Journeys: Phoenix, Arizona - Marathon

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Phoenix, Arizona - Marathon

This past weekend I ran in the Rock 'n' Roll Arizona Marathon. The 26.2 mile race started in downtown Phoenix, passed through Scottsdale, and finished in Tempe. For me, however, the journey started 9 months earlier with a nasty injury at the Salt Lake Marathon. Poor choices on my part before the Salt Lake race, and even poorer choices during the race, led to a torn hamstring and four months of no running. Even walking was a challenge for a couple of months. By September I was finally able to run and by the time I arrived at the start line in Phoenix on January 15, I felt great.

Half way through the Arizona marathon

A big thanks to Jacob for practically carrying me in to the urgent care center after the Salt Lake race, Zach for taking me to the desert for some camping and outdoor fun even though I was on crutches, my bike for keeping me sane all summer, and Marcin for the essential pre-race margaritas in Phoenix. I hope I learned some lessons to keep me from repeating those four months.

I promised not to push myself too hard in Arizona, but I felt strong throughout the entire race. I didn't pay too much attention to my time at each mile since my primary concern was making sure my leg felt good, but I knew I was having a good race. In the end, I finished in 3:45, just 5 seconds slower than my best marathon time. Not a PR, but I've never been happier after a race.

Rock N Roll Arizona Marathon

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards"

-- Edward Abbey

"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. "

-- John Muir

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

-- Terry Tempest Williams

"There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. But for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?"

-- Margaret E. Murie

"I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"

-- Everett Ruess