The Starting Line

by Debbie Bateman

Image use purchased from Adobe stock.

Once upon a klutz

In a former life, before hip pain encouraged me to seek an alternative, I devoted myself to long-distance running. Okay, the truth? It was my religion. I liked how my mind would untether from its troubles, how my body became its truest animal self, the wild freedom of pushing forward into the unknown next moment, of challenging what I thought I knew about myself.

I’d always been a klutz. I didn’t hit the baseball until Grade 9. That was me in swimming lessons, the one splashing and gasping and looking for all the world as if I was drowning. The awkward shy girl who consistently knocked the bar off in her sad attempts at the high jump, this too was me. I didn’t manage to sail over, not even once. I hated Phys Ed.

Hero status for ordinary humans

Imagine my surprise in my mid-forties when I discovered there was one sport I could do; never mind that it is glorified walking. Put one foot in front, then the other, repeat. Running brought me home to myself. It gave me a body. It made me whole. Many enthusiastic amateurs in the long-distance running community obsess over a singular goal. There aren’t many opportunities in this life to achieve hero status as an ordinary person. It’s one of the things that makes the Boston Marathon, the world’s oldest footrace, special. The world’s best and the world’s basically ordinary share a race and the people cheer. But first you have to qualify; only then can you join the race.

Qualifying

For four years, I reached for that goal. The first time I tried to qualify for Boston, I was half an hour too slow. I ended the marathon moaning out loud, hobbling, barely walking until my sons showed up and dragged me forward at a slightly faster pace. The second time, I did not make it to the starting line because I trained too hard and tore a calf muscle. The third time, I was beautifully fit and ready to rumble, but it rained the entire race and I finished slow and soggy and nearly hypothermic. The fourth time, I made it, assisted by a two-legged rabbit with a four o’clock shadow, otherwise known as a pace bunny. He’d ran beside me, daring me to go faster in the last three brutal kilometres of the forty-two.

A surprise! It’s not about the finish.

Here’s what I learned. It’s the starting line that matters—the moment when you dare to begin . . . and the training that gets you there. This is more complicated than it seems. A person can only train well if they recognize their shortcomings, their areas of weakness. Pigeon-toed, I do not land evenly on my feet. Every step torques the interlacing tendons on the soles of my feet. There are so many ways to injure yourself there. And if that doesn’t happen, next in line are the calves. Both strong and fragile, tug those babies the wrong way and snap.

As I approached the finish line with its neon digital clock and the guy who announced my name and the people roaring, I heard the one voice that matters most. My husband boomed, “Deb, you did it!” And he met me on the other side. We hooked up in a gap along the finishing chute, hugging and kissing and stopping to phone our sons. Then I finished the slow walk towards the volunteer who hung a medal on me, its weight solid against my sweaty chest. Soon after, I met my mom with her walker, beaming at me and telling me she was proud. All of this was sweet, so sweet.

The fresh light

But none of it was as sweet as the quiet moment at the break of day, standing by the parliament buildings in Victoria, with a thousand other people waiting for the starting gun. I told myself, good or bad, finish or fail, I would give the race everything. When I crossed the finish line, there would be nothing left. And honestly, there wasn’t. After I made it through the finish line and crossed the street, I was overcome with a cramp so bad it had me on my knees on the sidewalk, moaning and unable to stand for many minutes. If it had hit only a few minutes earlier . . . well.

Repeat ad nauseum

And so, here I am again, at a different starting line, mustering my courage and determining to give it everything I have. I know I will have to face my shortcomings, learn to navigate my weaknesses, build new muscle. Sooner or later, I’ll probably do something I shouldn’t have. I might end up injured and have to miss the year’s race. I might cross the finish in the sopping rain, weakened and confused and not nearly fast enough. All my work might end in soggy disappointment and aching bones and shivering. Now and then, my ambitions are bound to exceed my abilities. As before, I will recover and try again and again and quite possibly once more again.

For the last few months, I’ve been occupied with promoting my book that was published in October. Now, it is time to return to the novel-in-progress and the second short-story collection I was working on before Ronsdale Press offered to publish Your Body Was Made for This. My hope is that I will remember the simplicity of glorified walking. Sometimes you can feel like you’re flying and yet it is far more basic and undeniably earth-bound. One foot, then the other, repeat. Onward.