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.
Definitions
- august
- In the month of August where I live summer peaks and the days are often relatively hot (in the high 20s or low 30s) muggy, smokey and dry. Rain is infrequent, but when it arrives it comes in the form of drenching downpours and epic thunderstorms. We begin our runs earlier in the day because the local marathon runs late in the month and our training distances are maxing.
- bib
- Runners know this, but almost universally now when you run a street race you will be given a sheet of plastic-coated paper with a number printed on the front. Glued to the back side might be a little plastic tracking chip. In each corner there will be a small hole. You pin this paper to your shirt and it properly identifies you as a legit runner on the course, pings the electronic sensors that track your progress, and enable a bunch of photographers to tag you in a collection of terrible race photos that they will try to sell you later for hundreds of dollars.
- Canadian
- I write this blog from a small city in the middle of the Canadian prairies. It means I use terms like kilometres and celsius and you're just gonna need to deal with that. I run four seasons long, from blisteringly hot summers through icy cold winters. I've encountered moose, beavers, and snakes on our trails. And we're proud of it all.
- klick
- As a Canadian I run in metric. As a writer, I find the word kilometre clunky and clinical. I'll usually use the colloquial "klick" or "klicks" to substitute in for this.
- race
- You train and train and train some more, and then for no clear reason you pay a bunch of money to run as fast as you possibly can at a very specific time with a bunch of strangers along a course lined with more strangers (or along paths lined with trees if you are an ultra runner) at the end of which you are handed a medal and a banana and a sense of achievement unlike anything you will feel again (until you sign up for your next one.)
- september
- The days are noticeably shorter when we realize that September is upon us. The post-summer routine kicks in and people are back to regular work schedules and kids are back in school. It can still be warm, but the hottest days are behind us and most of the biggest races of the year are in the rear view. We savour September knowing winter is too soon to come.
