Napa Valley Marathon 1st Mar 2009

As my mind chooses to remember the pleasure over the pain of the past marathons, I ventured out to do the Napa once again on the spur of the moment. Kind of under prepared, started disgustingly early at 3:30 am with coach Patel, who, upbeat and alive to music of dhoom 2, simultaneously analyzing Adnan Sami, kishore kumar and M Rafi , at 80 mph in relentless rain, asked me to nap if I wanted to . Far from sleepy, I engaged myself into essential excessive carb loading on all the food and drink I was carrying ….lucky for me a marathon can burn 2800 calories for my weight and height : )

At the race met Rajeev’s colleague Engle yet another enthusiastic soul beginning his journey into the upward spiral of marathon addiction. As for me in doubt about what I was doing there and why was I doing this race again, I stood there waiting for the clock to strike 700. And the race started … but this time round it was different. I ran alone and I ran without music, I ran without a goal and kind of aimlessly. A blessing in disguise, my shuffle wasn’t charged, so, music that had become my crutch off late for running, wasn’t there to prod me on and in this race distract me. I couldn’t help but be in the moment….a lot.
I love the rain and I had my hearts content of running 5 hours in it. The temperature through the race was somewhere between 54-60 degrees and it was drizzling all along the course. As odd as it sounds it was just the perfect temperature to run in for me. It didn’t feel cold because my muscles were being worked and because it was cool it wasn’t fatiguing .
And the scenery oh boy ! needless to say inspite and despite of drunk driving on the sinful Silverado trail in the past, nothing compares to treading it on foot, on endorphins. One of the most spectacular expansive scenery of green rolling hills and mustard fields, of little known and world famous vineyards with their hill top villas and dreamy mansions. Making mental notes of not visited and wanna come back to vineyards (of which I cant recall any anymore) and high on Gu and Gatorade the miles slowly passed by, the increasing pain a grateful reminder of the soon approaching end .

Just around mile 20 I realized I was not doing bad at all and if I pushed myself I could pull in under 5 hours. So to feed my ego’s need I pushed and it felt like hitting against the ““dreaded wall” each mile thereafter. Joyous to see Patel at mile 25 coming back to get me as promised and around 14 minutes to spare I felt reassured of my sub 5 finish. Its funny in hindsight how one feels that they are running so fast when actually the mind is way ahead of the body beckoning it to the finish. I had an awesome finish laughing and crying, I don’t know if you guys see it but I see a white light at the end of a marathon.

I don’t know what it was, the endorphins or maybe the misty air laden with evaporated wine my memory of it rests at a blissfully painful race then and a painful bliss now. Still riding the high. Will have to do it again for more than one reason.