Running the World: June 2013

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.