Running on Empty

I’ve never run a marathon but I have competed in a half marathon, a 15 K and more 10 Ks than I can count. I was overweight and out of shape when I ran the half marathon. I didn’t win the event but I didn’t finish last either, well at least not dead last.

Oklahoma City inaugurated a yearly marathon event several years ago to commemorate the heroism and sacrifice of the people of our City, and others that lent helping hands during the aftermath of the Oklahoma City Bombing. Before that there was only the yearly running of the Jim Thorpe Half Marathon around Lake Overholser.

I ran track in junior high and kept up the practice through most of my life. Even so, I never ran a 10 K until the oil crash of the eighties when my little oil company went belly up. It was a strange time in my life. I had a bloated body and a deflated ego. I needed something to regain my self esteem and somehow decided that running was the ticket. Since I was too fat to run I began walking laps through the house. Soon I was jogging through the neighborhood at what I thought was a healthy clip. Feeling better than I had in years I entered my first 10 K.

To the uninitiated 10 K is short for ten kilometers, a distance of six-point-two miles. My first was the Red Bud, a yearly Oklahoma City running event that recently celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. I finished the distance in less than sixty minutes and I was hooked.

It was during my first 10 K that I learned I wasn’t the only busted oilie that had turned to jogging as therapy. Hell! Half the oil community was competing, and finding so many kindred spirits only bolstered my desire to continue running.

Many events followed but somewhere along the line I quit training and did nothing as my weight ballooned back up to one-eighty-five. I had made excuses for the past three Jim Thorpe’s and decided that I couldn’t live with myself another year without at least attempting the distance of a bit more than thirteen miles.

I arrived for the event late and unregistered. Only the convincing of some of my oilie brethren got me registered and I was still filling out papers when the starter pistol fired. It didn’t matter because I hadn’t come to win, only to compete and prove to myself that I still had the goods, even if they had shrunken slightly.

Months had passed since I had entered an event and word began trickling down through my group of friends. Amazingly, many waited on me, or dropped back in the pack to pat me on the back and offer encouragement. Before long I felt like a fat Forrest Gump, surrounded by friends determined that they were going to will me to finish the race.

Somewhere near the halfway mark I convinced my friends both male and female to run their race and that I would run mine. One by one they broke away, disappearing into the distance, leaving me alone in a pack of twenty or so very slow runners. It was then that I realized that I desperately needed to go to the bathroom.
Lake Overholser is a City Park and I soon spotted a bathroom. Breaking from the pack I headed straight for it. When I finished my business there were no runners around and I was, I realized, really bringing up the rear.

I somehow continued trudging forward, although I was already spent. A Seven-Eleven convenience store marked the three-quarter mark. Having a few dollar bills stashed in my shorts I stopped for a cold drink but once inside I settled on an ice cold Coors instead.

“Why not?” I told the clerk. “I’m so far behind that I can do no better than last anyway.”

“No way,” the pretty cashier told me. “At least ten runners just left here. They were all drinking beer.”

My dim hopes suddenly bolstered I slammed the Coors, gave the pretty girl a confident wink and hurried out the door. The potty and beer breaks were what I needed. I soon saw a group of runners ahead of me and could tell that if I continued my pace I would catch them before the finish line. With that goal in mind I began moving at a rate I soon realized I couldn’t maintain.

Most of the runners ahead of me continued their pace and when I reached the last turn before the finish line there was only one runner still ahead of me. I was out of shape but I wasn’t particularly old at the time. The runner in front of me looked at least ten years older than me and about the same weight. It didn’t matter because I could see the finish line in the distance and she was somehow managing to pull away. Closing my eyes tightly, I made a wish, took a deep breath and started to sprint.

Don’t ask me how but by some superhuman effort I managed to overtake the old lady and beat her by a foot or two across the finish line. My efforts didn’t impress her as she just frowned and shook her head as she walked past me. Everyone, it seemed, had already gone home and not even the scorers were left to welcome us to the finish line.

I was so sore that I could barely get out of bed the next morning and I had difficulty walking up the stairs. Still, I had a grin on my face that didn’t disappear for the rest of the weekend. Maybe I had beat out an old woman just to keep from finishing dead last but at least I had finished, and it came flowing back to me why I had begun running in the first place.

I learned a good lesson in life that day. No matter how bad you feel just keep putting one foot in front of the other. And, maybe more importantly, before giving up, stop, slug an ice cold Coors, then regroup and get after it again.

Fiction South