father’s day, deferred

I’m pushing the pause button on the South African ventures for a hot sec to tell you about yesterday, but first, I gotta backtrack…

For Father’s Day this year, my older son and daughter-in-law gave my husband two gifts: the first was to make his life easier — a thingy to haul around big sheets of plywood — and the second was to make his life harder: they wanted to pay his entrance fee to the Richmond marathon, if he’d agree to sign up. (They had actually wanted to sign him up without his knowing but I advised against that. “He needs to be in on a decision that big,” I said.) 

We can train together, they wheedled (the two of them had already signed up), and then they informed him that registration ended in two days so he had to make up his mind quickly. My husband said he’d think about it, and they were like, “Okay, cool. But you’re gonna say yes, right? So why don’t you just say yes now?” 

Remember this photo?

So he said yes, and my daughter-in-law smacked the laptop down in front of him so he could complete the signup. It looked like my husband would be running a marathon!

My husband found a treadmill on Facebook Marketplace (he hates running on roads) and stuck it in the garage, but it wasn’t until September, he began to get more serious. By the end of October he’d gone on a handful of longer, 12-15 mile runs (on roads, yes). 

But then two weeks before the race, he developed some sort of injury, we weren’t sure what it was. He knew he’d whacked his leg at work a couple weeks back, so perhaps all the running made that injury flare? His right shin was tender and swollen. Was it a shin splint? Something worse? It was too late to pull out of the race but he was struggling to walk and he wasn’t even done training. 

“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “We can go cheer on the kids. It’ll still be fun.”

“We’ll see,” he said, and he bought a compression sleeve and began wrapping and icing the leg.

Thursday morning this past week, I got fed up and, unbeknownst to my husband, I set up an appointment with a physical therapist. I wanted a professional to assess the leg: if he ran on it, would he be doing lasting damage? The therapist didn’t seem too worried about the leg which was reassuring; he was more concerned about whether or not my husband was inclined to push through pain, should it intensify.

That evening, my husband jogged from the chicken coop to the house. Thursday, he ran for a few minutes on the treadmill just to see how his leg felt (okay, he reported). Friday, we drove to Richmond and checked into our hotel. My younger daughter joined us — she came bearing pastries and homemade banana bread — and camped out on the floor.

Saturday morning, the city was chaos with bumper to bumper traffic. We found a spot in an almost-full parking garage, and then joined the stream of people heading to the starting line. My son and daughter-in-law met up with us. With just several minutes to go, the three of them squeezed through the fence into the mob.

While they waited, they peeled off their extra clothes and handed them to me, and then they were off.

Free clothes, anyone?

Eight-minutes later, we got alerts on our tracker apps that all three of them had crossed the 1-mile line, and I was like, Cool. I guess he’s running.

My older daughter joined us then, and we watched the starts of the half marathon and the 8K (there were 20+K runners total), before heading back to our car. While we were driving to the 12-mile checkpoint, we got another alert that they’d passed the 7-mile marker. Was he for real doing this?

We cheered as my son went by followed shortly by my daughter-in-law, and then when my husband came close, he slowed. “Do you have my food? I forgot to pack it.”

Good grief. Could the guy possibly be any more unprepared?

We swung by my older daughter’s friend’s house to use the bathroom, and then stopped at a coffee shop for breakfast, so by the time we got back on the road, our trackers said they were at the 18-mile mark. We decided to skip the 20-mile checkpoint and head straight to the finish. Parking was still tricky — we found a private (?) garage and decided to risk getting towed — and then attempted to join the masses piled below the finish line. It was too packed, though, so we went a little beyond that and perched on a fence along the exit corridor.

There was plenty to watch while we waited. The earlier runners (those running gods) looked amazingly cool and collected, but as time passed, the finishers looked increasingly battered — wobbling about, limping, clutching their glutes, etc. An ambulance inched through the crowd at one point, and we saw a person packed in ice go by in the back of a golf cart. 

My son finished at 4:00 hours, looking semi-stunned — “That is the hardest thing I have ever done” — and then my daughter-in-law breezed in at 4:09. “That was insane.”

My husband came in at 4:12. “You did it!” I screamed, completely losing my ever-loving shit. “YOU RAN A FREAKING MARATHON!!!” 

“Here, drink,” my daughter-in-law said, passing a partial bottle of whisky through the fence.

We milled around for an hour while the runners collected their hats and blankets, free pizza, and snacks.

my daughter-in-law’s sister ran the half and her brother ran the full — all five of them first-timers

“Was it fun?” I asked as we walked slowly, very slowly, back to the car.

“It was fun,” my husband said, kinda surprised. Amazingly, his leg had been fine the whole time. 

My husband hobbled around gingerly the rest of the day (“Now I know how you’ll be moving when you’re eighty-five,” I said), and every now and then we’d look at each other and shake our heads. “I can’t believe I did that,” he’d say. 

“Me neither,” I’d say. “You ran a freaking marathon.” 

And then we’d both laugh. 

What a Father’s Day gift.

This same time, years previous: seven fun things, three girlfriend recommendations, cheesetasting: round two, change, sourdough English muffins, the quotidian (11.17.14), official.