It was mostly done out of spite.
A month ago I looked at my stats for the year and I realized I had done the least number of marathons since the Pandemic. And that seemed wrong. In a world that has far too often regressed to its past … to have fallen prey to the repetition of histories we failed to learn from … it was my own small rebellion at making it a land of fear again. That’s the slogan, right?
So it was that I had signed up for the Jacksonville Marathon in December, having planned it as my 12th of the year. But circumstances had me skipping out on a November event’s registration and so to hit my self-imposed goal of a marathon a month, I opted to book a last minute event in Camarillo. The irony of all this, if irony is still a thing, is that to push forward I wound up repeating the courses of years’ past.
Jacksonville proved a repeat event that netted a series of “oh, yeah — I remember this stretch!” It did not unfortunately result in the unofficial motto of the race – voted (by somebodies) he fastest race in the south. It is pancake flat but proved an emotional and physical roller coaster for me this year. I struggled mightily and found myself lost in the haze of previous “glory” torn asunder by time and poor training.
And yet… that’s…in the mortal and (spoiler alert) part demon words of Huntrix… how it’s done.
So even though I spent this week in California struggling with a head cold/mild case of the flu (because *I* got the flu shot… because *I* still believe in science), *I* decided to also RFK Jr it and thus attempted to sweat out the germs via another marathon this AM. In truth Friday had been a nadir, prompting cancellations left and right of meetups, screenings, lunches. And by Saturday night I was feeling better. Unfortunately as I drove out to Camarillo at 4:30 am, I found myself feeling worse and worse. But I was up, I was there, and it was loops – why not, right?
And it was… fine. Challenging, despite the mostly flat course. Although I’d never run the Holly Jolly Marathon, it used the same course as a race I had done a few years back. And the course was a four loop T shaped design along a meandering bike path. So in some respects I had already run this course four times before the day even started… and would run it four more times to make it holly jolly. Struggled again emotionally and physically but muddled through the repetitions. I don’t think I’m better nor do I think I’m worse for wear… so in some weird way that feels like a victory.
All this is to say that everything old was new again… and everything new was actually old. And thus in going forward I’ve gone back… and maybe that’s actually a perfect way to cap off 2025.
The rebellion is the same as it was, as it will need to be. The journey is not to go back to the before times, with its cruelty, arrogance, and blinders. It IS a journey to go back to go forward with acknowledgements of setbacks and trying to learn from mistakes or missteps of the past… or at the very least, not to make things worse.