It’s December already. I’m in Arizona for the holiday and enjoying the relative warmth. I love the feeling I have when I can see the sky. I feel the world is large and open rather than tiny and gray the way it feels at home during winter in the Northwest.
This last Sunday, Bill and I ran the Desert Classic 30K for the second consecutive year. We were both recovering from colds that made us stuffy and wheezy, but it was glorious to be in the dry desert, running beside the White Tank Mountains. I had three hours and thirty-five minutes out there to think and breathe. I used my time to reflect on this last year of running and traveling.
We started the year off in Japan with a marathon in Tateyama, followed it quickly with a trip to South Africa and then another to Brazil in June. On top of our inter-continental races, we ran a marathon in Kelowna, British Columbia in October. In between the marathons, we crammed in a number of other races of various lengths and planned, re-planned and planned again for our 2010 pilgrimage to the bottom of the planet. It’s no wonder I am a little tired, a little poorer than at the beginning of the year and a little worldly-wiser than when I started last January.
The journey to complete a race on every continent is almost over. I’ve got one more this coming year and then I get to put on the ring I bought to celebrate my victory. You’ve all followed me from the beginning through the sleepless nights, the bowel problems, the bleeding, the arguments with my beloved and the long, long hours moving toward each finish line. Thank you for coming along so far. And thank you in advance for sticking with me through 2010, as well. I’ve learned so much it would be impossible to summarize the lessons, but I feel inclined to jot a few of them down as I reflect on this past incredible year. They may sound simple, but they've meant a lot to me. Here they are.
1. Always run at your own pace. No one else’s pace will allow you to breathe properly, follow a thought all the way to its conclusion or get into a proper day-dreaming mode. Every time Bill and I violate this principle and try to race together, we both feel agitated and out of sync with ourselves and each other.
2. Believe in yourself when you stand at the starting line. It’s a long way to the finish line, so a good dose of faith gets you started on the right foot. There’s no point in negative self-talk or pessimism. If you have to spend more than five hours with yourself in a messy physical state, you may as well try to be good company.
3. Forgive quickly and often. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from traveling internationally with my partner, it’s that almost nothing goes as planned – and this can produce a lot of anxiety. When people are anxious, they are not their best selves. These moments should not be allowed to define a relationship. When the person I love best acts like he would sooner shove me off the train than reach our destination together, it’s best to forgive the moment he apologizes rather than hold a grudge. I may need the same courtesy in ten minutes or less.
4. Embrace every moment in life wholeheartedly. In Brazil, a young runner from Mexico befriended me and waited for more than an hour after crossing the finish line to see me come through. I’ve learned to fall in love with people quickly and to let them go with an open heart. Every encounter, every intersection is sacred and precious and deserves my investment, even if it lasts a very short time.
5. And finally, keep putting one foot in front of the other. I know people who run the marathon in a little over two hours, but I’m on the course much longer than they are. I’ve learned that the finish will come, if you keep moving slowly forward. This applies to everything in life. Don’t quit on that argument you’re in the middle of or the paper you have to write. There’s a finish line somewhere out there. Of course, there’s always another starting line, too. Life doesn’t give us much rest, but it comes in cycles so we get a little breather now and again.
I hope you’ve had a wonderful year full of insight, sacred intersections and moments of celebration at the end of your races. Happy New Year and here’s to the races yet to come!
In March of 2010, I completed my seventh continental marathon distance. Follow me now as I keep running and try to finish a marathon in all 50 U.S. States before I turn 50.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Antarctica Update
Well, I’m getting personal messages from friends and readers asking what’s going on with regard to our trip to Antarctica. I’ve been a little out of blogging commission for a couple of months. It isn’t that I don’t have plenty to say. If you know me, you know that’s true. It’s just that there’s almost too much happening; it’s hard to pick what to write about. I’ve felt bogged down and blocked to tell the truth. A few days ago, because the weather was cruddy, I ran about five miles on the treadmill in my garage and watched an episode of Six Feet Under from Season Two as I ran. There’s nothing like running in a dark, cluttered room reflecting on the topic of death to give you an appreciation for life and encourage you to crawl out from under you metaphorical rock. So here I am.
You may have noticed that I took my posting about Antarctica off of the site. Here’s a very short version of what happened.
We had our trip to King George Island planned out almost to the minute and were getting ready to send our deposit in to the tour company we were working with when we got an email from them explaining our plans had to be put on hold. Apparently, someone had alerted the U.S. Department of State that we were organizing a marathon on Antarctica and (because most of Antarctica is a protected area) the State Department was concerned about this. They, in turn, contacted our tour company and started asking questions about our plans.
In a manner of speaking we were, certainly, organizing a “run” back and forth on a footpath, and the distance we hoped to travel was the marathon distance, but we were only organizing this for a total of five people (enough to charter the flight and to justify the use of a qualified guide on the island). All the tourists that travel with the company walk on the path we had been given permission to run on; we had no plans to divert from the usual routes traveled on the island.
Over the course of the past few weeks, we’ve continued to get messages from our tour company and from a representative of the State Department (who has been quite helpful, actually). As it turns out, it isn’t really any governmental agency that wanted to stop us, though it was because of the questions the State Department asked that got the ball rolling. It was actually the airline that contracts with our tour company who decided they didn’t want to jump through additional hoops to get us permission to run.
If you think all of this is confusing, join my club.
“So what is happening now?” you ask. What’s happening now is that I’m flying to King George Island as planned in March, but I’m not organizing anything. Bill will come with me as far as Punta Arenas, Chile and he’ll hang out there for a couple of days while I fly into the Antarctic Circle and experience King George Island. I will be accompanied by two wonderful women with whom I’ve been in communication over the past few months through the original planning process.
As we get closer to our trip, I’ll give you more details. We still plan on a 42K run/race in Punta Arenas and we look forward to seeing King George Island. Stay tuned for more.
You may have noticed that I took my posting about Antarctica off of the site. Here’s a very short version of what happened.
We had our trip to King George Island planned out almost to the minute and were getting ready to send our deposit in to the tour company we were working with when we got an email from them explaining our plans had to be put on hold. Apparently, someone had alerted the U.S. Department of State that we were organizing a marathon on Antarctica and (because most of Antarctica is a protected area) the State Department was concerned about this. They, in turn, contacted our tour company and started asking questions about our plans.
In a manner of speaking we were, certainly, organizing a “run” back and forth on a footpath, and the distance we hoped to travel was the marathon distance, but we were only organizing this for a total of five people (enough to charter the flight and to justify the use of a qualified guide on the island). All the tourists that travel with the company walk on the path we had been given permission to run on; we had no plans to divert from the usual routes traveled on the island.
Over the course of the past few weeks, we’ve continued to get messages from our tour company and from a representative of the State Department (who has been quite helpful, actually). As it turns out, it isn’t really any governmental agency that wanted to stop us, though it was because of the questions the State Department asked that got the ball rolling. It was actually the airline that contracts with our tour company who decided they didn’t want to jump through additional hoops to get us permission to run.
If you think all of this is confusing, join my club.
“So what is happening now?” you ask. What’s happening now is that I’m flying to King George Island as planned in March, but I’m not organizing anything. Bill will come with me as far as Punta Arenas, Chile and he’ll hang out there for a couple of days while I fly into the Antarctic Circle and experience King George Island. I will be accompanied by two wonderful women with whom I’ve been in communication over the past few months through the original planning process.
As we get closer to our trip, I’ll give you more details. We still plan on a 42K run/race in Punta Arenas and we look forward to seeing King George Island. Stay tuned for more.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Rio de Janeiro Marathon Race Report
GETTING THERE
In order to get from Ribeirao Preto, where we'd been staying with Bill's Brazilian family, to Rio de Janeiro for the race, we took a “sleeping bus” on Tuesday night. The ride was twelve hours. Unfortunately, Bill and I could not both get sleeping berths. At my insistence, Bill took the bed and I took the upright seat on the upper deck.
Why I would make such a magnanimous sacrifice? I can assure you it was completely selfish. If I don’t sleep well on any given night, I’m tired the next day, maybe a little labored in my physical movements and certainly prone to cry more easily than usual. But if Bill does not sleep, his face goes dark and the world becomes his victimizer. He changes from the reasonable man I adore into a threatened rattle snake snapping at every real or imagined enemy (I write this description with his full approval, by the way, and his admission that he deserves it).
It is in my best interest to help Bill get the sleep he needs. I am, one might even say, co-dependent on Bill’s sleep. That is why, after saying goodbye to Ana Rosa, Carlos, Mai, Jussara, Luiz and finally, Dimas, Bill snuggled into his cushioned pull-out easy chair with the fluffy blanket and pillow provided by the bus company in an enclosed heated room while I shifted stiffly in a vinyl chair up above, freezing and watching the hours tick by.
As expected, it was a tough night for me (but still better than the alternative). As soon as we reunited the next day, I was sure to let Bill know that my misery trumped his. Never was I so glad to arrive somewhere as I was to get to the bus station in Rio. A stationary restroom and a cup of thick Brazilian coffee went a long way toward refreshing me before we found our way to the hostel we’d reserved (Botofogo Easy Hostel).
We rested up for an hour or so, but not being ones to let the soles of our shoes grow cold, we soon got down to business exploring the city. From the chaotic avenue that ran perpendicular to the side-street our hostel was on we could see the Christ the Redeemer statue situated atop Corcovado Mountain in one direction and Sugar Loaf in the other. We were in the most beautiful city on earth!
Our most important task, of course, was to find our way to the race expo and pick up our packets. Tired as we were, we located Rio’s convention center, a large, bland cement building that took up two city blocks. We entered it and were greeted by a fitness fair where every kind of exercise equipment imaginable was being displayed and demonstrated to race participants as they wandered around looking for Registration. It took us nearly twenty minutes to discover that all foreign participants had a special registration area where young, energetic volunteers in bright orange jerseys were getting the chance to practice their various language skills. A cheerful young woman greeted Bill and me and walked us through the packet pick-up process with rapid and perfect English.
I’d almost forgotten why we were in Brazil by this point. For a week and a half, we’d been living with Bill’s Brazilian family in comfort, touring and visiting and eating and totally ignoring the other purpose of our trip. But the race expo was evidence that an event with more than 5000 participants was about to take place in this city. Our numbers, chips and race shirts were my personal evidence that in a few days, I’d have to run 42 K. I hoped I could do it. While I was in better health than before my last race in South Africa, Bill and I were both coming into this marathon somewhat compromised.
Let me lay out a few of the conditions under which we would stand at the starting line of our sixth continental Marathon on Sunday:
1. We’d been eating dinner at 11pm all week with Bill’s wonderful Brazilian family. Each day lunch had been served at about 5:00, appetizers at 9:00 and dinner after that. Bill and I had done our best to keep up with our hosts in these late-night extravaganzas.
2. We were both incredibly constipated due to this total disruption of our digestive routines.
3. We’d been drinking plenty of good Argentinean and Chilean wines every night.
4. We had walked at least 100 miles in our explorations of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, and Rio de Janeiro.
5. I had several mosquito bites around my ankles, and Bill had a deep gash in his left shin that he’d gotten by banging it against a bed frame at one of the places we’d stayed.
6. The young people staying at the hostel, while delightful and interesting, kept us awake with their talking in the common area until at least 4am each morning (and in case they’re reading this: We love you anyhow).
We’d do our best, but we had concerns.
During the next days before the race, we met and developed a special relationship with two guys who were staying at our hostel: Kevin from California and Omar from Mexico. Kevin was finishing the very quest Bill and I were on; he was in Rio to complete his seventh marathon on his seventh continent. We understood the time and expense and passion he had put into his dream and we both felt proud to have the opportunity to be part of his completion and celebration. He’d made the trek to Brazil alone, but we wanted to be sure he’d get properly toasted after crossing this finish line. Omar’s participation in this race was just as significant. He was in training for what would be his first marathon in Mexico City and had come to Brazil NOT to finish the Rio Marathon. His plan was to run 22 miles with the pack and then drop out, but when Kevin, Bill and I heard about his training regimen over the past months, we knew Omar could easily finish this race and encouraged him to think about going all the way.
Omar spent an entire day considering our exhortations and came back to the hostel the evening before the race with the announcement that he would run the full marathon on two conditions. One was that he would do it slowly (four hours, he said). The other was that we were all sworn to secrecy (sorry Omar!). He wanted his family to be able to celebrate the Mexico City Marathon with him as if it were his first.
Together we were “Team Rio!”
RACE DAY
Sunday morning came early. We’d barely fallen asleep at 4am as the hostel quieted down when our alarm sounded at 4:30. At 5:15, Team Rio jammed itself into a taxi and made its way from our little purple hostel to the finish line at the Flamengo Beach. We couldn’t see the ocean water in the dark. We couldn’t even hear the waves of the tide over the engines of the busses that waited to take us to the starting line 26.2 miles away in the town of Recreio, but we knew they were there.
This was a point-to-point Marathon, my favorite kind because it makes you feel like you’ve gone somewhere. You don’t end up where you started, though of course in this case we would because we boarded the bus at the finish and rode to the start. Easy come... easy go. I guess.
At the park near the starting line in Recreio, we watched the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean. As we stretched and munched on granola bars, local fishermen pushed their boats over the surf and people in wetsuits with large colorfully illustrated boards swam into the sea to try and catch a wave to ride in.
My three men and I snapped pictures of the sky and rocky coastline as the colors shifted over the water from blue-grey to green to red and orange and finally back to a deeper blue. There were clouds, but not many, and there was a perfect, gentle, warm breeze coming from the South. Winter in Brazil didn’t hurt my feelings; that’s for sure.
I waited for fifteen minutes to use the toilet, but the line was moving slowly. I finally gave up when I heard the call to get ready for the start. I had to hope to find a portable toilet on the course at some point early in the race (I didn’t). We crowded into the starting chute. No one seemed to be seeding him or herself by pace, so Omar, Kevin, Bill and I all stood together as we waited for the horn. Once it sounded at 8:30, I bid goodbye to the fellas as they ran ahead and concentrated on finding my pace.
My body felt heavy (I supposed it was heavier than when I’d left home two weeks earlier), but I had good energy and I was excited to be running on continent number six!! Who in my life would have ever imagined this for me? I set my stopwatch so I could measure my progress, but even at the first three kilometer marker I could see my pace was sluggish. This Marathon was not going to be about a personal record for me. That was fine. I wasn’t feeling like competing, anyway, even with myself. I gazed out to the East where the sun was low in the sky. This race had plenty to offer besides a fast course. For this runner, it would be entirely about the views I’d take in over the next several hours.
How many ways are there to describe the Ocean? Cobalt. Foamy. Wild. Speckled in light. Violent. Lonely. Container of life. Overwhelming. Demanding. Emerald. Serene. Secure. Full. Spilling over. Salty. Grey. Angry. Complicated. Filling the hole in the heart of the world. Vast.
The ocean seemed to encompass me as I ran next to it. Sometimes in front of me, sometimes behind, always to my right, it wrapped itself around the coast of Brazil and around my attention as I puttered away. Only to the left, to the West, could I not see water. That’s because it wasn’t my ocean, not the Pacific Ocean that seeps through the Strait of Juan de Fuca into the Bay that I can see from my front yard. This was another ocean that I didn’t know very well, one that lived on the other side of my country and alongside this country where I was a stranger in awe of how big the world is and how little I’d seen of it even though I’d put my feet on the soil of six continents.
The course was flat as it wound its way beside the coastline. I watched almost the way one watches a film as the terrain at the water’s edge became rocks and cliffs, then sand and palm trees. Beach after beach trolled by at my slow pace. From Recreio to the Barra da Tijuca shoreline, the Quebra-Mar, Sao Conrado, and Leblon beaches, the sun shone on the rose, blond and peach-colored sand. Every few blocks during the early and later stretches of the course, refreshment stands sold fresh coconut milk and cold beers. As the hours progressed, each beach I passed grew more populated with patrons than the last.
My legs were strong if elephantine in their performance. I’ve run enough races by now, though, to know that all I needed to do was pick them up and move them forward. I didn’t worry that I wasn’t “feeling” as light as I sometimes feel. I only needed to enjoy the journey at whatever pace my legs would carry me.
The day warmed. I saw a sign at a bank claiming it was 23 degrees (75 degrees Fahrenheit) at about mile nineteen. As the heat rose, so did the humidity. Sweat dribbled down my face from under my hat. My inner thighs chafed (once again, I forgot to "Vaseline" a very key area). And the roof of my mouth became sore. I speculate the latter was from the smog. Brazil is totally self-sufficient in its energy sources and one of these sources is ethanol alcohol made from sugar cane. The millions of cars on Rio’s roads run on a combination of ethanol and regular gasoline. My hunch is that the way ethanol burns creates a kind of pollution I’m not adapted to and it irritated me. But it’s just a theory (anyone know the facts?). Shortly after I noted the temperature, I got my first glimpse of Sugar Loaf. Sugar Loaf, or Pao d’Acucar, as they say in Portuguese, watches over the Rio coastline from the top of its 1,299 feet of granite and quartz. It beamed in the sunlight, smiled at me and reassured me that the end was not so far away. Next I was running along Ipanema.
The roads were closed to vehicle traffic for the weekend and this beach, even in the winter, was a Mecca for ill-fitting thong bikinis and circles of young people keeping soccer balls in the air. I continued to follow the orange cones that indicated the course, grateful for the aid stations faithfully placed every three or four kilometers along the route. My bladder was beginning to complain, but I couldn’t see an easy way to relieve it, so I ignored the feeling of fullness for the moment.
By this time I could also feel the predictable ache in my legs and back and shoulders, but I still felt stalwart, solid in my ability to finish with the joy in my heart I’d started with. There would be no crying here in Rio as there had been in South Africa, but nonetheless, my pain was intensifying as I approached Copacabana Beach. I could have used some encouragement. I don’t know if the onlookers along the pedestrian trail that paralleled the beach had more enthusiasm for runners at the front of the pack, but at more than four hours into the race, I was left to myself. Sun-bathers on the beach and families out for their Sunday walk were totally indifferent to me and the other stragglers at the tail of the pack. Just about when I was nearly dying to hear someone shout some words of support, a female American voice come from somewhere saying, “Come on! Not far to go! Good job!” I tried to find the woman with the voice, but never spotted her.
Once or twice more, someone applauded as I passed them, but for the most part, it seemed the folks in Rio were fairly unimpressed by my pain and my efforts.
Finally, I reached Flamengo Beach, where I had caught the bus about eight hours earlier. There was the finish line, a speck in the distance. A large park at the edge of the beach had been commandeered as a recovery center and was peppered with temporary tents and port-o-potties (thank heavens!). Here, fans and runners lined the fence and cheered as I approached. Relieved to be among supporters, I looked for Bill’s face in the crowd and couldn’t see him, but I was a half kilometer from the actual finish line yet. As I drew closer to the finish banner and still couldn’t find him, I wondered what to do. I’d never come over a marathon finish line without him there to greet me, and for a moment I thought maybe I should pull over and let other runners pass until I could spot him. But then I heard him calling my name and followed the sound until I could make him out amidst the mass of faces.
Bill was balancing on a stone fence post to elevate himself above the crowd and, as usual, he had his camera in hand. I waved and felt a sharp pain in my shoulder and neck with the movement. I’d been on the course for five hours, thirty minutes and twenty-three seconds. All the muscles in my body were stiff and spent.
I crossed the line and heard the beep of the chip register under my feet as I slowed to a walk. Closing my eyes I gave a silent thanks to my body for doing what I’d asked it to do even though I hadn’t been very kind to it on this trip. Unfortunately, closing my eyes caused me to lose my balance for a moment. I snapped my eyes open to find my equilibrium and as I did I saw Omar standing directly in front of me.
A Mexican Flag was tied around his neck and flowed down his back. His arms were open wide to take me in and bring me back into balance. “Great job!” he said. Omar had finished his very first marathon in 3:46 and then had waited for nearly two hours for me to cross the line. I was touched.
Volunteers were standing on the sidelines with bundles of medals. To get mine, all I had to do was get my chip from my shoe and trade it in. I bent to reach down toward my feet but my body revolted with surges of searing pain in my lower back. Omar shook his head at me and lifted my shoulders to return me to an upright position. Then he, tired and sore as he must have been after his first marathon, knelt and unlaced my shoe, removed my timing ship and retied my shoe before walking me to the edge of the crowd where I traded the chip in for my medal.
Bill came around front of the ruckus to meet us and once I was finally out of the finish area, Omar handed me off to Bill and headed back to the hostel to get a shower and get ready for our celebration later that night. Kevin was already there with a friend who had flown in from the States at the last minute to support him. We would follow them just as soon as I had relieved my bladder (there were no lines at the toilets now), stretched and recovered enough to move again.
Sitting on the grass in an enclosed area, I straightened out each of my legs and leaned into the best stretch I could manage, and I reflected. Had I really just completed not only my sixth continent but my third continent in this very year? I’d never even done more than two marathons in a single year before 2009.
“We’re crazy!” I said to Bill.
“No kidding,” he agreed.
Bill had finished his race in 4:12, not one of his better performances. As we hobbled back to the hostel he told me he felt the humidity and the effects of our eating and walking over the past weeks, too. I must say he looked pretty ragged and worn.
CELEBRATION
But there is no rest for the weary in our world! After showering and imbibing with a beer or two, we settled in front of the television with other hostel guests to watch the final championship game of the Confederation Cup football (soccer) tournament that was happening in South Africa. The USA and Brazil were competing against one another. The USA, Mexico, Brazil and Holland were represented in the living room with us. We chose sides and shouted our way through the game.
For our part, Bill and I cheered for the American team, but we both secretly hoped that Brazil would win because we had plans that evening that could be affected if Brazil lost. We were planning on attending a football match at Maracana Stadium between two of Rio’s most popular teams. Maracana is one of the world’s largest football venues. It holds 85,000 fans. And the Brazilians can be very testy if their teams don’t win. We didn’t want Brazil to have reason to be angry with us before we got the chance to experience a football match at the famous stadium.
Fortunately, Brazil was happy that night and we got our sore butts off the sofa and made our way on the subway to Maracana with a small group from the hostel.
After the football match we finally celebrated with a buffet dinner at a Brazilian barbeque restaurant! I’m told the meat was very tasty (I stuck with salad and bread). Most importantly, we toasted each other. We toasted Kevin for finishing SEVEN!!! We toasted Omar for number ONE!!! And we toasted ourselves for SIX AND COUNTING!!! Whew.
In order to get from Ribeirao Preto, where we'd been staying with Bill's Brazilian family, to Rio de Janeiro for the race, we took a “sleeping bus” on Tuesday night. The ride was twelve hours. Unfortunately, Bill and I could not both get sleeping berths. At my insistence, Bill took the bed and I took the upright seat on the upper deck.
Why I would make such a magnanimous sacrifice? I can assure you it was completely selfish. If I don’t sleep well on any given night, I’m tired the next day, maybe a little labored in my physical movements and certainly prone to cry more easily than usual. But if Bill does not sleep, his face goes dark and the world becomes his victimizer. He changes from the reasonable man I adore into a threatened rattle snake snapping at every real or imagined enemy (I write this description with his full approval, by the way, and his admission that he deserves it).
It is in my best interest to help Bill get the sleep he needs. I am, one might even say, co-dependent on Bill’s sleep. That is why, after saying goodbye to Ana Rosa, Carlos, Mai, Jussara, Luiz and finally, Dimas, Bill snuggled into his cushioned pull-out easy chair with the fluffy blanket and pillow provided by the bus company in an enclosed heated room while I shifted stiffly in a vinyl chair up above, freezing and watching the hours tick by.
As expected, it was a tough night for me (but still better than the alternative). As soon as we reunited the next day, I was sure to let Bill know that my misery trumped his. Never was I so glad to arrive somewhere as I was to get to the bus station in Rio. A stationary restroom and a cup of thick Brazilian coffee went a long way toward refreshing me before we found our way to the hostel we’d reserved (Botofogo Easy Hostel).
We rested up for an hour or so, but not being ones to let the soles of our shoes grow cold, we soon got down to business exploring the city. From the chaotic avenue that ran perpendicular to the side-street our hostel was on we could see the Christ the Redeemer statue situated atop Corcovado Mountain in one direction and Sugar Loaf in the other. We were in the most beautiful city on earth!
Our most important task, of course, was to find our way to the race expo and pick up our packets. Tired as we were, we located Rio’s convention center, a large, bland cement building that took up two city blocks. We entered it and were greeted by a fitness fair where every kind of exercise equipment imaginable was being displayed and demonstrated to race participants as they wandered around looking for Registration. It took us nearly twenty minutes to discover that all foreign participants had a special registration area where young, energetic volunteers in bright orange jerseys were getting the chance to practice their various language skills. A cheerful young woman greeted Bill and me and walked us through the packet pick-up process with rapid and perfect English.
I’d almost forgotten why we were in Brazil by this point. For a week and a half, we’d been living with Bill’s Brazilian family in comfort, touring and visiting and eating and totally ignoring the other purpose of our trip. But the race expo was evidence that an event with more than 5000 participants was about to take place in this city. Our numbers, chips and race shirts were my personal evidence that in a few days, I’d have to run 42 K. I hoped I could do it. While I was in better health than before my last race in South Africa, Bill and I were both coming into this marathon somewhat compromised.
Let me lay out a few of the conditions under which we would stand at the starting line of our sixth continental Marathon on Sunday:
1. We’d been eating dinner at 11pm all week with Bill’s wonderful Brazilian family. Each day lunch had been served at about 5:00, appetizers at 9:00 and dinner after that. Bill and I had done our best to keep up with our hosts in these late-night extravaganzas.
2. We were both incredibly constipated due to this total disruption of our digestive routines.
3. We’d been drinking plenty of good Argentinean and Chilean wines every night.
4. We had walked at least 100 miles in our explorations of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, and Rio de Janeiro.
5. I had several mosquito bites around my ankles, and Bill had a deep gash in his left shin that he’d gotten by banging it against a bed frame at one of the places we’d stayed.
6. The young people staying at the hostel, while delightful and interesting, kept us awake with their talking in the common area until at least 4am each morning (and in case they’re reading this: We love you anyhow).
We’d do our best, but we had concerns.
During the next days before the race, we met and developed a special relationship with two guys who were staying at our hostel: Kevin from California and Omar from Mexico. Kevin was finishing the very quest Bill and I were on; he was in Rio to complete his seventh marathon on his seventh continent. We understood the time and expense and passion he had put into his dream and we both felt proud to have the opportunity to be part of his completion and celebration. He’d made the trek to Brazil alone, but we wanted to be sure he’d get properly toasted after crossing this finish line. Omar’s participation in this race was just as significant. He was in training for what would be his first marathon in Mexico City and had come to Brazil NOT to finish the Rio Marathon. His plan was to run 22 miles with the pack and then drop out, but when Kevin, Bill and I heard about his training regimen over the past months, we knew Omar could easily finish this race and encouraged him to think about going all the way.
Omar spent an entire day considering our exhortations and came back to the hostel the evening before the race with the announcement that he would run the full marathon on two conditions. One was that he would do it slowly (four hours, he said). The other was that we were all sworn to secrecy (sorry Omar!). He wanted his family to be able to celebrate the Mexico City Marathon with him as if it were his first.
Together we were “Team Rio!”
RACE DAY
Sunday morning came early. We’d barely fallen asleep at 4am as the hostel quieted down when our alarm sounded at 4:30. At 5:15, Team Rio jammed itself into a taxi and made its way from our little purple hostel to the finish line at the Flamengo Beach. We couldn’t see the ocean water in the dark. We couldn’t even hear the waves of the tide over the engines of the busses that waited to take us to the starting line 26.2 miles away in the town of Recreio, but we knew they were there.
This was a point-to-point Marathon, my favorite kind because it makes you feel like you’ve gone somewhere. You don’t end up where you started, though of course in this case we would because we boarded the bus at the finish and rode to the start. Easy come... easy go. I guess.
At the park near the starting line in Recreio, we watched the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean. As we stretched and munched on granola bars, local fishermen pushed their boats over the surf and people in wetsuits with large colorfully illustrated boards swam into the sea to try and catch a wave to ride in.
My three men and I snapped pictures of the sky and rocky coastline as the colors shifted over the water from blue-grey to green to red and orange and finally back to a deeper blue. There were clouds, but not many, and there was a perfect, gentle, warm breeze coming from the South. Winter in Brazil didn’t hurt my feelings; that’s for sure.
I waited for fifteen minutes to use the toilet, but the line was moving slowly. I finally gave up when I heard the call to get ready for the start. I had to hope to find a portable toilet on the course at some point early in the race (I didn’t). We crowded into the starting chute. No one seemed to be seeding him or herself by pace, so Omar, Kevin, Bill and I all stood together as we waited for the horn. Once it sounded at 8:30, I bid goodbye to the fellas as they ran ahead and concentrated on finding my pace.
My body felt heavy (I supposed it was heavier than when I’d left home two weeks earlier), but I had good energy and I was excited to be running on continent number six!! Who in my life would have ever imagined this for me? I set my stopwatch so I could measure my progress, but even at the first three kilometer marker I could see my pace was sluggish. This Marathon was not going to be about a personal record for me. That was fine. I wasn’t feeling like competing, anyway, even with myself. I gazed out to the East where the sun was low in the sky. This race had plenty to offer besides a fast course. For this runner, it would be entirely about the views I’d take in over the next several hours.
How many ways are there to describe the Ocean? Cobalt. Foamy. Wild. Speckled in light. Violent. Lonely. Container of life. Overwhelming. Demanding. Emerald. Serene. Secure. Full. Spilling over. Salty. Grey. Angry. Complicated. Filling the hole in the heart of the world. Vast.
The ocean seemed to encompass me as I ran next to it. Sometimes in front of me, sometimes behind, always to my right, it wrapped itself around the coast of Brazil and around my attention as I puttered away. Only to the left, to the West, could I not see water. That’s because it wasn’t my ocean, not the Pacific Ocean that seeps through the Strait of Juan de Fuca into the Bay that I can see from my front yard. This was another ocean that I didn’t know very well, one that lived on the other side of my country and alongside this country where I was a stranger in awe of how big the world is and how little I’d seen of it even though I’d put my feet on the soil of six continents.
The course was flat as it wound its way beside the coastline. I watched almost the way one watches a film as the terrain at the water’s edge became rocks and cliffs, then sand and palm trees. Beach after beach trolled by at my slow pace. From Recreio to the Barra da Tijuca shoreline, the Quebra-Mar, Sao Conrado, and Leblon beaches, the sun shone on the rose, blond and peach-colored sand. Every few blocks during the early and later stretches of the course, refreshment stands sold fresh coconut milk and cold beers. As the hours progressed, each beach I passed grew more populated with patrons than the last.
My legs were strong if elephantine in their performance. I’ve run enough races by now, though, to know that all I needed to do was pick them up and move them forward. I didn’t worry that I wasn’t “feeling” as light as I sometimes feel. I only needed to enjoy the journey at whatever pace my legs would carry me.
The day warmed. I saw a sign at a bank claiming it was 23 degrees (75 degrees Fahrenheit) at about mile nineteen. As the heat rose, so did the humidity. Sweat dribbled down my face from under my hat. My inner thighs chafed (once again, I forgot to "Vaseline" a very key area). And the roof of my mouth became sore. I speculate the latter was from the smog. Brazil is totally self-sufficient in its energy sources and one of these sources is ethanol alcohol made from sugar cane. The millions of cars on Rio’s roads run on a combination of ethanol and regular gasoline. My hunch is that the way ethanol burns creates a kind of pollution I’m not adapted to and it irritated me. But it’s just a theory (anyone know the facts?). Shortly after I noted the temperature, I got my first glimpse of Sugar Loaf. Sugar Loaf, or Pao d’Acucar, as they say in Portuguese, watches over the Rio coastline from the top of its 1,299 feet of granite and quartz. It beamed in the sunlight, smiled at me and reassured me that the end was not so far away. Next I was running along Ipanema.
The roads were closed to vehicle traffic for the weekend and this beach, even in the winter, was a Mecca for ill-fitting thong bikinis and circles of young people keeping soccer balls in the air. I continued to follow the orange cones that indicated the course, grateful for the aid stations faithfully placed every three or four kilometers along the route. My bladder was beginning to complain, but I couldn’t see an easy way to relieve it, so I ignored the feeling of fullness for the moment.
By this time I could also feel the predictable ache in my legs and back and shoulders, but I still felt stalwart, solid in my ability to finish with the joy in my heart I’d started with. There would be no crying here in Rio as there had been in South Africa, but nonetheless, my pain was intensifying as I approached Copacabana Beach. I could have used some encouragement. I don’t know if the onlookers along the pedestrian trail that paralleled the beach had more enthusiasm for runners at the front of the pack, but at more than four hours into the race, I was left to myself. Sun-bathers on the beach and families out for their Sunday walk were totally indifferent to me and the other stragglers at the tail of the pack. Just about when I was nearly dying to hear someone shout some words of support, a female American voice come from somewhere saying, “Come on! Not far to go! Good job!” I tried to find the woman with the voice, but never spotted her.
Once or twice more, someone applauded as I passed them, but for the most part, it seemed the folks in Rio were fairly unimpressed by my pain and my efforts.
Finally, I reached Flamengo Beach, where I had caught the bus about eight hours earlier. There was the finish line, a speck in the distance. A large park at the edge of the beach had been commandeered as a recovery center and was peppered with temporary tents and port-o-potties (thank heavens!). Here, fans and runners lined the fence and cheered as I approached. Relieved to be among supporters, I looked for Bill’s face in the crowd and couldn’t see him, but I was a half kilometer from the actual finish line yet. As I drew closer to the finish banner and still couldn’t find him, I wondered what to do. I’d never come over a marathon finish line without him there to greet me, and for a moment I thought maybe I should pull over and let other runners pass until I could spot him. But then I heard him calling my name and followed the sound until I could make him out amidst the mass of faces.
Bill was balancing on a stone fence post to elevate himself above the crowd and, as usual, he had his camera in hand. I waved and felt a sharp pain in my shoulder and neck with the movement. I’d been on the course for five hours, thirty minutes and twenty-three seconds. All the muscles in my body were stiff and spent.
I crossed the line and heard the beep of the chip register under my feet as I slowed to a walk. Closing my eyes I gave a silent thanks to my body for doing what I’d asked it to do even though I hadn’t been very kind to it on this trip. Unfortunately, closing my eyes caused me to lose my balance for a moment. I snapped my eyes open to find my equilibrium and as I did I saw Omar standing directly in front of me.
A Mexican Flag was tied around his neck and flowed down his back. His arms were open wide to take me in and bring me back into balance. “Great job!” he said. Omar had finished his very first marathon in 3:46 and then had waited for nearly two hours for me to cross the line. I was touched.
Volunteers were standing on the sidelines with bundles of medals. To get mine, all I had to do was get my chip from my shoe and trade it in. I bent to reach down toward my feet but my body revolted with surges of searing pain in my lower back. Omar shook his head at me and lifted my shoulders to return me to an upright position. Then he, tired and sore as he must have been after his first marathon, knelt and unlaced my shoe, removed my timing ship and retied my shoe before walking me to the edge of the crowd where I traded the chip in for my medal.
Bill came around front of the ruckus to meet us and once I was finally out of the finish area, Omar handed me off to Bill and headed back to the hostel to get a shower and get ready for our celebration later that night. Kevin was already there with a friend who had flown in from the States at the last minute to support him. We would follow them just as soon as I had relieved my bladder (there were no lines at the toilets now), stretched and recovered enough to move again.
Sitting on the grass in an enclosed area, I straightened out each of my legs and leaned into the best stretch I could manage, and I reflected. Had I really just completed not only my sixth continent but my third continent in this very year? I’d never even done more than two marathons in a single year before 2009.
“We’re crazy!” I said to Bill.
“No kidding,” he agreed.
Bill had finished his race in 4:12, not one of his better performances. As we hobbled back to the hostel he told me he felt the humidity and the effects of our eating and walking over the past weeks, too. I must say he looked pretty ragged and worn.
CELEBRATION
But there is no rest for the weary in our world! After showering and imbibing with a beer or two, we settled in front of the television with other hostel guests to watch the final championship game of the Confederation Cup football (soccer) tournament that was happening in South Africa. The USA and Brazil were competing against one another. The USA, Mexico, Brazil and Holland were represented in the living room with us. We chose sides and shouted our way through the game.
For our part, Bill and I cheered for the American team, but we both secretly hoped that Brazil would win because we had plans that evening that could be affected if Brazil lost. We were planning on attending a football match at Maracana Stadium between two of Rio’s most popular teams. Maracana is one of the world’s largest football venues. It holds 85,000 fans. And the Brazilians can be very testy if their teams don’t win. We didn’t want Brazil to have reason to be angry with us before we got the chance to experience a football match at the famous stadium.
Fortunately, Brazil was happy that night and we got our sore butts off the sofa and made our way on the subway to Maracana with a small group from the hostel.
After the football match we finally celebrated with a buffet dinner at a Brazilian barbeque restaurant! I’m told the meat was very tasty (I stuck with salad and bread). Most importantly, we toasted each other. We toasted Kevin for finishing SEVEN!!! We toasted Omar for number ONE!!! And we toasted ourselves for SIX AND COUNTING!!! Whew.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Our First Week In Brazil
We've been in Brazil one week. As soon as we arrived at the Seatac airport my worries about Antarctica receded. I settled into the immediate bustle of ticketing and security checks and last-minute calls to say goodbye before turning off my cell phone for two weeks.
The flights (from Seattle to Atlanta and then Atlanta to Sao Paulo) were smooth, except that I was upgraded to Business Class for our first leg and Bill was abandoned to the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed back in coach. I smuggled him a warm sandwich and a bag of chips but, alas, there was nothing I could do to get him my bottomless glass of chardonay.
In Sao Paulo we were met by Bill's friend, Dimas and Dimas' son, Lucas. Back in 1967Bill had come to Brazil as an exchange student and lived with Dimas' family for six months. I watched as Dimas walked gingerly up to Bill and studied his face before uttering a very tentative, "Bill?"
Bill returned Dimas' gaze, blank for a moment and then I saw recognition dawn on both men's faces.
"Dimas!" Bill acknowledged and there were hugs and kisses and introductions all around.
We stayed our first several days with Lucas in an apartment on the sixth floor of a building in the heart of Sao Paulo. Lucas oriented us and gave us a good deal of his time, showing us a few of the city's best views and explaining televised "futebol" matches to us.
Once Bill and I had our bearings, we ventured out on our own and visited museums, parks and monuments until we were ready to collapse. We figure we clocked in with about forty miles of walking and exploring last week.
Bill and I agree that our favorite stop in Sao Paulo was at a temporary exhibition in the MASP (the Art Museum of Sao Paulo) by a Brazilian artist named Vik Muniz. "Vik" lived in the United States for many years but traveled extensively, creating his images in and from unusual artistic media. His portaits of several people who made their home at one of the world's largest garbage dumps, for example, were formed in the white space beneath thousands of objects retrieved from the trash heaps. Vik then took photographs of his works and blew them up to a huge scale. They stood anywhere from six to twenty feet in height. Look him up.
After Sao Paulo, we took a five-hour bus ride to Ribeirao Preto. This is the place Bill called home for six months after his junior year of high school. He had been back only one other time in 1973 for about six weeks. The city, then a town of 100,000 people, is now populated by 500,000 and is much changed from Bill's memory of it.
Dimas again collected us, this time from the bus station, and took us to the home he shares with his wife, Ana Rosa, in a downtown condominium. We've been here a few days now.
How can I describe the homecoming of a prodigal son? I've sat back and watched the kissing and hugging and questioning and the muddling through of two languages to give the answers. We've spent countless hours over food and drink and conversation with this lovely, large family. And Bill has said to me he feels that something in his life has finally come full circle.
I've been the observer, the silent capturer of images these past few days. I see the body language of a big, loving family and the volley of words passing between them. Occasionally I hear a phrase or a syllable that resembles French or English and I guess at the topic of conversation. Sometimes someone translates the gist for me. And then there are long stretches when everyone switches to English, however inconfident they may be with the language, purely for my benefit. I'm embarrassed by but grateful for this gift when it happens. The rest of the time I am understandiong what is happening through my intuition and my understanding of family systems.
Everyone should do this, by the way - sit a few hours with people who do not speak your language. It's a wonderful way to hone other kinds of knowing besides just that which comes from words.
Speaking of words, one of my quests in the last few days has been to find a book in English. I only brought one novel along with me and I've finished it. In a couple of days we'll make our way to Rio de Janeiro on a bus ride that will take about twelve hours. I can't see doing that without at least one book.
Dimas took us to the mall here in Ribeirao and I found a paperback copy of The Kite Runner in English. I took it to the cash register. They rang it up and told us it would be 78 Reais. That's 39 dollars to you and me, folks! I looked over at Bill. He was pulling out the money and counting out the bills, unthinking. I knew once he realized the actual price, his placid expression would be replaced with (how shall I say this delicately?) rage, horror, shock.
"That's 39 bucks, Bill. Forget it," I said. Then I turned to Dimas. "It's 78 Reais. Isn't that a lot?" I asked.
"Too much. Let's go," Dimas decided and we walked out.
I've never paid 39 dollars for a paperback book, and I'm not desperate enough to do it now (plus my marital bliss is far more valuable to me than that particular book), but I'm still in need of reading material for the bus. So last night I put the problem to the whole extended family.
"We found an English book at the mall, but it was too much money. Can I get one cheaper?" I asked. There was a flurry of conversation in Portuguese. The internet was consulted. Another flurry. There were questions I had to address. Did I like romances? (Not so much.) How about mysteries? (A little better, but not a lot.)
It was finally discovered that there is a used bookstore in town with thousands of books in English. And in the meantime, Dimas would search his shelves for something that would tide me over until we could get there. After much rummaging, there was one book in English in Dimas' and Ana Rosa's house, a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, left in Brazil some thirty-six years ago by one William P., my own dear Bill. Talk about coming full circle!
So, today we're having lunch at the family's sports club, visiting a used book store and generally enjoying this beautiful town. There's more to tell about (like Ana Rosa's concert with the symphony, our visit to an old sugar plant and Brazil's conversion to ethanol alcohol in lieu of gasoline for their cars), but it will have to wait.
The marathon is on Sunday the 28th in Rio. I'll post a race report when I'm home (and perhaps a book report on J. L. Seagull).
Love to all.
The flights (from Seattle to Atlanta and then Atlanta to Sao Paulo) were smooth, except that I was upgraded to Business Class for our first leg and Bill was abandoned to the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed back in coach. I smuggled him a warm sandwich and a bag of chips but, alas, there was nothing I could do to get him my bottomless glass of chardonay.
In Sao Paulo we were met by Bill's friend, Dimas and Dimas' son, Lucas. Back in 1967Bill had come to Brazil as an exchange student and lived with Dimas' family for six months. I watched as Dimas walked gingerly up to Bill and studied his face before uttering a very tentative, "Bill?"
Bill returned Dimas' gaze, blank for a moment and then I saw recognition dawn on both men's faces.
"Dimas!" Bill acknowledged and there were hugs and kisses and introductions all around.
We stayed our first several days with Lucas in an apartment on the sixth floor of a building in the heart of Sao Paulo. Lucas oriented us and gave us a good deal of his time, showing us a few of the city's best views and explaining televised "futebol" matches to us.
Once Bill and I had our bearings, we ventured out on our own and visited museums, parks and monuments until we were ready to collapse. We figure we clocked in with about forty miles of walking and exploring last week.
Bill and I agree that our favorite stop in Sao Paulo was at a temporary exhibition in the MASP (the Art Museum of Sao Paulo) by a Brazilian artist named Vik Muniz. "Vik" lived in the United States for many years but traveled extensively, creating his images in and from unusual artistic media. His portaits of several people who made their home at one of the world's largest garbage dumps, for example, were formed in the white space beneath thousands of objects retrieved from the trash heaps. Vik then took photographs of his works and blew them up to a huge scale. They stood anywhere from six to twenty feet in height. Look him up.
After Sao Paulo, we took a five-hour bus ride to Ribeirao Preto. This is the place Bill called home for six months after his junior year of high school. He had been back only one other time in 1973 for about six weeks. The city, then a town of 100,000 people, is now populated by 500,000 and is much changed from Bill's memory of it.
Dimas again collected us, this time from the bus station, and took us to the home he shares with his wife, Ana Rosa, in a downtown condominium. We've been here a few days now.
How can I describe the homecoming of a prodigal son? I've sat back and watched the kissing and hugging and questioning and the muddling through of two languages to give the answers. We've spent countless hours over food and drink and conversation with this lovely, large family. And Bill has said to me he feels that something in his life has finally come full circle.
I've been the observer, the silent capturer of images these past few days. I see the body language of a big, loving family and the volley of words passing between them. Occasionally I hear a phrase or a syllable that resembles French or English and I guess at the topic of conversation. Sometimes someone translates the gist for me. And then there are long stretches when everyone switches to English, however inconfident they may be with the language, purely for my benefit. I'm embarrassed by but grateful for this gift when it happens. The rest of the time I am understandiong what is happening through my intuition and my understanding of family systems.
Everyone should do this, by the way - sit a few hours with people who do not speak your language. It's a wonderful way to hone other kinds of knowing besides just that which comes from words.
Speaking of words, one of my quests in the last few days has been to find a book in English. I only brought one novel along with me and I've finished it. In a couple of days we'll make our way to Rio de Janeiro on a bus ride that will take about twelve hours. I can't see doing that without at least one book.
Dimas took us to the mall here in Ribeirao and I found a paperback copy of The Kite Runner in English. I took it to the cash register. They rang it up and told us it would be 78 Reais. That's 39 dollars to you and me, folks! I looked over at Bill. He was pulling out the money and counting out the bills, unthinking. I knew once he realized the actual price, his placid expression would be replaced with (how shall I say this delicately?) rage, horror, shock.
"That's 39 bucks, Bill. Forget it," I said. Then I turned to Dimas. "It's 78 Reais. Isn't that a lot?" I asked.
"Too much. Let's go," Dimas decided and we walked out.
I've never paid 39 dollars for a paperback book, and I'm not desperate enough to do it now (plus my marital bliss is far more valuable to me than that particular book), but I'm still in need of reading material for the bus. So last night I put the problem to the whole extended family.
"We found an English book at the mall, but it was too much money. Can I get one cheaper?" I asked. There was a flurry of conversation in Portuguese. The internet was consulted. Another flurry. There were questions I had to address. Did I like romances? (Not so much.) How about mysteries? (A little better, but not a lot.)
It was finally discovered that there is a used bookstore in town with thousands of books in English. And in the meantime, Dimas would search his shelves for something that would tide me over until we could get there. After much rummaging, there was one book in English in Dimas' and Ana Rosa's house, a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, left in Brazil some thirty-six years ago by one William P., my own dear Bill. Talk about coming full circle!
So, today we're having lunch at the family's sports club, visiting a used book store and generally enjoying this beautiful town. There's more to tell about (like Ana Rosa's concert with the symphony, our visit to an old sugar plant and Brazil's conversion to ethanol alcohol in lieu of gasoline for their cars), but it will have to wait.
The marathon is on Sunday the 28th in Rio. I'll post a race report when I'm home (and perhaps a book report on J. L. Seagull).
Love to all.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Training for Brazil: Trial #2
As I write, I’m in a little cabin in Tennessee outside of Knoxville. I came here to visit my friend, Wendy, and to get some writing done. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, and I’ve had trouble finding time to settle down and get my writing completed. This has been a whirlwind of a year.
Soon (tomorrow actually – it took me a while to get this posted), Bill and I leave for Brazil. We are about to run a marathon on our SIXTH continent! I can scarcely believe it. This has been a lot of work and a lot of fun.
As I took a run along a rolling road beside farm houses and log cabins, catching the scent of honeysuckle in the air and watching for snapping turtles on the ground, I let my thoughts fly free in a stream of consciousness.
It went something like this:
Ooh this is a bigger hill than it looked last night when we drove this course…. I hope I don’t get tick and end up with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever…. I wonder how the dogs and Bill are doing back home…. I hope I’m ready for this race in Rio…. I hope my Aunt S is OK…. What if I can’t get on that boat for Antarctica next spring????
And there I stopped (thinking, not running). I needed to focus on the scenery around me and breathe deeply into the moment or I was going to move into “panic mode” and my run would be derailed.
Just before I left for Tennessee, a couple of things happened. First, my dear Aunt S went into the hospital and was in ICU for more than a week with a tube down her throat. I went to see her once she was awake and stayed in touch with my cousin by phone on a daily basis, but I was terribly worried about her, and about my grandmother, for whom my Aunt and cousin do most of the care-giving. My family is aging, as are we all, and I worry if everyone will get what they need when they need it to keep their lives comfortable in the process.
Just as my Aunt S was stabilizing (she’s home now, by the way, and on the mend) and my anxiety was abating, I got an email from Marathon Tours, the company that runs the Antarctica Marathon saying I wouldn’t be on the 2010 trip. Maybe, they said, I’d be on the 2011 boat to Antarctica. This crushed me. As you know, I have a book contract to write about the effects of this 7 continent journey on my life and all my chapters, including the one on Antarctica, are due next year! Bill and I have spent a lot of money and time and effort to make this whole seven-marathons dream happen. And I’d been told earlier this year that as people were dropping out of the 2010 trip because of the economical decline, I would most certainly be moved from the waiting list to the real list by May. But when no one called me to confirm this, I finally got in contact with the company and found out I’d been jilted (apparently they had to cut back to one boat and cannot guarantee my participation even in 2011). Now what?
Actually, I have some hope. Bill and are getting creative. If we can’t elbow our way onto that boat in 2010, how will we find our way to Antarctica?
Ah, once I get to the idea phase of “panic mode,” I know I’m out of the worry woods. Back on track with a strain of thought I could follow constructively, I kept running and started brainstorming. What if we charter a private boat and just show up for the race? What if we take a helicopter to one of the islands and run 26.2 miles as charted by our Garmin? What if we plug in a treadmill at one of the research stations on the continent and run until we’ve completed the marathon distance?
Now my thoughts were coming fast and, just as I was getting to some pretty absurd schemes, I found myself back at where Wendy and I had agreed to meet and I put my ideas on pause.
So now I’m writing my readers just to say, I’m off to Brazil on June 13th (tomorrow), but I’m in search of creative input from anyone who has a thought about running a marathon (official or unofficial – it doesn’t matter to me) on Antarctica.
If you have any ideas of how to get to Antarctica (contacts for cruise ships, info about which islands have runnable terrain, the address of a friendly penguin), send them my way! I’ll do anything it takes to get us there (safely) and back in time to write my last chapter and turn my book in.
I’ll try to post while I’m in South America, but I’ll most certainly post a race report once I’m back.
See you in early July.
Soon (tomorrow actually – it took me a while to get this posted), Bill and I leave for Brazil. We are about to run a marathon on our SIXTH continent! I can scarcely believe it. This has been a lot of work and a lot of fun.
As I took a run along a rolling road beside farm houses and log cabins, catching the scent of honeysuckle in the air and watching for snapping turtles on the ground, I let my thoughts fly free in a stream of consciousness.
It went something like this:
Ooh this is a bigger hill than it looked last night when we drove this course…. I hope I don’t get tick and end up with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever…. I wonder how the dogs and Bill are doing back home…. I hope I’m ready for this race in Rio…. I hope my Aunt S is OK…. What if I can’t get on that boat for Antarctica next spring????
And there I stopped (thinking, not running). I needed to focus on the scenery around me and breathe deeply into the moment or I was going to move into “panic mode” and my run would be derailed.
Just before I left for Tennessee, a couple of things happened. First, my dear Aunt S went into the hospital and was in ICU for more than a week with a tube down her throat. I went to see her once she was awake and stayed in touch with my cousin by phone on a daily basis, but I was terribly worried about her, and about my grandmother, for whom my Aunt and cousin do most of the care-giving. My family is aging, as are we all, and I worry if everyone will get what they need when they need it to keep their lives comfortable in the process.
Just as my Aunt S was stabilizing (she’s home now, by the way, and on the mend) and my anxiety was abating, I got an email from Marathon Tours, the company that runs the Antarctica Marathon saying I wouldn’t be on the 2010 trip. Maybe, they said, I’d be on the 2011 boat to Antarctica. This crushed me. As you know, I have a book contract to write about the effects of this 7 continent journey on my life and all my chapters, including the one on Antarctica, are due next year! Bill and I have spent a lot of money and time and effort to make this whole seven-marathons dream happen. And I’d been told earlier this year that as people were dropping out of the 2010 trip because of the economical decline, I would most certainly be moved from the waiting list to the real list by May. But when no one called me to confirm this, I finally got in contact with the company and found out I’d been jilted (apparently they had to cut back to one boat and cannot guarantee my participation even in 2011). Now what?
Actually, I have some hope. Bill and are getting creative. If we can’t elbow our way onto that boat in 2010, how will we find our way to Antarctica?
Ah, once I get to the idea phase of “panic mode,” I know I’m out of the worry woods. Back on track with a strain of thought I could follow constructively, I kept running and started brainstorming. What if we charter a private boat and just show up for the race? What if we take a helicopter to one of the islands and run 26.2 miles as charted by our Garmin? What if we plug in a treadmill at one of the research stations on the continent and run until we’ve completed the marathon distance?
Now my thoughts were coming fast and, just as I was getting to some pretty absurd schemes, I found myself back at where Wendy and I had agreed to meet and I put my ideas on pause.
So now I’m writing my readers just to say, I’m off to Brazil on June 13th (tomorrow), but I’m in search of creative input from anyone who has a thought about running a marathon (official or unofficial – it doesn’t matter to me) on Antarctica.
If you have any ideas of how to get to Antarctica (contacts for cruise ships, info about which islands have runnable terrain, the address of a friendly penguin), send them my way! I’ll do anything it takes to get us there (safely) and back in time to write my last chapter and turn my book in.
I’ll try to post while I’m in South America, but I’ll most certainly post a race report once I’m back.
See you in early July.
Training for Brazil: Advice for me? #1
So, I started “developing” when I was ten years old, but it took me twenty years to get comfortable with my breasts.
My breasts grew more quickly than I was ready for and by junior high, I was big enough for the boys in PE class to shout, “Watch out Cami, you’ll give yourself a black eye!” when I ran around the track. This contributed to my giving up running until sports bras were invented/discovered/marketed widely.
I remember my first sports bra! It hooked in the back like a regular bra, but it pulled the girls in tight enough that they didn’t bounce anymore when I was in my aerobic dance class. I was elated! I loved the new stability in my life. And I wore this little ditty, or something similar to it, until I started running.
The first time I ever ran for more than one hour, my loyal friend, my tight, cozy, cotton bra – the one that had freed me to exercise with other people in the room and to overcome the trauma of Jr. High – failed me. I chafed.
I’ve talked about chafing before. It’s one of the most frustrating things about running for me. It happens when two things rub together, any two things. When your two thighs rub together (mine do) or when your shoe rubs against your ankle bone, you chafe. It’s not a blister, per se; it’s more like a rope burn. If the chafing happens over a long enough period of time, you bleed. Maybe you’ve been to the finish line of a marathon and seen men with blood on their shirts where their nipples would be. This is from chafing.
Sports bra chafing happens just under the breasts at the edge of the bra. For me, it’s like I’ve been sliced across my torso with a razor blade. I quickly learned early on in my long distance running experience that there were a few things that can prevent this. The first thing I had to address was the cotton. Synthetic material wicks away sweat better than cotton and is softer against the skin, so I switched to a bra made from polyester and lycra and tossed out all my cotton. Then I learned about Vaseline. Applied liberally on skin surfaces that may rub against something, Vaseline lubricates the area and eliminates friction. These tricks have saved me from the experience of coming h ome after a long run and wincing in the shower as the warm water washes the salty sweat down my body into my new raw wound.
So knowing what I know, why did I take a twelve mile run a few weeks ago without lubing this area? Why did I wear not one, but two tight sports bras and Vaseline all my usual spots except for my upper torso under the elastic? I can’t say. I forgot, I guess. In the midst of making sure I had my energy gel, my iPod, my water, my running belt, my phone and the new little digital voice recorder I just bought (so I can record inspiring thoughts as I run), I forgot to grease under my breasts.
Six miles into the run, I felt the chafing begin. I tried to tuck my shirt up under the bras to create some space between the thick seam and my skin, but it wouldn’t hold. I tried to run with my thumb under the elastic, but I couldn’t keep up that position. At mile ten, I could tell I was in trouble. An open sore had developed in a straight line front and center under my breasts. I had two miles left and the best I could do was grit my teeth, turn up my music and live with the pain.
When I got home and stripped out of my sweaty clothes, I saw the wound. It was a red splice across my skin measuring about four inches in length, raised and full of puss. As I expected, the warm water in the shower hurt like a mother and brought tears to my eyes. But the real problem was that I couldn’t wear anything (regular bra, shirt, robe) afterwards for about three days without pain. I’d really done a doosey on myself this time. It was the worst one I’d ever had. And I had to keep up my training, so I needed to put that damned sports bra on again, over my oozing sore, on Tuesday. It hadn’t even scabbed over yet.
The next week of running was a comedy of bandages. Tuesday I wore a large band aid with Vaseline underneath, which slipped off after a mile. Wednesday I tried a burn pad adhered with masking tape. Friday I used a blister pad.
None of these methods really held through the sweat, so I put the dilemma to Bill for his expert input. I suppose you can im agine my alarm when I walked in the house after a trip to the grocery store and saw Bill holding up a roll of duct tape! He claimed runners widely accept the use of duct tape to prevent blistering. I had a 15-mile run on the schedule for Sunday and I’d been worrying over my chafing wound all week. His proposal was that I lube up with Vaseline across the red mark, place a gelatin burn pad over the top of that and then run a strip of duct tape across my torso under my breasts where the elastic of my sports bra would sit.
I wasn’t thrilled with the image this created, but I was game if it would prevent further injury, and I foolishly trusted Bill. He sounded pretty sure of himself. So I tried it. The problem is, my breasts sag (I’m 42, people!). So the tape partly gaped on each side under each breast. My creative solution was to run another piece of duct tape between my breasts to create an upside down “T.”
Needless to say, this was a disaster. I launched out on my 15 miles and about half way through, the duct tape started irritating me. I could feel new chafing happening where the vertical strand of tape was between my breasts. In stages, I disassembled the bandage. First I took off the center piece of tape and inspected two new little red marks right on either side of the upper part of my cleavage. Next I took off the horizontal piece and shoved the burn pad between my breasts to soften the new rubbing there. Finally, I pulled that out when I could feel the gel disintegrating because of my sweat. Now I was back to just me and my sports bra with no buffer between us. I’d have to take whatever consequences would come.
There’s both a moral and a question here. The moral is that lubing the areas that chafe is crucial, and if you forget, you’re better off going home and starting over for all the energy it’s going to take you in the next week or two to manage the pain. The question is, does anyone have a solution as to what to do once you have chafed? Is there a product I’m unaware of? A method for protecting the wound while you keep running? Or do you just gut it through as I did?
My breasts grew more quickly than I was ready for and by junior high, I was big enough for the boys in PE class to shout, “Watch out Cami, you’ll give yourself a black eye!” when I ran around the track. This contributed to my giving up running until sports bras were invented/discovered/marketed widely.
I remember my first sports bra! It hooked in the back like a regular bra, but it pulled the girls in tight enough that they didn’t bounce anymore when I was in my aerobic dance class. I was elated! I loved the new stability in my life. And I wore this little ditty, or something similar to it, until I started running.
The first time I ever ran for more than one hour, my loyal friend, my tight, cozy, cotton bra – the one that had freed me to exercise with other people in the room and to overcome the trauma of Jr. High – failed me. I chafed.
I’ve talked about chafing before. It’s one of the most frustrating things about running for me. It happens when two things rub together, any two things. When your two thighs rub together (mine do) or when your shoe rubs against your ankle bone, you chafe. It’s not a blister, per se; it’s more like a rope burn. If the chafing happens over a long enough period of time, you bleed. Maybe you’ve been to the finish line of a marathon and seen men with blood on their shirts where their nipples would be. This is from chafing.
Sports bra chafing happens just under the breasts at the edge of the bra. For me, it’s like I’ve been sliced across my torso with a razor blade. I quickly learned early on in my long distance running experience that there were a few things that can prevent this. The first thing I had to address was the cotton. Synthetic material wicks away sweat better than cotton and is softer against the skin, so I switched to a bra made from polyester and lycra and tossed out all my cotton. Then I learned about Vaseline. Applied liberally on skin surfaces that may rub against something, Vaseline lubricates the area and eliminates friction. These tricks have saved me from the experience of coming h ome after a long run and wincing in the shower as the warm water washes the salty sweat down my body into my new raw wound.
So knowing what I know, why did I take a twelve mile run a few weeks ago without lubing this area? Why did I wear not one, but two tight sports bras and Vaseline all my usual spots except for my upper torso under the elastic? I can’t say. I forgot, I guess. In the midst of making sure I had my energy gel, my iPod, my water, my running belt, my phone and the new little digital voice recorder I just bought (so I can record inspiring thoughts as I run), I forgot to grease under my breasts.
Six miles into the run, I felt the chafing begin. I tried to tuck my shirt up under the bras to create some space between the thick seam and my skin, but it wouldn’t hold. I tried to run with my thumb under the elastic, but I couldn’t keep up that position. At mile ten, I could tell I was in trouble. An open sore had developed in a straight line front and center under my breasts. I had two miles left and the best I could do was grit my teeth, turn up my music and live with the pain.
When I got home and stripped out of my sweaty clothes, I saw the wound. It was a red splice across my skin measuring about four inches in length, raised and full of puss. As I expected, the warm water in the shower hurt like a mother and brought tears to my eyes. But the real problem was that I couldn’t wear anything (regular bra, shirt, robe) afterwards for about three days without pain. I’d really done a doosey on myself this time. It was the worst one I’d ever had. And I had to keep up my training, so I needed to put that damned sports bra on again, over my oozing sore, on Tuesday. It hadn’t even scabbed over yet.
The next week of running was a comedy of bandages. Tuesday I wore a large band aid with Vaseline underneath, which slipped off after a mile. Wednesday I tried a burn pad adhered with masking tape. Friday I used a blister pad.
None of these methods really held through the sweat, so I put the dilemma to Bill for his expert input. I suppose you can im agine my alarm when I walked in the house after a trip to the grocery store and saw Bill holding up a roll of duct tape! He claimed runners widely accept the use of duct tape to prevent blistering. I had a 15-mile run on the schedule for Sunday and I’d been worrying over my chafing wound all week. His proposal was that I lube up with Vaseline across the red mark, place a gelatin burn pad over the top of that and then run a strip of duct tape across my torso under my breasts where the elastic of my sports bra would sit.
I wasn’t thrilled with the image this created, but I was game if it would prevent further injury, and I foolishly trusted Bill. He sounded pretty sure of himself. So I tried it. The problem is, my breasts sag (I’m 42, people!). So the tape partly gaped on each side under each breast. My creative solution was to run another piece of duct tape between my breasts to create an upside down “T.”
Needless to say, this was a disaster. I launched out on my 15 miles and about half way through, the duct tape started irritating me. I could feel new chafing happening where the vertical strand of tape was between my breasts. In stages, I disassembled the bandage. First I took off the center piece of tape and inspected two new little red marks right on either side of the upper part of my cleavage. Next I took off the horizontal piece and shoved the burn pad between my breasts to soften the new rubbing there. Finally, I pulled that out when I could feel the gel disintegrating because of my sweat. Now I was back to just me and my sports bra with no buffer between us. I’d have to take whatever consequences would come.
There’s both a moral and a question here. The moral is that lubing the areas that chafe is crucial, and if you forget, you’re better off going home and starting over for all the energy it’s going to take you in the next week or two to manage the pain. The question is, does anyone have a solution as to what to do once you have chafed? Is there a product I’m unaware of? A method for protecting the wound while you keep running? Or do you just gut it through as I did?
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Race Report: Weskus Marathon, South Africa
To tell the truth, preparing a race report about the West Coast (Weskus) Marathon in Langebaan, South Africa has been a difficult task. This most recent journey brought up so many rich and confusing personal and political questions for me, which at first glance have nothing to do with running, that it has been a challenge to focus on describing the race itself whenever I sit down to write.
It’s inadequate to say that South Africa is a country which invites a visitor into a profound, maybe even life-changing dissonance. There’s so much one doesn’t easily understand. At once the country is beautiful and welcoming and wealthy, while a few blocks away it is unspeakably poor and people are deprived of basic necessities. And these divisions, for the most part, are starkly made down the center between the races, with dark skinned people working hard to manage at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy as light skinned people, give or take a few exceptions, fiddle around at the top. One hardly knows what to do with the blatant contrast and the unfairness of it all. I spent most of my two weeks traveling with a dull headache and a pain in my heart as I grappled with what I was seeing and what it might mean.
But the harsh racial division is one reason why it is, in fact, important for me to write about the marathon in Langebaan because on Saturday, March 14, as Bill and I boarded the bus to take us to the starting line, we saw for the first time on our trip a rainbow of faces all together – all in one place – present for the same reason. To run. The race event was the only place we saw this kind of integration during our two weeks in South Africa. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, just that we didn’t see it, except there. On this morning, we could be sure no one on that bus would be served or serving anyone else. Every runner had the same status. Every runner had an equal right to be there and would be running his or her own best personal race. I know both Bill and I let out a breath of relief to know that at least the marathon did not respect anyone’s color or gender or political orientation over anyone else’s; if you showed up for it, it would treat you according to your ability to contend with it – nothing else mattered. (Although as soon as I say this, the dissonance is there, since one’s ability to run a marathon does, indeed, depend on whether or not you can pay the entry fee and whether or not you can afford shoes and good food and to keep your body healthy. You see the muddle I’m in trying to say anything definitive, don’t you?)
My own story of this marathon feels trivial compared to the very real, very daily struggle to live with dignity that the majority of South Africans face, and for that reason, it feels self-indulgent to bother anyone with it. Let’s face it, as evidenced by the fact that I have the privilege to fly about the world and run marathons, I’m one of those fiddling at the top of Maslow’s Triangle. But my own story is really the only story I have to tell. So here goes. I’ll stick to the race for now, but I’ll keep thinking about the bigger questions I have after this trip and what to do with them.
Saturday morning, I stood at the starting line and worried. It had been a grueling few days before this race and I was afraid I wasn’t up to it. Six days ago, Bill and I had flown to Cape Town (23 hours in the air), spent a few days there and then “hired” a car to get us to the coastal town of Langebaan and to the West Coast National Park. It was here that I stood waiting for the go-ahead to begin the race. We’d taken a drive through the park to give us a sense of the race route two days earlier. I knew what to expect: rolling hills, ostriches and a dry, sandy terrain with low shrubs and sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean and the Langebaan Lagoon. The land on which the West Coast National Park lies makes an inlet that forms the lagoon. Hold up the thumb and forefinger of your right hand like you’ve got a quarter between them and you can see the general shape of the inlet in the space there. The race would go from Tsaarsabank on the far West (your thumbnail) where you could see the Atlantic Ocean. There would be a short out and back half way (at the crease between your two digits) and you would end in the city of Langebaan (at the tip of your forefinger).
Two nights before the race, on Thursday, after driving the course, Bill and I located a guest house with a kitchenette and a full view of the lagoon. We’d taken a ride to the grocery store a little out of town and purchased the makings for a spaghetti dinner. I’d prepared it and we’d eaten our carbohydrates with some South African Chenin Blanc we’d bought at a winery we’d stopped at earlier in the day. Then we’d watched a little TV (which consisted of news in various South African languages and an old Bill Murray movie) and had gone to bed.
At three o’clock that morning, I woke up shivering. I had intense cramps in my abdomen and a sharp headache. The longer I lay there, the worse the cramps became. Finally, I had to run to the bathroom, knowing what to expect. I had a violent case of diarrhea. I figured I must have gotten food poisoning somehow. Bill would have it too. But when Bill awoke a little while later, he was fine. He offered me some medication for the fever, which I took. But I couldn’t get back to sleep. Until the sun rose, I vacillated between freezing and sweating and running to the toilet.
Friday, one day before the race, I didn’t feel any better. The fever was in check due to the medication, but the diarrhea kept coming. I drank water a small sip at a time all day to stay hydrated. We moved to the next guest house I had pre-arranged for us where I climbed into bed for the remainder of the day. I can’t even remember if I ate anything for dinner. I kept thinking, “I came to Africa to run a marathon and I’m going to do it.” Throughout the day on Friday, whenever Bill verbalized his worries about me, this is what I told him. And, as I lay in bed there, in the African heat (I’ll get to that later), watching Bill pace the room trying to figure out what to do for me, I knew it didn’t matter how sick I was in the morning. I would be at the starting line.
This brings me back (or forward?) to Saturday. When we woke up to get ready for the race, Bill asked me how I felt and I told him, “It doesn’t matter.” I got dressed, out the door, onto the bus and up to the starting line chanting that mantra. The morning was beautiful, and I tried to take in the unidentifiable (to me) scents of the flora all around us and to feel the southern air on my face between the periodic waves of pain in my abdomen. The temperature at that point was comfortable, approximately 70 degrees Fahrenheit. There was a comfortable breeze and excitement in the air. The sound of the ocean lapping onto the bank nearby was rhythmic and calming.
South Africans, much like the Japanese runners we had encountered earlier this year, run as clubs. There is a very strong club identity in each geographic area around the country, and from what we could see, the clubs were racially mixed. Each club member was required to have a “running license” to take part in organized events. It was explained to us that a person could only get a permanent license after participating in a certain number of events in order to show a serious commitment to running. You could identify members of the same club by the information on this permanent license, which was worn on the back of the shirt – the race number was on the front. Bill and I had been given temporary licenses for us to safety pin to our backs. As we stood at the line, waiting, these licenses tagged us as either foreigners or new runners. We noticed other runners glancing at us curiously and then looking away to be polite.
It was 7:00 a.m. and, with the adrenaline of 560 chattering and stretching marathoners all around me and the sun poking its nose above the horizon, I had a brief moment before we started the race when I felt almost strong. I gave myself a little pep talk, saying, “You ran under five hours in Japan! You’re in good shape. You can do anything for five hours. Just put one foot in front of the other.” Bill, who was still at my side, kissed me goodbye and moved further toward the front of the pack. Then the horn blew and we started running.
Let me make this part short and to the point. Let me do it because now, typing at my keyboard, I CAN make it short; I can do what I could not do that Saturday. I can hurry through the hard stuff. The sun rose above our heads, and (we heard later) it reached 38 degrees Celsius (about 100 degrees F). I continued to have cramps throughout the run until I had to find a bush to squat under and…. Well, you can fill in the blanks. Though the park foliage was magnificent, it was all low to the ground, a knee level eco-system with unique plants exclusive to South Africa. There wasn’t a single tree for miles; nor was there any shade – at all. The fast people at the front of pack were hot and sweaty just like those of us at the tail end, so they drank all the water before we got to the aid stations (plus, there were apparently more registrants than the organizers had expected). So for the first 18 kilometers we were offered only Coke to replenish the fluids we were losing. I always carry water, so I had an advantage over other back-of-the-packers who had to manage with cola. I was rationing, though, and dying to have a nice long guzzle of water by the time the problem was addressed. I must still have been fighting a fever, too, because I had moments of feeling slightly chilled in spite of the uncomfortable heat. And the hills that looked rolling and easy in the car two days earlier were endless and numerous on foot. As a point-to-point marathon, it just kept going up with little dips in between to fool you into thinking you were getting a break now and again.
Still, although I was quite frankly miserable, although I watched my pace slow with every kilometer until I knew it was unlikely I would make it to the finish for the cut-off time (5.5 hours), although I had to walk most of the hills in the second half, and although one woman rebuked me for dropping my power gel packet on the ground (which I never, ever, ever would have done if I hadn’t been watching the clean-up crew and weren’t absolutely positive that it would be swept up before I was even off the course), I knew I was having one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. Many people came up to me and asked me where I was from. They told me about their favorite races around the country and asked me how I was faring in the heat, being from the North as I was. The people at the aid stations were full of encouragement and greetings and apologies for the lack of water. No ostriches chased me. I was never totally alone at the back of this pack as I so often am at home. There were plenty of other stragglers around to keep me company. And, hell, I was in AFRICA! I was kitty-corner across the globe from my home, my terrain and my worldview.
So, while if I had been in the same circumstances in, say, Wenatchee, I would have opted to call it quits after just one loop around Confluence Park, I was not tempted now to stop moving forward in this race. And, while I occasionally ran with eyes closed and fantasized about ruby slippers and clicking my way home in an instant, I just reminded myself that if I did what I was doing long enough, eventually the finish line would appear. It wasn’t magic, but it was true, and that helped.
The kilometers passed slowly. More hills came and went; I walked them. The vegetation never really varied from the odiferous shrubs I had squatted behind a few hours earlier, but once in a while glimpses of the water surprised me from out of nowhere and promised a refreshing, cool splash when this was all over. Finally, I could see the town of Langebaan (remember your forefinger?) in the distance. The little resort town sparked in the sunlight with reflections off of its clean white buildings. But as I saw the town, I also saw something I hadn’t noticed when Bill and I had taken the car on the course two days ago or when we were taking the bus to the starting line this morning: the biggest, longest, winding-est freaking hill I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m not sure how I’d missed it both times we had driven it, but I had. It was at least a kilometer long.
I was still a half kilometer away from having to face it, but I burst into tears. Thankfully, no one was close enough to hear my profanities flying, though I suspect I wasn’t the only runner to have that reaction and no one would have blamed me if they’d caught my words. I just couldn’t imagine from where I would mine the energy to make it up the whole thing. When I reached it, however, something in me kicked in. I knew I was near the end and I knew Bill would be there for me. I wanted so badly to see him and to stop moving and to find some shade. The only way to get there was up this hill. So, with tears streaking down my salty, sunburned face and thinking about how far I was from the triumph of Tateyama only a couple of months ago, I climbed it, one slow, labored step at a time.
There was another runner shadowing me, speaking to me occasionally in a language I didn’t understand. I think he was either saying something inspirational like, “Come on! We can do it!” Or he might have been cursing. But in any case, his presence was comforting and I offered him a faint smile now and again as we made our way.
After two years, we made it to the top of the hill and saw that the fates were smiling on us (or at least smirking) at last. It was all downhill for the final two kilometers into the town. I leaned into gravity and sniffled my way down to the finish line. When I saw it, I began to cry again. There was Bill – with his camera to record me in my weakest moment, of course. There were other finishers along the sidelines cheering for me, which made me cry all the uglier. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. That was hard,” I was saying. Bill came around the other side of the finish line and pulled me into a hug that held me up for a moment. I looked at my watch and guesstimated my finish time (5:35). The timeclock had been taken down. And the medals were no longer being given out.
As quickly as I could, I found some shade in a tent and stretched. It was over. My body was completely worn out. I wanted to crawl into a ball and close my eyes. At least my bowels were quiet for the moment. Bill told me he was afraid I must have collapsed somewhere on the route, and he had concocted a plan for me to stay an extra couple of weeks in South Africa so I could recover and try again with another race somewhere else in the country. I was grateful we wouldn’t have to go to those extremes.
Bill fetched me some cold cola and, when I had rested a little and could think straight, we struck up a conversation with the people in the tent. There was my friend from the hill, still uttering incomprehensible words to me and smiling and patting me on the back. A woman in the tent told someone else where we were from and then suddenly someone with a microphone was introducing us to the crowd. Before I knew what was happening, we’d been identified as “Americans from Washington” (I’m not sure if they knew we were from the State and not the Capital) and were offered beers and congratulations. The woman in the tent gave me her medal and the race organizers brought us another one “to give to our running club back home.” My hill-friend posed for a photo with me. Here we were with an extraordinary mix of gregarious South African people, drinking, snapping pictures, sharing stories and commiserations like old friends. The marathon was behind us and the celebration in front of us. I don’t care how many marathons you run or how well (or unwell) you run them, there’s always something to celebrate at the end.
It’s inadequate to say that South Africa is a country which invites a visitor into a profound, maybe even life-changing dissonance. There’s so much one doesn’t easily understand. At once the country is beautiful and welcoming and wealthy, while a few blocks away it is unspeakably poor and people are deprived of basic necessities. And these divisions, for the most part, are starkly made down the center between the races, with dark skinned people working hard to manage at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy as light skinned people, give or take a few exceptions, fiddle around at the top. One hardly knows what to do with the blatant contrast and the unfairness of it all. I spent most of my two weeks traveling with a dull headache and a pain in my heart as I grappled with what I was seeing and what it might mean.
But the harsh racial division is one reason why it is, in fact, important for me to write about the marathon in Langebaan because on Saturday, March 14, as Bill and I boarded the bus to take us to the starting line, we saw for the first time on our trip a rainbow of faces all together – all in one place – present for the same reason. To run. The race event was the only place we saw this kind of integration during our two weeks in South Africa. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, just that we didn’t see it, except there. On this morning, we could be sure no one on that bus would be served or serving anyone else. Every runner had the same status. Every runner had an equal right to be there and would be running his or her own best personal race. I know both Bill and I let out a breath of relief to know that at least the marathon did not respect anyone’s color or gender or political orientation over anyone else’s; if you showed up for it, it would treat you according to your ability to contend with it – nothing else mattered. (Although as soon as I say this, the dissonance is there, since one’s ability to run a marathon does, indeed, depend on whether or not you can pay the entry fee and whether or not you can afford shoes and good food and to keep your body healthy. You see the muddle I’m in trying to say anything definitive, don’t you?)
My own story of this marathon feels trivial compared to the very real, very daily struggle to live with dignity that the majority of South Africans face, and for that reason, it feels self-indulgent to bother anyone with it. Let’s face it, as evidenced by the fact that I have the privilege to fly about the world and run marathons, I’m one of those fiddling at the top of Maslow’s Triangle. But my own story is really the only story I have to tell. So here goes. I’ll stick to the race for now, but I’ll keep thinking about the bigger questions I have after this trip and what to do with them.
Saturday morning, I stood at the starting line and worried. It had been a grueling few days before this race and I was afraid I wasn’t up to it. Six days ago, Bill and I had flown to Cape Town (23 hours in the air), spent a few days there and then “hired” a car to get us to the coastal town of Langebaan and to the West Coast National Park. It was here that I stood waiting for the go-ahead to begin the race. We’d taken a drive through the park to give us a sense of the race route two days earlier. I knew what to expect: rolling hills, ostriches and a dry, sandy terrain with low shrubs and sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean and the Langebaan Lagoon. The land on which the West Coast National Park lies makes an inlet that forms the lagoon. Hold up the thumb and forefinger of your right hand like you’ve got a quarter between them and you can see the general shape of the inlet in the space there. The race would go from Tsaarsabank on the far West (your thumbnail) where you could see the Atlantic Ocean. There would be a short out and back half way (at the crease between your two digits) and you would end in the city of Langebaan (at the tip of your forefinger).
Two nights before the race, on Thursday, after driving the course, Bill and I located a guest house with a kitchenette and a full view of the lagoon. We’d taken a ride to the grocery store a little out of town and purchased the makings for a spaghetti dinner. I’d prepared it and we’d eaten our carbohydrates with some South African Chenin Blanc we’d bought at a winery we’d stopped at earlier in the day. Then we’d watched a little TV (which consisted of news in various South African languages and an old Bill Murray movie) and had gone to bed.
At three o’clock that morning, I woke up shivering. I had intense cramps in my abdomen and a sharp headache. The longer I lay there, the worse the cramps became. Finally, I had to run to the bathroom, knowing what to expect. I had a violent case of diarrhea. I figured I must have gotten food poisoning somehow. Bill would have it too. But when Bill awoke a little while later, he was fine. He offered me some medication for the fever, which I took. But I couldn’t get back to sleep. Until the sun rose, I vacillated between freezing and sweating and running to the toilet.
Friday, one day before the race, I didn’t feel any better. The fever was in check due to the medication, but the diarrhea kept coming. I drank water a small sip at a time all day to stay hydrated. We moved to the next guest house I had pre-arranged for us where I climbed into bed for the remainder of the day. I can’t even remember if I ate anything for dinner. I kept thinking, “I came to Africa to run a marathon and I’m going to do it.” Throughout the day on Friday, whenever Bill verbalized his worries about me, this is what I told him. And, as I lay in bed there, in the African heat (I’ll get to that later), watching Bill pace the room trying to figure out what to do for me, I knew it didn’t matter how sick I was in the morning. I would be at the starting line.
This brings me back (or forward?) to Saturday. When we woke up to get ready for the race, Bill asked me how I felt and I told him, “It doesn’t matter.” I got dressed, out the door, onto the bus and up to the starting line chanting that mantra. The morning was beautiful, and I tried to take in the unidentifiable (to me) scents of the flora all around us and to feel the southern air on my face between the periodic waves of pain in my abdomen. The temperature at that point was comfortable, approximately 70 degrees Fahrenheit. There was a comfortable breeze and excitement in the air. The sound of the ocean lapping onto the bank nearby was rhythmic and calming.
South Africans, much like the Japanese runners we had encountered earlier this year, run as clubs. There is a very strong club identity in each geographic area around the country, and from what we could see, the clubs were racially mixed. Each club member was required to have a “running license” to take part in organized events. It was explained to us that a person could only get a permanent license after participating in a certain number of events in order to show a serious commitment to running. You could identify members of the same club by the information on this permanent license, which was worn on the back of the shirt – the race number was on the front. Bill and I had been given temporary licenses for us to safety pin to our backs. As we stood at the line, waiting, these licenses tagged us as either foreigners or new runners. We noticed other runners glancing at us curiously and then looking away to be polite.
It was 7:00 a.m. and, with the adrenaline of 560 chattering and stretching marathoners all around me and the sun poking its nose above the horizon, I had a brief moment before we started the race when I felt almost strong. I gave myself a little pep talk, saying, “You ran under five hours in Japan! You’re in good shape. You can do anything for five hours. Just put one foot in front of the other.” Bill, who was still at my side, kissed me goodbye and moved further toward the front of the pack. Then the horn blew and we started running.
Let me make this part short and to the point. Let me do it because now, typing at my keyboard, I CAN make it short; I can do what I could not do that Saturday. I can hurry through the hard stuff. The sun rose above our heads, and (we heard later) it reached 38 degrees Celsius (about 100 degrees F). I continued to have cramps throughout the run until I had to find a bush to squat under and…. Well, you can fill in the blanks. Though the park foliage was magnificent, it was all low to the ground, a knee level eco-system with unique plants exclusive to South Africa. There wasn’t a single tree for miles; nor was there any shade – at all. The fast people at the front of pack were hot and sweaty just like those of us at the tail end, so they drank all the water before we got to the aid stations (plus, there were apparently more registrants than the organizers had expected). So for the first 18 kilometers we were offered only Coke to replenish the fluids we were losing. I always carry water, so I had an advantage over other back-of-the-packers who had to manage with cola. I was rationing, though, and dying to have a nice long guzzle of water by the time the problem was addressed. I must still have been fighting a fever, too, because I had moments of feeling slightly chilled in spite of the uncomfortable heat. And the hills that looked rolling and easy in the car two days earlier were endless and numerous on foot. As a point-to-point marathon, it just kept going up with little dips in between to fool you into thinking you were getting a break now and again.
Still, although I was quite frankly miserable, although I watched my pace slow with every kilometer until I knew it was unlikely I would make it to the finish for the cut-off time (5.5 hours), although I had to walk most of the hills in the second half, and although one woman rebuked me for dropping my power gel packet on the ground (which I never, ever, ever would have done if I hadn’t been watching the clean-up crew and weren’t absolutely positive that it would be swept up before I was even off the course), I knew I was having one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. Many people came up to me and asked me where I was from. They told me about their favorite races around the country and asked me how I was faring in the heat, being from the North as I was. The people at the aid stations were full of encouragement and greetings and apologies for the lack of water. No ostriches chased me. I was never totally alone at the back of this pack as I so often am at home. There were plenty of other stragglers around to keep me company. And, hell, I was in AFRICA! I was kitty-corner across the globe from my home, my terrain and my worldview.
So, while if I had been in the same circumstances in, say, Wenatchee, I would have opted to call it quits after just one loop around Confluence Park, I was not tempted now to stop moving forward in this race. And, while I occasionally ran with eyes closed and fantasized about ruby slippers and clicking my way home in an instant, I just reminded myself that if I did what I was doing long enough, eventually the finish line would appear. It wasn’t magic, but it was true, and that helped.
The kilometers passed slowly. More hills came and went; I walked them. The vegetation never really varied from the odiferous shrubs I had squatted behind a few hours earlier, but once in a while glimpses of the water surprised me from out of nowhere and promised a refreshing, cool splash when this was all over. Finally, I could see the town of Langebaan (remember your forefinger?) in the distance. The little resort town sparked in the sunlight with reflections off of its clean white buildings. But as I saw the town, I also saw something I hadn’t noticed when Bill and I had taken the car on the course two days ago or when we were taking the bus to the starting line this morning: the biggest, longest, winding-est freaking hill I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m not sure how I’d missed it both times we had driven it, but I had. It was at least a kilometer long.
I was still a half kilometer away from having to face it, but I burst into tears. Thankfully, no one was close enough to hear my profanities flying, though I suspect I wasn’t the only runner to have that reaction and no one would have blamed me if they’d caught my words. I just couldn’t imagine from where I would mine the energy to make it up the whole thing. When I reached it, however, something in me kicked in. I knew I was near the end and I knew Bill would be there for me. I wanted so badly to see him and to stop moving and to find some shade. The only way to get there was up this hill. So, with tears streaking down my salty, sunburned face and thinking about how far I was from the triumph of Tateyama only a couple of months ago, I climbed it, one slow, labored step at a time.
There was another runner shadowing me, speaking to me occasionally in a language I didn’t understand. I think he was either saying something inspirational like, “Come on! We can do it!” Or he might have been cursing. But in any case, his presence was comforting and I offered him a faint smile now and again as we made our way.
After two years, we made it to the top of the hill and saw that the fates were smiling on us (or at least smirking) at last. It was all downhill for the final two kilometers into the town. I leaned into gravity and sniffled my way down to the finish line. When I saw it, I began to cry again. There was Bill – with his camera to record me in my weakest moment, of course. There were other finishers along the sidelines cheering for me, which made me cry all the uglier. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. That was hard,” I was saying. Bill came around the other side of the finish line and pulled me into a hug that held me up for a moment. I looked at my watch and guesstimated my finish time (5:35). The timeclock had been taken down. And the medals were no longer being given out.
As quickly as I could, I found some shade in a tent and stretched. It was over. My body was completely worn out. I wanted to crawl into a ball and close my eyes. At least my bowels were quiet for the moment. Bill told me he was afraid I must have collapsed somewhere on the route, and he had concocted a plan for me to stay an extra couple of weeks in South Africa so I could recover and try again with another race somewhere else in the country. I was grateful we wouldn’t have to go to those extremes.
Bill fetched me some cold cola and, when I had rested a little and could think straight, we struck up a conversation with the people in the tent. There was my friend from the hill, still uttering incomprehensible words to me and smiling and patting me on the back. A woman in the tent told someone else where we were from and then suddenly someone with a microphone was introducing us to the crowd. Before I knew what was happening, we’d been identified as “Americans from Washington” (I’m not sure if they knew we were from the State and not the Capital) and were offered beers and congratulations. The woman in the tent gave me her medal and the race organizers brought us another one “to give to our running club back home.” My hill-friend posed for a photo with me. Here we were with an extraordinary mix of gregarious South African people, drinking, snapping pictures, sharing stories and commiserations like old friends. The marathon was behind us and the celebration in front of us. I don’t care how many marathons you run or how well (or unwell) you run them, there’s always something to celebrate at the end.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Our First Few Days in Cape Town
We just arrived back at our Bed and Breakfast (Colette’s B and B in Cape Town – great place) after our first day DRIVING (on the left side of the road) in South Africa! We’re glad to be “home” safely, and I have so many observations and anecdotes to record that I thought I’d try to put together a little pre-race blog to keep you updated. So by subject:
Electricity: Apparently, there are a few different kinds of outlets in South Africa. Some electrical outlets have three large round prongs and some have two slightly slimmer round prongs. The electricity comes through at 220 volts. As you know, in the US, we use 110 volts. Since I hoped to use my new little baby netbook computer to check email and to blog on this trip, we had to buy an adapter, which we did before we left. This $30 thingamajig does, in fact, work in translating the voltage strength, but it only has two prongs. Here at Colette’s, we need three. The adaptor we bought also only has two flat prongs for the US appliances (instead of the two flat plus one round one that my computer has). To make a long, boring story too long and boring than it needs to be, I’m writing this to you on a computer which has THREE different adapters plugged together to make it work (a two to three pronged US adaptor/ a US to South African adaptor/ and a two to three pronged South African adaptor). Here’s the lesson for you who would travel to Cape Town: Don’t trust that cute 17-year-old girl with the nose ring at Radio Shack to explain what you’ll need to make your appliances work on a continent she may or may not be able to place on a world map.
Language: Although English is almost universally spoken among the residents of Cape Town, we’ve still encountered numerous glitches and confusions. For example, we were “collected” at the airport by a lovely man with whom we arranged a ride to our Bed and Breakfast (even though we could scarcely collect ourselves and our luggage, so tired were we from 26 hours of travel – 22 of those in the air). Once we “hired” (rented) our car and paid the “excess” (deposit) in case of an accident, we had to get directions to our first destination. After about the third time we were told to turn left or right at the “robot,” I finally asked that question that I’d waited to ask until there was no alternative but to directly reveal my ignorance: “What is a robot?”
Mind you, I had images of a robotic traffic cop tooting a canned whistle and motioning for traffic to move forward or to wait its turn – like in the Jetson’s. I wasn’t far off. A robot is a traffic light! Mystery solved.
By the way, a “geezer” is a tiny hot water heater under the kitchen sink. A “funicular” is an elevator. And one answers a thank you with , “Pleasure,” rather than, “You’re welcome.” Fortunately, one still “drinks” wine, which brings me to my next subject.
Wine: There’s good wine here (hi Dennis and Benita). We’ve tried a few – a chenin blanc, a merlot and a shiraz from local wineries. I’ll have more to tell you after we tour some “wine farms,” but suffice it to say at this point that an excellent bottle of wine can be purchased for 20 to 30 Rand. (There are about 10 Rand to a dollar. Do the math. I’m not kidding.)
Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope: Beautiful, majestic, awe-inspiring. WOW! We took a little run (about 3 kilometers) from one cape to the other today. The Atlantic and Indian Oceans both feed into the waters around these points. Bill and I savored the sea air and the warmth (34 degrees Celsius) and we wished all of you could be with us.
Most importantly – Apartheid: Yesterday we took a boat trip out to Robben Island, the island prison where Nelson Mandela and many other non-white political prisoners were held captive during the years of the “Old Government.” Bill and I were humbled by the tour of the grounds and the prison cells. The first part of the tour was given by a young black South African woman who spoke, unflinching, to an almost entirely white bus full of tourists about the way the white minority systematically oppressed and repressed the black majority for decade after decade. While whites dominated all sectors of society with economic or political power, dissenters (both black and white) persisted in their resistance with propaganda creatively smuggled out of prisons and into the streets.
The man who gave us the tour of the prison cells was a former political prisoner housed at the very prison he now gives tours at. Can you imagine spending every day working at the place where, for seven years, you slept on the cement floor and peed in a bucket? Our guide said that he wanted to foster forgiveness. What does it even mean to forgive your government after families have been torn apart and dignity has been smashed to little pieces over and over? Maybe it means more than I am capable of understanding. I, of course, recalled America’s oppressions (past and recent [think Proposition 8 in California]), I also thought of our recent election of our first black president and tonight, as I write this, I’m challenged, once again, to wonder what words like “reconcile,” “forgiveness,” and “equality” mean. I don’t know. But for sure my questions are richer than they were before yesterday. If you get to Cape Town, get out to Robben Island. It’s not a pretty story, but it’s required reading.
That’s all for the moment. We’re off to Langebaan where the marathon takes place on Saturday. Until next time….
Electricity: Apparently, there are a few different kinds of outlets in South Africa. Some electrical outlets have three large round prongs and some have two slightly slimmer round prongs. The electricity comes through at 220 volts. As you know, in the US, we use 110 volts. Since I hoped to use my new little baby netbook computer to check email and to blog on this trip, we had to buy an adapter, which we did before we left. This $30 thingamajig does, in fact, work in translating the voltage strength, but it only has two prongs. Here at Colette’s, we need three. The adaptor we bought also only has two flat prongs for the US appliances (instead of the two flat plus one round one that my computer has). To make a long, boring story too long and boring than it needs to be, I’m writing this to you on a computer which has THREE different adapters plugged together to make it work (a two to three pronged US adaptor/ a US to South African adaptor/ and a two to three pronged South African adaptor). Here’s the lesson for you who would travel to Cape Town: Don’t trust that cute 17-year-old girl with the nose ring at Radio Shack to explain what you’ll need to make your appliances work on a continent she may or may not be able to place on a world map.
Language: Although English is almost universally spoken among the residents of Cape Town, we’ve still encountered numerous glitches and confusions. For example, we were “collected” at the airport by a lovely man with whom we arranged a ride to our Bed and Breakfast (even though we could scarcely collect ourselves and our luggage, so tired were we from 26 hours of travel – 22 of those in the air). Once we “hired” (rented) our car and paid the “excess” (deposit) in case of an accident, we had to get directions to our first destination. After about the third time we were told to turn left or right at the “robot,” I finally asked that question that I’d waited to ask until there was no alternative but to directly reveal my ignorance: “What is a robot?”
Mind you, I had images of a robotic traffic cop tooting a canned whistle and motioning for traffic to move forward or to wait its turn – like in the Jetson’s. I wasn’t far off. A robot is a traffic light! Mystery solved.
By the way, a “geezer” is a tiny hot water heater under the kitchen sink. A “funicular” is an elevator. And one answers a thank you with , “Pleasure,” rather than, “You’re welcome.” Fortunately, one still “drinks” wine, which brings me to my next subject.
Wine: There’s good wine here (hi Dennis and Benita). We’ve tried a few – a chenin blanc, a merlot and a shiraz from local wineries. I’ll have more to tell you after we tour some “wine farms,” but suffice it to say at this point that an excellent bottle of wine can be purchased for 20 to 30 Rand. (There are about 10 Rand to a dollar. Do the math. I’m not kidding.)
Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope: Beautiful, majestic, awe-inspiring. WOW! We took a little run (about 3 kilometers) from one cape to the other today. The Atlantic and Indian Oceans both feed into the waters around these points. Bill and I savored the sea air and the warmth (34 degrees Celsius) and we wished all of you could be with us.
Most importantly – Apartheid: Yesterday we took a boat trip out to Robben Island, the island prison where Nelson Mandela and many other non-white political prisoners were held captive during the years of the “Old Government.” Bill and I were humbled by the tour of the grounds and the prison cells. The first part of the tour was given by a young black South African woman who spoke, unflinching, to an almost entirely white bus full of tourists about the way the white minority systematically oppressed and repressed the black majority for decade after decade. While whites dominated all sectors of society with economic or political power, dissenters (both black and white) persisted in their resistance with propaganda creatively smuggled out of prisons and into the streets.
The man who gave us the tour of the prison cells was a former political prisoner housed at the very prison he now gives tours at. Can you imagine spending every day working at the place where, for seven years, you slept on the cement floor and peed in a bucket? Our guide said that he wanted to foster forgiveness. What does it even mean to forgive your government after families have been torn apart and dignity has been smashed to little pieces over and over? Maybe it means more than I am capable of understanding. I, of course, recalled America’s oppressions (past and recent [think Proposition 8 in California]), I also thought of our recent election of our first black president and tonight, as I write this, I’m challenged, once again, to wonder what words like “reconcile,” “forgiveness,” and “equality” mean. I don’t know. But for sure my questions are richer than they were before yesterday. If you get to Cape Town, get out to Robben Island. It’s not a pretty story, but it’s required reading.
That’s all for the moment. We’re off to Langebaan where the marathon takes place on Saturday. Until next time….
Friday, March 6, 2009
Takin' off for Africa
Well, by 7:00 am on Saturday, March 7, we’ll be off for continent number FIVE! The turn around between Asia and Africa has been chaotic and exhausting. Not only did we have to solidify our agenda for our next trip, we also had to keep up with our running and fight off the threat of Strep Throat (Bill’s daughter, Jessie, was sick for several days before she discovered what was wrong and started her anti-biotics).
Thankfully, we’re Strep free and Jessie is fine, too. Tonight we’re packing and doing last minute errands. It occurred to me today while I took one final slow run that I am truly grateful for this opportunity and for everyone who has pitched in to make it happen. I hope all of you know how much I appreciate your support and love. From my grandparents, who take care of our pups while we’re gone, to friends (Jack, Steph, Christine) who have shuttled us to or from the airport, this dream is really taking a village to bring about. Literally hundreds of people have wished us well and asked for updates (friends at Starbucks, those who respond to the blog, my writing group, Bill’s colleagues, our friends and families, random strangers who saw the article about us in the Bellingham Herald).
So here we go again. The race takes place on Saturday, March 14 in South Africa’s West Coast National Park. We’ll have one week before the race and one week after to explore Cape Town and the surrounding areas. Stay tuned for a race report and for a full description of our exploration of South Africa.
And thank you for all you’ve done to support us! We appreciate you.
Thankfully, we’re Strep free and Jessie is fine, too. Tonight we’re packing and doing last minute errands. It occurred to me today while I took one final slow run that I am truly grateful for this opportunity and for everyone who has pitched in to make it happen. I hope all of you know how much I appreciate your support and love. From my grandparents, who take care of our pups while we’re gone, to friends (Jack, Steph, Christine) who have shuttled us to or from the airport, this dream is really taking a village to bring about. Literally hundreds of people have wished us well and asked for updates (friends at Starbucks, those who respond to the blog, my writing group, Bill’s colleagues, our friends and families, random strangers who saw the article about us in the Bellingham Herald).
So here we go again. The race takes place on Saturday, March 14 in South Africa’s West Coast National Park. We’ll have one week before the race and one week after to explore Cape Town and the surrounding areas. Stay tuned for a race report and for a full description of our exploration of South Africa.
And thank you for all you’ve done to support us! We appreciate you.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Tateyama Wakashio Marathon - Race Report
Bill and I flew out of Seattle to Japan on January 20th, Inauguration Day. Our flight didn’t leave until early afternoon, so we had the opportunity to watch some of the pomp and circumstance of D.C. on television before we had to head down to the airport. We listened to President Obama’s speech on NPR as we drove. Sorry as we were to miss the coverage of the entire day, we were also excited to have our trip finally under way. It had been a long time in the planning stage.
This would be my second trip to Japan. The first was for our honeymoon, when we climbed Mt. Fuji and fell in love with her, that magic giant whose elevation is 12,388 feet at the highest point.
We had a different challenge on our agenda this time. It would be our fourth continent on which we would run a marathon.
When we arrived in Tokyo and debarked the plane, there were two men waiting for us with our names on a sign. We were on our way to Tateyama, Bellingham’s Japanese Sister City. The folks in Tateyama had been incredibly attentive to us as we made our plans. They paid for our entry to the marathon, arranged a homestay for us with a local family, scheduled a meeting with their mayor and insisted on picking us up at the airport. We had wanted to find our way to Tateyama on our own by train, but Michael, the liaison with the Tateyama mayor’s office, called us at least four times asking and re-asking whether or not it wouldn’t be better to have someone fetch us by car and drive us in. Eventually, he wore me down and I acquiesced. I like to take trains when I travel, but we would have to do it on another trip. And anyhow, I decided it might be a relief after a long plane ride to let someone else do the thinking at that point.
If you’ve never experienced Japanese hospitality, you’ve only lived half a life. When we arrived at the hotel Michael had booked for us, a team of six people (eight including us) gathered around a table in the lobby and commenced a meeting about our itinerary. We had contacted Tateyama through the Sister City Organization originally because there was very little information in English about the marathon online, and we’d realized we would need help to register. We never expected Tateyama to take us into the fold and treat us like honored dignitaries, but this is what happened. As Bill and I sat, exhausted and confused as to whether it was night or day, Michael translated for us what the representatives of the mayor’s office, the homestay family, the hotel and the Sister City Organization were planning for us. I tried to follow all the details, but when I realized I was having trouble even remembering people’s names, I finally dug out my pen and paper and took notes so I’d have something to refer to the next morning.
Here’s the itinerary:
Thursday: 10:00am – Our host (Kinuyo) would pick us up with the wife (Mrs. Kitami) of the man (Mr. Kitami) who had driven us from the airport. First they would drive us the full length of the marathon course. Then we would spend the day seeing sights of interest in Tateyama (the sports center and an interesting shrine cut into a mountainside). At 6:00pm we would convene at the Kitami’s for a potluck dinner with other Sister City Organization members who had visited Bellingham in past years. We would meet Kenji, Kinuyo’s husband, and sleep at their house.
Friday: A 9:30am meeting with the mayor who would present us with a gift and an International Friendship Certificate, more sight-seeing (a temple, local flower-growers and a Daibutsu) and then a lovely dinner at the home of our hosts.
Saturday: More sight-seeing in the morning, registration for the race in the afternoon and a formal presentation of plaques commemorating our participation in the marathon during a pre-race celebration in the evening. Sleep at the hotel and get ready for the race.
Sunday: Run the marathon at 10 am. Recover in the hotel room while watching the Sumo championship matches on TV.
Monday: We would leave Tateyama. The son of the hotel owner would drive us all the way (2 hours) to the next city we intended to visit before Bill had to fly home.
The morning after we arrived was foggy. Word was that Tateyama had one of the best views of Mt. Fuji in Japan, but we couldn’t find it. In fact, sight-seeing on our second day, the fog was so bad, we couldn’t even see the top of Buddha’s head as we stood at his feet. But once Saturday rolled around, rain cleared the air, wind blew the clouds and fog away, and Mt. Fuji made an appearance. Sure enough, there she was, across the water, huge and white and powerful.
When we awoke on Sunday morning and looked out the hotel room window, Fuji-san was still there. We were going to get to look at the mountain while we ran. Excited, we dressed and walked a few hundred meters from our hotel to the starting area.
Japanese runners are almost all organized into clubs. These clubs don’t much resemble the “running club” I belong to in Bellingham. They do meet for and support one another on training runs like we do, but they are more of a highly organized troop or team than we. For example, they tend to have about sixty members, all active, who register for races based on their identity as a club. They meet before races and stake out a spot near the starting line, situating themselves as a unit on a tarp or in a tent where they will store their post-race changes of clothes and where they will meet after the race to celebrate and eat. And they often have matching sweat suits. Actually, we’ve found that one of the questions on many applications for marathons around the world is, “Which running club do you belong to?” We always answer with, “Greater Bellingham Running Club,” but we know we aren’t answering the same question we’re being asked.
Because we didn’t have a recognized club to congregate with, we were introduced to a couple who invited us to join them on their tarp and to warm up with and start with them. There was a soccer field where runners warmed up near the race center. There was a big time-clock to the north side of the field that counted down the minutes to the start of the race. A few hundred people, wearing their various club colors, jogged around in circles, stopping from time to time to stretch. We jumped right into the circle and warmed up.
One of the women from the club took me under her wing. She was an avid marathoner with a slight injury, so she assured me she would be running this race at a slow pace. I know from experience that when most runners say “slow,” it never means slow like MY slow, so I didn’t count on running with her, but we did start together. Just minutes before the gun, we headed to the starting line, and I was surprised to see everyone lined up by number. There were signs telling us where we should stand (Bib #s 1100-1700, for example). I lined up behind the sign that indicated my bib number and stood next to my new friend as we waited for the signal that we should begin. We were also divided by sex. The men were on the right side of the line and the women on the left. (This, by the way, surprised Bill and me. We lost each other in the crowd as we were swept into our categories with only time for a half-hearted wave at one another.)
The gun went off and 5000 runners crossed the starting line, one chirping chip at a time. The first few kilometers wound along the bay as Mt. Fuji supervised our progress. I settled into my pace toward the back of the pack and waved goodbye to my injured companion as she soared ahead of me.
Bill and I were the only foreigners in the race, as far as we could figure (we’d asked the mayor about this, who seemed to think so), and most certainly the only Caucasians. Before and behind me, dark-haired runners bobbed along while I, even at only five feet six inches, towered above most. This made me conspicuous to bystanders and fans, of which there were many thousands along the race course. The Kitami’s were among them near the beginning of my run, and I heard them shout my name. I waved.
Just as we turned away from the water on the first bend of the route, I picked out of the crowd some of our new Sister City friends from the potluck dinner on Thursday night. I yelled, “Hello! Arigato. Thank you. Thank you for coming.” At just about the same time a woman runner settled in at my pace next to me and said hello. She struggled in English to ask me where I was from and if this was my first time in Japan. I answered her slowly, simplifying my language, as I had learned to do when I taught English as a second language years ago. Then she asked me a perplexing question. “Are you high school?” she said.
“High school?” I repeated.
She ran quietly beside me for a moment. I figured she was trying to piece together a way to rephrase her question (while I wished for the millionth time in my life I’d taken Japanese in college when I had the chance). Perhaps she thought I was a high school teacher, an exchange teacher, maybe. “Or do you go to University?” she finally asked.
I laughed. “Me?” I smiled at her. “I am forty-one years old.” I said. I held up four fingers on one hand and one on the other.
“OH!” She laughed now, too. “Me too. I born 1968.”
“1967 for me,” I said.
We continued our simple conversation for a few minutes before she said, “Do your best,” and jogged on ahead of me.
Do your best is a common motto in sporting activities in Japan. I noted, in fact, that everyone on the sidelines was shouting it as runners passed by. “Gambate”(pronounced gom-baa-tey) is the Japanese phrase. As we ran through tangled, twisting narrow neighborhoods and alongside dozens of small family businesses, the streets were packed with families, children and the elderly, all repeatedly shouting, “Gambate.” I felt exhilarated by the attention. This was the first time I’d experienced people lining the streets every inch of a race to cheer for all the runners, and I studied the faces of the fans. I especially enjoyed meeting the gazes of some of the small children and the very elderly people who seemed to be eyeing me as if I were an oddity of some kind (which no doubt I was). Most would look away quickly when they noticed I was looking back.
Some of the fans had set up their own unofficial aid stations. I’d never seen such a thing. One crew of women even served their treats on ceramic dishes. Onigiri triangles wrapped in seaweed, miso soup, hot green tea, hard candies, and salty treats were all offered along the way in between the official aid stations with their ample supply of water and fruit.
Before we left Bellingham, I had told Bill that I thought this would be the race in which I would be able to beat five hours. The course was relatively flat, the weather expected to be mild and I was feeling healthier than ever. To support my goal, Bill had calculated what my splits would need to be for each and every kilometer. I am used to figuring my pace in minutes per mile, and I didn’t want to have to do the calculations from miles to kilometers in my head while I was running. Now, on a sheet of paper tucked into the front of my running belt, I had these calculations. I was paying careful attention to them.
Every 2 kilometers were marked on the course. At 10 kilometers, I was running a few minutes faster than Bill’s splits. At 16k, I was nine minutes faster. One old woman watched me pull my paper out of my belt and study it. When I saw she was looking at me, I waved at her. Immediately she smiled, waved back and shouted in English, “YES YOU CAN,” a la Obama. I could see that, yes, I could do it. I just might run a sub-five hour marathon. Only a few weeks earlier I had run a 30 kilometer race in Arizona in 3:13. Why couldn’t I do it now? When I hit 30k this time, I was at 3:18. Not bad. At 35 kilometers, even after a few challenging hills, I’d been running for 3 hours and 53 minutes. I was slowing down, but I could almost walk the last 7 kilometers (4.35 miles) and still come in under my five hour goal. This gave me a sense of relief, so I relaxed a little and stopped looking at my spits, but I kept running.
The route was like a lollipop. We traveled the road along the waterfront with the view of Mt. Fuji both at the start and the end and circled through Tateyama in the middle. As I came down the final small decline and saw the water, pain finally registered in my quads and hamstrings. But when the mountain came into my line of vision and winked at me (I’m quite sure I saw her do this), I remembered that only three years ago, I had climbed to her summit and I took courage, knowing I didn’t fail her then and I wouldn’t fail her now. As the mountain moved further behind me to the left, I strained my aching neck to look at the snowcap now covering the point at the top of Fuji and a flash of triumph flooded through me. I shouted, “WooooHoooo! Yes!” Some runners behind me tittered and whispered something to one another. There wasn’t much talking or shouting among the athletes here; all was serious concentration, but I figured I was already out of place, so a little hoot wouldn’t hurt anyone.
Finally, I saw a man standing near the course holding a large sign reading, “2 kilometers remaining.” At least I assume that’s what it said. I was so close! A few minutes later, I saw Bill up ahead, camera in hand. He had finished his race more than an hour before (3:41, he told me later) and had had time to recover while waiting for me.
I waved with both hands to catch Bill’s attention (though surely he wouldn’t have missed me with my blond hair coming loose from my pony tail and flying wild in the wind). Bill waited for me to come up parallel with him and jogged beside me.
“Hey friend, look at your time!” he said.
“I know. I did it. I’m coming in under five!” Adrenaline was pumping into my tired muscles. “Am I close?”
“It’s around the bend. Go for it.” He dropped back and let me move into the finishing shoot before swerving a bit to the left and running ahead behind the spectators to get a photo of me finishing.
I saw the finish line, fans defining it on either side. Incomprehensible shouts of encouragement washed over me. This was such a welcome difference from the way I usually came over a finish line after everyone had gone home and the recovery food had already been eaten!
There it was. FINISH was written in English. There was no mistaking it. And the clock below it read 4:52! I raised my hands in the air as I heard my microchip beep and screamed, “I DID IT. I DID IT!”
Bill was snapping pictures like crazy of my every motion. I slowed to a walk. Snap. I felt nausea settle into my stomach. Snap. A cramp was threatening to seize up my left leg. Snap. There was no way to collapse, no time to indulge my physical discomfort; everything was being recorded and people were fussing over me, congratulating me. Plus, our host family was there on the spot ready to host us to the recovery food. There was green tea and miso soup awaiting us. And crab-leg bisque. I hobbled along behind everyone the best I could. They whisked through the crowd to a table and, finally, to a chair. Here I sat and stretched, unwilling to move another step until my muscles relaxed and gave me the go-ahead.
This may be the only time I ever finish a sub-five hour marathon, but what a place to do it: Our sister city with Fuji-san looking over my shoulder.
This would be my second trip to Japan. The first was for our honeymoon, when we climbed Mt. Fuji and fell in love with her, that magic giant whose elevation is 12,388 feet at the highest point.
We had a different challenge on our agenda this time. It would be our fourth continent on which we would run a marathon.
When we arrived in Tokyo and debarked the plane, there were two men waiting for us with our names on a sign. We were on our way to Tateyama, Bellingham’s Japanese Sister City. The folks in Tateyama had been incredibly attentive to us as we made our plans. They paid for our entry to the marathon, arranged a homestay for us with a local family, scheduled a meeting with their mayor and insisted on picking us up at the airport. We had wanted to find our way to Tateyama on our own by train, but Michael, the liaison with the Tateyama mayor’s office, called us at least four times asking and re-asking whether or not it wouldn’t be better to have someone fetch us by car and drive us in. Eventually, he wore me down and I acquiesced. I like to take trains when I travel, but we would have to do it on another trip. And anyhow, I decided it might be a relief after a long plane ride to let someone else do the thinking at that point.
If you’ve never experienced Japanese hospitality, you’ve only lived half a life. When we arrived at the hotel Michael had booked for us, a team of six people (eight including us) gathered around a table in the lobby and commenced a meeting about our itinerary. We had contacted Tateyama through the Sister City Organization originally because there was very little information in English about the marathon online, and we’d realized we would need help to register. We never expected Tateyama to take us into the fold and treat us like honored dignitaries, but this is what happened. As Bill and I sat, exhausted and confused as to whether it was night or day, Michael translated for us what the representatives of the mayor’s office, the homestay family, the hotel and the Sister City Organization were planning for us. I tried to follow all the details, but when I realized I was having trouble even remembering people’s names, I finally dug out my pen and paper and took notes so I’d have something to refer to the next morning.
Here’s the itinerary:
Thursday: 10:00am – Our host (Kinuyo) would pick us up with the wife (Mrs. Kitami) of the man (Mr. Kitami) who had driven us from the airport. First they would drive us the full length of the marathon course. Then we would spend the day seeing sights of interest in Tateyama (the sports center and an interesting shrine cut into a mountainside). At 6:00pm we would convene at the Kitami’s for a potluck dinner with other Sister City Organization members who had visited Bellingham in past years. We would meet Kenji, Kinuyo’s husband, and sleep at their house.
Friday: A 9:30am meeting with the mayor who would present us with a gift and an International Friendship Certificate, more sight-seeing (a temple, local flower-growers and a Daibutsu) and then a lovely dinner at the home of our hosts.
Saturday: More sight-seeing in the morning, registration for the race in the afternoon and a formal presentation of plaques commemorating our participation in the marathon during a pre-race celebration in the evening. Sleep at the hotel and get ready for the race.
Sunday: Run the marathon at 10 am. Recover in the hotel room while watching the Sumo championship matches on TV.
Monday: We would leave Tateyama. The son of the hotel owner would drive us all the way (2 hours) to the next city we intended to visit before Bill had to fly home.
The morning after we arrived was foggy. Word was that Tateyama had one of the best views of Mt. Fuji in Japan, but we couldn’t find it. In fact, sight-seeing on our second day, the fog was so bad, we couldn’t even see the top of Buddha’s head as we stood at his feet. But once Saturday rolled around, rain cleared the air, wind blew the clouds and fog away, and Mt. Fuji made an appearance. Sure enough, there she was, across the water, huge and white and powerful.
When we awoke on Sunday morning and looked out the hotel room window, Fuji-san was still there. We were going to get to look at the mountain while we ran. Excited, we dressed and walked a few hundred meters from our hotel to the starting area.
Japanese runners are almost all organized into clubs. These clubs don’t much resemble the “running club” I belong to in Bellingham. They do meet for and support one another on training runs like we do, but they are more of a highly organized troop or team than we. For example, they tend to have about sixty members, all active, who register for races based on their identity as a club. They meet before races and stake out a spot near the starting line, situating themselves as a unit on a tarp or in a tent where they will store their post-race changes of clothes and where they will meet after the race to celebrate and eat. And they often have matching sweat suits. Actually, we’ve found that one of the questions on many applications for marathons around the world is, “Which running club do you belong to?” We always answer with, “Greater Bellingham Running Club,” but we know we aren’t answering the same question we’re being asked.
Because we didn’t have a recognized club to congregate with, we were introduced to a couple who invited us to join them on their tarp and to warm up with and start with them. There was a soccer field where runners warmed up near the race center. There was a big time-clock to the north side of the field that counted down the minutes to the start of the race. A few hundred people, wearing their various club colors, jogged around in circles, stopping from time to time to stretch. We jumped right into the circle and warmed up.
One of the women from the club took me under her wing. She was an avid marathoner with a slight injury, so she assured me she would be running this race at a slow pace. I know from experience that when most runners say “slow,” it never means slow like MY slow, so I didn’t count on running with her, but we did start together. Just minutes before the gun, we headed to the starting line, and I was surprised to see everyone lined up by number. There were signs telling us where we should stand (Bib #s 1100-1700, for example). I lined up behind the sign that indicated my bib number and stood next to my new friend as we waited for the signal that we should begin. We were also divided by sex. The men were on the right side of the line and the women on the left. (This, by the way, surprised Bill and me. We lost each other in the crowd as we were swept into our categories with only time for a half-hearted wave at one another.)
The gun went off and 5000 runners crossed the starting line, one chirping chip at a time. The first few kilometers wound along the bay as Mt. Fuji supervised our progress. I settled into my pace toward the back of the pack and waved goodbye to my injured companion as she soared ahead of me.
Bill and I were the only foreigners in the race, as far as we could figure (we’d asked the mayor about this, who seemed to think so), and most certainly the only Caucasians. Before and behind me, dark-haired runners bobbed along while I, even at only five feet six inches, towered above most. This made me conspicuous to bystanders and fans, of which there were many thousands along the race course. The Kitami’s were among them near the beginning of my run, and I heard them shout my name. I waved.
Just as we turned away from the water on the first bend of the route, I picked out of the crowd some of our new Sister City friends from the potluck dinner on Thursday night. I yelled, “Hello! Arigato. Thank you. Thank you for coming.” At just about the same time a woman runner settled in at my pace next to me and said hello. She struggled in English to ask me where I was from and if this was my first time in Japan. I answered her slowly, simplifying my language, as I had learned to do when I taught English as a second language years ago. Then she asked me a perplexing question. “Are you high school?” she said.
“High school?” I repeated.
She ran quietly beside me for a moment. I figured she was trying to piece together a way to rephrase her question (while I wished for the millionth time in my life I’d taken Japanese in college when I had the chance). Perhaps she thought I was a high school teacher, an exchange teacher, maybe. “Or do you go to University?” she finally asked.
I laughed. “Me?” I smiled at her. “I am forty-one years old.” I said. I held up four fingers on one hand and one on the other.
“OH!” She laughed now, too. “Me too. I born 1968.”
“1967 for me,” I said.
We continued our simple conversation for a few minutes before she said, “Do your best,” and jogged on ahead of me.
Do your best is a common motto in sporting activities in Japan. I noted, in fact, that everyone on the sidelines was shouting it as runners passed by. “Gambate”(pronounced gom-baa-tey) is the Japanese phrase. As we ran through tangled, twisting narrow neighborhoods and alongside dozens of small family businesses, the streets were packed with families, children and the elderly, all repeatedly shouting, “Gambate.” I felt exhilarated by the attention. This was the first time I’d experienced people lining the streets every inch of a race to cheer for all the runners, and I studied the faces of the fans. I especially enjoyed meeting the gazes of some of the small children and the very elderly people who seemed to be eyeing me as if I were an oddity of some kind (which no doubt I was). Most would look away quickly when they noticed I was looking back.
Some of the fans had set up their own unofficial aid stations. I’d never seen such a thing. One crew of women even served their treats on ceramic dishes. Onigiri triangles wrapped in seaweed, miso soup, hot green tea, hard candies, and salty treats were all offered along the way in between the official aid stations with their ample supply of water and fruit.
Before we left Bellingham, I had told Bill that I thought this would be the race in which I would be able to beat five hours. The course was relatively flat, the weather expected to be mild and I was feeling healthier than ever. To support my goal, Bill had calculated what my splits would need to be for each and every kilometer. I am used to figuring my pace in minutes per mile, and I didn’t want to have to do the calculations from miles to kilometers in my head while I was running. Now, on a sheet of paper tucked into the front of my running belt, I had these calculations. I was paying careful attention to them.
Every 2 kilometers were marked on the course. At 10 kilometers, I was running a few minutes faster than Bill’s splits. At 16k, I was nine minutes faster. One old woman watched me pull my paper out of my belt and study it. When I saw she was looking at me, I waved at her. Immediately she smiled, waved back and shouted in English, “YES YOU CAN,” a la Obama. I could see that, yes, I could do it. I just might run a sub-five hour marathon. Only a few weeks earlier I had run a 30 kilometer race in Arizona in 3:13. Why couldn’t I do it now? When I hit 30k this time, I was at 3:18. Not bad. At 35 kilometers, even after a few challenging hills, I’d been running for 3 hours and 53 minutes. I was slowing down, but I could almost walk the last 7 kilometers (4.35 miles) and still come in under my five hour goal. This gave me a sense of relief, so I relaxed a little and stopped looking at my spits, but I kept running.
The route was like a lollipop. We traveled the road along the waterfront with the view of Mt. Fuji both at the start and the end and circled through Tateyama in the middle. As I came down the final small decline and saw the water, pain finally registered in my quads and hamstrings. But when the mountain came into my line of vision and winked at me (I’m quite sure I saw her do this), I remembered that only three years ago, I had climbed to her summit and I took courage, knowing I didn’t fail her then and I wouldn’t fail her now. As the mountain moved further behind me to the left, I strained my aching neck to look at the snowcap now covering the point at the top of Fuji and a flash of triumph flooded through me. I shouted, “WooooHoooo! Yes!” Some runners behind me tittered and whispered something to one another. There wasn’t much talking or shouting among the athletes here; all was serious concentration, but I figured I was already out of place, so a little hoot wouldn’t hurt anyone.
Finally, I saw a man standing near the course holding a large sign reading, “2 kilometers remaining.” At least I assume that’s what it said. I was so close! A few minutes later, I saw Bill up ahead, camera in hand. He had finished his race more than an hour before (3:41, he told me later) and had had time to recover while waiting for me.
I waved with both hands to catch Bill’s attention (though surely he wouldn’t have missed me with my blond hair coming loose from my pony tail and flying wild in the wind). Bill waited for me to come up parallel with him and jogged beside me.
“Hey friend, look at your time!” he said.
“I know. I did it. I’m coming in under five!” Adrenaline was pumping into my tired muscles. “Am I close?”
“It’s around the bend. Go for it.” He dropped back and let me move into the finishing shoot before swerving a bit to the left and running ahead behind the spectators to get a photo of me finishing.
I saw the finish line, fans defining it on either side. Incomprehensible shouts of encouragement washed over me. This was such a welcome difference from the way I usually came over a finish line after everyone had gone home and the recovery food had already been eaten!
There it was. FINISH was written in English. There was no mistaking it. And the clock below it read 4:52! I raised my hands in the air as I heard my microchip beep and screamed, “I DID IT. I DID IT!”
Bill was snapping pictures like crazy of my every motion. I slowed to a walk. Snap. I felt nausea settle into my stomach. Snap. A cramp was threatening to seize up my left leg. Snap. There was no way to collapse, no time to indulge my physical discomfort; everything was being recorded and people were fussing over me, congratulating me. Plus, our host family was there on the spot ready to host us to the recovery food. There was green tea and miso soup awaiting us. And crab-leg bisque. I hobbled along behind everyone the best I could. They whisked through the crowd to a table and, finally, to a chair. Here I sat and stretched, unwilling to move another step until my muscles relaxed and gave me the go-ahead.
This may be the only time I ever finish a sub-five hour marathon, but what a place to do it: Our sister city with Fuji-san looking over my shoulder.
Monday, February 2, 2009
I Take It Back
Even before I get around to writing about the race, I have to rescind my former statement regarding my dislike of Japanese food.
The first time I was in Japan, I was almost totally unsupervised in my food choices. This should never happen in some cultures. Left to one’s own devices, one is reduced to looking at pictures or plastic models of various dishes, pointing out one’s choice to the restaurant staff and enduring whatever has been served to one.
This time, because of the hospitality of our hosts in Tateyama and the guidance of my friends in Tokyo, I was advised and carefully monitored with regard to my every meal. Big surprise: It turns out I really love Japanese food.
On this trip I was instructed as to the difference between udon and soba noodles (the first are thick and made from white flour; the second are thinner and made from ground buckwheat). I was introduced to sukiyaki and shabu shabu, two dishes cooked right at the table in a nifty electric boiler. And I experienced a delicious minced tofu dish served with some tender root veggies that made me want to buy stock in the farm that raised them.
As promised, wanting to open myself up to whatever came my palate’s way, I lifted my personal ban on eating mammals while I was accepting the hospitality of our sister city hosts. Actually, unless you are very proficient in Japanese, it would be difficult to be a vegetarian in Japan and almost impossible to be vegan. Verifying the ingredients to any given menu item is both daunting and unlikely for the lone traveler. As I discovered with my first bowl of noodles, even dishes without meat are likely to be cooked in chicken, beef or port stock. Only in the case of homemade food can a foreigner (or at least this foreigner) absolutely substantiate what she is eating.
One evening our primary hosts in Tateyama, Kinuyo and Kenji, took us to the home of some of the sister city organization members for a potluck dinner. As twelve of us, ten Japanese friends, Bill and I, sat on the floor around a low dining table, chopsticks in hand, I inspected the offerings available. The women at the head of the table kept the food circulating while the men at the other end made certain our sake cups were never empty. As each dish came to me, I had my first opportunity to really ask about the details of what I was eating.
“How did you make this?” I asked several times. The answers I received yielded not only information about the contents of my meal, but also an impromptu cooking class. I discovered that while soy sauce is definitely the most common seasoning, sesame, garlic, onion and sake are also important and regularly utilized flavorings. I tried to take mental notes as the sake slowly took its effect on my state of mind so I could attempt to recreate at home some of the tastes I was experiencing that night.
I left Tateyama with an appreciation for my hosts and for the food they had lovingly introduced me to. By the time I reached Tokyo, I was braver and slightly more knowledgeable. I had names for a few things I had tried and liked, and I felt sure that if I could find a noodle shop I could keep myself alive for a few days wandering the big city by myself.
It would turn out that I would not need my newfound knowledge, however. My friends, Marci and Akira, invited me to stay with them for a few days and offered me part two of my edible education. We first took a trip to the grocery store and later to a 100 yen shop (kind of like a $1 store). At the first, Marci and Akira explained the mysterious items I had previously felt were so ominous. I even learned that the fruits and vegetables weren’t as expensive as I had once thought. I had mistaken a small box of strawberries, for example, for 1,245 yen (about thirteen bucks) when actually the sign read “1 package for 245 yen,” which is really not so bad. A few days later at the 100 yen shop, Marci and Akira pointed out their favorite dry snacks. I bought a bag of everything they said they liked, opened them ALL when we got home and sampled each one. My favorites were these little brown sugary nuggets that looked like tiny dog poops but tasted like heaven and some deep fried sweet potatoes covered with a light coating of sugar. Yum!
Finally, on my very last night in Tokyo, after I’d been completely won over and dreaded giving up all my new beloved victuals for the stuff I usually ate at home, I visited a dear old friend for a much-too-short dinner. I’ve known Kakuei for seventeen years and we’ve seen each other through both happy and sad times. I was excited to see him and his lovely wife, Yayoi, and to meet their 22-month old toddler. I was ready to enjoy whatever they put before me, as Kakuei had graciously done when he had visited me in the States over the years and I had offered him the best cheesy, greasy delectables America had to offer. I thought he would be proud of me for my daring dabbles in Japanese cuisine. But Kakuei had read my blog entry about my distaste for Japanese food and taken it very seriously. He had encouraged his wife to order pizza and not to offer me wine. Yayoi disregarded him on both counts, thankfully. Instead she made an amazing salad with slightly browned tuna and a dressing of soy sauce and olive oil, followed by three delicious courses of vegetables, potatoes and stroganoff. She had made a perfect compromise between Japanese and American fare - just in time to ease me back into the familiar.
So here I am, returned to my own bed and my own refrigerator. I honestly never thought I’d say it, but I miss my Japanese noodles.
The first time I was in Japan, I was almost totally unsupervised in my food choices. This should never happen in some cultures. Left to one’s own devices, one is reduced to looking at pictures or plastic models of various dishes, pointing out one’s choice to the restaurant staff and enduring whatever has been served to one.
This time, because of the hospitality of our hosts in Tateyama and the guidance of my friends in Tokyo, I was advised and carefully monitored with regard to my every meal. Big surprise: It turns out I really love Japanese food.
On this trip I was instructed as to the difference between udon and soba noodles (the first are thick and made from white flour; the second are thinner and made from ground buckwheat). I was introduced to sukiyaki and shabu shabu, two dishes cooked right at the table in a nifty electric boiler. And I experienced a delicious minced tofu dish served with some tender root veggies that made me want to buy stock in the farm that raised them.
As promised, wanting to open myself up to whatever came my palate’s way, I lifted my personal ban on eating mammals while I was accepting the hospitality of our sister city hosts. Actually, unless you are very proficient in Japanese, it would be difficult to be a vegetarian in Japan and almost impossible to be vegan. Verifying the ingredients to any given menu item is both daunting and unlikely for the lone traveler. As I discovered with my first bowl of noodles, even dishes without meat are likely to be cooked in chicken, beef or port stock. Only in the case of homemade food can a foreigner (or at least this foreigner) absolutely substantiate what she is eating.
One evening our primary hosts in Tateyama, Kinuyo and Kenji, took us to the home of some of the sister city organization members for a potluck dinner. As twelve of us, ten Japanese friends, Bill and I, sat on the floor around a low dining table, chopsticks in hand, I inspected the offerings available. The women at the head of the table kept the food circulating while the men at the other end made certain our sake cups were never empty. As each dish came to me, I had my first opportunity to really ask about the details of what I was eating.
“How did you make this?” I asked several times. The answers I received yielded not only information about the contents of my meal, but also an impromptu cooking class. I discovered that while soy sauce is definitely the most common seasoning, sesame, garlic, onion and sake are also important and regularly utilized flavorings. I tried to take mental notes as the sake slowly took its effect on my state of mind so I could attempt to recreate at home some of the tastes I was experiencing that night.
I left Tateyama with an appreciation for my hosts and for the food they had lovingly introduced me to. By the time I reached Tokyo, I was braver and slightly more knowledgeable. I had names for a few things I had tried and liked, and I felt sure that if I could find a noodle shop I could keep myself alive for a few days wandering the big city by myself.
It would turn out that I would not need my newfound knowledge, however. My friends, Marci and Akira, invited me to stay with them for a few days and offered me part two of my edible education. We first took a trip to the grocery store and later to a 100 yen shop (kind of like a $1 store). At the first, Marci and Akira explained the mysterious items I had previously felt were so ominous. I even learned that the fruits and vegetables weren’t as expensive as I had once thought. I had mistaken a small box of strawberries, for example, for 1,245 yen (about thirteen bucks) when actually the sign read “1 package for 245 yen,” which is really not so bad. A few days later at the 100 yen shop, Marci and Akira pointed out their favorite dry snacks. I bought a bag of everything they said they liked, opened them ALL when we got home and sampled each one. My favorites were these little brown sugary nuggets that looked like tiny dog poops but tasted like heaven and some deep fried sweet potatoes covered with a light coating of sugar. Yum!
Finally, on my very last night in Tokyo, after I’d been completely won over and dreaded giving up all my new beloved victuals for the stuff I usually ate at home, I visited a dear old friend for a much-too-short dinner. I’ve known Kakuei for seventeen years and we’ve seen each other through both happy and sad times. I was excited to see him and his lovely wife, Yayoi, and to meet their 22-month old toddler. I was ready to enjoy whatever they put before me, as Kakuei had graciously done when he had visited me in the States over the years and I had offered him the best cheesy, greasy delectables America had to offer. I thought he would be proud of me for my daring dabbles in Japanese cuisine. But Kakuei had read my blog entry about my distaste for Japanese food and taken it very seriously. He had encouraged his wife to order pizza and not to offer me wine. Yayoi disregarded him on both counts, thankfully. Instead she made an amazing salad with slightly browned tuna and a dressing of soy sauce and olive oil, followed by three delicious courses of vegetables, potatoes and stroganoff. She had made a perfect compromise between Japanese and American fare - just in time to ease me back into the familiar.
So here I am, returned to my own bed and my own refrigerator. I honestly never thought I’d say it, but I miss my Japanese noodles.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Hit Me With Your Best Shot
Before my high school creative writing teacher introduced me to Gerard Manly Hopkins, before I had taken my college courses in Shakespeare and Medieval Literature, before I began listening to audio versions of Dickens’ work on my long drives down to Seattle, I was introduced to the great female rocker, Pat Benatar, performing the nuanced poetry of song-writer Eddie Schwartz. In the eight grade, I bought Benatar’s 8-track tape called Crimes of Passion and played it on my stereo repeatedly while I slept at night. It seeped into my subconscious and rattled in my head during my days, even while I was at school.
It wouldn’t be long until Crimes of Passion would disappear with all my other rock albums in the crusade my church led to free its young people of the evils of secular music, but it was really too late; the devil had his foothold. I’d memorized the words to every song on that 8-track. They were a part of me. I could throw the short-lived technology into the garbage bin, but I couldn’t extract the lyrics of Benatar’s hits from my personal cannon of literature.
A few weeks ago, in a fit of boredom with my current catalog of running songs, I perused I-Tunes and came across Benatar’s #1 single: Hit Me With Your Best Shot. I downloaded the song onto my iPod and reclaimed one more memory discarded in the name of heaven.
Yesterday, I ran 21.5 miles – the last long run in my training for the Tateyama Marathon. It was one of the most difficult training runs of my life. The trails were still packed down with compact snow and ice, requiring me (or anyone else on the trail) to slow to a careful walk on some stretches. The temperature was in the low forties, but along the waterfront, the wind whipped me in the face and made the air feel closer to freezing. Plus, I must have eaten something the night before that didn’t settle well, because I struggled with a headache and an upset stomach for much of the run.
Just as I was feeling like the elements and this run were really kicking my ass, Hit Me with Your Best Shot blared through my ear buds. I cranked up the volume, listened to the words and sang along, then repeated the song a second time. “Yes,” I thought, inspired by Benatar’s sultry reminder of pre-adolescent rebellion and freedom, “the weather and my body are trying to keep me down, but I won’t be defeated! I WILL conquer these four hours of running! I WILL run through my pain! I WILL keep my balance on this ice! I WILL have French fries when this whole thing is over!” And I ran on, revived and encouraged enough to beat the icy hill I was facing. I sucked up the hurt in my stomach and the snot running out of my nose and I ran. I completed my 21.5 miles a little worse for wear, but alive. Still standing.
The devil may have the best music, but I couldn’t have gotten through yesterday’s run without it. I dedicate this song to long-distance running and to the Marathon. Go ahead, Marathon, hit me with your best shot. I’ll get right back up again. And in a little more than two weeks in Japan, I’ll be putting another notch in my lipstick case!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot
Written by Eddie Schwartz and performed by Pat Benatar
Well you're a real tough cookie with a long history
Of breaking little hearts, like the one in me
That's O.K., lets see how you do it
Put up your dukes, let's get down to it!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Why Don't You Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Fire Away!
You come on with your come-ons, you don't fight fair
That's O.K., see if I care!
Knock me down, it's all in vain
I'll get right back on my feet again!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Why Don't You Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Fire Away!
Well you're a real tough cookie with a long history
Of breaking little hearts, like one in me
Before I put another notch in my lipstick case
You better make sure you put me in my place
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Come On, Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Fire Away!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Why Don't You Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Fire Away!
It wouldn’t be long until Crimes of Passion would disappear with all my other rock albums in the crusade my church led to free its young people of the evils of secular music, but it was really too late; the devil had his foothold. I’d memorized the words to every song on that 8-track. They were a part of me. I could throw the short-lived technology into the garbage bin, but I couldn’t extract the lyrics of Benatar’s hits from my personal cannon of literature.
A few weeks ago, in a fit of boredom with my current catalog of running songs, I perused I-Tunes and came across Benatar’s #1 single: Hit Me With Your Best Shot. I downloaded the song onto my iPod and reclaimed one more memory discarded in the name of heaven.
Yesterday, I ran 21.5 miles – the last long run in my training for the Tateyama Marathon. It was one of the most difficult training runs of my life. The trails were still packed down with compact snow and ice, requiring me (or anyone else on the trail) to slow to a careful walk on some stretches. The temperature was in the low forties, but along the waterfront, the wind whipped me in the face and made the air feel closer to freezing. Plus, I must have eaten something the night before that didn’t settle well, because I struggled with a headache and an upset stomach for much of the run.
Just as I was feeling like the elements and this run were really kicking my ass, Hit Me with Your Best Shot blared through my ear buds. I cranked up the volume, listened to the words and sang along, then repeated the song a second time. “Yes,” I thought, inspired by Benatar’s sultry reminder of pre-adolescent rebellion and freedom, “the weather and my body are trying to keep me down, but I won’t be defeated! I WILL conquer these four hours of running! I WILL run through my pain! I WILL keep my balance on this ice! I WILL have French fries when this whole thing is over!” And I ran on, revived and encouraged enough to beat the icy hill I was facing. I sucked up the hurt in my stomach and the snot running out of my nose and I ran. I completed my 21.5 miles a little worse for wear, but alive. Still standing.
The devil may have the best music, but I couldn’t have gotten through yesterday’s run without it. I dedicate this song to long-distance running and to the Marathon. Go ahead, Marathon, hit me with your best shot. I’ll get right back up again. And in a little more than two weeks in Japan, I’ll be putting another notch in my lipstick case!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot
Written by Eddie Schwartz and performed by Pat Benatar
Well you're a real tough cookie with a long history
Of breaking little hearts, like the one in me
That's O.K., lets see how you do it
Put up your dukes, let's get down to it!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Why Don't You Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Fire Away!
You come on with your come-ons, you don't fight fair
That's O.K., see if I care!
Knock me down, it's all in vain
I'll get right back on my feet again!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Why Don't You Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Fire Away!
Well you're a real tough cookie with a long history
Of breaking little hearts, like one in me
Before I put another notch in my lipstick case
You better make sure you put me in my place
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Come On, Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Fire Away!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Why Don't You Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot!
Fire Away!
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