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racing through my life
February 15, 2006
i have about four copies of the marathon course printed out and strewn everywhere. i feel like the guy in memento, finding documentation everywhere, clues to be remembered and considered. kitchen counter. desk at work. work table behind desk at work. bedside table.
some have been printed out at work, costing the taxpayers of the state of texas about one thousandth of one cent each. sometimes i get distracted after i print one, looking at the copy i already have packed with my lunch, and the new one gets left on the printer. i would not be surprised if a dentist received a board order with instructions for compliance that included a map of the course. maybe more than one. some dim-witted dentist will no doubt pay her $5,000 fine, take 15 hours of continuing education in endodontics, then attempt to run 26.2 miles, terrified of having her license revoked for non-compliance.
i look over the map, and i plan, but as i run through the course in my head, and as i've actually run through parts of it, i find myself amidst memories. i've come to believe that the course is, in a way, mine, like i'll be running through bits of my life.
writing this, i have to print out yet another copy of the map. please stand by.
ok. i do have to admit, though it dampens the sentimental impact, that i have little memories of the first six miles of the course. at all. it is extreme north austin, where i try not to go unless i have to.
at around six miles in, though, we run by the last place my grandmother lived when we moved her to austin, after my grandfather died. sunday, i will run by it for selfish reasons, but 15 years ago, i couldn't, didn't make the time to go there enough. i don't think i could even remember how to get to her small apartment. now it's just a reminder of my selfishness. it would have been something if she were out there on sunday morning. there's no way she would have missed it, rain or shine. i keep hoping that maybe i'll just catch something out of the corner of my eye...
a mile later, we run close to where the race started last year, katie, janay, tiffany and i running together in the half-marathon, janay telling me to slow the hell down, something i should have listened to. at shortly past mile nine (three miles in last year) is the point at which tiffany's asthma forced her to drop back. janay stayed with her, and katie and i plowed ahead. katie is the faster runner, and our pace crept up slowly.
miles 11 and 12, running on shoal creek and the long stretch of great northern that i had always dreaded. i've run it both ways, and either way, it drains me of my will to live. last year, near the end of the stretch, at mile seven of that race, with katie and i running up to a minute faster per mile than we, ok, i, should have, janay caught up to us, a feat that still amazes me. around the same time, i started my long tailspin.
katie and janay finished well ahead of me, with pr's (personal records). tiffany has since kicked all the half-marathon ass, and will be out there Sunday.
luckily, this year, my good friend shannon will be working the water stop at mile 12, right before the hell of great northern. she's agreed to pass me some gu, though she insists that it be contained. she calls herself a "friend," but can't just hold a gooey glop of the stuff in her hand or pocket for a couple of hours for me. nice.
morgan and amanda's house is on the corner of north loop and aurora, a nice white house with, literally, a white picket fence. morgan has pledged to be out there "with a bag of rocks." i hate that their newborn daughter, madeleine, is already two months old, but running past may be the first time i see her. i'm considering running with the pink gift bag with the yellow plush ducky on it, that holds the little pink air jordan booties in it. the gift has been waiting patiently in my car since she was born.
north loop becomes 53rd street. just a couple of blocks from where margo and i lived, up the street we walked on so many times. she would always want to take a walk right after dinner. i never really wanted to, but did. we'd hold hands. i miss them now, and i miss her.
51st leads us to duval, and a couple of miles down, the point of true crisis in last year's half marathon, where i realized i had failed. i had to begin alternating running and walking at about mile nine, but by mile 11, both thighs and both calves were cramping with every step. i was dehydrated, and wheezing. many of my friends had wagered some money on me, all to go to an education fund for the little girl of a friend who had died just a few weeks earlier. i finished, but it was over a mile of self-hatred and doubt and newfound fear that it took months to shake.
coming out of the ut campus, where i spent eight years in undergrad and law school. too many memories to process, but most are about her. past the gym where i learned to play basketball, the first sport that really made a difference in my life.
across martin luther king blvd. more career memories two blocks up to my right, schulz's beer garden to my left, where the half-marathon ended last year, with me lurching across the finish, the seeming failure complete. a medal was handed to me, and i handed it to a kid standing near the finish, told him to run one someday. i spent the next 15 minutes unable to find my friends, largely because i couldn't stand up, and i couldn't see. i got myself over behind the medical tent, and sat down, assuming that if something happened, someone would find me there, and it wouldn't be so far to drag my body.
later, at the suggestion of friends, and a bashful request, the marathon organizers happily gave me a new finishers medal, that i finally appreciated. and my friends gave me kind words, and made their donations anyway.
but sunday, there's more to run. across 15th street, and then into one of the most talked-about, most dreaded parts of the course - the long uphill to the turn at 12th street.
running it last sunday, i was 18 again, walking out of one of the older parking garages, up the hill, up to my job at the insurance board's annex on 11th street, in the afternoons during school, in the morning during summers. i listened to old genesis, sting, the police, boston, debbie gibson. i mean... debbie harry. or something. as i said, i was 18.
the course turns right at 12th, the old main insurance building to the left. i used to wait everyday for my mother to get off work. i'd play on on the bar that served as an unused bike rack, and on the short wall and the two huge blocks of granite that the flagpoles sat on. i remember the day it was all covered in a fine, glassy, white ash, fallout from a volcano in mexico, hundreds and hundreds of miles away. on some days, i helped the security guards fold the flags after they came down, the first small fold, then the alternating triangles, with the final fold and tuck.
i remembered spending so many vacation days inside the building, having the run of it, talking to the guys in the supply room, buying ice cream sandwiches from the coffeeshop that was run by a blind woman. i remember my first summer jobs there.
through the old iron gates into the capitol grounds. memories of being amazed at how tame the squirrels were. around the north side of the pink granite building. talking to the old guys, in their seventies and eighties, who sat in lawn chairs out in the grass every day.
i can give the entire capitol tour by memory now, with the exception of the new underground labrynthian structure. i can explain the details and history behind the paintings - there's "deaf" smith behind the tree, his hand cupped to his ear listening to a wounded santa anna surrender to sam houston at the battle of san jacinto. there, in both the great epic painting of the battle at san jacinto and another of the battle of the alamo, there's an almost-hidden, frail spectre, an image of the artist's son, who had died of some horrible disease.
i used to annoy the tour guides. "why is the roof-top spire over the west wing crooked?" "how thick are the floors?" "when were the elevators installed?"
passing by the west side and into the south side of the building, i look down one of the course's gifts, the long, straight shot down congress avenue towards the river.
countless times, i've run from my apartment, up congress to the capitol, turned around, and headed back down the slow, steady downhill. i run a block, then sprint the next, full blast, hips forward, back straight, head up, quick, long strides, strong but loose, until just the balls of my feet brush the ground.
turning onto 2nd street, i'm in my neighborhood, a block from the state office building i worked in through college, a couple of blocks from the coffeeshop, from the bars where i sat with a notebook, ipod and beer two years ago, to begin writing again.
down cesar chavez, where i've run and rode bikes since high school, except on sunday, i'll get to run the ramp under the mopac expressway, up to the Run-Tex Store for Psychotic Running People. the green sign on top this week says, "think fast."
we turn, come down the another ramp back onto cesar chavez again, mile 24, mile 25, up the slight incline that i've always had a little mental problem with. but when i get there sunday, i'll see it for the last, insignificant bump that it is.
the turn onto the south first bridge, and the view of south austin that opens up. the municipal auditorium, where i was a floor supervisor for an ozzy osbourne concert, went to gun shows and boat shows and car shows as a kid, scout-a-rama, my high school graduation. i recall the lonely black and white photo of the interior, filled with white linen-covered tables, ready to receive president kennedy on november 23, a dinner that would never happen. now, the auditorium is gutted for a complete rebuild, with a pair of saturnian rings standing free, with no planet in the center to hold them there.
auditorium shores, and all the concerts i've seen there - countless artists in the days of aquafest - stevie ray vaughan, roy orbison. suffering through billy ray cyrus. i broke up with that girl very shortly thereafter.
the last turn, the last stretch, onto riverside drive, a stretch where i've finished quite a few races, now. i will remember and try to recreate all of those glorious sprints to the finish, but none will ever have been like this.
there will be more marathons, in other cities around the country, hopefully around the world. but a friend told me that my first one should be here, in my hometown, and she was right. there, on riverside, on sunday, will be a new landmark in my memories of this city and my life - a line, marking the end of a new memory that will not only join, but encompass and contain, and in some way, renew, all these others.
Posted by Rob at February 15, 2006 01:22 AM
Comments
Good Luck Rob. We'll be there cheering for you. Make sure you wear them bright red shoes so we can see you from down the block.
Posted by: Morgan at February 15, 2006 08:38 AM
You just made me cry at work.
We are gonna kick ass on Sunday.
Posted by: holly at February 16, 2006 09:58 AM