Looking Forward

I am excited to add a new marathon to my calendar, the Kiawah Island Marathon in South Carolina on December 8.

Not so far away, I have the Hamptons Marathon coming at the end of September, and it is the season to look ahead to next year. I hope to register for the 2013 Boston Marathon, and more than that, I hope to run it! I registered for the 2009 Boston Marathon but had to miss it because of a stress fracture. This time I don't want a certificate from the Boston Athletic Association informing me that I did not finish the race!

But for now, it looks as though I will be taking a brief time out. Sometimes circumstances invite a period of reassessment. I generally prefer to assess things on the treadmill or on the pavement. When that doesn't fix everything, I've got a problem. It's time to allow in some outside perspective.

Several years ago, in a similar situation, I found the phrase "I'll Keep Running" in a magazine ad, and I cut it out and pasted it onto the notebook I was using daily. It was more a dream than a certainty, but it came true: I had many races in my future, along beautiful courses in interesting locations, moments of feeling like I was flying, finish times I hadn't believed were possible for me. So I will look forward again and dream of races to come—some already scheduled and some not yet thought of. I can't always see what's ahead on the course. I'll take a few more steps and watch as the view opens up.

Waiting ...

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was too late to sign up for the National Marathon scheduled for March 17. How am I going to get through this month without a marathon, when I'm supposed to be in the midst of my 2nd annual spring marathon blitz? Hmm, I don't know. I'm thinking about a race in North Carolina on March 24, but it's, uh, a bit hilly. So I don't know if I want to commit to that.

In the meantime, I was spurred on to sign up for a May marathon in Brookings, South Dakota, which will be a new destination for me, and for the Charlottesville Marathon in April. I've run the Charlottesville race a couple of times before, but the course was different the second time, and I hear it's changed again for this year. They say it's flatter. So maybe I could manage the North Carolina self-torture event a couple of weeks before that?

Finishing a marathon gives me such a high, it is hard to wait to experience that again. I'm trying to remember the way I felt the Sunday after the Myrtle Beach race, when I was packing my bag at the hotel and listening to the interview on a local TV show and thinking, "A triathlon, sure, why not?" I felt strong and happy, ready to dive into a new challenge. I'm hoping at least my memory of that energy can last me until April 7!

Where in the World (Will the Pink Shoes Go in 2012)?

When I was growing up, my mom had a classroom-worthy globe of the world. I would hold it with my nose positioned a few inches above the eastern hemisphere and spin it slowly, tasting the names of cities and rivers, mountain ranges and islands: Vladivostok, Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Christmas Island … What was it like to live in those places, I wondered. What did people there do during an average day? What did they see out their windows? I would stare into the darkness beyond my own window and imagine that a light in the distance was the beacon in a lighthouse on a foreign shore.

In middle school I became obsessed with visiting Scandinavia, the birthplace of the great-grandparents who were the last of my ancestors to come to America. I decorated my room with pictures of Europe. I saved money in a piggy bank manufactured to look like a giant yellow crayon. I stood it on one end, covered it in brown paper with “battlements” cut into the top, and called it the Tower.

In high school I visited London and Paris with a school group headed by my French teacher. I remember the beautiful fields of rural England, with splashes of purple heather and red poppies. I remember the soft colored lights of the tour boats gliding along the Seine. I also remember feeling lost in every airport, always doing the wrong thing and going the wrong way, annoying my travel companions and, worse, the airport and customs officials. I can still smell the flooded basement of our hotel in London, where we ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant while the carpet made squishing sounds under the waiters’ shoes. I can’t picture the setting of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, since everyone in the swarming museum crowds wants their moment in front of her, just as I did, and some are more willing to fight for it. In France I couldn’t understand anyone, in spite of my year of classroom French. Honestly, I couldn’t understand a lot of people in England, either. By the end of the trip I was exhausted. On my last day in Paris, I managed to buy a child-size T-shirt from a street vendor without using any English. It was a gift for my younger cousin, and it used up the last of my money. It was the highlight of my trip. Still, I went home feeling like I may not make it as a world traveler after all.

In college I went back to France on a study abroad program with a group from the university. I understood the language a little better. I felt confident enough navigating around Paris to go out on my own. I have more good memories from that experience, more beautiful images stored away. But still, the trip had a checklist aspect. Guides showed us beautiful sights. We visited old churches, Roman ruins, museums stuffed with famous art. I stood on a café balcony overlooking the Mediterranean and thought, “Yeah, this is where those characters from that book would eat lunch.” I might have been an intruder in the scene. I was following someone else’s itinerary to take in the views that others had deemed noteworthy. And there’s nothing wrong with that; I don’t know a better way to get started. It’s just that standing on that balcony in Eze on the French Riviera was sort of an out-of-body experience, like I was watching a movie of a place instead of being there personally.

I reflected on all this one morning while I was running, and I relived the moment, too, when I found myself in a beautiful place without having read about it first, when I discovered myself in a breathtaking tableau quite by accident, and it was personal, it was my moment. It happened somewhere between Salem and Marblehead in Massachusetts, along the course of the Wicked Half-Marathon. I had already marveled at the coastline and the intense blue of the ocean, which kept meeting me unexpectedly when I’d turn down a new street. But it was about halfway through the race course that I got my most spectacular view of the sea, as buildings gave way to a vista of open water sparkling in the sunlight. I could barely breathe, and it wasn’t exhaustion that clutched my chest. It was one of the most purely joyful experiences of my life.

I began to feel that every trip changed me in some way. Every time I came home from somewhere, Dallas or Portsmouth or Dublin, I was different. I was richer. My soul had been expanded. Every experience became part of my identity.

I write this at the beginning of January; it is cold outside, and although the clock indicates it is still afternoon, I can tell that the light has begun to fade. Someone asked me today what I wanted for 2012. It’s the time of year when everyone talks like that. Well, this year I am going to get my car its 30,000-mile maintenance. I am going to buy a new pair of running pants. I am going to Myrtle Beach. I am going to Stockholm, Sweden.

I don’t know yet where else.

I don’t know. It is that time of year when it helps to start filling in the running calendar. If I want to travel somewhere within the United States between February and June, or even after June, it would help to start planning. Sometimes it is easier to get stuck in reminiscing. Oh, such great trips I’ve had. Maybe the best is behind me. Maybe it will never be that good again. Because for all the planning that goes into travel (I’m not a spontaneous traveler), there are some things you can’t plan or put on a checklist. Those magical moments happen when conditions are right, but there are no guarantees. That’s part of the magic.

When I was a kid spinning that globe, part of the intrigue was in not knowing. The names that sounded so exotic represented mysteries I couldn’t solve. Sometimes now I see those names in other contexts. CNN has a reporter there chronicling violence or starvation or some other tragedy. What is it like to live there? What is it like to live in Norway, the first Scandinavian country I managed to visit? Well, I still don’t know. The answers aren’t there on the surface, spelled out on the signs of the train station.

It’s an adventure. I can plan, I can choose based on timing and cost and other factors where to go this year. But I don’t know what will happen. I can't skip to the end of the book and read the last page. The future is there just out of reach, unwritten, uncertain, ready to unfold. It's scary and exciting and scary and ... 

And so begins the journey.

Note the awesome T-shirt contributed by Santa