no jetpack

2006-07-17T08:17:00.000-07:00

I reside in the one-blog-for-one-reason camp. It's a sparsely populated camp. But I like to do something, and write about it, and then the doing and the writing are done. This is not my online journal.

Consequently, there was the Burning Log for Burning Man and the Balkan Blog for the Balkans and Marathonorama for the marathon and you get the picture.

The point being that since the marathon is over and since I have not, as some predicted, become a Running Fanatic, this blog is old news. And the new news is in the new blog. But I'm not going to put a link to it here, for reasons that I am also not going to put here. Let me just say that with the tiniest amount of Blogger initiative, you can find this new blog. Or you can ask me and I'll point you there. Sorry for the seemingly unnecessary complication. I promise I have my reasons.

Bye now. Happy Running.

2006-07-03T20:21:00.000-07:00

Here I am again with ice on my knees…

I guess it might be true that at some point I may have said something to the effect of, after the marathon I am never running again. But post-injury that was amended to after the marathon I am never running another marathon. Because, well… I don’t hate running. Certainly not as much as I once did. And while I have not become an up-at-five carbo-loading speed-freak race-or-die runner as some of you (who mostly fit those categories) suggested was inevitable, I have come to appreciate the portability and stress relief and scenic value of the sport.

So when I showed up at Joshua’s place in Portland for the week, and he announced that he is now training for his first marathon (p.s. go Joshua!)… well, it seemed about time for my first post-marathon run. It’s been two weeks. We went three miles. I guess I’m still running.

More later. Now: Mediterranean food.

2006-06-19T10:42:00.000-07:00

(so i wrote this Saturday, and i'm posting today, and i'm disappearing into alaska now for a few days. more soon.)

5 a.m. Nik's alarm goes off. I shimmy into my gear: sneaks and little socks, black bike shorts, purple jersey, sunglasses, and Goo belt - a black elastic waistband that, holster-like, holds my energy gel and assorted other race needs. Five is not usually my time of day, but the early sunlight helps my mood and I feel awake and alert, but calm. We munch bagels, bananas, and pretzels, and bus to the start line with the rest of the Oregon team.

Bags are checked, water bottles are filled, and songs are loudly sung by the Oregonians, to the nervous surprise of the other teams. Turns out that our crew of 20 or so Portlanders and Eugenians is just about the most joyful raucous bunch amongst the 3,800 racers stretching and sighing and pacing about wearing trash bags.

We go to the start line. We sing We Are the Champions. And then I run a marathon. And though I am writing this from my post-cold-bath, ibuprofen-laden, immobilized-in-bed position, dare I say it was - fun? Or if not fun exactly, at least not as horrible as I expected? And there was a moose at mile two!

The course wound through woods and over streams, on pavement and dirt gravel trails, and for quite a while by the highway. The crowds were sparse but cheerful. The hills were numerous but thoughtfully spaced, and the other runners came in all ages and styles. The weather was perfection, 60s and partly cloudy.

I ran half way without music, listening to the footfalls and the wind in the trees and the well-intentioned cheers of sideliners misreading my jersey, Go Jean Go! My goal became: run a whole half marathon without walking. My body felt strong and my mind felt clear and there I was at mile 13.1, popping in my new earbuds and cranking up the mixes that my friends had made. The music, like all the other things I tried for the first time today, worked like magic. I just kept running, downing water and sports drink at each two mile station, squeezing foil packets of frosting-like gel into my mouth every four miles, and adjusting my pace to the ground and the beat.

My body creaked and groaned at times - sore toes, tight shoulders, swollen fingers - but most things either passed or were wholly ignorable. All the things that might have gone wrong didn't. My stomach never churned, my sides never stitched, my knee never stabbed.

The miles ticked by. For some I watched the changing terrain, the green and the streams and the distant mountains, or the other runners - their gear and their form and the dedications written on their jerseys. Other miles I spent in my head, thinking about friends and plans. And more miles than expected I spent wholly but happily in my body, relaxing shoulders, holding up my head, pumping my arms straight. I repeated a million times glide glide glide and it all felt like it was supposed to feel, and the surprise of that buoyed my mood. I expected serious pain, nonfunctional legs, and quiet desperation. But at each mile marker I thought ecstatically, It doesn't feel like shit yet!

Since it kept feeling good, I kept running. I decided to run for as long as I could. The uphills were slow and full of panting, and the downhills were slow and full of caution. I think my legs were tired, but as long as I kept moving they didn't feel it fully. The music and the cheering were a constant feed of energy. It felt almost automatic. Fuel in, motion out.

The last four miles were long. Long. But I was so happy to still be running, so high on the long list of unlikely circumstances that conspired to provide a good run, that I was equal parts spent and thrilled. I ran around the lake, and up the much lamented bluff, and around the West High track. And I crossed the finish line, and an announcer read my name, and the clock said 4:11. Works for me.

So there it is, whatever that means. I ran a marathon. I'm going to think about it some more and add these thoughts in a few days.

Until then, congratulations to all the Oregon runners and walkers and run-walkers, especially Nik, Emilee, Courtney, Jamie, Emily, Jane, Amy, Rachel, Ashely, and Vicky; and superhuge thanks to Traci from TnT and kickass Portland coach Priscilla. Many more thanks to follow.

(Next day p.s.: Traci called from the airport to say they put the top 100 men and top 100 women finishers in the Anchorage newspaper and holy shit! I just made it in at 98. Yeehaw.)

2006-06-15T12:07:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Anchorage!

After a short sweet Seattle waterfront run yesterday I headed to the airport and caught a nonstop flight north at nine p.m. The hours passed and the sky grew disorientingly lighter, until after eleven when my little window was full of bright white dawnlike sky over a snowtopped dark craggy mountainscape.

I landed to find one message on my mobile phone. It was my dad, frantically urging me to check the status of my expiring student health insurance. Quite the vote of confidence.

And here I am in my first Anchorage morning, pleasantly cool and cloudy. My classmate Nikki – who hatched this whole idea with me back in January, but has been living & training in Portland ever since – is due in at one. According to the Anchorage Daily News’s Alaska Weather page, which is found just after the articles “Rascally bears evict Denali campers” and “Bears? Wait till you see Kodiak bumblebees,” predicts a Saturday in the sixties, with intervals of clouds and sunshine. Hoo Rah. Two days to go.

2006-06-13T00:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a run of regret, zipping around the river path in one of Eugene’s perfect summer evenings, 8:30 and the sky still full of light, bikers and dog walkers and kids on swings and the smell of honeysuckle and the sound of rapids and my head full of wondering why I am leaving here, this surprising little city of liberal bumper stickers and buttes full of blackberries. And while I’m at it, why didn’t I bike this path every week? Why didn’t I spend even one day taking photographs of this place I’ve lived for four years?

And this is how I get about transitions, and it’s terribly sad and it’s part of why I appreciate them. Every time I try to do it a little bit better, so it will be a little less sad. But it’s always sad.

Last night Ty and Talley and I were sitting in Talley’s livingroom decompressing from the third and final yard sale, and we realized I was leaving in two days, and in the span of five minutes Ty and Talley called all our local friends on two cell phones so that tonight after a day of boxing my stuff and stacking it into a 5’x5’ unit, Ty and Talley and Melissa and Nopporn and Deb and John and Paz and Liz and Adrienne and I ate vegetarian Chinese food and made one last long pilgrimage to Sweet Life for cake and tea and stories. Some of these stories had to do with marathon vomiting and marathon underwear and marathon flesh wounds, but some of them were entirely pleasant.

And now every one of us is off to somewhere new, except Liz who is doing her something new right here, and I know that’s what needs to happen next. But wow, you sit at a table with eight inspiring kickass people and you just wish you could sit with them once a week forever to hear about the inspiring kickass things they’re up to.

But for now I’m packing. To the many many folks who have sent good wishes, song lists, tiny notes, and donations this week, thank you SO VERY MUCH. I hope you understand how deeply I appreciate this support, and how it has shaped this whole experience. Right this very moment, thinking about the run, I feel thrilled instead of nervous because of all of you. I promise to return the unanswered calls and messages just as soon as I can… so, as soon as I cram the rest of my stuff into the storage unit, drive to Seattle, fly to Anchorage, and run 26 miles. Next week, perhaps?

2006-06-10T14:41:00.000-07:00

One week from right now, from RIGHT NOW, I will be running. More accurately by this point I might be jog/limping.

One of my friends who reads my blog keeps his own blog, and one of his friends found her way onto my blog from his blog, and wouldn’t you know? Her mom used to run marathons, and the very first marathon she ran was the Alaska Midnight Sun Run. So yesterday I got an email from my friend’s friend’s mom with a mile-by-mile chronicle of what to expect. This is the kind of magic that has been happening around this whole event.

I will here reprint her description:

Miles 0 - 4 are on a paved bike path running parallel toAlaska's major N/S highway, with a slight incline up to theoverpass, across the overpass to the otherside of thehighway. Don't get caught up in the rush of the first fewmiles. Take it easy and you'll feel much better going the next 13.

Miles 4 - 7 are on a two lane paved service road, mostlyflat. Good cruising opportunity.

Miles 7 - 17 are over the dirt trails of the Chugach Mountain foothills. Rough in places, hilly, and ending on adirt road taking you over to mile 17. Grueling. Watch yourstep.

Miles 17 - 19 are on the sidewalk/bikepath right next toTudor Road, a major E/W arterial 5 lane paved road. Cough,cough, gasp.

Miles 19 - 25 take you through neighborhoods to run along Anchorage's beautiful greenbelt, including Chester Creek inplaces and a paved bike trail that features tunnels underthe N/S roads of central Anchorage. Some small hills hereand there. Another good cruising opportunity, but don't befooled as you circle around Westchester Lagoon. Notice thebluff straight ahead.

Miles 25 - 26 include a steep climb up the bluff (Oh No!),a weary jog along neighborhood streets, and finally a laparound West High School's track (arghhh!) to the finishline.

Let us take a moment to note a few key words and phrases: Foothills. Rough. Grueling. Cough, cough, gasp. Bluff.

Bluff?

2006-06-10T01:40:00.000-07:00

In my junior year of college back in the last millennium I spent a semester in Australia. I knew a guy there who wore the same thing every day: kaki pants and a blue button down shirt. He didn't wear the exact same clothes every day. But in his closet were ten or so identical pairs of kaki pants and ten or so identical blue button down shirts. He just didn't like to waste time thinking about what to wear.

I'm not that extreme. I have a whole closet full of clothes of varying colors and shapes. I can go to a wedding or an interview with only minimal borrowing from my friend Talley. But clothes are not something I think a whole lot about. If it's warm I wear a skirt and a tank top, and if it's cold I wear pants and a tank top and a sweater. And the pants are probably torn around the back of the cuffs. And I like when things have pockets, and I like fabrics that feel interesting. But that's it. So it is really alarming how long I have been planning and shopping for this one particular outfit. The marathon Day Outfit.

Now as I've mentioned, the general rule is not to do anything on marathon day that you haven't been doing for months before. But oh well. I've been working out in mid-length meshy shorts, and that's just not going to cut it. Extra material on shorts = deep marathon sadness, because everything you wear in a marathon is rubbing against you for many consecutive hours.

I tried to solve this problem long ago. I worked my way through several options.

For a while I was going to wear a running skirt, because it seemed like it would feel really comfortable. I ruled out the running skirts from the site that refers to the built-in underwear as "spankies" on principle. And right around then this big running skirt debate erupted on several running blogs I visit, and the general tone - reflected on all the running skirt sales sites - was, running skirts are a great way for a woman to be athletic but still be cute and feminine.

There ended the running skirt appeal for me. Cuteness is great and all but seriously, is that really what a woman is supposed to be thinking about when she's running a marathon? Because I don't anticipate getting to mile nineteen and thinking, "I sure hope I still look feminine!" This whole understanding of the word feminine really pisses me off, though that's a different blog entirely. Let's leave it at this: running involves strength and stamina and sweat and you can find that cute or not, but it's not really about you now, is it?

Next up: the feathery light runner shorty shorts. These have little material and are good when it's hot. They are the item of choice at Eugene Running Company. But they're just not for me. Putting aside the fact that when the wind blows your ass is exposed to all behind you (which granted, in my case, will not be very many people) these just don't work for people with thighs. The average chicken-legged runner is safe and sporty in shorty shorts, but for me the lack of material would cause as much chafing as an excess of material. Next!

At this point I put aside my shopping ethics and stopped in at the Nike store. With optimistic glee I bought a pair of black-and-pink spandex shorts with super wicking dri-stuff and a perfect little pocket in back for an mp3 player. Alas, these were not designed for distance. After only forty minutes of running the legs had rolled themselves up and the numerous seams where all the magic fabrics met were making themselves abundantly apparent. Nike may not have any sort of production ethics, but at least they have a good return policy.

Last stop: REI. Final choice: "compression shorts." Basically, black spandex. Black spandex with a wide flat nonabrasive waistband and legs long enough to stay in place. No pockets, but I'm working on some amendments.

So now I just have to pick out my makeup.

2006-06-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

Ten days til go time. Ten days from RIGHT NOW it will be over, and I will be drinking a beer somewhere in Anchorage with two hours of sunlight ahead of me and a lot fewer toenails.

My run today, as per usual, felt mediocre. I think I used to finish feeling tired but strong. I don’t know what has changed. It might be something ominous and I’m just shit out of luck, or it might be that I’m pushing myself a bit harder. I can’t tell. I have no sense of my pace, and I don’t like the treadmill. But for the past two weeks I’ve felt like I hit a plateau. Half way through my workouts I wish deeply that they were over. It could also be that the whole point of training is that you constantly push yourself outside of your comfort zone in order to get strong. But shit. Enough already. When do I get to feel strong?

I sent out an email soliciting running songs and running thoughts. It’s only been a few hours, and the collection so far is highly amusing. You wouldn't believe some of the music people actually pay for. Some of the music that in a few days I myself will pay for, and that a few days after that may save my ass. Cause really, is there a way not to laugh that your grown friend put Justin Timberlake on your mix? I mean even if you've been running for hours and oxygen is at a premium, you would still have to laugh. Justin Timberlake and his peers are my new allies in the defeat of marathon despair.

For the moment, though, I am munching on peanut butter and planning my evening, which – for the first time in as long as I can remember – involves neither thesis work nor a looming workout. Perhaps I will make some of my clothes clean. Perhaps I will rediscover the flat surfaces of my room. Perhaps I will return one of my weeks of backlogged messages. The options are endless. Hoorah.

Goodbye, double digits of days to the run.

2006-06-04T17:52:00.000-07:00

My computer nearly shut itself down just now, because the battery ran out and I didn’t want to stand up to get the cord. Because I am sore. SORE. As per The Schedule, I spent my afternoon running for an hour and a half and then immediately biking for a half hour and then stretching for ten minutes and then icing for twenty minutes and I feel like a ZOMBIE, except without the energy to feast on the living. Just the kind of zombie who lies around being undead, and occasionally moaning.

The marathon is in thirteen days. Two weeks from right now it will all be over. My repertoire of exclamations is insufficient to express my happiness about this. Tomorrow I am presenting my mater’s thesis and is that worrying me? No. What is worrying me at the moment is that I am somehow going to have to run for upwards of FOUR HOURS, in a row, ideally without an i.v. and – as the blogname suggests – with no jetpack whatsoever. How will this happen? I do not know.

My Plan A at the moment is the surfacing of some as-yet-undiscovered reserve of physical and mental capacity on the day of the event. I am also counting on adrenaline, crowd energy, and music. The piece of marathon advice I have encountered most frequently is do not do anything for the first time on the day of your marathon. No new socks that might rub you wrong, no new breakfast that might make you queasy. You’re even supposed to train with the specific brand of drink your marathon provides. But I am breaking this rule – along with assorted others like training with the specific brand of energy drink my marathon provides – by carrying an mp3 player on the day of. I haven’t done it ever, and I don’t even own one yet. But I’ve decided that this will be my version of the swimmer’s pre-race shave. It will be a big mental boost when I’ve prepared myself for no boost. And though I realize that I risk some angry bloody arm wound where the new player clings, I just can’t say I care. I am also alarmingly unconcerned about cheating myself out of part of the experience, or soaking it all in, or whatever. When I have run for an hour and a half and I feel like vomiting and passing out, I will pop those annoying buds into my ears and listen to Big & Rich and I Feel Lucky and the theme song from Chariots of Fire, and I will run for three more hours. If anyone has song recommendations, please pass them on and I will busy myself with some downloading.

And now, back to the PowerPoint that I will use to present two years of research and writing to all of the faculty and students I know. As if there’s anything intimidating about that, when it doesn’t even require stretching.

2006-05-31T10:59:00.000-07:00

Eugene in May is sunny until nearly nine, so my Sunday run was an evening bridge-to-bridge hour followed by half an hour on the bike to nowhere. After an hour and a half of constant motion, things were going just fine - which I find very encouraging. My knee gets a little tight these days, but it doesn’t hurt, and the stretching and icing seems to be keeping it under control. But then my run yesterday was 40 breathless minutes. And I wish I understood this.

I’m sure my bad runs correspond to something – sleep, hydration, nutrition, weather – but I sure can’t figure out what. And I wish I could, because I really don’t want marathon day to be a bad run day.

This week has had its share of marathon angst. Part came when I revisited the Beginner’s Guide to Running book that has been gathering bedside dust since February when I bought it, read about nutrition, and put it aside. Turns out there’s all kinds of good advice in there about things like core strength, which I don’t have. And now with three weeks to go it’s not such useful information. But I’m annoyed that I didn’t know to do these things sooner – the stretching and the weights and the exercises – and I guess if you’re a runner it’s obvious, but I didn’t know and my TnT coach didn’t mention it. And I think about how much stronger I could be and how much more ready I would feel, and ugh.

Also I read about the Anchorage course. It’s hilly. It’s hilly, and there aren’t many spectators, and miles of it in the middle are through quiet woods. Now back in January before I’d ever run anywhere this sounded beautiful and peaceful and scenic, but what I’ve learned about myself since then is that scenery does not motivate me. Though I’m excited to see Alaska, marathon-wise I think I’d do quite a bit better at one of the Rock n’ Roll marathons where every mile brings a new band. The other day I ran past a few guys jamming in the park and just that thirty seconds of music picked up my pace and my mood. So after putting it off all this time, I’m now planning to get an mp3 player for race day. It feels lame, but if it helps me finish, it can’t be such a bad idea.

So there’s me with eighteen days to go. Eck.

2006-05-28T16:31:00.000-07:00

I just mopped the floor, three times. I’m not a mopper. But when I dragged myself out of bed this morning at 11 there was a quarter inch of mud in the kitchen, producing tentacalling mud trails through the living room to the front door and the bathroom and my bedroom, which last night was a coat room. We had a pretty rocking party.

This latest fundraising effort was born last month when Julie, Talley, Melissa, Adrienne and I were having margaritas. The idea of a keg party came up. A keg party in our backyard to capitalize on the newly nice weather. Something with a theme. We discussed the potential of pirates, luaus, and barbeques, until Talley came up with the brilliantly transparent Sex Sells.

It seemed impossibly easy. As Ty put it, “Guys show up for tits and ass.” And when Eugene’s six months of rain finally end, girls are happy to oblige.

Talley and John got the keg of Terrapin. Julie promoted endlessly and recruited Kevin to DJ. Melissa and I hit the dollar store for Blow Pops and Ring Pops and candy necklaces and all manner of other vaguely sinister edibles. We shrouded the washer/dryer in purple velvet.
The main obstacles were Memorial Day Weekend traveling, and a rival party thrown by some architecture students. Surprisingly the rain worked in our favor on the first count, as camping plans were cancelled. The archies were another matter. We called to see if they would throw their partygoers our way later in the evening. They mocked our beer charge and explained that the architects would be staying at the architecture party, not wasting time at the landscape architecture party. Granted, this probably had less to do with actual assholeness than with one of the hosts lusting unsuccessfully after Melissa a few months ago, but whatever. For the record: You Guys Suck.

Happily, our friends turned out in style, and brought their friends with them. Girls in boas and guys in leather filled our dance floor. Lemon drops were downed. Malibu was sipped. Julie sold raffle tickets out of her bra - the only thing she was wearing besides a trench coat and heels. Newlyweds Sarah and Hans sported three flavors of animal print between them. John tangoed. A cowboy hat made rounds.

Amidst the general debauchery, there was crazy support and cheering for the running and for the cause. I heard more about the marathon Sarah ran in Kenya. I met Molly, who did an event with Team in Training in San Francisco - her dad passed away from leukemia. I talked with Drew about the cross-country bike ride he is planning for this summer. He wants to get corporate sponsors and raise $25,000 for cancer research. These are the people I have been crossing paths with via my asinine decision back in January.

Kevin spun until four in the morning. For the last half hour it was just him, me, Melissa, and a couple of our good friends, and he kept going anyway. The six of us danced around to the blaring music in the big empty room. We pulled out Talley’s birthday carrot cake, Julie fell asleep on the sofa, and we called it a night. I went to bed as the sky got light. Wahoo.

2006-05-21T20:58:00.000-07:00

Last night the Kitchen Synchopators played at Sam Bond’s, and I danced to their ragtime jug band fantasticness until two in the morning. It was the kind of show and the kind of crowd where you strike up constant conversations with the guys in straw hats and the girls in crinoline skirts, and one of them named Billy told Julie and I to catch Hot Buttered Rum closing the Eugene Folk Festival today. So at four in the afternoon the clouds parted just long enough for us to hop around in one of those tie-dyed tattooed patchouli-smelling Eugene crowds for an hour of pretty sweet bluegrass. The only downside to all this merriment being that my right knee aches something fierce, and so for the first time I am ignoring The Schedule, which told me to do an extra long workout today, and instead I am making a PowerPoint for my thesis presentation and hoping for the best.

2006-05-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

2006-05-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

So what was there waiting in the rack when I went to the machine room yesterday?

Backpacker magazine's gear of the year issue.

There was a full color spread on headlamps.

I pull up, lights turn green. Shit.

2006-05-16T20:10:00.000-07:00

My horoscope this week ended with this warning: You should watch for unexpected changes caused by the healthy improvements you've made in your life. I'm not saying the changes will necessarily be bad, just that you should be alert for results you didn't foresee.

Changes I started noticing, once advised to do so, include: (1) better posture (2) doing more laundry (3) regular upwellings of annoyance when I return home at one a.m. and realize I have to do leg lifts and (4) higher levels of general fidgetiness. But most alarming of all is (5) unwanted awareness of current fashion trends and lives of the stars. This last arising, of course, from the selection of reading material available in the campus workout room.

Since my long runs were curtailed I abandoned the acquisition of an mp3 player. I may yet revisit this, but for the moment I’m happily unheadphoned. I’m fine for my now-short runs. But I just can’t cope with the startling monotony of the elliptical machine. In the absence of music – and because the print of my own books is too small to read while bobbing up and down in place – I read whatever the fitness room magazine rack has to offer. And what it usually has to offer is a crushingly vapid selection of photo-heavy mags with embarrassingly vain single-word titles. People. Glamour. US. Shape. Self.

I find myself being reluctantly up-to-date on who is dating whom in Hollywood, and what freakish names they have given their children and pets. I have been briefed on the unfortunate stylishness this season of the shirtdress, the round-toed shoe, the gaucho pant, and the color white. These sorts of things were of no interest to me whatsoever when I lived in New York City, and they certainly do me no good in Eugene. Couldn’t someone do a big glossy spread about headlamps?

But there it is. The pictures are numerous and the text is large and now I know that pulling the frosting off my cupcake will save me eighty calories. As if anyone subscribing to this magazine would be caught dead with a cupcake, and as if I’d ever waste something as tasty as frosting.

2006-05-15T16:51:00.000-07:00

So the marathon is five weeks from yesterday. And yesterday my teammates ran about twenty miles, and I did not. I sat in the sun selling miscellaneous goods, and then I biked and climbed in place for forty-five minutes.

This was making me a bit worried, this gross deviation from the standard marathon training program. You know, the one that involves a lot of running. But Dave consulted his friend Viet and they put together a new training program for me – one that will get my body ready without wrecking my knee. I carry The Schedule with me at all times. The Schedule begins with Dave’s cheery explanation, “You’re pretty much going to be working more and harder, but you’re going to be running less.”

The Schedule has a workout for me for every single day until the marathon. Actually each day has three to four workouts. Two of these per day are endless sets of leg lifts, which it turns out I have been doing wrong up to this point and which are, in fact, far more uncomfortable and exhausting than my wrong ones. The third workout, and fourth on some days, is running and/or biking and/or the elliptical. Each workout is followed by extended specific stretching, which I like, and then by icing, which by Dave’s decree is the only thing I am allowed to do while reading.

So there it is. Five more weeks. I am trying not to cheat and I am trying not to hate the elliptical machine and I am trying to be thankful that at least I am a graduate student, so I won’t get fired for spending nearly three hours a day obsessing over my leg muscles. And today I ran for half an hour, past the purple blooming Empress trees and the foul-smelling photinia and the baseball-sized Saturn of Eugene’s model solar system, and it all felt pretty good.

2006-05-13T19:14:00.000-07:00

This marathon involves several things I am bad at. The first and most obvious is running. The second is fundraising.

Team in Training works this way: event participants agree to raise a certain amount of money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and TnT handles the race logistics and matches the participants with each other and with a coach. Once my knee went bad, I pretty much abandoned the team and the coach – I had my own special limpy-appropriate schedule, and anyway I don’t see any reason why runners feel obligated to put in their miles bright and early on Saturday mornings. But I stuck with the organization because they really do great work, and I like the kind of model they follow where everyone contributes something they can – coaching, running, cash, morale – and in the end this adds up to big meaningful things that just wouldn’t have gotten done otherwise. I am not the rah rah teamwork type. I am the let me just do this myself type, or the why don’t you just do that already type, and I generally don’t go in for the nonhierarchical consensus based project style. But in this rare case I am a fan. Rah, rah.

So my end of this, in addition to a crazy amount of running-related activity that I will describe in a subsequent post, is raising nearly $4500. This is difficult for two main reasons: (1) me, and (2) everyone I know.

(1) There are many things I like doing, and there are many things I don’t like doing but can suck up and do anyway. Asking for things from people I don’t know is neither. We are encouraged by TnT to approach businesses with requests for donations or services or percentages of their earnings, and forget it. Schmoozing and working connections is not my thing. The good work of the world could not be accomplished without it, but that is why nonprofits have development directors. And I would sooner run a marathona month than be one. Which means in my fundraising, I initially approached people I know. Which leads to

(2) I know a lot of people. Amazing, inspiring, fabulous people. To get an idea of them, pick at least one item from this list:

artist

musician

writer

grad student

four years of college loans

and one item from this list:

just bought a house

about to buy a house

just got married

about to get married

just had a kid

about to have a kid

just started a business

about to start a business

and then you will get a sense of who I know. And knowing this, you would be *astounded* by how generous they have been for this bizarre undertaking of mine. And that generosity – along with some equally overwhelming generosity from my parents and my friend’s parents and a few people I don’t even know – got us about 40% of the way there.

And so the next 60% looms, and I just don’t need looming right now, what with the graduating and the new internship and the general chaos and the running all the time. So I am chipping away at it. There was the first garage sale, which for all its agony at least brought in $150. And then there was a trip to the store that buys clothes, $15, and the store that buys books, $60. And soon there will be a big party, which much more will be written about.

But today there was a second garage sale, this time in my friend Warren’s driveway and not in the parking lot of a big box store, and it brought a much more cheerful and supportive $200. I’m still sunburned and exhausted like last time, but far less bitter. This time people gave me five dollar bills for three dollar items and refused change. And one couple saw my sign and came to ask me about lymphoma, because their friend had been diagnosed two days before, and she didn’t know what it was or where to go. And I told them about the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s website. And they bought a calligraphy set.

But no one has yet bought the Star Trek engineer costume. Let’s overlook the fact that I can identify the particular ranking of Star Trek officer to which this uniform would belong, and just say that I guess I’ll have to have another sale.

2006-05-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

I just spent three days in Phoenix for the wedding of my friend Matt’s sister. We stayed at a “resort hotel.” I have stayed at nice hotels but never at a resort hotel, and it was a little insane. But I have to say that in the midst of an expansive golf course and about ten swimming pools and various arrangements of cacti, the highlight for me was the workout room. And no, I am not turning into some sort of gym freak, and I still like the outdoors better than the indoors. But damn, it was nice. If I had access to this kind of workout room (and access to some sort of time machine) I would happily work out two hours a day.

The first attraction was the shiny sleek smooth equipment. As I’ve said I like the big robot machines, but all these machines felt friendly and sturdy and… svelte. The weights rose and fell with appropriately muscular steadiness and control, and all in near silence. Small simple diagrams highlighted target muscle groups. Though I’m barred from leg machines there were five upper body machines to keep me busy.

What with the Phoenix heat and my nagging knee, ellipticals and treadmill sessions replaced my runs. Though I am exceptionally good at amusing myself – a legacy of only-childhood that allows me to keep entertained in an empty room for hours at a time – ellipticals and treadmills challenge even my high threshold for boredom. But these ellipticals and treadmills had large display screens that not only provided detailed information about speed, incline, resistance, heart rate, calories burned, and other workout minutiae, but also doubled as televisions. Televisions with Full Resort Cable. So I ran towards Nicole Kidman for an hour.

In addition to being sexy and entertaining, the workout room was full of small amenities. The machines each had a crisp clean white workout towel rolled and waiting. A table in the back had extra sets of headphones, and a tower of wet washcloths, and a cooler full of ice water. Ice water with sliced limes. Suddenly I have less awe for the toned physique of stars like Madonna. I mean, we’d all be a lot more kickass if it came with iced lime water.

2006-05-04T23:30:00.000-07:00

Today I am all limpy again. This time, though, I’m not panicking about it and throwing my arms up in the air. The first time athletic injury happens it is big and mysterious and scary. But after that it seems ordinary and manageable, and you forget how it used to be big and mysterious and scary. And I think this is why the first time it happened to me, the majority of my nonathletic friends (and I) assumed my running was finished while the majority of my athletic friends thought I should calm down and deal. Which, essentially, was true. Happily this time I am calm and dealing.

So getting back to limpy: I had a daily routine this week of half an hour on the elliptical and lots of stretching and leg lifts and fifteen minutes of running, followed by icing. Talley and I have been going to the gym together for the ellipticals, and the first time we went we had fifteen minutes to kill before machines were available and we ended up in the secret weight room.

The secret weight room is not really secret so much as secondary, small and tucked away behind the climbing wall. Most people choose the big flashy weight room with giant windows and even bigger mirrors, where there is grunting and posing and staring. In the secret weight room no one cares if you spend a few minutes adjusting the seat and reading instructions on the sides of the elaborate machines, and more often than not the weights are already set to fifty pounds instead of two hundred.

I love the secret weight room because I love weight machines. I love their big bulky robot forms, like people imagined the future a hundred years ago. I love their precision, the way two tons of pulleys and iron mechanically conspires for the sole purpose of toning one single muscle group in your forearm. I love doing three reps of ten, when the third set takes all my concentration and willpower and I have to count practically out loud after six.

So I started going to the secret weight room every day after the ellipticals, and alas, this was unwise. Specifically, my enthusiasm for the machine where you sit with your legs at ninety degrees to a big metal plate and push back to near-standing was unwise. Because apparently this machine puts stress on knees, and my knees would prefer a break from stress right now. So today, limpy. Lesson learned.

2006-05-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

It wasn’t long or glorious, but I ran yesterday. Not even two miles. Sort of a trial run. I ran down to the river and the park was full of people and I ran into Lindsay on her bike, and my breathing was all heavy and sloppy like when I first started all this, and after ten minutes my body felt tired and uncoordinated like when I first started all this, but I didn’t really want to stop. It was sunny and warm and I wanted to do the 3.5 mile bridge-to-bridge loop but I didn’t, cause Dave said One Or Two Miles Only. So I got to the riverbank where the kids feed the ducks, not even as far as Skinner Butte, and I turned around.

And I came back home and stretched and iced, and a little later I took some ibuprofen which I’m not sure I was supposed to do. But it doesn’t hurt today. So I guess I’m ready for trial number two.

How I’m going to get from not even two miles to twenty six point two miles in less than seven weeks is a thing I’m choosing not to think about.

2006-05-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

letters from foreign countries in the mail this morning: two.
small beet plants in the new raised bed out back: six.
temperature outside: eighty.
minutes since i handed in the final draft of my thesis: five.

wahoo!

2006-04-30T16:31:00.000-07:00

Despite the lack of entries lately, I haven’t fallen off the running wagon again. Though - if you want to be all technical – I am not actually running, but I’m training. I’m stretching and icing and strengthening and for a while I was even pumping myself up with ibuprofen, and for the past few days I’ve been spending time on the elliptical machines. Not quality time so much as half hour long monotonous segments, but that’s all they let you do at the UO gym.

Meanwhile the rest of my life has been steadily descending into chaos. Not the kind of happy chaos in which I most often cheerfully reside, but a newer, more frantic, more strung out chaos that I’m hoping will end in approximately – oh, let’s just pick a time frame – two months.

This new chaos derives mostly from the fact that, in addition to training for a marathon, I am currently finishing my master’s thesis and starting an internship. Those of you who talk to me often are by now confused, no doubt, about why this “finishing” of the thesis has been going on for nearly as long as the beginning and middle of the process. It’s mostly because after I thought the writing was done I started with the layout, and then the layout expanded and grew and clamored for more images, and then the images multiplied and divided and thirsted for more text and layout. So now I have a hundred and fifty page full color monster that still has no conclusion and is going to cost as much to print as six months in southeast Asia. Not that I’m sitting here weighing the pros and cons of that option or anything.

The goal was to turn in the final draft on Thursday, but I blew that off when two friends from D.C. cruised into town on their way to Portland, so now the goal is Monday. I’m really, really going for Monday.

In the midst of the thesis finishing, everything else has gone to shit. Weeks-old phone and email messages languish unanswered, boxes from last week’s garage sale gather dust in my truck bed. I have no fresh food in the house. I have nothing to wear to the wedding I’m going to next weekend. With seven weeks to the marathon, I have no airplane ticket to Alaska and I’m about $2500 short of my fundraising goal. I have become a flaky disaster.

So just for the record: Kira, Andrew, & Aerin, congratulations on the walkathon! Jen, congratulations on the race! Joshua, I’m sorry I keep not showing up. Matt, you will eventually get a birthday present, and it will be cool. Lisa, I will call you back. Julie, I’m sorry I didn’t get to read your essay. Emilee, I hope your hip is holding up (we can limp to the finishline together). And everyone else who drops in here, I’ll try to be less scarce. For the moment I’m going to go hang out with my old friend Sleep, who it turns out is a terrific antidote for my new friend Forgot to Eat Dinner.

2006-04-23T18:12:00.001-07:00

“How much for this book?” the woman asked me, eyeing me suspiciously, holding up East, West.

“Three dollars,” I said.

“Three dollars?” she practically hollered. “For a paperback?” And she dropped it back into the box.

I breathe deeply and hope that somehow raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society justifies this soul crushing garage sale I am taking part in. This garage sale in which three dollars is seen as an obscene and predatory price for a mere book, never mind that it is by Salman Rushdie, winner of the Booker Prize, winner of the Booker of Bookers prize. Never mind that it is Rushdie’s only collection of short stories, a moving and brilliant compilation of vignettes that will transport you around the world. Never mind that the book would cost fourteen dollars new and that the three dollars I am futilely trying to collect would go entirely towards fighting cancer.

No, all that matters here in the Big Lots parking lot is that this book is a paperback, and a paperback should cost a quarter, fifty cents if it’s thick. Deep, deep breaths.

I guess I am exactly the wrong combination of naïve and snobby to be good at a garage sale. Early in the day I have not yet learned that asking for “a couple dollars” in exchange for some valuable item like a coffee maker will trigger either a look of disdain (what do you take me for?) or a bitter, reluctant production of a wallet, and a slow, careful extraction and smoothing of two single bills.

Early in the day I do not yet expect people to haggle over Banana Republic shirts that are priced, out of equal parts hope and surrender, at a dollar. Early in the day I am still surprised when the very same woman who sniggers at my three dollar book then wanders to Donna’s Mary Kay table and buys sixteen dollars of lotion, handing the money to Donna with a look of reverence and gratitude for this woman who, for just sixteen dollars, provides a skin-type appropriate vial containing the possibility of youth and happiness and beauty. Early in the day I am neither sunburned nor dehydrated nor angry at the world. But soon enough, it’s later.

I don’t have a lot of things to sell. My chilly relationship with possessions comes from seven years of moving semi-annually between closet-sized New York City apartments. I don’t like stuff. I don’t like buying stuff and I don’t like worrying about stuff and I don’t like packing and unpacking stuff and I don’t like when stuff breaks. I rent a single room in a house and it has my drafting table and my rocking chair and too many art supplies and too many books, and this is how I like it. This is a bad foundation for a garage sale.

So I scoured my already second-hand clothes and the bottom shelf of my bookcase and the box of knickknacks I feel guilty throwing away, and I packed up my truck. Arica and Adrienne and Melissa cleaned their closets for me too and filled things out.

There were high points like the mother and daughter who gleefully snatched up an ambitiously priced painting of zebras (thank you, Arica), and the Latina woman who skillfully bargained for an orange button-down with a small, mysterious witch-and-cauldron print, and the old Asian woman who told me that she usually makes her own clothes but she couldn’t resist the shirt with a rainforest pattern that concealed big colorful parrots. But mostly it was a mix of awful and bizarre, like the guy who picked up the glue-gun-looking device and said “What’s this for?” I rolled my eyes and laughed and explained what I myself had just learned - that it was for slicing your seatbelt and cracking open your window in the highly-unlikely-but-apparently-phobia-inducing event of becoming trapped in your car, possibly underwater. And then he said, “How much do you want for it?”

And that was my day. I made one hundred and fifty dollars for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. And all it took was eight hours and my faith in humanity.

2006-04-22T18:48:00.000-07:00

Even among my non-athlete friends I have found an average of one degree of separation between everyone and an injured-while-running person. Pick a random person and their (sister / dad / girlfriend / someone) (tore / fractured / pulled / something) his or her (knee / hip / ankle / somepart) while running.

This reminds me of the time Talley was going to teach me to snowboard. She went to take a quick run while I rented gear, but before I ever made it onto the mountain she was headed to the hospital with a broken wrist. For the next two weeks when I told this to everyone who asked about my snowboarding, they inevitably replied with a story about a friend or family member breaking some really important bone(s) while snowboarding. Two solid weeks of snowboard injury stories essentially vaporized my desire to learn to snowboard.

Several times now when I have explained my knee situation to someone with running-injury knowhow, he or she will reply, “Ah yes! RICE!” Which is some acronym for the things you are supposed to do with an injury, namely ibuprofen, coolness, elevation, and something that begins with the letter R. Reggae, perhaps? Riddles? Robots? I hope it's robots. But I don’t remember. In any case I’m not really doing the RICE thing so much as I’m stretching twice a day, doing leg lifts twice a day, and icing three times a day.

I am also supposed to be taking three to four ibuprofen three times a day (I was told to “Get the big bottle”) but I just can’t bring myself to do this. I half-heartedly pop two or three about twice a day, and even that feels like mild drug abuse. In normal life my habit is to take one ibuprofen, maybe, if I am having the sort of headache or the sort of cramps that are wholly and completely incapacitating. Otherwise I don’t take anything for any reason. I think it comes from this feeling that my body is doing what it needs to do – like raising its temperature to kill bad bacteria – and I shouldn’t mess with that. Which yes, I recognize is not the case with the knee. I do not claim that any logic is operating here. But I don’t like taking so many pills.

Regardless of the undermedication, my knee is feeling much better. It cracks more than it used to, including every time it goes from a locked position to bent, but I’m trying to ignore that. I’m eager to try it out again. Monday, maybe?

2006-04-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, I haven’t been posting. Because I haven’t been running. Instead I entered a three week period of heavy denial. The denial went something like this: When I run, it hurts my knee. The next day I cannot walk. This is my body telling me that running causes it injury. My body is telling me this when I run for just a few miles. There is no way my body is going to let me run a marathon. Therefore I will not be able to run a marathon, and there is nothing I can do about it.

If I was running a marathon and my head was saying, Jenn, what the fuck are you doing, I am very unhappy, please stop, I know how to say to my head, hang in there, it’s just a little bit farther, or just shut up. But when my knee says to me, step on me and you’ll fall over, I have no good answer.

So for about three weeks I have been feeling ridiculously out of control of this, and I stopped fundraising, and I stopped talking about running, and I basically assumed that I wouldn’t be able to follow through with this whole thing. And on last Saturday morning when I slept in until 9:30, and it was cold and rainy, I didn’t miss running at all. But I felt pretty lousy mentally. I felt like I had given up even though I never seemed to have been given a say in it, and I felt like hiding from everyone who has been encouraging me.

And then yesterday I was instant messaging with Dave, my runner friend who has had superhuman patience for lengthy conversations about my right knee. Which I realize is not such a gripping topic. But Dave will not let me stop talking about running. Many of my friends who are not very athletic – which is most of my friends, and I count myself among them – hear that I hurt my knee and they say, That sucks, you can’t run the marathon right? But Dave will not say this to me. Secretly I have been waiting for Dave to say this so that I can finally say it is out of my hands.

Instead of saying this, however, Dave asks pointed questions about how it hurts and when and where. And then he sends me links to webpages about stretching and advice about ibuprofen. And so I resentfully tried these things for three weeks and thought There! Fuck you! It still hurts. You’re going to tell me to quit now, right? But instead he sent me more links. And finally I said What is the point? How can I run a marathon if my knee hurts whenever I run?

But then he explained it to me, and for the first time it made sense.

My knee is hurting because some little thing inside it is rubbing against some other little thing. It is probably doing this because my thigh muscles are not strong enough. Once the rubbing started, there was swelling, and this swelling made the rubbing much, much worse. So while I could run twelve miles before, now I can hardly run two.

This isn’t the monumental problem I have been taking it for because if I can (a) strengthen my thigh muscles and (b) make all the swelling go away, it won’t happen again. This was the magic secret I didn’t understand. There are fairly reliable ways to accomplish both these things. I don’t know why I didn’t understand it. I guess I was thinking about it more like an allergy: if you’re allergic to milk and you drink it, you get sick. You wait a few days and you feel better… but that doesn’t mean you can start drinking milk again. If milk makes you sick and you drink it every time you feel ok, you’re not too bright. Yet, as it turns out, my body is not actually allergic to running.

So Dave explained this and bam, I realized: I can run this marathon. I have been grim and sulky and totally lethargic for three weeks. And that’s done now. I am going to run this marathon.