“Yeah. It’s cool.” she responded with a friendly smile and flipped her leg backwards into an open palm to stretch a quad muscle.
Maybe it was the arctic sensation. Perhaps it was just too early in the morning. Regardless, Stephen‘s innocent politeness began pouring out and it was simply too late to stop the rookie train from leaving the station. “So, is this your first marathon?” His face flushed unnoticeably in the cold.
The lady looked up at Stephen. “Yeah. I just started running a few months ago. My sister, Amy, got me hooked up with this crazy thing.” The young lady looked off to the side as if to sarcastically stare down an invisible third party to the conversation. “Actually, she signed me up for this torture and then she told me about it.”
“Wow, that’s one way to get someone on board!” Stephen chuckled.
“I’m Carrie, by the way,” she replied while extending her hand.
Meeting her hand, he responded, “Stephen.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Stephen. So, what about you? Ever done one of these before?”
“No. This is my first. I’m actually somewhat shocked it’s not blatantly obvious. I feel like I’m standing out like the sore thumb in this crowd.”
“Oh no, it’s obvious. I’m just trying to be polite!” Carrie responded with a cheeky laugh. “I’m kidding, of course. I get the feeling there are more of us sore thumbs out here than other fingers.”
“That’s encouraging; I think. Thanks for the boost in confidence.” Stephen did start to feel a little more comfortable in his discomfort.
“Oh, you’ll want to take confidence from someone else besides me. You know, like one of these people around here who call themselves runners. I’m so nervous. I’ve gone to the bathroom like eight times already this morning.”
Stephen’s chuckle was accompanied by a release of anxiousness and it came out louder than he intended. “But you’re here, right? That’s got to count for a lot.”
“Seriously,” Carrie stiffened into an over exaggerated resemblance of a Queen’s Guard at Buckingham Palace. Her neck tilted and her eyes rolled to peer into Stephen’s, “I may very well die out here.”
“Well, at least you made it this far.”
Letting go of the drama performance, Carrie responded more lightheartedly, “Oh, I’m finishing. There’s no doubt about that. I may just die afterwards but I tell you, I am running this thing. And if I can’t run, I’ll walk. If that doesn’t work, I’ll crawl. Heck, you may even see me rolling before too long. But by golly, I am absolutely finishing this thing.”
Stephen loved her playful confidence and in between his laughter he continued, “So your sister signed you up and she’s not running with you. How does that work?”
“Well, she has a pretty good excuse, I suppose. She was always the fit one. Miss Health Nut who’s was married to her juicer since she was a teenager. Pureed vegetables were never my thing though. I’m more of a dairy-gal. As in like, the cookies-n-cream type of dairy!” Carrie smiled naughtily at the thought of her guilty pleasure. She had an infectious smile and with the mention of her sister came a tenderness which told Stephen that she and Amy had a special relationship.
“She convinced me to go on a jog with her one afternoon, which was more of a ‘walk with heavy breathin’ for me, by the way. So, while we’re out there she tells me she just signed us up for a marathon. Just like that. Like she had just made me breakfast or picked up my laundry. You know, like, ‘Hey there, that’s a cool shirt you’re wearing. Oh, by the way, you’re running a marathon.’”
Stephen wasn’t sure if this sarcasm was meant to be funny, but Carrie was cracking him up and he welcomed the opportunity to laugh in light of the grueling task ahead of him.
She continued, “But you know, last year I started exercising and changing what I ate. I gave up ice cream.” Carrie’s voice dropped an octave as she revealed her displeasure about that particular element of her life change, “And after a while, I got to running. Of course, lots of running.” Carrie emphasized the comment with a dramatic head swing. “Oh Lord, so much running.” Her feigned torture was worthy of comic’s stand up routine. “But you know what? The next thing you know, here I am. 75 pounds lighter, wearing tights and wasting perfectly good dream time!”
“75 pounds? Really?!?” Stephen wanted to be encouraging but was genuinely impressed.
“I know; right! That’s like kicking a hobbit off your back!”
“That’s awesome.” Stephen thought about the time he had successfully lost 10 pounds and was genuinely impressed. “Sounds like you had a pretty memorable year.”
“Yeah. You could say that.” Carrie seemed to drift off into her own thoughts and Stephen took it as his queue to continue stretching.
Feeling the awkwardness of standing next to someone with nothing to do but watch the lull of the conversation drift into the air Stephen broke the silence, “So, is your sister meeting you somewhere to cheer you on?”
Carrie continued looking at the bobbing heads in front of them. “Oh yeah. She’s cheering me on alright. She darn well better be or I’m gonna kick that skinny little rear of hers.” Stephen saw Carrie’s demeanor change as her eyes began to drift above the sea of bodies like she was expecting to see someone. She shook her shoulders as if knocking off a sheet of ice and asked Stephen, “Alright- your turn. So, who twisted your arm to get you here on a perfectly good day for bagels in bed?”
Was it the challenge? A test? Therapy? A desire to see if he could persevere; do something big from start to finish? After everything he had come through, did Stephen really have anything to prove to anyone? And if he did, could a running twenty six miles actually prove anything of value? It could, he decided; to himself at least. He needed to know he was strong enough to follow through and finish the challenge he had begun. He needed to prove that to himself. This motivation for showing up to the starting line revealed more insecurity and indecision than he felt comfortable sharing with a quasi-stranger. Instead, he summarized his explanation with, “A friend mentioned it and, I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Carrie politely chuckled, “Yeah, I suppose there are worse reasons for lining up and freezing your behind off with a few thousand other people in the wee hours before the crack of dawn.”
Stephen thought about how some things really did seem to be without purpose at times. More than once he had questioned whether or not running this race actually held any purpose for him or anyone else. “I think maybe it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but never really got around to doing it.”
“Kinda like a bucket-list thing?”
“More like a challenge to myself. I’ve thought about doing this a few times before but life had other plans, I guess.”
Carrie twisted her back in some sort of cross between a stretch and a bounce and said, “It’s amazing how somehow life just always seems to get in the way just at the wrong time. There’s just always something. But I think sometimes you just have to show up anyways.”
“Yep, I think you’re right about that. Sometimes we just have to show up anyways,” he repeated. As their conversation blended into silence, Carrie’s words lingered in his ears. Nerves tingled from the anxiety of the upcoming run and the prolonged wait was punishing.
Hurry up and wait. After all this time, you’re still hurrying up to wait.
The present situation was not too unlike the Army’s unofficial motto about hurrying up to wait. The awareness resurrected a memory of his waiting with sensitive nerves. He looked at the people in front of him and saw the bodies of the other runners bounce and wiggle with attempts to stay warm in the crisp of the cold dark morning. It unconsciously bothered him to see the loose formation and the undisciplined lack of bearing as the crowd moved around without an apparent purpose. Stephen scanned the crowd and recalled the memory of his first military deployment. In his mind, he began to see the forward-facing bodies of the runners reorganized in proper rows and columns of a military formation. Their heads were stilled and all eyes were locked to the front. Hundreds of uniformed soldiers stood in formation awaiting final instructions to board their designated ‘herky-bird,” the C-130 transports which had gathered on the tarmac in preparation for taking his unit overseas.