Running in the Rain

(originally published May 10, 2015. My original blog, on Wordpress, was hacked in early 2016. All of the original posts, through January 2016, have been re-posted here on Blogger.)


Sometimes – in running and in life – obstacles show up for which we are wholly unprepared. Occasionally, we don’t expect any obstacles (big mistake), yet they dare to show up anyway. Other times, the obstacles we encounter bear no resemblance to the obstacles we anticipated.

So it was in Geneva. The good news is that I finished – my second marathon of five this year – and I managed to shave almost ten minutes off my best marathon time. But I can’t say it was easy. A marathon never is.

Geneva is a pretty European city, set next to a beautiful lake within shouting distance of the Alps. Its marathon had several things going for it – a very inexpensive flight to get there, the opportunity to explore a new city, and a mostly-flat course with breathtaking scenery.

The course’s flatness especially appealed to me. I ran my last marathon (first of five) in Jerusalem. As the psalmist wrote thousands of years ago, “Jerusalem, hills enfold it.” In truth, hills do not merely enfold Jerusalem. They permeate virtually every inch of the city. Which makes Jerusalem one of the world’s more challenging marathon courses. Hills are everywhere, down to the very finish line.

I live near Jerusalem, and hills permeate every inch of my town as well, which makes for challenging training runs. I wondered what it would be like to run for a long stretch without actually having to struggle up a hill or carefully watch my knees on the way down.

At first, in contrast to Jerusalem, the Geneva Marathon seemed almost easy. At first.

As expected, I encountered few hills, and none particularly steep. For the first 25 kilometers (15.5 miles), I sailed through, not experiencing any of the stiffness I sometimes get in my knees or soreness I always get in my thighs when navigating hills. I began to dream. What if I kept running at this speed? Maybe I could cut a full hour off my regular marathon time. Maybe I could enter a whole different league as a runner. Maybe I could recover from this marathon in a couple of days rather than the week it took me after Jerusalem. Maybe . . . .

Yeah, maybe. Then it started to rain.

Jerusalem had been sunny. Not too sunny, though, and cool – perfect marathon running weather. Geneva, on the other hand, had seen rain for days before the marathon. However, by marathon morning, the drizzle had begun to taper, leave the over 2,000 runners with overcast skies and temperatures in the mid-60s – also perfect marathon weather.

Just as I was entertaining my visions of running grandeur, the skies opened up. Not a little. A lot.

I kept running (what choice did I have?), hoping the remaining 10 ½ miles or so wouldn’t be like this. I became upbeat again when the rain let up after about 15 minutes. But that was when the problems, the unforeseen obstacles, really began.

The Geneva Marathon is a misnomer. This race really should be called “The Backroads of Geneva Marathon.” Only the last seven kilometers (4.3 miles) of the race are in Geneva. The course starts in Chêne-Bourg, a quaint suburb of Geneva, and then winds its way through a series of charming Swiss villages, farmland, and actual cow paths. Those cow paths were to be my downfall.

As I moved from road to cow path, the surface transitioned from pavement to dirt. That is, it would have been dirt, except that the dirt had soaked in the rain of the past few days and the downpour of the last fifteen minutes. So instead, it was mud. Sloshy, sticky, mud.

Suddenly, running up and down those hills in nice Jerusalem weather didn’t seem so bad. My until-now easy steps became labored. Although I still wasn’t feeling the usual aches in my thighs from the hills, before long, all the muscles in my ankles started to hurt as they never had before – apparently a side effect of all the sloshing and slipping and sliding in the mud.

Eventually, the cow paths were behind me and I headed toward the lake and the big finish in Geneva. Less than eight miles to go, I told myself. But it was too late. The cow paths had done their work. I hobbled on, every step more of an effort than the last, the finish line now agonizingly far away.

That was when I started an internal dialogue, trying to play mind games with myself that would get me to the finish line. Every long distance runner does this when needed, some more than others.

“It’s time to go to Plan B,” I told myself. Sadly, that did little good since I had no Plan B.

“Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional,” I repeated a few times, hoping this well-worn cliché of the running world would keep me going.  That wasn’t too effective either as it was hard to shake that suffering feeling, no matter how often I told myself otherwise.

Approaching the Finish Line

Finally, I resolved just to keep going. No matter what. Sometimes I would tell myself I was going to run from one lamp post to the next. And when I got there, then to the next lamp post. And then the next. Sometimes, the traffic light in the distance became my goal.

Whenever I started to falter and entertained thoughts of bailing out, I told myself that I had committed to run five marathons, that part of my experiment was to do - not merely to try to do - what I had previously thought was beyond me, that I was running for the children at the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled who surely had much greater challenges than I did at the moment, and that I had told a lot of people I was doing this and I really didn't want to write a blog post about how I didn't finish the Geneva Marathon (when all else fails, appeal to your own sense of vanity). So on I went, to whatever was the next landmark in front of me.

Finally, Geneva came into view, and crossing the finish line began to feel like a possibility. Then the actual finish line came into view, and I found some renewed strength - from where I do not know - and poured it on for the last couple of minutes (well, whatever was left at that point to pour on).

I had begun the Geneva Marathon thinking I would have none of the obstacles I had in Jerusalem. I was right. I just didn’t anticipate that I would have different obstacles that turned out to be at least as challenging.

In running and in life – whatever the challenges, the main thing is to keep going. Head for the next landmark. Take the next step. Whatever you do, don’t stop. And little by little, that finish line will come into view.

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I am running these five marathons for the amazing children and adults at the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled. We have set a goal of $5,000. Every donation of any amount makes a difference. Click here if you want to help us get to the finish line!