It has been three weeks since our last race, the Oscar Blues 4-Miler in Brevard, and we had signed up for this inaugural race in Bryson City. It had initially been advertized as a “flat and fast” 5-K starting and ending in Bryson City in conjunction with a half-marathon, so we assumed it would be on the same course as the Firecracker 5-K, which we have run in past years on the Fourth of July and which is indeed flat and fast. Fifteen years ago, I ran a 22:30 on that course, a time which still surprises me – did I actually run seven minute miles back in the day?
We discovered that the race was instead to be held as part of the (also inaugural) Strawberry Jam Festival at Darnell Farms, about two miles east of Town on the picturesque Tuckasegee River. Two weeks ago, on a Mother’s Day trip home from the Highlands Hiwassee Wine Festival, we had checked out the course, and it was entirely on an unpaved gravel road along the river (The Old River Road). Undaunted by this discovery, we had nevertheless planned to give it a try, and Martha had reserved a room at the Stonebrook Lodge the night before, one of the nicest places we have stayed recently.
My running had been going well. Last Saturday I completed an eight-mile run, the farthest I have run in almost a year, and I had also been running some intervals in faster and faster times. Monday I completed a nice, easy three-mile run which included some hills, including the formidable Monkey Hill on Hickory Street. But Tuesday morning, I awoke feeling tired and sluggish, and my three-mile run on Wednesday was a disaster, characterized by many walking breaks and making me doubt in the final mile if I could complete it. I remained fatigued all week, and were it not for any of the other symptoms (fever, aches, loss of smell, headache, etc.) I might have suspected that I had a case of the Omicron variant of Covid. Martha had had a spell of similar fatigue two weeks ago over the Mother’s Day weekend but had recovered and was running better than ever last week. So Friday morning I thought I should go and see what I could do. Perhaps three days of rest would work its magic, and I could at least accompany Martha to the starting line and be there for her at the finish, if not walk the three miles.
We arrived in plenty of time to pick up our packets from
a pair of friendly volunteers at Darnell Farms, confirmed where the course would be, and
drove it in our Mini. It was indeed a very
scenic drive along the river – this is a photo our friend Anthony took (we
found out later that he had run the half-marathon that morning). Fisherman were parked along the road, and there were some out on the river in tubes.
But the road was even rougher than we remembered it, with loose rocks and boulders protruding from the surface. “This section doesn’t look so bad,” Martha would say hopefully as we bumped along. But our little Mini was struggling, and a car barreling by in the opposite direction raised a thick cloud of dust. It was a course so rough that we would be required to walk much of it, and it would be an invitation for injury. I commented that if our Mini was not comfortable with a course, perhaps we should reconsider. On top of these conditions, I had discovered that there was a Code Orange air quality warning for race morning.
“Code Orange air quality is considered 'unhealthy for sensitive groups,' and active children and adults, and people with lung disease such as asthma, are advised to reduce prolonged or heavy exertion outdoors.”
That was the tipping point in our decision not to run this race. In my 203 races to date, I have never been what runners call a “DNF” – Did Not Finish – nor has Martha. That includes marathons almost entirely in the rain, a walking break due to an asthma attack during Martha’s first marathon, and, most recently, a 5-K in a downpour of rain ( the deceptively named Autumn Breeze 5-K – see post of October 4, 2021). But there is no shame in being a DNS – “Did Not Start” – and we have both cancelled races for good reasons over the years. I remember getting bronchitis a week before a marathon in Huntsville, Alabama, when my training had gone very well, and being forced to cancel. We looked at each other. “Are you sure?” Yes, I said. “Really? You won’t get up in the morning and decide to run at the last minute?” I swore.
So what to do? Here we were in Bryson City, one block away from one of the best Italian restaurants in the area, Pasqualino’s, where we have consumed out usual pre-race plain-pasta-with-marinara-and-no-wine dinners in past years. We returned to the Stonebrook Lodge, parked the car, and walked to the restaurant, where we enjoyed non-plain-pasta dinners (Chicken Cacciatore for me, Spinach and Ricotta Manicotti for Martha), and we enjoyed some very good wine.
And did we awaken Saturday morning with the wild idea that we might just drive the four minutes to the starting line and run this race anyway? Yes, we both did. But we realized that we had made the right decision. We even saw some folks wearing the race shirt at lunch (pizza at Anthony’s by the railroad tracks). “How was the race?” Martha asked. “Great!” a woman replied. “I did the half-marathon!” We congratulated her, not without some envy and remorse.
It was Tennyson who famously said, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” But I don’t think the same philosophy applies to running races. It is not as if we have never run a race at all - just the opposite. Sometimes it is better to not have run a race that would likely have been one of our slowest, and possibly resulted in injury. As for me, I would honestly have found it difficult even to walk three miles. I have continued to suffer fatigue, to the extent that I completed an at-home Covid Rapid Test this morning, which proved negative. So I must suppose that I am suffering from something else entirely, although it does seem that I am on the mend. As for Martha, her training is going better than ever, and she is focused on our next race, the Waynesville Main Street Mile on June 11. That should be a distance that I can complete.
