I RAN: CRISIS

It was the best of climes, it was the worst of times.

I'm talking about Saturday's Grandma's Marathon ("World Class Event, Small Town Charm") in Duluth, Minn., in which I and 9,700 or so others took part. It was a perfect day--if you were taking your boat out on Lake Superior, the north shore of which abuts the Grandma's course. But if you were running a marathon...well, as I said, approximately 9,700 runners entered the race but only 6,898 finished. That's nearly 3,000 runners who dropped out, about a 30% attrition rate.

And I was nearly one of them. Simply put, I ran the slowest race of my life, and I probably was not the only one. But I also ran the best marathon I've ever run. I've never actually wanted to quit a marathon before--maybe for a 30-second span or so, but like that lascivious feeling I get whenever I see Helen Mirren appear on a red carpet, it quickly subsides--but this morning I wanted to quit for more than half the race. Remember Mr. T's prediction for his bout with Balboa? He could have predicted the same thing for me this morning. But somehow I kept on going. And (here's the wrap-it-all-up-in-a-neat-little-bo-peep part) that's the lesson of the marathon, after all: it's about the journey and that no matter what befalls you, you have to keep moving forward. You cannot quit.

Damn, was it warm. It was not a PR day, it was a CPR day. It was a day when, by the 20-mile mark, you realize why they call this marathon Grandma's: because most of us were running as fast as one.

Me? I'd run seven previous marathons, all of which I'd done between 2:59 and 3:12. Today: 3:30 on the button. And I'm not even (that) disappointed. Because, when all you want to do for the final thirteen miles, which took me nearly two hours to run, is to quit and you don't, you can feel good about that.

It really was an awesome day, minus the 80-degree heat. Grandma's is a point-to-point course, so you take a school bus out 26 miles east of Duluth to the starting line. I sat next to Pete Hulke, a 52 year-old 3rd grade teacher from Marshfield, Wisconsin, who was a delightful fellow. That's another great thing about marathons. How would I have ever crossed paths with a Pete Hulke, were it not for this race? On eHarmony? And why would Pete and I be matched up? He's married and I'm straight...REALLY!

Anyway, Pete was a seven-time veteran of Grandma's so he immediately showed me to the section of Port-a-Johns that aren't too heavily trafficked. Then he introduced me to four of his running buddies. "Guys, this is John Walker."

'JOHN RUNNER' TO YOU, PETE! (And what is it with "Walker"? Everyone thinks I'm a New Zealand miler.)

Anyway, the race started.The course is gaw-geous! You run along a two-lane highway lined by evergreen pines the first few miles, then you've got Lake Superior on your left for about seven or eight miles. If I were a moose, I'd live here.

I started out strong. 6:24 first mile, 6:31 second. Then it went downhill faster than Chase Wright's outing at Fenway Park (my new standard for sudden and unforeseen disaster, replacing the previous standard, my blind date with Jenny Duick in the summer of '86). By Mile 11 I really thought about quitting. Really. I crossed the half-marathon mark in 1:32, which is respectable, not great, but by then I was being passed more often than a joint at a snowboarders' bonfire. Am I going backward? Am I hallucinating? I must be: I thought I just saw Al Franken cheering us on at about Mile 9 (wait, that really was him).

At more than a few moments between Miles 10 and 18 I felt as if I were toast. Hit the wall? The way Wile E. Coyote runs into rock formations. And yet, at every point where I desperately wanted to take not another step, where I'd hit my Moment of Duluth, well, something kept me going. And it wasn't friends or family cheering me on. Or cute signs. Or even the site of the two muscle-bound, shirtless Hans and Franz types mooning the crowd as if they were God's gift to steroids.

No. It was the realization that some times in life, too many times, in fact, the only thing you can count on is yourself. And you cannot let yourself down.

Certain moments keep you motivated. Every time I'd spot a "Medical Station Drop Out, 200 Feet" sign, an open invitation to succumb to self-indulgence (some might say self-preservation), I'd whisper to myself, "Fork that!" And then I spotted a bedsheet-sized sign that read, "Way To Go (An Ex-Girlfriend's Name), You're No. 1". And that motivated me, too. Maybe there was a lesson or two to be gleaned, as well. A lesson such as, When one reaches a certain age, they cannot expect to be a Flippy Cup champion one Saturday and a marathoner deluxe the next.

As slowly as I was running--as so many of us were running--I felt a sense of release. Time, or a good time, no longer mattered. Survival did. My marathon mantra became that of the Winter Warlock: "Put one foot in front of the other."

It was liberating. I'd never run a marathon with the regular joes. No elite runner, I, but finishing had never been the issue. Beating my previous time had. But now I was with the runners for whom the latter half of the marathon begins to feel acutely like you're reliving the Stations of the Cross. At one point I came across a female runner, about my age, in a yellow tank-top. She had been running well, but now was walking. And, unfortunately for her, she was walking on the opposite side of the street from the water station (the Grandma's volunteers at the water stations are the best, by the way). So I grabbed two waters and brought one over to her (what a nice boy). I felt like Simon of Judea. Or is it Mary Magdalene. One of the two.

For the next few miles I killed time (as well as my quadriceps muscles) by composing thoughts about this blog in my head (surely, somewhere G.A. was mind-melding with me and counter-composing comments). I tried to come up with funny lines, but the fatigue set in and I decided that should I finish the race, funnier quips would come (sadly, no).

By Mile 22, right before Lemon Drop Hill (whose reputation is much worse than its actual slope), I realized that I was going to make it. The lady in the yellow top, who had been walking-then-running with me for about five miles, began to fall back. I ran as slowly as I ever have, but I ran. I never stopped running.

With the help of a great woman from Des Moines, Kathy Hale, I was able to finish exactly at 3:30. Kathy reached me right at Mile 26 and urged me to pick it up so that I could come in under 3:30. The last-fifth of a mile was fast, or fast for me at this point, and though I missed the goal by one second, it was a good feeling to finish strong.

Mostly, though, it was a good feeling just to finish. And to experience a marathon from an entirely different perspective. Hey, nobody forces you to run a marathon, so you deserve no one's pity for attempting one. But if you do, and you feel yourself feeling as many of us did today, the battle becomes taking that next step, knowing that you have five, or ten, or even fifteen miles of next steps ahead of you before you will be able to relax again. That's a long time to have someone's elbow up against your throat. But if you can overcome the pain, if you can keep going when all you want to do is quit, a fantastic reward awaits you.

Free beer.