Saigon
24-10-09
A few minutes ago I officially withdrew from the NYC marathon. I could cry right now if I concentrated hard enough.
I should have clicked the ‘cancel my entry’ button a week or more ago once it became so painfully obvious that I wouldn’t be running well enough to catch one of those famous New York Yellow Cabs on November 1. The airline reservations were already cancelled, after all.
Several times over the past week I logged onto the organizer’s website and let my mouse hover over the cancellation button. I could not bring myself to make the final click. It seemed such an irreversible decision. Technically, it is an irreversible decision. Warning signs scream in bold Times New Roman typeface that once cancel I cannot be reinstated to the NYC ING 2009 Marathon.
It is not the shouted warnings from an impersonal computer screen that put me off. I know this has to happen. Whether the button was clicked last week, yesterday or today, it makes no difference. But some not quite rational part of me feels as if I will be saying goodbye forever to one of the houses I grew up in or getting on a plane at the end of an adventurous holiday that I know deep down in my reptilian brain will never be repeated. This is why I hesitate.
The hedonist and selfish part of me hesitates too because when I click this button I will know with certainty that I will miss another adventure, a good party or two and a chance to visit friends and family along the eastern seaboard. I know I could still make the trip but it would seem so pointless and probably frustrating to be in or near New York and not run in that race.
Lastly, I don’t want to click this button because it feels like I’ll be accepting failure or defeat. I am a very goal oriented person. I don’t mind losing. ‘Shit happens’, as one famous runner said. But I detest failure when I think that I didn’t do the hard yards somewhere along the way. It’s irrational, but I feel that there will be failure lurking about when I click that button.
All these emotions fire across my synapses in milliseconds. About the time it takes not to press a mouse button. I don’t dwell on it for too long. I just close the tab on my browser, move on to some other important work or a meeting, and postpone the inevitable decision.
But today I actually clicked the button and it does hit me hard. The sense of irreversible permanence is there, like super gluing a broken pair of eyeglasses back together: I had only one chance to get it right and I screwed it up. Glue has now melted the lenses.
The regret for an adventure missed nags at me, like that Grateful Dead concert I missed because I did the ‘right thing’ and stayed at school to write a term paper. People talked about the concert for years to come. Within months I had already forgotten what I wrote about or even what class the paper was for. And Jerry Garcia is dead now.
I can taste the failure. It has the taste of metal and blood.
But as fast and hard as these thoughts hit me the next come to redeem me. There are many more of them and they are stronger.
I consider how much I have honestly enjoyed the training. Not just the running, which at times was a pain in the ass, but also getting to that blank, almost brain-dead mind state that suddenly allows me to dream while awake. Taking the time along the way to write some of that down is certainly more permanent than clicking a cancellation button.
I’ll miss the trip and the parties and the visits with friends but the good news is that I get an automatic slot for next year’s race. So I am not really missing out on anything. Just postponing it for a year.
I have a sense of accomplishment already, knowing as of a few weeks ago, that I was ready to run a full marathon, well ahead of schedule. After all, I did run 582 kilometers (361 miles) since I started training in mid June. Surely that did not go to waste. I know it’s premature to say this, but marathon distances don’t scare me anymore.
I don’t presume to know the things that Buddha did; write more eloquently than Robert Frost or any of the many other prophets, philosophers, poets or songwriters who have said something similar. However, those that say it is the road and not the destination that is most important are telling some truth. I understand that better now. Even if I did not make it to the destination (this time) at least I got to travel along the road. A sprained ankle and missing one long run through New York City can’t take that away.
So that’s the end of this story. Not exactly the ‘Finish’ I had hoped for but a finish nonetheless. I think I’ll get back to work now but before I do that, I am going to see if its not too late sign up for the 2009 Angkor Wat half marathon on December 6. That one is a lot of fun.
I hope to be ‘good to go’ by then.
