Final Long Run

Today was a milestone for both of us - our final long runs in the training schedule for the half marathon on March 2.  I used to run 20 miles before a marathon, and I like to run at least 12 miles before a half-marathon.  Because of rain and ice, my mileage in December had plummeted drastically; I think one week I only managed five miles for the entire week.  But I began the New Year optimistically with a five mile run, and then a week later, our first Saturday here in Atlantic Beach, we both ran five miles again.  Since then we have run two 5-K races, and on the other weekends we have been working on increasing the long run.

We missed our run on Saturday morning because of rain, and instead we went to the yoga class we had attended last week - a good thing to do on a rainy day!

Conditions were ideal this morning, overcast and a little chilly, but not raining at all.  Martha completed her goal of 11 miles and I ran 12 miles.  For me, recovering from an injured knee, this has been a big accomplishment, and it persuaded me to run the half marathon instead of the 10-K in two weeks.

Martha varied her route a little bit, running west on Fort Macon Road on part of the course.  I stayed on the road to Fort Macon, making a couple of loops through the Bath House parking lot and some back-and-forth on the road to the Fort.  I noticed what appeared to be a finish line set up for a race on the back side of the parking lot, and further investigation confirmed it.  It turns out this was the end of the Maysville to Macon 50-mile run, which began at midnight in Maysville (not far from New Bern), headed south to Emerald Isle, and then continued all the way along the beach to Fort Macon and back to this finish line.  What an arduous race!  Martha told me later that she passed Number 73, who might have been the winner, his time somewhere close to nine-and-a-half hours.

It somehow made 12 miles easier, to know that these ultra runners were out here running four times that distance, and almost twice as far as I have ever run in a race.  They would have come right by the condo this morning, running in sand, and finishing in this place so close by the condo.

Still, we are grateful for what we can do.  And grateful for every single day that we can run.  This month we have lost two friends in their 60s - Tommy Chambers (leukemia), Martha's second cousin, and Sonjia Gibson (lung cancer), with whom I worked at the Town Office for several years.  Sonjia was a non-smoker and she had just retired in July, planning to do some traveling.  So we ran today thinking about Tommy and Sonjia and their grieving friends and families, and giving thanks for every step.