Day 4,212—Happy Halloween! And Part V of the OT 100!—

 

I am sorry it is taking me so long to write the OT story. It is just that I have felt so overwhelmed with work stuff that I haven’t been able to motivate myself to do a lot of writing and video editing at home. Also, most of my time this week at home has consisted of me doing things with my kids. I finally started to go back through some footage yesterday of the OT video, but it is still in the very early stages. I desperately would like to spend a good chunk of a day alone so I can work on stuff, but I don’t know when that might happen. Right now, I don’t want to sign up for the 100-mile race on 11/22, which shocks me. I still half want to do it, but all the other complications with stuff make me want to hold off, but I am turning 40 this year. I got to do something special.

        I took this picture this morning down the street in a house close to where I live. I walked by there yesterday with my kids, and they said they thought part of the decorations were scary, so we talked about ways to be less scared. We called the monsters “boobooheads” and laughed at them; that seemed to work, and my kids laughed too. I wondered if this was only a good lesson for pretend monsters or if real monsters you should also name-call and laugh at.

Part V of the OT: Running in the Rain and Why Would Anyone Be So Nice to Me

        I had just hit mile 50, and I wondered how likely it would be that it would rain all night or if it would just be a few hours. While my shoes were working better than ever, I was still so excited about the prospect of putting on my second pair of shoes and completing the rest of the race with them. I was also hoping I might get some more hot food somewhere. The aid stations had some stuff I could eat, but I hadn’t gotten a lot of hot food yet. When I made it to the mile 55.8 aid station, I didn’t plan to stop long when people started asking me about my shoe situation again. Some guys were asking me about my shoes and asked me what size I wore. I told them size 12 with an apology, knowing how people usually respond when they realize how uncommon my size is for runners. One guy offered his shoes to me, but he was a size 13, so I just didn’t see how those would be that helpful, but still, a size 13?! It was crazy that his feet were bigger than mine, which often is not the problem. Then, this guy Greg offered me his shoes, and he was a size 12! I didn’t want to take them at first. They were my size and my brand that I wear, but I was, after all, only 10 miles from my regular pair of shoes, so I knew I could wait until then. Yet, it was raining more and more, and I could see the delicate combination of tape might still fall off with all the rain and the ground getting increasingly muddy.

        He said he had only worn them twice and wanted to return them, but he couldn’t. I was sold. I said yes, and I would be happy to leave them somewhere so he could get them back, but he insisted, “no.” The woman who had met me at a much earlier aid station and called ahead to let the other aid workers know of my situation was there, and she tried to talk me into saving my old shoes. She was saying how epic the adventure was that they had gone through, and I should save them. I said they could throw them away. I thanked everyone profusely before I left. Mainly Greg! Greg had made me smile again. I was so happy starting off on my next 10-mile stretch.

        When I was a little way off from the aid station, I started to cry. Just a little. I didn’t make any typical crying sounds, but my face got heavy and my eyes became full of water. I wondered why I was crying, and I just thought about how unworthy I felt, how undeserving I was of anyone’s kindness. When I realized that’s what it was, I just reflected on why I felt like that. Maybe it was just growing up with the messaging that no one gives you anything for free, which I still think is sometimes true, but I give people things for free regularly, so it cannot be true all the time, and here was a guy I might never see again who literally gave me the shoes off his feet, asking nothing in return. Thanks, Greg.