Country Music Marathon, Part II
OK, that took longer than I thought.
Anyway,it shouldn't have been any surprise to me that Nashville knows how to throw a party. Granted, my wife and I missed all the evening's festivities because we were just too damn exhausted to do anything but drive out to the Olive Garden for dinner and drinks, then go back to the room to sit up in bed and watch the Braves game on TV. I was out like a light by a quarter to nine, a half-empty beer going flat on the nightstand beside me.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I should write about the race.
Actually, I'll back up to the day before. The expo was at the convention center downtown, about a mile around the corner and up the hill from our hotel. We drove up there first, only to discover about halfway there that we had forgotten our confirmation sheets. We were pretty pissed at ourselves and each other until we realized that there wouldn't have been any place to park anyway; so when we got back to the room, we decided to walk back up. Not a bad decision. The walk was uphill, but was a good way to work out some nervous energy before trying to sleep that night. We were both worried when we walked into the convention center and saw all the people -- thousands of them -- going in and out of the expo; but despite the crowds, it was one of the quickest, most glitch-free packet pickups that I've ever done. We breezed through the expo, and back to the room to get some dinner and rest. I went to bed at 9:00 CST, 10:00 by my internal clock, and got my usual fitful pre-marathon 4 hours or so of sleep.
The next morning at 4:30, we left the hotel to walk the half-mile down the street to the Titans' stadium, where we would catch the shuttle to the start in Centennial park near Vanderbilt. We were among the early arrivals, and it was still dark when we got there, so the scene didn't look too crazy. But as the sun came up and we started moving toward our start corrals, I began to realize just how many people were there. Thirty thousand, the paper would say the next day. On the way to my corral, I used the porta-potty for what would turn out to be the last time. It was still an hour till the start.
That was a mistake. By 6:30, as I started to feel a little twinge in my bladder, I walked around the row of porta-potties and saw lines of 60 feet or more in front of each of them. OK, I thought, this is not optimal, but I can handle it. There will be porta-potties somewhere along the course, and it worse comes to worse ... well, you are wearing wicking shorts, and it is a marathon, and no one is going to smell very good at the finish line.
Such was my state of mind and body as I began my first out-of-town marathon. Once I started running, however I quickly saw that the discomfort was bearable, for a while anyway, and thus did not alter my stride. Then at around the 2-mile mark, I saw a row of porta-potties in a parking lot to my right. The stop took me 30 seconds. Problem solved. Time to get down to enjoying the race.
The first miles of a marathon are easy, as people try to hold back on their paces and save their energy for later when the running gets really tough. And as three times as many people were running the accompanying half-marathon as were doing the full 26.2, I wound up running in a cluster of mid-pack half-marathoners running 9:30 miles and telling some interesting stories. We went through some ritzy neighborhoods where people were sitting in their yards drinking beer and wine and eating cheese. All kinds of people of all nationalities were out in the adjoining neighborhoods. A large grassy lot backed by a line of trees provided an impromptu toilet for a few guys who apparently had hydrated even better than I had. At the next water station I was once again made aware of the enormity of the event, as I waded through sticky puddles of orange peels, bananas, and Accelerade. For a while I ran beside a large African-American man with a cleanly-shaved head. He was wearing a red shirt and a yellow half-marathon bib, and stood out among the hundreds of runners around me on the street for his sheer size -- about 6'4'' with arms as big as my legs. I found out later that he was Eddie George.
More later ....
Posted by MHB
at 9:20 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, 27 May 2007 10:23 PM EDT