First Half-Marathon Entry
My first half-marathon! It was a milestone I never thought I would (or could) reach. I won. Well technically, I didn’t. I finished last, the race was over when I touched the finish line. But I know my win lies in finishing a 21.1K, so when they told me that the race was actually over, I just kept running.
My walk to pick up the start-number was amid all the nervousness-borderline self-doubt, that night, contentment was somehow couldn’t find its way back home. There were four of us running the event, Radho and Putri had their first race doing the 10K, and Dafa my half-marathon finishers compadre, Khalishah, and Wira were also there and I am beyond happy knowingly they were there. We had an early excitement before the race even started, seeing people lining up to take their number and how they were starting to flood the starting line. The excitement top with ecstatic adrenaline at the starting line was a different kind, perhaps intensified by the fact I was a race first-timer.
I was already behind from the beginning, owning my time and efforts as I will be running for the next 120 minutes. I noticed that people passed me by and obviously It adds the sense of pressure. I knew I run my own race, againts the only opponent; myself. However, I was simply being a human to have a reference point to compare and contrast myself to, and that night my reference points were these other runners who passed me almost every time. But it was fine, comparing myself to someone is one thing, stressing out over it is another thing, and that night I decided to not bother by it.
Perhaps either or both because of the length and duration of the run, my mind is a weird place. It was a reality on its own, shutting down the material world; other runners who passed me by, the cheering spectator throughout the city who strangely gave sufficient energy boost, and the route and its silenced surroundings in between. During my run, my mind was an existence on its own which come and go like a lightning-quick, wandering from recalling memories to worrying about the future, from self-doubt to naive confidence, from family to jobs.
Lost in one own thoughts has always been nice and not at the same time, but I realized I just can’t get stuck in that kind of reality, it brought me to too many strange places. What helped me to go back from my spiraling and back to my reality; the run, was somehow my shortness of breath. A long-distance run is indeed a different playing field, it is a long game. In the middle of my shortness of breath, I set my mind to just focus on finishing a segment by segment, I dichotomize the park segment and the city segments which have their sub-segments within, and I shift my mind to run this sub-segment by sub-segment. Shutting down the thought I was running a long distance. I focused on finishing the manageable, short win; the dark neighborhood before the quiet park, the circling canals before the sleepless city on a Saturday night.
The ‘make or break’ was at the end of a third lap. I know the race is over when the volunteers guide me to the finish line to grab the medal instead of going for another lap. The race was over but I know mine was not. They gave me a medal which I picked up and put in my pocket, I don’t deserve it yet. I know I came to finish my first half-marathon, so screw them, my race is over when I say so. Then, I decided to go for the fourth lap, the last one. My body aching and my leg was screaming, I know they would hate me afterward as I endured them more than I have ever before. It was borderline spiritual as it feels like there were these peculiar forces that pushed me forward, I doubt it was my mind or a mere motivation as I know they both had already given up on the third lap. I thought it was perhaps the cheering kids throughout the city that keep me going, or the other runners that pass me by, or the route and sceneries around, but at my last lap, all of them are gone, the race is over, I was on my own.
I decided to just keep running and not minding what keep me forward until on the last 3km, during another recurring spiraling thought, I figured out what those forces are. It was my aching body that kept me going; my screaming legs, sore back, breathless lungs, and all their hatred towards me. I noticed that they have stretched their limit for my pure ego, and it is they who tell me “don’t you dare to stop” or otherwise they endured the pain for nothing. So I finished my final efforts for them and for all the pain they have endured.
So there was I on my last 2km, running in a state of flow I never thought might exist. When I see the finish line and my friends who wait and cheer in a worried excitement, I could not believe the 150 minutes voyage in a realm of short-breath, aching body, and spiraling mind had finally come to an end. When I hug my friends — who also just contacted the red-cross cause they thought something bad happened — I was the highest I’ve ever been, it is a runner’s high unlike any other, a post-anesthesia sensation, I couldn’t feel my body, and could not comprehend my friends’ echoed voices, my mind was just simply taking its time to reconnect with the world. A similar feeling when every time I try to grasp the reality after waking up from a long and vivid dream.
Realized that I too had just crossed off a milestone that once was a mere daydream.
