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.

2006-04-06T15:01:00.000-07:00

I ran on Monday. I ran for an hour, in the freezing cold wind, and it was numbing and headachy but it felt nice to be moving again. And I came back to Patrick’s apartment and put my legs up with a big bag of frozen tortellini on my knees just like I’m supposed to.

And then I woke up on Tuesday, and it was a mess. My right knee felt achy and sore, and when I walked there was pain underneath that shot down into my calf. It was my last day in Quebec City, and my plan was to walk around taking photos. I walked for an hour, which was bearable if I avoided hills. The day was gray and rainy and windy and cold and generally miserable, and I was sad it was my last day.

After lunch I headed out again, but now the pain was so much worse – probably aggravated by the earlier walking – that I had to go down the apartment steps one at a time. After fifteen minutes I found myself leaning against building walls as I walked, and I decided to call it a day. I hobbled back to the apartment, grabbed the tortellini, and got on instant messenger with my runner friend Dave.

Dave says I have runner’s knee. He says I have to take two weeks off and ice three times a day and pop huge amounts of ibuprofen and do leg exercises to strengthen my thighs, which are apparently causing part of the problem. I say this sucks.

Much as I don’t love the running thing, the idea of losing all the endurance that it sucked so much to build up is making me very unhappy. Also, I am a bad sick person. Also, I don’t want to do any long-term damage to my knees, which have been very good to me so far. Also, I’m not convinced that after all this recovery shit, the knee won’t just start hurting again as soon as I start running again. And then what? Because I told everyone I’m running a marathon and I’ve been waking up at 7:30 on Saturday mornings and you better fucking believe I am running a marathon. But what if my knee just doesn’t let me? That would feel so fucking lame.

Also, and let’s not make too big a deal out of this, I kind of feel like going for a run right now. I’m back in Eugene, and it feels like spring here, and I’m sad to have left Quebec. Running right now would feel really good.

2006-04-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

First off thanks to everyone who harassed me about not blogging this week. I occasionally wonder if anyone reads this and hooray, at least a couple people do. So sorry I’ve been such a slacker. It happened like this: after my run last Saturday, things were looking good. Sunday is my day off and Monday I woke up ready to run. But my right knee felt off. It didn’t hurt or ache, it just felt… strange. Like there was something clicking a little inside. And when my leg was straight, it didn’t feel trustworthy. I emailed my coach and waited for news.

Coach Phil emailed back that I should take a few days off and ice it regularly. So all week here I was in Quebec City, with nothing to do but work on my thesis by day and eat Patrick’s insanely delicious cooking by night. Also some drinking. All in all it’s been the most productive thesis time I’ve had in months, accompanied by feasting on everything from cheddar leek corn croquets to a veggie version of Ethiopian Doro Wat.

What I haven’t been doing is running, which was fine until Saturday, when I was supposed to get back up to at least 8 miles. But this was officially my last weekend in QC, and it was a sunny, beautiful day, and instead of running Patrick and I went to a bookshop and picked out periodicals for an hour, and then we went to a café and read said periodicals while snacking on croissants filled with cheese and chocolate. And when the rain started falling we walked around some of the old neighborhoods of the lower city, and then we went to a film festival and saw Art School Confidential. And it was all pretty fucking fabulous, but there was no running involved.

So anyway, here I am and it’s Monday and I am going to work on my thesis until five and then I will go running. To be honest this is the part where, if I hadn’t told anyone about my plans to run this marathon, I would quietly duck out. A few years ago I learned about the beauty of putting down a book that I’m not enjoying or turning off a movie that sucks. But I know that in this case what I’m doing is not a complete waste of time, and there are plenty of good reasons to keep doing it. And I know that it’s only for another three months, not even, and then I will have run a marathon, and we will all have raised a lot of money for leukemia and lymphoma. But the biggest motivation at this point is that I don’t want to be a big quitting loser, which is a pretty lame reason to do anything, though for the moment I’m going with whatever works. But a few days ago I was talking to a dear friend, and she told me I was inspiring, and I mostly felt like a complete con.

2006-03-25T15:24:00.000-08:00

Last night Patrick and I were invited to a fondue party in a château on an island in the St. Lawrence. Yes. Really. Did I mention I’m staying another ten days? Anyway we went and ate fondue with fifteen lovely French Canadians and drank numerous bottles of red wine, mostly tasty French wine but to my globalizatious surprise there was also a bottle of that yellow kangaroo stuff so ubiquitous at Eugene dinner parties.

After all that wine, our ride Antoine - along with the majority of the other guests - was too drunk to drive back to the city. Consequently I slept on a sad little sheetless cot in a room full of drunk snoring party guests. The sleeping was not good. And when I woke up and Patrick asked, do you have plans today? I realized, yes. Today I have to run eleven miles.

Back in the city I fuelled up on my now regular Quebec breakfast of Russian black tea, fresh croissants, and stinky cheese (did I mention I’m staying a while longer?) and headed out. I went to the Plains of Abraham as usual, planning to run a big figure eight around the art museum. I realized, though, that eleven miles would mean looping this loop at least four times. Or more. So I spotted a tiny steeple in the distance and decided to run for it. I ran down the Grande Allée, which is French for Grand Allée, until it turned into another street. When you have run so far in Quebec that the street has become a different street, they are helpful enough to hang two signs: one indicating the new street name, and a second one indicating the previous street name with a big red line through it. I ran far enough for this to happen several times.

The run was feeling strangely good. My posture and my breathing and my legs all felt strong, and I got to the church and back while enjoying the happy little exercise chemicals washing over my brain. Once again, however, I was unpleasantly surprised when I swung by a phone box to check the time… less than half done. It’s amazing how far you can get when you’re running.

And though the run didn’t end there, the story does. This is what always seems to happen lately on my Saturday runs. I feel good, I feel done, and then I’m just not, so I run a lot more without feeling particularly happy or engaged. I’m even considering getting an ipod or some related amusement thing. But this idea bugs me because I’m kind of a Luddite. More on this later. For now: bread stuffed with chocolate. Mmmmmmmmm.

2006-03-23T17:53:00.000-08:00

Today it was gray and I was lazy, and then suddenly it was 4 in the afternoon and I hadn’t gone for my run yet. The idea of running the same icy circle I’ve been running all week – the one through a business district where the Quebecois, who apparently are not such big runners as Eugenians, stare openly with annoyance as I run by – was not any sort of motivation. So I agreed to join Patrick for a trip to the gym he recently joined.

The friendly trainer behind the desk at Energie Cardio let me in for free. She took my pulse (for insurance reasons, she mysteriously explained) and off I went to the treadmill. And then I ran, and ran, and ran on the treadmill for one hour. It wasn’t a fancy treadmill with superfluous but distracting numbers flashing, so I tried to amuse myself with a magazine. This did not work: too bumpy. Ultimately I watched Le Monde on the overhead television. There were subtitles instead of sound, and my French was decent enough to get me through stories about the recently freed hostages, avian flu, and the dangers of garden pesticides. Not particularly uplifting, but at least it passed the time and was good for my language practice.

It’s kind of neat, being able to run for an hour without feeling the need to stop. It’s certainly not something I could have done when this started less than two months ago. There were a few times I sped up or added a few degrees of incline just for variety. I don’t know how far or fast I went, but whatever.

And now, I will go eat well earned French food.

2006-03-20T11:11:00.000-08:00

Saturday was my first ten miler, but I’m in a foréign city (the é is for proof) where I know only one person. He is not a runner. After confirming that I really, really couldn’t skip this run, even though it was a beautiful day for seeing Quebec and I was still working off some St. Patrick’s day damage, he pointed me to the Plaines d’Abraham. This is French for the Windy Icy Frostbite Death Hills of Abraham. Sadly my French is patchy at best, so I bounced off towards the park with wholly unfounded optimism about fresh air and exploring a new place and other assorted bullshit.

After about two minutes I realized the trails were 90% covered in very slick ice. I nearly wiped out at least three times just looking for a place to run. Finally I settled on the main drive through the park, which was only snowy at the margins. Since I had no way of telling how far my route would go, I just assumed ten minute miles and planned to run for and hour and forty minutes. After what felt like three quarters of that time I checked a phone box, only to find I’d been running for a mere forty minutes. So then I ran for an hour more.

It was cold, and I had to keep running by the same things because of all the ice, but overall it wasn’t actually horrible. I ran at my own pace, which is a bit slower than I run with the Saturday group, and although I was tired and a little uncomfortable at the end, I could have kept going. Not for another sixteen miles, but maybe for another two. Which, for the moment, I feel pretty good about. And now I don’t have to go that far again for a whole week. Wahoo.

2006-03-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

Hills this Wednesday were less rainy, and less cold, and generally less horrible. They still felt bad, and by the fourth time running up I still wanted to hide behind some trees until my half hour was up, but this time sneaky Coach Phil waited just before the steepest ending hill and ran up with each of us as we arrived, saying how strong we looked. Which, in my case, was a complete lie. I know what it looks like to run up a hill looking strong, because my teammate Amy who is all posture and calf muscles bounces right up them with light quick steps as if her body is unaffected by gravity. I, on the other hand, hunch over and shove myself forward in effortful, wheezing, tiny increments as if running in an atmosphere composed largely of syrup.

Then I got in my truck and drove to Portland and got on an airplane and flew to Vermont and got in my friend Patrick’s car and drove to Quebec City, where I will spend the next week.

Where I will somehow, tomorrow, do a ten mile run in the snow on my own.

Where the keyboard is just different enough to be completely frustrating, so that is all for now.

2006-03-13T16:16:00.000-08:00

After yanking out my wisdom tooth Friday afternoon, the mean oral surgeon’s nice assistant Laura told me not to do any strenuous activity for three days. Saturday’s nine miler seemed to fall into this category. I skipped it and slept in, which, while enjoyable, made my Saturday seem significantly less productive.

Today I biked ten minutes to a breakfast place, and when I got off my bike I felt flushed and nauseous. It’s not possible to get that out of shape that fast, is it?

2006-03-08T21:52:00.000-08:00

My fucking wisdom tooth is impacted.

I’ve only ever had one wisdom tooth show itself, but I guess I wasn’t giving it enough attention because after three years of poking peacefully out it decided to violently emerge on Sunday. It is now stabbing into the back of my mouth creating various unpleasant abrasions and impeding many activities I enjoy, such as eating and swallowing. I have an appointment with an oral surgeon tomorrow but in the mean time I am hungry, dehydrated, and (in case this wasn’t apparent) really fucking cranky.

You can imagine, then, the gleeful gusto with which I approached my first hill training this afternoon. This windy, near-freezing, really fucking rainy afternoon. I was soaked to the bone in approximately thirty seconds, though the full hand/arm numbness didn’t set in for fifteen minutes, which at least distracted me from the knife-like pains in my jaw, or at least accompanied them harmoniously as I ran up a big muddy hill, over and over again, as Coach Phil intoned cheerfully, “This shouldn’t feel good!”

Well shit. I must be doing it right.

2006-03-05T15:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday’s training run was eight miles. It involved my first encounter with hills, which are pure evil, and my first encounter with Gu, which is evil in the form of gelatinous frosting power gel, and my first encounter with “chaffing,” which is worse than hills and Gu and will inevitably get even worse when I go eight miles three times in a row, and then two point six more miles just for garnish.

Oh, and then we were instructed to go home and sit in an icy cold bath for ten minutes.

So I would say the fun has officially begun.

2006-03-03T13:38:00.000-08:00

Reason Number Four that I am running this marathon, which is a reason I won’t dwell on too long, is that I like to travel, and I like to write about my trips. At the moment, however, I am not traveling. I got back from nine months abroad in September and now I’m trying to finish my master’s thesis. After that I’ll be looking for a job. For the moment, I’m not going anywhere.

So basically I needed something to write about, and running a marathon seemed about as ridiculous as hanging out in Serbia.

When I go somewhere I like to read all about it (I can recommend lots of good books on Serbia…) and so it seemed natural to do the same thing for running. I wanted to see the full range of running book options, so I skipped my usual favorite independent & used bookstores for the local giant megabookstore with built-in giant megacoffeeshop.

There were endless shelves of running books, as I had hoped. They fell largely into five categories:

(1) Training books, with weekly schedules on how far to run. I don’t need these, because I have a coach and I’m stickin with him.

(2) Weight loss books, with advice on how to run and diet in order to slim down. I’m guessing this will happen anyway, whether or not I read a book about it. What with the insane amount of running I am now doing.

(3) Inspirational books, with various combinations of quotes and stories for motivation and encouragement. Gag, gag.

(4) Better running books, with information on how to run faster / farther / more. Pretty much any running I do at this point is faster farther more than I used to. Don’t need no book for that either.

(5) Women’s running books, which were a lot like the other running books but more irritating. And with sections on pregnancy and menopause. Nope.

In the spirit of giving this a real go I left with the Runner’s World Complete Book of Beginning Running – mostly because it had a nice glossy section on nutrition, and Why We Run by Bernd Heinrich. The latter has turned out to be a neato natural history book about the physiology of endurance in the animal kingdom.

Online I ordered cheap used copies of How Running Changed My Life and First Marathons, both collections of predictably soggy sentimental essays with titles like “What Is She Running From?” and “Zen and the Art of Marathon Running.” I bought these mostly to ridicule. So far so good.

2006-03-01T20:50:00.000-08:00

Well, my run today felt like ass. And not like svelte runner’s ass. Just ass.

I don’t know why this is. I wasn’t going any faster or any farther than usual. But my lungs got that feeling that they used to get back when I would smoke the occasional cigarette at a bar: the morning after they would be too small for my bike trip to school. That is how my run felt. And no cigarettes were involved.

Also today I got my March training schedule, and we’re up to five days a week instead of four. Four seemed manageable. Five might be ok except that one of them is hills, and another is supposed to be a bit speedier. Ass + hills + speedier = bleak running day.

Perhaps this is a good time – for my own good – to bring up the next reason on the list of Reasons Why I Am Doing This. Reason Number Three: One day, it seems, I may get old. And there is a very particular way I want this to happen.

I’m not getting too old just yet. No gray hair, minimal strange aches, and Eugene’s moist climate has even thwarted the crinkly lines that I’m bound to get one of these days from the skeptical squinting and way-too-loud laughing that are my two dominant expressions. But last year I lived for a few months in Amsterdam, and Dutch old people rock. They bike about in eighty-year-old pairs, slender and fit and seemingly free of hip replacements.

Now I don’t want to be running when I’m eighty. I don’t even want to be running when I’m forty. I like my knees, for example. And already I am getting these weird big thighs when I’d rather have calves. But I want to be doing something, from the point that this all ends until my body just won’t do it anymore: hiking up things, biking over things. I want to be on teams – lacrosse, kickball, soccer, whatever. Community teams that play in parks on Saturday afternoons and then go drink beer. And since I’m not particularly gifted at any one sport, at least I can be in shape enough to not suck. And this seems like a good kick-start to that.

Now I know that some of you, the runners among you, are still thinking, it’s only a matter of time. Soon she’s going to want to keep running. I realize that may be the case, though I think you’re wrong. When I got a tattoo in college the tattoo artist said, Oh, you’ll be back again. But you know what? That was ten years ago, and I still only have one tattoo.

But I kind of want another one.

A bigger one.

I kind of want it a lot.

2006-02-27T14:25:00.000-08:00

My friend Dave, who is a real runner – not a just-this-once runner like me – and who keeps a blog – the kind of blog that you check each day thinking I hope there’s a new post – has made reference to the fact that one key feature of his running success is that he is a stoic. To quote a recent entry of his, “I could hold my breath longer than anyone underwater, not because I had better lungs, just because I cared less about how uncomfortable it became.” And I just want to be clear, right up front, before this becomes painfully apparent and you feel surprised and misled: I am no stoic. By no definition of the word, and at no point in my life.

To be fair, I am no drama queen or martyr either. And, in certain circumstances, I do some things that can be confused with stoicism. While traveling, for example, I can eat cheese sandwiches and sleep in bus stations for weeks on end. I can amuse myself in lonely, empty places pretty much indefinitely. But upon closer inspection what I really have is a very low threshold for happiness. I can do things that seem awful because I don’t really find them awful.

The key difference here is that when I actually find something awful, rare as that is, I can’t deal with it at all. I am particularly a wuss when it comes to sickness and injury. I really, really don’t like feeling bad. I don’t buck up. I don’t make the best of it. I wallow in misery.

I bring this up now because I just went for a solo run in the cold rain, and to my surprise it felt pretty good. But as I was running, thinking something along the lines of how surprising that this solo run in the cold rain feels pretty good, I had a sudden and unwelcome realization: this level of comfort is simply not sustainable. At some point in this training, as I have learned from various running blogs and books, my legs are going to feel like jelly and my mental health will deteriorate and – Good God! – my toenails are going to fall off. And nothing, nothing about this appeals to me. This is not the kind of adventure I’m seeking.

So I’m just letting you all know. That way, when the tone of this blog goes from self-mocking skeptical how-about-that to weary, angry, what-the-fuck, at least you will be ready for it. Because I like my toenails, and I’m not letting go of them without a whole lot of belligerence.

2006-02-26T15:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning at 7:30 my truck was covered in ice. Since I’ve recently been reading the running blogs of people in such places as New York and Michigan, I realize this is hardly cause for much sympathy. But it’s just not what we expect here, as evidenced by the fact that I had to scrape this ice away using a plastic cd case.

It had warmed a bit by the time we started our seven miles. Back in college my crew teammates and I would cluster around Isabel during our training runs, because Isabel grew up in New York City and was in good enough shape to spend entire runs effortlessly recounting her Manhattan sex-and-drugs teenage years. This captivated our seventeen-year-old new-to-New-York attentions and made the runs fly by. My TnT motivational equivalent is Emilee. Emilee isn’t like Isabel – because, for example, she grew up in Iowa – but she has Isabel’s extroverted energy and contagious fitness and unflagging spirit. Emilee talks about her family and friends and job, all things she loves, and the miles tick away.

I was able to keep up for the first half of the run, until the just-for-fun four laps around Hayward Field, at which point I fell behind and began serenading myself with Friends in Low Places. This morphed into Two Pina Coladas, which got me all the way back with only brief intervals of general discomfort and ill-will. And I felt tired, and my legs were a little achy, but I could have gone farther. And I remember that on my first run, not so very long ago, I ran only three miles and couldn’t stand up with ease for three days. Oh the body is a miraculous thing.

And also, fuck! I ran seven miles!

2006-02-24T16:09:00.000-08:00

Stairmasters are stupid, and that is all.

Well, maybe that’s not all. But really. Just the name: Stair Master? Come On.

Ty is suffering from shin splints, so despite the sunny clear afternoon I went with Talley to the wreck center for my workout. She actually likes the freaky machine room. (Edit: Talley, after reading this, tells me she does not in fact like the freaky machine room. Her dedication to the freaky machine room is, therefore, just another sign of how Talley gets shit done that needs doing, like it or not. As she herself would say - and has said, on at least one occasion, to stunned softy northwesterners: Buck up, or get the fuck out of here.) Since the ellipticals were all booked we signed on for the stair machines. For half an hour I climbed hypothetical stairs while looking out a window at a big yellow sign that said “DEAD END.” No, really.

The Stairmaster encapsulates much of what I dislike about the whole idea of “working out:” it is completely contrived, whereas so much physical work in the world actually needs doing. And granted, it is not geographically possible for me to spend 45 minutes a day rebuilding homes in New Orleans. But the Stairmaster gets at the worst of it. The building I work in every day, after all, is full of actual stairs that conveniently connect one floor to the next. The Stairmaster reminds me of the year I worked for a woman on Park Avenue who would take a taxi five blocks to the gym.

In any case I “climbed” “stairs” for half an hour and now here I am back at my computer. Don’t spread this around, but I’m looking forward to the group run tomorrow morning. Not only will it actually involve moving through space, but it’s seven miles long. And, being both curious and impatient, I am anxious to see how it will feel.

2006-02-23T17:45:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning feeling scattered and it hadn’t gone away by four. I was having this very specific feeling, a feeling that took me several hours to put my finger on: it was the feeling you get a while after a big breakup, where you’re not exactly sad and not exactly missing the person, but more missing the comfortable habits associated with that person. You’re missing the part where you wake up and they have your coffee waiting on the table. Which is an odd feeling for me to be having at this specific point because I haven’t gone through any break-up of any kind recently. Also because I don’t drink coffee.

With all this scatteriness my work wasn’t much getting done, and the weather was looking a bit ominous, so I decided to go for a run while the running was good. On my way out the door I bumped into Paz, who wanted to come along. This was exciting because I was resigned to running alone, but also intimidating because Paz is small and fit and fast. We definitely ran faster than I would have solo, which I know is good for me, and we ran for at least forty five minutes. And despite the speed and the duration, it all felt pretty good.

I am at a loss to explain why some of my runs feel so much better than others. Part of it I understand: I feel better if I am rested and in good company. But other variables are still a mystery. The whole nutrition thing eludes me, as does hydration, which really seems like it should be a no-brainer. Time of day is also a factor, but morning runs feel alternatively exhilarating and debilitating.

Today’s run just felt good. I feel warm and strong and not even a little tired, which is at least something for a scattered day.

2006-02-19T11:52:00.000-08:00

I am in Los Angeles for the wedding of my friends Julien and David. Consequently I traded my 6-mile Saturday run with TnT in Eugene for three two-mile loops around the Penmar Golf Course in Venice Beach, all by myself. I do not like Los Angeles.

In a few months I will be moving somewhere, and it will be a city – a city bigger than Eugene. Beyond that it could be lots of places – preferably somewhere with access to the outdoors and a few cool museums and some significant body of water. It could be Portland or Seattle or San Francisco or Philadelphia or Boston or Chicago, and I’d even consider places like Austin or St Paul or other random spots for the right job or the right people. But it will not be LA. Not if the love of my life and my dream job were waiting for me here and nowhere else.

LA is more highway than anything else. It takes an hour in a car to get anywhere, and car is the only way to get there. It’s sprawly and scattered and for me has all the peculiarities of a foreign city without any of the appeal. I know these sentiments are neither fair nor original. I don’t care. I just got back from a six mile run and I can write what I want.

The run, actually, was not so bad. I ran by whitewashed houses and people working on their yards listening to Spanish radio. Half the run was on sandy southern California soil that, because of the unusual eighth inch of rain that fell yesterday, was sticky and puddled. The grainy mud clumped on the bottoms of my sneakers and weighed down my feet.

When I run I pass the time in my head in several ways: I sing songs – often just a particular part of just one song over and over, I think about my body and how I am feeling, I have elaborate day dreams. This works until I start to feel physically bad. Today this happened after four miles, just as I was starting my third and final loop. My face flushed and my mouth dried and stifling heat came up off of my chest and throat; my stomach twisted. That’s when I started thinking about how my body will only get better at this if I push it; how you have to constantly put yourself in an uncomfortable zone to improve. It’s not like I say this to myself in some motivational speaker kind of way. I say it in a grudging, angry, so-why-the-fuck-am-I-doing-this way. Also, and I mean this, I think about how many people have encouraged me, and how many people have supported the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society because I am doing this, and how doing this is my end of that bargain. That’s what I think about when I really want to stop.

Also I identify plants, because I am a science geek. But that was harder here in a different climate zone, where the plants are different. Today I could only i.d. a few: coast redwood, some cotoneaster, a bottlebrush tree, rockrose, Hollywood juniper. Most of the other plants were strange desert-looking things with smooth bark and glossy leaves. The air as I ran past was sweet and citrusy.

I finished my run by a taqueria, and it’s the longest I’ve run so far, maybe ever. And when I finish that on marathon day I’ll still have twenty miles left to run.

2006-02-16T21:51:00.000-08:00

I just got back from a solo run. It was not as bad as the solo runs of my first two weeks. In fact for much of the run – the maybe 40% when I was not singing this particular verse of Christmas Carol by the Nields – I was thinking about how quickly things have gotten better. It has been less than four weeks, but I’m no longer breathless after five minutes. I no longer feel like vomiting after twenty. I no longer feel, when my forty-five minutes is up, that I could not possibly run any farther. I currently feel that if I really, really had to – if someone was very slowly chasing me, say – I could probably run for an hour and a half without dying.

Among other signs of progress is my disappearing stomach. I made it to twenty five with one of those eat-everything-in-site-with-no-consequences metabolisms, but for the past few years my waistline responds directly to my diet. And diet I don’t. I also can’t say I particularly care, aside from the sudden unwearability of some clothes I used to like. But! The first day I went running I was specifically unfond of my stomach. It shook and gurgled and felt unpleasantly heavy and off-balance. It felt like an unwanted passenger around my middle, and running, frankly, is bad enough as it is.

Today, however, I realized that this passenger is substantially smaller. I didn’t come to notice this before because I tend to wear my pants and skirts somewhere around my hips. In any case the smaller stomach – which I’m attributing directly to the running – is, in turn, making the running much more pleasant. Three cheers for positive feedback loops.

I still don’t like solo running as much as running with Ty, who tells me about the cornfields and hickory trees of central Pennsylvania, and who wears a watch so I don’t have to think about how much longer we have to go. But I ran today in a big loop that crossed two bridges over the Willamette as the sun was going down, and I smiled at other runners, and - though I still think it would have been more fun to be playing soccer or lacrosse – I am home now, and I feel pretty good.

2006-02-15T17:14:00.000-08:00

So, here’s something you runner-types predicted, but I never believed you: I am going for a run in half an hour, and I can’t wait. I would go right now if I wasn’t waiting for Ty. I am downright looking forward to this run.

I had a crappy afternoon. My thesis is behind schedule, a job that was offered to me turned into a different, less desirable job with fewer hours, and I haven’t been able to focus all week. I have no idea what I will be doing in four weeks, or where, or with who. I am sitting here at this computer, not working on my thesis, looking out the window and thinking, I would like to be running right now, it would be cold and sunny and I wouldn’t have to be dealing with any of this.

Well shit.

2006-02-14T13:38:00.000-08:00

My plan was to write about this ridiculous running book I’ve been reading, full of stupid cheesy sentiments about running, but that’s on hold for now. Because yesterday I sent out a fundraising email, and this morning suddenly my inbox was full of encouragement. And the little runningman on my fundraising page is now running over a big “17%” instead of over a sad little “2%”. So instead of mocking the running book and all it stands for, I want to say thank you thank you thank you to everyone who let me know that this might not be such an awful idea after all, and who made pledges to push my little runningman forward, and who maybe did one or both of these things while also calling me a variety of creative names for crazy, which I will compile for a future entry. Really, thank you. I will think about it while I’m running and it will help me keep running.

Next time: more making fun of running.

2006-02-13T12:22:00.000-08:00

Today was the Truffle Shuffle, an annual Eugene run sponsored by a local chocolatier. You run four miles and get a big chocolate truffle. Since (a) that’s one mile less than the run I was supposed to do this weekend and (b) a big chocolate truffle was involved, I signed up.

Eugene is currently in the midst of fake spring, the two weeks in February when the sky clears, the rain disappears, and the temperature rises. Consequently I decided to run in a skirt, specifically a skirt my mom made me in junior high that is blue with little palm-treed tropical islands printed on it. I pulled on this, my Team in Training jersey, and my speedy new sneaks and met up with Emilee, another TnT runner who is also the roommate of my friend Julie. We biked over to the park and found the registration tent, where we got big paper numbers to pin to our stomachs. I was 1462. My first big paper number ever.

We headed up to the starting line, where runners from the earlier two mile race were just coming in. We cheered and stretched and marveled that we were doing the long race of the day. As start time neared we ran into Aaron, another TnTer, and the three of us made our way to the start.

The starting line was more of a starting mob. The crowd numbered in the hundreds. Eugene is also known as Tracktown – it was home to Prefontaine and is about to host the Olympic time trials – and the crowd had its fair share of hard core. It also, however, had teenagers in skater clothes and seniors with sweatbands. We milled around chatting until a loud crack shattered the air. After about five seconds we realized that it was probably some sort of starting gun. After another ten seconds the crowd in front of us began moving.

The mob spread out quickly and we settled into our slow, steady pace. Coach Phil had been clear that even when running “short” distances like four miles we were to stick to conversation pace. For us this turned out to be 10-minute miles. For those of you new to running, that’s pretty fuckin slow. As a frame of reference, there are people who run 4-minute miles. Not that they do it for a whole marathon, but even so… people finish marathons in just over two hours. For those of you new to math, if we had maintained those 10-minute miles for another 22 miles – to total the length of a marathon – said marathon would have taken us 262 minutes to complete. That’s almost four and a half hours. Four and a half terrible, terrible hours.

Not that this mere forty minutes left me begging for more. Between feeling overheated in the sixty-degree weather and my first awkward, non-hydrating attempt at drinking-while-running, these four miles left me feeling unfit and graceless as ever. Fortunately there were good parts: all of mile two had an intuitive rhythm, where I just looked straight ahead and let my body run; the finish felt energizing and endorphiny. But the rest… ugh. This is going to get better, right?

2006-02-10T09:37:00.000-08:00

So here’s one thing I’ve learned about myself so far: I don’t run well alone. I don’t run as far or as fast. Twice these two weeks of training I’ve tried to run alone, and both have been sad little runs. My internal running monologue is not nearly as effective as my internal rainbiking monologue or really any of my other I-don’t-like-this-but-I’ll-keep-doing-it-anyway monologues. And then I let myself cheat. So I’m going to try hard not to run alone.

Speaking of rainbiking, it’s time for Reason Two (again, in no particular order) that I am running this marathon: I hate running, and I’m always curious if I can stop hating the things I hate.

In my adult life I have warmed up to lots of things I once hated, and some of them I have even come to love: Ethiopian bread, cell phones, country-western music, Volvos, the Economist, oak trees. In addition to Things I Once Hated That Now I Love, I have two other hate-related lists: Things I Once Hated That I’m OK With Hating, and Things I Once Hated That I May Yet Come to Love. Right now running falls into this last list, keeping good company with curry and wheely suitcases. This marathon, then, will be the decision-maker: will I come to love running, or will it be relinquished to the middle pile, languishing for unexamined eternity with radio call-in shows and caraway seeds?

2006-02-05T14:56:00.000-08:00

We opened the front door at 7:30 on Saturday morning and a crack of thunder shook the porch. This didn’t seem like a good omen, since thunderstorms are even less common in Eugene than neckties. Nevertheless Betsy and I hopped in my truck and drove to meet the crew.

We ran from Oakway Mall down to the river, then followed the bike path for a mile between the highway and the brown, churning Willamette. We crossed it on one footbridge and looped back on another miles later. The rain fell in slanty streaks, and wind whipping off the water blew across our path. But it’s not so bad, running in the rain. Not nearly as bad as I expected. The warmth of running balances out the cold elements, and the rain washes the sweat from your forehead. I felt a little messy, but I didn’t feel freezing. I didn’t feel soaked. I didn’t feel defeated.

I ran the second half of the course with Jeb, a recent grad of my department who I recognized at the first organizational meeting. He keeps a faster pace than I would on my own, so I kept it too. I think this is really good. I think this is the sort of thing that helps me push outside my comfort level and eventually improves my stamina. Of course eventually hasn’t come around just yet, so on this particular morning the pace made my breathing hard and my stomach sloshy. I have discovered that I can control my breath if I focus hard enough – I can actually will my breathing under control, which I find amazing and Matrix-like; there is no panting – but there’s nothing I’ve been able to do about my stomach so far. It bothers me every time.

At the end of our run we had a shoe clinic at the Eugene Running Company. Shivaun, one of the owners, put me on a treadmill and filmed my running. We watched the tape and she explained the various inconsistencies of my foot physiology and how the right shoes would prevent these from causing me injury. Ever since my college co-rower Bridget told me freshman year that my shin splints were likely the result of my three-year-old sneaks – which proved absolutely correct, and to my great gladness cleared up the problem – I look upon good gear with grateful awe. So I left with a new pair of Asics that feel like slippers. They have silver and purple stripes, which I think will also help my speed.

2006-02-03T19:01:00.000-08:00

Understandably, quite a lot of people have been asking me why I am training to run a marathon, since the more obvious “I enjoy running” is clearly not the answer. Since I can think of six reasons right off the top of my head, I am initiating a new series of blog entries to address the question.

I’ll go ahead and kick that series off now, since I don’t feel like working on my thesis. So with no further ado and in no particular order…

Reason Number One: I am inexcusably out of shape.

Admittedly, I have not spent much of my life “in shape.” There was that one year in college on the crew team, working out six times a week for several hours a go, running up stadium steps two at a time and erging until I fell off. At the end of that year I had the realization that I would never, ever in my whole life be that in shape again, which was both inspiring and discouraging.

Since then I’ve only exercised accidentally. As in, I don’t avoid activities that are exercise-like, but I don’t exercise for the sake of exercise. So I hike in the summer and bike to school and play random sports and walk just about everywhere, but I’ve never signed on to that three-times-a-week-for-thirty-minutes thing. Sporadically I’ve had periods of serious fitness, like the six months in Costa Rica working in a garden almost daily, or the two-week timber framing course. And then I get in shape really fast, and I get strong and I feel great. And then I stop and it all goes away.

Usually backpacking gets me in shape – and I mean the kind where I travel around with a backpack, not the kind where I’m hiking – and I was backpacking through Central Europe for several weeks last summer. But this particular bout of backpacking was preceded by six months in Amsterdam, where my second home was a bar. If I listed out the ingredients of my Amsterdam diet, FDA regulations would require that beer appear first. In addition to picking up conversational Dutch and an adolescent fondness for text messaging, I also acquired what the Dutch might refer to as “ten kilograms.”

I had arrived in Amsterdam in January with several pairs of pants. When I dug these out of the closet depths in June to re-pack them, I found them resoundingly unbuttonable. Though at first I hypothesized a high-temperature drying accident, the localization of shrinkage to the waistbands did not support my theory. With passing worry I donated them to my chain smoking but endlessly skinny Spanish friends and filled my newly roomy suitcases with flashy Dutch design books.

Though I made lemonade from these lemons, the beer’s damage has lingered. And now I am ready to once again climb multiple flights of stairs with ease. I am ready for the return of some muscle tone. I am ready to broaden the scope of my recreational sports participation beyond travel bocce.

So that’s one reason.

2006-01-31T22:20:00.000-08:00

I don’t know why or how, but things have gotten better.

After two days of hobbling about, I was a bit hesitant to pull on the sneaks for my scheduled Monday run. All the same, run number two seemed a little early to start falling behind schedule. So after a day that started at four in the morning and included a career-day style trip to Portland, I suited up and headed out.

As fortune had it my friend Ty has decided that now is a great time to get in better shape, so he volunteered to come along. I was concerned about keeping up with him – Ty being quite a bit taller than me. But as it turns out, being tall makes you heavier and being heavier makes running harder, so I more or less did just fine.

The best part was we settled on a slow, steady pace, and for the first time I understood what everyone has been saying about “running at a conversation pace.” We managed to talk for the entire forty minutes of running.

Actually, the best part was that we ended our run by meeting up with Nopporn and getting in a hot tub. But, dare I say it? This run was kind of… fun.

2006-01-29T20:03:00.000-08:00

I am so very, very sore.

I am a kind of sore that I don’t remember ever being before – though it’s likely that I was this kind of sore many times when I rowed on the crew team my freshman year of college. But that was eleven years ago now, and I don’t remember it.

This is the kind of sore that makes me understand what it must be like to be old, with a body that you don’t feel you can trust: I need to lean on something in order to stand up, stairs make me flinch, and I caught myself walking down a hallway with my hand on my hip for support. I feel eighty and then some.

The sad part of all this is how little it took to get me here. I ran just three and a half miles. Slowly. It didn’t even take an hour. Just as a refresher here, a marathon is twenty six point two miles.

My Saturday morning started at seven o’clock. Did you know that it’s still dark at seven o’clock in the morning? It was news to me. Which tells you something about my usual schedule. But on this particular Saturday morning my room filled with the rousing Dutch favorites Acda en de Munnik at seven on the dot. I wasn’t as bleary as expected, because nervousness about the running had kept my sleep light and nervous. I fumbled around my room, edgy and distracted, pulling on those items of my hiking gear that I thought could transition to running: a wicking nylon jersey, clunky trail running shoes, clingily unflattering pants that I would usually never think of wearing all on their own. And I drove to the park.

About twenty people, similarly outfitted, were huddled on the sidewalk, blowing into their hands and making quiet introductions. It was clear from the bright eyes and high ponytails that many of them were intimately familiar with this time of the day, but there was a fair share of stunned and sedate as well.

I assumed that, since so many of us were beginners, our coach Phil would lead some sort of physical and emotional warm-up – stretching, advice, and so on. Instead it was more of, “Well, let’s go!” And off we went. I actually stood there for a moment thinking, so, I just run now? And, since that seemed to be what everyone else was doing, I did.

We ran on a bark trail and on the roadsides, under gray but mercifully dry skies, passing dog walkers and lots of cars. I started out in the front with a regular runner named Tracy who chatted casually to my increasingly brief, breathless responses. Then I fell back a bit and introduced myself to Jenny, a graduate student I had coincidentally met the day before on campus. She, too, seemed to carry a disproportionate role in our conversation, and I started to worry that my teammates will think I am uninteresting instead of just terribly out of shape. When she mentioned finishing up her dissertation, I was able to croak out with my first genuine optimism of the morning, “Really! Tell me all about it!”

For the last half or so I ran on my own, somewhere in the middle of our stretched-out pack, trying not to feel too sick and telling myself that my only goal for the day was to finish the run without stopping to walk. And I did.

2006-01-26T14:18:00.000-08:00

Tonight is the Eugene kickoff celebration for Team In Training. This means that I will meet the other folks here who are training for the Mayor’s Midnight Sun marathon, and I will meet my coach… but most importantly it means that now I’m pretty sure I have to start actually running. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, since the specter of running has been hanging over my head for several weeks now, I’m relieved to just get started already. After all, maybe it won’t be as bad as I fear. On the other hand, there’s the fear. Have I mentioned that I don’t like running?

I am fairly confident that this training will involve a number of unpleasant things, things such as getting up really early, getting up really early on Saturdays, feeling sore, being out of breath a lot, feeling nauseous, being overbooked, and being exhausted. The secret of course is that not so deep down I like all of these things. Except being nauseous. There’s absolutely nothing redeeming I can think of about nausea. But nausea aside, all the other stuff feels good almost immediately after the initial unpleasantness. And I know that. So why does this whole thing have such a looming quality?

2006-01-17T22:58:00.000-08:00

This weekend in lieu of the zombie cardio room I went snowshoeing. Snowshoeing is everything good about being active. It starts with sunshine, works up a good sweat, takes a break for snowball fighting and tree identification, and ends with a particularly fulfilling whole-body exhaustion. Since I am not yet in good enough shape to carry on a conversation while snowshoeing, it also provided some nice quiet thoughtful time under big trees.

Quiet thoughtful time has not been my specialty lately. Lately I’ve been trying to finish my master’s thesis, and trying to figure out what to do after I finish my master’s thesis, and trying to learn lots of plants so that I know at least as much as the students in the plants class I’m teaching. I’ve also developed an unfortunate West Wing affliction that – since I have no TV – can only be treated with DVDs containing upwards of six programming hours that I tend to watch all in one go. I realize this is not the best use of my time, but the bearded guy brought the press woman that goldfish, which kind of got to me in an embarrassing way, and now I want to see what happens.

Anyway, the snowshoeing was good for thoughtfulness, and then at the top (or at least what we decided to call the top, which was perhaps not actually the highest point one might have reached) we ate cheese and nuts and bread, and it was satisfying in that way that food is only satisfying when you have just climbed up something. And then we ran down.

2006-01-13T13:52:00.000-08:00

Since all I’ve done so far is complain about running and running-related activities, perhaps you are wondering something along the lines of, why did you sign up for a marathon, moron?

Well, you know those lists you make of things you want to do before you die? I’ve made those lists. Those lists are important to me. When I die I really don’t want my last thought to be I really wish I’d done (that thing)! And as my lists have grown and evolved with my tastes and interests, one thing has remained constant: running a marathon has never appeared.

It’s not that I’ve thought about it and decided I was uninterested. It’s that a marathon was so far out of the realm of my interests that I never even considered it. It would have been like listing “develop gills” or “surgically remove pinkies.” It wasn’t like I paused, pen to paper, and thought, “Hmmm, do I really want to put this down? Nah.”

On the other hand, I have often considered doing a triathlon. Triathlons involve swimming, which I enjoy. Additionally, they are only one-third running. But most importantly, the name triathlon has inescapable grandeur. Triathlons seem majestic, Olympic. You’re not going to find heroes of Greek mythology in the cardio room. They’re out completing triathlons.

Also my friends Erin and Sharon have competed in triathlons, and they both kick ass.

Alas, my current fitness state being what it is, any sort of –on would require serious training that I don’t know how to accomplish on my own. When Sharon did her race in San Francisco, she trained through Team in Training, a nonprofit associated with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Athletes who sign up with them agree to raise a sum of donations, and TIT provides coaches, workshops, and connections to other participants. Sharon raised thousands of dollars for the society with her participation. It seemed like the way to go.

Unfortunately the Eugene TIT is not training for any triathlons this season: only runs, walks, and bikes. The walking wouldn’t be enough of a kick in the ass, and the biking would require an expensive new bike. It was either a marathon or three more months of laptop-illuminated immobility. The jury is out on which would be better for my general well-being, but at least the marathon is likely to inspire more sponsors.

2006-01-12T21:44:00.000-08:00

I just got back from the gym.

I’ve been to the UO gym before, for dance and yoga and weights classes, but today was my first venture into the cardio room. I have been in cardio rooms before, and I did not particularly want to go back. Cardio rooms make me uneasy – all those skinny bouncing people staring blank-eyed into some middle distance under fluorescent lights, doing the same thing en masse in total isolation. Cardio rooms are the Edward Hopper paintings of the fitness universe.

I got on one of those machines that makes me feel wobbly and off-balance and started running without going anywhere. Talley hopped on the machine next to me and enthusiastically punched in some workout for burning calories; I chose one with a single big “hill.” Talley is not someone who would describe herself as peppy or cheerful, but after ten minutes on the machine she had the rosy upbeat demeanor of an aerobics instructor. After ten minutes I wanted to see what would happen if I leaned over and shoved her off. But I was too out of breath.

Not that this comes as any surprise to me, but I am not particularly in shape. My average day involves forty minutes of easy biking and twenty flights of stairs. I eat relatively well and don’t drink too much, and I’ve even given up the monthly cigarette. I could walk all day no problem.

But endurance: not my thing. So, a marathon.

2006-01-11T09:34:00.000-08:00

Let’s just start this with a simple truth: running for the sake of running is not something that I do. When it comes to athletics I enjoy team sports, water, and the sorts of activities that might either be featured in Outside magazine or result in something tangible, like a table or pile of firewood. Running is none of these things.

I don’t like fancy colorful sneakers. I don’t like running shorts. I don’t want a runner’s body and I don’t want a portable music device velcroed to my arm.

Those women who stand at stoplights jogging in place make me nervous. I’ve only known two hardcore runners personally, and I dated them both, and they were both freakishly bad boyfriends.

So I’m going to run a marathon.

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