Marathon Audio Reflection

Before the fatigue castrated all other thoughts from my head, I kept thinking about the blend of high-energy sounds from runners and crowd not only electrified the Chicago Marathon but would also make for a fun audio project.

The challenge was, of course, recreating as best I could in a woefully small time frame the skyscrapers and deep trenches of emotional tumult that I went through running. I also wanted to recreate key sounds of the race, especially those that somehow linked to the emotion of it. Because the collective emotion is really what makes running 26.2 miles special and horrible. I decided to roughly use a 60 to 1 scale. For every minute running the real marathon, a single second of audio would play.

But this scale did little to infuse the emotion of the race. So one crucial strategy that helped me negotiate the contrast of size as well as emotional infusion was following a blueprint of tempo. When running, the pace you're going correlates with your emotional superstructure. So I figured by talking fast during the beginning, I could capture the excitement that strapped a rocket to my back and made the first half of the marathon a joyous flight. During the first half, I was acutely aware of the cheering crowd, the sounds they made and the things they did. After training primarily alone on Los Angeles beaches and in Champaign cornfields, having a crowd to cheer me on was energizing.

I also decided to record two separate tracks: one of me speaking with vocal inflections that match the emotional state, the other a more monotone mile marker that counts from one to 26. That way, the tracks would grate against each other. Sometimes, the mile marker interjects mid sentence, which I though was an accurate representation of the way the miles bleed into the runner's reasoning in a way that both structures and unravels thought – structures, because at each marker I knew I was one closer to the end; unravels, because there are so many markers that they seem infinite and you have no beginning and this race will never end and all your world is a gutting-out of pain so as to avoid embarrassment and cash out on all the training. While running, I welcomed and despised each mile marker. It was like: "Yes, I'm finally half-way! But dammit, I'm only halfway and I want to quit now!"

But by 13.1 miles, halfway, the race changed as if night and day. I no longer cared about the crowd, so I took its screams and hoots out without fade. I began to realize my various aches that got worse and worse. I breathed harder and harder, thus the breathing soundtrack (that I got lightheaded making). I began to beat myself up in order to force myself to keep going. I focused on my own world, no longer mesmerized by running in the Chicago loop. I don't think I even heard my footsteps. Just my pulse thudding in my head and the indescribable fatigue. In this case, less was more, especially when the second half's "bare bones" presentation is done in light of the first half's pizazz.

A psychoanalyst or dirty-minded college kid might find the intensifying breathing around mile 26 a bit orgastic. I thought about dialing it down, but found the sexual innuendo a fitting twist on traditional emotions associated with physical excess. After all, the flood of endorphins that swarm your brain is the highest high; the aches and pains are the lowest low. Marathon running is a blending of binary oppositions. One that twists your mind and guts your will for a long, long time.

The Marathon is the hardest thing I've ever done, but that statement does little to recreate just what I felt when. This project, with all the bells and whistles of sound editing, helped me recreate the awful prospect of being absolutely physically taxed yet still having a gut-wrenching distance to run. Despite the challenge, when sitting here and writing about it or creating an audio presentation, I still can't completely remember just what it felt like. Memory does a disservice by recalling only the parts of the race I emphasized in the audio, and not those long gaps when I was just a slow moving figure of bright and glorious agony. It can't recreate just how long the race was. A good thing, yes, but also a dangerous one.

Because now that I can walk again. I can't wait to do another one. If only to find out how to more accurately recreate the race in a space far too small.