The Portland Marathon

At the starting gate!

7am pre-race hugs

crossing the St. Johns bridge. mile 17

hugs from my monkey after finishing. Feeling nauseous and proud :/

#teamKendall

sister support <3

Taffy loves my medal

Time for beer

 

Yesterday I ran 26.2 miles nonstop, averaging 9min 20sec per mile. I didn’t chafe, my blisters were minimal, I never felt out of breath—it was exhilarating and exhausting. And man oh man did I get my fill of endorphins cascading down my spine, hamstrings, and calves. It’s easy to paint the past through rose-colored tints—once an accomplishment is finished it doesn’t seem as daunting. But I’ll be honest when I say that this marathon has been a journey and then some.

I signed up for the race way back in March while I was predominantly sedentary, coming off a stint of living in India and getting almost zero exercise. My base was maxed at around 6 miles, running like 11 min miles or something ridiculous. Needless to say, I wasn’t in the best shape of my life.

Why did I register? Why does anyone register for these things? I think I felt a sense of “fuck it, I can do it,” mixed with an urge to get my ass kicked and have something to focus on other than my overwhelming ‘newness’ in this city I just moved to. Mostly, I yearned for that sense of freedom that accompanies being able to run far and fast and through the shits and through the leg fatigue until those surges of ecstasy course through your veins.

You could say I caught the bug a year ago when I decided to run 21miles on my 21^st birthday. I trained for about 10 weeks, ran it alone on April 1st in the national forests around Missoula, Montana, having setup ‘water stations’ the night before since my college buddies were too hungover to commit to helping me out. During training, and after the run I felt like I was satisfying some primordial beast within, pushing mental/physical limits and also my understanding of myself.

There is certainly a zen-component to running long distance. It is reminiscent of intense Ashtanga yoga sessions, where you are forced to dive deep within yourself and just keep moving through the motions, the breath. Of course it takes a while to cultivate this meditative relationship with running, at least for me. At first, I would attack training runs—listening to pump-up music without any sense of pacing and wear myself out. Soon you learn that you have to relax into the run, relax into the uncomfortability building up in your shoulders, your feet, your quads—and lean into it, cherish it almost, because if you push through you feel higher than any drug could ever make you.

I have been thinking a lot lately about how I can live my yoga without having a rigorous daily practice. Maybe I’ve been hanging around Ashtangis for too long, such that I feel guilty for attributing so much time to an activity other than the primary series. But I’m starting to see how the principles of yoga can be applied to many discaplines. And what yoga is really about is becoming a better, more mindful human; it shouldn’t matter the path through which you attain that. Patience, letting go, being present, dissolving ego-driven action—all of these practices have been strengthened through my running (although Guruji would cringe at the tightening of my hamstrings).

These were my mantras yesterday whilst pounding the pavement in a sea of neon bodies: “focus on the breath; loosen up the shoulders; easy posture, light strikes; if it feels like work, you’re going too fast; lose yourself in the movement.” And I fucking did it.

I remember at one point during training, my brother-in-law was asking me how it was going and I replied, “After this marathon, I’m never going to run again.” Maybe I have retrograde amnesia because I’m already looking up ultramarathons around Portland for next spring while I lay lathered in Tiger Balm, muscles crippled from the previous day’s ventures. Here’s to pushing limits and sweating profusely!