The Marathon With an OUCH!
By Erika Abraham
Dreams don’t die. They are just rescheduled. As with Mile Slinskey, I had to take a dream detour at the DCC Marathon. The weather on race day was a runner’s delight. I felt real good, well rested and “ready to roll”. Pacing myself for the first half went well. It didn’t matter who was in front of or behind me. On Arthursburg Road I stopped to talk to course marshal/cyclist Barbara Carson about a serious safety issue. Time lost didn’t matter.
As I later learned, life is what happens when you make other plans. I met Roy at the mid-point, left him with my empty hydration bottle and continued on my merry way, still on track for a sub 4:40 finishing time. Shortly after mile 14, at the turn from Robinson Lane onto Route 376, all plans went awry. I suddenly found myself landing hard on the gritty, sandy roadway. Certainly not a graceful landing, more like a frontal PLOP! Roy would later claim that the Highway Department would charge me for the big dent that I left in the roadway. My chin hit the surface so hard that I thought my jaw was broken. Road rash was painful. Pebbles and sand aren’t too nutritious. With the help of a traffic control person, I got up, put weight on my legs and decided to try running. Talk about “rolling with the punches”. For me it was mind over matter. The course marshals probably thought that I lost my mind so nothing else matters. I think I left them behind with looks of disbelief.
Being somewhat of a bloody mess, I kept going, albeit slower, with the hope that as long as I could put one foot in front of the other, I’d continue to do so. Despite the discomfort with each foot strike, it was not a reckless or foolish decision. Rather it was based on knowing my body and its limitations. It I had to quit, I would have. Well, maybe… I did a lot of talking to myself as a means of reassurance. The ambulance crew and some course personnel wanted me to stop and be medically checked. An object in motion stays in motion. Right? Therefore, I told them all that, “I may be old and I may be slow but I am still moving forward and am NOT stopping.”
Barbara Carson accompanied me for the last two miles or so, being my Guardian Angel on a bike. She knew that I was on a mission to finish what I started nearly five hours earlier. Several times I had to stop dead in my tracks due to the curvy road with no shoulder and speeding vehicles. In due time I remember seeing Roy, Becky Withers, the EMTs and the large finish line banner. When I stopped, I hugged Becky, sobbing with both joy and pain, telling her, “I really hurt.” MHRRC’s Dr. Nancy Crocker and the EMTs finally had their race casualty to administer aid to. I could later smile when the word that was sent out mentioned an injured 35-year-old runner. What a morale booster, especially for someone pulling 69 and pushing 70!
Although at 4:59:18 I missed my dream time, there was so much to smile about. The cheering, enthusiastic hydration station kids, the countless volunteers, the people on the course who wanted to help, the fantastic traffic control/course marshal crew and finally for me finishing and being able to say, “I DID IT.” I recall these words from a roadside sign in Maine: “Never regret anything that made you smile.” I certainly have no regrets.