Not Over The Hill

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Not Over the Hill

Up the hill. Over the hill. Down the hill.

I've been up the hill. I'm over the hill. I'm not ready to go down the hill, but I guess that's where I am headed. Today I found out I'll be running in my fifth St. George Marathon. I wanted to run this year because I turned fifty-five, but I don't feel that old.

The first time I ran the marathon I was probably thirty-six or seven. I was celebrating my wife's cancer victory; I figured if she could survive cancer, I could run a marathon. It wasn't a stellar performance, but for a guy who didn't think he could run a mile until he was twenty-five, it was a pretty fun four-and-one-half hours.

That's right. Even though the winners were done in just over two hours, I was still running two hours later. But that was fine with me. It was the most amazing feeling of accomplishment. Surging with endorphins and totally exhausted, I felt on top of the world. But I must have looked pretty ragged, because as I leaned against a tree in the park in the center of St. George, a lady walked up and asked me if I needed to go to the hospital.

I had just jogged, plodded, ran and walked twenty-six point two miles. What should I look like? I felt like an Olympian God ready to send lightning bolts from my fingertips. But I bet I looked like a sweaty, exhausted mess.

It was a long journey from not being able to run a mile to finishing a marathon, and just like everything else I've done in my life, it just takes putting one foot in front of the other and not stopping. It sounds hackneyed and trite but it's true. Just don't stop.

The St. George Marathon is an amazing, exhilarating race where it seems the entire city turns out to cheer every runner for every step. As a celebration for my luck in the lottery to decide who gets to run, I walked up my local hill today. I'm not in the best shape, and the last time I ran the marathon two years ago, I had to walk the final six miles. My knees stopped working. I hadn't trained enough, but I finished the race.

Now as a baby-boomer, senior-citizen, I am officially over-the-hill. I have a hill to climb in the next one-hundred forty-four days. That's the countdown given on the website.

I'm not in the beginning of my race of life, but I'm also not at the bottom of the hill. I've found out a few things on this long distance race. Life isn't a bunch of short sprints but more like a marathon than most people know. Endurance has a lot more to do with success than we might think, and that really is the secret to the marathon -- and to life. Danny Kaye once said, "Life is a great big canvas, throw all the paint at it you can."

I may not win the marathon, but I am a winner in life. I've thrown so much paint at my canvas most people ask if I have a clone. I'm an award-winning gardener, and I love working in my yard. I've acted in more than thirty films, commercials or television shows. On stage I've performed more than fifty different plays. I've had a radio program and recorded all of the Shakespearean sonnets. I have a website which is getting about twenty-thousand visits each month. I've taught high school and college for more than thirty years, continuing to expand my interests like wind-surfing, skiing, writing poetry. But since I am over the hill, I guess I'll just have to increase the speed I learn new things.

As I speed down the hill, toward the end of this race, I'll know I did everything I wanted. And if I didn't do it, I just didn't want to badly enough. Walking up the hill today was a beginning, but mostly a symbol. The St. George Marathon starts at the top of a long canyon and so it is mostly downhill. The course descends a half-mile over the twenty-six miles.

But there is one part of the race which challenges every runner. Veyo. A small hill in the middle of a long race, but it does show up just a little into the race; just enough to discourage anyone looking up at the extinct volcano. My approach to the hill is to not stop running. It may not look like I am running to anyone else, but in my own plodding and determined style, I know as long as I don't stop, eventually I will be over the hill.

Even when I'm already over the hill.