Mission accomplished
I have run eight marathons. As far as I remember, all but one took longer than four hours. This HALF marathon in Barbados was the third hardest race I have ever run.
No amount of training could have prepared me for the heat and humidity, even for a run that started at 5 a.m.!
I will never forget the sound of the roosters crowing from the darkness of the backstreets near the race route, or how drenched I was one kilometre into the run. Oppressive heat. A wall of humidity. As I hit the 10-kilometre mark well-off my goal pace, with the air seeming even thicker, and with the diesel fuel fumes from buses making me nauseous, I thought about the shame I would feel if I couldn’t make it, and what a let down it would be to the people who sponsored me more than $11,000. I needed to get stronger. The mind games began: “You have run farther than this before … You are almost half way there … Looking strong.”
It worked. I picked up my pace, but still stopped at each and every water station and consumed two full cups each time. At 7 a.m., two hours into the run, the sun was surprisingly high in the sky, hot and searing and making my head pound. Who knew I should have worn a hat and sun screen for a run that started in the pitch black of pre-dawn?
The most humbling moment of the run happened less than one kilometre away from the finish line. I could hear the din of the cheering supporters and I somehow willed my feet to move quicker, as my movements morphed from a near shuffle into something resembling a run. I was suddenly aware of lots of breathing and very fast feet approaching me from behind and found myself in the midst of a pack of elite marathon, with runners from Kenya, St. Lucia and Barbados. While I was struggling to finish the run in under two-and-a-half hours for my 13.1-mile half-marathon, they were looking at the same time for 26.2 miles!
But of course many of the people now lining the streets of Bridgetown had no idea that I was not running the full marathon. So as the human gazelles shot past me, a Bajan gentleman at the side of the road cupped his hands to his mouth and hollered “RUN FAT MAN”!
He actually thought the big pasty white guy from Canada was giving these elite hot climate athletes a run for their money. With what little strength I had left, I laughed out loud and pretty much giggled all the way to the finish line.
Yes, I need to lose a few pounds, but fat is a relative word when one is being compared to Kenyan marathoners!
I finished the race in two hours and 26 minutes, nowhere near what I used to run halfs in, but that was more than a decade and 30 pounds ago. Considering the heat, I was kind of proud.
I sat down for 15 minutes, and ate a granola bar and downed Powerade and returned to the finish line to watch and cheer others coming in especially people from The Joints in Motion Team. Talk about emotional to watch. So many stories. There was my new friend Rakan running in his first full-marathon for his mom whose hands are swollen with arthritis.
The Crawfords, Joan and Bill from Clinton, Ont., both with double knee replacements, yet they walked the entire half-marathon distance in the Barbados heat; and Kimberly from Nova Scotia, so stricken with arthritis at one point in her life, prior to medication, that she was told she would end up in a wheel chair and never have children. Now a mother of two, this driven woman trudged along the half marathon route as well.
There were many other inspiring stories of people living with the pain and discomfort of arthritis overcoming unbelievable obstacles.
For those who sponsored me on my mission with the Joints in Motion team to run the Barbados Half Marathon and to raise both money and awareness for the Arthritis Society, please accept my heartfelt thanks. Your generosity has made a difference and will not be forgotten.
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