Padre's Campaign Slogan

(Pain, it's Fun! by Richard Connelly on Spaced City- Our Most Disgusting Marathon Pictures.)

I had expected sympathy. And the go ahead to NOT go ahead.

The total pain had reached the point that it felt like you'd ran a marathon.I say you- because I never have had to run one. At least in the literal sense. But I feel I have felt similiar feelings to running one.

Only to have someone say that you have to RUN it AGAIN. Back to Back.

Come again?

Unfortunately I know some antelope built tri-athletes that would smile and nod their heads and continue to run another marathon.

But I'm not that breed.

It's one thing to have run one- literally or whatever. To feel that you are FINISHED. To have crossed the line of being done. Done in. Steak, well done.

Done to the point that you drag yourself to your Dad and beg for mercy.

-Running isn't unfamiliar to me because I did run track until my bones couldn't handle it and I had to take up the (say this really quiet- disk and shot put)

What I know now about my disease and its ability knock out how the bones similated vitamin D, I would have felt less put out that I wasn't still running the 4x400 relay with my mates.

AFter many years on big gun meds that destroy the immune system to keep it from destroying you- yeh, I felt that I may have a hold on a marathon runner's feelings.

The physical pain was NOTHING compared to hitting the wall on a 400 sprint. Where the body seems to shut down and on top of it you hit a nice big wave of wind in your face.  Where the muscles are screaming from no oxygen or something, where it has to pull from some far off energy, that comes from your brain, WILLING it to go forward. On nothing.

So you are told to run another lap. You know this lap. How it hurts. But on top of all the suffering that has already happened how is it possible?

I went to Padre, per text of course, and confided that I COULD NOT DO what was being asked- I did not expect this Candidate Reply:

"Oh, yes you can. And yes you will."


What?

"That's right."

Shock.

No comforting nod about all the miles I'd just run. No taking off my paper number pinned to the front of my jersey and letting me off the hook.

.NADA! Nothing!

I was imagining him icing my legs and carrying me or something fatherly! Seething I went about some stuff and realized-

I'd RUN the race! It was DONE!  My body seriously had met its limit- so I thought.

Padre was right.

He's always right, dad blame it!

A sense of calm came over me that he knew what I was capable of-- and that I didn't go through all  those years of sports and through life's little trials- all the pain for nothing. It was a sort of reservoir that I was building. And my conclusion was: yeh, he's right; I CAN keep going through with it.  Even nauseauted.

But it took him grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking the truth into me. Which seems contrary to what you'd expect when told to jump off a cliff or something ridiculous.

So whenever the needle comes, the adverse reaction to something, those words ring like a bell in my head. And it seems, by default Padre got my vote.