My marathon on April 30th, the expected race of a lifetime, was by 9.1 miles like my eyeglasses—flying through rain drenched air before bumping hard across slick asphalt.

Recovered, the glasses slipped again from my confident grasp as I came nearly to a full and complete stop. Finally, the glasses perched again atop the bridge of my nose, as rain pounded them.

These glasses have endured so much struggle over time-the freezing rains, howling winds, zero degree air icing them to my hat. Furnace blasts of heat in Charleston and the Outer Banks nearly melting them away.

And yet through it all, resilience. This marathon was to be the one marrying functionality with performance. Style with grace. A new anti-fog cream I’d been searching for had just been bought at the expo and I was sure this was a major missing element before, when heat and rain on glass stole most of my sight.

This was finally the day. 62 degrees, a steady rain falling, all systems go. No, the weather was not ideal. Yet, with utmost confidence, I knew I would see more clearly than ever before.

I carried on, seeing fairly well throughout, but never achieving that eagle’s eyesight I aspire for. That I bleed for. It was all so…plain, mediocre. I would die to see the spectrum of colors amid Angel Falls, the carbon molecules holding me together.

That damned anti-fog cream was not a panacea.