Save Yourself!

“Go ahead, save yourself,” the fallen one called, struggling to  breathe through the pain.

“But we’re a team; we live together or we die together,” he encourages, looking back with concern in his compassionate green eyes.

“No, you must, please,” the fallen one pleads with desperation.  “Leave me; do it!”

With one last moment of hesitation he does as he is asked; he leaves the fallen one behind and focuses on the challenge ahead-he will forge on without the fallen one and hope that, in the end, he will not regret it.”

Sound like the scene from a Turner Classic movie,right?  How about a scene from this morning’s Run for Read 8K?  Wow, were my eyes opened as to how different running everyday on a flat surface or a treadmill differs from a “trail” run.  Not that we knew it was going to be a trail run when I signed us up for this one.  The website described the trail, but why would I have bothered to read it before hand?  That sounds too reasonable-and those of you who know me know I am anything but reasonable.

So there we were, ready to begin the 8K under a drizzling grey sky.  The race would begin at 9:00, leaving the historic Tredegar Iron Works Civil War Museum, follow the Canal Walk, cross over onto Brown’s Island and then  to the Southside of the James River.

I was feeling good about the whole thing and my husband and I had talked about the fact that he would help me keep pace during the race.  What I wasn’t prepared for, though, was the change in terrain and how it would  mess with my head.  The running surface went from brick to concrete to aggregate to dirt to weeded path to steel steps to graveled footpath to precarious path along train tracks to floodwall to cinder to woods to blacktop to dirt to wet leaves to bridge ramp to concrete path ….. you get the picture.

In addition to the various running surfaces, the route itself included more inclines than I had ever tried to run and in no stretch of my imagination did I ever think to include metal steps in my neighborhood runs.

Somewhere around mile 2 I told my trainer partner husband to go on without me; the steps and incline had created a stitch in my side that I needed to walk out and I felt really bad about holding him back.  He didn’t want to do it, but I kept waving him on and I think he sensed my frustration so he did as I asked.  After we separated I settled into a pace that would allow my breathing to return to a more steady rate and, fortunately, the stitch soon eased up. I came upon a couple running together that was keeping a pace I could deal with so I settled in behind them, focusing on the man’s heels and blocking out my surroundings so that I could “zone”.

The 4th mile was upon me before I knew it-I was going to make it after all! That’s when I saw it-the concrete ramp up the bridge-to me it seemed as if it led straight up into the clouds.  What the —-?  Was this a joke?  I had mentally settled in for the last mile and suddenly I was forced to realize that it wasn’t over yet.  I tried to maintain a running jogging pace as I started up the wet concrete incline but my shins weren’t very happy with me so I reverted to a speed walk until I reached a flat surface where I picked it up to a jog.  Coming down the other side of the bridge was the decline, seemingly easier but pretty slippery so I still had to keep it in low gear for fear of falling down-that would suck!

When I reached the bottom of the bridge and rounded the corner I saw  the couple that I had been drafting for pacing purposes and something inside me finally came alive.  Call it stupidity, call it determination, call it competitiveness-whatever it was, I poured it on and blew past them at a flat out haulin’  a– pace.  I was approaching the finish line and could see my partner’s orange shirt on the sideline, cheering me on.  There was a man in front of me and he must have heard my lightning pace behind him because he sped up.  That really fired me up so I kicked it up one more notch and we were nose to nose to the finish line.

I will have to wait to see how I did.  My husband said that he was so involved with cheering me on that he forgot to hit “stop” on the Garmin.  The race was too low budget for chips-so they had volunteers at the finish line writing down your race number and your time.  I guess they will eventually get around to posting the times for everyone but for now I am just glad I SURVIVED!