Mile 3

I have two friends, Laura and Austin, also training for the marathon, who wear Icy Hot to work to ease their daily leg pains. Stepping into the elevator at the investment firm, they find coworkers' heads turned. Then comes the audible sniffing, as if someone had let loose a strange inappropriate peppermint odor. This is not good elevator etiquette, but even when a runner isn't dressed as a runner, even on the job or at home, there is still one focus. Injuries make one do very unusual things.

http://www.thestick.com/

These people, and you know who they are if you're paying attention at all, focused on training sit in office chairs with a tennis ball under a sore hamstring, keep "the stick" on their shelf to roll out their muscles every hour or so, and then there is wearing compression tights, or my beloved compression socks, underneath one's pants. 


Yeah, all this gets a little weird after a while, and so generally I just don't say anything. If the people back in that elevator had any idea that Icy Hot was just the tip of the iceberg, well.


I had been thinking about all this as I waited to see if I could get in to see a sports doctor, a specialist in the field of running and elite marathon training, Dr. Dan Hamner. It's strange but a lot of runners have alter egos. I'm not saying we're superheros. There are a few similiarities. For example, I want to run "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerfull(y) than a locomotive, and (be) able to leap tall buildings in a single bound," but I'll settle for faster than I did last time.

Photo courtesy of Jerry Macari

In this process marathon runners do have to save their own bodies and sometimes this requires special hydration mixes for hydration, extra sleep, extraordinary discipline, and risk. And it's true I wish I were superhuman.

Even those guys had their problems. Achilles had his heel. Superman had his Kryptonite, David had his Goliath. David Beckham had his achilles.


 Brad Pitt was Achilles. 

Photo of Carl Dambkowski as Brad Pitt's stunt double. 

Joan had her Arc.

(French marathoner not to be confused with Joan Benoit Samuelson)

And Pheidippides, the Greek messenger who first made up this whole business back in 490 B.C., dropped dead.

Pheidippides

(O.K. so the historical, classical, comic book, and religious figures are a little mixed up). Also it looks like, the Greeks pre-dated the whole barefoot running movement.


What do I have? I have the ING Philadelphia Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon coming up and unknown injury. Mile 4 I will be seeing Dr. Hamner.


So if you're smelling Icy Hot in the elevator, be very careful. You're probably around someone who is trying to defy pain and weakness. Someone you might have worked with and known for sometime, but underneath they have a marathon to run.