It was a blast, and I was unexpectedly happy to have done it. Not so much to notch my belt, as to have participated in something communal, and to have learned something more about myself. The lack of competitiveness as a group was welcome; there was a sense of all of us doing somethin
g together, for literally no other purpose than enjoyment and challenge. The rubber chicken certainly wasn't the motivator. On the way back down the switchbacks, the 12k runners (us) would call down it's line to alert people of the 25k runners coming back up the hill for their second circuit of the route. Often one fellow would yell out attaboys, and we'd often smile to each other. There was a sense of pride in each other, in what we were doing and the limits we were pushing in ourselves. Very sweet.In myself, what I got to watch was the rise and fall of my mind's deep kvetching. Most of the way up the hill, it kept pretty quiet and neutral, and in fact, the amount of energy and stamina I had was surprising. I passed many people once there was room for me to do so (the switchbacks were almost single lane paths, and in fact, in some areas we had to take forced walking breaks because there was a clog in the traffic ahead--maybe 400 people were running the path at once), and kept up a pace that was brisk and powerful. But then on the last leg up to the summit, the mind began it's low, sapping assessments of the inability to do anything more than it was doing. I tried to use the people in front of me as motivators--there was a way of matching gait and foot placement that seemed to feel like "drafting" a truck, letting it pull your car along with less effort--but twice I stopp
ed and walked. So, that was familiar from my training runs, but what was not was what happened once we crested the hill and started down. It was amazing what pace we kept, not quite sprinting but keeping a serious clip. My legs weren't cramping, my mind was loose, I felt at the end that I could have gone up for the second loop. It was a deeper sensation--I don't know what other word to use for it--than I'd even thought to expect, especially in getting such a visceral and muscular experience of the transitoriness of mind and it's constrictions.Heather greeted me with her camera, having snapped a victory photo. She had wandered around while I ran, taking pictures of the sights, being Photo Babe. Then the nice folks at Envirosports gave me a race T-shirt, and we hopped on a ferry home.
(You can see me in the dead middle of the pack, 153rd out of 336 runners, by clicking here, and photos at [pending].)
