We're fast approaching race day - this Saturday, November 21! And it's time to get a little philosophical - please bear with me. Since I started posting on this blog back in August, Ray and I have tried to give a sense of what it's like to run a marathon, and to prepare for and run a fifty-mile race. But the truth is, we don't know what it's like to run a fifty-mile race. When I think ahead to Saturday, race day, it's just a big unknown we're sharing with you.
So I've done what Lance Armstrong tried to do when he first faced cancer - I hold onto numbers. I can tell you the number of miles I've run in my training, and how fast. I can tell you about my heart rate and average pace. I can even tell you how I expect to do on Saturday based on past performance and what I know about the race course and its elevation changes. I've done my research and I know my numbers.
I just don't know... what will happen.
Cancer patients and those who support them have a lot of unknowns - the biggest ones possible - and also a lot of numbers they can crunch. I've been thinking about some of the numbers Shauna has told me in our phone conversations. She is struggling with insurance companies, and she has become an expert in the number of doctor's visits and co-pays they've had, and the number of treatment sessions, and the numbers in dollar amounts that the doctors charge and the insurance companies offer (or refuse) to pay.
There are numbers I shudder to think about, like the number of times cancer patients get stuck with needles; the number of times their bodies have to undergo chemotherapy or radiation; the number of hours they spend waiting - for doctors, for results, for the nausea to go away; and the numbers that determine whether a treatment can go forward, and whether or not it is working - blood cell counts, for example.
And then, there are the numbers about Munda that I find myself writing as I describe him. He passed away on September 25, 2009. He was 52. At Munda's funeral, Keith Malonosky said that the numbers on a headstone aren't really important; what's important is the dash in between them, the life.
I can be proud of my numbers (some of them), but they're not what matters. Numbers are just a way of keeping track of what we think we know so that we don't think so much about what we really don't know. Numbers help us to not be so scared. But not really! People help us not to be so scared. What really counts are people, and helping people, and remembering people, and taking or having heart from those encounters and relationships. What's the value of 1 if it's just 1 person? Maybe a whole lot. Brad Paisley sings, "To the world, you're just another girl, but to me, you are the world."
I got to talk to my mom yesterday morning on the phone for the first time in weeks, and she asked me about the race. I haven't had a chance to talk with her much since she started a new job, and there's so much going on in her life and mine, as always. It was just great to hear that we were on the same page, even though we hadn't been in touch.
I talked with my sister Becky in Alaska, my dad, and two of my aunts, Shauna and Luck, too. Their questions and comments, and the questions and comments they pass on to me from other relatives and friends, show me that I do not face the unknown alone.
I think of Heavan, and Munda there ahead of us - maybe looking down and thinking that I am crazy to be doing this.
And fellow runners. The videos Ray and I created have gotten several supportive comments from fellow runners on Facebook; they remind me how supportive runners are of each other. Everyone has a story they run with. Here's someone whose story jumped out at me, for example (mainly because Ray sent it to me - thanks, Ray): This week the newspaper in Hagerstown, the Herald-Mail, is profiling JFK-50 runners; on Sunday their featured runner was 49-year-old local dairy farmer Dale Rhoderick, who has completed the race twenty-two times and will go for his 23rd this Saturday. Cancer took away his wife nineteen years ago, and he dedicated that year's race to her. This year, he'll run for the first time as a former dairy farmer; he just lost his farm. Click here to read the story.
And Ray - I wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for Ray. And I wouldn't be able to do it, either.
We're crazy runners! Through it all, we just keep running. In today's Wall Street Journal there is an article about people who have run hundreds and hundreds of marathons. "Three Germans, a Finn and a Japanese woman are known to have clocked more than 1,000 marathons apiece -- that is 26,200 miles, about 1,300 miles more than the circumference of the earth. The record holder, 74-year-old Horst Preisler, has run 1,636 marathons," the article says. Click here to read. (For the record, Ray has run 14 marathons in 5 states, and I've run 6 marathons in 4 states.)
One multi-marathon runner's personal doctor called him a "nut job" and a "marvel." But the truth is, runners are pretty neat people, and they're a great, supportive group to have around. I don't want to put it into numbers - you can't - but I have to include this quote: Larry Macon, a lawyer who will soon complete his 600th marathon, told the Wall Street Journal, "The jerk percentage among marathoners is just so much lower than the jerk percentage among lawyers."
And then there's the advice people who run ultra-marathons (any distance over 26.2 miles) give and get - that you must make "relentless forward progress no matter what." You just have to keep going, even when every fiber of you wants to stop.
The fact is, runners are a ready-made support group; they have to find a way to deal with that. And in life you really, really need that!
As for numbers? They're just what gets you into the club, what allows you to enjoy the camaraderie of people who know what they really mean.
