Phantom Run

My alarm goes off. It is 5:30am. It is Sunday morning. It is race day. I really don't want to get up but I do and head to the kitchen where I make myself a cup of instant coffee. While my fever from the day before is gone, I feel like crap, and I know there is no way I can race today. The only reason I got up and dragged myself down to the kitchen at all was I wanted to see if this was my normal 5:30am feel like crap feeling or something worse. It was something worse. I went back to bed.

30 minutes later I was up. I couldn't sleep because of the coffee or my mind not wanting to give up on my goal of running a half marathon in under two hours. I made another cup of instant, ate some "safe" snack, got dressed and headed to the subway. The subway was crowded with runners and at the station just south if Tiananmen Square it was packed with runners commuting in for the race. Thanks to whatever virus I had, I was more irritable than normal which is to say I was extremely agitated. Half the people seemed to be trying to squeeze past me to gain inches in the line. The other half seemed to be statues, not moving, not risking to lose yet another picture moment for their weixin.

I eventually got out of the station and through the underground pedestrian walkway and onto south Tiananmen Square. Runners were all about, happy and eager for the race. I did not feel well. It was a beautiful morning and only cold in the shadows when the race started. We ran north on the square and turn left onto Changanjie. I last ran this race two years ago and the culture shift towards weixin moments was clearly evident with lots of people posing on in front of Forbidden City just as the rest of us were trying to find our legs. The next day there would be famous pictures of runners peeing on the walls of what people assumed was Forbidden City but I think it must have been later in the race. And the thing to know is that in all half marathons you will see guys peeing in the shadows, it's just that for the Beijing half marathon the guys don't mind it being their own shadows.

Two miles in I felt "ok" and thought I might be able to finish the race "ok". Four miles in I knew I was in trouble and that there was no way I would make my two hour goal. I texted Yang, who was bringing the kids to meet me at the finish line, that I was running slowing. By the halfway mark I had started walking for spells and came very close to stepping off the course and looking for a taxi but the fear of actually being able to find one and then being able to direct it somewhere seemed more than I could bear. So, I just kept going. Run for a half mile, walk for a quarter mile, repeat as necessary. Yang and the kids made it to the finish line well ahead of me. Everyone was passing me in the race and the only ones I was passing were those who gave up. I persisted and a few hundred meters from the finish line met Yang and the kids. Aidan and Lydia stayed behind the barrier but I lifted Elisa into the street with me and we all ran towards the finish line together. Crowds on the side of the road seeing Elisa running next to me yelled Jiāyóu! Jiāyóu!. I looked down at Elisa's face and say the wonder on it. The wonder of getting so much attention. The wonder of having people cheer for her. And I would like to believe the wonder of being with her dad at that moment.

I crossed the finish line 30 minutes off my goal which considering how miserable I felt was decent. I gathered my clothes and walked the 15 minutes to Yang's mom's place where she was preparing the post-race lunch. The 15 minutes felt like two hours. When I finally reached he house I sat for a moment, then desperately needed to use the bathroom, and then slept for eight hours. When I awoke it was just me and Yang's mom and the house and she commented that I looked better, that my lips were no longer green. I took leftovers from the lunch I didn't each and headed out intending to catch a taxi home. There was none so I took the most grueling hour long subway in my life; standing the whole way; feeling horrible; feeling grimy from the run; transferring lines once. When I got home I took a bath and slept some more. I would miss the next two days of work and felt a mixture of accomplishment and stupidity.