I almost forgot my running shoes.  That would be me, wouldn’t it?  The blogger who does not blog, and the runner who does not remember to bring her running shoes to the one and only race she will do this entire season.  We were catching an afternoon Greyhound bus to Montreal.  The race was scheduled for the next morning, up and down St. Joseph Boulevard with a loop under the armpit of the Olympic stadium.  I had my book bag pinned under my arm.  Leaving the house without my book bag would be like forgetting to take my little fingers, or my eyebrows.  It was just a given.

But I do not have a “running bag” or the sensibility that having one might imply.  All I have is the memory of the items that I grope for in the early mornings while trying to keep my eyes closed for the longest possible amount of time: sporty hat, sporty bra, sporty shirt with extra-sporty reflector stripe.  It was at that point in my packing process that the cat came along and head-bumped me.  A head-bumping cat cannot be ignored.  A head-bumping cat is saying, “nothing in the world could possibly be more compelling than my teeny velvet ears.”  So I stopped after that.  I stopped with everything except running shoes.

Fortunately, divinity intervened.  God (or whoever) put those running shoes in front of the door, where I tripped over them, scattering them in front of me.  I thought, “Good one, God (or whoever).”  I picked up the running shoes.  I stuffed them in the book bag.  And thus I was prevented from leveraging the last hope I had for finding a way out of this race.

D and I spent the night before the race with my fantastically great friends Val and Brendan, who live in a Montreal condo that is worthy of their greatness.  They are the sort of friends who look for any old excuse to hug you, which is exactly the type of friend that I love.  They are also the sort of friends who are enterprising and wise with their leisure time, so visiting them invariably tops up my reserves of self-reliance and imagination: they brew their own beer, knit their own scarves, create their own stunning wall art by framing impossibly ambitious jigsaw puzzles, and they use what time is left over to provide nourishing, delicious sorts of homemade food for us, the sort of food that fitness advice columnists decree as a serious runner’s best arsenal.  As though this weren’t enough, they also provide a home to three gorgeous, head-bumping cats.  All of our conversation that night was interrupted and punctuated and enhanced by lavish displays of affection from humans to cats and back again.  It was a great night.  The kind of night that makes a visit to Montreal feel entirely complete.  So did I really need to run a race the next morning?  Wasn’t simply seeing these two friends reward enough for the Greyhound ride?  I put this question to Derek.  He responded by pointedly setting the alarm for 6 a.m. the next morning.

The 10k race was scheduled to begin at 8:40am.  We planned to meet Val’s sister Mel and her friend Alana, who would be running the event with us, at 7:30am outside the Laurier metro.  We were panicked about traffic and parking, but it was one of those mornings that rolls out at your feet like a velvet carpet: except for a small, intense knot of activity around the race site, the city was serene and quiet, and we found a parking spot with almost suspicious ease.   We waited outside the appointed metro station, hopping from foot to foot to stay warm, eyeing the other runners.  Once united, we continued with our hopping and our eyeing, this time while standing in a long line trailing around a row of pungent, stoic outhouses in Laurier Park.

These outhouses, receptors of the waste of hundreds and hundreds of runners, were our last bid for procrastination; once through with them, there was nothing more between me and this race.  After all of that waiting around, the final few minutes were a frenzy of activity: tearing off all the outer layers of clothes, mashing earbuds into place, last goodbye kisses and words of farewell from Brendan and Derek, our cheering squad, who waved to our retreating backs as though we were all about to go diving off a cliff, never to be seen again.  And it felt as though, quite possibly, that’s just what we were doing.

The Corral 

Here is where the intensity really builds.  You’re assigned a starting corral based on your expected finish time.  Val’s friend Alana is right in the starting blocks, coiled to spring the moment they fire the starter pistol.  The rest of us have less glamorous prospects.  I am in the 60-minute-to-finish corral, which is a mixed bag: lots of first-timers, lots of moms with their kids’ names painted on their fabric shirts, lots of basketball bellies mingling with the lean and muscular.  I pretended to stretch my hamstrings.  Because this is Montreal, everything is done sensibly: they let each corral get a head start, so that people aren’t crushing and tripping over each other for the first kilometer.  By the time I’m actually running across the start line I’m already five minutes behind the starter pistol, but a small computer chip on the back of my race bib will faithfully (and cruelly) count the seconds between my foot crossing the start and my foot crossing the finish.  For now, this is okay: I am one full minute into the race and I feel like a God.  I am Pheidippides himself, never tiring, never waning.  I breeze past the first water station at Kilometer One with scorn.  I’ve got this race in the bag.  I should’ve registered for the 50-minute start corral.  My footfalls are synced with the beat of my music, which is programmed to 155 BPM, a good clip that feels effortless.  I think of Derek and Brendan at the finish line, stunned when they see me rounding the last bend a full ten minutes before I’m expected.

Kilometer Five

Okay.  That earlier Megan, the imaginary Pheidippidesian one, might still be flying somewhere up ahead, but I am stuck with the real thing: panting, aching, fumbling to lower the music’s BPM to somewhere within the realm of possibility.  This is a “Rock ‘N Roll” race, which means runners are tormented every few kilometers by the sight of a rock band jamming at the side of the road, shouting things like “Keep going!” and “Don’t give up!” and other pitiless missives as we straggle past.  I am entertained for a kilometer or so by the fantasy of smashing their flea-market guitars against the pavement.  I am painfully aware of the computer chip attached to my race bib.  It seems not to be counting the seconds so much as pinching them into my flesh.  I think, as I always do at about this time, what a ridiculous idea this was.  I think of everything else that might provide the sense of accomplishment and worthiness that I am after, without causing my lungs to explode: writing a blog, for example.  While wrapped in a warm blanket.  While breathing regularly.  While stationary.  While sipping gallons of cool, clear water.

I pass the water station at Kilometer 5.8 and, out of pure vanity, try to grab a Gatorade cup without breaking stride.  The results are soggy and embarrassing.  I slow down.  Who am I kidding?  I try to keep myself from gulping gallons of the stuff, which I know will only hit me like a sucker punch a few kilometers on.  I sip reasonably.  I do that runner’s thing of crushing the paper cup in my hand and tossing it savagely to the ground.  The little thrill of permissible delinquency is enough to power me up again, and at Kilometer Six I’m back to 155 BPM, already imagining the plate of poutine that I have promised myself.  I try not to think of the kilometers ahead.  But, as these things go, trying not to think of them only makes them rear up like headless beasts.

This is one of those cruel looping courses where you are forced to retrace your steps in the race’s second half.  I pass the place where I had been forty minutes earlier.  I scoff at how full of light and naivety I was back then.  Now I am a hardened veteran of the race.  I grit my teeth.  I am keeping my pace, dammit.  Derek says there is no point in slowing down to appease a tired body, because it’s not as though you’re about to die.  You’re just going to feel uncomfortable for a while, and then you’re going to cross the finish line and then you’re going to rest and be fine.  But Derek is wrong.  This is going to kill me!  But I labour on: I have not been getting out of bed at 5:30 a.m. for the last two months for nothing.  A shouting match wages in my mind between “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP RUNNING HOLY SHIT” and “KEEP GOING KEEP GOING KEEP GOING.”  Somehow, I keep going.

Kilometer Eight

For the last ten minutes I’ve been trailing a girl my age with a slogan on the back of her t-shirts that says “…Try to Keep Up.”  This annoys me enough to leverage a burst of speed as we both pass the final water station.  I allow myself a triumphant glance back at her.  The front of her shirt says “I know I run like a girl…”.  I feel a stirring of pride for our entire female species.  I want to hug her.  My emotions have clearly gone as haywire as my body.

Up ahead, I see runners pouring around the turn onto Brébeuf, which is truly the last leg of the race.  I think of all those thousands and thousands of pairs of feet pounding over the pavement.  I run like a girl who is running like hell.  An eight-year-old boy maneuvers coolly past me.  I shoot venom at him.  I think of poutine.  I run some more.  I swear that the kilometers are getting longer and longer.  Someone has not measured this course properly.  Who investigates this kind of thing?  I feel angry about a lack of accountability in race management.  I round the final bend, and Parc Lafontaine appears.  No oasis in the desert has ever been as welcome a sight as this park.  When I lived in Montreal,  this park was my neighbour.  I have an affinity with this park.  And now it throws its arms open to me.  I can see the white banner that marks the finish line in the distance.  I begin to relax.  This is the best part, after all: the final burst of speed, the end in sight, the ecstatic,  staggering deceleration after crossing the finish.  They are handing out bananas and medals.  I take one of each.  I slip through the barriers meant to shepherd runners through the south side end of the park.  I don’t go find Brendan and Derek yet; I just sort of fall to the ground like a pile of damp laundry.  I think, in rapid sequence:  I will never do this again.  But of course I will!  But I don’t want to.  But I will!   And then I think of all the pizza and poutine and wine that’s in my very near future, and as I begin to breathe normally again I feel like life has suddenly taken an upswing and everything everywhere is going to be okay.

In the end, it turns out I shaved a good handful of minutes off of my next-best race time.  Alana, our friend in the starter blocks, finished in a blur and placed fourth in her age category with almost 700 contenders at her back.  Val and her sister ran a strong race themselves, better than any they’ve done before.  We were high as hippies when we all found each other at our appointed meeting spot, checking our chip times on Derek’s iPhone and shouting hoarsely to the marathon runners, who were now pouring into the park towards the finish line.  I had already forgotten how annoying it is when people who are comfortably seated on the sidelines shout “Keep Going!” in your face as as you labour past, and I join in the din of cheerleading.

A few hours later, when we finally collapse into chairs under the heat lamps of the La Banquise patio, looking down into the glory of a plate full of fries and cheese and gravy, I feel that after-party mix of pride and emptiness: pride to have done this big , difficult thing, and emptiness because all the anticipation and preparation and nervous strategizing is now finished for another season.  I consider the possibility of running through the winter; people do, after all.    But I know almost right away that this is a ridiculous thought.  I do not have the strength of will or the determination or whatever it takes to carry on running around like a maniac once the snow and cold arrive.  I will go back into books and fireplaces and lazy mornings in bed until next spring.  And that is 100% okay with me.