Race Report from Arizona

Happy Holidays from Arizona. As you can imagine, Bill and I are thrilled to get out of the snow of Washington and visit his mom in Sunny Peoria (where the Mariners have their Spring Training facilities). It’s only been between 55 and 65 degrees, but I’ll take what I can get given what everyone in the Seattle area is wading through just now.

We flew out of Bellingham into Las Vegas on Friday. Then we rented a car and drove to Peoria on Saturday.

Before we left home, Bill located a 30K for us to run while we were here as one of our final training runs before we do the Wakashio Marathon in Tateyama, Japan. Sunday morning we woke up early and traveled about 20 minutes to Surprise, a town to the West of Peoria. This race was sponsored by the Arizona Road Racers, a large running club in the area.

Mornings aren’t my favorite time of the day. I usually feel cranky and groggy until about noon. As I stood in line at the port-o-johns at about 7:30 am, I eavesdropped on some of the local club members talking about the race we were about to run. The woman in front of me said, “I’m just using this as a training run. I won’t be racing this one.” Then she added, “I’ll probably do it in nines.”

Since I can hardly run one mile at nine minutes, let alone 18.6 miles, and since it was 7:30 in the morning and I felt irritated, I silently rolled my eyes and thought, “Show off.” Glancing around at the small cluster of runners congregating at the starting line, I guessed there were only about fifty runners (turns out there were 95 people in the 30K). I’d be at the tail end, as usual.

Fortunately, there was absolutely no chance of my getting lost in this race as I have so many other times when I bring up the rear. This race was to be an out and back route. And I mean we’d go OUT in a straight line, turn around, come BACK. The whole course was on the Bell Road, a street that sprawls with malls, gas stations and mini-marts for miles on end through Peoria, Sun City and Surprise.

When Bill first told me where the race was going to take place I wasn’t thrilled to run for more than three hours along this exhaust-filled path of retirement suburbia. We’ve spent the holidays in this area of the country before, and Bell Road is one of those avenues concentrated with outrageous congestion during the holiday season.

Once we were at the starting line, however, I was surprised and delighted to discover that the Bell Road hasn’t been developed past the town of Surprise and that our route was going to take us parallel to the White Tank Mountains, right through the best of the desert. There were no shopping centers or housing projects on our route whatsoever, just pristine red soil and Saguaro cacti looking on as we made our way out to the turn-around point.

Indulge me as I relive it. I know I’ll be home next week, and I’ll try to do a 22-mile run in the slush and the mud and the cold. I know I’ll cry when I’m finished and then stand in the shower for an hour trying to warm my bones, so I want to keep this little 30K with the Arizona Road Racers in my memory and my heart as long as I can.

When the foghorn went off and I heard my chip beep as I crossed the official starting line, I noticed right off the bat that the road was at an incline. The first nine miles rose very gradually. The grade was so slight it was undetectable at certain points. The sun lit up the White Tank Mountains and their sienna hues were a perfect contrast to the cloudless blue of the sky. I squinted up into the brightness and visualized vitamin D wafting in through my nostrils and spreading through my limbs and into my bones. I breathed in dry, warm air and heard my lungs cheer, “Yes!”

Absolutely nothing eventful happened during this race. The temperature was perfect (about 60 after 9:00). The view was soothing and filled me with reminders that spring will come even to Western Washington. And the course was simple. My body felt light, buoyed by the knowledge that if we ran UP hill the whole way out, we’d be running DOWN hill on the way back.

I waved to Bill as he was running in the opposite direction at about mile eight (for me) and reached the turn-around at approximately an hour and thirty-seven minutes after the gun had gone off. Once again, as I have noted of late, my pace was faster than I expected it to be. Somehow, I’m stronger and faster without being miserable and without pushing myself much harder than I’ve ever pushed.

The way back was just as full of meditative ease as the way out had been. The sun was in my eyes, low in the sky. I noticed shadows from the mountains smile their blessings on the succulents over which they kept watch, and I let gravity pull me forward down the gradual decline. There were two inclines on the way back I hadn’t remembered the first time through, but I had the energy to push up them without much complaint from my quads.

I crossed the finish line at 3:13:07. I think I ran negative splits in the last nine miles.

Bill wasn’t there to cheer me over the finish line as he usually is. I knew this meant he wasn’t expecting me yet, so I went in search of him and found him waiting to receive his first-place award in his age group.

Just before we packed up to come home, we spent a little time chatting with a man Bill had run with for the first half of the race. “Joel” won third in his very competitive age group and fourteenth overall. As we walked with him back to his car he told us how he had tried and failed to finish the marathon distance nine times. We listened to him recount his disappointments (each a gruesome tale of ending up on the side of the road in ignominy and grief) and wondered at how such a strong runner could get so stuck and so discouraged. Bill and I waved good-bye to him and agreed, as we got into our car, that Joel was a victim of Perfectionism.

Once again, I’m reminded that the best way to run (or to love or bake a pie or write a blog) is imperfectly. My philosophy only strengthens with experiences like these: Run only as hard as you want to and let gravity help when you can.

Japanese Food: Getting ready for the Wakashio Marathon

Well, Bill and I are getting ready to pack our carry-on suitcases and make our way to the international wing of the airport once again. This time, we’re traveling to Japan for the Wakashio Marathon in Tateyama. We leave in mid-January. This will be the fourth continent on which we’ve run a marathon! Sometimes I can hardly believe this dream is coming true.

Every international trip requires research and then specific preparations. For example, you may have to get shots to protect against tropical diseases or buy special clothing for unusual weather conditions. For warm-weather trips, I make sure to purchase extra-potent insect repellent because bugs love me. If there’s a mosquito in the hotel, or the town we’re visiting, it’ll find me. Fortunately mosquitoes will not be a problem on this trip to Japan. That’s one advantage of traveling in the winter.

This time, I’m grappling with how to prepare for a different type of problem. You see, I don’t like Japanese food. I know, I know! I can hear your shock! I am the only person in the world who does not like Japanese food. Everyone, Japanese or otherwise, loves sashimi, tempura, miso soup, noodles and those little triangular rice balls with a surprise inside. I can appreciate the occasional yaki soba or California roll, but I’m not a big fan of the soy flavor in most Japanese food. Rice makes me bloated and constipated. And raw fish does nothing for me. I know it’s unusual and maybe even a sin, but it’s just how I feel.

Bill and I have traveled to Japan before and food was a huge problem for me. We went there on our honeymoon in 2005. Bill had a series of business meetings he needed to attend in Tokyo, so we decided we’d add a couple of weeks onto his trip and make a vacation out of it. We arranged an exciting itinerary that took us to Nagoya for the World’s Fair and to Kyoto to see the ancient temples. Then we made our way to Tokyo where Bill spent between about 8:00am and 4:00pm in meetings while I wandered through the city. This suited me fine. I was able to shop and catch up with a few friends who lived within a short train ride. Each night, Bill and I planned to meet back at the hotel room around 4:30 and go out together for dinner. I’d discovered this one tolerable curry dish that was available at most restaurants.

But on our third evening in Tokyo, I had a full-on food crisis one night.

Bill was in his meeting, expected back at the hotel sometime after 4:30. I was there waiting for him, flipping channels on the TV. Nothing kept my attention (it was in Japanese, after all). There was three-quarters of a bottle of Australian wine on the night stand from the evening before. I poured myself a glass and settled on the bed to wait for Bill. At 5:00, he wasn’t back and I was getting hungry. By 5:30, I knew I’d have to get something to tide me over in case his meetings ran much longer. I had a vague memory from our conversation in the morning, while I was still in bed, that a late meeting was a possibility.

I decided I’d take a walk to the grocery store on the corner. We’d had some trouble with grocery stores in the first part of our trip. We had to rely on the images on the packaging to figure out what we were buying. Usually we guessed right and ended up with the yogurt or tuna we meant to buy, but at least a few times we’d been wrong. Once we opened a container and found some kind of margarine spread when we’d meant to buy cheese. Even though it was a gamble, I hoped I’d be able to find some kind of small snack to get me through till dinner. And anyhow, grocery stores are interesting, great places from which to observe a culture close up.

I scoped one out across the road from the main entrance of the hotel. On my way over, I noticed I was just a bit tipsy from my glass of wine, so I crossed the street carefully. I walked in through the automatic sliding doors and breathed in the fishy soy smell that I was getting used to in the supermarkets. I started on the right side of the store and wandered each aisle, looking for something I recognized. I finally located a tiny jar of peanut butter. That sounded good. A piece of bread with creamy peanut butter smoothed on its surface would go perfectly with cheap Australian wine, I thought. I looked at the price on the shelf below it, listed in yen and then picked it up and headed to the check out. On second thought, I decided I’d better dig the calculator out of my pocket and make the change from Yen to American dollars, so I knew what I was spending. $6.39!!! There was no way I was paying more than six dollars for two ounces of peanut butter. I put the jar back in its spot and kept moving down the aisle.

I walked past packages of dry noodles, jars of mayonnaise, cans of shrimp, bags of chips and numerous objects I could not identify by their packaging, though I picked them up and studied them from all vantage points. Finally, I retreated to the back of the store and the meat section. I stood, staring down at raw meat and sea food I’d never seen before. The “deli” section had pre-prepared food ready to eat on the run, but I couldn’t figure out what most of it was. There was a shrink wrapped bowl of teriyaki chicken, but I didn’t have a microwave back in the hotel room to heat it up.

Finally, I decided that some fresh produce would be an easy answer. With my calculator in hand, I returned to the front of the store and faced down the fruit section. There, like an apparition from heaven, was a Fuji apple! I picked it up and squeezed it. It was firm and my mouth watered for its juice. I made the translations from kilos to pounds and then Yen to dollars and estimated that it was more expensive than I’d pay at home, but not as bad as the little jar of peanut butter. It would have to do. I stuck my calculator in the back pocket of my jeans and reached in my front pocket to pull out my Yen as I walked toward the check-out counter.

Standing at the back of the line, holding my apple in one hand and my money in the other, I watched the people in front of me. Each had a little basket full of items I could not identify. They did not talk to one another or to me, though several of them glanced tentatively in my direction and then averted eye contact quickly when I tried to smile at them. I looked down at the apple in my hand. And I waited.

The checker was slow. I observed her carefully. There was no way to know for sure, but she seemed honest. This was crucial because I took note that there was no little screen next to the cash register displaying the price of the purchase. Once she weighed my apple and figured out the exact price, I would be at her mercy. I would hold my money out to her and trust her to pick out the right coins and give me the correct change.

I felt how dependent I was on others in this country. I pulled out my calculator again and tried to guess at the right change to offer so I wouldn’t look like an illiterate idiot, which of course, I was here. The woman directly in front of me in line gave me a suspicious once-over (I thought) while the woman who had lined up behind me looked at me with pity (I thought). God, this was ridiculous. It shouldn’t be so hard to buy a stupid apple without looking like an imbecile. I made a promise to myself to always be helpful to foreigners in grocery stores when I got home.

I looked down at my apple again. Suddenly, although my stomach was gurgling, I was repulsed by this apple. It was nothing but a representation of my shame and ignorance, my cultural ineptitude. It would do nothing but expose me. I couldn’t imagine anything worse in the world than eating this apple. This apple disgusted me! Suddenly, I decided I’d had too many apples in my life. For all I knew this Fuji apple was grown in Washington State, anyway, right across the mountains from me, maybe on my uncle’s farm.

I stormed back to the produce section and replaced the Fuji apple in the perfect pyramid from which I’d plucked it. Then I left the grocery store.

As I crossed the busy street and made my way back to the hotel, I hoped Bill was there waiting for me in the room. I was agitated now. My hotel room was empty. The clock read 6:00. Bill couldn’t be far behind me at this point. I settled in in front of an unintelligible TV show with another glass of wine.

One hour, two more unsuccessful trips to the grocery store and the rest of the bottle of Australian wine later I began to decompose. By this time, I was drunk. I hadn’t eaten since noon, and I was embarrassed by my incompetence and fear of being mocked by the other shoppers. I started to cry.

I cried so hard that I began to convulse. My mascara ran down my face and my nose plugged with mucus. My shoulders shook, and I even had a touch of the dry heaves. All by myself alone in a hotel room on my honeymoon starving, I sobbed.

At 7:13, Bill walked through the door and found me thus. I managed to open my puffy eyes a little in his direction and I saw his alarm. “Oh my god, what happened? Are you okay? Did something happen?” Poor Bill was frantic.

I tried to speak, inhaling sharply between each word, “I – can’t – shop.” Sniff. “I’m – totally – illiterate – and – so – hungry.” Bill sat down on the bed and held me. I wiped my nose on his collar. He stroked my hair. Then he caught sight of the empty wine bottle by the bed.

“Did you drink all of that?”

I nodded. “I – tried – to – buy – food. The grocery – store didn’t – have any.” We were silent while he held me and I wound down a little. Like a mother with a very small child, he brushed the hair off my forehead and lifted my face so I had to look him in the eye.

“Are you drunk?” he asked me. I nodded. “And you’ve eaten nothing?” I nodded. He studied me earnestly and then stood, lifting me to my feet by my shoulders. Then he swatted me on the bum and said, “Get your shoes on. We’re going to McDonald’s to get you some French fries.”

I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of McDonald’s. It was kitty-corner across from the grocery store, but I’d been so focused on wanting to conquer the supermarket, that it never dawned on me to look for something familiar and comforting. I stumbled, heavily supported by Bill, down the elevator, across the street and into McDonald’s. I was struck immediately by that wonderful thick scent of grease. Bill sat me down at a booth and in a few minutes came back with a fish burger, fries and a milkshake. I ate quickly and then sent him back for another round.

We learned a lot from that experience. So as I get ready for this, my second trip to Japan, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and have realized the most important advanced preparation I can do is come up with an eating plan. Here it is:
1. Forego my recently espoused vegetarianism while in Japan. This will open options for me.
2. Try everything, even if it doesn’t smell good.
3. Locate all fast food restaurants in our vicinity upon arrival and do not be embarrassed to eat what is familiar
4. Bring snacks from Costco to tide me over in a pinch
5. Do not drink alone.

Winter is coming

In the eleventh grade I was introduced to the following poem:

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

MARGARET, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I remember my feelings after that very first reading in Mr. Hanby’s creative writing class. I could see Margaret standing among the red and gold leaves, crying because winter was on the way. I knew just how she felt. For me, the changing of the leaves meant the end of summer, the beginning of school and rain. At the time, I only vaguely understood the weighty predictions in the poem that someday Margaret would consciously weep over her own mortality.

Later, in graduate school, Gerard Manly Hopkins’ poem came back to me. As I learned to be a therapist, to sit with individuals and families whose pain came from horrific events I could scarcely imagine, I sometimes wept. When I heard from children of abuse at the hands of their parents or from spouses trying to recover from their partner’s infidelity, I occasionally experienced a sadness that settled in my chest cavity and ached and ached, even after I had closed the door to my therapy room and gone home.

I hung Hopkins’ poem on my office wall to remind myself that even as I ached for the plight of my clients, the twinge in my chest was really my own. It was my pain, my own mortality, my own sadness that gave it such strength. “Sorrow’s springs are the same,” after all. The events of life are different for each of us, but grief belongs to us all.

Last week this poem came to my mind again. I took a run through the woods near my house and found myself treading through thick fallen leaves. I kicked at them as I jogged along and watched as the wind picked them up and they floated down again. The first lines of the poem came to mind: “Margaret, are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving?” And the question changed. “Cami, are you grieving/Over Bellingham unleaving?”

I was. I am. A change is coming. On the surface, it is the change of the seasons. I’ve spent a glorious, comfortable summer running in my shorts, sweating, breathing and dreaming. I’ve run perhaps hundreds of miles on these trails in the last few months. And every moment I was full of grateful joy for the warmth and the green and the dry. Now it will all be different. Now, I will wear double long sleeves and long pants, and I will have to muffle my face to keep the crown on my left molar from freezing and giving me shooting pains that punch me in the eye. Now I will run many days on the treadmill in my garage watching videos when the rain forbids that I venture out to the trails.

But there is also another change that came home to me as I ran through the leaves last week. I’ve turned a corner. It dawned on me that when I turned forty-one this year, I became older than either of my grandmothers were when I was born. I became the oldest person in my family NOT to have a child or beyond that, a child with a child. This year, I started experiencing peri-menopausal symptoms and I noticed things sagging that never sagged before. My mortality is giving a shout out, asking me to listen. And I hear it, loud and clear.

But there is something else I hear, as well. Freedom. As I am grieving that life is so damned short, I am also more of myself than I have ever been. I may be sagging, but on the other hand, I no longer painstakingly cover my sagging body to protect others from my unsightly skin; I trust them to turn away if they must. I’ve given up watching people’s faces with every word I say to determine if they like me or if they think I’m smart or funny. I already think I’m smart and funny. And although I accidentally offend people from time to time, I apologize more easily than ever because I’m not surprised when I make a mistake. I’ve come a long way since eleventh grade.

As summer turns to fall, this year and in life, I will be crying from time to time for what will be lost. I really do prefer the sunshine and the green on the trees. But this season I’m going to wrap myself up in my running gear and, as often as I can stand it, get out into the wind and the mud and appreciate the grit and groundedness of fall, the sparse trees, the bare, basic trunks, the core without the accoutrements. I hope all of you will do the same.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION #5

Removed by author

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION #4

Nowadays, with the economy doing belly flops, several people have asked me, “How do you pay for these trips you take to run marathons all over the world?” It’s an excellent and fair question.

Let me tell you how we do it. If more people were willing to see the world the way Bill and I travel, many people who think they can’t pull it off could afford trips overseas. Bill and I are not rich. We’re just cheap (or smart, depending on how you look at it). Here’s our advice for a traveling life-style.

1. Live to travel: To start with, traveling is a huge priority for Bill and me. We choose to live in a small condominium instead of a big, expensive house. This way, we have very few home repairs, low mortgage payments and reasonable utility bills. We also own our own old cars. My Honda has 125,000 miles on it and I plan to keep it until it’s got twice that. I credit most of our daily financial prudence to Bill. He’s a coupon-clipping, sale-watching, bargain-hunting kind of fellow – and it pays off. (It also sometimes irritates me, but that’s another blog entry.) Basically, we filter our every-day spending through the sieve of how it will impact our travel.

2. When you travel, stay close to the culture you're visiting: We almost always stay at hostels or guest houses. Most hostels have private rooms for couples. Some even have toilets and showers in the room like your run-of-the-mill motel room. The great thing about hostels and guest houses is that you usually have access to a kitchen. After we arrive at our lodgings, we go shopping. We don’t eat out every night. We buy our wine and food at the neighborhood grocery store. It’s fun to shop with local people and learn to eat what they feed their own families. I have also discovered that in a pinch, if I hate the local food, I can live for at least two weeks on peanut butter, crackers and fruit.

We always use public transportation in every location we travel to. If we’re in Chicago, we use the “L.” If we find ourselves in Berlin, we figure out the busses. This way, we rarely rent a car, or if we do, we cut the cost of gas by traveling cheaply for as much of the time as we can.

3. Look for bargains and make friends: When we go site-seeing, we work hard to look for the deals. Almost everywhere in the world, you can find a bargain if you look. If you wait to buy your theater tickets until after 3pm, for example, you might get them half-price. Or if you visit a museum on a certain day of the week, it might be free. We do a lot of research before we leave home, and we ask advice of locals once we arrive. We don’t often take official tours that cost a great deal of money, we borrow the self-guided tour pamphlets at the information desk of the museum, instead.

And we make friends. The young people who backpack around the world and stay at youth hostels are masters at saving money. They are our best resource for free deals and cheap thrills. Every friend you make when you travel is an open door to a rich experience. When we were in Australia, we made friends with the woman who drove our wine tour bus. She came back to our little motel with her own car later in the evening and took us around the county looking for kangaroos and telling us about the region. She would accept nothing from us but thanks (though we offered to buy her dinner and drinks).

If we didn’t travel the way we do, we could not possibly make our way around the world and see all the exotic places we’ve experienced. Basically, for the price of one week’s worth of gas, groceries, entertainment and espresso drinks at home, we can live in another country (minus the cost of lodging). All we have to do is get there.

Blood, Sweat and Tears: Mixing metaphors at the Adidas Panama City International Marathon

I've removed the contents of this entry for a while. Some of the text will be re-worked in my book. I'll post a revised version at some point....

Coming soon - Panama City race report

Stay tuned for a full report on the marathon. I only have a moment at a internet cafe just now. I wanted at least to report that Bill finished in a little over 4 hours and I finished in 5:11:52 (that's my PR, people). The weather was warm (too humid for Bill) and at 4 hours into our race it RAINED (DUMPED)!!!!!! But it was one of the most amazing adventures of our lives. I'll give you the details when I have more time at a computer or when I get back.

Peace.

Greetings from Panama City, Panama. Bill and I arrived at 10PM local time Thursday night. We've spent the last couple of days getting oriented to the city and acclimating to the humidity.

Those of you who have followed my winter complaints (aching teeth, frozen hands, runny nose) will be relieved that I will NOT be complaining about the heat now that I am here in deep Central America. No, I'm quite happy to be warm for a change and look forward to a nice long run in 90% humidity tomorrow morning at five AM.

As always, we have learned some quick lessons about the country we are in. We've learned, for example, that in Panama City, traveling by taxi is by far the most efficient way to get from point A to point B, and that taxi rides are not for the faint of heart. In fact the whole traffic scene, even for the pedestrian, is a trip! Yesterday Bill advised me regarding the best method for crossing a street (and those of you who know us well will recognize Bill's advising me on street-crossing as a recurring theme in our relationship) saying, "Tuck yourself behind some locals and let them lead the way."

Since information on the marathon is in short supply, we don't know if the traffic will be re-routed during the race or if we'll spend the whole 42 K tucking ourselves behind locals to make it to the finish line.

I've also learned that many of the roads don't have signs. For me, as a back-of-the-packer, unmarked roads can prove to be very troublesome. If the course isn't marked or if the volunteers are not plentiful and/or helpful, I may need to find my own way on the course.

Today I started to worry about how, with my limited Spanish I would be able to find my way to the finish line if I find myself alone on the course. To assuage my concern, Bill suggested we create a "safety plan." When you run slowly in a foreign country with a language barrier, I have learned from unfortunate experiences that a safety plan is crucial.

Here is my safety plan for tomorrow.

Along with water and energy gel, I will carry:

1. A map of the course, for what it is worth,
2. A list of locations (such as our hostel and the address of the finish line) with phonetic spellings beside the actual spellings of all words,
3. A list of Spanish phrases that will help me communicate with passers-by or volunteers,
4. Five dollars for a taxi.

Tomorrow morning at what is three AM for my friends on the West coast, Bill and I will be starting the Panama International Marathon. About five hours after that, with any luck, I'll be crossing the finish line. Send us your good vibes (and a good sense of direction for me) and stay tuned for the race report. If I'm not too trashed, you'll get it tomorrow night. If I'm over the edge with exhaustion, I'll post it when(ish) we get home on August 18th.

Peace!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION #3

Q: Which continents have you already done and where are you going next?

A: This is, of course, the most common question I get regarding the seven marathons quest we’re on. Our first continent was Europe. Five years ago, Bill asked me to take a three week trip with him to visit the Czech Republic. He’d made some contact with distant relatives and invited me to tag along and, oh, how about we run a marathon while we’re there???

I insisted on a walk/run routine for that first marathon in Prague. It hurt like hell anyhow, and I wasn’t convinced I’d ever “run” another marathon. Four years (two dogs and a marriage license) later, Bill called me at work and suggested we divert our summer vacation plans to Australia so we could run a little race with only 31 participants. I’d always wanted to go to Australia, so I agreed. It was while I was training for this Australian marathon that I really got on board with the idea of running seven marathons on seven continents. I still wasn’t in love with running (that’s only started to happen this summer), but I started to get the hang of it, to see and appreciate the ways it was teaching me about myself and about life. That’s why, shortly after we got back from Australia, I started training for a marathon on North America and writing about the Seven Marathons project. Bill had already completed several full marathons here at home, so he supported me in my training for the Whidbey Island Marathon, which I completed a few months ago (as chronicled below).

As I said, this summer I’ve had a shift in my running. Even after the Whidbey race, I still felt that I would enjoy the traveling more than the marathoning. I also felt that, although I knew I would be a runner the rest of my life, I would probably only do the seven full marathons and then I’d stick to shorter races and running on the trails around my home. This summer, however, Bill and I decided to take a trip. We wanted to spend some time on a beach someplace inexpensive and warm, so we started to look at Central America and guess what? Panama has a marathon in August!

I took a look at the map and tried to barter Panama into South America, but it wouldn’t go. Nope, Panama is Central America. That’s not one of the continents – and yet I found myself wanting to run there. So I started to train and found that my pace had quickened and my legs were strong and I was looking forward to my morning runs. We’re off in a few days to Panama; we run on August 10th. It’s the rainy (and hot) season there now – should be an interesting experience.

As for our other races, we have a tentative plan to complete three of the four remaining marathons in 2009. On January 25th, we plan to run the Tateyama Wakashio Marathon in Bellingham’s sister city in Japan. Then in June, we’re hoping to take a whirlwind trip ticking off two more continents: The Mt. Kilimanjaro Marathon in Tanzania in mid June and either Rio de Janeiro (at the end of June, 2009) or the Sao Paulo Marathon (at the beginning of June) in Brazil. The exact dates on these marathons are yet to be announced. We’ve chosen these races based mostly on their likely or proposed dates and because they’re in locations we’d both like to visit.

As you might imagine, planning this kind of international travel is a huge undertaking, and several things need to fall in place for us to be able to pull it off. We’ll have to get time off of work, squeeze a bunch of money out of a tight budget, get Yellow Fever shots and get into damn good shape. But what fun! What adventure!

Now, you’ll be counting on your fingers at this point and you’ll shortly realize that I have named only six continents (plus one extra marathon in Central America). So the next question is always, “What’s the deal with Antarctica? Is there really a marathon there?” And the answer is yes, but it’s not a simple yes. As far as we can tell based on our research (and if anyone out there has more information, let me know), there are a couple of tour groups that organize marathon experiences on the great icy continent and they aren’t easy to sign up for because they book up quickly. They’re expensive, too, so we’re saving Antarctica for last, but I promise to keep you posted when we have firm plans.

Next question?

Frequently asked question #2

Q: So do you lose a lot of weight when you train for a marathon?

A: I get asked this question often. We are a culture obsessed with weight and weight loss, after all. I don’t know what other people experience, but for me the answer is no.

I was raised on a diet of macaroni and cheese and sugar corn pop cereal by parents who didn’t have any kind of regular exercise regime in their own lives. I wriggled out of PE classes anyway I could while I was growing up (mononucleosis in Jr. High, driver’s education in high school) and started to see the scale creeping ever closer to the two-hundred mark by the time I was twenty.

Since there is a lot of obesity in my family, I was getting scared – certainly by the way I thought I looked, but mostly by what I saw were the effects of the struggle in my family. I’d watched my grandmother go through a gastric bypass surgery so she could drop a hundred pounds only to suffer from numerous other physical ailments I’m convinced were due to lack of nutrition. I’d watched my sweet aunt suspend aspects of her life because the person she was on the inside was weighed down by obesity and constant physical pain. I didn’t want this for my life, but I didn’t know how to stop it from happening. In those early years, I had made only a vague connection between food, exercise and body weight. I mostly connected food with comfort and ate to fill up empty spaces inside of my heart, not so much to nourish my body.

Then, in community college, I took an aerobics dance class because I needed a PE credit for my associate’s degree. In one quarter, I watched myself shrink by ten pounds without changing my eating habits in the least. I also felt my energy and joy increase. The next quarter I took another class. It turned out that I liked to dance and I liked to move my body. During this second quarter of aerobics, I added a meal schedule to my efforts. As opposed to skipping meals all day and binging before bed, I began eating exactly four times a day: morning, noon and evening, plus a snack. Fifteen more pounds disappeared without any suffering or hunger on my part. By the time I graduated, I had dropped from 175 pounds to 133 pounds.

And that is where I have stayed for more than twenty years. Some of those years I’ve been more fit than other years, but my weight has remained the same (with a brief increase in grad school and a brief decrease during my divorce).

I am five foot six inches tall. I wear a size six or eight – depending on what time of the month it is or where I buy my clothes. Occasionally, I gain or lose one or two pounds, but always bounce back to 133. I’m as average as they come.

At times, I admit, it has actually felt discouraging to work as hard as I have worked to train for these long races and scarcely lose an ounce. Everyone says, “Muscle weighs more than fat.” Yes, but I’m sure I still have enough fat to lose to displace the weight gain due to muscle increase. I’m not immune to thinking that being skinnier and skinnier is what the goal should be. I’m no different than all the other women I know who wish their butts were less jiggly or that their thighs were more shapely. In my case, it’s my stomach I wish were flatter.

Still, in this running process, I’m working toward being content with my body as it is. I don’t want to eat less than I do. And I don’t want to run so I will LOOK better. I run for a hundred complex reasons that have to do with who I AM and how it makes me FEEL. If I lost ten or even twenty pounds I might be lighter on my feet – maybe even increase my running pace a bit. But I’d also have to cut back on my calories, not eat when I’m hungry or cut out some of the things that make my taste buds feel happy. Instead, I want to work toward striking a balance between using food as a comfort to my heart and as a way of nourishing my body. I believe that our bodies rather than fashion magazines should guide us as to what is healthy for each of us. This is where my body wants to be – at 133 pounds.

Now, there’s no doubt that I could add more grains and fresh veggies to my diet. My digestive process loves it when I get my roughage. I’m not giving myself an excuse here not to continue to improve the way I care for my body with nutrition. In fact, a few weeks ago, I visited my naturopath and was advised to cut cheese out of my diet altogether for a while as an experiment to see if dairy is clogging me up (and I’m thinking about it). I’m only saying that, as I get older and as I run more miles, the weight loss isn’t my measure for health and well-being.

A lot of people do lose weight when they train for a marathon. I applaud them if that’s their goal (as long as it’s healthy and not obsessive). I stay the same – and tentatively, a little more every day, I applaud that, too. I want to run because running is power – an invitation to dream and breathe and feel alive with visceral knowledge of self – not so I can look better in my swimming suit or have a smaller waistline. I want this for everyone. So if you can run, just run and let your body find its happy place. If you can’t run do whatever makes you feel alive and let your body find its happy place.

Frequently Asked Question #1

Between races, I thought I might answer some frequently asked questions. As I talk with people about running, non-runners or beginners have asked me several recurring questions. How do you keep your body going for so long? Do you lose a lot of weight while you’re training for a marathon? Why is it important to taper after your longest training run? What do you think about while on the trails for all those hours? How do you choose the races you’re going to run? And, of course, the ever-present confusion: Why do you run? I’d like to start with the “how” and work my way toward the “why.” So here goes.

Q: How do you keep your body going for a four or five hour run?

A: To me there are three keys to keeping up my 12-minute mile pace for the many hours I’m on the trail. Even a half-marathon takes me more than two hours, so I’ve had to figure out how to run through lunch while others are already in the recovery tent. Here are my essentials: peanut butter toast, water and energy gel.

Of course the food I eat all week before a long run is important, but I’ve never been very good at keeping to an overly nutritious diet for any length of time (that will be my new year’s resolution next year, I swear), so I depend on my breakfast before a race or a long training run more than dinner the night before. Here I’d like to offer a disclaimer and say that I am in NO WAY telling other runners what to eat. I have no training in nutrition and one could indisputably argue that I would be a much better runner if I got some advice on the topic. I’m merely speaking to what I actually do. And what I actually do is make myself a piece of peanut butter toast with half a banana on top about two hours before I start my run. I don’t like to feel hungry, and peanut butter seems to keep that feeling at bay for me in a way that oatmeal or even eggs don’t.

The second key to keeping me running is liquid. I prefer water to sports drinks, and I like to put a little sugar free lemonade flavored powder mix into my squeeze bottle just to entice my taste buds as I plug along. Usually twenty ounces will get me about ten miles if I’m well hydrated before I start. I’ve heard it recommendations about what a runner should drink for each mile she runs. I just drink when I’m thirsty and it usually works out.

Perhaps the most important element that keeps me moving is the energy gel I keep in the pocket of my running pouch that bounces against my behind. At about an hour into a race or a training run, those peanut butter toast carbs start to wear out. They leave me, like an unreliable boyfriend, alone and tired and spent, feeling older than my age. Fortunately, there is a quick fix in my back pocket, a fix that, once in my veins, brings me a renewed feeling of well-being, a blessed half hour, 45 minutes, perhaps, of energy. But you have to be serious about your running to be willing to suck the stuff down because it’s nasty shit.

Do you know the feeling of phlegm in your throat, say, when you have a nasty cold? When you’re hacking up the congestion from your lungs? This burst of energy in my back pocket comes in this form – of a snotty, slimy substance laced with the flavor of its foil packaging and the sweat on my hands. When it’s time, I dig one out of my pouch, hold the packet in my right hand and rip it open with my teeth.

I usually have “Orange Cream” and “Vanilla Bean” in my arsenal. Really, the flavoring serves only to distract from the consistency of the stuff long enough to get one swallow down a parched throat. I often gag as I squeeze it into my mouth, and a trace of it sometimes misses my lips and dribbles onto my chin. I wipe it with the back of my hand and then feel sticky as well as sweaty for the next hours of my run.

Like a tube of toothpaste, I roll the package from the bottom, wrap my mouth around the opening and squeeze the remains in. I always “eat” Vanilla Bean first, my “favorite,” if you will, because at least it reminds me of cake frosting at first squirt. Only upon swallowing am I reminded of the texture of raw oysters or lard.

But once I’ve got it down and washed my mouth with a swig of flavored water, I feel the caffeine and sugar trickle into my veins. Sweet, grateful relief! The exhausted tingling in my fingers disappears. My limbs come alive, the spring in my step bounces back. My mind grows alert, and I am once again able to lift my head and my thighs. I swing my arms through the air to give me momentum. My hope of finishing my run returns. I feel alive again for another three quarters of an hour. Then I pull out my Orange Cream and start over.

Each little packet of gel has 100 calories, which is about what I burn every mile while I’m running. During a marathon I might eat four or five packets just to keep me moving.

Hopefully this answers the question about the physical issue of how to keep going. Stay tuned for the “how to” of the mental challenge. And let me know if you have questions you want me to address.

Meeting Dean

“Being a champion meant not quitting, no matter how tough the situation became and no matter how badly the odds seemed stacked against you. If you had the courage, stamina and persistence to cross the finish line, you were a champion.” - Dean Karnazes, in UltraMarathon Man: Confessions of an all-night runner

To me, Dean Karnazes, ultra-runner, is a hero. Certainly he is an extraordinary athlete – and for that alone I am in deep awe, but I admire him for more than that. Dean made a conscious decision in his early thirties to listen to what the sound of his own footsteps pounding on the pavement was saying to him. He bucked the corporate system, turned his back on simple definitions of success and embraced a lifestyle of personal authenticity.

That’s the kind of person I want to be. All my life I’ve wanted to be a writer and I’ve wanted to see all the continents of the earth. I’ve known this since I was eight years old. One weekend, my family took a trip to Ocean Shores, a town right on Washington’s coast. I’ll never forget my first time seeing the Pacific Ocean. I’d grown up on the Puget Sound, which is the Ocean’s water flowing into a large inlet, passed the San Juan Islands, all the way down to the inverted elbow that curves around to make the fist of the Olympic Peninsula. I’d looked across this water toward the Olympic Peninsula and its snow-capped mountain range every day that I could remember, but I wasn’t prepared for what was on the other side of those mountains.

There I sat, a tiny girl on a large driftwood log, looking at a body of water that had no end. I was frightened by it. The roar of it was thunderous to my tender ears. Where did it go? Why couldn’t I see any land out there? The wild, untamable enormity of it made me cry.

That night, by the luminescence of a flashlight, I wrote my first poem about the largeness of the earth and the formidable vastness of the Ocean, which defied my understanding. I’ve lost the original poem by now (probably in a house fire we had when I was eleven), but I remember that it was eight lines and it had an a/b/a/b rhyme scheme – as most first poems do.

When we returned from our camping trip, I started announcing that I was going to travel the world and become a writer. As you might expect, even though I was a very young child and nowhere near the point of having to choose a college major, some of the adults in my life hastened to enlighten me that writing was no way to make a living and that I’d eventually have to dream up other options for myself. “Cowgirl” and “movie star” came to mind, but fortunately I never shared these career ambitions out loud.

A few grown-ups in my life got on board. My great Aunt Margaret bought me a journal and my dad’s brother, Uncle Bruce, got me a subscription to The Writer Magazine. It was over my head, of course, but I knew it meant that he took me seriously, and I loved when it arrived in the mailbox each month as a reminder that someone had believed me when I said I wanted to be a writer.

As life marched on, I was indeed called upon to make some career choices and “writer” did indeed appear to be a rather less than practical option. I contented myself with becoming an English teacher and encouraging my students to write. Later, when that no longer hit the mark for me, I became a therapist who listens to my clients’ stories and helps them articulate and have the courage to follow their own hopes and dreams.

But this year, as I have been reading Dean Karnazes’ brave leaps of faith into living out his impractical passions, I simultaneously began writing about my life which, at the moment, is a lot about training for and running long distance races all around the world.

Dean’s story of moving from stuckness to adventure and personal risk have resonated with me. More than that, his story has shouted at me to seize each day and be alive. Just as there came a moment for him when he stepped out the door in his boxers and old sneakers to go for his first long run in more than a decade, this year I’ve made a commitment to myself to run and write and travel. I’ve decided to take the first steps to write about the relationship between the marathon life for a back-of-the-pack, non-athletic, trudging-along-and-finishing-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth runner and life in general. And as I go, I believe what Dean says is true: If you do it, hard as it is, and cross the line at the end, you’re a champion.

Feeling this connection with his story as I do, you can imagine my elation when Bill forwarded me a message from the Ultramarathon Man himself. I’ve never been one to chase after meeting celebrities, but I knew Dean Karnazes would be at the finish line of the Whidbey Island Marathon, and I hoped to shake his hand and thank him for writing his story. I missed him, of course, due to my late arrival at the finish line (see below). But unbeknownst to me, Bill had communicated by email with Dean, telling him of my disappointment at missing out on the chance to meet him on Whidbey Island. Dean graciously responded with the following note:

Dear Cami,
I am so sorry to have missed you at the Whidbey Island Marathon. When I heard about your endeavor to run a marathon on every continent, I am sure we are kindred spirits! Cami, you are a tremendous inspiration. Please, never stop! I look forward to the time that our paths meet. Until then, keep going strong!!
Warmest regards,
Dean Karnazes

I was delighted. Dean had taken the time to read my blog and then said we were kindred spirits! Naturally, during my run later that day, I floated easy on my feet, with the idea that I might be kindred spirits with a running legend like Dean. But as I think about it, it’s certainly not only the running that makes me feel connected to him. In fact, as is well documented, I don’t find running that easy. I’m not always in love with it, not often eager to get outside in the elements and work my body hard. It is in the desire to live life with guts and personal truth that makes me feel like a kindred spirit with him and with others who live out their crazy ideas of happiness.

Later that week, after getting Dean’s note, Bill informed me that Dean would be in our town for a new ultra-marathon. We decided to take a trip to the finish line and see if we could catch him and thank him for his kindness. We waited after the awards’ presentation for a long while, finally decided we’d missed him again and started to make our way toward our car. On the way out we saw him. I felt shy, but I introduced myself and thanked him for his message to me and for his book. Dean was gracious and encouraging to both of us.

As I’ve reflected on these encounters, one thought keeps arising. We all have opportunity to share our gifts with others, but only if we embrace them ourselves. Only if I follow what calls to me – running, writing, traveling – will the gift of my life be a gift I can offer others. Dean, I hope you know the gift you are to your readers and fellow runners. Thank you!

Highlights from the Boston Marathon

I had never been to Boston before last week, but I was excited to go. I was done with my own marathon training for the moment which gave me the freedom to take a little break from running and to focus on my cheerleading duties. Bill was trained up and ready for the 112th annual Boston Marathon!

We flew out of Bellingham on Thursday. We spent the afternoon in Boston on Friday, mostly at the convention center for the race expo collecting samples of energy foods and pamphlets for other interesting races around the world. Here we were able to check out the Antarctica Marathon trip and talk with travel company representatives about when their next openings will be to cruise from Argentina to the Southern most continent for a glacial running experience (I guess we’ll have to wait until 2010 – darn!). On Friday night, we drove West on the Massachusetts Turnpike to spend the weekend with friends from Seattle who had recently re-located to the East coast. For two days we enjoyed stimulating conversation and amazing homemade vegetarian lasagna (thanks J and R).

But by Sunday, pre-marathon jitters were starting to hit Bill. I don’t get these jitters the way Bill does. I get overwhelmed with terror that I won’t be able to finish at all and drown said terror with wine and cheese the week before I run (which may, in part, explain both my race times and the reason why I put on five pounds whenever I train for a long race). Bill, in contrast, gets a particularly physical experience of nervousness: upset stomach, inability to sleep, compulsive packing and re-packing of his race bag. When the jitters started late Sunday afternoon, I sent him to bed early.

I had my own worries about Monday’s race to contend with. I had to make my way by car, train and on foot to various locations along the marathon route to cheer for Bill who, in all likelihood, would not be able to distinguish my voice from the rest of the throng of cheering fans.

Let me pause and set the scene of the frenzy that is the Boston Marathon. More than 21,000 runners and their families had flown in from around the planet and descended upon the city. Patriots Day, a Massachusetts holiday for which no one seems to know the origin, is also called “Marathon Monday” (as decried by banners hung on lampposts all over town). Streets and subway stops were closed down for the event. Churches offered “marathon blessing services” for runners. And fans numbering over one million lined the course early with coolers and cow bells and megaphones ready to shout out to any runner who had taken the time to write his or her name on an arm or leg in waterproof ink. All this was just the beginning of the chaos. Helicopters swarmed overhead prepared to track the progress of elite and/or famous race participants, and thousands of police and volunteers stood guard over the marathon route ready to prevent fans from interfering with the runners. Reportedly (I never verified this), there was beer offered at at least one aid station and at another, young women offered kisses to sweaty runners who cared to slow down in order to partake.

As I took all of this in Monday morning, after dropping Bill at the start, I was flooded with concern – OK, panic – that I would not be able to negotiate the crowds and the trains and the convoluted instructions in Bill’s race packet about where I could watch him and how I could find him in this crazy sea after the race. The highway leading to the park and ride where I would catch my first train (to get to my first viewing point at mile 17) was backed up for miles. I waited for an hour and a half just to park the rental car.

When I finally parked, purchased a train ticket and boarded the train, I was greatly comforted to find at least a dozen other dazed travelers looking for mile 17. A woman from Ohio told me her husband should be coming through at noon. Another woman asked me where I was from and learning I came from Seattle (that’s what we say when we travel since no one has heard of Bellingham) pointed dramatically at me and shouted across the train to a bleary-eyed couple sitting near the back of the car, “Hey, this lady’s from Seattle too!” We meekly waved at each other, grateful to be strangers in a strange land from the same part of the globe.

“My daughter’s running,” one man offered into my elbow proudly.

“We came from Sweden,” the woman sitting next to him responded. “My son is running. It is only his fourth marathon.”

“You win,” I said. “You came the farthest of anyone I’ve talked to so far.”

But after we all tumbled out of the train and took a short walk to the race course and jostled for places on the sidelines where we might be able to see the runners, I discovered fellow fans from other places in the world including a woman originally from West Africa, now living in England.

I have to admit to being slightly baffled. Why were we all here? I just ran a “hella” hard marathon the last weekend in my own backyard. I think I could argue that the Whidbey Island course was at least ten times as hilly and difficult as this Boston course would be. And there had been probably only, say, 60 fans along the whole way for me. So clearly, I lamented, the difficulty of the feat has no bearing on how much glory one gets for the accomplishment! It’s just another example of how the marathon adventure, like so many things in life worth doing, has to be motivated by something personal and intrinsic and not by the accolades you may or may not get from others.

In any case, I was here to add my screams and praise to the mounting excitement of the crowd.

The thing is, it really is profoundly awe-inspiring to watch the elite frontrunners if you ever have the chance. In spite of all the time I wasted parking, I was at my post in time to see the women, who started early at 9:30 am, and then, not far behind, the elite men fly by. These guys came through so quickly that I didn’t have time to snap a picture of anything but the bicycles that protectively trailed them, but I had enough time to see the way their taught skin flexed over their perfectly sculpted muscles and to admire the way they seemed to perform each stride as if it were the most poignant step in an exquisite ballet.

After the pros came through, there was a break in the action and then the first wave of starters (with the blue bibs) began trickling past us. A woman standing next to me was receiving text messages announcing her sister’s progress in 10 K intervals. I’d never heard of this and wished I had signed up for this service so I could calculate exactly when Bill would be coming through. Bill was in the second wave of runners (with red bibs) that started at 10:30, so I knew I had a long while to wait. I used the calculator on my cell phone to figure out that he would be passing mile 17 at or around 12:45, so I settled in to enjoy the show.

A large group of people decked out in purple shirts and Dr. Seuss hats (the Doctor was born in Massachusetts) stood on a street corner to the right of me and chanted enthusiastically to every runner who came through wearing the trademark purple Leukemia Team uniforms. Before arriving in Boston for the event, I thought the only way to run in the marathon was to qualify, but as it turns out, there are also charity teams allowed to enter who raise funds for their various causes.

At about an hour and fifty minutes into the first wave, helicopters began swarming above us. “Lance must be coming,” the woman tracking her sister by text messages said to me. We had been trying to guess when Lance Armstrong would be coming through. I had read that he was going to try and run the race in 2:45.

“Then our friend, Jason, will be coming too,” I said. Jason had told Bill he thought he might see Lance on the route since he was shooting for a similar finish time. I blinked my eyes and when I opened them there was a wave of yellow sailing past me.

“There he is,” my new friend said.

“Where?” I strained to get a glimpse of Lance, but all I could see was an entourage of buff young men encircling something – or someone. And then I saw Jason, not twenty yards behind Lance’s posse. Jason and his wife, Laura were at most of the races Bill and I ran. We had had the privilege of watching both of their times improve with almost every run, but Jason’s PR to date was 2:59 – and here he was tracking Lance, looking like it took no effort at all to run four minutes a kilometer. “Jason! Jason!” I screamed. “You look great! Whoooo!!!” I knew he couldn’t make out my voice in the crowd, but I was thrilled. “I know him!” I told the woman beside me with pride, as if I knew Lance, himself.

Almost an hour later, having been on my feet for two and half hours (it’s hard to complain when you’re watching marathoners, but my back was aching), I saw Bill’s slightly bow-legged stride coming around the bend. I hadn’t remembered to look to see what color shirt he would be wearing or to take note of his bib number, so I was lucky to spot him in an unusually large group. He was running on my side of the road, and since I had recently nudged some observers out of the way so I could position myself against the guard rail, I had a good view of him. I started shouting his name and flailing my arms, “Bill!! You’re doing great! You look good. Bill!!” With a sudden intuition (he told me later he couldn’t hear me yelling his name) he turned and spotted me, waving back and shooting me a broad smile.

I thought this meant that he was feeling good. His knee must not be bothering him and he must be having a strong go of it.

Sadly, this is all I saw of Bill’s race – thirty seconds, a wave and his butt jogging away toward what the Bostonians call “Heartbreak Hill.”

It was time for me to leave my new pals and cram myself into a train and ride into the downtown area. Once there, I had to weave my way through six blocks of detours just to cross the street only to discover that I couldn’t get within a mile of the finish line. Then, I had to get lost among twenty thousand marathon finishers all wearing the same foil blankets and to fight an anxiety attack when Bill didn’t show up in the designated family meeting area even an hour after his race should have been done.

When he finally arrived under the letter of his last name in the family area, I was so grateful to see him that I cried. He’d had a good race time (3:42, which qualified him for next year’s race), but it had been a harder race for him than I had guessed. At 15 miles he had gotten sick and had to take a four-minute break at a port-o-potty (I didn’t ask what happened in there, but four minutes in an outhouse is never pleasant). And the hill had felt much longer than he remembered from the first time he ran the race in 2002. He had spent an extra long time in the recovery area stretching and rehydrating before making his way to the family area because he was still fighting a mild nausea.

I didn’t bore him with my navigational trials until much later when we both had a couple of drinks under our respective belts and his queasy stomach was just a memory. At that point I told him that I had concluded small races were more fun for fans and big races were more fun for runners. Bill agreed with me, of course. In the past eight days he’d gotten to be a fan at a small race and a runner in a big one – the best of both worlds.

We climbed in bed that night, both having earned our exhaustion, excited to wake up the next day and check finishing times in the paper.


Finishing times that interested us:
2:07:46 – Robert Cheruiyut – Men’s #1 finisher – from Kenya
2:25:25 – Dire Tune – Women’s #1 finisher – from Ethiopia
2:50:58 – Lance Armstrong – famous cyclist wearing yellow
2:56:02 – Jason – awesome runner – I know him!
3:42:28 – Bill – my #1 finisher – from Bellingham

Uphill Journey - The Whidbey Island Marathon

Let me tell you about the Whidbey Island Marathon. Saturday, we took a drive down to the race expo to pick up my race packet and decided to drive the course so I would know where I was going in case, as in the Birch Bay run, the volunteer force was diminished by the time I came through and there was no one handy to show me the way. After getting lost or nearly lost in Prague, Mudgee, and Birch Bay, I’ve learned my lesson: Study the route.

As Bill drove, following the course map, pointing out the turns, I kept repeating, “Holy shit! Another hill.” The course was up, up, flat, up, down, up, up, up, down, up, up, flat, up, up and so on. I’d heard this course had hills, but every time I brought it up during my training, Bill would reassure me, “It’s no worse than Mudgee. You’ll do fine.” But now I was seeing with my own eyes that this race was much hillier than Mudgee. Bill continued to tell me that it would be no problem, even as we put the car in second gear up the mile-long hills I would have to traverse the next day.

Self-doubt is a tenacious little monster, isn’t it? A thousand other people can tell you you’re great, or capable, or smart, or strong – but ONLY your opinion of yourself can chase away self-doubt. I fought with that doubt as we continued to drive the route, vacillating between, “I’m trained well. I know I can do it,” and “You’re hosed. Those hills are going to kick your ass.”

“Well, I guess I can walk if I have to,” I concluded as we sped past Oak Harbor High School where the finish line would be. I would fall back on my motto: I don’t have to be good or fast, only committed.” So, although I had hopes of beating or at least matching my time from my last marathon, I could see it was unlikely, and I fell back on my belief that “doing” is more important than “winning” or, in my case, “not sucking.”

I managed to sleep on Saturday night and get myself up in time to dress, drive to Starbucks and order a double, short, sugar-free cinnamon soy latte and make it to the starting line ready to run for more than five hours. Bill caught a glimpse of Dean Karnazes, the Ultra-marathon Man, crossing the starting line just before I came through.

The course was beautiful (hills notwithstanding) with rolling fields and glimpses of the harbor, and the weather was at least partially cooperative, sprinkling only a little rain on me at about mile 17, but the highlight of the race was running with a man I met along the way at about mile 12 who, with his own determination and commitment to the marathon, took my self-doubt, crumpled it in a little ball like used foil and tossed it off to the side of the road. His name is Mel and he is seventy-five years old. Bill had pointed him out to me before the race began, so I knew a little about him when I caught up to him on one of the rare flat points in the race.

He ran with hunched shoulders and his head tucked down and thrust forward with determination. Mel’s pace was actually slightly slower than my own, but I was happy to reduce my speed to have a talk with him while I recovered from one of the hills we had just conquered.

“Hey. How’s it going?” I asked as we settled in side by side.

“So far, so good,” he answered.

“I heard this is like number four hundred for you.”

“No. Only three-hundred and thirty one,” he corrected. This didn’t change my awe. How, and more importantly, why, does anyone run hundreds of marathons?

“When did you start running?” I asked.

“I didn’t start until I was fifty,” he told me. It turns out that he had watched his father throw his hands up and let life go “down hill,” at fifty. Mel had decided that fifty was the time to start playing, and for him that meant running. “Yep. The first year I ran one marathon and hurt so badly afterwards that I told myself I’d never do it again.” I knew the feeling. “But I recovered. And so the next year I ran two, and the year after that four. The year I retired from work I ran more than twenty.”

I looked over at him. He wasn’t any taller than I, and he was of average build. His posture wasn’t great, and he was breathing heavily enough for me to worry that this could be his last race. But he wasn’t slowing down. The more we talked, in fact, it seemed to me, the faster he ran. “Last February,” he went on, “I fell out of a tree and hurt myself. Had to take some time off.” He had just started up running again in the past few months. The last week he’d run a race in Yakima, this week the Whidbey Island Marathon and next weekend he would do Wenatchee. The goal was to run without walking. This is how he would know he was back up to speed, despite the pain he had in the hip he’d broken falling out of the tree and the pain he had in the other hip from accommodating his broken side.

We ran silently together for a while. I contemplated the privilege I felt running next to Mel and made a conscious decision to put aside my self-indulgent worry that the hills on this course were going to make me miserable. Maybe they would, but I was just getting started in this life. The journey was hard for all of us, but if Mel could do it, with his chipped hip and his seven and a half decades of life, I would do it, too, and be grateful that I was on my feet.

I bid him goodbye and ran ahead on the next downhill. There is little exchanging of names during a race, I’ve noticed. People cross paths, just this once in their lives, during a brutal endeavor that takes every ounce of focus. Those of us who run slowly enough to hold conversations with one another do so in virtual anonymity. We want the camaraderie in the moment, but the commitment is to the task, not to the relationship at hand. Mel wouldn’t know who I was or how our discussion challenged me to stop my internal whining.

Most of the rest of the race I ran alone. I started to hurt at mile 21, a gigantic uphill that was followed by a steep, fast down before the beautiful homes and beachfront of the West Beach Road came into view. I took the downhill slowly to save my knees and when I finally reached the flat stretch that rode along the water, I saw Bill’s smiling face coming toward me in the other direction. I was thrilled and grateful to see him. He replenished my water and snapped a few pictures and, most importantly, gave me a push up the second to last hill before running ahead to meet me at the finish line.

When you run slowly, like me – or Mel – the finish line isn’t what it is for the people at the center of the pack. There are no crowds, little cheering, and sometimes, all the food has been eaten. The awards ceremony is over and the port-o-potties are being hauled away. This is the scene I saw at the finish line as I came in on Sunday. Even Dean Karnazes had departed the event, leaving the back-of-the-packers to ourselves.

You have to have an internal locus of celebration, I have decided. You have to let your own sense of accomplishment serve as the reward for the long journey you’ve just traversed. I crossed the finish line of the Whidbey Island Marathon at five hours and thirty-one minutes. I took my medal, grabbed a bottle of water and continued walking for about twenty minutes, stopping to stretch now and again, to prevent my legs from cramping. Bill was there to take my picture and offer a high five – and to drive me home, back to our lives.
I did it!!

I checked the race results on the web, by the way, and Mel came in at five hours and fifty-five minutes.

I DID IT!!!!

Stay tuned for details and pictures.

The "Tail End" of My Training

Well, one week till the big event! Think of me next Sunday between 8:00 AM and 1:15 PM. I’ll be out there on Whidbey Island with hundreds of others willing my body to repeat the same motion for over five hours.

Send your thoughts, prayers, intentions, or whatever influence you have in the universe to the weather gods and insist on NO rain or wind, if you don’t mind.

I’ll be spending this week eating pasta, stretching, drinking water, peeing, drinking water, peeing and syncing my iPod. Saturday, Bill and I will drive down to the race Expo where, hopefully, I’ll get to meet Dean Karnazes (you know, Ultra-marathon Man). Of course, meeting Dean will be only one of hundreds of opportunities to feel inferior next week, but it will be worth it to get a real-life glimpse of his perfectly engineered physique.

I was reflecting on “physiques” this week and thinking about how the one thing you get to see at the back of the pack that you don’t get to see at the front is the variety in the human ass.

At the front of the pack you encounter only one kind of ass, really – the ass that is taut and muscular, that moves obediently in concert with the rest of the body. The gluteus maximus is fully engaged and flexed with each stride as the finishing touch after the calf muscles and the hamstrings have done their part. At the back of the pack we run differently and the renegade ass has a life of its own. The leg muscles do the work of moving the body forward and the job of the ass is to bounce, in its entirety, up and then down with each stride, so that the skin feels the impact.

From the back I have seen the behinds of many an interestingly shaped personage (and I can’t deny that my shape may be equally as unusual as some of those which have passed me, but, let’s be honest, there aren’t many runners on my tail). I have seen the wide, cellulite-laden bum, the flat but round rump, the breech of the well proportioned thick-stumped person, the bubble fanny, and the dangling duff, among others, all shoot ahead of me. At first I was alarmed by this. Should not fitness, size and proportion (or age, for that matter) bear some resemblance to one another, giving visual cues as to who should seed herself near the starting line and who should linger further back? Should not the skinny people move forward in the pack and the plumper ones meander behind? But this is not the case! Not only have I seen the larger variety of asses at the back, but the smaller and the lankier ones as well. Tall, elongated buns and tiny, compact tushes linger just in front of me near the back of the pack. What sense can be made of this?

By now, I have realized that shape and girth have almost nothing to do with speed and fitness level. We have been sold a bill of goods, taught to regard size as the measurement for, not only beauty, but health as well. As I plug along behind almost every imaginable variation of the human body in each race I run, I think, “Hogwash!” There is some other mysterious factor. Genetics? Training? Diet? Determination? I don’t know.

What I do know is that the longer I’ve been running, the greater admiration I have for the people who join me, some of them against their better judgment, no doubt, or against the jeers of friends or family who have said, “YOU, run a marathon? Ha!” Each ass that passes me has a story about how it got started and why it is doing this crazy thing we are all doing together – and yet alone. And those stories, when I get to hear them, inspire me to keep running. Usually people have emotional beginnings to their running careers. Usually, the meaning at our end of the race is not in the speed but in the completion and personal sense of victory (perhaps not unlike the asses at the front of the pack).

One more week until the Whidbey Island Marathon! One more week to get my ass in gear!

The Birch Bay International Road Race

Just now I sit on my sofa with my dogs. I’ve got Dancing with the Stars on the TV. Today has been a non-running day, a day off, and I earned it.

This weekend we ran the Birch Bay International Road Race 30 K (18.6 miles for those of us South of the Canadian border) on Saturday and then the “Take Back Our Trails” 5 K on Sunday (more about that later; it deserves its own entry).

On the way up to Birch Bay on Saturday morning (about a 20 minute drive northwest from our house), wet snow pelted the car and quickly melted on the windshield. Snow at the end of March is almost unheard of here, but there it was. Have I mentioned how much I hate running in the cold and the rain? Ditto for the snow, only more.

I must say that if I didn’t live in Washington State, if I hadn’t become used to, and therefore nonchalant, about our fjord-like waterways, evergreen forests, our dark, mysterious San Juan Islands and the quaint artistic communities that inhabit them, I would think of this place I live in as the most beautiful place on Earth. If I were a visitor, particularly in the Summer, and I visited the Puget Sound area on vacation, I would go home to the Midwest or California or wherever I came from, sell all my possessions (which I would need to do to accommodate the impending rise in my cost of living – it’s expensive here), pack up my family and move to the Northwest.
But I’ve been here all my life and, given to complaining and whining as I am, most days I think of this place of my birth as an overly cloudy, dark, frigid, sopping wet terrarium which intentionally persecutes me with chill and drizzle ten months of every year of my life.

Still, I work hard to appreciate the gifts nature has bestowed on us here and to see the land and the water through the eyes of visitors rather than through the eyes of Seasonal Affective Disorder. And that is why I can say that Birch Bay is one of the most picturesque communities in our area.

On this 30 Kilometer run we were about to embark on, we would take in the scenery along the bay, look across the water to get glimpses of Point Roberts, that little peninsula of America that you have to cross into Canada to get to, meander through Birch Bay State Park and pass Drayton Harbor and the resort homes that surround it. If the clouds lifted even a little, it would be a gorgeous route. I was committed to doing this race whatever the weather for three reasons. First, I needed the miles due to my failure the week before (see below). Secondly, the Whidbey Island Marathon is in two weeks on April 13th and it could still easily be pouring rain daily at that point. I’d better try to get used to it. And third, I really admire the Girls on the Run program, for which this race was raising funds, and wanted to show my support, not only by giving them my money but by being a Woman on the Run (not to be confused with a Woman who Runs with the Wolves)!

Bill and I arrived at the race start, collected our race numbers and timing chips and climbed back in the car to keep warm. We wouldn’t be running this race together but we’d start together, and he would run backwards to meet me at the end if he was feeling strong. That’s our new strategy, we run long races nowadays at our respective paces and then he comes to find me and offer moral support. This has been working well. My iPod is a good pace keeper until the very end of a long run when I feel can kill someone sooner than run another step or listen to another disco song. At that point, it’s great to have Bill’s smiling face come over a hill and hear his, “Hey beautiful. You look great.” I know he’s lying but it always effectively cheers me and gives me a little bounce back. So this was the strategy for the Birch Bay International Road Race.

At the appropriate time, we hustled up to the starting line and, when the race organizer gave the signal for us to start running, Bill and I waved goodbye to one another not to meet up again for at least three hours. By my calculations, this race would take me three hours and thirty-six minutes. The weather in Birch Bay proper was slightly better than it had been on the way up, so at least we didn’t have the heavy snow to contend with – nothing more than the cold and a slight mist off the salt water. I’d rigged a face mask out of a fleece scarf decorated with snow flakes that I wound around my neck twice and tied in the front. I pulled it up over my mouth to protect my rebellious crowned tooth as I started to run.

I jogged in front of two women who talked about the next day’s run to “Take Back Our Trails” in Bellingham. I listened intently to their conversation.

“It was ten AM on a Sunday morning when that woman was attacked,” one said.

“It’s crazy!” the other concurred. “You should be able to run at ten on a Sunday.” We all agreed. There should be rules. Ten AM on a Sunday morning is not the time to be attacked. When a woman has tucked her pony tail into her shirt so as to minimize her femininity, when she runs in the daylight on a well-traveled trail carrying her cell phone and her pepper spray, she has done her part. Did these attackers not realize they were breaking the rules, that if she had been running at ten PM alone on a secluded trail with her hair freely blowing in the wind, we would understand what she had done wrong. But on a Sunday morning!

I realized as I eavesdropped that it was absurd to be more offended by the attack because the runner had followed the woman runner’s code-of-safety-ethics, but we were. We wanted to believe we had the power to keep ourselves safe. Somehow we were forgetting, momentarily, that any attack at any time of day is an affront on a woman’s right to move about freely in her life.

I slowed and joined the conversation these two women were having and the topic shifted to which trails we ran in town and the precautions we each took to keep ourselves safe, further colluding in the illusion that there were ways of preventing being attacked.

Our pace was faster than I usually run. I asked them how far they were going and they said they were both doing only the 15 K. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up their pace for the whole 15 K, but I was glad of the company for the time being, knowing that I would eventually be running alone.

At the four K marker, our time was 24 minutes, which meant we were cruising along at about nine-plus minutes per mile. This being almost three minutes faster than I was accustomed to running, I could only keep up with them for about another ten minutes before I had to slow down. I bid them goodbye, exchanging names with one of them who lived near me so we might meet up and run together sometime. As I plunged forward, I felt my pace was still faster than twelve minutes a mile, but I was comfortable.

I had spent my week eating carbohydrates, laying off the wine, cutting back on coffee and cheese, stretching and drinking water. My body was happy with me and cooperating accordingly. The race course, on the other hand, was not as kind. I plodded on at a decent rate (for me) not knowing how far I had gone. I kept an eye on my watch and calculated my distance based on what I thought my pace was, but there were no markers on the course. Suddenly, all the runners turned into the Birch Bay State park. I followed, ready for a change in scenery. I should have been focusing on the beauty of the place, but as I rounded a corner there, one hour and eight minutes into my run, was the 7 K marker.

I started doing calculations in my head. At the pace I was going I should have completed a 10 K by now. Did they mean 7 MILES? But there was no way I could have run 7 miles in an hour and eight minutes, even with my first three at nine minutes a mile, was there? I knew I had dropped back almost to my usual pace after 5 K. I couldn’t put it out of my mind. The times weren’t making sense to me. As we all continued on and as I dropped to the back of the 30 K pack, the few K markers placed on the course continued to baffle me. When I finally reached the half-way point I sped up to catch one of the only four runners I could see, a woman in my age group whose pace was very similar to mine.

“Do your times seem right?” I asked her when I finally reached her.

“No,” she affirmed. “I looked at the map. We missed a turn at the State Park and I figure we added about 2 K by going around it instead of through it.”

“I knew something was wrong.” I pulled out my own map and studied it as we jogged along. “There was supposed to be a turn around and we never saw that,” I said.

“Yep. We all missed the first entry to the park, so we’re going to end up going 20 miles total, I guess.”

Oh my god, I thought. This was sad poetic justice after last weekend when I cut my run short by five miles and took a ride back to my car.

“Well, I need the miles anyhow,” I said, resigning myself to the situation. What could I do about it now?

“Me too,” she agreed. She was training for the Eugene, Oregon Marathon in May.

I ran ahead again to tell the couple in front of us what had happened. I’d overheard them talking about how their pace didn’t seem right. The woman confided in me that she was worried they would get lost since the foible in the course put us further back in the pack than they had expected to be. I assured them that both the woman behind us and I had maps and that my husband would meet up with me at some point and run us in. I had been either slightly in front of or behind them since the beginning of the race, so I assumed they would track with me the rest of the way.

During the second half of the run, I struggled. We all did. My iPod turned against me at the half-way mark and completely stopped working. And the energy of the crowd couldn’t help me because there was no crowed anymore. There would be a total of 86 finishers in the 30 K, which I now thought of as the 20 Miler, and we would be among the last four to cross the finish line. I set my mind on four hours and watched the minutes tick away. The man in the couple, now running several yards behind me, got a nasty cough and, not knowing how far away our next aid station would be, I gave him some of my water.

I should be able to report on the scenic detail of this run, since I had so much time to look at it, but my mind was elsewhere – wondering if the aid stations would close down before we came along, wondering if the race organizers might even take down the finish line, wondering if I had missed the turn onto Semi-Ah-Moo Parkway while I was wondering about other things.

But my worrying was all in vain. With the exception of one deserted aid station, there were attendants at each of them and someone following us in a van to give us directions. My knees started to smart on the last major down hill, but I knew I was going to make it. Somewhere in the last four miles, I pulled ahead of the rest of my tail-end cohort and was only able to see the lone woman runner far in the distance.

I told each of the aid stations that there were three people behind me and I entrusted my fellow runners to the race organizers and volunteers. This was a mistake, it turned out.
Bill met me with only one K to go. He’d had a hard run and confirmed that most runners in the race had taken the wrong route. We ran in together and, because all the volunteers had gone home, Bill awarded me my medal as I crossed the finish line and heard my ankle chip beep. Victorious and exhausted I raised my hands in triumph, grateful to be done and sure I could pull off the Whidbey Island Marathon in two weeks (well, we’ll see, won’t we).

The race organizers congratulated me and patted me on the back as I crossed the line at 3:51:26. Panting and on the point of collapse I said, “There are three people behind me!”
“We’ve got’em,” one of the organizers told me. “We’ve been tracking with you.”

We waited as the other woman with the map came over the finish line. Bill awarded her the medal with little fanfare besides a high five from me. Next two women came around the bend together. Again Bill awarded them their medals, but I was confused. I didn’t know those two were behind me. Where was the couple I had tracked with the whole race? We waited. Nothing happened.

“There are two more,” I told the organizers as they started tearing down the tents and disassembling the timing clock.

“No, they’re all in,” someone said.

“No, they aren’t,” I argued. “There is a couple, about forty-ish. A woman with a long grey braid down her back and a man with a curly pony tail. There’s no way they came in before me.”

“We haven’t seen them.” I kept insisting that they were still out there and eventually, the race organizers took heed.

Several of us hopped in our cars and drove the course and all the possible routes this couple might have taken if they had missed a turn. No one was able to locate them. Bill and I spent almost an hour driving and re-driving the course looking for any sign of these two lost strangers.

Today, the race results do not reflect this couple’s times, and I’m still worried that they’re roaming around out in Birch Bay in search of the finish line. I know what it is like to get lost, to know you are last and to wonder if anyone takes you seriously back there, working your hardest to find your way in, knowing the awards ceremony was completed before you were half-way through. Being last is like an empty water bottle when you are thirsty, like the hunger for a missed meal. You’re longing for something that is out of your reach any time soon. I know what the fear of being left for dead smells like. It smells like the dust kicked up from others’ running shoes as they pass you, like empty power gel packets, like exhaust when the course opens back up to traffic.

If you’re out there, fellow back-of-the-packers, and somehow you read this, don’t give up the dream of the marathon you told me you were training for. Don’t let a disorganized race take the wind out from under your wings. Keep running!!!

Hitting the proverbial wall

Today the rain is coming out of the sky with a vengeance. I despise running in the cold and rain. But I live in the Pacific Northwest. I live in a place that ranges between 38 and 48 very wet degrees for the better part of ten months of the year. When I run in this weather, I bundle up with several layers and don hat and gloves and rain gear. The one thing I cannot figure out how to keep warm is my face. Several years ago I had a crown put on one of the molars on my left side and a teeny, tiny bit of the root was left exposed in the process. When I run in the inclement weather, as is inevitable around here, the cold hits my face and gives me a whopping ice cream headache that will not quit. Once this happens, I have to complete my run with something like a Charlie Horse pounding behind my left eye socket. Nothing warms it up and stops the throbbing except a hot shower.
Fortunately, this weekend I had the foresight to look at the weather forecast and chose to do my long run yesterday when the temperature was at the upper end of that ten degree range and the sun was shining. The conditions were nearly perfect for what I expected to be a 21 mile run – my longest single run before the Whidbey Island Marathon (which is Sunday, April 13, by the way). I could have wished for it to be a few degrees warmer, but this would be a futile waste of brain cells. We may not see 60 degrees around here until June.
So I strapped on my running belt with all my supplies securely in its zippered pouch and started out for four and a half hours of pounding. The beginning of the run was actually fairly pleasant. I took the same route I had run on my last final pre-marathon training run. Starting at the Squalicum Boat House near where the local whale-watching cruises depart in the summer, I ran past the harbor and took in the hundreds of sailboat masts and fishing boats advertising fresh salmon for sale. Most of the first four miles were in the sun and were populated with walkers and dogs and bicyclists and other runners. This is the best part of any run for me – the part where other creatures join me in seizing a moment in life, breathing in the same cool air that gives me a headache and using the same trails that take me out there and back here every week.
Bill met me after I had traversed into the woods and had been running in the shade for about one mile. One month ago, a woman was abducted and raped on one of our trails in the north part of our city. The running community has been shaken by this. We’ve always felt proud of how safe our extensive trail system is, how well-used and welcoming, even to lone women runners. The terrible violation of this woman runner has scared me and made me adamant about not running the more lonely parts of my training without companionship.
But Bill’s presence, along with a sense of safety, also gave me the perfect “out” when I hit my wall. We ran for an additional 5.5 miles on the Interurban Trail, which runs parallel to the shoreline looking out at the Puget Sound. To our right was the magnificent jutting Lummi Island, green and wooded, and the blue of the water, smiling at the unfamiliar sunshine that shimmered on its surface. To our left stood expensive, majestic homes built into the hillside with their super sized windows and towering chimneys. This part of the trail, as you can imagine, has vast charm, but for me, the overwhelming feeling was the drop in temperature as we progressed into the deepening shade.
By the time we hit our turn-around point in the parking lot at Clayton Beach, my left eye was throbbing and my energy was suddenly, completely depleted. In spite of the two energy gels and the granola bar I had consumed in the first ten and a half miles, I felt sleepy and sluggish. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. I could have lain down, nestled against the unthawed earth, and fallen asleep.
My car was more than ten miles away at that point, but I hatched a plan to “see how I felt” when we reached Bill’s car, which was only five miles away. Naturally, the closer we got to his vehicle, the more sure I became that I wouldn’t go one step further than I had to. The wine and cheese from the night before, the cold air, the option of stopping early and (I later realized by the dark yellow color of my pee) some slight dehydration, all weighed in and convinced me to throw in the towel and let Bill drive me the extra miles back to my car.
Demoralized, a half hour after reaching Bill’s car and our 16 mile mark, I stood in the shower and tried to justify my actions. Everyone hits the wall once in a while, after all. But I really needed those miles. I needed them to know I can do 26.2 in three weeks. I needed them to know I actually possess the psychological and physical endurance to complete that Whidbey Island race. I’ve run the marathon distance before, but my doubts about my running abilities are not assuaged in the least by this fact. This is a different time, a different course, a different continent. I have to be sure I can do it.
Next weekend I have another chance to string together more than 21 miles (though not all in one day). Saturday, we’ll run an 18.6 mile race in Birch Bay to support Girls on the Run, a local club that encourages girls in the third through fifth grades to start running and to run in 5K races around our county. I support this program and wish I’d encountered this kind of confidence building opportunity in my own childhood. Maybe I wouldn’t be so doubtful about my athletic capabilities now if I had. Bill will be running ahead of me in this race and his car will not be available to rescue me before the finish line. In order to get back to where I started, I’ll have to finish.
On Sunday we’ll run, along with many others in the city, a short but important 5K organized on the trail where that woman was raped. We’ll “take back our trails,” the newspaper says, and with any luck (okay – and determination) I’ll take back my miles.

I spoke too soon.

Well, I spoke too soon saying I had a great recovery from Sunday's run. I guess the french fries I indulged in Sunday night weren't nutrition enough to keep away the cruds. After I pushed the "publish post" button on yesterday's posting, I developed some suspicious symptoms. It looks like I may have the flu. I couldn't sleep well and had dreams of my teeth falling out (what does that mean?). My maintenance run may not happen today (not to mention my writing group or my business meeting), so I'll be set back a little in my progress. If anyone has a sure cure before this flu gets into full swing, I'm open to suggestions. :{

First time blogging my training

Welcome to my blog. I'm training for marathon number three in my pursuit to run seven marathons on seven continents. I'll be running the Whidbey Island marathon in April. Runners' World said it's one of the must-run marathons of 2008 - supposed to be as green as they get with very little carbon footprint!

Yesterday I did my 15-mile training run. The morning started out warm, but a cold front arrived just as I suited up to start my run (of course). Even so, I trudged my way through and had a great time. I feel like my fitness level may finally be increasing when 15 miles leaves me spry and energetic. We'll see how I feel at my 17-mile run the week after next.

I welcome comments from anyone running the seven continents. My husband and I have done Europe (Prague) and Australia (Mudgee). I'd like to know your experiences and get your suggestions for 'thons in South America, Asia and Africa.

See you on the trail!