March 3, 1979. Cindy,
my bride of less than two years kissed me for good luck as I ventured out into
the streets of Gainesville, Florida to tackle my very first marathon.
December 9, 2012.
Cindy, my wife of over 35 years gave me a congratulatory kiss moments
after I crossed the finish line in Honolulu, Hawaii as I finished my 200th
marathon.
It’s been a great run, literally and figuratively. I’ve been fortunate to have run the fabled
Boston Marathon twelve times. I’ve run
through the Brandenburg Gate on my way to finishing the Berlin Marathon. I’ve run my all-time favorite marathon, the
Atlanta Marathon (the Thanksgiving Day version; sadly, it no longer exists) 27
times. I feel blessed to have completed
every marathon I’ve ever started. I ran
10 Shamrock Marathons (Virginia Beach, Virginia), as much a reason to visit my
parents as a reason to run a marathon. I
was Master’s Champion at the Vulcan Marathon (Birmingham, Alabama). Twice.
I’ve lost track of how many inaugural marathons I’ve run (some of them
didn’t survive, while others have flourished).
I ran New York City and Chicago when the field was only (only!) 20,000
runners.
I set my sights on the 2012 Honolulu Marathon as my 200th
marathon as early as 2010. In late 2011
I realized I would have to run an aggressive schedule of marathons in 2012 in
order to complete #200 on December 9. To
begin the year I ran 11 marathons in a 13-week window. I optimistically registered for the Honolulu
Marathon early in the year, and was lucky enough to get an early-bird
registration of only $40. The trip to Honolulu
was going to be a surprise 35-year wedding anniversary present (which she would
find out about on June 18) for Cindy and I.
Virtually everyone I knew was aware of the impending trip; in fact I
wrote about it in my running club’s quarterly newsletter, a monthly on-line
column I write for a running magazine and on my running club’s Facebook
site. In all instances I would mention
‘it’s a surprise wedding anniversary trip for Cindy so don’t mention it.’ No one did.
‘But Scott, you said it
was going to be a surprise! What if
Cindy read about it and found out?’
I appreciate your concern, but if there’s one thing I’ve come
to realize it’s that Cindy doesn’t read much of what I write. Granted, she did read my first
book…two-and-a-half years after it was published. But I knew there was no way she would read
anything I wrote in 2012 in
2012. I was absolutely right. When Cindy learned about the trip on our
anniversary it came as a complete surprise, although in my circle of friends it
had been common knowledge for well over six months.
You may be wondering why I chose Honolulu for #200? My dad, an officer in the U.S. Navy was
stationed in Pearl Harbor from 1967 – 1970, and in all honesty it was the best
assignment my dad—and our family ever had.
I learned to play golf in Hawaii (thank you Navy-Marine Golf
Course). I was in the inaugural class of
Moanalua Intermediate School in Hawaii (go Mustangs!). Our family lived in the greatest military
housing in Hawaii (Radford Terrace). Hawaii 5-0 (the Jack Lord version) and Tora! Tora! Tora! were filmed in Hawaii
while we were stationed there. I learned
to walk barefoot—everywhere and eat
Li Hing Mui (salty dried plums soaked in salt, sugar and licorice—pretty
frightening, huh?) in Hawaii. I kissed a
girl for the very first time in Hawaii.
So over 42 years later I returned to the scene of the best
assignment our family ever had. The
Thursday before the race Cindy and I endured a 10-hour flight (thankfully, direct from Atlanta to Honolulu) and
upon landing on the island of Oahu Cindy immediately looked for a restroom in
the terminal. I told her to look for a
door with ‘wahine’ (‘woman’ in Hawaiian) on it.
Oddly, I hadn’t spoken or even remotely thought of that word in 42
years.
We then rented our Ford Mustang (a red convertible!) and drove
in Honolulu rush hour traffic (wow—it wasn’t anything like that 42 years ago!)
to our hotel. The next morning (Friday)
we went to the Honolulu Marathon Expo, which was like any other with one major
difference: virtually everyone was Japanese.
I was a definite and dare I say distinct
minority. Cindy decided to enter the 10K
race walk to be held in conjunction with the marathon. Her entry fee? $70!
(So much for the money-saving early-bird marathon registration!) I figured it was worth it: Cindy would enjoy
a walking tour of Waikiki and since both our races shared the same finish line,
she would be there to see me as I completed marathon #200.
We went to the pre-race luau that night where—for the
‘bargain’ early-bird fee of $54 each—had
a meal eerily reminiscent of the lunches I ate at Moanalua Intermediate many
years ago. The entertainment? The good news: It was exactly what the
audience wanted. The bad news: The
audience was predominately Japanese, and their idea and my idea of
entertainment are worlds apart. (The
host? Remember the ‘lounge lizard’
entertainer Bill Murray portrayed on the old Saturday Night Lives? His
brother.)
After the luau we stayed on the beach to watch the Pearl
Harbor Memorial Parade (it happened to be December 7, which I haven’t mentioned
yet). The highlight of the parade was
seeing the Pearl Harbor survivors—all of them heroes and all of them beaming with
pride. The lowlight? A Japanese woman in her 40’s asking me what
the parade was for. Me: To honor Pearl
Harbor. Her: What happened at Pearl
Harbor. Me: It was attacked on this day
71 years ago. Her: Attacked?
By whom? (At least her grammar was good.) Me: The
Japanese! (I couldn’t help it; I
stayed PC as long as I could.)
Saturday we took a drive to the north shore and encountered
considerable traffic on the two-lane as there was a surfing competition going
on at the infamous Banzai Pipeline. We
had a great lunch at the artsy-hippie village of Haleiwa, vowing to return
later during our vacation when we had more time (translation: when I didn’t
have to get back to the hotel to rest up for the marathon). Once we got back to the room, I laid out my
running gear and noticed the screen of my chronograph was blank; the battery
had apparently died. Cindy and I made a
quick trip to a drug store at the Ala Moana Mall where I bought a battery and
borrowed a watch tool (from the counter clerk) and a pair of reading glasses
(right off the rack) and replaced the battery.
The chronograph was as good as new, and after setting a 3:00 a.m.
wake-up call (the race would start at 5:00 a.m. the next morning), I was fast
asleep by 9:00 p.m. Cindy wasn’t far
behind.
Race morning I walked to the starting line (a mere 1/3 mile
from our hotel) where I lined up in the middle of the ‘three-to-four hour’
corral. A fantastic fireworks display
began minutes before the start of the race; in fact the fireworks were still lighting
up the sky (and waking up the locals and any tourists who weren’t in town to
run, which fortunately for the local Tourism Board couldn’t have been very
many) when the marathon began. As I was
watched the fireworks I felt a lump in my throat: partially because I knew how
much Cindy enjoyed fireworks (and they really
were amazing) and she was missing them as her race walk didn’t start until
5:25 and partially because I knew it was signaling the start of my very last
marathon. Yes, #200 was going to be my
finale. My swan song. My farewell.
Sayonora (for my Japanese readers).
Aloha.
I started my chronograph as I crossed the starting line and
spent the next hour or so dodging other runners, and by ‘other runners’ I mean
a good many of the Japanese runners who were stopping here, there and literally
everywhere to take photographs of the
Christmas lights of Waikiki Beach, the historic landmarks of Honolulu and last
but not least of each other. The aid stations posed another problem: in the
dark the white paper cups discarded on the road looked a lot like the white
traffic reflectors, so I made every humanly effort I could muster to avoid
stepping on anything white. All I wanted
from this marathon was to finish: time was irrelevant. I couldn’t afford to twist an ankle, trip and
fall or entangle myself with another runner—anything that would jeopardize me
finding that pot of gold at the end of my final 26.2-mile long rainbow.
Once daylight arrived (two hours into the race) I found the
course much easier to navigate. I could
see the reflectors in the road. The
crowd had thinned out. The temperature
had only risen seven or eight degrees (keep in mind, however that the
temperature at the start of the race was 70 degrees so by now things were
getting pretty toasty). With every nine
(Ten? Eleven?) minutes another mile
could be checked off.
Then the unthinkable happened.
I saw a life-size Scooby-Doo (who happens to star in my grandson
Krischan’s FAVORITE cartoon) and I knew I just had to have a photo of the two of us. So on the only out-and-back section of the
entire course I cut through the crowd running in the opposite direction (Ruh Roh), took my cell phone out of my
waistband (I would later use it to call Cindy when I had one mile left in the
marathon) and asked an obliging elderly Japanese gentleman if he would take a
photo of my pal Scooby and I (if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em). This two-minute drama made me realize two
things: (1) I am no longer in any way, shape or form the serious marathoner I
used to be and (2) I am now more a grandfather than I am a runner. Not that there’s anything wrong with either
or those revelations.
Almost four-and-a-half hours after the firework display
signaling the start of the marathon, I had one mile left and called Cindy. She would be on the right side of the road
just before the finish line…which is exactly where I later found her as I was
duking it out with a Japanese man dressed in a white swan costume, complete
with a two-foot long neck with a tiny swan head on top.
As I approached the finish line I wondered why I wasn’t
getting a lump in my throat…or sensing that special feeling of pride and
accomplishment I normally have when I’m about to finish a marathon. The only thing I felt was anxious; anxious to
get it over with.
After completing lifetime marathon #200 (the time is totally
irrelevant; better to focus on the 100% marathon completion rate!) I met up
with Cindy who gave me a congratulatory hug and kiss and asked me how it felt
to finish my final marathon. I told her
two things: I was relieved to be at the end of my 34-year journey, and
embarrassed I had been duking it out with a guy dressed as a swan for the final
eight miles of it. Cindy said I would be
more embarrassed if I had seen some
of the other runners who finished in front of me.
Sometimes fate has a funny way of telling you when your time
is up.
Less than 30 minutes after finishing the Honolulu Marathon,
the face on my chronograph was blank once again.
Like I said, sometimes fate has a funny way of telling you
when your time is up.
Marathons are no longer fun.
I can no longer run marathons without pain. Sure, in the old days I didn’t mind some good
old-fashioned self-inflicted pain—the
kind of pain you can only get from pushing yourself to your anaerobic
threshold. But the kind of pain I had
been experiencing in marathons wasn’t that kind of pain. It was the kind of pain that was telling me
I shouldn’t be running 26.2 miles any more.
Truth be known I knew it over a year ago, but I’ve always been good at
lying to myself as well as being a ‘numbers guy’ and I found 200 to be a nice
round number. And from what I can tell,
my body and (believe it or not) my mind had been telling me that 200 would
signal the end of the (marathon) road.
And I’m good with that.
For the rest of the week we enjoyed the sights and sounds of
Oahu. Pearl Harbor. Punchbowl Cemetery. Diamondhead.
We celebrated my 58th birthday the day after the
marathon. We returned to Haleiwa (we had
more time to spend this time) and the Banzai Pipeline (when there was no
surfing competition). We drove to the
northeast side of the island and watched the windsurfers at Kane’ohe Bay. We took a trip to the Navy-Marine Golf
Course, Moanalua Intermediate and Radford Terrace—for old times’ sake. We took a dolphin-watching/snorkeling cruise
along the southwestern shores of Oahu.
We ate Li Hing Mui seeds (yes, we). We celebrated 35 years of marriage. We also celebrated the end of my 34-year
marathon career.
March 3, 1979. Cindy,
my bride of less than two years kissed me for good luck as I ventured out into
the streets of Gainesville, Florida to tackle my very first marathon.
December 9, 2012.
Cindy, my wife of over 35 years gave me a congratulatory kiss moments
after I crossed the finish line in Honolulu, Hawaii as I finished my 200th
marathon.
It was only fitting that Cindy—who has been with me every step
of the way, was there for the first and last steps of my marathon career.
Sometimes fate has just
the right way of telling you when your time is up.
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