Oh, thousands of people lining the race course cheering was wonderful and amazing and thank you all for coming… but call me old fashioned, I can take it: I remember the good old days when my name was not printed on the front of my race bib in big bold letters and I could run in dignified anonymity, suffering through the last few klicks of a course without people shouting personalized encouragement at me from the sidelines.
So many of you love this, but there are moments of lucid clarity when I do miss nameless attention during a race.
Now look, before you object. Yeah, I know. I get it. I see the problem and it’s me. I probably could have opted out of this at some step in the process of race registration. I’m sure there was a tick box or a “do you want your name on your bib” option that I accidentally selected. I didn’t. Obviously. And too, this obviously reeks of some kind of race privilege: guy runs and is disconcerted, annoyed, frazzled by supporters cheering. Boo him instead, maybe. Look. It’s not that.
It’s my own problem: a clashing of the limelight and participation and too, this quirky sense of self image which always feels a little ill-fitted. Bah humbug, ok?
When I ran the Chicago Marathon a few years ago, clever me thought I would wear a running shirt that was styled after the Canadian Olympic branding I had picked up during the then-recent games. The name of my country was emblazoned in bold letters across my chest. After the thousandth or so time that, roughly ten klicks into that race, I heard “Go Canada” or “Keep running Canada” or “You got this Canada” shouted at me by lovely, supportive, friendly Chicagoans, the patriotic pride got to my marathon-strained mindset. I wasn’t doing as well as I hoped, not faring as well as I’d trained for and there was a whiff of shame creeping into my heart. If I could have ripped that shirt off and completed the race topless and also country-less I may have done it.
This vibe popped up again when I ran the Edmonton half marathon the other week and my name was printed in big bold letters—letters potentially visible from space—on the middle of my bib. Hundreds of wonderful and supportive strangers cheered me on by name as I passed by, as I slogged out a race for which I was ill-prepared and through which I was nursing a minor foot injury—none of which was the fault of the cheering squads, obviously—and it all soon started to get more than a little overplayed in my tunnel-vision mind to be hearing my name from the sidelines. I didn’t deserve it. They should have been passing out paper bags, I surely thought.
I appreciate the support. I really do. But, in these moments it’s hard not to become more of a toil-in-obscurity kind of guy, especially when I’m limping home after a mediocre race. Please just give me anonymity to wobble towards the finish line safe inside my own bubble.
Or maybe I’m completely wrong and it was exactly those cheers that got me home at all.
