Just One Marathon

Labour (Day) Pains

This Labour Day weekend, I’ll be in Toronto for a wedding, a bar mitzvah and, possibly, a 32K run. On Sunday, it will be four weeks until race weekend – the ideal time to peak in mileage during this marathon training schedule. However, knowing our busy family schedule, I had ruled out the possibility of a monster run this weekend.

 

Then I started thinking, “Why not?”

 

On Saturday night, we’ll be staying at my parents place in Pickering, Ontario, which is a suburb of Toronto. They live right near a waterfront trail which stretches along Lake Ontario for miles. As a result, it will be easy to map out a 32K route – just run 16K along the lakeshore, then turn around and come back.

 

My kind, supportive family has agreed to help out. My kids and their grandparents will meet me at the half-way point with water refills. And I’m hoping I might be able to talk my sister into biking part of the route with me, just to keep me company. The Runner I Married will join the water station crew after squeezing in his run.

 

My only worry about this whole endeavour (other than the bit where I run 20 miles) is how I’ll feel for the rest of the day. I am wearing a pair of grey patent-leather gladiator-style sandals with a higher-than-usual heel to the wedding. I *heart* these shoes. They are so sexy, which is not – don’t be shocked – my usual look. The heels are about 3 inches and it will probably kill me to wear them. But I will leave a damned-fine looking corpse.

Lions and Tigers and Shoes! Oh My!

For Christmas, The Runner I Married got me a gift card for a high-end department store here in Canada. Normally, I’m afraid to go in there. I imagine they’ll take one look at my washable faux-shearling coat, sensible rubber-soled boots, and salt-encrusted designer knock-off purse and ask me to leave. But the gift card gives me permission to cross their threshold – I walk in brandishing it like a police badge at a drug raid. (Yeah, I know it’s pathetic to be intimidated by retail but I’m too old to change now.)

Once I got through the doors of the store last Friday, though, I lost all my inhibitions. The stars aligned to make it a perfect shopping experience. All the clothes were on sale. All the sales people were nice. Everything looked great on me. The gift card became more like, y’know, a down payment. I had narrowed down my purchases to one excellent and versatile outfit. The saleswoman popped over to the shoe department to grab a pair of pumps, so I could have the pants hemmed. And she came back with these:

 

Now I’m normally not a pointy-toed shoe person. But these were incredibly comfortable, they finished the outfit perfectly, and I swear they even made my ass look smaller.

 

Then the sales person tossed out this little nugget of information: “You know, they’re made with

Nike Air technology." And I thought, “Whoa, whoa, whoa … they’re, like, running shoes?!” Until now, I've been walking around my workplace wearing low-performance, non-technical career footwear. I don’t even know if I pronate or supinate in the office. Clearly, I need these.

 

After that, it was kind of like the scene in The Wizard of Oz where the wicked witch tries to take the ruby slippers from Dorothy and gets zapped. To remove the shoes from my feet, you would have had to lock me in a tower and hex me with a magic hourglass. Witches, castles and hourglasses being in short supply, I took the shoes home with me. And we lived happily ever after.