she would need to qualify else where if she ran it again.
Janine was more upbeat, she had one kidney, her husband had the other. Her husband was all for her giving up, the last thing he wanted was to feel she was risking her health after the sacrifice she had made for him already. She calmly and firmly decided it wasn't worth the risk, she was feeling OK, not wonderful and decided not to chance it. There would be other years. One guy sat down ashen and dripping in water and sweat and found it hard to breath for another half an hour. All around us stretchers kept on coming. I sat eating my chips feeling embarrasingly healthy, treasuring the big strap around my knee, which showed why I had thrown in the towel. The man with the blisters looked jealously at my conspicous bandaging and bindings, he had nothing visible to explain his DNF and now he had also missed his flight. A runner in his twenties, african american, with an impressively low number sat next to me on the bus with his head in his hands. He was beyond words, had dropped out at 21 and been bussed back to mile 18 in complete despair. I watched the endless flow of runners battling the heat as they poured slowly past the tent and then the bus and felt a multitude of emotions.
A friend had told me to run the race in thirds. The first with my head, the second with my personality and the last with my heart. My heart had not been in it. The heat had zapped all desire to finish and the unicorn was no where in sight.
Meeting up with an exhausted Q-Less I felt sad and guilty. She had battled on alone struggling against stomach and leg cramps, stopping to stretch occasionally. Either delirious, or paranoid that I might have returned to the race and could even be ahead of her, she kept hearing both our voices called. She looked exhausted, faint and was having problems staying up right. I on the other hand felt fine and eagerly took the bottle of blue moon the loyal support crew of Merciless and Nonetheless had ready for us.
As we marched back through the inferno that was Boston Common, people congratulated us. The first man that said well done, I felt compelled to say 'No, I didn't finish' but the others shusshed me quickly - Cheri with her medal was the real deal, I felt a fraud. Dinner that night was still fun, but I didn't feel the way I had expected to feel, never in my dreams had I thought I wouldn't even finish the race.
That night I had posted on facebook that we were OK - my parents had seen me drop off the AT&T tracking but in the UK hadn't heard if I was alright, they were just relieved I was fine and told me how proud they were anyway. L'ill bitch was convinced he would be called into the Principal's office all afternoon to be told I had died, so my actually returning was a good thing in his mind - he just texted me 'well done for getting to 18, that's more than I could have done'.
No matter how supportive your family and friends are it doesn't feel good, so I decided two days after getting over some minor pains in my quads to get out and jog again with the Housewives. It was fun being out on the trail again, and made me happy I wasn't so lame I couldn't join the fun. This was what running was about after all.
But it left me still wondering about what would have happened if the weather hadn't been so freaky, and there was only one way to settle that one - I knew in my heart I would have to race again before I could feel complete. I was nagged by the worry, that my fresh experience of giving up had actually been too pleasant. I had not finished and instead had opted out - literally and figuratively I had sat on the coach eating chips while the world toiled past me. What if this spectre continued to haunt me and hindered me from all the other races I wanted to run. The memory of Boston needed to be exorcised before I could feel good about the world again, so I started to toy with the idea of racing again...and soon.....
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