Everyone Has a Reason for Running the Marathon, and I Guess | Do, Too.

am the quintessential couch potato. At least, that is what my father tells me just about every day. I guess he has good reason. Reluctantly, I wake up in the mornings and make my way to school. After cruising through the day, I come home around 6:30 p.M., plop myself onto the most comfortable couch, and flick on man’s greatest invention, the television. To me, that has to be the closest thing to heaven on earth. That is the time when my father usually returns from work and makes his daily comment to me, which I have already mentioned. In some ways, he has a point. I mean, there is even a groove in the sofa where gravity has taken its toll—an indentation that would make even Homer Simpson proud. However, if you asked anyone else about my life, laziness would not be one of the traits they would cite. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of

Courtesy of Alec Velazco

A Alec (in black shirt) with mom Kathy (to his immediate left) and friends at the Mardi Gras Marathon in 2006.

them usually stands out: every now and then, I will travel to some remote area and run a marathon.

As I write this, Iam 16 years old and have completed eight marathons. As you all know, all marathons these days are 26.2 miles long. It is not that some of them are shorter than others. Trust me, they are all long, but more on that later.

The first marathon I did was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In my opinion, that was a big mistake. I should have dropped out, quit, faked an injury—something, anything. If [had taken that route, however, I’m not sure that I would have ever come back to do more. However, I was in my idiot mode that day, and I finished it. Since then, things have steadily gotten worse. I ran one out in the burning desert of Arizona. That one wasn’t too bad, aside from the scorching heat and zero shade. I might have killed some brain cells during that run because, a few weeks later, I decided to run two marathons in one week.

Based on the trend that was forming, I should have been institutionalized for masochistic bents. Yet, somehow, I’ve managed to maintain enough intellect to survive a few more 26-milers.

What is weird is that looking back on some of them, I actually came away not minding the grind all that much. There was one in Napa Valley, California, that was just plain beautiful. The course was on a hillside that overlooked miles and miles of vineyards. Even there, due to exhaustion, I don’t remember very much between miles 16 and 22, but from what I remember, it was pretty nice.

Now, I might as well let everyone in on a little secret here. There is absolutely no good reason for anyone in his right mind to run a marathon, especially more than one. If it is a matter of getting into shape and staying in shape, just run a

» Alec (center) with dad Andy (to his right) and Mike Smith at the ING Georgia Marathon in 2007.

few miles every other day or swim laps. I would, however, encourage people to try at least one marathon. That way, more people will have shared my pain and will know what I’m talking about.

As I said earlier, marathons are long. They are so long, in fact, that there is probably someone out in Oklahoma still on the course from the marathon I finished a year ago.

Few experiences in life are as mentally and physically challenging as running a marathon. They make you realize that there are muscles in your legs that you never knew you had. The way that you find out you have these phantom muscles is that your nerve endings send pain signals to your brain like fingernails on a chalkboard while you are blinded to what is going on around you by the stinging sweat running into your eyes.

Every inch of your body is covered in what feels like a thin cling-wrap coating of salt, oil, and urea. The pounding of your heart and the impact of your feet pounding the ground for hour upon hour with thousands upon thousands of strides drone on like a rusty John Deere tractor whose main bearing is going out.

All of that misery for four to five hours sounds just like your cup of tea on a Sunday morning, doesn’t it? Let’s not fool ourselves—it makes me want to fall on a rusty sword.

A The perfect couch potato exercising his muscles.

Well, I still haven’t answered the question as to why I do it.

After everything I’ve written so far, I realize once again that I’m a little bit crazy. People have to have some motivation to be willing to subject themselves to this sort of punishment. Let me say this: I certainly don’t enjoy running. Neither do I run for exercise or competition. Chicks, admiration, attention—no, no, and no. My parents do pay me some money when I finish a marathon, sort of to work as motivation, I guess, but I don’t run marathons for the money—that would make me a pro, and it would seem too much like a job.

I have come to realize that there is really only one explanation for why I run marathons. It is because something happens on that one special day when I complete a marathon, something that provides me with enough satisfaction to run another one time and time again. It is simply because on that special day, my father has no excuse to call me a lazy bum, and I feel as though I’ve ; made him proud of me. i