I ran the St. George Marathon so you don’t have to
On Saturday, Oct. 7, nearly 5,000 people ran the St. George Marathon through a 26.2-mile stretch of Washington County’s desert. I was one of those nearly 5,000. Because I hate myself, I guess. Or because I had something to prove to the world. Or because so much of adult life is monotonous and difficult to navigate and progress feels impossible to track and I needed a tangible goal to set and achieve to feel alive.
Honestly, I only took one psych class in college so I’m not really qualified to understand how I ended up at that starting line in frigid temperatures on Saturday in the wee hours of the morning.
But there I was, waiting for the starting gun, questioning what delusion led me to believe I could, and should, run 26.2 miles IN A ROW. Perhaps I had still been riding the runner’s high from completing the very downhill and very fast Deseret News Half Marathon when I registered for the St. George full a few days after it, somehow not realizing how much further 26 miles is than 13.
It’s an absurd activity for anyone to participate in. According to legend, the whole thing started when some guy named Philippides ran the obscene distance from Marathon, Greece, to Athens to deliver a message. Once he reached Athens, he delivered his message and promptly keeled over dead.
Then I guess someone thought, “That looks fun, we should make this a thing that people pay money to do.” And now thousands of people in a town in southern Utah line up at 3 a.m. to board a school bus to be driven 26 miles away, then try to not die while pounding the pavement for four hours or more. IN A ROW.
Related
Those hours for me were, obviously, terrible. Well, actually, the first three hours were pretty fine, or as fine as running for three hours can be. There were a few demoralizing hills and some upsetting odors emitting from the hundreds of bodies near me, but the scenery — the sun rising over the red and white rock of Snow Canyon — was distraction enough from the dull pain of taking one quick step after another over and over and over.
But then, at the start of the fourth hour, my AirPods died, and the playlist I had carefully curated to carry me through the end of the race was rendered completely useless. All I had for audial distraction was the thump thump thump of hundreds of footsteps and the pain of the other runners around me — one man a few feet away softly groaned with each step.
By mile 23, I, too, wanted to groan with each step. There wasn’t a single part of my body that didn’t hurt. I stopped at every aid station to have one of the angels on the volunteer team apply Icy Hot to my thighs, which didn’t so much numb the pain as make the pain spicier, but I did it three times.
Then, I don’t understand the astrophysics principles that made this possible, but I swear the final mile was actually the distance of 10 miles. At about mile 25.5 I was positive I was running in reverse. One man declared, “I feel like I’m running through molasses!” perfectly describing what we were all experiencing.
Eventually, I became convinced the whole thing was an elaborate prank and the race would never end. But then I turned a corner and saw the finish line two blocks away, pushed as hard as I could on gelatin legs, and crossed the line.
And then I felt worse than I had while running. My brain caught up with my body and registered what had just happened, and I collapsed on a patch of grass for what might have been five minutes or might have been an hour, I don’t know. I was only motivated to move when someone in my family mentioned they had seen potato chips on a nearby table. Then I began my shuffle to the car, but only made it a few steps before I collapsed again and dramatically told my loved ones I was incapable of going on. To their credit, they were able to keep their eyes from rolling and told me they’d pick me up. They did, and drove me home (with a pit stop at McDonald’s) where I slept for three hours.
Now, two days later, I can barely move. It hurts to type. I’m brushing right up against the edge of dangerous ibuprofen intake. It takes me 10 minutes and a lot of swearing to get down one flight of stairs.
But I’m so glad I ran the St. George Marathon. I loved it so much. As I saw and ran through the finish line, I began to cry. Because after all the mornings on the trail, all the money spent on shoes, gels and electrolyte powders, and all the lost toenails, on the morning of Oct. 7, I still wasn’t sure if I had what it took to finish. But then I did. And I felt immensely proud of myself for doing it, which is a feeling that most of us experience far too rarely. And 5,000 of us were able to feel it that day.
It was four of the worst hours of my life, and I’m sure three to six hours of the worst hours of my fellow runners’ lives. But also four of the best. I hated it and I loved it. I’m so glad it’s over, and I can’t wait to do it again next year.
