Day of the Dead — John Znidarsic

The Charlottesville Marathon was still pretty homegrown in 2007 when I ran it with three of my best friends.

There was no expo. You just picked up your bib and shirt out of the back of the local running store. And, the course carried this casual vibe perfectly. It was somewhat marked, hilly AF and water was scarce - sometimes left to homemade roadside stands with kids serving up Dixie cups or hitting you with a much-needed spray of a hose. It was a runner’s race. There may have been 300 or so signed up for the full - maybe 2x that number in fans. But, there’s one guy I’ll never forget.

One buddy had moved ahead and the other had slipped behind. Now the two of us found ourselves running behind a pack of VMI cadets trapped in a field of negative energy. Nobody said a word. Yet you could hear the internal screaming as you ran closer to the pack. Mark gave me a nod and while neither of us were feeling fantastic we stepped on the gas to pass this funk. It worked. But in a mile or two we paid the price. Bombing gel packs – grasping at whatever you can just to try and get by.

And that’s when I heard it.

I couldn’t tell if it was in my head or the reality outside of it. Bump ba-ba, ba-dump bump bump. Bump ba-ba. You hear that? And as we make our way to the crest of the hill it gets louder. There’s no mistaking that baseline now. Then Jerry’s guitar hits that pure run where notes are just sprinkling down like raindrops and we’re nearly sprinting down the hill quads burning. Fire...fire on the mountain...

At the bottom, an old man sits stoically with his boombox perched next to him on a fencepost. No expression. Great big white-beard as much Claus as it was Garcia. Music blaring.

I don’t know how many of the 300 finished. But, I still love the fact that if you did you most definitely heard this old timer who got up early just to sit at the base of a grueling part of the race to play Fire on the Mountain on repeat for hours.

On the Day of the Dead...that’s a memory I’m grateful for..