10 Days in AZ: The Phoenix Marathon

I notice the saguaro cacti first, it’s what I see immediately as I leave the Phoenix Airport. They’re huge—like green prickly soldiers with wounds from where mockingbirds have made their nests.
”These?” my Uber driver Jaime says. “These are nothing! You should see some others—so tall. So tall.” He proceeds to tell me they’re protected—people can get in big trouble for tearing them down. “It takes so long for them to grow,” he says.
*
Dan comes in later, around 8pm. We only realized the day before that we’d booked separate flights from Boston to Phoenix. Or, re-realized, I suppose. We booked my ticket together, so we must have both known at that point, and then both forgotten in the month or so afterwards. We’re in Phoenix for the marathon, which Dan will run on Saturday.
*
The man’s longest training run was ten miles for Chrissakes, and here I am, tracking him on the Live Tracker Marathon App, seeing that he has an estimated finish time of four hours and seven minutes. The man is an animal, I think to myself. This shouldn’t be humanly possible.
Running only ten miles in preparation for a marathon is, shall we say, not a great idea. When he first signed up for the race, he was jazzed, hoping to qualify for the Boston Marathon again (he’s run it twice before). But then, you know, winter happened, we bought a house, etc, etc, and he found himself out of time to train. “Plus,” he would wail, “They dropped the Boston qualifying time to 3 hours.” Hella fast, in other words.
”You know you don’t have to finish, right?” I say to him the day before the race, as we’re drinking coffee in our hotel, the Staybridge Suites in Gilbert, AZ. “There’s no shame in quitting if you’re really in pain.” I’m worried about him. Years ago I ran the Philly marathon without training and hobbled on blistered feet and broken knees for weeks.
He smiles wanly at me.
“This is the worst pep talk ever, huh?”
He nods.
We go over the game plan over tacos at Joyride Tacos in downtown Gilbert. Due to limited parking, the race was requesting runners meet at the finish line, and take a shuttle bus to the starting line.
”Ok, so we’ll have to leave to make the shuttle pick-up area at 4am or so,” he says.
My taco dribbles out of my open and aghast mouth. “4am?"
He nods.
”So, that means the rooster crows at what time?” I ask.
He attempts to smile. “3?”
”Oh god,” I say. I sneeze twice in a row as if on cue. The day before our flight from Boston to Phoenix, my throat had gotten sore, my nose was stuffed and I was sneezing like crazy. “There’s no way,” I say. “I need to take Nyquil tonight and there’s no way I’m going to get out of bed at three.”
I can tell he’s bummed, but he gets it.
And yet, 3am rolls around and I fling myself out of bed in a state of Nyquil-induced madness. We drive to the finish line. He’s excited and nervous. I am excited too, to take the car back to the hotel and sleep for two more hours.
”Ok, so I’ll see you at Mile 13, somewhere in the 20s, and the finish line,” I say. “Bye!” He waves and walks off into the night.
I zoom back to the hotel, afraid I may not be able to fall back asleep and wake up as if I’d been mummified two miles beneath the earth two hours later cursing the alarm clock. I wake up, and look at his progress on my phone. Holy shit, I think. I might miss him if I don’t leave now!
I drive to Mile 13 and realize I have no idea where to park. I end up parking .9 miles away at a shopping plaza and start walking the long, long road to the marker. Roads in Arizona seem to grow as you walk on them, they are flat, long and unforgiving. I’m walking a dirt path alongside an orange orchard where planes are flying overhead and landing at the Falcon Field Airport. I keep checking the app. How the hell is he running this fast? I think. I quicken my stride and hope no chupacabra emerges from the endless rows of citrus, after dodging pile after pile of mysterious scat.
”I’m going to make it,” I say to myself, realizing how absurd it sounds when compared to Dan’s 26.2 miles. I get there and I am overjoyed to see a row of porter potties. I fight the growing urge to run to the bathroom and it’s a good thing I do because Dan comes rolling through.
”You’re going so fast!” I say. “Wooo woo! I’ll see you in the 20s!” I am being vague about the 20s because I don’t know the parking situation in town.
I end up pulling into Pioneer Park, where a farmer’s market is going on, and walk to mile 21. I see that he’s slowing down, according to the app, so I jog to mile 20 and plan to run alongside him to mile 21. A woman with a megaphone is holding a sign that reads “You got this!” and shouting an endless stream of encouragement. I fall in love with her, and so do the runners, who smile when they pass her.
Then I look at the app again, and it tells me Dan has passed me, and he’s gone. What the— I look around. There’s no way, I think. I start foaming at the mouth. How did I miss him? Why didn’t I just stay right where I was? They never tell you how stressful it is to be a spectator.
I decide to give it ten minutes, in hopes that the app is wrong, and then I see him, grabbing water and running towards me, looking piqued. F-ing app almost gave me a heart attack, I think.
”Wooooo!!!” I shout.
”I’m struggling,” he says.
”You’re doing great!! I’ll see you at the finish!”
And I do. The beast cruises in just over four hours, waved on by a stream of international flags and a huge crowd cheering and shouting. All he wants is a soda, and they don’t have any. "There’s french toast!” I say. He doesn’t want any, and I spend the rest of our trip wishing we’d gotten some.
”You did great,” I say, as we pull out of the parking lot and head back to the hotel.
”Thanks, pal,” he say.
I did great too, I think, coveting his medal and tossing the furiously scribbled maps and landmarks I had Googled and written up preparing to find him along the route.