I Ran a Marathon to Stop Feeling Like a Loser

Every finish line is a lesson

My first year out of high school was one of the low points of my life. I’d just dropped out of college and couldn’t escape the feeling that I was an enormous disappointment.

I got a minimum wage job that consisted of menial labor. I mainly dug ditches and drove a dump truck.

At lunch time, the workers gathered in a large warehouse with walls black from exhaust fumes and oil stains. The other guys all filed in with their soiled jeans and flannel shirts. I still remember how they used to eat their sandwiches with blackened hands as if they couldn’t even spare the time to wash up.

So, this is going to be my life now.

The AP courses I’d been taking a year ago seemed like a memory that belonged to another person.

A conservative, rural community

The other workers weren’t bad people, but you learned pretty fast that there were things you just didn’t talk about. The Green Bay Packers were a safe topic, as was the weather. You could mention an occasional movie. Clint Eastwood had just come out with ‘Unforgiven,’ that was okay.

You couldn’t talk about books.

They worked hard and finished their day. Some of them parked on the bar stool afterwards to finish their nights. My social circle engaged maybe 9% of the topics I wished to talk about.

It was lonely.

The local marathon

The closest major marathon was up in Duluth, Minnesota: Grandma’s Marathon. The course goes along the shores of Lake Superior and finishes near the lift bridge at Canal Park.

There’s a common misconception that you can see the lift bridge from the starting line, but that’s not exactly true. Still, the lift bridge does start to hover into view maybe around the halfway point.

“I’m thinking of running the marathon!”

The words caused one of those needle-off-the-record moments.

“You’re crazy.”

But the rebuttal wasn’t delivered with the same scorn I got when I mentioned a book title. There was begrudging respect there. The marathon seemed like a lifeline to another world. I seized it.

Trouble was, I wasn’t a runner

I’d never done any running. I hadn’t been in track or cross country in high school. I hadn’t done any sports. It had been a conservative, rural school. I wanted to spend as little time with those people as possible. I wasn’t really ready to do a marathon, but I figured I was 18 and I could get by on the vibrancy of youth.

I marked out a loop with my bicycle. This was before GPS watches. I had a Timex Ironman watch with a lap counter. After work, I’d do five or six miles.

“If you can run five miles after work it means you aren’t working hard enough!”

The men grumbled things like that and it gave me pause. Was this what adult life was like? Your employer owned your work time and they owned your off hours as well?

Did the other workers have a point? Was I not giving them enough at work?

To heck with that! I could run if I wanted to. I just resolved to stop telling them about it.

The big day

It’s strange to reflect on my first marathon. The event was enormous, people came from all over the world. The energy was so different than the soul sucking misery of the work warehouse. People smiled and laughed, they all looked so thin and young.

There was life here!

They bused us up to the start and there was the nervous energy of the crowd. They inhaled and exhaled as if we were all cells in the same giant organism. The gun went off and we began.

The day was pleasantly cool, and Grandma’s Marathon is famous for the breeze that comes off the lake. I watched people flowing by, pleased to be among them. Spectators shouted encouragement. It was nice to see that there were literally thousands of people that didn’t think this was a silly undertaking.

Thousands of people were unabashedly impressed!

The finish

My time was nothing special, just under 4:11. They handed me a medal and wrapped me in a space blanket. I stood looking at the medal.

The trick to a marathon is that it’s not a physical challenge as much as it’s a mental one. Your legs hurt, that’s part of it, but you keep going. You endure setbacks, but you keep going. You want to stop, but you keep going.

Nothing is the end of the road, not even the finish. You complete the marathon, get your medal, and you keep going. But you’re different after that medal.

Back at work

I hobbled a little bit on Monday, but I’d had Sunday to recover so I could put in a good work day. The men were fairly quiet when they filed in for lunch. Nobody was going to ask me how the marathon went, but they were curious.

“Well, I finished the marathon,” I declared. The words bounced against the walls stained with oil and motor fumes.

A few eyes glanced up, and although there wasn’t praise, there wasn’t derision either.

I’d brought my finisher’s medal. “Here’s what they give you.” I held it out to the nearest man, not knowing if he’d take it or just laugh at me.

To my surprise, he took it and squinted as he looked at it. “Seems like a small reward for so much work, he said.” He smiled, and passed the medal along. He knew the other guys wanted to see it.

The medal made a long loop before it came back. As the last guy handed it back he smiled.

“Well, you’ve done something that nobody else I know has done.”

It was almost as big a moment as when they gave me the medal at the finish. At the finish line, I’d learned something about myself. When my co-workers handed me back my medal, I learned something about them.

They were gruff and dismissive and no-nonsense. They also admired the achievement, even if they had a hard time admitting it.

Back to school

The following semester I was back in college.

Twenty-six marathons later, I still find a new lesson at every finish line.