Begin Again

Soon I'm heading out to Idaho for the Boise Marathon, my second race in my home state. My first Idaho marathon, back in 2008, yielded a still-unbroken PR and a rather awesome division first-place trophy--but I'm not competing with 2008 this month. Many times since my last blog post in November, I've thought to myself, "I guess it WAS the end, after all." Not the end of running, which is ... unimaginable. But the end of a beautiful era in which marathoning and traveling and snapping photos of old buildings and beaches and European McDonald's signs felt exciting and sparkly, and posting my musings here on this blog created another dimension of reality. Here I could be only the runner and the person I wanted to be, with all the bad filtered out (Delete-Delete-Delete, so easy, so clean!). The blog is like memories: when you look back from enough distance, you can gloss over the uglier realities of mortality. When I recall my anguished moments in a port-a-potty in Sweden, for example, what stands out now isn't my fear or my rain-soaked physical discomfort but that triumphant moment of bursting out the door and back onto the running path through the storm. How I've elevated that moment in my mind, and yet I know at the time I didn't feel triumphant or determined as much as desperate. I was continuing on toward the finish line because I couldn't figure out any better way to get home.

My Stockholm run took place in June 2012, and though I came home from Sweden feeling strong, I was in a hospital within a month receiving a transfusion of "Be Positive" blood cells. Anemia clamped down hard on my frantic workout pace. The transfusion helped, as they always do for me, but it reminded me of that specter--the darker side of my running. Marathoning remained compelling, but it lost a little sparkle. At the beginning of 2013, the story of the Pope's retirement captured my imagination because it fed my own yearning to be finished, finally, to reach the end of my hard race. When I was just starting out with marathons, I learned to comfort myself with the reminder, "It is finite. It is long, but it is finite." I'm sure that applies to other things, too, but it can be difficult to remember when the struggle exceeds my typical four-hour race time.

I wrestled with what I wanted this blog to be. How it helped, at times, to pour out my thoughts here in honesty: there is a problem with what I'm doing, there is a distortion, and I am not the only one who suffers. On the one hand, it didn't seem wise to go on and on about what led to my visits to Camp and Prison. On the other, it feels impossible sometimes to go on and on about anything else.

But here's what I've realized since my last post. Running is hard, and writing is hard, and I'm not as good at either as I'd like to be. I do them still, because they call to me. I've run four marathons since November: in Kiawah, SC; Myrtle Beach, SC; Washington, DC; and Charlottesville, VA. They are four moments in time, and four miracles. The years since I've been running are marked and measured by marathons. "Oh, that was the year I went to Norway, and I remember ..." I still don't know what this blog should be--or rather, I have an idea that I should fill it with useful information about marathon logistics and hotel reviews--but what's meant the most to me are the personal accounts I would not have recorded if I had not been writing posts. My last four marathons have been memorable, as all marathons are, but I'm afraid of letting them recede in time with nothing more substantial than memory to hang on to them.

Last month I listened to the worldwide conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I found myself particularly excited by a few talks, one referencing the Olympic performances of some members of the Church. I've never been to the Olympics, but in hearing about the intense moments of physical competition, I couldn't help reflecting on my marathons. I knew then that it meant something to me to write about them. Sometimes I wonder, Why do I run at all? In the darkness of January, I thought it would kill me. But in a marathon, life is reduced to the essence. You sense what is real. There is rock and sky and shade. You are on a knife's edge between what is possible and what is beyond you. You are alone but not alone. In those moments, I have felt carried, watched over. I have been sustained from breath to breath.

And I don't want to forget about that. So let the blog go on.

 

This Is Not the End (I Hope)

So, maybe it’s bled through into the writing: I’ve been pretty sad this year. (One comment on my entry “Why Am I Here (in Luxembourg)?” offers “a reward of $20 for anyone who can find a more blue blog of travel to Europe that doesn't involve jail time or a hospital visit.”) It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and if I started listed reasons for gratitude, I could fill up a “gratitude journal” in a single long entry. Then I might look at my list and wonder, with all that, how could things not be all right? But most of my questions lead back to the same answer. The problem is me. I haven’t figured out yet how to fix that.

I started the marathon season with a run in Myrtle Beach, and that evening I drove through a mountain pass into a sudden snowstorm, where I contemplated the likelihood of careening off the road. While I was thinking about my own death, death came for someone in my family.

At my next marathon, I enjoyed a thrilling race, buoyed up by the Wellesley Scream. I crossed the finish line, got my medal, boarded a train out of the city. I still can’t watch news footage of what happened at the finish line while I was on that train.

And then I retired from running for two and a half weeks to sit in St. Louis and ponder what it is all for (see “Interlude, or, Thoughts from Code Name: Prison”). I can still taste the relief I felt when I left the treatment center, bought a six pack of Diet Dr. Pepper, checked into a hotel, and ran 10 miles on the hotel treadmill. My world seemed restored to the simple and the clean.

Four weeks later I ran my third marathon of the year, in Luxembourg, and by then I was sad again, with my illusions of control smashed by a postmarathon club sandwich in the hotel bar.

What is it all for?

I stopped writing. I stopped taking pictures. I didn’t stop running.

In September I traveled to the Hamptons to run my second Hamptons Marathon. This time the T-shirt was much better than last year’s. Woohoo! And I got second place in my division, a result I found out after I’d returned home. Guess what? The marathon committee mailed me a little plaque to commemorate the second-place finish. I didn’t bother to check again how many women in my age group finished that marathon. I’ll just let the plaque speak for itself!

Earlier this month, my friend boosted my morale enough for me to complete the Richmond Marathon: she picked me up at 5 a.m. to drive me to Richmond, then cheered me on at mile 15. I skipped out of Richmond last year, when I woke up in the November night and couldn’t face the prospect of the lonely, dark drive to the marathon start. This year, although I ran the marathon alone, I didn’t get there that way.

In my office at work, I have three Post-It notes stuck to the wall next to my chair: “Boston,” one reads. “Hamptons,” says another. And finally, “Richmond.” Reasons to keep going.

Still, there’s the question—what is it all for?

When I started running, I loved it. It made me feel good, physically, mentally, spiritually. It gave me new confidence. It made me braver. It opened up the world. And then, for a long time, running was a guaranteed fixer, a medicine that never failed. Running was always transformative. It brought peace and rational thought, two things I couldn’t seem to hold onto without it.

But there’s this cycle: push, push, push, and it feels good. So push more, more, more, and it doesn’t feel good anymore. Push again, again, again, and maybe it will get better. Fight, fight, fight, and go nowhere. Smash. Chaos. Reset. Start over. Repeat.

It hurts.

I’ve been through this storyline before. So the other day I was remembering my thirteenth marathon, back in 2009. I felt awful. I felt heavy. I felt slow. I finished the race, but during my next run, I got a shooting pain in my ankle. I couldn’t run consistently for the next several months. I felt so defeated. That year, I faced some of the lowest moments of my life. And looking back, I wish I could reassure myself on that marathon day, “This is not the end. There may be some bad times ahead, but you are going to run strong again. You are going to run more marathons, you are going to travel, you are going to have fun again.”

This month, when I ordered new running shoes, I decided on orange ones. For zest.

I don’t know … I don’t have the surety of hindsight here and now. But what I can hope is, “This is not the end.”

The plan is for South Carolina in December.

Some smiles after Richmond, thanks to my super-Starr friend

Walk, Don't Run

I’ve already written—too much, maybe—about the dreary Sunday following my Saturday night run in Luxembourg, but here’s the part where it’s time to stop running … and walk.

Picture a June evening in Europe: a rain-washed city under a clearing sky, the sun shooting out gold from low on the horizon, the air fresh and cool but no longer sharp. A dark afternoon giving way to a promise. There is beauty in the world. There is hope.

We had abandoned a tour of Luxembourg City under a downpour, but the brightening aspect beckoned our return to the heart of the Old Town. Here we discovered the Place Clairefontaine, noted for its charm, and the Chemin de la Corniche, the long path overlooking the Alzette River ravine and the part of the city known as Grund. We rambled and marveled and took pictures and talked. We stared down at terraced gardens and over at skyscrapers looming at the city’s edge. We got acquainted with the Old Town at our own pace, unhurried, without a guide.

Earlier, I had looked forward to the two-hour tour with the guide from the tourist office. I’m not one to bash guided tours; I’ve been on too many good ones to discount them. But sometimes I feel like I’m being rushed or, worse, like I’m being told what to appreciate and enjoy. It can be a passionless experience, with no spontaneity and no personal connection to the locale.

On our walk along the Chemin, I didn’t always know what I was looking at—with no guide to point out all the sights considered by the general consensus to be significant—but I don’t know how long I might have retained any information from the tour, anyway. The walk I will always remember.

Place Clairfontaine



Along the Chemin; high rises on the Kirchberg Plateau (site of the hotel and the marathon start and finish) are visible in the distance







Looking down into Grund

The rock wall along the left is part of the Bock casemates, a maze of tunnels begun in the 17th century for defense

Gardens along the Alzette River

Looking toward Kirchberg again

Bridge over the ravine

In the village of Vianden, too, where we went to see a castle, we lingered and savored. Many times I’ve passed through villages that looked intriguing, like a storybook. The first time I went to Europe, in high school, and then again on study abroad in college, I caught glimpses of little towns as I traveled by bus to some prearranged location. On the one-day version of Norway in a Nutshell, I saw a white church spire rising in the distance as the train I rode careened down into a valley, and then we were hustling from the train onto the ferry to view a fjord from another moving conveyance.

When we arrived in Vianden, I thought we might see the castle and then go on to one more village. But Vianden was so fun, with its beautiful flowerboxes and tree-covered hillside and a river running through it, and then we rode a chairlift up to the top of the hill and took a forest path down to the castle … and we decided to give ourselves over to the joy of the day. Vianden resembled a storybook village, and we got to stay and read the first page.

Welcome to Vianden

The castle looms over the village

 

We rode the chairlift to the lodge visible on the hillside

From the lodge, we hiked down toward the castle ...

... through the forest

From the castle we could look back up at the lodge



Leaving the castle ...



.... we took a windy cobblestone street into the village

Could we stay at the Hotel Victor Hugo?

 

Signs show our route back; flowers ensure a sweet memory of Vianden



Why Am I Here (in Luxembourg)?

Friday afternoon, June 7, I clambered down off a bus in the Kirchberg business district of Luxembourg City and began walking. The sun shone surprisingly hot, and I wore the backpack I had stuffed and then wrestled to zip. My mother walked next to me with her big red duffel. We might both have preferred tossing our luggage to the concrete and kicking it rather than carrying it, after our journey from Virginia that had started the day before. Worse than our cramped muscles, though, was our present situation, since we seemed to be sort of, well, lost.

While some part of my remaining intellect considered what to do next, a louder part of my brain wondered how I had gotten myself to this point in the first place. I didn’t question so much why I hadn’t managed the bus ride better, why I hadn’t asked the driver for help in deciding where to get off—but why had I dragged us here at all? Why get on an 8-plus-hour flight to Europe and face a layover and unfamiliar public transportation, foreign languages, maps, guidebooks, and the certain disturbance of my safe, comfortable routine? Was this all for a stupid marathon? They have those in the United States, you know.

I wanted to go home.

My mother had maintained a better connection to reality. We needed to find our hotel. Since I couldn’t see any of the street names or landmarks I’d been looking for, I decided we should get back on the bus. We did, and eventually we made it to the right stop. We navigated around a construction site (being chased, it seemed, by a crane) and spotted the sign for the Sofitel, our destination. When we arrived hot and breathless in the lobby, a young woman at the front desk checked us in graciously and asked, “Do you know we have a marathon this weekend?”

“That’s why I’m here!” I exclaimed. She gave me a few maps and some tips about the bus (there was an easier way to return to the bus stop than by dodging the crane), and I thanked her and headed for the elevator. But still, I really wanted to go home.

The next morning, marathon day, as I waited for the evening race to approach, I remained doubtful about my latest adventure. It all seemed like so much work. True, the hotel was interesting; sure, we’d found a gigantic, Super-Walmart-esque shopping center easily accessible by bus to supply us with essentials; still, I kept thinking I would have been fine at home, with my familiar Chantal (car) to drive me around familiar streets.

Cool refuge in the Sofitel hotel atrium

Inside the hotel atrium Friday night

Auchan shopping center

Inside the shopping center entrance

And then I finally ventured into downtown Luxembourg, the Old Town.

I went on my own to buy Luxembourg Cards, which would cover our transportation costs and admission fees to a long list of attractions. I stepped off the bus at the Royal Quai stop and walked only about half a block before excitement had me diving into my purse for my camera. I took one photo and didn’t want to stop. Every view around me seemed worthy of a picture. I moved along with a leisurely crowd through narrow streets, and I began to enjoy the sounds of French conversation around me. I spotted a sign for Quick, a French fast-food chain I remembered from study abroad in college. The street opened onto a square lined by cafes, with chairs set out under colorful awnings. People relaxed in the shade and enjoyed their lunches unhurriedly.

My first photo in downtown Luxembourg: Subway and Pepsi Max look more picturesque in Europe!

I needed shade, too. My eyes strained against the brightness. I noticed a shop selling clothing and sunglasses and ducked inside. At the sunglasses display, I tried on a few pairs before choosing one with big lenses. I took them to the checkout and was very proud of myself for conducting the entire transaction in French. Although I don’t think I said anything more than “bonjour” and “merci.”

Leaving the shop, I threaded between buildings into another square filled with flowers for sale. Here I found the tourist office and purchased the Luxembourg Cards. On my way back toward the bus stop, I noticed a vendor selling an interesting-looking snack, so I approached his cart to investigate. It was candied almonds. No, nothing too exotic, but I might have been lured over by hunger. Or maybe by the vendor’s friendly demeanor. He asked if I would be running the marathon that night, and we chatted about the race. I found out the course would bring me back through this square. The vendor would be there still: “Until 1 a.m.,” he told me. He hoped the heat would let up a little, for the runners’ sake and for his.

Back at the bus stop

Excitement carried me through the rest of the day. I spent the difficult final hours before the race hanging out in the runners' “Chillout Lounge” and reading an issue of Washingtonian magazine, listening to a nearby trio of runners discuss the marathon versus the half marathon (the two women were running the half, “so we’re only half crazy,” they said).

Inside the expo center at the marathon start/finish

The race began under the threat of rain, but the evening turned fine, and the city sparkled with a festival atmosphere. We ran from the business district into the Old Town, where spectators cheered and musicians played. I have run other races with live bands along the course, but I have never before passed a line of people playing alpine horns, which are so large that the musicians have to stand up behind them and rest the horn part on the ground several feet from the mouthpiece. I noticed other instruments unfamiliar to me, with tones like xylophones and bells. All around me were beautiful old buildings, and sometimes the course passed over cobblestones. In my ears and in my head were French words. The language I studied in college began to sound familiar again, so that my mouth felt ready to shift its default position and exclaim, “Oh, c’est beau!” There are marathons in the United States, I reflected, but they are not quite like this.

I kept seeing the clock on this tower from different points throughout the course--this is what I was racing!

The scenery was dramatic, and so was the elevation change, as we ran at the level of this bridge and along the floor of the ravine below.

There's so much lush greenery, and at dusk the lights twinkle through it.

Luxembourg wasn’t on my schedule of places to visit before I discovered the marathon listing last fall. Even once I decided to go there, I had to look it up on Google to find out exactly where it was, and still during my trip, I kept imagining that Luxembourg has a sea coast (it doesn’t). It took a long time to get there and a long time to get back home, and so much about the days I spent there wasn’t very convenient. But I don’t ask myself anymore why I went.

So what was all the trouble for? Well, come on—it was Luxembourg!

This street is not in my neighborhood at home

Luxembourg and Me (and Me and Me and Me)

Just over two weeks have passed since I ran the Luxembourg Night Marathon on June 8, and I’ve been thinking it’s time to write about it—and wondering why I’m hesitant. It isn’t for lack of stories to tell or impressions to record. Reflecting on my brief but intense experience in Europe this June, I promised myself I’d put it all down, from the cowbells in the Zurich airport to the chunk of camembert on my lunch tray during the flight from Frankfort. I promised myself I’d write it. I have to write, you see, when I can’t think what else to do, when it hurts and I don’t know how to fix it. Luxembourg was so beautiful and in some ways such a fantasy, but overall it hurts.

Notwithstanding my last entry, I don’t want to make this into an eating disorder blog. Most of the time I’d tell you I don’t have an eating disorder, anyway, and I never have, only I’ve done a decent impression of it once or twice. Still, I can’t deny that my negative feelings about food and weight and self-worth have dominated the past several weeks; they provided the theme on my journey through fairytale settings, as they often have in past marathon experiences. So I’ve been reluctant to write about Luxembourg because I couldn’t distill the smiles from the darkness. I wanted to write about the pain, but I couldn’t decide if I wanted to post it. I am not planning to turn this into an eating disorder blog. But I’ll tell a little of the true tale of Luxembourg, for my own sake, and it might be worth something. Honestly, my personal belief is that many serial marathoners are “disordered eaters.”

At some point while I was running through the streets of Luxembourg, I remembered the doctor at Prison (treatment) asking me, “Why do you underfuel so much?” Of course I replied, “I don’t underfuel.” I recalled this wistfully during my evening race, thinking how scary my situation had felt when she asked me that, and also knowing her words would be a comfort to me in the future, in the midst of my inevitable guilt over food.

I was right about the coming guilt. No surprise there. I’ve been through this routine before. I tell you, crossing a marathon finish line is like reaching the end of a long purification. You are temporarily so clean, pure, and pristine. I think that’s the high I keep seeking. For a little while, there is an end to self-doubt and questioning, to demands, to “Why aren’t you good enough?” and “What have you accomplished lately?” For a few minutes or hours, maybe the rest of the day, there’s a sense of peace and calm. When the physical discomfort mounts, as the body demands to be replenished, the pain can twist into virtue.

But for me, it never lasts. For almost every marathon, I can call up my list of postmarathon “sins.” Sometimes I can dismiss them as not so bad; sometimes they haunt me. I remember way back after my second marathon, reaching an emotional high on Saturday afternoon and then crashing by Sunday evening, throwing myself onto my couch in despair because I was such a disgusting pig. I remember feeling guilty after drinking chocolate milk at the finish line of a half-marathon, and then going to the grocery store, starving, but sensing those limits around me at every moment: Don’t overeat, don’t overeat!

I traveled a long way for this latest race, and Luxembourg in the evening was so picturesque. We started running at 7 pm. When I was tired in the twilight, the lights came on through the greenery. The gracious old buildings stood calm and steady in their spotlights. I knew I was seeing things I would have missed if not for the marathon. I knew in my exhaustion that there was no better place to be this Saturday night than running around Luxembourg on a 26.2-mile (42.2-kilometer) course.

But the next day, Sunday, dawned bleak with heavy clouds. I had slept restlessly, and I couldn’t stay in bed long. The pain had morphed into my great nemesis: brain-sucking hunger. I waited until I could hope the shopping center down the road might be open, and then I walked in a light sprinkle through nearly empty streets. I could tell by the lonely look of the place as I approached that the shopping center would offer me no comfort. Sure enough, the front entrance was barred. I caught a bus back to the hotel, restless and uncertain.

The whole day was filtered through the pain of hunger and hopelessness. Hopelessness because it kept raining and I was cold and I couldn’t imagine finding sightseeing appealing—and because I didn’t have the calorie allowance to make myself feel better without making myself feel worse. My mother and I ate lunch at McDonald's. I ordered a wrap and a salad, and we made the mistake of sitting outside under the awning, even though I knew the ice-cold diet soda would push me over the edge into outright irritability. I went to the restroom and stood in front of the warm air from the hand dryer until my mother came to find me. She wasn’t going to sit and wait for me all day. Neither were the other women in the bathroom.

We started a walking tour with a group from the tourist office, but the sprinkle became a downpour. The night before, I had held out all the way to the finish line, and beyond that, I had gotten myself back to the hotel, posed for pictures, and showered, all without collapsing or screaming or generally acting weird. But now I had had it; I was done. I couldn’t hold out any longer. We left the tour and rode the bus back to the hotel, and I told my mother, “I’m just going to eat. I have to eat something.”

We didn’t have many options. That is, we had the hotel’s gourmet restaurants and its bars. Two places I never go are gourmet restaurants and bars. But I was desperate. I asked for a recommendation at the front desk. “Where could I go for a sandwich?” They sent me to one of the bars. It was comfy and mellow on a rainy late afternoon. I ordered the only non-beef sandwich option: the club. It came dripping with mayonnaise and accompanied by fries.

Now I’ll stop this movie. I mean, you can imagine what happens from here without the gory details. I’ll pick up later on, maybe an hour or so, when I notice that the light pouring into the hotel atrium is brighter than before. I am panicking, I can’t just go back to the room into the double trap of physical and mental confinement. So I stare hopefully through the glass and I say to my mother, “What if we go back downtown? Maybe the weather is better now?”

And we do, and it is. We walk on the Chemin de la Corniche, the scenic promenade I have read about in every travel book I managed to find on Luxembourg, and we take our time admiring the view over the Ville Basse, the Lower City. We come to the medieval Bock casements. We admire the streets of the Old Town and the carvings on the Grand Ducal Palace. We experience one of the most beautiful June evenings we’ve seen in a long time. And physically, I feel better.

I remind myself that the next day starts a new week. As we head into the countryside on Monday to look for castles, I embrace a chance for repentance.

I’ll continue the Luxembourg narrative in another entry, because I want to do justice to the good parts (I’ll write a “good-parts” version!). But to close out the bad-parts saga, suffice it to say that repentance can be a long process, with lots of switchbacks. And I wonder sometimes why a club sandwich feels so awful, anyway, when there are so many uglier things in the world. My therapist advised me to save guilt for real sin. She has a point.

Life since Luxembourg … and before that, Prison, and before that, Boston, and before that, a loss … is slowly returning to equilibrium. I am (sigh) still me. But I am a me who ran a beautiful course in a stunning city, a me who did manage to see a castle in the European countryside. And I guess the cost was a club sandwich in the bar and a few really rough weeks afterward. Well, life always involves risk. At least, a life worth living does.

Back from the marathon, still innocent

That room service cart is not for me

In Old Town Sunday evening, after splurging at the bar

Monday, a fresh start