26.PHEW

A marathon is earned suffering. You work very hard for 18 weeks, running 400-odd miles all in, just to get to the point where you're able to run long enough to use up all the stores of glycogen in your muscles. That sounds fun, right? And boom, you're done.

(I'm not talking to you, Dean Karnazes/Marshall Ulrich/Todd Jennings, crazy long-distances runner types. I'm talking to the over-3:30 set and slower...like Paul Ryan slow. Like me.)

So, yeah, run through your glycogen and get a space blanket. Sure. Except that most people run through those stored carbohydrates around mile 18, or 20, or 22.

Which means you've got 8.2 or 6.2 or 4.2 miles to go. And it's those miles that are your reward. They fucking hurt! In a good way! You have to run them with your brain! And while you're running them (hahaha, "running" them, yeah right), you're thinking things like "why why why why step step step step step why why why why c'mON mutherfukker" mostly, but also, if you're like me, you're reflecting on the end of Infinite Jest (and, sadly, you take no pleasure in the fact that you read it AGES ago and the people around you probably didn't and are philistines), the part where Gately's in the hospital and seeing the D.A. sitting outside and he's enduring each millisecond knowing that the pain contained in a millisecond is finite and he's continuing and continuing and continuing and continuing, etc. This reflection is made less enjoyable, if you're like me, by the constant presence over your left shoulder of a possibly hallucinatory prosecuting attorney in a fedora running effortlessly and taunting you and calling you fattie, but that's just me OR IS IT. You might also, as I did this past spring, reflect on the pain that it was to be David Foster Wallace, and how tough life must have been for that poor guy, and how brave he seems in retrospect to have been in the face of such crushing depression, and how lovely some of his thinking and phrasing and structure and (I'm not going to footnote this) convoluted sentences were. And you might start to mantrafy the words "this is water this is water this is water."

I've run four marathons, the most recent one this past spring after a six-year hiatus (child #2 really puts a dent in your whole thing). And it was during this one that it struck me that if I hadn't trained as hard as I had, I would not have earned the pain of those last four miles. I would not have had the opportunity to find a limit for myself, lean into it, push against it, and shove it back—maybe not as hard as I'd like, but still—shove it back for another 44 minutes after I reached it, until I decided to stop. A marathon gives you a chance, within an otherwise normal, even comfortable, life, to be told NO by the universe and to answer back 'FRAID SO.

They say you hit a wall in the marathon, and you do. But what they don't usually tell you is that you can choose to grab hold of the wall—it's about seven feet tall and eight feet wide, made of stacked 4x4s— hoist it painfully over your head, stagger to the finish line under its weight, then throw it onto the ground flat and stand on it while they take your picture.

If you don't believe me, take a look at those post-finish-line photos. Everyone in them is actually about four inches taller.


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Move

I haven't seen the destruction in New York firsthand. My town was more or less spared by Hurricane Sandy. Trees and power lines down, power out for a couple of days, no major flooding. But I lived in New York City for eight years, my sisters and cousins and friends still do, and I've been talking with my people.

They say that the New York City Marathon is scheduled to go on this Sunday, less than a week after lives and neighborhoods were destroyed by the storm. The power is still out. Transportation is a debacle. There's wreckage in places that hasn't even been touched yet. The race is set to go, and apparently people are angry.

The race ought to go on.

In 2001 I recall being angry. Vindictive. Scared. I thought maybe the marathon would devalue my grief. That a celebration of life so soon after death would be disloyal to the dead. That I might forget, and we were very clearly told to NEVER FORGET.

But I went out to cheer for the runners, cheer for the city, cheer for my living, cheering friends around me eating bagels. In 2003, completely renewed -- a father, a runner, no longer a New Yorker -- I ran that race. I ran it again a couple of years later. Forget? Hardly.

The New York City Marathon is an annual heartbeat in a city that's all heart. If you're angry that the marathon is going on, remember what got you angry. That storm was unfair.

And one day taken from a cleanup and rebuilding that is going to take years is a small price, on top of the price already paid. More important, the marathon is an investment of spirit in a place that needs it. This marathon will be like the news of V-day. It will be like the end of the '68 blackout. It will be like -- well, it will be like the New York City Marathon in 2001.

This isn't an abstract thing, here. The marathon is a real thing. It saves lives. It redirects energy. The city is at a standstill? Not if you let tens of thousands of people run through it. You can't get anywhere? Yes you can. Use your feet. The power is out? The power is right there in front of you, taking in air and turning it into kinetic energy. You're going to tell the world that storm, blackout, and tragedy can shut New York down? You're going to tell people that the place they travel in droves to see is not as mighty as they think it is? New Yorkers: you live in the center of the universe. Light it up.

If you're angry, and you're sad, and you're frightened, make your way to the course on Sunday and let your emotions go. Cheer. Cry. Hand someone an orange. Let the brave men and women running that race -- many of whom also lost much during this storm -- let them help you remember to be alive.


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Meeting the Internet

The last couple of months have seen several in-person meetings with actual live bloggers. (Not actual live-bloggers, although some of them might do that if witness to something fascinating, or if they had a cell phone, a restroom and a Twitter account. Because they're addicts.) Big bloggers, regular ones, all of them very talented and incredibly good looking. And here's the weird thing: like the runners I'm privileged to know, they all seem to be decent people who support one another in their endeavors and who don't politicize the dynamic or judge you for your skill or your reactions or your thinning hair. I know that's not everyone's experience, but I'm new here.

It was natural that I'd combine the two pursuits sooner or later, so when I read on the Internet that Heather B. was running 5k's I thought "oh, I'll have to invite her down for a run sometime this summer," and as I thought that I passed a big banner for the first annual 5k at a local church, and I thought "yeah, I'll have to remember to find a race that makes sense and email her," and then I ran over a guy painting arrows to mark the course and I thought "yeah, if there were only a race of the correct distance nearby, I could totally invite her" and then I crashed my car into the race director and said "duh! I could invite her to this race! The one that starts about a foot from my driveway!" And naturally, having read her blog, seen her photos, read her Twitters and met her once, my next thought was "what kind of booze should I use as bait?"

I needn't have bothered with the booze: she never hesitated from the moment I suggested a run. An excellence of spirit and openness to new experience seem to be what Heather B. is all about, and I now know that "No pasa nada" translates to "yeah, I'm in." So she came down, refused mojitos and had some wine, got up completely game, and ran that race like an absolute pro with a form-perfect kick for the last fifty yards that was grace itself.

I made eggs, but didn't serve mimosas. Then Heather offered (ahem, for the record) to watch our kids for an hour when we announced that we had an appointment, which I had sort of neglected to mention. But after that lapse in good hosting, THEN, we took her to watch Polly turn seven, which is not something you see every day, I don't care what kind of fancy blogger you are.


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Rock Star

I didn't realize that we weren't going to finish the race until pretty late the day before. By that time I'd purchased the makings for a stellar Elvis belt -- rhinestones, glitter, pleather -- and was resolved to stick with the Presley troupe for most of the course.

Which is how it played out. We launched our shopping-cart barge into a sea of kooks, got treated like Kings for four and a half miles, then I changed into running gear and made my way to the beach, after the course was closed, through a couple of police barricades and past a surprising number of live bison. From the time I started I was the only one running. For a stretch I was the only one on my feet -- never have so many gotten so wasted for so little. I covered the last two miles solo, through Golden Gate Park's eucalyptus and pines, and was the last to cross the finish line as they dismantled it.

My knee didn't bother me once, nor the next day. I'm back, baby. Long live the King.

Pictures of me and the Elvis phenomenon and the race itself.

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Flowers in my hair. Thin flowers.

Tomorrow I follow in Mark Twain's footsteps and fly to San Francisco to visit friends and run the Bay to Breakers. While running, of course, I will be dressed as Elvis Presley, who disliked hippies, mostly, but did lots of drugs and sang about Love.

Mark Twain famously said, of the Bay to Breakers, "I think that much the most enjoyable of all races is a steamboat race; but, next to that, I prefer the gay and joyous mule-rush." He finished in 44:30, about a six-minute mile, and was so mad at not winning that he rent his gold lamé shad suit asunder and attended the after party in nothing but a boater, socks, and garters. Of that party, he said "It is not nakedness that gives the sense of immodesty, the modifying the nakedness is what does it." He then began attempting to get everyone else to take off their clothes, slurringly admonishing anyone who would listen that "Modesty antedates clothes and will be resumed when clothes are no more. Modesty died when clothes were born. Modesty died when false modesty was born." And everyone was pretty cool with that and several traditions were born.

Elvis, on the other hand, said of Mark Twain, "cats were born to give you acne," then stumbled into a completely disjointed version of "I've Got a Woman" before launching into his famous tirade against newspapers and newspapermen, particularly Twain. Presley's time in the Bay to Breakers was a sad showing in his later years; he finished his final race a full seven minutes slower than the PR of 50:36 set in 1952.

You can read about the race here. I would like to return to many comments lauding my time, whatever it may be.

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The Aches, the Pains, the Aches of Overuse

The cycle works thisaway: you run two races back to back in the fall, without reaaaalllly being in super-great running shape. This causes your knee to get a little sore. That gets worse as you keep running on it. You look it up: it's patellar tendonitis (tendinitis?), probably. You keep running on it, but maybe a little less.

Flash forward to February. You've been running a little less each week, trying to give it time to heal, but you don't want to stop running, because then? Fat. So you run 9 miles one Sunday. Take Advil. It's fine!

Run three miles the following Thursday and strain your calf.

But that sounds like underuse, you'll observe. But not really. It's really overuse of something that wasn't ready to be used quite so much.






















So from now on it's up early to write. Doctor's appointment soon. No running this weekend. Note to self: avoid cheese.

UPDATE: Self-diagnoses confirmed. Pictures here.


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Updates

Few things:
  • I saw an eagle standing on the ice out on Tomahawk Lake this morning.
  • My patellar tendo(i?)nitis is much more localized than it was, but returns after each long run.
  • We dropped in on friends and found three goats penned in their backyard. I was not upset that they hadn't told us about the goats; I was upset that they weren't reading Exurbitude, because if they had, they would have told us about the goats. (The goats were on loan to eat weeds.)
  • THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT, THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT, THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT
Actual prose to follow.

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What Do You Do, After You Blogged All Month?

Next Actions
Apparently a lot of other people were writing novels last month. That sounds nice. I have a couple of other writing projects to sew up, and then I'm starting me one of those. Rather, working on one I started for NaNoWriMo two years ago.

Wafer Thin
This morning was the traditional First Scraping, as our cars were coated in the most delicate thin layers of the hardest ice. Like something made by Italian craftsmen on a little island someplace, this ice. So thin, in fact, that I discovered a new part of the car. The part where, when you scrape some ice and a beautiful, dinner-plate-sized micro-thin sheet of it slides oh-so-delicately down the outside of the window and disappears into the door; the part where you hear it shatter with a glasslike tinkle into a thousand little wet slivers. That part. My car has one.

Cold, Cold Ground
I ran a little down Baltimore way this past weekend, on a wide-open one-mile loop in a park with no trees and lots of frost on the ground. It was extremely bright, and around the loop here and there I could see other people out walking and running. Our breath made little lambs of steam that romped together in the sunlight.


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Once a year

“It’s only once a year,” we say as we tuck in following a moment of poorly feigned reluctance. And it’s true: for those controlling their weight, as for everyone else, the obscene feast that is modern Thanksgiving happens only once annually. Once annually. So why not?

Other once-annual feast days you might observe:

    New Year’s Day
    Your bonus arrives
    Superbowl
    Valentine’s Day
    St. Patrick’s Day
    Your significant other’s birthday
    Your best friend’s birthday
    Passover
    Your birthday
    Easter
    Your particular once-a-year feast day…with “the guys” or a sibling, your sorority, etc.
    Memorial Day
    Graduation
    Your anniversary
    Your kid’s birthday
    July 4th
    The weekend after July 4th
    Vacation!
    Labor Day
    Ball game!
    The harvest
    Your sibling’s birthday
    Rosh Hashanah
    After the play
    Halloween
    Thanksgiving
    Company Christmas party
    Holiday party
    Christmas Eve
    Christmas Day
    New Year’s Eve


I don’t know about you, but I’m going out for a run. I’ve got some once-a-year chowing down to do later.

To all of you, a healthy Thanksgiving, and my gratitude.


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The Internet Tells Me It's Patellar Tendinitis

My knee aches. You know how I often write about the many hills to be run in this area? How steep they are? How many ups we do on a weekend morning? Well, they all go back down eventually, and that can be hell on one's knees. Couple that with races on two consecutive weekends and a little more mileage than usual, and you can develop tenderness and a little inflammation of the patellar tendon, which connects the kneecap to the, umm, fribula. The one in front there. The shin, yeah.

It only hurts when I keep it bent for a long time -- for instance, during an hour-long drive or sitting at a desk for eight hours. Fortunately I only do each of those things once a day (well, twice, the driving). For my lay readers, I have prepared a diagram that will illustrate the condition.



Don't be alarmed: this is a fairly common syndrome and I expect a full recovery. Although your concern is appreciated. (PS: I'm still running, because it only hurts after.)

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Orange You Glad We Didn't Give out Bananas?

We don't get down to New York City that often—at least not to Manhattan—but the marathon is powerful enough to draw us out of the mountains in our flannel, beards, and suspenders to stand on Fifth Avenue and croak obscenities from baccy-stained mouths at the sneaker-clad city slickers in their polyester gym shorts. Our toddler is especially good at this.



Sunday we went, and a very generous woman who lets me sleep at the house spent some time slicing oranges in the kitchen before we left. I haven't watched the race since 2004, and I didn't hand out fruit then, but I received a slice of orange while running it in 2005. That's when I discovered that oranges are hand-made by Santa Claus, and he uses magical go-juice to make them.

I don't know if you fish, but that physical feeling when a fish mouths your bait? And the more decisive tug when it takes the lure? That's what it felt like when runners dipped into the gallon-sized ziploc I was holding, extremely grateful, looking me in the eye, calling me nice things ("lifesaver," "godsend"...I would have given my wife the credit, but she was three or four feet away, and I like being called nice things), asking if they could take one "for a friend."

The three pounds or so that I held outstretched went as quickly as my wife had said it would, and even the last forlorn little orange section, awash in a pool of juice, got snatched up by a Swedish lady whom you could tell felt a little thrill of victory at getting the last orange.

Ordinarily I would sum up by digging out a metaphor and broadening the orange story and the running and the time my wife spent slicing them into something to walk away with and chew over. But not today. Today I would like to simply report that it was really fun to give out oranges to runners during the New York City marathon.



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Reason #458

My neighbor and I were daubing the last bit of sealant on the shared driveway, under his direction. I leaned on my broom a little too hard, it snapped, and thworlp! my forearm was coated with viscous, lukewarm tar.

"You're fired," he said.

Now, I've talked about my skill with tools in the past; on the spectrum of general handiness, I'm sort of a five out of ten. The bulky things come easiest. I'm good with stone walls, as long as you don't want them ruler straight, and I'm a decent digger. I have little patience for the detail work, which includes such things as measuring, masking, working slowly, planning. As I said in a recent post, I only learned one knot in all my scouting years.

But none of that matters. Because no matter how bad—or at least not great—I am at other things, I can still run. Perhaps because the skill was so hard to earn, or because it was something that seemed so alien to me for so long, putting a few miles together still feels like an achievement, every time.

In the rigid world of times and scoring, I'm about as good a runner as I am a house-painter. But while I look at any given paint job and see where I should have applied some tape, I remember every race as though I broke the tape. Like air guitar or karaoke, you don't have to actually be good at running in order to feel good about your skill level.

First prize for my age group is still safe in some other runner's hands. My times may not improve. That's okay. Because when I change out of my synthetic gear and put on leather shoes and go off to test my competence in other arenas, there's always this quiet spot right at the center, a place I can mentally put my finger on and say "I'm good at this."

And that's almost as rewarding as watching your neighbor finish sealing your driveway.


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The First Time I Ran

Two of the most important elements of my first attempt at running were fiber-based. One was the fabric of the outfit I was wearing. This was a thick "fleece" of the polar-tek variety, although not specifically Polar-Tek™. I think it had been purchased at Target, and was a generous gift from my in-laws. It had mildly sporty racing stripes on it, but it was hearty, and thick. Not like your basic fall hiking fleece, but more the type Joe Pesce would have worn in an early-90s film wherein he whacks people. It was a pullover, but with a half-zipper, presumably for temperature control and/or cubic-zirconium nameplate visibility. In any case, I chose it because it was the closest thing to a "sporty" garment I owned.

That hunter-green non-gym-standard garment would have been, of course, an Extra Large, if not the dreaded XXL. The date was roughly February 1, 2002. I had begun Weight Watchers two weeks earlier and knew that, in order to seriously lose weight, I'd have to begin exercising. Running seemed easiest.

The other important fibrous mass was my beard. Always of questionable quality and cut, it remained red after the rest of my hair had gone brownish, except that now, after a particularly harrowing year at work, it sported two vivid white patches, one on each side of my chin. But I kept it on like an old beloved pet or a stuffed animal—and nothing hides (and emphasizes) spare chins quite so well as a thick beard. I don't know whether you have a beard, but, well, beards are great on cold days, and they're terrible with sweat.

I trundled my ass out of bed early that twenty-degree morning, put on a truly humungous Carhartt coat over my Thick-n-Hearty Fleece™ and stalked down Austin Street to the New York Sports Club I had chosen for my triumphant debut. I believe I may have been "pumped" at the time, although I would only have recognized it then as a vague feeling of doom.

Is it really a memoir if you don't remember anything? I don't truly remember anything after entering the gym. I know I didn't use the locker room, because I lived up the street. I know I was in an upstairs room with open windows facing the street, staggering along on a treadmill with a gray dawn outside, feeling an icy slice of cold air on my throat, which was (by the second or third minute) emitting the sounds that Czech scientists recently reported hearing from the throats of Aral Sea sturgeon in their death throes. I know that I set the blasted machine for fifteen minutes, but it may have been twelve and I hope the truth is not in a database somewhere waiting to destroy my career. I leaned forward and pushed off, and ran for whatever time and at whatever slow pace I had entered.

Fleece is supposed to "wick" moisture. Wicking. Heh.

So I do remember not wanting to put my Carhartt back on, because I had sweated so profusely that the fleece clung to me like a paper-thin wifebeater, and the Carhartt was my "good" coat (that was the style in them days). I remember feeling the sweat freezing, slowly, in my beard as I shambled home up the street. I remember how hot my face was, after running for the first time, despite my frozen beard, the frigid air, and the freshening breeze that came up with the pale winter sun.

And this morning, almost six years later, I noticed again the heat in my clean-shaven face, finishing a short four-miler in my size-M shirt, feeling that same warmth, which I now know is the flush of victory.


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The Heat? On.

Today Florida feels like Satan's rectal thermometer. How do I know? I know because I'm there. Here, that is. And even though it's only 7 degrees hotter here than at home (95 vs. 88), the...sun...is...burrowing through what's left of my skin like a...like a...sorry, I'm out of similies because of the above. Freaking hot.

Yesterday, I ran in the morning. Have I already said this? Perhaps I'm delerious. That might explain the palace of ice cream cones I can see hovering upside-down in the distance, drawing me forward, forward. Anyway, I ran in the morning, snakes and lizards darting across my path, heat-prostrated pit bulls ranging alongside behind fences, a petit, angry, blisteringly hot land crab threatening my feet, another version -- scuttling gray monster -- pulling itself into a burrow as I passed. Bloated alligator carcasses lined my route, dead of heatstroke all of them, dehydrated vultures plucking listlessly at their livers, the vultures thinking of January and cold-water lobster. All that was missing was Virgil to guide me the 4 miles.

Ice cream!

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RIP, Sean O'Neill

The city of Utica, New York, was the scene of a massive race a week ago Sunday, with more than 10,000 people running 15 kilometers in the annual festival/race called the Boilermaker. Sadly, one young runner fell victim to a previously-undetected heart arrhythmia and collapsed on the course. He was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later.

Several of his friends ran the last 3 1/2 miles for him a few days afterwards.

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Reason #346

There’s a flat trail nearby, a former railroad right of way now paved. It passes through some of the finest country around — the Black Dirt region, source of the finest onions — and makes for a scenic and pleasant run or cycling trip. A lot of my marathon training runs take place on the Heritage Trail, as it’s called.

This past weekend it was home to the Matthew Dudgeon Memorial 7k Run/Walk, an event in its third/seventh year. The race is held to bring attention to a suite of rare mitochondrial diseases, one of which claimed the life of 27-month-old Matty in 2000. In addition to raising money for the study of these diseases, entry fees and raffle funds go toward supporting families in the region who are coping with terminal illness. Matthew’s family are the force behind this event, supported by the local running community and others.

Whether you’re looking for reasons to run or not, you’ve found one. There are events like this one around the country on any given weekend. Bring the kids. If you can’t run 4.4 (or 3.5 or 6.2) miles, you can walk. Your entry fee will invariably help someone who needs it, you’ll connect with other humans, you’ll help a family make something good come out of something tragic, you’ll enjoy yourself outside, and you’ll increase your own fitness. And boy howdy, standing around with all those fit people and exuberant youngsters will restore something you might be missing if you’ve been watching the news or looking at your gas bill …maybe it’s optimism, faith in your fellow people, or just the clean sensation of taking a deep breath and doing something with it.

Often, you’ll get a t-shirt.


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Itinerary

The next several days are quite full, thank you. Activities range from a pasta potluck with Runner’s World editors (don’t forget to buy your June issue) to a flight to London to cooking breakfast for the sweet people I live with. There’s a half-marathon and a pint or two in there as well. This past week, and the one coming up, has had the same quality as those first few weeks with a newborn. (Although I did manage to get a haircut the other day, I don’t remember how or when.)


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7:19

I may not be a joiner (or maybe I am), but there’s one club of which I’m proud to be a member. That’d be the 7:19 Club, a local, informal, occasional disglomerization of runners who meet on weekend mornings to run at 9:30am. I mean 7:19.

As most things do where I live, the club grew from a commute — couple of guys talking about running on the train, couple of guys overhearing them, agreements to meet up. And then, unable to fix on 7 or 7:30, an off-the-cuff suggestion of 7:19 seemed right. (There are also references built in – there’s a 6:20 Club outside of St. Louis, and a movie where Pre’s coach Bowerman calls his team meetings for :28 past the hour, to encourage attendance via curiousity. But mostly, it was convenient and easy to remember.)

My post seeking running buddies on the local runner’s club board got me an invite, and two years later, running with these folks has motivated me to run even more than the fear of dying has. There’s the fast guy, who leads the group and runs a zany trail race in the Catskills every year; there’s the stringbean 60-year-old who’s run 50 marathons and outkicks me in every race we enter; the stolid buddies whose support and marathon companionship make it possible to run that far; the woman transforming herself into a distance runner; the speedy lady who runs up the Empire State Building stairs for kicks; the guy who lost 175 pounds and runs all. the. time. And more. An amazing bunch.

There’s nothing wrong with a little joining now and then. Oh, but one thing: I never, ever, ever get there on time. They’re often kind enough to wait. Sure, I wonder what they do at 7:19. But I’m just not that curious.


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Pulling the Plug

This doesn’t end well. You’re warned.

Toward the end of my run on Saturday, something wriggling in the ditch beside the road caught my eye. I stopped to look, and saw what I took to be a juvenile skunk in distress. Its small form was squirming around spasmodically in the leaves at the bottom of the gully, one paw sticking up. I assumed it was either rabid or had been hit by a car.

When it turned a little I could see its muzzle, and suddenly the animal’s proportions didn’t make sense. The face on it looked full grown, but its body looked stunted. The skunk was looking at me, mouth open, panting. I felt terrible, but assumed it was not long for this world and would expire on its own. I ran a few more paces, but curiousity took over; the size and shape of it had been wrong. A glance back told me the rest of the story.

The back half of the skunk was a few feet further up the bank, motionless. The front part – head, one leg, a portion of the body – still lay trembling in the ditch, writhing in what appeared to be agony and which showed no signs of abating as I watched in horrified fascination.

Reluctantly, I concluded that I should finish the grisly job that someone in his car had started. I picked up a log, apologizing to the skunk the entire time, and dropped it as hard as I could on the creature. Its spasms continued. Still apologizing, I picked up another one and dropped it on the first one a couple of times, until the animal lay still.



UPDATE: For the record, I did not feel good about this. Not at all.
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