A Sort of Homecoming
After Sunday’s funk, I wake up Monday knowing its time to get back to business, and get the long walk done. 30k, about 18 and a half miles. I hear the rain before I even sit up in bed. Blurgh. Its going to be wet. I drink my coffee, gathering my energy and my walking gear. I need to be ready for rain, blisters, and cold. Going through my bag, I find a shell I picked up at the beach on Saturday. A visual image comes into focus in my head, the bright sun and endless blue water of the Gulf. Seems like forever ago. I sit down at my computer and check the weather. If the forecast is right, we’re due for an extended break from the rain today. Here’s hoping…
By the time I get out of my car at the bike path, the rain has stopped; in spite of yesterday’s rude thoughts, Portland is once again my friend. I set out for loop one of four. The weekday crowd is a bit different from what I’ve seen on Sundays: fewer people, fewer groups, more of the bikers look like commuters (this path goes downtown). Also, a few trucks along the path with workers, including one that scares me, marked “Mosquito Control.” I’m feeling really lucky that its dry, although otherwise a bit sluggish. By the end of my second loop, just as I start to feel a bit less energized, I am passed by a man on an unusually shaped unicycle. It only has one wheel and a seat, but the wheel is close in size to a regular bicycle wheel, and the seat isn’t as high as the ones you see in the circus. A bicyclist coming in the opposite direction has stopped to stare, and as I go by, I say, “Great bike path, isn’t it?” He agrees, smiling. Tampa can have its Shoreline Drive anyday. My smile over the unicycle lasts me back to the car, and after chugging down some sports drink and a gel, I’m re-energized for my third loop. I get a bit draggy one more time in lap four. Realizing I’ve been thinking of skimping on the miles, I decide to finish with a push, so I speed up for the last half mile. Somehow it always works to exorcise my inner whiner on the spot, by challenging myself a bit faster or longer. I’ll never make the starting line if I think of myself as a wimp. Incredibly, the rain starts back up about 5 minutes after I finish. Four and a half hours of dry weather, and I walked through four and a quarter of them. What an incredible gift.
Back at home, I check my email and find another Welcome Home: someone at Gleukos has read my blog and wants to give me sports drink for my training! Well, actually its even better, they want to give t-shirts, bottles, and sports drink to the whole team. I’m really pleased about this; its actually what I use, one of the few commercial sports drinks my digestive system seems to tolerate well. For my first four Portland Marathons, I carried my own homemade sports drink in a hydration pack, because I didn’t think I’d tolerate the course drink. This past October, though, they had Gleukos on the course, and it was so amazingly better without the hydration pack. I stumbled across it almost by accident; one or the other of my local coaches had gotten a bunch to try back in the spring. I appreciate the freebie financially too; visiting the doctor three times a week for my foot has certainly added up, and I don’t even want to think about how fast I’m going through shoes.
After a bit of a false start, it feels like a homecoming.