My nagging knee injury has improved to the point where I have not been wearing my knee brace in the last miles of runs (although I wore it for the race today). In May, my long runs crept up to 10 miles (Martha's went up to 12 miles), and I have begun doing 400-meter intervals and some tempo runs, too. It was Martha who had looked ahead and said she wanted to do this half marathon, and I agreed to support her. But I am not yet ready for a half marathon, despite the ten-mile long runs, so I signed up for the 10-K. It is reversal of roles that does not at all make me uncomfortable - she running a long race, I the shorter.
We left for Asheville on Friday and drove to the Hilton Gardens to pick up our race packet - always an exciting thing to do. A volunteer noticed my Asheville Half Marathon shirt which I had deliberately chosen to wear, and I proudly explained that I had run this race seven times between 2000 (the inaugural one, if I am not mistaken) and 2009, although, uncharacteristically prudent, I would be running the 10-K in the morning. Downtown Asheville has improved dramatically since we lived there 35 years ago, and we explored the area enough to find the Start/Finish line on Spruce Street, immediately adjacent to Pack Square Park, a beautiful outdoor venue that has been completely transformed from the days we used to go to "Shindig on the Green" and listen to music on Saturday nights. Then we drove the course, something we always try to do before a race if we have time. Martha had see an on-line description that indicated the course would wind through the historic Montford District, and so concluded that it had been changed from the last time we ran it, when it concluded with an ascent up Lookout Road, a relentless climb similar in grade to Horse Cove Road here and which prompted Martha to state unequivocally that she would never run this race again.
We were unable to follow the course exactly (Patton Avenue is one-way downtown, for one-thing), but we noted that it did not include any of the Montford District; we picked it up on Clingman Avenue, a long deliriously fast descent to the River Arts District where Dave Steel Company used to be located (I used to work there in another life, but now it is a vacant, fenced lot with weeds growing up in the parking lot). Shortly after Mile 2, the course took an abrupt uphill turn off Depot Street, and then uphill again, into an area called Livingston Heights, finally winding through the campus of A-B Technical Institute before descending for a long, flat, five-mile stretch along the French Broad River. Then we reached Mile 10 (Mile 3 for the 10-K, which consisted roughly of the last-half of the course), and turned right on, of all things, Lookout Road. "This looks familiar," we both said. And sure enough, up and up and up we climbed. Finally, the course dropped down to Broadway, and back up the long, gradual return to downtown Asheville, with a steep hill up Spruce Street to the Finish at the very end. Some of these hills, I thought, seemed to have been thrown into the course gratuitously, sadistically.
But although intimidating, we both knew that everyone was running the same course, tackling the same hills, and so in a sense even a ridiculously hilly course is a level playing field.
We enjoyed the traditional simple pasta dinner Friday night at Iannucci's on Hendersonville Road, and noticed that a blackboard next to the hostess station inexplicably but magically contained these words, meant for us:
BE
STRONG
BE
COURAGEOUS
We had already scoped out the parking situation, so the morning went smoothly, setting the alarm for 4:00 a.m. and leaving by 6:15 for downtown Asheville. It was one of those lovely, foggy June mornings in Asheville (which I remember Thomas Wolfe describing so well in Look Homeward Angel), but I knew it would burn off before the race was finished, so we planned to stay hydrated and consume energy gels on schedule.
The Half Marathon started at 7:00 a.m. and the 10-K five minutes later, and once again I was here, in the middle of a race, surrounded by other runners, all of us striving together toward a goal, chatting amiably from time to time in that peculiar camaraderie that complete strangers discover during a race, holding back just a little in anticipation of the hills, but still trying to play out our strength, to pace ourselves. The descent down Broadway was beautiful, all downhill, following a little stream in the Asheville Botanical Gardens shrouded in fog that was just starting to break up from above. We were amazed to see two gazelle-like African runners, shaved heads, flying past us, going uphill, and we realized they had already reached the four-mile point of a 10-K while we were all at the two-mile point . . . at 22 minutes. I later learned that the winner of the 10-K, Cyrus Korir, finished in an unbelievable 31:26 (a 5-K time I would be proud of these days), closely followed by two other Africans finishing in under 32 minutes.
"What goes down must go up," someone said. "Oh, it's even better than that!" I said. And suddenly we turned the corner on Lookout Road and I could hear groans from runners who were not familiar with the course, which curved upward, each bend in the road revealing more uphill, and still more. Nearly everyone began walking, some walking so quickly with pumping arms that they did not lose any time at all (I later learned that this was Martha's strategy on the same hill). But I was determined not to stop, and I did not, passing 20 to 30 runners, one woman several times as she stopped to walk, passed me, and walked again. (I finally passed her on Lexington Avenue and she did not pass me again). We finally reached the top of the hill, and then turned hard right and dropped down Campus View Drive in a grade so steep that it was more difficult than running uphill, holding back, feeling the burn in our calves. And finally we turned onto Broadway and began climbing uphill, passing the point where nearly an hour ago those Africans had flown past, back under the glorious graffiti of the I-240 overpass, up Lexington, three more turns, and then up Spruce to the Finish Line, which I think I pulled faster than any part of the race. 1:17:45, the clock said, more than a minute faster than my last 10-K in March on the relatively flat Morehead City course.
For the next hour, I wandered through Pack Square Park, sipping water, eating a banana, listening to an excellent band set up in the amphitheater, and thinking and praying about Martha. Where would she be on that long half-marathon course, I thought? Would she be climbing Lookout Road yet? "Be Strong, Be Courageous!" I realized that I had run faster than I thought I would, so I went to the Finish line a little after 9:00 a.m, camera in hand, and waited. What a joy it is to see runners finish a tough race! - exhausted, beaming with pride, triumphant, joyous with the effort of having given everything they have. One little girl barely old enough to walk ran onto the course to hold her mother's hand and cross the finish line with her.
And then I could see Martha turning the corner on Spruce Street, a determined look on her race, coming in way ahead of schedule.
She had that look on her face! Focused on the Finish Line, finishing strong, flying by me so quickly I could barely click my camera fast enough.
I caught up with her and gave her a hug and a high-five as she walked around, recovering a little, finally sitting on a wall next to another woman with whom she had run for awhile, a 68-year old (thus in another age group) who had tripped and fallen only a half-mile from the Finish, bleeding from both knees. I went to get water for both of them, and another man, a tall, lean black man, went in search of bandages and antiseptic. I had learned that you could enter your bib number on a laptop under the timing tent to find your finish time and I typed in Martha's bib number, 911 (there had been some good-natured joking about her bib number at the packet pickup last night), and found that she had finished in 2:20:07, two minutes faster than her last half marathon in Morehead City. The sun was reflecting off the screen and I could barely make out her place. I checked it twice.
"Your time was 2:20:07," I told her when I returned. "But, you know, in a big race like this you can't expect to place well." I paused. "You took first place!" Her injured fellow-runner, it turned out, had also taken first place, which I think did her as much good as the first aid which had been brought to her. When we looked at all of the results the next day, we found that Martha had finished a full 15-minutes ahead of the second place finisher in her age group, a group of at least seven women, some of them younger than she was.
So it was a good day. We wandered together around the park, listening to music, enjoying the sunshine, re-hydrating, snacking a little, enveloped in that sweet satisfying sensation that is so difficult to describe to anyone who is not a runner. The joy of having been strong and courageous. Of accomplishing another worthy goal.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
- Tennyson
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