One race I ran was a simple out and back 5k which ended right where it started. The chute was two ropes strung parallel to form a little line for the finishers and the end was anti-climactic almost. Except that I was one of only a few who ventured the heat that day to run the race and finish it.
I once ran this relay race that spread across Washington and Idaho, 189 miles in all. The race was broken into chunks and each member of my 12 person team ran 3 times throughout the 24 hours we ran. The finish line of each of my handoffs was nothing more than 4 cones set up in a square where the person to whom I was handing off would stand so we could have a proper exchange.
The Pikes Peak Ascent ended in blurred vision and victorious conquering, because the only thing more satisfying than running up a mountain is getting to the top. It is a big yellow banner they use for the finish line--pretty epic, in and of itself except they make you walk 20 extra inclined yards to the very top of the mountain becuase they couldn't put the banner up there.
The finish line of my senior year state cross country meet was at the end of a long stretch of freshly mowed and matted down stretch of grass. There were vertical banners running alongside the finishing stretch, and I remember thinking my legs had never felt like such limp pieces of flesh just dangling off my pelvis. That was a victorious finish becuase it was the last time I had to prove myself officially in the 5k and I did it faster than I ever had up to that point.
Some finish lines I've crossed aren't actually even finish lines. They are just my apartment door or my home's front porch, or the foyer at Doherty High School where our cross country team met or the lawn in front of my apartment complex. Just finishes really--to very hard, character-building runs which shaped my ability to push myself to every official finish line thereafter.
And then Boston, of course. The epitome of epic. Not only does it come at the end of a street crowded with hundreds of spectators, the blue banner of the finish nestled at the bottom of a stretch of the most pure blue sky, contained on one side by the John Hancock tower and on the other with a some famous skyscraping structure, but it comes at the end of the world's most famous 26.2 miles. I crossed the large, electronically stimulated finish line with thousands of the world's best runners, coming across, sacrificing strength I didn't have to hoist my arms triumphantaly in the air for the hundreds of news cameras and their viewers beyond to see.
One time I worked for hours with a group of three other girls on a final project that constituted half of our grade. It was the largest assignment I would ever turn in, 32 pages in all, and I even dreamt of stapling it with the huge stapler reserved for assignments of 25 pages or more. Passing it down the row to the hands of my professor was one of the most satisfying feelings in the world.
And now, I believe, I am reaching a finish here. A whole semester of sifting through my mind for my fondest memories, some of them with real finish lines, some of them races still being run. I don't know if you read all of these entries, but I did, and in fact, I wrote them. So I have thought of them fondly, and I think I will forever.
Thanks, Carol. This is a good finish.
