Saturday, March 17, 2018

St Patrick's Day 5k

You can only be where you are.

That isn't right. You can only start from where you are. Is that better? A Saturday morning, nervous in the cold, laughing, jumping up and down, waiting for the gun. Wishing for a jacket. Glad I left my jacket in the truck. Looking forward to the reward of my jacket at the end, and then the gun. The gun goes off and we all start to run. My breath is even and steady. My heart is pounding, though. There is panic in this, but it is controlled panic. I look at painted stripes on the street, cracks in the pavement. I think about whether this road is made of asphalt or cement. I smile at strangers who are waving at me. I pause for a tiny paper cup of beer, which I knock back like a shot and I am running again, telling myself not to look at my pace, it doesn't matter how fast I am going, it will never be fast enough, so don't look. I run through the sounds and smells of the street. People whistling, yelling, laughing. Someone yells my name and I yell back, high and thin, my voice giving away how hard I am working. I laugh anyway. The wheezing of my lungs remind me of a blacksmith's bellows, but instead of coal smoke I am smelling a thick greasy fried onion smell and I try not to breathe it in while also running faster to get through it sooner, and my lungs burn. My spit feels thick in my mouth.

The parade of runners turns back on itself and now we are running alongside the people behind us, calling encouragement back and forth. Halfway. We are past halfway. I am measuring my energy, dealing out little bursts, a steady stream, enough to get me back without puking. Just barely. Maybe. Hoping I calibrated it properly, hoping I have enough with me to get back without puking. Puking becomes the foremost thing in my mind as the finish line comes into view, and I speed up too soon. It's exhilarating, though, and I don't slow down. My stomach feels like the top of it will twist off and I am sure I will puke now, and I slow down and think I slowed down too late, I will puke anyway. I think about what I've eaten and think I haven't had enough liquid. It will be hard to puke. It will slow me down even more, so I ease it back a little more, feeling like lead, feeling like a snail. It feels like going backward, giving up that speed. I remind myself that I can only start from where I am, that I can't magically make speed happen, that this is part of a process. My stomach lurches, but more softly, and the top untwists, and I am gasping air that burns my throat and sweat is tickling my neck. Runners around me are shiny with sweat. The guy ahead of me is bigger than me, and I put him behind me. Middle of the pack. Solid. I want to stop and I want to never stop. I want to keep running through the clot of people blocking the road behind the finish line. I cross the mats and my legs are stopping, but my lungs are still wheezing and I remember running past a girl sitting on the curb with a white face, and someone saying Albuterol, inhaler, forgot it, doctor, and sweat drips off my chin while someone says my name and I am raising my hand for a shaky high five.

Later, there will be a diner counter and a carafe of mimosas and a breakfast burrito. I will squeeze the little paper cups of sour cream, salsa, and guacamole down the length of my burrito, smearing the colors together and spearing fried potatoes with my fork. The conversation will be life, and love, and voodoo. I will talk about fleeing my dad's house to go run in the woods with my dog. I will leave out the wet shit stains in the carpet and the sob that surprised me in my throat and made me leave without taking out the trash, barely contained panic masked by a whirlwind of efficiency. I will leave out promising myself that I could cry in the woods, but not now, and how the sob stayed with me while I ran with the dog until the woods made me forget about crying.