After four days in Chicago I got home and still we had no power with no end to the blackout in sight. The house was frozen solid. The fridge was bare. My daughter had been sent to her grandma’s to keep warm. But I had to strip down, make some soup on the stove (gas!) and head out to work. And we had less than a week to go to the Trenton ½.
But we made it. The race was in its first year, so still small and understandably disorganized (particularly in light of the fact that every cop and public works official who might have been scheduled to help with the event had been working around the clock for days cleaning up after Sandy). There were about 2,000 runners. Because Trenton is a bit of a shithole, the race organizers apparently hadn’t wanted to tell people they could park right by the race start in the lot adjacent to the state’s supermax prison. Instead they told everyone to park at the Sun Center Arena (doesn’t that have a nicer ring to it?) and then they’d have yellow school busses to take people to the start. But 2,000 people don’t easily fit into two yellow busses, and they’d already closed all the roads for the race, so the busses weren’t really able to get anywhere.
Suffice it to say, that the race did not start on time. And since it was 37 degrees out, standing at the starting line for an extra hour and twenty minutes was, frankly, awful. But once the race gun went off --at least I think it did; we couldn’t hear anything because the sound system had pooped out in the middle of “Eye of the Tiger” a half hour earlier-- things improved. First, I had Diane by my side. We stayed together for the first 7 miles, which was really fun. Then she sped on and I kept up the old, steady Holly pace. By mile 10, however, I felt like I still had some juice left in me, so I ran those last three miles like I was just heading out fresh for a 5k. It was amazing. The end of the race took us into the Trenton Thunder (local AAA baseball league) stadium for one lap of the field before we crossed the finish line. I ran that lap feeling like Usain Bolt, if not exactly looking like him.
My finishing time? 2:23:04 I’d shaved off nearly a half hour since my Philly run two months earlier! Diane finished in 2:18 --a fabulous first half for her, particularly considering her longest training run had been just over 8 miles. We had a crazy wait to get our bags and then get onto the bus to take us back to our car; in fact, the bus never came, so after forty-five minutes of sitting on the curb with 400 other runners, feeling the sweat freeze on our skin, we just decided to hoof it back to the Sun arena. It was a wise choice. We never saw the bus show up. Both of us were facing a serious need to use the port-o-potty, but we made it home in time and even stopped to pick up yummy lunch at Wholefoods on the way. We were truly satisfied. The course had woven through crappy neighborhoods and run-down “green” spaces, but we’d done it together, and had fun doing it.
Here are a few pics of me and Diane at the Trenton ½:
In the midst of it all, I’d overcome that ankle injury, too, and now, at the back of my mind, that voice whispering “triathlon” was getting louder.
Diane was already excited for her next race and talking about doing a full marathon at the first opportunity. She’d got the bug. That afternoon, after the Trenton half, I poked around on the Internet, discussed our options, and signed Diane and I up for a half marathon in Key West in January (oh, the decadence of that choice!). I even got us cheap tickets on Jet Blue and booked a hotel room, so we really couldn’t back out.
Having a new goal was great, but somehow it wasn’t enough. The next day I went back online and secretly signed myself up for my very first triathlon. It was in Red Bank, NJ in mid May, right after my spring semester would be done. It was a long way off, so I figured I still had plenty of time to train (or chicken out). At first I felt numb, then giddy, then numb again. I didn’t even mention it to Diane until a few days later. Fortunately she was thrilled and totally supportive from the start.
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