Runners and cyclists who test their own limits invariably find themselves in interesting circumstances. Whether you run or ride, you can appreciate that pain and suffering can come about whenever you enter into some kind of contract (usually social) and attempt to cover a distance you’ve never run or ridden before.

It’s actually easier to pull the stunt of overcommitting in cycling than in running. The freewheeling cyclist often knows not that his tank is near empty, while a runner, having a more intimate relationship with the ground, can feel the muscles start to tighten, the soreness begin to accumulate, and the will begin to give out long before he or she has actually bonked or hit the wall.

But then, some of us are born to break the rules of common sense and human limits. That is after all what makes life interesting.

Age 15 and naive

Imagine for a moment that you are 15 years old and the longest distance you have ever covered in one run is 10 miles. Then imagine that a bunch of running buddies on your track team decide to run, not walk, a 30-mile Walkathon that starts in a disturbingly isolated northern Illinois town, in this case the City of Dekalb.

While DeKalb is home to the prestigious Northern Illinois University with its sprawling campus and towering dorms sticking up in the corn field to the north of campus, beyond that DeKalb is a cluster of building surrounded by farm fields and barbed wire, which happens to have been invented there.

The Walkathon was one of those spring affairs when you never knew whether the weather was going to cooperate or not. The main body of participants were people who signed up to suffer by walking 30 miles to raise money for whatever good cause was on the line.

Our purposes were selfish. We signed up to run the whole thing on a group dare of sorts.  And there we stood, all 6 of us, loitering around the start together like a band of wayward shorebirds far from water. Actually we were all just sophomores wearing various sorts of inadequate running shoes that were the best that money could––not saying much––since the first running boom had just begun.

Nikes had not been invented yet.

There was no gun to signal the start of the Walkathon, which we shall note early on was not designed to be a race. Yet there we were, ready to run the whole darn thing if we could. It was a Sunday in the middle of April. The height of preparation for spring track season. It was a pretty sure thing our coaches would not have approved had they known what we were about to do.

The dorm towers at NIU in DeKalb.

Wind and loneliness

There is never a day when it is not windy in DeKalb, Illinois. Fortunately the wind was mild and the temps were 60 degrees. At a signal from the Walk organizers, we took off running carrying maps of the course in the band of our shorts. “In case someone gets lost,” one of us chortled. It might have been me.

Suddenly we realized we were not alone in our adventure of running our first full marathon. A group of equally skinny and somewhat desperate-looking DeKalb runners joined us on the roads, and the race was one.

None of us knew much about pacing, which is why hustling along at a rapid pace was particularly stupid. One fellow in our group carried a stopwatch and was calling out the mile times, which we were covering between 6:00 and 6:30. We actually went through 6 miles in just over 36:00. That was my 10K PR at the time.

Next up: Nothingness

The 6 mile mark was also the last we would see of the race organizers. None of the volunteers was told to expect a pack of 12 distance runners racing along the back roads. We arrived at spots designated for water stations. There were stacks of cups and trash cans to hold them when empty, but no water. That would be the tale for the rest of the day.

One by one runners started to drop out. In fact the DeKalb guys, having realized the roads were not their own this day, pulled completely over at around 9 miles and jogged back home before things got too serious.

That left 3 or 4 of us running toward a horizon that never seemed to come. The Walkathon was mapped out in a big square. For all we knew it followed the margins of DeKalb Township itself. So we ran and ran, getting slower and slower of course. 12 miles passed. Then 15. Two more of our party sagged and took a backroad toward the Northern campus while they could still see it. Two of us tarried on.

The “race” is on

Insanely, I still wanted to win the “race” with my teammate, who was known as one of the runners with the best endurance on the team. It was easy to question whether I could beat him at this game or not, running forever.

On we went, until the course took a turn toward town at 20 miles and my last companion tarried off toward town without a word, apparently thinking I might have the sense to follow.

It was one of those moments where every fiber of your brain is feeding you common sense but your body is moving along as if had evolved into a being of its own. After a couple glances behind to watch the last other runner disappear, I carried on. What else was there to do.

At 23 miles it became apparent that thirst was entering the picture. Though it sounds impossible in the context of today’s highly hydrated world, at that time runners usually did not drink much in practice or races. It just wasn’t done. Plus at our high school situated over the limestone beds of Illinois, the water tasted so much like sulphur and iron none of us wanted a drink very often anyway.

Coke is it

But at 24 miles my body demanded a drink. I walked up the porch steps of some house on the edge of town where the course was faintly marked from the previous year and begged for some water. They handed me a Coke, and with an obscenity-laced goodbye they slammed the door behind them.

It was against team rules during the season to drink soda of any kind. Which makes sense, because drinks like Coke and Pepsi and Dr. Pepper, laced with caffeine and carbonation and sugar do not good training drinks make. But the Coke I drank that day was almost precisely the form of beverage needed at that moment. I downed the whole can while continuing to walk, because my legs had tightened standing on those steps and I was afraid they might lock up completely.

At mile 26 I tossed the Coke can in a ditch and hollered out loud, “Marathon!” But I still had four miles to go.

Those last four miles were covered at a shuffle, but still running.

Finally the Walkathon course came mercifully to an end. Walking into the giant gymnasium where the Walkathon ended on Northern’s campus, it was a welcome sight to see my friends gathered around a big cooler with cups in their hands.

“God, I’m tired,” I told them. They all stared blankly at me. One of them said, “Nice job. You ran the whole way?”

“I stopped for a drink,” I said disappointedly. “And they gave me a Coke!” I admitted.

“Eah, that’s okay. It probably helped,” someone volunteered.

I laid down on the hard gym floor and nearly passed out. The bright dome lights shone down in my eyes but it felt so good to be horizontal that I let me legs just flop.

“I can see up your shorts,” someone said. “You need a new jock.”

I tipped my head up and smiled, sort of. My whole body was so tired it was almost impossible to hold my head up.

The meat wagon

Next a parent came and scooped us up for the drive home. “How’d it go, boys?” she asked cheerfully. It took all sorts of effort to get into the car. Then most of us slept. It was a 25 mile drive back to normal civilization and I swore I’d never set foot in the City of DeKalb again. But that proved to be untrue. Now I ride my bike out and around the town on my 50-milers, and there have been many other visits to the campus over the years.

None was so welcome as that 30th mile, with the big Northern buildings beckoning me on. Trudging through downtown DeKalb in my despicably inadequate shoes.

That is why I never raced the marathon much as my career continued through high school, college and beyond. Yet there were a few more pulls to insanity, some successful, some not, because the 26.2 mile distance holds some fascination for runners as a whole.

Be thankful that Pheidippides character did not have longer to go. Because you should all be glad the marathon is just 26.2 miles, not 30 as I experienced. Those last four miles hurt like hell. As the legend goes, they might even kill you.