marathon

1 day and 1 hour ago we started running. Before hand I had met up with few guys who were running as well. It was great to panic together with someone. Unfortunately we started running in different groups.

As the start of my morning predicted it was not THE marathon of my life. Yet again I started to wonder why I put myself through the pain and suffering and waste of time. By 25km I had to give up with my time goal and just concentrate on going on. By 30km I decided to stop. By 32km it was going to be my last marathon.

At the end, after the finishing line I had two friends waiting for me. On the way I had some other friends waiving for me. It felt great. They were jumping and shouting and congratulating. I started to feel quite good, even if annoyed with the missed time goal. And definitely sure that this was my last one.

I took the metro home to have a shower. I talked with my parents on the phone and they didn’t seem to think I had done too badly. Apparently being in the top 100women is good enough. At that point it wasn’t for me, not yet. Though I wasn’t ever going to do another marathon so what does it matter?

We met up again with my friends in a park for picnic. Later the other runners joined us with a bottle of champagne. It was starting to feel pretty good. We started to plan the next marathon – should it be Berlin or London or maybe New York or why not the one across Sahara. But we decided not to go for a run until on Wednesday, at least not do anything too long.

The sun made me forget about the time and I arrived to work 5min late, but they had saved me dinner. Our barman told all customers what I had done and surprisingly many of them had been running in the morning as well. The compliments and comments about slight insanity (I think I had been the fastest and was still standing and working) kept pouring down on me. A lady from the bar came to talk to me. She was a coach from LA and wanted me to get in contact with her. Apparently someone who can do what I did at my age has potential and even if she can’t run with me as we are on different continents – well she would hate to see me stop.

By 23h our barman gave me champagne – cos I deserved it. Sweet.

On my way home I started to feel pretty good. It wasn’t too bad after all. So what if I didn’t break that 3hours yet, I still have many marathons to go. After all, marathon runners are supposed to peak at around 30 and I am not quite there yet.

But today, I’ll take a day off.