By Emilia Benton
Last weekend, I took a mini-vacation to join over 31,200 people for the 10th annual Country Music Marathon and Half-Marathon in Nashville, Tenn. Friends and family clearly thought I was nuts to travel to an unfamiliar city alone, but it was the perfect opportunity to get away from campus before the stresses of finals, graduation and apartment-hunting hit.
I’ve been a consistent long-distance runner for about six years now and completing a full 26.2-mile marathon after graduation is high on my list of life goals. When I learned that the earliest I can qualify for the New York City marathon is November 2010, I started signing up for increasingly longer races, beginning with a 10K (6.2 miles) last August, a 15K (9.3 miles) in December, and finally, my first half-marathon in January, when it was only 14 degrees in Central Park. Shortly thereafter, a friend tipped me off about this half-marathon, I immediately rushed to read up on it-two of my greatest loves, country music and running, together? Additionally, I’d always wanted to visit Nashville, but figured I’d call it a lost cause when I couldn’t find anyone to make the trip with me.
I’ve also always been a huge fan of contemporary country music, especially live country music, which is why I was intrigued by the prospect of visiting and possibly later seeking jobs in Nashville, a city that is widely known to be the country music capitol.
Upon arriving here in 2005 and realizing that there are no country radio or television channels here, I quickly learned that New York is not very country music-friendly, to say the least. I figured I wouldn’t be missing much if I still managed to keep up with my favorite acts. However, the last real taste I got was when I practically had to all but drag my then-boyfriend to a Keith Urban concert after snagging last-minute tickets on eBay in November 2005.
The more I thought about this race, the more I wanted to do it-after all, I was likely going to stick around New York for spring break and probably would not get to go on a vacation for a very long time, depending on how my job search turns out. I’ll admit, I was definitely a little nervous about venturing into a new city by myself. But I snapped out of it. I came all the way across the country for college. I’ve traveled to Europe and navigated the streets of Madrid by myself. I even jumped out of a plane and lived to tell about it last summer. Surely I could handle a weekend jaunt to Music City by myself. Besides, I remembered recently reading somewhere that it takes a very secure person to travel alone. So I put my birthday check from my dad toward the race’s $100 registration fee and booked a flight and hotel stay for a three-day weekend and considered it a 22nd birthday gift to myself.
Saturday’s race was definitely the most challenging 13.1 miles I’ve ever run-even at 7 a.m., it was pushing 80 degrees, humid and much of the course was uphill. But it was also the most fun race I’ve ever done and I ended up finishing in 2:05, beating my New York City time by two minutes.
The course started in Nashville’s Centennial Park and continued through Vanderbilt University’s campus and down Music Row before circling through downtown and throughout the rest of the city. Much of the course was on elevated overpasses, which provided incredible views of the city, simultaneously providing live performances by local bands staged at just about every mile. The festivities were capped off with a free concert later that evening in Nashville’s Sommet Center. It was a fantastic experience and made realize just how much I miss living in the South.
I was born and raised in Houston before my family moved to Oregon shortly before I started high school. For the past four years, I’ve been about 95 percent sure I would move to New York City after graduation and most likely be there to stay. Having never truly felt at home in Oregon, I still consider Houston to be my hometown and assumed that if I were to move out of New York, it would likely be either back to Houston or to another major city down south and that I’d eventually default back to New York. But now I’m not so sure.
As I sat in a few of downtown Nashville’s country bars (or “honky-tonks”), listening to live music in the middle of the afternoon, in between visiting museums and snapping pictures of the city, I found myself thinking “this is so my scene,” and I could totally see myself living there someday. I was tempted to snatch up the free travel voucher and stay an extra day when I learned that my flight back on Sunday night was overbooked.
But I knew I had work to catch up on and needed to come back and face reality. I’m graduating in just over two weeks and I’m about to sign a lease on an apartment and continue my job hunt. Who knows where I’ll be in a year-perhaps I’ll have landed the cushy magazine editorial position I’ve long dreamed about here in New York, or maybe I’ll be willing and ready to make the jump should I come across a great opportunity in my old stomping grounds. Either way, one thing’s for sure: the South will always hold at least a little piece of my heart.
Emilia Benton is a senior print journalism student. You may e-mail her at