The Maine Marathon 2024
October 2013, was my first time running 26.2 miles, when you’re eighteen and you run that far it feels pretty significant. I really really wanted to run the Maine Marathon ten years later in 2023, but it just did not work out so here it happened for my eleven yearaversary! At twenty-nine here in 2024, my ten year victory lap marathon happened eleven years deep into the career. Running is truly my passion in life, and I just love being in Maine having been up there for all of college plus many trail adventures, chasing coastal miles. The feeling of running my event for over ten years in one of my favorite places in the world is too special to express in words.
After a long car ride from Upstate NY, we checked into our lovely Maine hotel and ventured off to Portland for the Maine Marathon Expo. The Maine Marathon logo photo backsplash is so fun, eye-catching, exciting to see whilst walking into all the thrill of a big race expo. The shirts were a very cool design, of the Maine Track Club. Being social, buying merchandise, my new Maine Marathon glass, gave me all the joy to kick off race weekend. Wearing all my running attire, sneakers and new race top, we went to one of my favorite Portland spots, the lobster company. I dreamed of sipping on my pumpkin smashed Shipyard beer, with a delicious buttery lobster roll while listening to a loud live band right on the ocean, such a perfect pre-marathon evening under the stars.
Before my marathon, I ate several mini snickers bars with my electrolyte gel. Sugar with all the candy is all I ever want for running all the miles. During the race, I had a gel every five miles, until the end when I had one every two miles and drank all the water and Gatorade without strategy. Always have a strategy until the time comes to just stuff your face.
During the national anthem, I put my hand over my heart, feeling all the power from the crowd. Then, the gun went off, my Skullcandy headphones popped in blasting Queen and my feet were flying too fast with the surging crowd along the glorious coast of gorgeous Maine.
It’s funny, my first time in the Maine Marathon we weren’t allowed to go over the bridge just along the water, as it had been under construction. My second time, my senior year of college, I don't even remember if we did the bridge. This year, it was a pleasure to stride across the bridge two times, very fun.
Positive affirmations in poetry or life, which I think of during long runs under pressure may be, 'Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour’ or ‘you’re running for god’ or ‘just do it’. In all seriousness or gigglyness, every athlete has positive affirmations during those tough spots. ‘The Climb’ is still one of my favorite running songs, for Maine Marathons especially. Chasing the long miles is difficult eleven years later in different ways than my first time; is knowing what to expect better than being surprised? In running, you grow and adapt through the years to be built together the necessary way to achieve the feat, those tendons and bones work with the muscles to take the runner places. For instance, at eighteen my flesh felt as if it were tearing from the bones twenty miles deep and I had to run anyway, where now my legs have adapted to intense high mileage, so they keep springing fluidly in my stride with a more relaxed feeling enabling sarcastic yet real life kicks in speed that last fifty meters to the finish. Running may be more of a state of mind if the runner is not injured.
Several miles deep, the crowd separated, no one was shoulder to shoulder running through the course. To see half marathon runners turning the corner, while the full marathon runners keep going another direction, is intimidating as if to be lapped. Nevertheless, those legs keep springing, one mile to the next, not knowing where you’ll place in the mix of re-layers, half-marathon runner's, plus extraneous categories. Too many layers of definition to placement in running to think about on the actual run, but I just focus on the mile I’m running before planning the next.
Some things about the marathon still feel unnatural, like inevitable chafing after twenty miles, my thighs were so bloody it was embarrassing and painful, but nothing to stop the race for. I wish, I had the Vaseline packets from my summer camp med kit in my bra, the med station gave me some luckily. On merry way past twenty miles, my mantra was ‘keep springing’. Sometimes, I would just stare at my thighs maybe hoping to put a spell on them to keep on moving and grooving, shimmying on down to the finish line. Strategy balanced with pain and thirst happens in those last three miles, while you still feel competitive as if to be running shoulder to shoulder in a track meet.
Loud music, with my disciplined springing legs took me to the familiar final stretch, with my increased speed making me feel powerful as I crossed the finish line, quickly switching from super serious to a smile of pure joy before holding my glamorous Maine Marathon Medal shaped as the actual state.
Soon after, came my celebratory drive to Old Orchard Beach, then going to the beach in bear feet being taken over by the salty ocean waves, after stripping into just my run-buns and sports-bra, very glamorous medal around my neck, as if it were still my college days being wild and free.
The Maine Marathon, had been everything I ever wanted it to be.
