Slow and Steady

We made it. Better yet, we made it together.

As I previewed a couple of weeks ago, this weekend, Sean, my college buddy, and I completed the ING half-marathon in Atlanta, GA. For me, it was my 10th (or 11th, or 12th - I've lost track) race of that distance. For Sean, it was his first. Granted, he finished a full Ironman a year or so ago, but he admitted to me at the starting line that he'd never signed up for just a run before.

I'll admit the race was a different experience for me for two reasons. First, for all the races I've run, I've never run one with a partner before. I'm used to sticking in the headphones, cranking the tunes and going. On Sunday? No headphones. It was just me and Sean and 16,000 other runners.

Second, I'd never run a race at that pace before. While I'm not as fast as I used to be, I can still average an eight-minute mile or so for 13 miles. Sean, on the other hand, cannot. The cancer he had more than 10 years ago left him with poor circulation in his legs. He explained that when he exercises, the blood in his legs starts to pool and his heart starts to pump harder to push that blood through his body. If he's not careful, his heart rate can spike to an unsafe rate. He takes beta blockers about an hour before he works out which helps to regulate his heart rate, but the medicine only works to an extent. Sean wears a heart rate monitor, and I found myself constantly asking him how his heart was doing as we ran. If the pace was too fast, we'd have to walk for a bit. Once his heart slowed below 120 or so, we started to jog.

At first I thought the slower pace (about an 11:30-mile average) would be a problem for me. I wasn't used to it. I hadn't prepared for it. And I worried about Sean. Would I just arbitrarily start going too fast? Would Sean, being the competitive person he is, try to work too hard to keep up?

Turns out, those worries were for naught. In fact, I found the pace to be liberating, even exhilarating. See, the thing is, it turns out people who run 11:30 miles are way more fun than people who run eight-minute miles. At the faster pace, it's all business. No one talks. No one smiles. It's just running, running, running for 13 miles.

At 11:30 there's a lot of chit-chat. There's a lot of camaraderie. At an 11:30 pace, there's time to slap fives with the kids who line the road. There's time to say a genuine "thank you" to the volunteers who hand out Gatorade and water. There's time to actually enjoy the scenery (including the really hot woman we ran behind for some time - thighs so tight you could bounce quarters off of them) and appreciate the spectacle of 16,000 people bobbing along a street at the same time.

Along the way, I met people and actually had conversations with them, like the group of barefoot runners who talked about remodeling their Web site (the address of which escapes me at the moment) and the guy who saw my 1993 Ball State Bike-a-Thon T-shirt. "You from Muncie?" he asked in a race in the middle of Atlanta, GA. He'd run the Muncie Endurathon, which, according to him at least, is the longest running half-Ironman in the country.

We cheered at each mile marker as we neared the finish line. Or, well, I cheered. The people around me weren't quite as rousing at that point, but I think they appreciated my enthusiasm. And when we reached the finish line, Sean and I crossed it together. Sean said he was pleased with his time (about two and a half hours). Me? I was pleased with the time I had, too - not clock time, mind you, but a great time just the same.

In the end, that race made me realize something pretty important about life. It made me realize how valuable it can be to slow down from time to time, to appreciate the little things, to not constantly worry so much about what's around the next corner. That race reminded me that it's not the finish line that's the most important part of the experience; it's the journey to get to there that matters.

And it made me remember how important it is to have good friends. I'm glad I ran that race with Sean. I think he was glad, too.

I can't wait to do it again.

Happy running.