Course Preview

We are on slightly different running schedules this week, Martha and I; she is running on Tuesday and Thursday, and I am running on Monday and Wednesday.  Martha enjoys previewing the race course (see post of February 2) and so do I.  So we drove to Morehead City this morning and, after some wrong turns, we managed to locate the start, finish, and mile splits of the 5-K - she running while I led the way in the car.

The half marathon course is nearly identical for the first three miles, then turns on Arendell and crosses that high, intimidating Causeway; we drove the course in the car and found some of the mile markers.

Of course, on race morning we will simply follow all the other runners in front of us.  So while previewing the course must seem obsessive-compulsive to a non-runner, it is a kind of ritual we always try to do (and we will often drive it after the race as well, a race debriefing).   It is helpful to find landmarks to look for, rough sections of road, the summits of hills (or bridges).  We previewed the Asheville Half Marathon course several years ago, Martha's first, and she said it helped her enormously to know where, for example, the very top of that killer hill at Asheville Country Club was located.

We can defeat most of our doubts if we know what is to come, can we not?  I will always remember pausing at Mile 22 at the OBX Marathon, on the very summit of the bridge to Manteo, throwing my arms in the air jubilantly, and crying "Yes! Yes!" to the consternation of some of my fellow-runners.  All downhill from here.

If only we could preview the course of our own lives as easily as this!  The rough stretches of road, the obstacles that could trip us up, the wrong turns to be avoided, the encouraging landmarks along the way, the deep shade under the live oak trees and the bright blazing terrifying open sky, the balm of relenting steepness and water stations, and the final turn that will take us to the finish line.