Warped!

I'm feeling a little warped from trying to adjust to the EIOP. However, I continue to have no prospects for retiring to an Italian villa.

After reading the culmination of the Everest adventure, in which most everyone died, I'm less psyched than I was last Sunday to begin another week of Extreme Running. The attractions of mountaineering and marathoning had struck me as similar. But Thursday and Friday, I cheered myself on to running by considering the relative ease of an endeavor that requires no oxygen mask and no protection against hundred-below-zero gales.

I am signed up to run the National Marathon in Washington, DC, next Saturday. It will be my fourth running of the race (I ran it in 2008, 2009, and 2011), but my first since it became part of the Rock 'n' Roll series. I will get to check out a new course and experience my first Rock 'n' Roll marathon. I've never run a marathon in the series before, but in many races I've passed volunteers playing music from the sidelines. It makes a difference! I remember in particular when a satisfyingly bitter Alanis Morissette song quickened my step along a waterfront trail in Hartford, where I matched a PR I have never approached again.

In comparison to an Everest summit push, a marathon is a short adventure: that's what I will keep telling myself. If I keep a steady heart and mind, a few short hours will carry me to my goal.

EIOP

The day of the Pope's retirement, February 28, came and went (see "Running through Pain"). I watched the news coverage as the final moments of the papacy ticked away. I ran that day in misery. I had thought to get a rest myself from what has become my routine. The whole media spectacle around the Pope's departure filled me with melancholy. Or jealousy, more accurately, as I yearned for a helicopter to snatch me away into a different life.

I am tired: yesterday I felt I didn't care if I ever made it to Boston, or Luxembourg either. Today I started reading about an expedition to Mt. Everest, and the tale stirred familiar longings. I felt again the lure of pushing against a perceived limit. I reflected on the way trivialities fall away and the moments crystallize into purity. I thought maybe I could forge ahead after all. But of course, it is Sunday and thus a no-running day. My dreams required no immediate action.

Still, I have a plan. I am implementing Emergency Interim Operating Procedures (EIOP). Circumstances compel me to suspend--temporarily, I insist--my weekly mileage goal. For now, I shift the focus to the day by day. I will do what I can. And I won't speculate too hard about the future.

No helicopter is coming to whisk me away. If I make it to Boston this time, I must do it through my own resources. In spite of this week's dire musings, I may get there. I do not want another letter from the BAA informing me that I failed to complete the Boston Marathon! Oh, well, at the very least, I have an awesome T-shirt from Myrtle Beach.

Running through Pain

Yes, I ran in Myrtle Beach. I have the medal and the postrace photo to prove it to myself. But it feels like a dream. The sunshine that morning shone cheerfully. The volunteers shouted encouragement. I passed the now-familiar landmarks, the pretty-colored shops and hotels and fountains that make me smile. I ran tired. A sadness pressed on me. But my pace held steady. The sadness pressed and yet didn’t crush.

That morning was a gift. In the afternoon, the sun disappeared and the winds howled. I left Myrtle Beach as a storm rushed up. The bright image of race day dissolved into grayness. I thought I could drive away from the storm, but that night I drove into another. I came around a bend in the mountains and got swallowed up in a sudden flurry of white flakes. I could barely see the road. The swirl of flakes made me dizzy. I got off the freeway and tried to find a place to stay. At one of the hotels that turned me away, I almost snatched a cookie from the lobby. But I guess I kept my head enough to restrain myself.

So what was I doing in a mountain pass on the night after the Myrtle Beach Marathon, anyway? A funny thing happened on my way home from South Carolina—I traveled by way of St. Louis. I had hoped for a rest there. I feel like the Pope, you see. It’s like he says: I don’t have the capacity to go on like this. Whenever I would hear talk of the Pope’s retirement, I would think of my own period of rest, and the idea brought a sense of relief.

But if I was dreaming last weekend, it wasn’t of the marathon, which was real enough; it was of the resting period that never came. My long journey by car is now over. I have left South Carolina and St. Louis, too. I have not crashed on any mountain highways. Saturday night, a friend of mine passed in what I hope was a quieter way. I cannot believe she is gone from this earth.

This year, the Myrtle Beach marathon goodie bag included a blanket with the word “Marathon” printed in large, black letters. I have spent a good part of the past two days curled up in it. I have hung my medal where I can see it. I am getting caught up on laundry. These things—blankets, medals, dirty clothes—they are concrete. They are real.

Next marathon, three weeks from tomorrow.

Falling into the Black Hole of January

It is Dark times. It is the last day of that month when all the candles from Christmas fail to push back the gloom. It is a season that seems lost in perpetual twilight.

Last year, I fell into the black hole that is January--I remember well. I began the month excited to take my gift cards and Christmas money on a trip to the outlet mall. I even scheduled a day of vacation from work. First on my shopping list: new running gear. Somehow, when the appointed day arrived, I couldn't imagine walking into a sporting goods store without feeling sick to my stomach. I didn't go.

I kept running down in that hole, I kept "training" all month long because I had to. Running is my therapy, my medicine, my drug of choice, and I suppose it's not even ironic when it becomes my greatest torture also.

Now here has come another January, and my reflections on the past year have turned to brooding. I keep running, but my steps are a candle against the Night. I can't push it back forever. So I contemplate my options. I think of taking time out. Sometimes, the opportunity to contemplate ends without resolution, as forces stronger than my will whittle away at my choices.

I am dreaming of Myrtle Beach. I looked through some old pictures a while ago, thinking wistfully, "Those were good times." As if such moments could not be had again. And yet Myrtle Beach is still there, my now-traditional season opener is still on the calendar. After that there's the National Marathon, there's Boston and then on to Luxembourg. On my shopping list now, a new pair of shoes. Probably, this time, not pink.

So ... tomorrow is February.

Hope for Light

These Are Why (I Shun Shorts)

Scrolling back through my post on the demise of my Under Armour running pants (see "The True Story of My Breakup with Under Armour"), I can’t believe how dramatic I made it all seem. But then, looking at the recent pictures of me in my new (well, still new to me) running SHORTS, I remember why I shunned them for years. And this is why. Or rather, these are why! See the legs poking out? They happen to be similar to some other legs in my family. We put the blame on an ancestor a few generations back. Of course, we don’t have a picture of this ancestor’s legs, only her face. (She never confronted the dilemma of buying running shorts!) In her defense, she can blame the bad picture on the photography of the era, but we will continue to blame her for all the physical traits we don’t like. It makes a convenient circle.

These knees are courtesy of The Ugly Lady

Sigh … if you ever flip through a running magazine (I make it a point not to), you’ll notice how everyone looks beautiful and svelte. Just like the models in fashion magazines, only maybe a little more obviously muscular and dressed in sportswear. You may deceive yourself into thinking (especially as it’s the time for New Year’s resolutions) that if you exercise regularly, let alone run a marathon, you will look like that, too. FYI: these legs here just ran a marathon. So don’t get your hopes up!

At Its Best

At its best, a marathon is a transcendent experience.

It almost always leaves me thinking, “Again, again!” Just like when I was a little kid coming off a favorite carnival ride. Only a marathon is even better.

I could list a number of reasons I find the marathon experience compelling, but I suspect they all have to do with being taken out of myself—removed from my normal routine and surroundings, freed temporarily from many of my chronic concerns, liberated to an extent by the extreme nature of the task at hand.

It is in this place away from myself that I come to myself, that I see things for a moment the way they really are.

At its best, a marathon is a spiritual experience. I am completely alone, because no one else can finish the race for me, and yet I am not alone. I feel connections that elude me under more routine circumstances. The world around me seems different. The very air is changed.

In a marathon, I am part of a whole group of runners. I have conversations with complete strangers about running shoes and the quantity of port-a-potties at the start line for Boston. In Kiawah, I watched a prerace yoga-style warm up. I didn’t join in, because I had to photograph it instead. It was beautiful.

I am a few days out from Kiawah, and I am thinking, “Again, again!”

Just To Finish

My sore leg and I both made it across the finish line at the Kiawah Island Marathon. I blamed my leg pain for making me go slower--but without the usual pressure to keep up the pace, I stayed relaxed and enjoyed the run. So maybe this sore leg isn't such a drag after all.

And when my leg no longer needs to be dragged around, I'm gonna feel like I'm flying!