Tell the Town

The greatest thing I learned about myself, in regard to my marathon course style preferences, happened during this marathon. Years ago I'd learned of my un-affection for running inaugural courses, those which include terrain similar to a woodsy hike, & a few other characteristics.

In the past I would have just moped & pouted that this negative existed. Now-a-days I recognize each of these opportunities as learning experiences. That's what I chose to do with this current marathon experience.

I enjoy a crowd acknowledging (not me! 😁) that their city, their town, their neighborhood & maybe even their street has a marathon going on. Essentially that it's advertised & that those locals which could give a care, have the opportunity to care. Plenty of participants from, well, just about everywhere & anywhere, oftentimes travel far & then even further to cross a course's finish line. In similar interest there are people who thoroughly enjoy these events from a "passerby" standpoint, well, sometimes just to ask participants "From where did you come to run today?" And sometimes just to ring a cowbell too. 😊

This marathon wasn't one of those marathons. Not by far. The local authorities didn't permit for streets to be shut down (so we ran either on the sidewalk or alongside the curb) or for traffic lights at major intersections to be manually manipulated (so, if the "walk light" wasn't in our favor, we had to just wait, even if it would add that long of a duration of seconds to our finishing time).

Live & learn. It's another marathon in the books. And to now know that a marathon with a restricted participant count has the perk that participants make great in-the-moment, help-to-pace-me-out-these-first-10-or-so-miles kind of friends, & in my humble opinion, not much else.

In gratitude I can say that having these at all the many fueling stations was welcome & appreciated. It was obvious they'd been donated, with their being in such a large abundance of that flavor on each table, yet I've been on courses where the flavor option, especially by the time a pace I could manage finally reached the remaining selection had the majority of the scatterings included the word lime in the flavor's title. According to this article, perhaps those have been (good idea! 😂) discontinued. I'm still a fan of these, in that they're organic. I'd packed my pockets full of them, as well as these, & a few of these too. With the latter's flavor similar to that which I kept picking off the water station table, on the intervals when I'd consume my own packets, I let them stay in my pocket.


And then I crossed the finish line. Sweet success. 👊👏💪

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