Death Race Redux
April 14, 2008When I was driving into Toronto last Wednesday afternoon, cruising down the Gardiner, when I got to Windermere, I gasped when I noticed how far away downtown looked from there. Windermere was the turnaround point in the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront half-marathon I ran plodded last fall, you see. There’s no getting around it—it’s a bit of a hike (12k, actually) just to get to the half-way point. Then, yeah, you gotta turn around and go back. I seem to recall not having a feeling of elation at that point… I mean, it wasn’t exactly “Yay, I’m half-way done!” It was more “Sweet jayzuz, I gotta go all the way back, now!?”
A few days after the sight of that long run back downtown, my friend Laurie asked me if I’d run the H2Ofront half-marathon again this year, this time with her. Laurie sez she needs a goal race as a fire under her butt to keep running. (I don’t need such things, I’ve found. I actually enjoy running without anything more in mind than just the enjoyment of doing it. La la la la la, I float through life without goals!) I pause to consider… I think about the poor sleep and the broken door, the parched mouth and sandbag legs, the seemingly Rocky Mountain-sized overpasses on the way back downtown, the ferocious thigh muscle cramps and the fruitless searching for a Freezie afterward, and I say… “Okay. Count me in!”
