Legs To Run On

The affirmation of finishing the marathon.

by ASHLEY FANTZ

The author, center, crosses the finish line.

I can still see Coach Workman’s face. Eyes buried in wrinkles like a shar-pei, his rusty whistle dangling across a referee’s shirt. A clipboard that seemed a permanent shelf jutting from his lean stomach. The Bela Lugosi of fourth grade gym class, Coach Workman was one serious guy. Although girls were given leniency, boys were expected to shimmy up a rope quickly “because climbing is what boys do best” and dodge ball was about “focusing on and hitting your enemy like war.” And, the dreaded annual “Mile” was not just a test of endurance, but a way to separate the weak from the strong.

I heard the word Darwinism in elementary school gym more often than I got my training bra snapped.

As the back of my legs beat against the cold steel bleachers, I watched my classmates, one after another, run by on the track, arms flailing. There was always the star who finished in under 10 minutes. Most skipped around the pavement for 15 minutes or more. I, however, was officially benched. An asthmatic nerd allergic to everything — including most inhaler mists — I reaffirmed Coach’s assertion that Title 9 was a silly women’s rights thing. For years, until high school when the Mile was replaced in importance among adolescent socialites by cheerleading, dance squad, or volleyball, and if you were truly a badass, basketball, I continued to believe that I had limitations because of my asthma.

Don’t feel sorry for me. I was not the fat kid. I was not unhealthy. I took dance lessons. And I began to run alongside my mother, who is a rabid swimmer, biker, and runner. One afternoon, while jogging behind her, complaining that I was spent after finishing 2 miles, I noticed that my mother had a nicer ass than I. That’s traumatic. Later that evening as we sat lotus style, drinking fig leaf tea and meditating, she wisely said, “A toner booty is only the beginning, my child.”

And, gosh, aren’t moms always right?

What my mom didn’t tell me was what kind of extremists runners are. They train and party with equal zest. Tony George and Rodney Diggon have together run more than 50 marathons from Boston to Chicago. Both sat at a table at a packed High Point Pinch drinking a beer with their fellow Memphis Marathon runners.

“All you need after a marathon is a beer. All you need anytime is a beer,” Rodney said. Who wouldn’t want to hang out with these people?

To earn a seat at the High Point Pinch post-marathon shindig, you had to work first. Specifically, you had to work it from The Pyramid, down North Parkway, past Memphis College of Art, down East Parkway, alongside Mid-South Coliseum. Continue running down Elvis Presley Blvd., backtracking along Winchester to Third, up Beale, and finish — crying, swearing, laughing hysterically — on Riverside Drive back to The Pyramid. Twenty-six-point-two miles of willpower — especially if you had to use the bathroom for five miles. It was the first time in my life I wished I were a man. A woman who was having the same difficulty explained about a contraption she was wearing that made enabled her to conduct business and did I want to see it. I said I’d try to hold it.

A brief breakdown of the race goes: mile 5, running like I’m Carl Lewis; mile 8, Does South Parkway reach to the Dead Sea? When is this stretch gonna end?; mile 9-14, Porta Potty! Ohmigod Porta Potty! mile 17, coughing up snowball-size lugees composed of car exhaust from Elvis Presley; mile 22, regretting that I ran like Carl Lewis; mile 26 with .2 to go, sudden love for my chapped face, hammering heart, jumping lungs, and exhausted, cramped legs.

A friend had called that the body’s orchestra. A.R. Ammons was right when he wrote, “The purpose of being alive is to be alive.” Running the marathon was my way of turning up the volume of my life, the everyday playing of it, to make sure I could appreciate how perfectly danceable the music is.

I was worried the night before the race that I had not trained enough. The longest I’d run without stopping was 7 miles. It’s common that runners-in-training log at least two 20-mile runs before attempting a marathon. Although I was advised repeatedly to follow a regimen and to run outside, I allowed both laziness and arrogance to overcome my daily runs on a treadmill. I finished right at four hours, keeping a 9-minute pace or less throughout. Completely in awe of everyone — from the woman in her 60s who passed me at mile 23 to the bionic winner Kevin Odiome, who broke the course record by finishing in 2 hours and 20 seconds — I’m going to stick with this marathon thing. What better way to realize that we are defined by the bodies we occupy, yet so gloriously separate from them in will. That certainly must be true. I didn’t use my inhaler once.

You can e-mail Ashley Fantz at ashley@memphisflyer.com.