A Race Well-Limped

I’m walking around the house with a severe limp and actively second-guessing every decision I’ve ever made. That can only mean one thing: I just ran my one race for the year.

For the second time in a row, my 13-year-old, Betsy, accompanied me on this foolish endeavour because the best mistakes are made in tandem. We both went into the 11-km course with no training, and it showed. Determination and a can-do attitude are no match for gravity and distance.

As an extremely sedentary person, it’s important for me to occasionally do something semi-athletic to remember that it’s much better to not move. I’m greatly envious of those coral reef creatures that sit in one spot their entire life while plankton filters through their mouth holes. I’m out here working for my food while the ocean basically has free DoorDash 24/7. It was a mistake for mankind to give up gills.

Betsy and I were accompanied to the race by a group of three extremely in-shape people. You wouldn’t think that such individuals would want to associate with me, but we all live in the same Indianapolis suburb.

I lift weights because it’s the form of exercise that requires me to move the least. I can literally do it while sitting down. These guys bike and run countless kilometres, often in the same day. One has done dozens of Spartan Races, which are gruelling obstacle courses that require you to crawl through mud, flip tires and throw spears. Another is training for a triathlon. He’s the worst because in addition to being faster than me on foot, in the water and on wheels, he can also outlift me.

I was the leader of our expedition because I told everyone about the race, and also I own a minivan. The race is in my hometown in Illinois, and I’ve been doing it almost every year since I was Betsy’s age. I peaked about 15 years ago and have been phoning it in with performances of various levels of ineptitude ever since.

Why do I keep going if I no longer enjoy it and am getting worse every year? Tradition, mostly. A bad idea is somehow less bad if you do it consistently at regular intervals. Besides, I don’t dislike the whole race, just the running part. I like seeing all the running club members I’ve known since childhood, and I love the free beer afterward. Running is just a minor stumbling block on the way to the good stuff.

My athletic friends don’t understand any of this. While they’re all laid-back, well-adjusted individuals, they’re also good at things, which skews their perspective of the world. All three had a reasonable chance of winning the race.

That wasn’t enough of a challenge for one of the guys. When I messaged our group chat to let everyone know what time I’d pick them up Saturday morning, he said he didn’t need a ride. He was going to ride his bike there. I don’t mean a motorcycle but an actual bicycle with pedals.

The race was 106 km away by interstate. If you take back roads, it’s more like 135. He set out in the dark at 4 a.m. to meet us at 10 a.m. We arrived at almost exactly the same time. After biking for hours, he stretched a bit, then beat me by nine minutes in a 11-km run.

He’s probably not even sore today. Afterward, he tossed the bike in my minivan for the return journey. I should have made him ride it home.Betsy was a trouper. She finished the race for the second year in a row. She’s not a huge fan of the running part, either, but she likes the adventure of going places with me and hanging out.

As for how I ran, I did better than I thought I would, even with my considerable slowdown from last year. My expectations for myself were very low­—no one puts less pressure on me than me. I was actually having a strong race through most of the course. Between 6 and 8 km, I felt so good that I wondered why I only do this once a year. Then I hit 9 km, and my body re­minded me. The human form is like a convoy of ships: It can only go as fast as its slowest part.

Usually, the lagging component is my breathing. I simply can’t guzzle enough oxygen to get my awkward, unwieldy body to go. This time, it was my legs. I pushed until I had a 1.5 km left, at which point my quads and hamstrings decided they were done.

Still, I can honestly say I gave everything I had. My slow, plodding finish was actually a victory shuffle that proves I gave it my all. I don’t need a huge trophy to commemorate my heroic performance. My grossly swollen knee is enough of a souvenir.

As I slowly made my way to the finish line, I had no idea how the rest of the group placed. I thought it would be funny if my friends came in first, second and third, and people got the impression that our nondescript suburb was somehow a running powerhouse. They actually finished between fourth and 12th. Our fastest guy cut five minutes off his run from last year, yet there were still three people ahead of him.

He didn’t get a medal, but he did come away with an even better trophy: a massive, authentic made-in-Japan German beer stein I picked up from a secondhand store years ago. It’s basically our group’s Most Improved award. I took it home last year because it’s not hard to get better from rock bottom. When I passed the stein on to its new owner, I was supposed to fill it with beer and present it on one knee. Our top guy doesn’t drink beer, which definitely has nothing to do with why he’s so fast. So I gave him the beer stein full of diet soda instead.

A day later, even as my entire body tells me I’m an idiot, I can’t help but feel that the race was a success. Everyone in our group wants to do it next year. My 11-year-old, Mae, starts cross-country this fall. I strongly suspect I can talk her into racing with me at least once. Kids don’t actually know you’re giving them bad advice until they test it for themselves. Parenthood is all about destroying your children’s trust one misguided family tradition at a time.

As for me, I’ll keep doing this race as long as my legs can support me. I proved I can still roll out of bed and run 11 km, even if those 11 km will prevent me from getting out of bed for all the days thereafter.  

Reprinted from Exploding Unicorn.