No Sympathy

Mark and I recently flew down to Utah for a marathon.  Not a marathon for me to run in mind you, Mark’s the insane runner in our coupledom.  He went to race and I went to spectate.

Now before you think Mark is the more robust of us two for such daring athletic prowess, let me appraise you on the subject of being a spectator.   To be clear, this is no easy task.  In fact, after my little soliloquy here, perhaps I will have convinced you that spectating should involve shiny metals like the marathoners get--a personal cause which heretofore has fallen on deaf ears.

First off, to spectate a marathon properly one must be in peak condition.  It is important to practice polite-but-firm shoving skills and a few sets of light elbow jabbing to get yourself in prime conditioning for the clash that occurs when trying to get a glimpse at the runners coming toward the finish line.  Most importantly you’ve got to condition your calves by doing copious amounts of leg raises so you’re fit enough to repeatedly lift yourself taller so you can see over the mishmash of heads in order to spot that runner you came to cheer for.  Next comes larynx conditioning.  Even with a voice like mine, well known for its legendary and admittedly obnoxious volume capacity, it will certainly be tested to its limits. Spending a few weeks before a race hollering at random people will strengthen the voice muscles and get your lungs at their peak performance.  Finally there’s the palm conditioning.  Palm preparation is also vital. Liberal amounts of clapping can wreak havoc on ones hands, as I will demonstrate later.

No doubt I’ve blogged about my unusually loud clapping skills.  I was cursed with a loud clap (which you can be certain I all too often use to my advantage in immature and impish ways).  It's an undisputed fact that my skills are so good that if clapping were an Olympic sport, I’d be the Nadia Comaneci of clapping, elevated to that esteemed spot on the tallest podium bungling the words to my national anthem under the weight of a dozen gold metals.  My clapping is so inexplicably extraordinary Olympic officials would get suspicious and have me tested for doping.

Speaking of gymnasts, Peter Vidmar happened to be one of the runners there at this latest marathon.  Mark was all excited because people kept coming up and asking him if he was Peter.  He was pretty proud that people were mistaking him for a world-class athlete but I pointed out that there was a high probability that all they were really doing was indirectly calling him “short”, or worse, perhaps an ‘aging athlete that looked pretty good for his age’.

But I digress….

Lastly, any experienced spectator knows you must strengthen your arms.  You risk great peril if you hold up a sign overhead too long, there is a real jeopardy of putting your arms to sleep.  This is a large tactical error--prematurely weakening your arms-- which will be needed towards the end of the race in order to position your hands for the all-important finish-line clapping phase.

Over the past few years I’ve spectated at many a race.  A handful of marathons, a couple triathlons, and a few 10 mile “quickies”.  So this latest marathon was definitely not my first rodeo.  I was in prime spectating condition…or so I thought.

This time I would be cheering on three racers--far more of a challenge than I surmised. Little did I know this sort of spectating should have required me to do more extensive cross-training beforehand to adequately prepare...and perhaps I could have had on hand a little bottle of 5-hour energy…just in case.

These races always begin in the wee hours of the morning, long before it gets light outside.  This is why you’ll likely never see me enter an event such as this.  The copious amounts of cussing I do in regular life are wholly exacerbated before dawn—or really anytime before 9am.  Add that to the fact that I hate to run and you’ve created a situation prolific with profanities.  Therefore I avoid marathon running like the plague.

So at 3:15am Mark and I, and my niece and nephew Danielle and Andrea, all piled into the car and headed to the race.  I dropped the three off at the appointed spot where they would be driven by bus to the starting point.  

Not even my iphone's flash wanted to wake that early in the morning...

This marked the start of my marathon spectatorship… 

First you have to stake out a parking spot.  Some races this can be an uphill battle, despite the absurd hour you find yourself doing it.  Popular races are a nightmare to find parking even at 3am.  You need to keep a vigilant eye out for a space.  Sometimes you have to hunt really hard which requires periodic rehydration using ice cold diet cokes just to keep you in the best condition for skimming and scanning parking lots.  Once you claim a space it's imperative you get a little shut-eye and rest up for the viewing obstacles you're about to surmount.  But this is no cozy nap mind you.  You find yourself cramped in the back seat praying sleep will come despite the frigid conditions you find yourself surrendering to. You're now about to toss and turn for a hour...

About ten minutes after you finally fall asleep, it's time to wake and scope out the finish line.  You see how early the crowd is amassing and whether you need to stake your claim to a small spot at the barrier.  Really jam-packed finish lines mean you won’t be able to camp yourself out in a comfy folding chair.  Often it’s standing room only for three to four hours.  But this is why you condition so hard for these epic ordeals.  Marathoners just don’t appreciate the stamina it takes to conquer the hellish conditions we onlookers are entrenched in at the finish line.

Fortunately for me, this marathon was a brand new first time ever race.  An inaugural run.  And because of this I was surprised at how easy it was to park and how sparse the onlookers were.  I got so excited I ran back to the car to get my cozy camp chair and envisioned an easy day at the races.  But boy was I wrong.

I arrived back at the finish and had my pick of the place and set out my chair.  But no sooner had I unfolded it and set it in just the right spot to shade me from the rising sun when the first finisher of the half marathon rounded the corner and headed for the finish.  The first few finishers always merit a lot of hoopla from everybody so I refrained from sitting and commenced clapping and cheering, and rooting for the first runner’s big finish.  No sooner was he gotten through when the second and third place runners rounded the corner and began their final push.  Gotta keep clapping for them too.  Soon I realized all these runners were coming in and I was the only one clapping for them.  The few people standing there were obviously being miserly and only there to clap for their runner and absolutely positively NO one else.  What the??  It is customary that runners all finish to a chorus of claps and cheers.  The sheer size of typical finish line crowd often insures that everyone there just part-time claps and somehow the roar of the crowd never stops for four or five solid hours until the last man or he-woman is through. 

Nobody at this race seemed to have read the ‘Spectating for Dummies’ book, which, clearly states that people crossing the finish deserve applause.

So there I was, epic applauder, with a major dilemma.  Do I let people finish, tears in their eyes, clinging to the last thread of life, headed for a silent finish?  It just all seemed wrong.  So I commenced clapping and never stopped for three hours strait!  Do you know what that does to your hands? Seriously. I’m not sure many people actually know the pain and suffering it can cause the palms of your poor hands.  Combine that feat with two hours of cheering stragglers on and rising up on my tippy-toes (up and down, up and down) so I could see over the selfish non-clapping people obscuring my field of vision--and you’ve got a recipe for serious palm chaffing, voice losing, calf crippling injuries.

Thankfully, Danielle successfully finished her first-ever half marathon and then both Mark and Andrea finished their marathons before I was blistered and bloody--all three finished to the single solitary applause and cheers of yours truly.  It seems there was an embargo on ebullience and I was the only one who didn’t get the memo.

Here's Andrea headed for his big finish.  Do you see anyone clapping for him out in that sparse crowd of onlookers?  Ba-humbug!

Again notice no clappers to be found in the background of this shot either... That poor guy crossing the finish did so in utter silence as I was the only clapper and I was using my hands to operate a camera to take this shot.

After the runners had a brief recovery at the finish line, I gently loaded three tired, sore, and sweaty passengers into the car and drove them strait to a burger joint so they could recover over butter burgers and icy cokes.   

 

Then it was time to get home to recuperate.  This R&R is strictly for the runners and hardly for the spectator.  That’s because there would be aching athletes to help up stairs, to tuck in beds, and to supply ice packs and aspirin to.  The finish line marks the end for the runners but not the spectators.  Spectators, I’m afraid, have a few more hours of service in which they will have to draw upon heretofore unknown tapped resources of courage and stamina, “dig deep” as Mark calls it, to provide after care to the tired blister laden athletes.  No one realizes the spectator has been doing calf raises and sign curls for three hours strait and that you may be in need of your own nap and ice pack.

They don’t notice until the next morning when you seem to be walking stiffly from sore calf muscles and see that you can barely hold onto things with your chaffed hand-clapping palms.  Then they’ll curiously inquire why you’re getting around so awkwardly.  This is when you tell them with your hoarse and weakened crowd-cheering voice, that you're actually sore from waiting at the finish line for their grand finale.

At which point, said runners will squish up their face in total repugnance and say, “How does that make you sore??”

Absolutely no sympathy.

Danielle's First Half Marathon:

Andrea's First Full Marathon, clearly re-thinking the whole idea:

Mark coming in for a strong finish. 3rd in his age division: