Only racers go to motel breakfasts at 6 a.m. Sundays; it has
to be funny to see us all come in, skinny legs and all
It was a good thing K and I had been to the Barrington Rec
Center the day before. No way in hell we could’ve found it before race time at
8 a.m. Sunday
Oh yes, the car’s dipstick is still showing full, not a
sliver lower than at the auto show at Woodstock
Ten minutes before the 8 a.m. start no one is standing under
the banner; we are among the first to line up, the fulls, the halfs, and the
10Ks – eventually the 10Ks are told to
split up and go about a football field away where at one point the starter asks
through the public address system if anyone in the 10K group can hear her. No
one says a word in reply. She asks the question again, slightly louder, and a
man in front (there are more than one hundred of them in the group) gingerly
raises his hand
After On Your Mark, Get Set, Go! we trundle off; eighty-four
marathoners, double that for halfs. K urges me to run ahead and I do, Go Dado! she
says with a “Boston” look in her eye
It’s quite cool at the start but not at the finish, which is
still as the Bayou. Along the way, few signs are out, not a lot of roadside
cheers. “Half-Marathoners Are Only Half-Crazy,” and in front of a church beyond
the twenty-mile mark, “Remember Why You’re Out Here!” (I couldn’t and stopped
and walked for a spell)
The best bit: Under the burning sun at the 16-mile mark,
with a hard-to-fathom 10.2 miles to go, I see along the roadside a row of
handmade wooden signlets with first names printed in black block letters. There’s
a slew of them and when I see the name LARRY I tell myself that they have been
placed there by the Nova Scotia Marathon organizers to honor the runners, which
certainly helps salve the sting of the motorist who flipped me the bird at the
9-mile mark in response to my smiling wave to him
At the 12 miles I’m making good time and begin to pace
ahead of a guy I’d been running with when the fella cries to me, “See you at
the hills!” “What hills?” I reply
Finally the finish line is in sight. More than four hours, twenty-five
minutes since that 8 a.m. start. I’ll have finished six of eight marathons, but
this will be my slowest. K is there, though, as I manage a final kick. During
the last 400 meters I make my best time of the race. There’s a medal, chocolate
mile and a sweaty hug from K
She’d done OK in the half! Ran all the way, that’s my girl!
Before heading on to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and the ferry to
Portland (an 11-hour trip with 5,000 Muzakian versions of “Farewell to Nova
Scotia.” Word of caution: Bring earplugs!) K and I head back for an afternoon
in Shelburne, our new favorite place, where on a fence-top I see it. The
steely-eyed lobsterman, his wooden arms wheeling a mile a minute in the
never-let-up breeze, where ten years ago the
ultimately unwatchable “Scarlett Letter” starring Demi Moore was being filmed, the locals never tire of telling us, there are two lobster pots in the
back of my hero’s whirligig skiff, and K and I are hooked, we later learn there
is a whirligig festival in Shelburne every year and standing
before the work-obsessed face of the lobsterdude we make our pledge to come
back to this place, not to run a marathon, but to conceive, design and build
our own whirligigs and fly them in the 16th annual festival in
Shelburne, Nova Scotia, in September 2015!
Next: Running for Your Life: When Training Isn’t the Goal
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