The Best Marathon You’ve Never Heard Of

By now those of you who are interested know that the St. Jude’s Memphis Marathon was canceled due to safety concerns as a winter storm came through west Tennessee on December 6^th and 7^th.  This, of course was the marathon that I’ve been training for and the cause that I’ve been raising funds for.  It was disappointing but we totally understand and support the decision.  The next morning, on what would have been race day, the temperature was 20 degrees with a wind chill of 9 and the decision to cancel became brilliant.  So I left Memphis with 5 race shirts, a Christmas ornament, and a 26.2 sticker for a race that I didn’t run.

  

That was Saturday.  By Sunday the group that I had trained with was blowing up our Facebook page with ideas of how we could run our marathon (or half marathon) without waiting for several months.  The idea of keeping our mileage up or training back up to marathon mileage didn’t appeal to anyone.  By the end of the day we had settled on a do-over (or mulligan) to take place on the 16^th at 8am.  The good folks at Fleet Feet in Brentwood volunteered to provide support and water stops and the Memphis Mulligan was born.

Now this is where it goes from very cool to super cool.  I’m a realist when it comes to running and I knew that since I’m the slowest in our training group, I was destined to spend a very lonely 26.2 miles.  There were only about 15 of us running and most were running distances less than a marathon, soooooo I decided to reach out to some friends who had been instrumental in encouraging me to run.  Obviously no one was ready to jump in and run 26 miles but I just asked them to run whatever they were comfortable with.  I wound up with 9 humans and two dogs who ran anywhere from 1 mile to 8 miles with me.  The only time I was alone was the first 8 miles of the day.  In addition to my running buddies, I had my own personal mobile cheering section.  Lori and the girls showed up at water stops with noisemakers and also coordinated the runners who were trying to connect with me.

The course was really challenging for me:  long gradual inclines for a good amount of it and concrete sidewalks for more than three quarters of it.  I began to experience leg cramps at about 15 miles and had to walk off and on to keep my muscles from seizing up.  Most of my “posse” had run at least a half marathon before but no one tried to get me to push it.  Our focus was to finish and I did just that.  It wasn’t fast and it wasn’t pretty but it was 26.2 miles and the first and probably last Memphis Mulligan was in the books.

This is what I’ll take away from all of this:  if you run (or walk and run), you’re a runner and you have the respect and support of the running community.  Speed doesn’t matter and neither does distance.  When I crossed my “finish line” the folks from Fleet Feet were still there cheering for me even though I was the last one and everyone else had gone home.  They stayed and celebrated with me and my posse. 

Since then I’ve worn all of my shirts proudly, hung the ornament on the tree and put my sticker on my car.  About a week after the Mulligan, the soreness was gone and I got back on the horse.  I may never run another marathon but I will run the Country Music Half in April and it’s time to start training for that.