Piercy Shoes, Merry Lepper and the Mini -subtitled "The Tiny Long"

Stop wrecking me buzz - I KNOW it's just for men

Violet Stewart Louisa Piercy was the first broad to run a timed  Marathon.in 1926.
She was running by accident.
Due to a mix up in the paperwork, she had slipped through the net at the MEN only event
She ran it in 3 hours 40 minutes and 22 seconds and this record would hold for 37 years until a woman who rejoiced in the unusual moniker of Merry Lepper  merrily lepped her way home in 3 hours 37 minutes and 7 seconds.
I was not merrily lepping anywhere and felt I was on the bus by accident  myself.
They collected me from home at sparrow fart and brought me to the hotel on the N25 where everyone with a pair of legs abandoned their cars.
And then we got on the bus.
Me, and the women who were taking this seriously and had actually prepared and trained for this day.

As if ..........

I had done none of the above.
The only thing I had actually done was agree -  (in a state of madness)  - to participate, and to beg friend and foe alike to sponsor me to run, walk or crawl the required distance to get the paper folding money.
All of this running and driving and walking and begging was informed by my Mothers dementia -  which had seen me create the "Alzheimer Association of Ireland" page on Facebook and my sister start to travel the globe fundraising, cycling around Cuba on a bicycle dispensing sachets of shampoo and wet wipes to women with babies on their hips, and to throw open the doors of our houses to strangers while holding Tea Days.
"You want me to run a MARATHON?" I snorted to the Skin & Blister.
"It's a mini" says she.
Mini my arse.
Surely the term  mini marathon is a misnomer.
Mini being a word that is usually associated with tiny skirts, tiny cars or tiny breaks, and Marathon being coupled with Grecian Olympics, Feats of Endurance, and  massive chocolate bars with nuts in.
I must have been nuts as despite my advancing years, obesity, and 20 a day habit, I actually considered this instead of laughing out loud and ringing for Indian take-out while wrapped in a blanket.
My mind  however instantly threw up a poignant image of my Mother, sitting slumped silently in the massive electric chair and I caved, and for her sake,  her voice ringing in my ears saying "be active, be alive", I agreed.  
My training consisted of telling amazed  people who clutched their sides, asking for money and getting a lend of a pair of runners.

State

     On the bus I grab a seat at the front, leaving all my stuff on the empty one beside me so that I don't have to listen to any  inane prattle  - other than my own -  and  so I can see every single thing happening from the giant windows, the hired coach filled with women, driven by a woman.
I don't get out much. 
I spend the journey texting not one, but 3 men who are following my progress in disbelief.
Hewhomustnotbenamed, a Spanish Busker, and a Giant that I had picked up by accident.
The Skin & Blister is opening huge cellophane bags and dispensing them around the seats.
"What in the name of God?" I exclaim as I open mine and see the contents -
 headed paper, armbands, wrist bands, laminates, numbers, fruit and bottled  water.
"Match them better if this money was ploughed into craythurs pushed to the pin of their collar to pay for nursing homes, or research into cures!" says I frothing at the mouth.
"Your one in the front is a scream "says one athlete to the other down the back.
The women are eating bananas and rubbing vaseline into their nipples and I feel a little trepidation creep over me.

I'm at the back beside the umbrella

When we park we have to walk about 27 miles into the city where we are herded like sheep into the railed off streets to queue.
Nobody tells you that you have to queue to run.
They also omit to mention the  standing  around talking shite with strangers  for hours  bit, most of whom  are wearing black bags with holes in as poncho's and a man with a megaphone  who is shouting into their faces to please leave their umbrellas at the sides before they have someones eye out. 
I know.
Umbrellas.
*think I'll just pop into town and run a tiny long way with 40,000 women, pass me the brolly* said nobody ever.
They must sell them at the barriers.
Maybe not the giant golf ones.
40,000 women, queueing behind barriers, eating bananas, rubbing their nipples, stretching their hamstrings, and doing star jumps ..........in the rain.
2Fm are broadcasting from the starting point and Ruth Scott has the audience in a frenzy .
I caused a bit of a frenzy myself when I lit a Marlboro Light, trying to hold the zippo out of the rain and wind under the brim of my baseball hat.
Well, it was the 7th of June, and it was Dublin not New York.  
"Jesus, Michelle, ............. really?" says the woman passing the vaseline back down the line.
I offer a silent prayer for my nipples which  will have to fend for themselves, as the crowd surges forward and the first of the runners race away to the strains of Tina Turner shouting Simply the best.
It takes us 14 minutes to shuffle to the giant digital clock and run under it , and I am swept up in the moment and feel the energy and adrenaline of the crowds of women as they run under, the love of the sisterhood, the divine feminine, Mother Nature, and lovingly witness them checking their watches and the start time, knowing that their wristbands are electronically tagged and their progress  will be in the evening papers, and their photographs.
I know none of this.
Blissfully ignorant, pounding along the middle of the main road in the group from my bus, smiling and nodding at the bystanders applauding, the people waving from the high windows, the beeping of the waiting taxi cabs,  I feel good, and positive and high, and think,  .......
I can do this, I can do this, I can actually do this.
5 minutes later I hate it.
The women are running on my heels, and me on theirs.
 Their elbows are in my backs and under my chin, and there is no way to alter my pace.
I hate this, remind me never to do this again, I think furiously.
15 minutes later with my tomato face and wheezing lungs, I round a corner with about 87 women and a piece of gravel is kicked into my trainer.
Sweet Merciful Christ.
There is no way to stop and not be mowed down.
I can't  even limp to the side as the road is a mile across  and filled with running women like the forward line of the All Blacks.
It is impossible to stop so I run on, and then walk, and then limp.
My crowd are gone, and I am running, walking and limping with strangers.
AND there are men in drag.

Where the men be at?

 "No way can men do it anymore, they're very strict now" says Hewhomustnotbenamed as he regales me with the time he did it for the Rape Crisis Centre,  and then got abandoned by his mates and had to walk the length and breadth of the city in his sisters mini skirt and lipstick.
I'm glad there is a bit of testosterone and a couple of scrotums in this mix as I am beginning to loathe the women, standing on my ankles, knocking me around corners, running on the spot behind me and sighing, the combined smell of deodourant and perfume and sweat, their pony tails plastered to their necks, the fake tan streaking down the backs of their legs in the rain. I am still jogging trying not to think about the stone in my shoe, and knowing it is futile to make a dash for the sides and so concentrate on the sizes and shapes, the hairy, the smooth, the lumps and bumps and moles and warts, the teeth, the hair, the wigs, the crowd.
We are a sodden seething mass of humanity running around a railed off city for the love of running or people who we love.

Mam

 45 minutes later the pain and temper and frustration are so bad I think I may spontaneously combust, or commit a murder and then I remember Eddie Izzard.
"Cop on, Michelle" I think "If Eddie can run all those Marathons and Miles eating chicken curries and salad rolls, on a pair of  feet that looked like  2 sirlion steaks , then you can make it to the end of this, you spanner!" 

Ouch

 Because it was raining,  the firemen who normally spray the women with their hoses to cool them from the summer heat -   in a  phallic display not seen since a roman orgy  -  were wearing their coats and idly chitchatting and trickacting  with the young ones crawling around the fire engine,  so the highlight of my race was somewhat diminished, but I got a second wind as the crowd started to shout and clap as we made our way back to the finish line.
I found the skin & blister and the entire crew of the coach esconsed in the back room of a pub -  that was so packed the Sardine Canners and Packers Association could have taken notes -  drinking pints of cider and paying a fortune for bad sandwiches.
"Dont.
 Even. 
Speak. 
To. 
Me.
...........I panted as I bent double in the door, finally getting both my breath back  and the stone out. .
Never again, I swore. Never again, and then I swore a little bit more.
To all the women who did this today again, for their own reasons and causes and loved ones, then Bless you and all belong to you.
To Barbara Cleary who won it in 34 minutes, you absolute little belter, Kudos.
And to my Mother, who is still sitting in her electric chair, 4 years later, Thank- You x.

A medal for running? With MY reputation..........

MDM June 2nd 2014