Add Oil

I ran a marathon on Sunday. 

This week people have been asking me, “So Micah, how was marathoning?”

I want to reply, “Well, it’s kind of like puberty – it didn’t last forever, but seemed like it.” 

It actually was awesome. I ran in Hangzhou – a city near Shanghai that is the Fort Lauderdale of China. 

Last January, my friend Hannah and I talked about running a marathon together. The talk morphed to a handshake. The handshake morphed into dream. Eight months later the dream morphed into sweaty reality. So after miles of trials and miles of trials in China’s spring, America’s summer, and China’s fall my legs got a little less flabby and my lungs got a little blacker. When people ask if I smoke I like to answer, “No, I second hand smoke 3 packs of smog a day.” Comparing the pollution levels of Beijing and L.A. would be like having Danny DeVito and Shaq go back to back to see who’s taller. But my theory is – I would rather live for five years than survive for fifty. 

I ran alone with 22 friends. I ran the race alone – Hannah hurt her foot last year and couldn’t train. So I ran alone, but had 22 friends from across China come to Hangzhou to cheer me on. It was phenomenal. When I was in the last 400m of the race, my legs were jello wrapped in skin, but when I saw my crazy friends screaming my name, my skin grew sweaty goose bumps. I let out a rebel yell and charged ahead. It was one of those moments in life where the mental image you have will never fade or rust – that’s the stuff that makes life so sweet. 

During the race, I ran with this American fellow named Israel. He was an amazing dude. This was his 15^th (ish) marathon, so he calmed me down and kept me on pace. We talked for miles as we wound through the breathtaking tea fields and were silent sweaty wingmen for miles along the river. It was so great to run with Israel. 

The universal Chinese cheer for anything involve athleticism or effort, from ping pong to applying for a visa is “Jia you! Jia you!” (pronounced, “yo” as in Yoko Ono). It literally means, “add oil.” What a cool cheer. Add some fuel to that fire. Seeing those 22 friends waiting in the mist, cheering me home was the best way to add oil to my dwindling flame. 

Becca and I had to teach the next day, so we hopped on the bullet train at 4:30 and six and a half hours later we rolled into Beijing. I hobbled up the stairs, one at a time, and crawled into bed only to wake up a few hours later to teach the kiddos at 8:00 the next morning. The walk to the bathroom Monday morning felt like I was walking on two 2x4s.

Now, that my marathon milestone is past I feel a bit as though I’ve been dumped. My maiden of the past eight months has vanished. We were together almost every day. We sweated, laughed, cried, bled, burnt, froze, tripped, triumphed, and pooped together. And now she’s vanished like a fart in the wind. Well, I guess I’ll have to find another maiden to chase.


P.S. - Hannah treated to me to a massage on Monday night, a day after the run. I got man-handled by this masseuse from Xinjiang Province (the Saskatchewan of China). She was not petite. Let me put it to you this way, it was like getting massaged by Brian Urlacher. She had no tender mode.