A Sweet, Searing Pain

Countdown time for the Hamptons Marathon: it is now less than two weeks away. To get in the mood, I’ve been watching the “Barefoot Contessa,” Ina Garten, on the Food Network, as she visits farms, markets, and beaches around East Hampton (that’s where I’m headed!). She searches for fresh cheese or produce, or in the beach episode, she joins Elmo on a play date for a cooking-with-children theme, and she wears a windbreaker while she unpacks frozen fruit smoothies she whipped up for the Muppet. Fortunately, Muppets never get cold. All that fur, you know.

So it’s the Hamptons, but I can’t really see anything. I’m not going to remember that shop where Ina’s husband, Jeffrey, stopped to pick up wine and bread, or the name of the farm where they make cheese. And anyway, perhaps there’s not much in common between a cooking show and a marathon, in spite of the location. And then again, perhaps there’s a reason they are playing on the same channel in my mind.

It’s not just Ina—there’s also Giada, dicing up green apples and goat cheese and tossing around cinnamon and dried cranberries, and Paula and Ree and plenty of others with their skillets and food processors and zucchini and cumin. It’s words (“crostini,” “tartelette,” “pancetta”—never mind that I wouldn’t eat the meat … or touch it); it’s colors (green, red, purple, orange, green, did I mention lush, lush green?); it’s impressions (beauty, life, sun, friends, art, playing and then resting, feeling happy-tired). It’s memories. One of my grandmas used to serve me apple slices topped with cheddar cheese as a snack. I haven’t had that combination since I was a child. But suddenly I could taste it, and I knew for a moment it was the only food in the world I wanted. I could see her kitchen again, and the family room that opened right off it, where I’d sit in the rocker with the footstool and watch TV.

It’s a sweet, searing pain: a fleeting image, a moment of beauty you can’t capture or hold onto. You can’t close your fist around it and press it against your heart for later.

Last year, when the pumpkins came out for Halloween and the fall harvest spilled into grocery stores and roadside markets and the high school fundraiser down the street, I whirled into my usual tizzy of excitement, wanting … wanting … I don’t know, to rush out and purchase school supplies (ah, how I loved the fresh clean notebooks in the old days). Acting purely on my whims, I could have bought up a carload of pumpkins and various fall-themed decorations, not to mention jars of preserves with fetching labels, so quaint and so, frankly, un-useful to me. My practical side reigned. “Buy a pumpkin?” I scoffed at myself. “For what?”

“Well,” I might have answered myself, staring at the ground and poking a toe at the pavement, “I could carve a jack-o-lantern.”

 “Hah!” Guffaw.

“Well …”

“Come on.”

“Well, I could.” Only I wouldn’t. And I knew it. I sighed, but I left the parking lot at the pumpkin patch with my wallet unopened. Ultimately, I felt relieved at the ability of my common sense to adhere to the budget, but I was filled too with something like … like a sweet, searing pain.

Finally I realized I couldn’t “have” all the beauties and wonders of fall around me, but I could photograph them. That helped. I didn’t buy up produce that wasted away while I contemplated what to do with it. Still, maybe because I was paying more attention to the world around me, I kept seeing beautiful things that pricked at me even as I enjoyed them. They were ephemeral. I couldn’t bottle them up or take them home. I wanted to fill myself up with them, but I knew their moment would pass and leave me empty again.

Passing moments: that’s all a marathon is. I remember the glimmer of water during the Richmond Marathon. Running through a cheering crowd in Dublin and seeing the one spectator pointing out the mile marker in the midst of the chaos. Catching my breath—from exertion and awe—as I crested a hill and burst into a field lit with the rising sun outside Charlottesville. Passing a boy wearing a giant red claw at a water station in the Haunted Hustle Marathon in Wisconsin. Hearing the rhythm of my feet on the slats of a wooden bridge in a forest … somewhere. Huddling inside a port-a-potty while the wind howled outside, summoning me back to the course in Stockholm, Sweden.

You run for a long time in a marathon, but it’s just a series of moments. Some of them are brutal. Some of them make me shudder to relive them. Some are amazing. All seem to be elevated by the sense of an epic undertaking. To succeed in that undertaking brings a thrill that can’t be strung onto a ribbon or emblazoned on a T-shirt. You can’t touch it or hold it. Time passes, carrying your moment away. Leaving perhaps a sweet, searing pain.

Here it is autumn again, and the pumpkins are appearing. The light is shifting, taking on its golden tinge that strikes me as poignant, because winter is coming. I look forward to the joys of sweaters and candles, chilly mornings, maybe even a jack-o-lantern this year. Beautiful moments to store up in my memory against the darker season that follows.

Because all those moments we remember aren’t really gone—they’ve become part of us. When I think about past marathons and past trips, the moments that stay with me always seem inevitable, as if I can’t imagine not having been to Norway or Dublin, I can’t imagine the Stockholm Marathon of 2012 working out any other way (than bitterly cold and grueling and triumphant).

Sometimes I wish I could freeze time, or I wish I could string all my good memories onto ribbons and hang them with my marathon medals; I wish in looking at pictures I could recreate rather than merely remember, and knowing that I can’t—that I can never again sit in my grandma’s family room eating apple slices with cheese while she dances around in the kitchen, that I am never again going to stand on a stool at my other grandma’s kitchen sink to help her wash dishes while her bread dough rises—it lends sweetness, I think, as well as pain.

If I could have the past with me, could I look to the future? Last year’s autumn is gone, and this one is just arriving. Moments have floated away, and new ones have yet to be lived. I am craving that marathon feeling. It’s time to do more than remember what it’s like to cross the finish line. It is time to go out and cross one again.

Whatever happens on September 29th, I expect I’ll find myself watching the “Barefoot Contessa” again in the future, and it may occur to me that once upon a time I had never been to the Hamptons. What?! I had never been to the Hamptons? (Just as I had never been to Iceland or the Netherlands, way back when.) How odd. How almost unimaginable. I may not recognize any of the places Ina goes, and if I want to experience her food, I don’t think I will find it among the postrace refreshments. But I do think her art gives me other moments to look forward to … and future moments, perhaps, of sweet, searing pain.

Some charmers to admire, if not to possess:

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.

Is It OK To Be a Klutz?

Have you heard? It’s time for the Olympics! I told myself I would not get involved this year. If I watch, I’ll get interested in people. I’ll get invested emotionally in events that permit very few winners. Inevitably, I’ll see heartbreak. I don’t need that right now.

And yet, I found myself staring at cyclists pedaling up a winding road in the rain. I can’t seem to look away. If I’m around a TV when coverage of the men’s or women’s marathon is on, it will be hopeless. I’ll be hooked for sure.

I look at the athletes, and I wonder about them, about their lives. What brought them to this moment. What their expectations are. What their routines are like. Gazing at a close-up shot of a female swimmer who had medaled before, I marveled that she looked like … well, an ordinary person.

There was a shot of her parents, and they looked like ordinary people, too.

So I keep wondering. Were there any klutzes among those athletes who paraded into the stadium in London on Friday night? Unfortunately, I don’t think there are accurate records about how many klutzes have won Olympic medals. I suspect some have, but I can’t know for sure. What I do know is that a different kind of medal, a marathon finisher’s medal, has been draped around the neck of a klutz. Yeah, me. And it’s not televised or played up in the media or widely noticed in any way, but that’s my Olympic moment. It’s something that as a teenager suffering through my mandatory PE classes, I never hoped to experience.

I guess I’m thinking about this now not only because of the Olympics, but also because of recent news coverage of the proposed ban on large sodas in New York City, another episode in the seemingly endless saga of America’s “obesity epidemic.” Pardon the pun here: coverage of this issue disturbs me on a gut level. Discussions of weight always seem to favor, either overtly or indirectly, approaches that alarm me. I dislike the heavy-handedness of the soda ban, apart from any arguments about its effects, but last week when I watched an interview with some public figure opposing the ban, I recoiled from his message, too. The place to make a difference, he argued, isn’t in the “mom and pop” shops selling drinks, but in the schools. Mandatory gym classes for all grades! If only the New York budget would allow.

Thank goodness for the limits of the budget in this case, I think at his image on the screen. I don’t even know why he scares me so much. I don’t live in New York. He’s not my gym teacher. He’s not going to toss me a pair of short shorts and throw me into a violent game of dodge ball.

He isn’t … right? Bad memories die hard. I was running on a treadmill as I watched him; I was feeling good, a welcome blessing after a few difficult weeks in mid-June and early July. I’m a pretty active person these days; I do things I never used to think I could. I go into sporting goods stores with no self-consciousness or timidity. Still, the thought of gym class makes me want to curl up in a ball in the corner. (I seem to be full of puns today.)

It’s not that I spent the first 25 or so years of life being sedentary. I have glowing memories of playing with my cousins on my grandparents’ sprawling property in rural Idaho. I loved riding my bike around a private loop, lost in daydreams. I loved going for walks in the field out back. Once a few of us kids used a baseball cap to scoop up dirt from the field and then twirled around with the cap held at arm’s length. It made an impressive dark cloud, from which we could emerge as superheroes. Wonder Woman I think, for me and my girl cousin.

Only, in spite of those fun early activities, I had a huge problem. I was a klutz, and even worse maybe, I knew I was a klutz. I couldn’t manage anything involving a ball. It didn’t take many ball games on the playground or in elementary school gym periods to realize I was the worst player I was ever likely to encounter. I developed a deep conviction of this, that I was hopelessly flawed, that for some reason I was doomed to look and feel stupid trying unsuccessfully to do what seemed easy and even fun for everyone else. Once the conviction took hold, it got reinforced easily. In high school, I was the only student in my PE class to receive a grade of C for the golf unit. Yeah, I am hopeless at golf. Just like dodge ball. And basketball. And softball. And volleyball. And on and on. One particular talent I did seem to have—well, I don’t know if you could call it a talent or more of a magnetism. Balls of all kinds seemed drawn to my head. If I’d been braver, I could have used this gift in soccer.

Looking back at the whole of my gym class experience, I have to admit that it wasn’t THAT BAD. I mean, everyone in all my gym classes always knew, as I did, that I was the worst player and nothing but complete klutziness could be expected of me. Still, I can’t remember anyone actually being unkind. For the most part, I went to school with good kids, and they didn’t make it a huge issue. The only person who was truly cruel to me then was me. I thought horrible things about myself, and I let them hold me back from getting involved in activities, from taking part and having fun. And now, as a “grown up,” a “runner,” a “marathoner,” I still fear the phrase “mandatory gym class.”

Again, I don’t know for sure, but I suspect there are others out there like me. I was lucky to finally discover running in a way that opened it up to me … from running two minutes and then walking a bit, to the huge accomplishment of running two miles consecutively, to participating in my first 5K. All I wanted going into the 5K was not to finish last. I came in solidly in the middle of the pack. But you know what? Whoever came in at the tail end, if they had a good time getting out and being active, they have nothing to regret.

I’m grateful now to have an active lifestyle, and I support good health and fitness. But I also know that gym class for me was a deterrent from an active future, not a boost toward that goal. I know when I get upset at the media and the topic of combating obesity (which sounds like maybe we should just beat our jiggles with a stick), I’m interpreting what I hear through my own experiences and perceptions. I may be coating all the messages with guilt and encouragement of self-hatred that isn’t really intended. Still, I wish some of the messages could come across a little differently, offering hope to other klutzes that fitness can be achieved even with limited hand-eye coordination. If there could be a little more positivity, a little more “you can do it” and a little less “why in the h*** would you drink that when you know it’s bad for you and eventually you will cost taxpayers money by making bad choices like ordering a Pepsi.”

Yes, a little encouragement instead of discouragement could go a long way in promoting healthy activity, I believe. Because I may still be hopeless at all kinds of ball games, but even a klutz like me can experience the joy of movement and the sweet victory of doing more than I thought I could do. When I watch the drama of an Olympic competition, when I witness the moments of gratification and disappointment that come with a medal ceremony, I do it knowing this important truth: sometimes they give out medals to klutzes, too. I don't have to cower in the corner or hang back on the sidelines--I can put on my looonnnggg shorts, lace up my shoes, and run.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

OK, you know I didn’t come up with the phrase “the agony and the ecstasy,” but ever since I first heard the title of Irvine Stone’s biographical novel of Michelangelo—let’s see, I must have been in middle school then, and I can still smell that intriguing aroma of old paper that permeated the first floor of the Preston city library—the words have resonated with me.

I am no artist. I am engaged in no masterpiece. But even ordinary mortals like me can know what it is to have a passion that drives you, a pursuit both painful and exquisite. As it says in the Book of Mormon, “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11). As Bono sings in a classic U2 song, “I can’t live with or without you.” Joy and pain are mixed up together. Rewards require sacrifice. Great rewards require great sacrifice.

I’d never run a whole mile when I first heard of Irving Stone. I had different pursuits then, before the miles took me over. Now running is a solace, a friend, a hard taskmaster that shapes my world above and beyond the role of a regular daily workout. Last month, in Sweden in June, I experienced the ecstasy: such an incredible high, coming off that terrible run in the worst conditions I’ve faced, and knowing that I finished in spite of all my doubts and fears. I felt, as I wrote at the time, that I could do anything.

And I’d been back from Sweden only a week when suddenly I couldn’t manage my normal routine. I have these “bad spells” now and then, periods of physical and mental rebellion—it’s hard to figure out sometimes where the physical aspect ends and the mental one begins. I knew my willpower was tired. But my body wasn’t working right, either, and that became more apparent as the days went on, as they turned into weeks when I fought hard to complete a fraction of my usual mileage. I avoided looking at my photos from Sweden. I felt swallowed up in a new reality. The smiling woman in Sweden became an image of myself I feared I could never live up to again.

She looks stronger than I am

Eventually, lab results offered some objective explanations for my sluggishness. I spent a night in the hospital with red “Be positive” flowing into my veins. I left the next morning with orders to take iron supplements and a dozen (or so it seemed!) other vitamins. I am not usually good at sticking to a vitamin regimen, but I went right to the store—well, OK, after going for a run—and I bought iron supplements at the prescribed dose, which turns out to be an impressive 361% of the recommended daily value for the general population. The supplements had better be potent, though, because I am pinning a lot of hopes on them.

Gradually, more gradually than I would like, I seem to be returning to “normal.” I just finished a week of running back at my usual level. It’s frustrating, as I surface out of this trough, to wonder what the next few weeks hold. I wanted to run three more marathons before the end of the year. So far, I am registered for only one more, the Hamptons Marathon at the end of September. I can only hope I’ll be feeling good at that point. But there is always uncertainty, and I have missed out on planned marathons before. There are stress fractures and freak snowstorms on the beach (see White Holiday Mixup). I think all I can do in the moments of agony is remind myself that there are two more words in the Irving Stone title. I intend to keep running for a long, long time, and the moments of ecstasy will come around again.

What It Is All For ...

My reward for surviving the Stockholm Marathon was a gift of beauty. Take a look at the pictures below, from our cruise through the archipelago toward Finland, and none of my harrowing marathon stories could convince you it wasn’t worth it.

On the cruise

Our boat, the Cinderella II

At Sandhamn, the last stop before Finland

Ready for some tennis?

I want to go to summer camp here (as long as I have lots of warm clothes with me).

The islands in the archipelago provide good settings for summer homes.

I bought lunch at this little grocery store.

And Just as I Was Leaving, the Sun Came Out

Rain splattered the windows of the bus as it drove from the Stockholm airport into the city. I peered out at the dense gray sky. Somehow, whenever I had imagined my trip to Sweden, I had pictured Stockholm sunny.

Outside the bus at the Central Terminal, the cold penetrated my two jackets, making me hunch my shoulders and scurry for shelter—as much as it is possible to scurry with luggage. I guess I blame the cold for distracting me so that I missed the sign pointing from the bus terminal to the adjacent train station. Whatever the culprit, it seemed to take me as long to travel from the bus dropoff point to my hotel as it had taken to fly to Sweden.

By the time I reached my hotel room, I had no desire to go outside again into that inhospitable weather, especially to brave the crowded train system once more and find my way to the marathon packet pickup. But I didn’t want things piling up for the morning, when my anxiety would already be high. I went back out into the storm. The rain had lessened somewhat. Still, I walked as quickly as possible from the train station to the marathon expo. I kept telling myself it would be better tomorrow … anyway, there was no point in thinking otherwise.

The next morning dawned early, around 3 am. I kept my eyes on the window. No rain, at first. And then a few drops. And then a few more. By the time I left for the marathon, the rain fell steadily. I had received a white baseball cap labeled Oasics Stockholm Marathon with my marathon packet, and I decided to put it on. It afforded some relief, deflecting the drops out of my face. But in the first miles of the run, I felt the wind snatching at it. I should have tried to fasten it with my barrettes. Too late—near the 5-km mark, the wind got greedy and carried the cap off and away.

I held out hope that the rain would let up, only it didn’t, and the wind blew cold, and the sky framed the world in bleakness. I didn’t believe that the sun had ever shone on Stockholm. Around the halfway point, I glimpsed a row of port-a-potties and decided to stop (not a poetic detail, but real). The storm sounded even worse from inside the little box. The wind ripped at the roof and the rain pounded at it. I found that my hands had frozen into claws. I listened to the elements swirling inches away, and I knew: I could not go back out there. I was stuck. I was alone. I couldn’t go on, but I had to.

Because I was in a port-a-potty …

in a park …

in a foreign city …

on the coldest June day in 50 years …

with no money on me (lesson here?) …

and there was only one way out of my nightmare.

I burst out the door and hit the pavement running, and I did not stop until I reached the finish line inside the Olympic stadium from the 1912 Stockholm games. Even then, I permitted only brief delays. I exhaled heartfelt thanks to the volunteers who cut off my timing chip and handed me a yellow “Finisher” T-shirt (to stand in for the sun, my mother said) and a recovery packet containing fluids and snacks. I gushed even deeper thanks to the volunteer who retrieved my bag from the bag check. I pulled out my two jackets and my subway card and hurled myself toward the train station. On the subway, I stood shivering. Someone asked me about the marathon, about how I did. I couldn’t really answer.

“Too cold,” he said.

“Yes.” But I was finished—in the better sense.

Night of the marathon, still standing

The next morning, I was still alive. The air had less ice in it and fewer rain drops, but I rode the train to Gamla Stan, the Old Town, out of a sense of obligation. After consulting the map in my guidebook, I navigated toward one of the narrow streets that twisted up from the modern stretch outside the train station. At one point, I looked back to orient myself … and I gasped … and smiled. The view was beautiful.

I whipped out my camera. “This is cool!” I said.

Then I turned down one of the old streets. “This is so cool!” I said.

 

And it was still cold and damp all that day, although the sun peeped out, and the next day was just a little better, and the last day, the day I left, might even have turned out warm in the afternoon. I wasn’t there to know.

Even with my two jackets, I had not expected Stockholm to be quite so cool. And then again, even in my pretrip excitement, I had not expected Stockholm to be quite so cool.

Storming Stockholm

Last Saturday I finished the Stockholm Marathon under the toughest weather conditions I've ever faced in a run. I made it to the end mostly because I doubted whether my frozen, collapsed body would be carried into shelter if I dropped somewhere on the course. Coming back from Sweden on Tuesday, I waited in the passport control line at JFK airport and reflected on the experience. I told my mom I would be gratified just to have the difficult conditions acknowledged on the marathon website or in runner comments on Marathonguide.com. Today I checked my email and found this:

"June 2 was the coldest day in June in Stockholm for the last 50 years, so it was not a good day for running a marathon. Wind and rain made the situation even worse. All those things made the 2012 ASICS Stockholm Marathon the most demanding race in the 34 years history of the race.
We are most impressed that you and almost 15 000 other runners managed to finish the marathon, concerning these cruel conditions. You and other runners were well prepared for the race, and ran wisely.

"Kind regards
"Athletic clubs Hässelby SK and Spårvägens FK"

Foreboding weather at packet pickup was only a shadow of conditions to come

 


And now, I feel like I can do ANYTHING!