A Trail Runner at the London Marathon

The author at the finish line of the London Marathon

Just two weeks ago, I was flying toward a road race of 56,000 strangers and 26.2 miles of concrete.

I boarded a plane from Minneapolis to Heathrow, by way of Dublin, the Thursday of race day. My partner was with me—miserable and pumped up with antibiotics as he wrestled with the last remaining symptoms of strep. Both loving and distanced, I walked a few paces behind him in the terminal. It had been a monumental feat to stay healthy during my one-week taper toward this moment, and I wasn't trying to push the envelope.

I was on my way to run the London Marathon: 26.2 miles of pavement, corrals, crowds, and buildings.

Before London, my marathons belonged to a wild quiet within me. I liked not having a time to aim for, a performance measure to hit, or a measuring stick to place myself against. Marathons had become tools in my overall training toward bigger miles.

One of the last times I ran a marathon, it was in Leadville, Colorado, winding through twisting trails beneath bending trees, to the sound of my breath and the light chatter of the runners behind me intermingling with the wind. We trekked over rock and through slanted mountain snow, only to emerge into gentle sunshine at the finish line in town on a brief stretch of concrete. I was greeted by aid stations full of folks cheerily acknowledging me, asking what I needed. I felt alive, tended to, capable, connected.

It was a tough race, but a fun one. I pressed through the terrain and gasped with the limited oxygen I had access to. It was an adventure—a piece of a bigger puzzle in my ultrarunning training.

London felt different.

I was using this race as a leg up in my training for this year's Leadville 100. The idea was to train my legs and cardiovascular system to go fast, to withstand the pain of quicker miles underfoot, so that my longer running attempts could benefit. Even though it was just another puzzle piece in the bigger picture, I wanted a lot out of this run. I wanted a PR.

About a decade ago, I ran the Boston Marathon in 3:24. Since then, I haven’t purposefully trained for the marathon distance—largely because I was fatigued by the distance and what it demands from a runner. I sought refuge in the trees and the mountains, and I like what I feel there.

I am so enamored by the trails—who they call to run on them, what they inspire in a community, how they press me to be both a better runner and a better person.

Road marathons don’t seem to do that for my soul. Instead, the road marathon presses me back into the crevasses of my mind as I dip into a realm of comparison, competition, and performance. As soon as I started running—making my way through the first few miles of London's iconic race—I remembered all of this.

I remembered that the road marathon didn’t usually bring out the best in me. The trail did. Does.

I pushed through the first half of the race valiantly. I went out at a PR pace and held on up until about mile 14. My PR attempt was officially fading away and I had to adjust expectations. Call it a mixture of jet lag, pavement pounding, and unexpected heat—I began to fade. As I slowed my pace (and took a quick stop at a nearby porta-potty), I realized the true kicker to what was slowing me down: all the cheering.

Every inch of sidewalk was packed. People screamed, cheered, and yelled—sensory overload. Admittedly, I did not like it. My mind veered sideways, slowing my down, aiming to find some kind of relief to all the noise. I couldn't find any.

In the final few miles along the River Thames, approaching Big Ben and ultimately Buckingham Palace, I began to choke up. I wasn’t in the stillness of the woods, and I wasn’t in an intimate community setting, I wasn't in the comfort of the trails.

Instead—I was in an ocean. I was like a crab, tossed to and fro by the rush of waves on either side of me, carried as I scuttled toward shore—the finish line.

There, in the midst of 56,000 people surging toward the same shoreline, I was suddenly overcome with a surge of power and awe.

As I rounded the corner to the final straightaway, the tears rolled down my cheeks.

While this wasn’t a trail run and it wasn’t a quiet stretch of powerful trees bowing to me, it was a throb of humanity. It was a mighty ocean. It was electricity—a network of veins, blood pumping all around me.

It was a reminder that I am part of something enormous.

That we all are.

Whether we like it or not.