New York State of Mind

On my way to the San Francisco airport this morning, I was the first passenger to be seated in the familiar blue Super Shuttle, which arrived an characteristically 15 minutes early. (Last time I had ordered a shuttle, I had been en route to JFK and nearly missed my flight. I assumed this morning was starting earlier than usual because the company has still not figured out how to remedy tardiness.)

The driver started north and, after 20 minutes on the freeway, I wondered if I was going to be the only passenger this trip. The radio was on, airing a morning pop station and filling in the silence and space between our seats. Maybe I will get lucky, I thought to myself, maybe I won't have to share this ride today! I relaxed into the clothed bench, watching the outside sky lighten across the bay.

The time alone was short-lived as we pulled into a cul-de-sac a few short minutes later, and I watched a little old lady approach the van. Why did I assume I would be alone this morning? This was a shuttle. Shared ride, says the ad.
I felt the anticipation of conversation rising as the double doors swung open and this nice old lady waved a cheery good morning. I faintly smiled back and nodded my head.
She seated herself right next to me after looking around, wondering aloud how many others were going to join us.
The driver, overhearing, answered that there were two more stops.

Here was conflict: no longer alone in the van, the curly-haired woman seated now in my personal bubble of space, the pressure to connect presented itself. Little old ladies traveling early in the morning are notorious chatterers.

In New York, I'm surrounded and bombarded by people in my personal space at almost every waking moment. The city is like gauntlet, testing one's superior indifference skills: yes, hello, I realize you are in my space but I am going to try to ignore that fact and occupy myself with an activity that portrays how disinterested I am in the reality of your standing here and having to breathe the same air through our closely approximated nostrils.

Technological devices are life-savers in situations like these. Click on my iPhone, plug in my earbuds, turn up the iPod, shuffle through my Kindle library: I am busy, please don't engage. Perhaps consider turning your head so I have enough oxygen to intake while I go about my very important personal business and/or leisure activity.

In New York, people don't usually chat. One may find the bus running horribly late and we may commiserate with the impatient comrade on our right, while we search frantically through our smart phones for alternate transportation ad an exit strategy. One may have one's subway ride interrupted by an outrageous mariachi band soliciting funds, and we may exchange looks in order to see who's digging into their pockets. We may have fleeting moments of reality checks between being preoccupied with ourselves, but these moments merely remind us that we are on track or en route and happen to also be surrounded by a thousand other people. We don't stop to chat. Chat requires time, and room to breathe. We are busy people who barely have enough oxygen as it is.

I've found, however, that in locations where the air is available, visible overhead even, where one has enough room to breathe, where the space itself expects to be filled - these are the places weighted with the inevitability of human chatter. Everyone sitting here understands the construct: we will be sitting here in a spacious van for about an hour with all our technological distractions packed up behind us with the remaining 48 lbs of things we call baggage.
So, what to do?

If you are not in a New York state of mind, chat is the obvious answer here. If not to fill the expectant and weighty silence of social normative permeating the air, chat reminds us that we are curious beings who are constantly learning and absorbing the world around us. Chat allows us to engage in a mutual understanding of our present reality. Chat passes the time and sometimes brings comfort. Chat soothes our fears of being alone.

This goes to say, New Yorkers are not afraid to be alone. In fact, some crave the chance to have no one around. Neither are they afraid of living in their own reality, as evidenced by such icons of the New York populous like the Naked Cowboy, and/or the purple-wigged peace cyclist who has outfitted their bike with pinwheels and a vintage boom box.

But for the rest of the world, where living side-by-side isn't such an ordinary outrage, chat crystallizes our belief in the magic of the everyday. Maybe the person sitting next to me is the spouse of a Nobel laureate, perhaps a retired test pilot for NASA, or maybe a beloved author of vegan cookbooks. We never find out if we don't say hello first.

Paying respect to the space and construct that is the Super Shuttle rideshare, I politely asked to where my fellow passenger was traveling. After a few moments we discovered that she has family residing a few steps away from my workplace in NYC. Further small talk revealed her to be a mediator, about to publish a book on conflict resolution, and a curious story about resolving issues among local post office staff.

We chatted about theatre, as she is a patron of the arts, both classical and contemporary, and I expounded on vocal technique as exampled in today's musicals. I learned something new about Offenbach, and we murmured in agreement over the concept of listening as instrumental to the peace process.

Chat turned into conversation which deepened into dialogue. By the time we reached the airport, Elizabeth and I shook hands and wished each other safe travels.

I hadn't wanted to start a conversation, because I don't often expect small talk to lead anywhere in the short span of an hour's van ride to an airport where we all disembark in different directions. What's the point?

But we're all on the same path, to excuse the metaphor. Maybe the chatter was to remind us of the human journey. I was going back to NYC, Mecca of Loneliness, and she to the Midwest, Home of the Colloquial. Wandering in two different directions, but wanting a reassurance that we had someone alongside on the metaphysical sojourn.

Hooray, You're 30. I mean, 80.

I have had trouble putting on pants for two days because that involves a very tricky bend of the legs.  I haven't been able to descend stairs properly for 48 hours.  I don't want to talk about what it's like to try to sit down on a toilet.  My quadriceps simply won't cooperate; I have suddenly gained the future knowledge of what it will be like to get around town when I'm 80 years old.  It's a weird sensation: standing at the top of the subway staircase, before I even make a toe movement towards the first step down, my brain immediately knows that NO, this is NOT going to work. As soon as I start to bend, I know that my legs will begin to wobble and burn, my arms will clench the metal railing, and my shoulders will seize up to support half of my body as I reach my opposite toe for footing on the next step; there will be a strong exhale and my lips will be pulled inward on each other as my teeth are clamping down to muffle the scream of lactic acid's revenge.

The sensory memory of the pain in taking that step down is so strong that there's no room in my imagination for the possibility that today it could be a little bit better than yesterday.  So each step is the same hurdle as the step before it, and the previous 47 hours worth of steps...it's going to HURT and I have to tell myself, before each step, that it won't.  And besides that, I look like an idiot: a young, capable lady climbing and descending stairs sideways with both hands on the railing, audibly grunting through her nose.  But that's what you get for running a marathon when you turn 30.

I ran 26.2 miles on Saturday.  Some of it was easy, all of it was beautiful, some of it really hurt, and most of it took so much mental energy that after crossing the finish line and sitting down 30 minutes later to eat a burger, it was all I could do to keep from literally passing out with my sweaty, beanie-ed head on the wooden table of a shore-side restaurant.  Pain had been my companion for the latter half of the race, starting after hour 3.  The first pain shows up mentally: "Is this getting harder?  How much further do I have?  Oh. Right, I just passed mile 13.  Everything I just did for the past 3 hours I'm going to have to do again."

Then there's the physical pain: "Ouch.  Why is my shirt scraping my skin off?  Is that blood?  Uck.  Ok, just keep going."  The real work begins after mile 18; it's slow torture, running towards the end, because you know that it's just going to get worse, but you can't speed up the process unless you yourself speed up, and once you speed up there's no slowing down unless you want your friend Pain to envelope you in a bear hug until you suffocate or collapse, or both.  "If you slow down right now, you're not going to make it through this next mile.  Just keep going for one more minute.  Ok, breathe, breathe.... La la la la la la laaaaaaa.  Dooo dooo dooo.  Let's just sing a little song until that next tree."  All that, and your ego is long gone, since you've been basically talking/singing aloud to yourself for 4 hours now in  full view and hearing range of the myriad of spectators and fellow runners.  And, oh yeah, you forgot that you've been wearing that white plastic garbage bag like a sweater this whole time.

Nausea from consuming GU for five hours, burning in your midsection from the chafing of your underwire, dull throbbing in your legs with each bend and roll of the foot, and a consistent ache in your hips from the repetition of movement: these are the mind tricks Pain summons.  So, you do everything in your power to distract yourself from focusing on the pain: singing, humming, counting, watching someone else run, giving a high five to a little Brownie scout handing you water, cheering on that one person you keep passing, wondering about what you're going to eat later on, watching the time, watching the scenery, wondering about how you're old enough to have kids and how this pain compares to having a baby, wondering how you would handle delivery pains at this point in your life, marveling at that autistic runner who's got a chaperone, ruminating on why you decided to do this again, praying five shots of GU caffeine won't make your blood pressure do weird things, wondering if you're doing lasting damage and hoping time will be kind to your body down the road...thinking about anything and everything else beside the fact that YOU HAVE BEEN RUNNING FOR FIVE HOURS.

If the mind would calm down about it all, if I didn't focus on the pain, if I pretended it didn't exist, perhaps Pain would get so upset at the lack of attention that it would just tear its way through me and finally let the body handle the pressure.  I'm sure the body would fix itself: vomit everything up and send some endorphins to the parts where it hurts.  Voila, fixed.  I mean, there are people who run ultra-marathons, and I was only doing a quarter of that kind of feat.

Luckily, I was accompanied by some real friends who drove out to the country to see me run: friends who jogged alongside me at the halfway point, friends who waited in the rain for a half-hour longer than expected for my finish, friends who hand-fed me potatoes while I changed out of my mucky running clothes, and friends who rubbed my tired back as I drifted off in a post-race food coma.  Those friends provided moments which eased the mind of its all-consuming fight with the pain, and offered much-needed relief from the reality of running a marathon.

But, then, when all is said and done, and you wake up the next day, the body seeks its revenge for your abandoning it to do all that WORK.  And pain memory shows up for however long it takes your mind to get the message: the body saying that "if you ever put me through this process again, I swear to God this is how it will feel for three weeks, you a-hole."

Well, I don't think I will be doing it anytime again soon.  Maybe, MAYBE in five years.  Maybe not.  I started out training for this thing because I was commemorating my 30th birthday.  Now that it's finished, I can revel in my new decade of wonderment.  So, happy birthday to me.  Nothing says "You're 30 and alive!" quite like the inability to climb stairs or put on pants.

Let the Countdown Begin!

"There's 10 days left.  Oh dear."
That was my first thought upon starting this long, long, immensely long-overdue post.
In short explanation, I'm fighting off plantar fasciitis, and had no motivation to gripe about it on this here blog.  Just know that, yes, I've been taking it easy, trying to find cardio-workout substitutes for running that involved low/no-impact and as little time as possible on my feet.  And with about a week until the actual marathon, I'm nervous about finishing in decent form.

I'd like to talk a bit about the mental battle I've been waging against those feelings of anxiety.  I go back and forth with how confident I feel about finishing the race.  A major difference in my training (this time around) has been the sheer fact that I've been doing it ALONE.  And with no one else puttering along beside me to gauge my progress from an objective standpoint, I've had to become comfortable with assessing where I'm at and what I need.  I've had to become my own coach, and for some reason, I don't trust my own coach voice.  The coach in my head is young, nervous, and brutally honest.  In fact, she's a little uptight about doing everything by the book, and since I've experimented with workouts and done more timed runs than distance-focused runs, she's basically tearing her hair out because she's got no point of reference anymore.  So, I've had to coach myself into being relaxed about the process, and trusting that I've done the best I can at this point in time.  Nursing an injury right now, it's hard to say I've done my best, because perhaps I've pushed past the point of balanced training.  Time will tell.  Literally.  In like, two Saturdays from now, I'll be able to tell from the marathon time on my wristwatch.
But, the stakes are pretty high for me with this distance running - here I am, four months into training, through an unbearably hot and humid summer, in New York City, the land of cement and steel, and what happens if I can't finish the marathon I've set out to do to mark the advent of my 30s?  What was the point of all that training if I can't even get halfway?  What if I have to drop out, or what if I bonk out at mile 20 and end up walking for so long that I don't finish in under 5 hours and they close the race course on me and I have to hitchhike back?  What if I have to crawl across the finish line because of the pain?  What if I have to get escorted off the course by EMTs, and then I have to live through my 30s knowing I had my best years in my 20s?  WHAT WILL IT ALL MEAN.
I am absolutely headed for an existential crisis here, one way or another.

So my dad put it in perspective: You don't sign up for a marathon in order to finish it.  You sign up for the marathon to commit to the training.

And I just had to ask myself whether or not I committed to the training.  Survey says Yes.
And that in and of itself is the real accomplishment.  Not finishing the marathon.  That's like the icing on the cake: you finish running 26.2 miles, and then comes the realization that all that training was the actual accomplishment, not the 5 hours of plodding along you just did on some dirt road with water stations.
All the days you didn't want to get up and go out running. All the days you felt too tired or wanted to go socialize in the park instead of running for two hours alone.  All the inclement weather and staring locals.  All the times you went to find some running clothes but they all stink like Fritos so you had to have a stinky Frito run.  All the chafing, the dehydration, the planning and plotting and preparation.  For months, logging the workouts, tracking how far, can you go faster tomorrow, can you finish just one more hill today, can you not walk those last five minutes.

I'm hoping that realization happens for me this time around.  I'm hoping the training means something at the end of this.

Thank God for Whomever Invented A/C

It's been a while since my last running post, but I will say I finally broke down and joined a gym...for the A/C.  It was the most glorious Saturday run I've had yet.  (Mind you, I ran this past weekend outside, thinking it was going to be nice, but it wasn't and it still didn't compare to the thrill of my treadmill experience.)
I've griped in the past about how tedious it is to run in one place on a machine, but when you've been living without A/C in the God-forsaken summer weather of NYC, you are likely to trade your soul for a bath of ice cubes on the worst days.  You can imagine my glee upon entering my new gym and hopping on an ultra-modern, technologically-bedazzled treadmill that held not one, but two water bottles, my iPod, GU packets, and towel, while offering me the option of 8 different cable channels of an iPod shuffle, all hands free.  Running uninterrupted without crowds, traffic, or dog poop for a full two hours with my favorite playlist?  Yes, please.  A shower and stretching area all to myself afterwards, and no critics to judge my sweaty-hot-mess-ness?  Totally amazing.  $10 a month for A/C, cable, and a gym?  ...Screw you, Con Ed.

This past Saturday I thought I'd get out on the road again, but despite running over the George Washington Bridge and through Fort Tryon park (hey there, Cloisters!), I was just beaten up by the humidity.  I'm curious to see how I'll fare when the weather cools off - I feel like I've been over-training with the climate at its deadliest, and hopefully I'll start sprinting right along once the fall comes.

Cannot wait for that moment, but for now at least I have my A/C 24/7.

Running is Hard, Running is Easy.

Running is Hard.
I will say, training in New York City in July's best (re: worst) weather is grounds for temporary insanity.  But once you can master the art of talking yourself into/out of the run, you've got the craziness handled.  A friend told me it helps to have a mantra: Running is Easy. And Running is Hard.  When the going gets tough, you can pick whichever one you want.  Running is Easy: you just put one foot in front of the other and remember to breathe.  Relax, running is easy.
Or, Running is Hard: No one, I repeat, no one is out here running hill repeats in 90 degree heat at 75% humidity at 3pm in the afternoon.  Running is F**ing Hard.

Temporary insanity, yes.  Because talking aloud to yourself is the only way to stave off the quits.
If the humidity doesn't kill your training regime, you can count on the sudden thunderstorms to interfere at the best (re: worst) possible moments.  Or, you can be sure you will experience a near-death dementia from sweating every ounce of salt-laden cellular potential you have out your eyeballs and armpits.
During the long humid weekend, I was out for a two hour jaunt when I realized that sweating consistently this much for this long was perhaps the best (re: you get it) way to die.

There I was, talking myself into the long run for the week, and I was armed with two water bottles and all the sweat-wicking body gear I could manage.  Twenty minutes into the run, I had polished off both bottles and had to stop for a refill.  But, I was determined not to quit.  Forty minutes later, my shirt looked like I had soaked it in the wash and neglected the spin cycle.  My anti-chafe cream had melted and was now functioning as anti-sunscreen.  But I was still plugging along - until the sighs started up once I caught sight of the traverse in Central Park known as "Great Hill."  It was here that I contemplated turning around and taking the air-conditioned subway home.  However, "Running is Hard" kicked in and I looked around at the three other pedestrians crawling up the hill, the four cyclists weaving to and fro with audible grunts, and said, "Ok, no one else is doing this. Running is Hard right now, but it's temporary."
Serendipity rewarded me ten minutes later as I stopped to refill the water bottles yet again and looked down at the stone fountain engraved with the name of a local group dubbed "79th Street Marathon and Pasta Club."  The little bit of inspiration I needed, right then and there.
And suddenly, Running is Easy.
Being part of a club is great inspiration for a long run.  It reminds you that you're not alone in the journey.  And that you're not the only crazy one.  (Ok, maybe I wasn't part of that club, but I was drinking the water, so it was inclusion by proxy.)
I continued along the edge of the Jackie O Reservoir (which was, miraculously, less humid and cooler despite its location as dead center of NYC), and while the Running was Easy, I was growing very, very tired.  The combination of the humidity, my water-logged stomach, and the lack of shade combined to slow me to a walk for about ten minutes.  And then I had to find a way to start running again.
Now, anyone who has run a long distance (whether that's 200 miles or 2 yards) can tell you that one of the most difficult obstacles is picking up the pace again once you've slowed.  Particularly in the case of heading back into a running pace after a slow walk.  The mind rebels, the heart pleas for mercy, and maybe the body will cooperate as long as there's no pain involved.  So, being the rational person I am, I had to convince my mind first that we were going to start running again.  Oh, but she's a tricky thing, my mind, because she's so adept about talking me out of every source of inspiration I can manage.  "Just push through this, you'll thank yourself when you're at mile 22 in about two months." Nope.  "There's another marathoner, just try to keep up a little bit - you can do it!" Hell no.  "You're going to have to admit defeat to your fans." Who cares?

And then, by some lovely, demented bout of insanity, I found an exceptional inspiration: the end.
I asked myself, what if this was the last time I'd ever be able to run, ever again?  EVER.  As in, my legs were going to fall off tomorrow (which, at the moment, I wouldn't mind), but I'd never be able to enjoy running, even at the truly worst moments, ever again in my lifetime.  These last thirty minutes were the last chance I'd have to know running.

Well, my mind liked that one.  Blame it on the actor in me, ever in search of some emotional height, or blame it on the primal fear of death, whatever.  All I know is, it worked.  Off I went, picking up the pace as I headed home, surprised by the amount of energy I found, and relieved by the sense of relaxation I was having (truthfully, the downhill path helped immensely).

Running is Easy, when you're about to lose your legs.

Limits

Mediocrity has been on my mind lately.  I've been waging a debate with myself about how comfortable I am with being average.  (By average, I mean a personal average.  I think there's average on a social level, and then there's average on a personal level.  Let's say personal average is an equal division of the sum totals of your achievements from birth to present, with a median knowledge of what your day-to-day activities contain.)  There are some days when I think, "Yep, I'm content with not making my bed today, nor showering, and maybe I'll just sit around and do nothing."  And then there are days when I'm in a rage because I need to be challenged intellectually or physically, to feel the threat of failure on a grandiose scale, if only to reminded that I'm alive and breathing.  And on both occasions, I wonder if I could be happy with living at either extreme.  "Of course not," I think to myself, "Because you get bored easily, you're too innately curious, you love vacation, and life is all about striking a balance anyways."  So the question always lingers: how comfortable could I be if I was average?

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a household where the word "potential" was used as a weapon.  Any breach of discipline or feat of under-achievement was promptly attacked as unfit and not in keeping with my "potential".  There was no excuse for not using all the gifts in my psyche to their full capacity.  From birth until the day I moved coasts, I was suffocated by the idea of my Potential.  What was it?  Potential: that unknown, immeasurable limit of individual human greatness; the tiny lettering on an uninflated balloon.  As far as I could glean, my Potential was limitless and thus anything less than stellar (effort) was unacceptable.  But even more frightening was the thought of, where does it stop?  How will I know I've reached my Potential?  Everyone supposedly has "potential", and we all assume this means "capacity for greatness" (re: success), but to what end?  Forget family legacy; genetics is just a theory in this arena.

The frightening moan of Potential is the assumption that you have an unlimited capacity for growth, for development.  And it's upsetting to see that capacity diminished, uncultivated, or even blatantly disregarded.  How often does it happen that when someone dies (or severely screws up) we grieve the loss of their Potential?  It's everywhere, the threat of Potential loss, and you can feel it creeping into your soul each time you quit, stop trying, or feign indifference or carelessness.  Potential is a dangerous word, because its hit-man is that other daunting term, Disappointment.  And Disappointment is perhaps The Worst, because itself contains an unlimited potential for feeling really, really, bad about oneself.  Between the two, there's no limit as to how high or how low you can go.

There's no denying that the impetus for progress runs parallel to the idea of potential in our daily lives.  At work, there's an urgency for forward motion, accompanied by that little voice reminding you of how capable you are of achieving the results.  There are tasks to be done, and it's only a matter of how smart/efficient/creative/annoying you are which will help determine their end.  You know there's applause and relief pending completion of said objective; alternatively you could just half-ass it, lose your job, and go live under a bridge.  So you get it done (or not) and perhaps that little voice nags at you when you return home, reminding you that maybe you didn't do enough.  But does there ever come a time when we say to ourselves, I'm just not capable of this...?

I think that's the curse of running a marathon.  I know I'm capable of it, so the Potential exists.  But now that there's a time stamp on the previous record, I'm unsure of my limits.  Last time, I just needed to finish, that was the litmus.  I'm certain I can finish one again, but will I be able to do it faster?  And regardless of the outcome, will that be enough?

Gits

The humidity has not let up.
These past two weeks have been a reintroduction to the perils of running in New York City weather.  I got a taste of it when I was training for the half-marathon about a year/plus ago, in the dead heart of winter.  I think I might prefer to be running out in the cold with 15 layers of moisture-wicking clothing than in the relentless sweat-inducing humidity of July.  (Of course, the grass is always greener, as they say.)  The upside of running in winter is that no one can really get a good look at you, hence the dearth of "compliments".

This past weekend was a treat, being at the beach and running along a boardwalk with no "compliment"-givers in sight.  In fact, the 3 remarks that were made included an empowering shout from a local lifeguard, a 'take-it-easy' from an older passer-by, and a little cheer from my beach-blanket bound roommate, upon my return.  However, the treat was short-lived upon returning to my weekday routine and being harangued by a 17-year old youngster on Tuesday, who insisted on calling me 'honey' as he followed me down the block.  I was barely warming up, still in a little walk-trot, and he kept close at my heels, softly jibing at me as I tried to ignore him.

However, I have my limits.  And being harangued by tiny boys is one of the many.
I was so fed up with the name-calling that I turned around and got into a little 'conversation'....

The punchline here is: futility.

17yo: Hey honey, you're lookin' good.
Me: (hand on hip, aghast) Exactly how old are you?
17yo: 17.
Me: (laughs, shakes head)
17yo: How old are you?
Me: Guess.
17yo: 20.
Me: (laughing even harder) Nope.
17yo: 25?
Me: (secretly flattered and yet still appalled) Sweetie, I'm almost old enough to be your mother.
17yo: (suggestively) You can be my mama, I'd like that.
Me: (taken aback, and now seriously shaking head) That's so wrong.
17yo: I like how you call me sweetie.
Me: (putting up the 'stop-sign' hand) No.
17yo: (finally slowing down) You could teach me some things, c'mon.
Me: (fed up and now resorting to lies in order to stop him in his pursuit) I've got someone to teach already.
17yo: (calling after me) I can be your second man! C'mon...!
Me: (running away and avoiding eye contact as I should have done in the first place)  No!
17yo: You still look hot, honey!

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why one should simply not say anything to anyone, ever, on the street. Especially not little 17 year old gits, to borrow a favored expression.

I think I'll be seeking out new running routes soon.

Pace and Dignity

Running this last week was a dream.  It suddenly got easier by Friday (but I was on a treadmill, so it was like finding fool's gold).  However, for a short 30 minutes in that tiny Maryland hotel fitness room, I remembered what it was like to feel great about running, and that was all I needed to re-ignite my motivation.  I ran in(to) three different states this past week/end: New York, Maryland, and New Jersey (or, as some call it, West New York).  A colleague's wedding in Baltimore had me sightseeing around Fell's Point and the Inner Harbor on Friday and Saturday, while Sunday took me slowly bopping across the George Washington Bridge (what a view on foot!) into NJ, a mere mile away from NYC over the Hudson.
And let me just say, that's a big-aces river.  I mean, it really is something in the old days to have to "forge" a river.  Lost an ox on the way over, yeah?  Well, duh.  That river's a beast.  And people who we call "jumpers"?  Yeah, I'm amazed they don't chicken out on the way to the railing.  Hello, you're up HIGH.  In fact, there are a bunch of PSA signs telling the public how to spot a jumper and how to help them out.  Kind of creepy, but kind of nice to see my tax dollars at work.


I've been reminiscing these past few weeks.  Getting back into the swing of things has brought up a lot of memories and revelations, but I'd like to take a moment to talk about something that is new.  Potentially embarrassing, but definitely confusing.

I've mentioned that I've moved into a new neighborhood, and it's been interesting getting to know the culture.  People are so friendly.  There are a lot of instances I find similar to running around the Bay Area in CA, but some things are different.  For example, in CA, I'd go running and no one would look twice.  Usually because there are at least 5 other morning runners out with you, a few dog-walkers, and perhaps a gaggle of cyclists.  Well, in Dominican NYC, there's a least 5 men sitting on my stoop, and all of them are gaggling at me.  Because I'm the only lady with a matching pink running outfit designed to minimize chafing, for some reason people stare.  Sometimes they comment.  As in, "Que linda, bonita. Adonde vas?"  or "Tell me you must be married, mmm-MMMH!"  or "Hey, can I come running wit choo?"

Asking if they can join me in my workout is probably the most baffling part.  I mean, I'm sorry, but here we are at 8am, and from the looks of your saggy pants and neck full of rosary beads, I don't think you're going to be able to keep up, mister.  I'm afraid you might (a) trip over your pants and perhaps (b) get whipped in the face by the Virgin Mary hanging around your neck.  And then who'd be liable?  I just can't risk that.  Plus, let's be real.  I know that you'd probably only want to run behind me the whole time.  So, let's not confuse your interest in fitness with your interest in my derriere.

And that's the real issue for me: the fine line between a compliment and objectification.  I've grown up feeling embarrassed about the way it looks to be exercising.  In my hometown culture, there's a fitness mindset.  Everyone is fit (or on their way to getting fit) and so it's potentially embarrassing to be bobbling along during your workout, huffing and puffing and getting red in the face, limbs akimbo while some 50-year old whizzes past you with a cheery hello and more bounce in their senior-age step than you had in your teens.  But from the looks of it, you're working towards a goal - there's an ulterior motive at work.  So, you keep on huffing and puffing, and assuming the people who call out to you on the street are encouraging you on your way to achievement.
In NYC, I go out running, huffing and puffing and getting red in the face, and my neighbors think that's sexy.  Their cheery hellos are come-ons.  The only ulterior motive at work here is one that relates directly to how I look.  Which is so confusing.  Because it's nice to receive recognition for practicing a healthy lifestyle - when the focus is on an internal trait like commitment, motivation, or dedication.  But it's disarmingly uncomfortable to receive recognition for practicing a healthy lifestyle when the recognition is focused on exterior traits, like one's upper pectorals or glutes.


I ran around the track yesterday, rolling these thoughts over in my mind, and I realized that a compliment, when best-utilized, is sincere in intention; it is designed to enhance the receiver's sense of self-worth and feelings about themselves.  But a compliment disguised as a come-on is objectification at its most volatile.  It's design does not include concern for the subject's feelings, and in fact seems designed explicitly for the denial of the subject's humanity.  When I go out running here and get whistled and hollered at, I don't believe the intention is to encourage me in my training, to draw attention to my dedication, to my ambition.  I'm just a visual in a pink get-up, bouncing along in the early a.m. and the attention is on my other assets.  And while I know it's just friendly commentary, it's very confusing.  Because the more exposure I have to certain types of friendly commentary, the less I trust people's intentions.


So, what's a girl to do?  These days, I just try not to make eye contact, or give a curt "thank you" while trying to maintain my pace and my dignity.

From the Beginning, Again!

This week was a beginner's lesson.

The problem with undertaking a second marathon is that you take for granted the past effort you put in to achieve the initial result.  I've forgotten how much effort it takes.  I vaguely remember it being difficult in the beginning, but never like this.  I literally go out for my runs and think, What is wrong with me?! This week was a gradual vocalization of the fact I'm a beginner again.  And taking things from the beginning when you've already accomplished the goal once before feels like learning how to read and write all over again.  


It makes me think that kids actually have it really hard.  (Bear with me.)  We think that it's such a lovely time, being a child and living without adult responsibilities, but I ask you to recall how hard it was for you to learn something as a kid.  You would sit in school for hours, absorbing and interacting and exercising your brain with only about an hour or so of break time to relax.  Kindergarten was difficult because you were learning to share and listen (well, most of us, anyways.)  And then came elementary school, then junior high - hormonal instability coupled with algebra was like a gauntlet of shame - then, remember what it was like in high school?  When you had three to four hours of homework after the eight hours of instruction from your less-than-favorite chemistry teacher?  And then, the preparation for the SATs?  Finally getting into college was like some sort of door prize for participating in the decades-long boot camp for your brain.  When you finally got to college, you had been developed into a well-oiled, neutron-firing machine. 


If running my first marathon was like getting into college, running my second marathon has to be some sort of post-bac purgatory.

Training again has thrown me for a loop in then sense that I am sure that, at some point, I was pretty good at running.  But for some reason, my speed and endurance are not as easily accessible as they once seemed.  And it's confusing to go out running (something I've done for, literally, years) and feel like I've lost the well-oiled, neutron-firing machine that used to be my tempo and distance.  I really used to know how to do this, but now it's like I'm having to learn it all over again - and the progress cannot be catalyzed.

The reality is that I expected it would all come back to me more quickly.   Getting back on the track this week, I was gasping for breath after 3 laps of intervals, having to walk after 20 minutes of tempo, and wondering, how, dear God, am I ever going to be ready for another full marathon by September?  Part of me doubts that I was ever successful at this.  In fact, I think,  Maybe I've been on the short bus this whole time and nobody's told me.


Each year in school, you were having to start all over again, learning something new and building on what you have stored away in your brain from years past after barely a summer's respite.  But you'd get back to class every fall and it would take about a week before you were zipping along at your regular pace.  Kids have it hard, but they sure bounce back quick.  Presto, voila, simple and easy.  But here I am, almost three weeks in, and instead of zipping through the textbooks again and speedily jotting down my thesis statement ideas, I find I'm having to go back to the very basics of just simply (re)learning how to listen and share.

Stop Whinging and Get On With It Already

The first week of training. Was. Tough.

On Tuesday, my alarm went off at 6:30am.  The first thought in my head was "Dear sweet baby Jesus, this is not happening."  I forgot.  I forgot what it was like to wake up that early, to tell my legs that we were going for a run, to try to shake and stretch some energy into my limbs, and to groggily push out the door and get moving. But I remembered about halfway down the block why I love this.  Running into the nearby state park sports complex, doing an interval workout around the track, I remembered how good it felt to have a purpose.  This was a God-awful early run over cement and brick, and yet I loved it.

Wednesday was a different story.  Again, the 6:30am alarm.  Again, I couldn't believe this was happening.  And then I couldn't believe how difficult it was to run that morning.  My legs were defiant and refused to propel me.  I ended up pushing through most of the workout, mumbling to myself that it was almost over and no, I was NOT going to quit training for a marathon I had just signed up for only four days prior.  What had happened?  I had felt so wonderful just yesterday.  I chalked it up to two factors: a) being a very close subsequent workout to the last one and b) too much energy after a long work shift on my feet the night before.

And then Friday arrived.  After working a double shift on Thursday (16 hours trotting about on the feetsies), I hit the track mid-afternoon on Friday.  If Wednesday was hard, Friday was surreal.  I warmed up for about 5 minutes, and then stared at my watch every 30 seconds thereafter to check how much longer I had to be running.  No, time did not move faster.  No, the workout did not get easier.  In fact, it was so difficult to maintain a consistent pace that I found myself walking after a mile and a half.  Seriously now, I thought, what is going on?!  As I walked around the track, my mind conjured up a thousand tiny voices explaining why I should just quit and call it a day: I had worked so hard this week! I had been on my feet for an extreme amount of time the day before! I was working hard and shouldn't risk an injury!

And then I realized that this was a mental workout day.  Every moment of training counts for some reason, and Friday was the reminder of the "tiny voices" syndrome.  Those tiny little voices that give you the best excuses to give up - you have to be in tip-top mental shape to do battle with them in conversation.  Talking aloud helps, for some reason and while you may seem crazy for a brief moment to any nearby listeners, it's the only way to win the war.  So I told myself: "This is the part of the marathon where you want to give up.  But you can do one more lap.  You have that in you.  One more lap and then you can go home."

So I did.

I had to work Friday evening, and heading into bed after the late-night shift, I was fearful for Saturday's run. I knew I had to get up and get it over with, but I wasn't sure how my muscles were going to feel.  All week, I had been reminded of the soreness, the mental fortitude, the battle with the tiny voices that comes with training for the marathon....  My resolve was frayed.  Saturday's long run seemed impossible.

But Saturday brought about an unexpected motivation: a brief visit with my friend who is currently battling Hodgkin's.

A dear colleague of mine was recently diagnosed and has been undergoing chemo.  Said friend also signed up for a fundraising walk-a-thon (Relay for Life), and I went to Brooklyn on Saturday morning to say hello.  A short visit was all I needed to put the whole damn week into perspective.  Here I was, a completely physically competent body whinging over the difficulty of the first week of training.  While standing in front of me was a scarred, bald, gorgeous soul who had to return to work despite the continuation of outpatient chemo every two weeks for the next couple of months, who had put together a team of friends to walk together on the weekend to honor cancer victims, who was going to spend the next few hours ambling around the piers because ambling is a high-energy term.  I had truly forgot.  I forgot that the last marathon was a complete perspective shift; running in honor of all those cancer patients, victims and survivors who had friends and family who loved them.  I hadn't thought of running this marathon for anyone but myself.

All that said, my Saturday run was perfect.  I could move, I took the pace slower than usual, and the weather was inviting.  I had my health and my breath and that's really all that mattered.

So, looking back, I think, yes, the first week of training was tough.  It was tough to welcome back all the small aches and pains that come with having a purpose.  It was tough to feel the limits of my resolve again.  But it was exceptionally tough to be reminded that I'm far more capable everyday than I imagine.

A Bang and a Whimper

Hello again, Marathon Fans.

Well, I never thought it would happen, but I got the urge to run another marathon.  5 years after the inception of this little blog, here I go again!  I'm registered for the Hamptons Marathon in September.

The idea to torture myself through what I now know to be a grueling training process and demonic effort of physical exertion transpired from a culmination of realizations.  The most sobering realization is the fact that I am turning 30 this year.  I realize this may not seem like a big deal to many, but I see it as the next chapter of life adventures.  I also realize that I may have been considered a runner in years past, and while I may have completed one (and a half) marathons to date, I cannot bear the thought of entering my 30s as a "former runner."  Actually, I realized just now I can't bear the thought of ending my 20s without some sort of immodest feat to mark the occasion, either.  The past decade has been very kind to me: no major health complications to speak of, worldwide travel, some major physical accomplishments, and a terminal degree under the belt.  So, I'm looking forward to starting the next decade of greatness with a bang.

Oddly enough, the training today began with a whimper.


Having moved out of the International House (affectionately termed IHOP by my relatives) after a 3-year stint of cultural entrenchment, I find myself a minority living uptown in a primarily Dominican-populated building overlooking most of Harlem. I'm learning new languages daily, and how to maintain peace with your bachata-music-at-all-hours neighbors. Not much has changed, really.


Heading down the stairs at 5pm today, and side-stepping the abuelito who usually resides there in the evenings, I looked skyward to see the impending summer thunderstorm.  I took a brief pause and considered going back upstairs to grab a rain jacket, but I knew that if I turned around, I'd lose momentum for the run.  Here it was, my first training run, my resolve to do this whole crazy thing again coursing strong through my veins, and I knew that I must not let the loud booming of thunder deter me.  With a grimace and said whimper, I turned on my stopwatch and headed out.  I hopped along for about 10 feet before the clouds opened up and started pouring down buckets of rain onto my non-rain-proof clothes.  I had 30 seconds on the clock and I was already soaked through.  Well, I thought, I can just chalk this up to the first test of my mettle.  So there I went, trailing down my neighborhood streets into the nearby park, passing all the gente huddling under awnings and doorways, watching the crazy lady running wide out in the thick of it.  In retrospect, it was kind of nice to have the usually-crowded New York streets cleared out by the downpour - I had the road all to myself, I didn't have to slow down or say 'excuse me' to the ambling Sunday pedestrians, and I could run in any which direction I chose.

21 minutes and 36 seconds later, after trotting up the heart-attack inducing hill that is W. 138th Street, I stopped my workout.  And there, standing on the corner, checking my pulse, the rain dissipated.  Just like that.  Coincidence?  The 20 minute time-frame I chose for my first training run was a literal thunderstorm.  It might be too much to say it, but I got the whole dang thing started with a bang after all.