I’ve written about running and exercise and the “whys” of it all lots of times. Triathlon likely saved me from myself some 20 years ago and sent me down a path to this past weekend (and clearly beyond). 

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Louisiana Marathon, I thought for a split second I’d have sat down and written something about it, in real time, but no sleep does something to the brain. Well it does a lot of things, but none of them are cohesive with organizing thoughts. The opposite, actually. A weekend of race production is a juggling of actions and thoughts and problem solving and cold and on and on. No single item is hard. It’s all of them with no sleep that gives you a residual fog for a couple days after. Two cups of coffee in and it’s still hazy in here. 

As I played the Monday catch up after race weekend, I found myself driving a section of the course, hard not to do in a town out size. As I gave myself a little attaboy I started thinking about what it means to race. Like really think about it. People can run the exact course of almost any race we put on for nothing but they come and put down good money to be a part of something bigger, a combined experience, and that, is magic. 

There’s something special about race day. We circle a day in the future and aim our lives towards it. We do hard work. We eat right. We steel our minds for an attempt and we run.  Not by ourselves. With others.  

Except for a few, we are almost all running against ourselves. Against our goals, our ever moving lines in the sand. We are in a solitary effort but the magic comes because we do it with others. 

We need the others to get there. Like some sort of endurance vampires we are suck up their energy and them ours, feeding, pushing forward, onward. And that makes it magical.   We could be out here running alone. Could have looked at the published course map and run, but the others. The others make it different. 

I’d never once considered this thought until yesterday. I mean perhaps some part of it. I make most of my living from putting on these events, so I grasp the economics of it well. I know the power of “signing up for a race” as a carrot to keep you training and as an anvil hanging over to keep you from stopping. As I looked through all the posts on social media and saw the joy, even of those who may not have hit their goals, I thought about it more. As our lives were all upended last year, this simple act of running together was and will remain important. 

Triathlon and running have saved thousands I’m sure. The health benefits remolding people from so many lumps of mottled clay into something more. Into something that they are proud of. They are simple sports really and are unique in that you can train with others but must battle yourself to get your best. For a year we’ve mostly been forced to go it alone or with less. Without the racing, the measurement, the community, the group test. 

That’s what I took away from the 10th running of the Louisiana Marathon. That we need each other a lot more than we think. We push and pull and cajole each other. We encourage and try to punk each other in the chute. We’ve been clamoring for a year to rate ourselves against what we thought possible for this go around. Having not done it for a year, we wondered if we still had it. We wondered if you’d come. And you did. And it was magical. 

#hugsandhi5s