Zimbabwe, Manhattan, and the Great Adventure
"Dad, I have good news and bad news." The connection is terrible. All kinds of chaos in the background. Happy chaos.
I start laughing. "I already know the bad news."
"The good news is I finished ninth and I was the first non-Zimbabwean. The bad news is I only got 59,000 steps. I'm sure I'll get another thousand, but I need you to do 40,000."
"Not a team player," I said. He laughed.
Earlier in the week, he sent me this picture from a training run:
Just your totally normal normal giraffe encounter. He also sent a short video of zebras running across the trail in front of him.
Zimbabwe was familiar--at least in terrain--because he'd spent so much time in Zambia. And the weather was perfect--low sixties, which was incredibly cool for this time of year.
Climbing up the tallest mountain in the country, though, about five hours in, it started pouring.
He climbed for the first twenty-five miles of the race, then got it all back in the last ten, but at such a steep angle that he said it was the worst part of the race, by far.
C and I had walked about 15,000 steps already when I got his call. I'd been mentally preparing myself for the possibility, though, so I wasn't entirely surprised by his number.
We'd already walked around Central Park, so we kept going.
The first 30,000 steps weren't bad at all. And C stayed with me for 17.5 miles, which was genuinely incredible. She already had more than 40,000 steps at that point because she's almost a foot shorter than I am. I was only at about 35,000, though.
Those last two and half miles were very very tough. It's easy to say, "All I need to do is keep walking," but it still gets hard.
His kids will have come catching up to do. More tomorrow.
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