Day 30 - Free Beer At The Finish!

As this last section of 40 days comes into focus, it's a lot like running a race. I can see the finish line from here, but there's still a good solid bit of work to do.. some of the hardest work of the whole race. At the 2/3 point of a marathon you are at 17.5 miles and you have 8.7 miles left. That actually means that you still have two and a half miles left before that ultimate 20 mile crux point when so many people "hit the wall."

The first time I ran the Big Sur Marathon I was wearing a relatively new pair of shoes that were not properly broken in, and which had a particularly annoying strap that rubbed against my instep. About a mile into the race I stopped by the side of the road and ripped that strap out of the shoe, but the damage had already been done. It had rubbed a huge blister across my instep and by the two-thirds point of that race my right shoe was making a distinct "squish squish" sound as blood poured into the shoe with each step.

A few miles later - at a definite post-WALL point, I was walking the road, calculating my pace and praying to the Goddess that I would just finish the damn race and not have to be picked up by the rescue van. I saw a man on the side of the road with his shoe off. As I looked forlornly at the poor guy, and he looked forlornly at me, I thought to myself, "if I stop like that, I won't start again." With that internally generated motivation, I kicked back into my stride and began running again.

Several miles later, as I was cruising down a small hill toward the final bridge crossing, a slightly crazed, rather shabby looking dude jumped out in front of me and shouted, "Just cross that bridge and you get free beer!" Well... the beer was Bud Light, but at that point, it was the perfect carrot. For one last time, I kicked up my pace, raised my head and smiled. I crossed the bridge, cruised through the orange plastic chutes of the finish line, got my finisher's medal, my picture.. and my BEER.

There is absolutely no question that those last 8.7 miles were the hardest of the entire 26.2... The were also the most terrific!