Q: Which continents have you already done and where are you going next?
A: This is, of course, the most common question I get regarding the seven marathons quest we’re on. Our first continent was Europe. Five years ago, Bill asked me to take a three week trip with him to visit the Czech Republic. He’d made some contact with distant relatives and invited me to tag along and, oh, how about we run a marathon while we’re there???
I insisted on a walk/run routine for that first marathon in Prague. It hurt like hell anyhow, and I wasn’t convinced I’d ever “run” another marathon. Four years (two dogs and a marriage license) later, Bill called me at work and suggested we divert our summer vacation plans to Australia so we could run a little race with only 31 participants. I’d always wanted to go to Australia, so I agreed. It was while I was training for this Australian marathon that I really got on board with the idea of running seven marathons on seven continents. I still wasn’t in love with running (that’s only started to happen this summer), but I started to get the hang of it, to see and appreciate the ways it was teaching me about myself and about life. That’s why, shortly after we got back from Australia, I started training for a marathon on North America and writing about the Seven Marathons project. Bill had already completed several full marathons here at home, so he supported me in my training for the Whidbey Island Marathon, which I completed a few months ago (as chronicled below).
As I said, this summer I’ve had a shift in my running. Even after the Whidbey race, I still felt that I would enjoy the traveling more than the marathoning. I also felt that, although I knew I would be a runner the rest of my life, I would probably only do the seven full marathons and then I’d stick to shorter races and running on the trails around my home. This summer, however, Bill and I decided to take a trip. We wanted to spend some time on a beach someplace inexpensive and warm, so we started to look at Central America and guess what? Panama has a marathon in August!
I took a look at the map and tried to barter Panama into South America, but it wouldn’t go. Nope, Panama is Central America. That’s not one of the continents – and yet I found myself wanting to run there. So I started to train and found that my pace had quickened and my legs were strong and I was looking forward to my morning runs. We’re off in a few days to Panama; we run on August 10th. It’s the rainy (and hot) season there now – should be an interesting experience.
As for our other races, we have a tentative plan to complete three of the four remaining marathons in 2009. On January 25th, we plan to run the Tateyama Wakashio Marathon in Bellingham’s sister city in Japan. Then in June, we’re hoping to take a whirlwind trip ticking off two more continents: The Mt. Kilimanjaro Marathon in Tanzania in mid June and either Rio de Janeiro (at the end of June, 2009) or the Sao Paulo Marathon (at the beginning of June) in Brazil. The exact dates on these marathons are yet to be announced. We’ve chosen these races based mostly on their likely or proposed dates and because they’re in locations we’d both like to visit.
As you might imagine, planning this kind of international travel is a huge undertaking, and several things need to fall in place for us to be able to pull it off. We’ll have to get time off of work, squeeze a bunch of money out of a tight budget, get Yellow Fever shots and get into damn good shape. But what fun! What adventure!
Now, you’ll be counting on your fingers at this point and you’ll shortly realize that I have named only six continents (plus one extra marathon in Central America). So the next question is always, “What’s the deal with Antarctica? Is there really a marathon there?” And the answer is yes, but it’s not a simple yes. As far as we can tell based on our research (and if anyone out there has more information, let me know), there are a couple of tour groups that organize marathon experiences on the great icy continent and they aren’t easy to sign up for because they book up quickly. They’re expensive, too, so we’re saving Antarctica for last, but I promise to keep you posted when we have firm plans.
Next question?
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.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
Frequently asked question #2
Q: So do you lose a lot of weight when you train for a marathon?
A: I get asked this question often. We are a culture obsessed with weight and weight loss, after all. I don’t know what other people experience, but for me the answer is no.
I was raised on a diet of macaroni and cheese and sugar corn pop cereal by parents who didn’t have any kind of regular exercise regime in their own lives. I wriggled out of PE classes anyway I could while I was growing up (mononucleosis in Jr. High, driver’s education in high school) and started to see the scale creeping ever closer to the two-hundred mark by the time I was twenty.
Since there is a lot of obesity in my family, I was getting scared – certainly by the way I thought I looked, but mostly by what I saw were the effects of the struggle in my family. I’d watched my grandmother go through a gastric bypass surgery so she could drop a hundred pounds only to suffer from numerous other physical ailments I’m convinced were due to lack of nutrition. I’d watched my sweet aunt suspend aspects of her life because the person she was on the inside was weighed down by obesity and constant physical pain. I didn’t want this for my life, but I didn’t know how to stop it from happening. In those early years, I had made only a vague connection between food, exercise and body weight. I mostly connected food with comfort and ate to fill up empty spaces inside of my heart, not so much to nourish my body.
Then, in community college, I took an aerobics dance class because I needed a PE credit for my associate’s degree. In one quarter, I watched myself shrink by ten pounds without changing my eating habits in the least. I also felt my energy and joy increase. The next quarter I took another class. It turned out that I liked to dance and I liked to move my body. During this second quarter of aerobics, I added a meal schedule to my efforts. As opposed to skipping meals all day and binging before bed, I began eating exactly four times a day: morning, noon and evening, plus a snack. Fifteen more pounds disappeared without any suffering or hunger on my part. By the time I graduated, I had dropped from 175 pounds to 133 pounds.
And that is where I have stayed for more than twenty years. Some of those years I’ve been more fit than other years, but my weight has remained the same (with a brief increase in grad school and a brief decrease during my divorce).
I am five foot six inches tall. I wear a size six or eight – depending on what time of the month it is or where I buy my clothes. Occasionally, I gain or lose one or two pounds, but always bounce back to 133. I’m as average as they come.
At times, I admit, it has actually felt discouraging to work as hard as I have worked to train for these long races and scarcely lose an ounce. Everyone says, “Muscle weighs more than fat.” Yes, but I’m sure I still have enough fat to lose to displace the weight gain due to muscle increase. I’m not immune to thinking that being skinnier and skinnier is what the goal should be. I’m no different than all the other women I know who wish their butts were less jiggly or that their thighs were more shapely. In my case, it’s my stomach I wish were flatter.
Still, in this running process, I’m working toward being content with my body as it is. I don’t want to eat less than I do. And I don’t want to run so I will LOOK better. I run for a hundred complex reasons that have to do with who I AM and how it makes me FEEL. If I lost ten or even twenty pounds I might be lighter on my feet – maybe even increase my running pace a bit. But I’d also have to cut back on my calories, not eat when I’m hungry or cut out some of the things that make my taste buds feel happy. Instead, I want to work toward striking a balance between using food as a comfort to my heart and as a way of nourishing my body. I believe that our bodies rather than fashion magazines should guide us as to what is healthy for each of us. This is where my body wants to be – at 133 pounds.
Now, there’s no doubt that I could add more grains and fresh veggies to my diet. My digestive process loves it when I get my roughage. I’m not giving myself an excuse here not to continue to improve the way I care for my body with nutrition. In fact, a few weeks ago, I visited my naturopath and was advised to cut cheese out of my diet altogether for a while as an experiment to see if dairy is clogging me up (and I’m thinking about it). I’m only saying that, as I get older and as I run more miles, the weight loss isn’t my measure for health and well-being.
A lot of people do lose weight when they train for a marathon. I applaud them if that’s their goal (as long as it’s healthy and not obsessive). I stay the same – and tentatively, a little more every day, I applaud that, too. I want to run because running is power – an invitation to dream and breathe and feel alive with visceral knowledge of self – not so I can look better in my swimming suit or have a smaller waistline. I want this for everyone. So if you can run, just run and let your body find its happy place. If you can’t run do whatever makes you feel alive and let your body find its happy place.
A: I get asked this question often. We are a culture obsessed with weight and weight loss, after all. I don’t know what other people experience, but for me the answer is no.
I was raised on a diet of macaroni and cheese and sugar corn pop cereal by parents who didn’t have any kind of regular exercise regime in their own lives. I wriggled out of PE classes anyway I could while I was growing up (mononucleosis in Jr. High, driver’s education in high school) and started to see the scale creeping ever closer to the two-hundred mark by the time I was twenty.
Since there is a lot of obesity in my family, I was getting scared – certainly by the way I thought I looked, but mostly by what I saw were the effects of the struggle in my family. I’d watched my grandmother go through a gastric bypass surgery so she could drop a hundred pounds only to suffer from numerous other physical ailments I’m convinced were due to lack of nutrition. I’d watched my sweet aunt suspend aspects of her life because the person she was on the inside was weighed down by obesity and constant physical pain. I didn’t want this for my life, but I didn’t know how to stop it from happening. In those early years, I had made only a vague connection between food, exercise and body weight. I mostly connected food with comfort and ate to fill up empty spaces inside of my heart, not so much to nourish my body.
Then, in community college, I took an aerobics dance class because I needed a PE credit for my associate’s degree. In one quarter, I watched myself shrink by ten pounds without changing my eating habits in the least. I also felt my energy and joy increase. The next quarter I took another class. It turned out that I liked to dance and I liked to move my body. During this second quarter of aerobics, I added a meal schedule to my efforts. As opposed to skipping meals all day and binging before bed, I began eating exactly four times a day: morning, noon and evening, plus a snack. Fifteen more pounds disappeared without any suffering or hunger on my part. By the time I graduated, I had dropped from 175 pounds to 133 pounds.
And that is where I have stayed for more than twenty years. Some of those years I’ve been more fit than other years, but my weight has remained the same (with a brief increase in grad school and a brief decrease during my divorce).
I am five foot six inches tall. I wear a size six or eight – depending on what time of the month it is or where I buy my clothes. Occasionally, I gain or lose one or two pounds, but always bounce back to 133. I’m as average as they come.
At times, I admit, it has actually felt discouraging to work as hard as I have worked to train for these long races and scarcely lose an ounce. Everyone says, “Muscle weighs more than fat.” Yes, but I’m sure I still have enough fat to lose to displace the weight gain due to muscle increase. I’m not immune to thinking that being skinnier and skinnier is what the goal should be. I’m no different than all the other women I know who wish their butts were less jiggly or that their thighs were more shapely. In my case, it’s my stomach I wish were flatter.
Still, in this running process, I’m working toward being content with my body as it is. I don’t want to eat less than I do. And I don’t want to run so I will LOOK better. I run for a hundred complex reasons that have to do with who I AM and how it makes me FEEL. If I lost ten or even twenty pounds I might be lighter on my feet – maybe even increase my running pace a bit. But I’d also have to cut back on my calories, not eat when I’m hungry or cut out some of the things that make my taste buds feel happy. Instead, I want to work toward striking a balance between using food as a comfort to my heart and as a way of nourishing my body. I believe that our bodies rather than fashion magazines should guide us as to what is healthy for each of us. This is where my body wants to be – at 133 pounds.
Now, there’s no doubt that I could add more grains and fresh veggies to my diet. My digestive process loves it when I get my roughage. I’m not giving myself an excuse here not to continue to improve the way I care for my body with nutrition. In fact, a few weeks ago, I visited my naturopath and was advised to cut cheese out of my diet altogether for a while as an experiment to see if dairy is clogging me up (and I’m thinking about it). I’m only saying that, as I get older and as I run more miles, the weight loss isn’t my measure for health and well-being.
A lot of people do lose weight when they train for a marathon. I applaud them if that’s their goal (as long as it’s healthy and not obsessive). I stay the same – and tentatively, a little more every day, I applaud that, too. I want to run because running is power – an invitation to dream and breathe and feel alive with visceral knowledge of self – not so I can look better in my swimming suit or have a smaller waistline. I want this for everyone. So if you can run, just run and let your body find its happy place. If you can’t run do whatever makes you feel alive and let your body find its happy place.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Frequently Asked Question #1
Between races, I thought I might answer some frequently asked questions. As I talk with people about running, non-runners or beginners have asked me several recurring questions. How do you keep your body going for so long? Do you lose a lot of weight while you’re training for a marathon? Why is it important to taper after your longest training run? What do you think about while on the trails for all those hours? How do you choose the races you’re going to run? And, of course, the ever-present confusion: Why do you run? I’d like to start with the “how” and work my way toward the “why.” So here goes.
Q: How do you keep your body going for a four or five hour run?
A: To me there are three keys to keeping up my 12-minute mile pace for the many hours I’m on the trail. Even a half-marathon takes me more than two hours, so I’ve had to figure out how to run through lunch while others are already in the recovery tent. Here are my essentials: peanut butter toast, water and energy gel.
Of course the food I eat all week before a long run is important, but I’ve never been very good at keeping to an overly nutritious diet for any length of time (that will be my new year’s resolution next year, I swear), so I depend on my breakfast before a race or a long training run more than dinner the night before. Here I’d like to offer a disclaimer and say that I am in NO WAY telling other runners what to eat. I have no training in nutrition and one could indisputably argue that I would be a much better runner if I got some advice on the topic. I’m merely speaking to what I actually do. And what I actually do is make myself a piece of peanut butter toast with half a banana on top about two hours before I start my run. I don’t like to feel hungry, and peanut butter seems to keep that feeling at bay for me in a way that oatmeal or even eggs don’t.
The second key to keeping me running is liquid. I prefer water to sports drinks, and I like to put a little sugar free lemonade flavored powder mix into my squeeze bottle just to entice my taste buds as I plug along. Usually twenty ounces will get me about ten miles if I’m well hydrated before I start. I’ve heard it recommendations about what a runner should drink for each mile she runs. I just drink when I’m thirsty and it usually works out.
Perhaps the most important element that keeps me moving is the energy gel I keep in the pocket of my running pouch that bounces against my behind. At about an hour into a race or a training run, those peanut butter toast carbs start to wear out. They leave me, like an unreliable boyfriend, alone and tired and spent, feeling older than my age. Fortunately, there is a quick fix in my back pocket, a fix that, once in my veins, brings me a renewed feeling of well-being, a blessed half hour, 45 minutes, perhaps, of energy. But you have to be serious about your running to be willing to suck the stuff down because it’s nasty shit.
Do you know the feeling of phlegm in your throat, say, when you have a nasty cold? When you’re hacking up the congestion from your lungs? This burst of energy in my back pocket comes in this form – of a snotty, slimy substance laced with the flavor of its foil packaging and the sweat on my hands. When it’s time, I dig one out of my pouch, hold the packet in my right hand and rip it open with my teeth.
I usually have “Orange Cream” and “Vanilla Bean” in my arsenal. Really, the flavoring serves only to distract from the consistency of the stuff long enough to get one swallow down a parched throat. I often gag as I squeeze it into my mouth, and a trace of it sometimes misses my lips and dribbles onto my chin. I wipe it with the back of my hand and then feel sticky as well as sweaty for the next hours of my run.
Like a tube of toothpaste, I roll the package from the bottom, wrap my mouth around the opening and squeeze the remains in. I always “eat” Vanilla Bean first, my “favorite,” if you will, because at least it reminds me of cake frosting at first squirt. Only upon swallowing am I reminded of the texture of raw oysters or lard.
But once I’ve got it down and washed my mouth with a swig of flavored water, I feel the caffeine and sugar trickle into my veins. Sweet, grateful relief! The exhausted tingling in my fingers disappears. My limbs come alive, the spring in my step bounces back. My mind grows alert, and I am once again able to lift my head and my thighs. I swing my arms through the air to give me momentum. My hope of finishing my run returns. I feel alive again for another three quarters of an hour. Then I pull out my Orange Cream and start over.
Each little packet of gel has 100 calories, which is about what I burn every mile while I’m running. During a marathon I might eat four or five packets just to keep me moving.
Hopefully this answers the question about the physical issue of how to keep going. Stay tuned for the “how to” of the mental challenge. And let me know if you have questions you want me to address.
Q: How do you keep your body going for a four or five hour run?
A: To me there are three keys to keeping up my 12-minute mile pace for the many hours I’m on the trail. Even a half-marathon takes me more than two hours, so I’ve had to figure out how to run through lunch while others are already in the recovery tent. Here are my essentials: peanut butter toast, water and energy gel.
Of course the food I eat all week before a long run is important, but I’ve never been very good at keeping to an overly nutritious diet for any length of time (that will be my new year’s resolution next year, I swear), so I depend on my breakfast before a race or a long training run more than dinner the night before. Here I’d like to offer a disclaimer and say that I am in NO WAY telling other runners what to eat. I have no training in nutrition and one could indisputably argue that I would be a much better runner if I got some advice on the topic. I’m merely speaking to what I actually do. And what I actually do is make myself a piece of peanut butter toast with half a banana on top about two hours before I start my run. I don’t like to feel hungry, and peanut butter seems to keep that feeling at bay for me in a way that oatmeal or even eggs don’t.
The second key to keeping me running is liquid. I prefer water to sports drinks, and I like to put a little sugar free lemonade flavored powder mix into my squeeze bottle just to entice my taste buds as I plug along. Usually twenty ounces will get me about ten miles if I’m well hydrated before I start. I’ve heard it recommendations about what a runner should drink for each mile she runs. I just drink when I’m thirsty and it usually works out.
Perhaps the most important element that keeps me moving is the energy gel I keep in the pocket of my running pouch that bounces against my behind. At about an hour into a race or a training run, those peanut butter toast carbs start to wear out. They leave me, like an unreliable boyfriend, alone and tired and spent, feeling older than my age. Fortunately, there is a quick fix in my back pocket, a fix that, once in my veins, brings me a renewed feeling of well-being, a blessed half hour, 45 minutes, perhaps, of energy. But you have to be serious about your running to be willing to suck the stuff down because it’s nasty shit.
Do you know the feeling of phlegm in your throat, say, when you have a nasty cold? When you’re hacking up the congestion from your lungs? This burst of energy in my back pocket comes in this form – of a snotty, slimy substance laced with the flavor of its foil packaging and the sweat on my hands. When it’s time, I dig one out of my pouch, hold the packet in my right hand and rip it open with my teeth.
I usually have “Orange Cream” and “Vanilla Bean” in my arsenal. Really, the flavoring serves only to distract from the consistency of the stuff long enough to get one swallow down a parched throat. I often gag as I squeeze it into my mouth, and a trace of it sometimes misses my lips and dribbles onto my chin. I wipe it with the back of my hand and then feel sticky as well as sweaty for the next hours of my run.
Like a tube of toothpaste, I roll the package from the bottom, wrap my mouth around the opening and squeeze the remains in. I always “eat” Vanilla Bean first, my “favorite,” if you will, because at least it reminds me of cake frosting at first squirt. Only upon swallowing am I reminded of the texture of raw oysters or lard.
But once I’ve got it down and washed my mouth with a swig of flavored water, I feel the caffeine and sugar trickle into my veins. Sweet, grateful relief! The exhausted tingling in my fingers disappears. My limbs come alive, the spring in my step bounces back. My mind grows alert, and I am once again able to lift my head and my thighs. I swing my arms through the air to give me momentum. My hope of finishing my run returns. I feel alive again for another three quarters of an hour. Then I pull out my Orange Cream and start over.
Each little packet of gel has 100 calories, which is about what I burn every mile while I’m running. During a marathon I might eat four or five packets just to keep me moving.
Hopefully this answers the question about the physical issue of how to keep going. Stay tuned for the “how to” of the mental challenge. And let me know if you have questions you want me to address.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Meeting Dean
“Being a champion meant not quitting, no matter how tough the situation became and no matter how badly the odds seemed stacked against you. If you had the courage, stamina and persistence to cross the finish line, you were a champion.” - Dean Karnazes, in UltraMarathon Man: Confessions of an all-night runner
To me, Dean Karnazes, ultra-runner, is a hero. Certainly he is an extraordinary athlete – and for that alone I am in deep awe, but I admire him for more than that. Dean made a conscious decision in his early thirties to listen to what the sound of his own footsteps pounding on the pavement was saying to him. He bucked the corporate system, turned his back on simple definitions of success and embraced a lifestyle of personal authenticity.
That’s the kind of person I want to be. All my life I’ve wanted to be a writer and I’ve wanted to see all the continents of the earth. I’ve known this since I was eight years old. One weekend, my family took a trip to Ocean Shores, a town right on Washington’s coast. I’ll never forget my first time seeing the Pacific Ocean. I’d grown up on the Puget Sound, which is the Ocean’s water flowing into a large inlet, passed the San Juan Islands, all the way down to the inverted elbow that curves around to make the fist of the Olympic Peninsula. I’d looked across this water toward the Olympic Peninsula and its snow-capped mountain range every day that I could remember, but I wasn’t prepared for what was on the other side of those mountains.
There I sat, a tiny girl on a large driftwood log, looking at a body of water that had no end. I was frightened by it. The roar of it was thunderous to my tender ears. Where did it go? Why couldn’t I see any land out there? The wild, untamable enormity of it made me cry.
That night, by the luminescence of a flashlight, I wrote my first poem about the largeness of the earth and the formidable vastness of the Ocean, which defied my understanding. I’ve lost the original poem by now (probably in a house fire we had when I was eleven), but I remember that it was eight lines and it had an a/b/a/b rhyme scheme – as most first poems do.
When we returned from our camping trip, I started announcing that I was going to travel the world and become a writer. As you might expect, even though I was a very young child and nowhere near the point of having to choose a college major, some of the adults in my life hastened to enlighten me that writing was no way to make a living and that I’d eventually have to dream up other options for myself. “Cowgirl” and “movie star” came to mind, but fortunately I never shared these career ambitions out loud.
A few grown-ups in my life got on board. My great Aunt Margaret bought me a journal and my dad’s brother, Uncle Bruce, got me a subscription to The Writer Magazine. It was over my head, of course, but I knew it meant that he took me seriously, and I loved when it arrived in the mailbox each month as a reminder that someone had believed me when I said I wanted to be a writer.
As life marched on, I was indeed called upon to make some career choices and “writer” did indeed appear to be a rather less than practical option. I contented myself with becoming an English teacher and encouraging my students to write. Later, when that no longer hit the mark for me, I became a therapist who listens to my clients’ stories and helps them articulate and have the courage to follow their own hopes and dreams.
But this year, as I have been reading Dean Karnazes’ brave leaps of faith into living out his impractical passions, I simultaneously began writing about my life which, at the moment, is a lot about training for and running long distance races all around the world.
Dean’s story of moving from stuckness to adventure and personal risk have resonated with me. More than that, his story has shouted at me to seize each day and be alive. Just as there came a moment for him when he stepped out the door in his boxers and old sneakers to go for his first long run in more than a decade, this year I’ve made a commitment to myself to run and write and travel. I’ve decided to take the first steps to write about the relationship between the marathon life for a back-of-the-pack, non-athletic, trudging-along-and-finishing-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth runner and life in general. And as I go, I believe what Dean says is true: If you do it, hard as it is, and cross the line at the end, you’re a champion.
Feeling this connection with his story as I do, you can imagine my elation when Bill forwarded me a message from the Ultramarathon Man himself. I’ve never been one to chase after meeting celebrities, but I knew Dean Karnazes would be at the finish line of the Whidbey Island Marathon, and I hoped to shake his hand and thank him for writing his story. I missed him, of course, due to my late arrival at the finish line (see below). But unbeknownst to me, Bill had communicated by email with Dean, telling him of my disappointment at missing out on the chance to meet him on Whidbey Island. Dean graciously responded with the following note:
Dear Cami,
I am so sorry to have missed you at the Whidbey Island Marathon. When I heard about your endeavor to run a marathon on every continent, I am sure we are kindred spirits! Cami, you are a tremendous inspiration. Please, never stop! I look forward to the time that our paths meet. Until then, keep going strong!!
Warmest regards,
Dean Karnazes
I was delighted. Dean had taken the time to read my blog and then said we were kindred spirits! Naturally, during my run later that day, I floated easy on my feet, with the idea that I might be kindred spirits with a running legend like Dean. But as I think about it, it’s certainly not only the running that makes me feel connected to him. In fact, as is well documented, I don’t find running that easy. I’m not always in love with it, not often eager to get outside in the elements and work my body hard. It is in the desire to live life with guts and personal truth that makes me feel like a kindred spirit with him and with others who live out their crazy ideas of happiness.
Later that week, after getting Dean’s note, Bill informed me that Dean would be in our town for a new ultra-marathon. We decided to take a trip to the finish line and see if we could catch him and thank him for his kindness. We waited after the awards’ presentation for a long while, finally decided we’d missed him again and started to make our way toward our car. On the way out we saw him. I felt shy, but I introduced myself and thanked him for his message to me and for his book. Dean was gracious and encouraging to both of us.
As I’ve reflected on these encounters, one thought keeps arising. We all have opportunity to share our gifts with others, but only if we embrace them ourselves. Only if I follow what calls to me – running, writing, traveling – will the gift of my life be a gift I can offer others. Dean, I hope you know the gift you are to your readers and fellow runners. Thank you!
To me, Dean Karnazes, ultra-runner, is a hero. Certainly he is an extraordinary athlete – and for that alone I am in deep awe, but I admire him for more than that. Dean made a conscious decision in his early thirties to listen to what the sound of his own footsteps pounding on the pavement was saying to him. He bucked the corporate system, turned his back on simple definitions of success and embraced a lifestyle of personal authenticity.
That’s the kind of person I want to be. All my life I’ve wanted to be a writer and I’ve wanted to see all the continents of the earth. I’ve known this since I was eight years old. One weekend, my family took a trip to Ocean Shores, a town right on Washington’s coast. I’ll never forget my first time seeing the Pacific Ocean. I’d grown up on the Puget Sound, which is the Ocean’s water flowing into a large inlet, passed the San Juan Islands, all the way down to the inverted elbow that curves around to make the fist of the Olympic Peninsula. I’d looked across this water toward the Olympic Peninsula and its snow-capped mountain range every day that I could remember, but I wasn’t prepared for what was on the other side of those mountains.
There I sat, a tiny girl on a large driftwood log, looking at a body of water that had no end. I was frightened by it. The roar of it was thunderous to my tender ears. Where did it go? Why couldn’t I see any land out there? The wild, untamable enormity of it made me cry.
That night, by the luminescence of a flashlight, I wrote my first poem about the largeness of the earth and the formidable vastness of the Ocean, which defied my understanding. I’ve lost the original poem by now (probably in a house fire we had when I was eleven), but I remember that it was eight lines and it had an a/b/a/b rhyme scheme – as most first poems do.
When we returned from our camping trip, I started announcing that I was going to travel the world and become a writer. As you might expect, even though I was a very young child and nowhere near the point of having to choose a college major, some of the adults in my life hastened to enlighten me that writing was no way to make a living and that I’d eventually have to dream up other options for myself. “Cowgirl” and “movie star” came to mind, but fortunately I never shared these career ambitions out loud.
A few grown-ups in my life got on board. My great Aunt Margaret bought me a journal and my dad’s brother, Uncle Bruce, got me a subscription to The Writer Magazine. It was over my head, of course, but I knew it meant that he took me seriously, and I loved when it arrived in the mailbox each month as a reminder that someone had believed me when I said I wanted to be a writer.
As life marched on, I was indeed called upon to make some career choices and “writer” did indeed appear to be a rather less than practical option. I contented myself with becoming an English teacher and encouraging my students to write. Later, when that no longer hit the mark for me, I became a therapist who listens to my clients’ stories and helps them articulate and have the courage to follow their own hopes and dreams.
But this year, as I have been reading Dean Karnazes’ brave leaps of faith into living out his impractical passions, I simultaneously began writing about my life which, at the moment, is a lot about training for and running long distance races all around the world.
Dean’s story of moving from stuckness to adventure and personal risk have resonated with me. More than that, his story has shouted at me to seize each day and be alive. Just as there came a moment for him when he stepped out the door in his boxers and old sneakers to go for his first long run in more than a decade, this year I’ve made a commitment to myself to run and write and travel. I’ve decided to take the first steps to write about the relationship between the marathon life for a back-of-the-pack, non-athletic, trudging-along-and-finishing-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth runner and life in general. And as I go, I believe what Dean says is true: If you do it, hard as it is, and cross the line at the end, you’re a champion.
Feeling this connection with his story as I do, you can imagine my elation when Bill forwarded me a message from the Ultramarathon Man himself. I’ve never been one to chase after meeting celebrities, but I knew Dean Karnazes would be at the finish line of the Whidbey Island Marathon, and I hoped to shake his hand and thank him for writing his story. I missed him, of course, due to my late arrival at the finish line (see below). But unbeknownst to me, Bill had communicated by email with Dean, telling him of my disappointment at missing out on the chance to meet him on Whidbey Island. Dean graciously responded with the following note:
Dear Cami,
I am so sorry to have missed you at the Whidbey Island Marathon. When I heard about your endeavor to run a marathon on every continent, I am sure we are kindred spirits! Cami, you are a tremendous inspiration. Please, never stop! I look forward to the time that our paths meet. Until then, keep going strong!!
Warmest regards,
Dean Karnazes
I was delighted. Dean had taken the time to read my blog and then said we were kindred spirits! Naturally, during my run later that day, I floated easy on my feet, with the idea that I might be kindred spirits with a running legend like Dean. But as I think about it, it’s certainly not only the running that makes me feel connected to him. In fact, as is well documented, I don’t find running that easy. I’m not always in love with it, not often eager to get outside in the elements and work my body hard. It is in the desire to live life with guts and personal truth that makes me feel like a kindred spirit with him and with others who live out their crazy ideas of happiness.
Later that week, after getting Dean’s note, Bill informed me that Dean would be in our town for a new ultra-marathon. We decided to take a trip to the finish line and see if we could catch him and thank him for his kindness. We waited after the awards’ presentation for a long while, finally decided we’d missed him again and started to make our way toward our car. On the way out we saw him. I felt shy, but I introduced myself and thanked him for his message to me and for his book. Dean was gracious and encouraging to both of us.
As I’ve reflected on these encounters, one thought keeps arising. We all have opportunity to share our gifts with others, but only if we embrace them ourselves. Only if I follow what calls to me – running, writing, traveling – will the gift of my life be a gift I can offer others. Dean, I hope you know the gift you are to your readers and fellow runners. Thank you!
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Highlights from the Boston Marathon
I had never been to Boston before last week, but I was excited to go. I was done with my own marathon training for the moment which gave me the freedom to take a little break from running and to focus on my cheerleading duties. Bill was trained up and ready for the 112th annual Boston Marathon!
We flew out of Bellingham on Thursday. We spent the afternoon in Boston on Friday, mostly at the convention center for the race expo collecting samples of energy foods and pamphlets for other interesting races around the world. Here we were able to check out the Antarctica Marathon trip and talk with travel company representatives about when their next openings will be to cruise from Argentina to the Southern most continent for a glacial running experience (I guess we’ll have to wait until 2010 – darn!). On Friday night, we drove West on the Massachusetts Turnpike to spend the weekend with friends from Seattle who had recently re-located to the East coast. For two days we enjoyed stimulating conversation and amazing homemade vegetarian lasagna (thanks J and R).
But by Sunday, pre-marathon jitters were starting to hit Bill. I don’t get these jitters the way Bill does. I get overwhelmed with terror that I won’t be able to finish at all and drown said terror with wine and cheese the week before I run (which may, in part, explain both my race times and the reason why I put on five pounds whenever I train for a long race). Bill, in contrast, gets a particularly physical experience of nervousness: upset stomach, inability to sleep, compulsive packing and re-packing of his race bag. When the jitters started late Sunday afternoon, I sent him to bed early.
I had my own worries about Monday’s race to contend with. I had to make my way by car, train and on foot to various locations along the marathon route to cheer for Bill who, in all likelihood, would not be able to distinguish my voice from the rest of the throng of cheering fans.
Let me pause and set the scene of the frenzy that is the Boston Marathon. More than 21,000 runners and their families had flown in from around the planet and descended upon the city. Patriots Day, a Massachusetts holiday for which no one seems to know the origin, is also called “Marathon Monday” (as decried by banners hung on lampposts all over town). Streets and subway stops were closed down for the event. Churches offered “marathon blessing services” for runners. And fans numbering over one million lined the course early with coolers and cow bells and megaphones ready to shout out to any runner who had taken the time to write his or her name on an arm or leg in waterproof ink. All this was just the beginning of the chaos. Helicopters swarmed overhead prepared to track the progress of elite and/or famous race participants, and thousands of police and volunteers stood guard over the marathon route ready to prevent fans from interfering with the runners. Reportedly (I never verified this), there was beer offered at at least one aid station and at another, young women offered kisses to sweaty runners who cared to slow down in order to partake.
As I took all of this in Monday morning, after dropping Bill at the start, I was flooded with concern – OK, panic – that I would not be able to negotiate the crowds and the trains and the convoluted instructions in Bill’s race packet about where I could watch him and how I could find him in this crazy sea after the race. The highway leading to the park and ride where I would catch my first train (to get to my first viewing point at mile 17) was backed up for miles. I waited for an hour and a half just to park the rental car.
When I finally parked, purchased a train ticket and boarded the train, I was greatly comforted to find at least a dozen other dazed travelers looking for mile 17. A woman from Ohio told me her husband should be coming through at noon. Another woman asked me where I was from and learning I came from Seattle (that’s what we say when we travel since no one has heard of Bellingham) pointed dramatically at me and shouted across the train to a bleary-eyed couple sitting near the back of the car, “Hey, this lady’s from Seattle too!” We meekly waved at each other, grateful to be strangers in a strange land from the same part of the globe.
“My daughter’s running,” one man offered into my elbow proudly.
“We came from Sweden,” the woman sitting next to him responded. “My son is running. It is only his fourth marathon.”
“You win,” I said. “You came the farthest of anyone I’ve talked to so far.”
But after we all tumbled out of the train and took a short walk to the race course and jostled for places on the sidelines where we might be able to see the runners, I discovered fellow fans from other places in the world including a woman originally from West Africa, now living in England.
I have to admit to being slightly baffled. Why were we all here? I just ran a “hella” hard marathon the last weekend in my own backyard. I think I could argue that the Whidbey Island course was at least ten times as hilly and difficult as this Boston course would be. And there had been probably only, say, 60 fans along the whole way for me. So clearly, I lamented, the difficulty of the feat has no bearing on how much glory one gets for the accomplishment! It’s just another example of how the marathon adventure, like so many things in life worth doing, has to be motivated by something personal and intrinsic and not by the accolades you may or may not get from others.
In any case, I was here to add my screams and praise to the mounting excitement of the crowd.
The thing is, it really is profoundly awe-inspiring to watch the elite frontrunners if you ever have the chance. In spite of all the time I wasted parking, I was at my post in time to see the women, who started early at 9:30 am, and then, not far behind, the elite men fly by. These guys came through so quickly that I didn’t have time to snap a picture of anything but the bicycles that protectively trailed them, but I had enough time to see the way their taught skin flexed over their perfectly sculpted muscles and to admire the way they seemed to perform each stride as if it were the most poignant step in an exquisite ballet.
After the pros came through, there was a break in the action and then the first wave of starters (with the blue bibs) began trickling past us. A woman standing next to me was receiving text messages announcing her sister’s progress in 10 K intervals. I’d never heard of this and wished I had signed up for this service so I could calculate exactly when Bill would be coming through. Bill was in the second wave of runners (with red bibs) that started at 10:30, so I knew I had a long while to wait. I used the calculator on my cell phone to figure out that he would be passing mile 17 at or around 12:45, so I settled in to enjoy the show.
A large group of people decked out in purple shirts and Dr. Seuss hats (the Doctor was born in Massachusetts) stood on a street corner to the right of me and chanted enthusiastically to every runner who came through wearing the trademark purple Leukemia Team uniforms. Before arriving in Boston for the event, I thought the only way to run in the marathon was to qualify, but as it turns out, there are also charity teams allowed to enter who raise funds for their various causes.
At about an hour and fifty minutes into the first wave, helicopters began swarming above us. “Lance must be coming,” the woman tracking her sister by text messages said to me. We had been trying to guess when Lance Armstrong would be coming through. I had read that he was going to try and run the race in 2:45.
“Then our friend, Jason, will be coming too,” I said. Jason had told Bill he thought he might see Lance on the route since he was shooting for a similar finish time. I blinked my eyes and when I opened them there was a wave of yellow sailing past me.
“There he is,” my new friend said.
“Where?” I strained to get a glimpse of Lance, but all I could see was an entourage of buff young men encircling something – or someone. And then I saw Jason, not twenty yards behind Lance’s posse. Jason and his wife, Laura were at most of the races Bill and I ran. We had had the privilege of watching both of their times improve with almost every run, but Jason’s PR to date was 2:59 – and here he was tracking Lance, looking like it took no effort at all to run four minutes a kilometer. “Jason! Jason!” I screamed. “You look great! Whoooo!!!” I knew he couldn’t make out my voice in the crowd, but I was thrilled. “I know him!” I told the woman beside me with pride, as if I knew Lance, himself.
Almost an hour later, having been on my feet for two and half hours (it’s hard to complain when you’re watching marathoners, but my back was aching), I saw Bill’s slightly bow-legged stride coming around the bend. I hadn’t remembered to look to see what color shirt he would be wearing or to take note of his bib number, so I was lucky to spot him in an unusually large group. He was running on my side of the road, and since I had recently nudged some observers out of the way so I could position myself against the guard rail, I had a good view of him. I started shouting his name and flailing my arms, “Bill!! You’re doing great! You look good. Bill!!” With a sudden intuition (he told me later he couldn’t hear me yelling his name) he turned and spotted me, waving back and shooting me a broad smile.
I thought this meant that he was feeling good. His knee must not be bothering him and he must be having a strong go of it.
Sadly, this is all I saw of Bill’s race – thirty seconds, a wave and his butt jogging away toward what the Bostonians call “Heartbreak Hill.”
It was time for me to leave my new pals and cram myself into a train and ride into the downtown area. Once there, I had to weave my way through six blocks of detours just to cross the street only to discover that I couldn’t get within a mile of the finish line. Then, I had to get lost among twenty thousand marathon finishers all wearing the same foil blankets and to fight an anxiety attack when Bill didn’t show up in the designated family meeting area even an hour after his race should have been done.
When he finally arrived under the letter of his last name in the family area, I was so grateful to see him that I cried. He’d had a good race time (3:42, which qualified him for next year’s race), but it had been a harder race for him than I had guessed. At 15 miles he had gotten sick and had to take a four-minute break at a port-o-potty (I didn’t ask what happened in there, but four minutes in an outhouse is never pleasant). And the hill had felt much longer than he remembered from the first time he ran the race in 2002. He had spent an extra long time in the recovery area stretching and rehydrating before making his way to the family area because he was still fighting a mild nausea.
I didn’t bore him with my navigational trials until much later when we both had a couple of drinks under our respective belts and his queasy stomach was just a memory. At that point I told him that I had concluded small races were more fun for fans and big races were more fun for runners. Bill agreed with me, of course. In the past eight days he’d gotten to be a fan at a small race and a runner in a big one – the best of both worlds.
We climbed in bed that night, both having earned our exhaustion, excited to wake up the next day and check finishing times in the paper.
Finishing times that interested us:
2:07:46 – Robert Cheruiyut – Men’s #1 finisher – from Kenya
2:25:25 – Dire Tune – Women’s #1 finisher – from Ethiopia
2:50:58 – Lance Armstrong – famous cyclist wearing yellow
2:56:02 – Jason – awesome runner – I know him!
3:42:28 – Bill – my #1 finisher – from Bellingham
We flew out of Bellingham on Thursday. We spent the afternoon in Boston on Friday, mostly at the convention center for the race expo collecting samples of energy foods and pamphlets for other interesting races around the world. Here we were able to check out the Antarctica Marathon trip and talk with travel company representatives about when their next openings will be to cruise from Argentina to the Southern most continent for a glacial running experience (I guess we’ll have to wait until 2010 – darn!). On Friday night, we drove West on the Massachusetts Turnpike to spend the weekend with friends from Seattle who had recently re-located to the East coast. For two days we enjoyed stimulating conversation and amazing homemade vegetarian lasagna (thanks J and R).
But by Sunday, pre-marathon jitters were starting to hit Bill. I don’t get these jitters the way Bill does. I get overwhelmed with terror that I won’t be able to finish at all and drown said terror with wine and cheese the week before I run (which may, in part, explain both my race times and the reason why I put on five pounds whenever I train for a long race). Bill, in contrast, gets a particularly physical experience of nervousness: upset stomach, inability to sleep, compulsive packing and re-packing of his race bag. When the jitters started late Sunday afternoon, I sent him to bed early.
I had my own worries about Monday’s race to contend with. I had to make my way by car, train and on foot to various locations along the marathon route to cheer for Bill who, in all likelihood, would not be able to distinguish my voice from the rest of the throng of cheering fans.
Let me pause and set the scene of the frenzy that is the Boston Marathon. More than 21,000 runners and their families had flown in from around the planet and descended upon the city. Patriots Day, a Massachusetts holiday for which no one seems to know the origin, is also called “Marathon Monday” (as decried by banners hung on lampposts all over town). Streets and subway stops were closed down for the event. Churches offered “marathon blessing services” for runners. And fans numbering over one million lined the course early with coolers and cow bells and megaphones ready to shout out to any runner who had taken the time to write his or her name on an arm or leg in waterproof ink. All this was just the beginning of the chaos. Helicopters swarmed overhead prepared to track the progress of elite and/or famous race participants, and thousands of police and volunteers stood guard over the marathon route ready to prevent fans from interfering with the runners. Reportedly (I never verified this), there was beer offered at at least one aid station and at another, young women offered kisses to sweaty runners who cared to slow down in order to partake.
As I took all of this in Monday morning, after dropping Bill at the start, I was flooded with concern – OK, panic – that I would not be able to negotiate the crowds and the trains and the convoluted instructions in Bill’s race packet about where I could watch him and how I could find him in this crazy sea after the race. The highway leading to the park and ride where I would catch my first train (to get to my first viewing point at mile 17) was backed up for miles. I waited for an hour and a half just to park the rental car.
When I finally parked, purchased a train ticket and boarded the train, I was greatly comforted to find at least a dozen other dazed travelers looking for mile 17. A woman from Ohio told me her husband should be coming through at noon. Another woman asked me where I was from and learning I came from Seattle (that’s what we say when we travel since no one has heard of Bellingham) pointed dramatically at me and shouted across the train to a bleary-eyed couple sitting near the back of the car, “Hey, this lady’s from Seattle too!” We meekly waved at each other, grateful to be strangers in a strange land from the same part of the globe.
“My daughter’s running,” one man offered into my elbow proudly.
“We came from Sweden,” the woman sitting next to him responded. “My son is running. It is only his fourth marathon.”
“You win,” I said. “You came the farthest of anyone I’ve talked to so far.”
But after we all tumbled out of the train and took a short walk to the race course and jostled for places on the sidelines where we might be able to see the runners, I discovered fellow fans from other places in the world including a woman originally from West Africa, now living in England.
I have to admit to being slightly baffled. Why were we all here? I just ran a “hella” hard marathon the last weekend in my own backyard. I think I could argue that the Whidbey Island course was at least ten times as hilly and difficult as this Boston course would be. And there had been probably only, say, 60 fans along the whole way for me. So clearly, I lamented, the difficulty of the feat has no bearing on how much glory one gets for the accomplishment! It’s just another example of how the marathon adventure, like so many things in life worth doing, has to be motivated by something personal and intrinsic and not by the accolades you may or may not get from others.
In any case, I was here to add my screams and praise to the mounting excitement of the crowd.
The thing is, it really is profoundly awe-inspiring to watch the elite frontrunners if you ever have the chance. In spite of all the time I wasted parking, I was at my post in time to see the women, who started early at 9:30 am, and then, not far behind, the elite men fly by. These guys came through so quickly that I didn’t have time to snap a picture of anything but the bicycles that protectively trailed them, but I had enough time to see the way their taught skin flexed over their perfectly sculpted muscles and to admire the way they seemed to perform each stride as if it were the most poignant step in an exquisite ballet.
After the pros came through, there was a break in the action and then the first wave of starters (with the blue bibs) began trickling past us. A woman standing next to me was receiving text messages announcing her sister’s progress in 10 K intervals. I’d never heard of this and wished I had signed up for this service so I could calculate exactly when Bill would be coming through. Bill was in the second wave of runners (with red bibs) that started at 10:30, so I knew I had a long while to wait. I used the calculator on my cell phone to figure out that he would be passing mile 17 at or around 12:45, so I settled in to enjoy the show.
A large group of people decked out in purple shirts and Dr. Seuss hats (the Doctor was born in Massachusetts) stood on a street corner to the right of me and chanted enthusiastically to every runner who came through wearing the trademark purple Leukemia Team uniforms. Before arriving in Boston for the event, I thought the only way to run in the marathon was to qualify, but as it turns out, there are also charity teams allowed to enter who raise funds for their various causes.
At about an hour and fifty minutes into the first wave, helicopters began swarming above us. “Lance must be coming,” the woman tracking her sister by text messages said to me. We had been trying to guess when Lance Armstrong would be coming through. I had read that he was going to try and run the race in 2:45.
“Then our friend, Jason, will be coming too,” I said. Jason had told Bill he thought he might see Lance on the route since he was shooting for a similar finish time. I blinked my eyes and when I opened them there was a wave of yellow sailing past me.
“There he is,” my new friend said.
“Where?” I strained to get a glimpse of Lance, but all I could see was an entourage of buff young men encircling something – or someone. And then I saw Jason, not twenty yards behind Lance’s posse. Jason and his wife, Laura were at most of the races Bill and I ran. We had had the privilege of watching both of their times improve with almost every run, but Jason’s PR to date was 2:59 – and here he was tracking Lance, looking like it took no effort at all to run four minutes a kilometer. “Jason! Jason!” I screamed. “You look great! Whoooo!!!” I knew he couldn’t make out my voice in the crowd, but I was thrilled. “I know him!” I told the woman beside me with pride, as if I knew Lance, himself.
Almost an hour later, having been on my feet for two and half hours (it’s hard to complain when you’re watching marathoners, but my back was aching), I saw Bill’s slightly bow-legged stride coming around the bend. I hadn’t remembered to look to see what color shirt he would be wearing or to take note of his bib number, so I was lucky to spot him in an unusually large group. He was running on my side of the road, and since I had recently nudged some observers out of the way so I could position myself against the guard rail, I had a good view of him. I started shouting his name and flailing my arms, “Bill!! You’re doing great! You look good. Bill!!” With a sudden intuition (he told me later he couldn’t hear me yelling his name) he turned and spotted me, waving back and shooting me a broad smile.
I thought this meant that he was feeling good. His knee must not be bothering him and he must be having a strong go of it.
Sadly, this is all I saw of Bill’s race – thirty seconds, a wave and his butt jogging away toward what the Bostonians call “Heartbreak Hill.”
It was time for me to leave my new pals and cram myself into a train and ride into the downtown area. Once there, I had to weave my way through six blocks of detours just to cross the street only to discover that I couldn’t get within a mile of the finish line. Then, I had to get lost among twenty thousand marathon finishers all wearing the same foil blankets and to fight an anxiety attack when Bill didn’t show up in the designated family meeting area even an hour after his race should have been done.
When he finally arrived under the letter of his last name in the family area, I was so grateful to see him that I cried. He’d had a good race time (3:42, which qualified him for next year’s race), but it had been a harder race for him than I had guessed. At 15 miles he had gotten sick and had to take a four-minute break at a port-o-potty (I didn’t ask what happened in there, but four minutes in an outhouse is never pleasant). And the hill had felt much longer than he remembered from the first time he ran the race in 2002. He had spent an extra long time in the recovery area stretching and rehydrating before making his way to the family area because he was still fighting a mild nausea.
I didn’t bore him with my navigational trials until much later when we both had a couple of drinks under our respective belts and his queasy stomach was just a memory. At that point I told him that I had concluded small races were more fun for fans and big races were more fun for runners. Bill agreed with me, of course. In the past eight days he’d gotten to be a fan at a small race and a runner in a big one – the best of both worlds.
We climbed in bed that night, both having earned our exhaustion, excited to wake up the next day and check finishing times in the paper.
Finishing times that interested us:
2:07:46 – Robert Cheruiyut – Men’s #1 finisher – from Kenya
2:25:25 – Dire Tune – Women’s #1 finisher – from Ethiopia
2:50:58 – Lance Armstrong – famous cyclist wearing yellow
2:56:02 – Jason – awesome runner – I know him!
3:42:28 – Bill – my #1 finisher – from Bellingham
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Uphill Journey - The Whidbey Island Marathon
Let me tell you about the Whidbey Island Marathon. Saturday, we took a drive down to the race expo to pick up my race packet and decided to drive the course so I would know where I was going in case, as in the Birch Bay run, the volunteer force was diminished by the time I came through and there was no one handy to show me the way. After getting lost or nearly lost in Prague, Mudgee, and Birch Bay, I’ve learned my lesson: Study the route.
As Bill drove, following the course map, pointing out the turns, I kept repeating, “Holy shit! Another hill.” The course was up, up, flat, up, down, up, up, up, down, up, up, flat, up, up and so on. I’d heard this course had hills, but every time I brought it up during my training, Bill would reassure me, “It’s no worse than Mudgee. You’ll do fine.” But now I was seeing with my own eyes that this race was much hillier than Mudgee. Bill continued to tell me that it would be no problem, even as we put the car in second gear up the mile-long hills I would have to traverse the next day.
Self-doubt is a tenacious little monster, isn’t it? A thousand other people can tell you you’re great, or capable, or smart, or strong – but ONLY your opinion of yourself can chase away self-doubt. I fought with that doubt as we continued to drive the route, vacillating between, “I’m trained well. I know I can do it,” and “You’re hosed. Those hills are going to kick your ass.”
“Well, I guess I can walk if I have to,” I concluded as we sped past Oak Harbor High School where the finish line would be. I would fall back on my motto: I don’t have to be good or fast, only committed.” So, although I had hopes of beating or at least matching my time from my last marathon, I could see it was unlikely, and I fell back on my belief that “doing” is more important than “winning” or, in my case, “not sucking.”
I managed to sleep on Saturday night and get myself up in time to dress, drive to Starbucks and order a double, short, sugar-free cinnamon soy latte and make it to the starting line ready to run for more than five hours. Bill caught a glimpse of Dean Karnazes, the Ultra-marathon Man, crossing the starting line just before I came through.
The course was beautiful (hills notwithstanding) with rolling fields and glimpses of the harbor, and the weather was at least partially cooperative, sprinkling only a little rain on me at about mile 17, but the highlight of the race was running with a man I met along the way at about mile 12 who, with his own determination and commitment to the marathon, took my self-doubt, crumpled it in a little ball like used foil and tossed it off to the side of the road. His name is Mel and he is seventy-five years old. Bill had pointed him out to me before the race began, so I knew a little about him when I caught up to him on one of the rare flat points in the race.
He ran with hunched shoulders and his head tucked down and thrust forward with determination. Mel’s pace was actually slightly slower than my own, but I was happy to reduce my speed to have a talk with him while I recovered from one of the hills we had just conquered.
“Hey. How’s it going?” I asked as we settled in side by side.
“So far, so good,” he answered.
“I heard this is like number four hundred for you.”
“No. Only three-hundred and thirty one,” he corrected. This didn’t change my awe. How, and more importantly, why, does anyone run hundreds of marathons?
“When did you start running?” I asked.
“I didn’t start until I was fifty,” he told me. It turns out that he had watched his father throw his hands up and let life go “down hill,” at fifty. Mel had decided that fifty was the time to start playing, and for him that meant running. “Yep. The first year I ran one marathon and hurt so badly afterwards that I told myself I’d never do it again.” I knew the feeling. “But I recovered. And so the next year I ran two, and the year after that four. The year I retired from work I ran more than twenty.”
I looked over at him. He wasn’t any taller than I, and he was of average build. His posture wasn’t great, and he was breathing heavily enough for me to worry that this could be his last race. But he wasn’t slowing down. The more we talked, in fact, it seemed to me, the faster he ran. “Last February,” he went on, “I fell out of a tree and hurt myself. Had to take some time off.” He had just started up running again in the past few months. The last week he’d run a race in Yakima, this week the Whidbey Island Marathon and next weekend he would do Wenatchee. The goal was to run without walking. This is how he would know he was back up to speed, despite the pain he had in the hip he’d broken falling out of the tree and the pain he had in the other hip from accommodating his broken side.
We ran silently together for a while. I contemplated the privilege I felt running next to Mel and made a conscious decision to put aside my self-indulgent worry that the hills on this course were going to make me miserable. Maybe they would, but I was just getting started in this life. The journey was hard for all of us, but if Mel could do it, with his chipped hip and his seven and a half decades of life, I would do it, too, and be grateful that I was on my feet.
I bid him goodbye and ran ahead on the next downhill. There is little exchanging of names during a race, I’ve noticed. People cross paths, just this once in their lives, during a brutal endeavor that takes every ounce of focus. Those of us who run slowly enough to hold conversations with one another do so in virtual anonymity. We want the camaraderie in the moment, but the commitment is to the task, not to the relationship at hand. Mel wouldn’t know who I was or how our discussion challenged me to stop my internal whining.
Most of the rest of the race I ran alone. I started to hurt at mile 21, a gigantic uphill that was followed by a steep, fast down before the beautiful homes and beachfront of the West Beach Road came into view. I took the downhill slowly to save my knees and when I finally reached the flat stretch that rode along the water, I saw Bill’s smiling face coming toward me in the other direction. I was thrilled and grateful to see him. He replenished my water and snapped a few pictures and, most importantly, gave me a push up the second to last hill before running ahead to meet me at the finish line.
When you run slowly, like me – or Mel – the finish line isn’t what it is for the people at the center of the pack. There are no crowds, little cheering, and sometimes, all the food has been eaten. The awards ceremony is over and the port-o-potties are being hauled away. This is the scene I saw at the finish line as I came in on Sunday. Even Dean Karnazes had departed the event, leaving the back-of-the-packers to ourselves.
You have to have an internal locus of celebration, I have decided. You have to let your own sense of accomplishment serve as the reward for the long journey you’ve just traversed. I crossed the finish line of the Whidbey Island Marathon at five hours and thirty-one minutes. I took my medal, grabbed a bottle of water and continued walking for about twenty minutes, stopping to stretch now and again, to prevent my legs from cramping. Bill was there to take my picture and offer a high five – and to drive me home, back to our lives.
I did it!!
I checked the race results on the web, by the way, and Mel came in at five hours and fifty-five minutes.
As Bill drove, following the course map, pointing out the turns, I kept repeating, “Holy shit! Another hill.” The course was up, up, flat, up, down, up, up, up, down, up, up, flat, up, up and so on. I’d heard this course had hills, but every time I brought it up during my training, Bill would reassure me, “It’s no worse than Mudgee. You’ll do fine.” But now I was seeing with my own eyes that this race was much hillier than Mudgee. Bill continued to tell me that it would be no problem, even as we put the car in second gear up the mile-long hills I would have to traverse the next day.
Self-doubt is a tenacious little monster, isn’t it? A thousand other people can tell you you’re great, or capable, or smart, or strong – but ONLY your opinion of yourself can chase away self-doubt. I fought with that doubt as we continued to drive the route, vacillating between, “I’m trained well. I know I can do it,” and “You’re hosed. Those hills are going to kick your ass.”
“Well, I guess I can walk if I have to,” I concluded as we sped past Oak Harbor High School where the finish line would be. I would fall back on my motto: I don’t have to be good or fast, only committed.” So, although I had hopes of beating or at least matching my time from my last marathon, I could see it was unlikely, and I fell back on my belief that “doing” is more important than “winning” or, in my case, “not sucking.”
I managed to sleep on Saturday night and get myself up in time to dress, drive to Starbucks and order a double, short, sugar-free cinnamon soy latte and make it to the starting line ready to run for more than five hours. Bill caught a glimpse of Dean Karnazes, the Ultra-marathon Man, crossing the starting line just before I came through.
The course was beautiful (hills notwithstanding) with rolling fields and glimpses of the harbor, and the weather was at least partially cooperative, sprinkling only a little rain on me at about mile 17, but the highlight of the race was running with a man I met along the way at about mile 12 who, with his own determination and commitment to the marathon, took my self-doubt, crumpled it in a little ball like used foil and tossed it off to the side of the road. His name is Mel and he is seventy-five years old. Bill had pointed him out to me before the race began, so I knew a little about him when I caught up to him on one of the rare flat points in the race.
He ran with hunched shoulders and his head tucked down and thrust forward with determination. Mel’s pace was actually slightly slower than my own, but I was happy to reduce my speed to have a talk with him while I recovered from one of the hills we had just conquered.
“Hey. How’s it going?” I asked as we settled in side by side.
“So far, so good,” he answered.
“I heard this is like number four hundred for you.”
“No. Only three-hundred and thirty one,” he corrected. This didn’t change my awe. How, and more importantly, why, does anyone run hundreds of marathons?
“When did you start running?” I asked.
“I didn’t start until I was fifty,” he told me. It turns out that he had watched his father throw his hands up and let life go “down hill,” at fifty. Mel had decided that fifty was the time to start playing, and for him that meant running. “Yep. The first year I ran one marathon and hurt so badly afterwards that I told myself I’d never do it again.” I knew the feeling. “But I recovered. And so the next year I ran two, and the year after that four. The year I retired from work I ran more than twenty.”
I looked over at him. He wasn’t any taller than I, and he was of average build. His posture wasn’t great, and he was breathing heavily enough for me to worry that this could be his last race. But he wasn’t slowing down. The more we talked, in fact, it seemed to me, the faster he ran. “Last February,” he went on, “I fell out of a tree and hurt myself. Had to take some time off.” He had just started up running again in the past few months. The last week he’d run a race in Yakima, this week the Whidbey Island Marathon and next weekend he would do Wenatchee. The goal was to run without walking. This is how he would know he was back up to speed, despite the pain he had in the hip he’d broken falling out of the tree and the pain he had in the other hip from accommodating his broken side.
We ran silently together for a while. I contemplated the privilege I felt running next to Mel and made a conscious decision to put aside my self-indulgent worry that the hills on this course were going to make me miserable. Maybe they would, but I was just getting started in this life. The journey was hard for all of us, but if Mel could do it, with his chipped hip and his seven and a half decades of life, I would do it, too, and be grateful that I was on my feet.
I bid him goodbye and ran ahead on the next downhill. There is little exchanging of names during a race, I’ve noticed. People cross paths, just this once in their lives, during a brutal endeavor that takes every ounce of focus. Those of us who run slowly enough to hold conversations with one another do so in virtual anonymity. We want the camaraderie in the moment, but the commitment is to the task, not to the relationship at hand. Mel wouldn’t know who I was or how our discussion challenged me to stop my internal whining.
Most of the rest of the race I ran alone. I started to hurt at mile 21, a gigantic uphill that was followed by a steep, fast down before the beautiful homes and beachfront of the West Beach Road came into view. I took the downhill slowly to save my knees and when I finally reached the flat stretch that rode along the water, I saw Bill’s smiling face coming toward me in the other direction. I was thrilled and grateful to see him. He replenished my water and snapped a few pictures and, most importantly, gave me a push up the second to last hill before running ahead to meet me at the finish line.
When you run slowly, like me – or Mel – the finish line isn’t what it is for the people at the center of the pack. There are no crowds, little cheering, and sometimes, all the food has been eaten. The awards ceremony is over and the port-o-potties are being hauled away. This is the scene I saw at the finish line as I came in on Sunday. Even Dean Karnazes had departed the event, leaving the back-of-the-packers to ourselves.
You have to have an internal locus of celebration, I have decided. You have to let your own sense of accomplishment serve as the reward for the long journey you’ve just traversed. I crossed the finish line of the Whidbey Island Marathon at five hours and thirty-one minutes. I took my medal, grabbed a bottle of water and continued walking for about twenty minutes, stopping to stretch now and again, to prevent my legs from cramping. Bill was there to take my picture and offer a high five – and to drive me home, back to our lives.
I did it!!
I checked the race results on the web, by the way, and Mel came in at five hours and fifty-five minutes.
Monday, April 14, 2008
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