To Test the Limits

When is a marathon not a marathon? Most runners (and very few non-runners) know that the marathon distance is 42.195 kilometres, or 26 miles, 385 yards. No farther, no shorter (unless you count Frank Shorter, who won the marathon gold medal at the 1972 Olympics). The distance was standardized by the IAAF in 1921 (not at the 1908 London Olympics, as held by popular belief). But the standard remains: if it isn’t 42k, it isn’t a marathon. Don’t listen to your neighbour who boasted to you that he did a 5k “marathon” last Sunday. He was short by about 37k. Tell him to go out and finish it.

Which brings us to the Comrades Marathon, a challenging jog through the hilly South African countryside between Pietermaritzburg and Durban. At a distance of 89 kilometres, give or take, it is technically an ultramarathon. The race was founded in 1921 to commemorate South African soldiers killed in the Great War, and as such is probably the oldest ultramarathon in the world. Over 12,000 runners participate every year, making it a very popular event, as well as a very historical one, so if they want to call it a marathon that’s fine by me. Especially since it’s been going on since before anyone really knew how far a marathon was.

Each year the race reverses direction. From Durban to Pietermaritzburg the topography is generally uphill, so it is called the ‘Up” run. The other direction is (by deduction) the “Down” run. Both directions have their challenges, as one can imagine. This year is a Down year, finishing at the Kingsmead Soccer Stadium in Durban.

So I’ve entered the Comrades Marathon for this Down year, May 24, 2009. Even with my past record of endurance sports, a few eyebrows (including my own) have been raised at my plans. I guess that an explanation as to why I would try to run such a distance might prompt me to offer Louis Armstrong’s reply to the jazz question (“if you have to ask, you’ll never know”). And I’m not sure I have a better answer at the moment. For me, discovering the reason I have set this goal is part of the goal itself.

Aside from the airy metaphysical aspects of my running that I have described in various essays below, the fact is that I like to try to challenge myself to go beyond where I should logically be able to go. To me, travelling to Africa and participating in the Comrades Marathon - whether I finish the 89 kilometres smiling or barfing, sprint to the finish or wilt in the first 10k - constitutes an inquiry into how much farther I can go.

A finisher of the notoriously punishing Badwater Ultramarathon once reflected on the inevitable question this way: “We are here,” she said, “to see what is possible”.

Heaven help me if I ever cease to explore what is possible.

Ultra distance-wise, I have a couple of things going:

· Slow running suits me. I am not fast and never will be. I have a feeling if I tried to get fast I would injure myself and come to grief.

· Long distances suit me. I am not prone to blisters, black toenails, shin splints, seized muscles or spasmodic tendons that stretch tight as piano wire and then pop, scattering animals and small children in all directions. In my case, after a certain number of hours, I hurt; later on, I hurt more. That’s about the extent of it.

· I am old (57 on race day). Older runners tend to do better at long distances for reasons that no one really understands. It might be that we are not in such a hurry to get to the finish line. Which is just as well since it is going to take a while to get there.

· I actually enjoy myself while 'racing' slowly. As a side benefit - not an end in itself - I find I do better in a longer event in which I am enjoying myself. An example is last year’s Ironman Canada, at which I was relaxed from beginning to end, had fun the whole day and finished in a personal best time.

Having said this, the sobering fact is that I have never run one step beyond the marathon distance in my life. I might turn out to hate those extra miles, my quads might turn to quivering mush and my feet might be pounded into instruments of torture, but I won’t know till I go there and try it. I think I can do it, but I don’t know, and therein lies the adventure. If I fail, then I will - to borrow from Edison - know one more thing that doesn’t work.

“…he finally got it through my head that the real purpose of running isn't to win a race. It's to test the limits of the human heart.”
Bill Bowerman, in his eulogy to Steve Prefontaine

Footfalls

I have no idea what to put in a blog, so I am going to copy in an essay I wrote several years ago about running. Maybe this will get me primed.

Footfalls
The Exquisite Loneliness of the Marathon Runner

I have a vision of a visitor arriving in Toronto this autumn from a distant war-torn country. As his host drives him into town, their trip is temporarily interrupted by a marathon race; they must stop to let the runners pass. The perplexed visitor turns to his host and asks, “What are they running away from?”

I am one of those marathon runners and I have been asked similar questions. Why do I do it? What am I fleeing? The curiosity and cynicism is logical; we runners have been described as compulsive personality types, weight-obsessed and prone to alcoholism. The average marathon field might be thought to contain a fair number of unbalanced, anorexic drunks trying to outdistance their own neuroses.

I am not an elite athlete; I neither win nor lose the race. I run in the back half of the pack, with aging executives and heavy-hipped women in long white T-shirts. The folks running near me are there to go the distance certainly, but they are challenging themselves only; the winners have long since finished. There is conversation and laughter. As we reach the halfway point, people are making plans for brunch afterwards. Later we fall silent as our muscles stiffen and our feet begin to hurt.

A marathon is 42.2 kilometres long. Some of these kilometres can be uncomfortable. To actually want to run such a distance can be puzzling to those whose hobbies are less exacting. There is no immediate gratification in pounding each one of your feet into the street pavement 21,000 times over a period of four hours. Neither is a lot of sensual pleasure generated by clomping along the road mile after mile as your legs turn to painful stumps and your body becomes caked with a layer of sweaty salt.

Some of my friends wonder why I spend so much time and energy on a pursuit that causes such apparent anguish among its practitioners - more so than, say, shopping for antiques on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Why do I run?

Is it because I want to feel superior to my sedentary friends in the same way that the aviator feels superior to earthbound mortals? Maybe I achieve a self-satisfaction in listening patiently to someone tell me of the new vibrating Barca Lounger they’ve just had delivered while I am cooling down my tingling quadriceps muscles after a 20K training run. Is it smugness I seek?

Am I fleeing our pervasive modern technology by attempting to rediscover something primal, more basic, something that people have been doing naturally since our species first walked upright? There could be something in this, although the theory is discredited somewhat by the computerized timing chip strapped to my ankle as I run through the urban jungle.

Am I looking for the kind of challenge that is disappearing from my everyday existence? Not many of us in the cities go off into the grasslands to hunt down our dinners these days. We do not have to cope with Bubonic Plague, sabre-tooth tigers or marauding bands of Vikings. Let’s face it, we are part of a society that is transfixed by televised reality stories of dysfunctional wannabees all trying to claw and backstab their way to a million dollar prize. Are some of us looking to endurance sports as a way to become real survivors in our own lives?

Some years ago a running shoe company ran an ad that suggested we runners were actually fleeing old age itself - as if that were possible - and that we would succeed if we bought their product and just did it. Did this sell any shoes? I hope not.

Popular lore holds that we run for cardiac fitness, weight control, or to find inner peace in an age of anxiety. The fact is that all of these things are a by-product of running, not a goal. No weight loss agenda will carry you through a three-hour run in the blistering heat. People speak of a “runner’s high”. These people are mostly non-runners. I have seldom been high in the final miles of a marathon; sore yes, high no.

But if you were a runner you would know this:
At one point in a long distance race, you will come to a place where all conversation ceases, and there is only the sound of rubber soles hitting the pavement and of runners evenly breathing. The people around you are deep in their own thoughts, alone with their discomfort or despair, with their dreams or determination. This is a time of transcendental solitude, when no external source - no self-help book, no friendly coaching, no high-tech shoes – can get you to the finish line. You are locked away in negotiation with your abilities and your limitations. It is an elemental moment that is redefined each time your protesting feet hit the ground.

About three-quarters of the way through a marathon, the fuel in your muscles is exhausted and you are literally running on empty. No one is quite sure what powers you through the last 10K, but this much is known: you are given an opportunity to reach deep into yourself to achieve personal greatness. By accepting this opportunity, you become extraordinary. In the end, it’s not your legs that carry you across the finish line. It is your heart and your soul.

In answer to our foreign visitor’s question: we marathoners are running away, but not from old age or chubby thighs or the stresses of the world. We are running from the shadow of the ordinary man, from the purgatory of spiritual indifference, and ultimately we are running out of mere being and into our essence. We run in order to demand something supernal of our bodies and our souls, and to feel them respond.