While most couples spent Valentine’s weekend bedazzled in chocolate and rose petals, soaking in a hot tub on a romantic overlook at a mountain villa, sipping champagne and pledging their undying love for one another, my smokin’ hot love toy and I ran a marathon.
If my grandparents were alive, they would say we have more time than good sense. If my hamstrings were speaking to me, they would say it was their last 26.2 distance. But those voices are just two of the many that sing not so harmoniously in my head. Determination and desire are the local loud mouths and they usually strong arm the others into submission.
I started running on my 35th birthday. I went out for my daily walk and decided to run instead. I ran the ½ mile to our stop sign then walked the rest of my three mile loop. Over time, I could run all of it. Then I could run it twice. My first race was a poorly organized, ½ marathon on an icy, December Saturday with a grand total of six competitors. It is one of the only times in my life that I have ever finished in the top ten of anything.
Many people shake their heads at the thought of running a marathon. And just as there are sports that aren’t for me, such as competitive swimming, where I would drown unless they allowed innertubes or those inflatable ducky-shaped water wings, I get it if running isn’t your thing. I just wonder from the reactions about marathoning if it is the sport itself or the training required to earn your running stripes.
I believe in movement, all the better if it is outdoors. I think a good walk, jog, or hike does wonders for the mind and spirit. And with the great miracles gifted to us by the portable music gods … running has become for me an uplifting blessing, a needed escape from my crazy world. Running with my IPod Nano has replaced what I used to find on a long drive in my car with my sun roof open and Don Henley’s Boys of Summer as my co-pilot. I used to get lost in those miles … but alas, those days seem gone forever with a BlackBerry ringing, buzzing, and tweeting and a navigational system barking out the next turn. How can anyone ever get lost from anything anymore?
When I registered for my marathon, I created a playlist to serve as my inspiration. I have listened to this same list since October. While they didn’t allow portable music in the actual race, these tunes still played in my head.
With “Eye of The Tiger,” I am Rocky, … “risin’ up, straight to the top. Had the guts. Got the glory. Went the distance; now I’m not gonna stop. Just a man, (a girl) and her will to survive.”
Pat Benetar and I “Run with the Shadows of the Night,” along with Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty.” Bryan Adams and I “Run to You,” and The Boss belts out, “Tramps like us … baby, we were born to run.”
Big and Rich tell me to “save a horse, ride a cowboy,” but I just keep on riding my running shoes.
REO Speedwagon sings “Take It on the Run Baby,” just like they did at my high school prom. The Eagles strut their pipes in “The Long Run.”
For grins, I have “B, double E, double R, U, N … beer run,” by Garth and George. And “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer,” by Dr. Elmo.
Pat Green sings “Mile upon mile got no direction,” in “Wave on Wave.” And, Chris Tomlin reminds me in “God of This City,” to be the change I want to see in the world. Van Halen recalls the times we have both “Run with the Devil.”
Lady Antebellum croons, “I run my life. Or is it running me? I run too fast. Or too slow it seems.”
With Tom Petty, I am “Running Down a Dream” and with Bon Jovi, I am a “Little “Runaway.” Tom Cochrane covers “Life is a Highway” and my feet pound on down, pound on down the road.
AC/DC describes me as “a fast machine, I keep my motor clean. I am the best (bleep) woman that you’ve ever seen.”
Gretchen Wilson labels us redneck women and Brad Paisley welcomes me to the future with my favorite line …. “I thought about him today and everyone who’s seen what he’s seen, from a woman on a bus, to a man with a dream.”
Heidi Newfield wails out “Johnny and June,” “I wanna be there on the stage with you. You and I could be the next rage too. Hear the crowd roar. Make them want more. Kick the foot lights out.”
My playlist has served me well, muffling the cries of my back, knees, hips, ankles, and psyche. My home stretch ritual is always the same, reserved for that path of sidewalk that dumps me out at my mailbox finish line. I find Sara Evans on my IPod and lengthen my stride. I am transformed, traveling back in time to a nine year old me, on a rust-colored pony name Calico. We are like the wind, blonde manes flying, running for my parents’ barn as Evans sings in my ear …
“So, how do you wait for heaven?
And who has that much time?
And how do you keep your feet on the ground?
When you know that you were born ... you were born to fly.”