Mile Markers

It is my birthday again, and this event has long since slipped away from childhood exuberance to a more melancholy reflection of that parallel universe where my closet has less triathlon gear. Birthdays ricochet you back into endless introspection more than anything save weddings; both are celebrations of an old set of possibilities being replaced with new hopes. To have been to both in the past week is a bit like wandering through Versailles and staring into the infinity of mirrors on opposites sides of its rooms.

It is a great week for a long run.

So consider yourself fortunate that we are going far this weekend; for some it will be the last long run before the marathon. There is a natural anxiety for the final long training run both in preparation the night before and afterwards when pondering “is this all there is?” It is easy to worry about the distance, to have the feeling that you have to do at least 20 miles, but the real truth is that the last long run is only a fraction of the total training volume during the course of the season, a part of the program but only a small one. Several books advocate your last long run should be determined by time not distance, and in Europe they tend to do 30k ~ 18.3 miles, which is also the same distance I did when I did my best.

What I am trying to say is the last long run is an important to a marathon as a wedding is to a marriage. Everyone wants a great wedding, the magic day captured by photographs and toasts, but from what I have seen as an outsider to marriages is that they aren’t defined by their celebrations, but by their ability to handle the unexpected at two o’clock in the morning or some random Tuesday. Humor, good dance moves, general agreement about money, kids, and religion, and endless patience help.

The wedding I went to was a collection of friends from my first marathon season in 1999. It is symbol of my aging (like my hair gently frosting) that my friends’ weddings have shifted from production numbers fueled by parents with baseball team number of groomsmen and bridesmaids to quieter celebrations for the participants. Many years out from school we now have other groups of friends besides our classmates, but instead of being a larger celebration it has become harder and harder to get these friends from different parts of our lives together.

It had been a long time since the old marathon group was together and it was great to see everyone again. Under a lazy Los Altos sun we huddled around tables covered with jumbo shrimp, baked Brie, egg rolls and glasses of wine and talked about the time since we last met. There were children – one making his debut in a blue sailor outfit and the others now while looking more like their parents have started to develop their own personalities that will please and annoy their parents for years. We talked about new jobs and trips to Germany. We talked about half marathons, the c# programming language, and the TV show “Project Runway.” We enjoyed the wine.

The bride looked beautiful in a white dress that was convenient enough for her to float through reception and chat with everyone. MP3’s off of a laptop provided the background music, while toasts from her cousins from Bakersfield provided the laughter.

It was a great time to relax.

On our running calendars we have our athletic schedule, but in either Outlook or a daily planner, we have life’s mile markers. For most of these we experience the same emotions of last long runs – the dreaded anticipation and the wondering if that is all that there is. But on the occasional lazy summer day, all that is there winds up being just wonderful.