Friday, October 21, 2011

A Good Thing Going Bad

[Written Thursday, although not posted until Friday, in case the references to yesterday and this morning are confusing.]

I've run every day for the last 20 days in a row now.  In the world of running, this is called "streaking."  And yes, I wore clothes.

It's funny, fascinating, and frustrating how easy it is for something to become a god, of sorts, something to serve.  I guess there's a reason why the first commandment came first.  If you can keep that one, you're doing pretty well, and the rest of the commandments will be a lot easier.

I never meant to start a streak, in truth.  I just ran for the sake of running.  On the day that I usually take off, I needed a quick easy run to center my head, to start my day, to wake up my body.  It felt good, and I felt surprisingly good all day.  I felt rested and refreshed.  Plus, I'll admit, the mileage looked kind of good on my running log, even though that wasn't the original intent of the run.  So the next week when my usual day off came around, I remembered the week before.  I ran slow and short and easy, and it was, again, like resting.  It wasn't meant to even be a run, but it was a run, so I wrote it down.  And then I noticed that, huh, I'd run for 14 days in a row.  And as soon as I made note of that, as soon as I told a friend about it and it was named "a streak," it changed.

I've been running a good amount.  For about four weeks I held my running mileage in the mid-thirties.  Then I had a couple of weeks at 38.5.  Then I ran 46.5.  Then I ran 50.  You don't get to 50 miles a week just by adding in a little 2-3 mile run on your traditional rest day, but it doesn't hurt either.  So the numbers started to take over.

I started "the streak" just wanting to run because I love running.  I ran to improve my running, to relax my spirit, to enjoy the outdoors and the time alone.  I ran for the joy of being able to run.  Some runs I ran to spend time with other runners.  I ran because, to me, running is a great multi-sided gift.  I think these are all good reasons to run.  Running for numbers is not.

I've been doing the Jack Daniels' Blue Plan for advanced runners, and I'm currently half-way through.  [Note to non-runners: Jack Daniels is a running coach who has written a much-cited running book; he is not a form of adult beverage--at least not in this context.]  It's been going smoothly, and up until yesterday I felt like my body was handling it very well and improving gradually but steadily.  Most running coaches and experts and training plans demand at least one day of rest.  Daniels does not.  The blue plan requires five to seven days a week.  Yesterday was an optional run.  I always run on Wednesday evenings, but yesterday I had a meeting scheduled just after the usual Wednesday night run, so I planned to run in the morning.  I woke up at 5am yesterday morning to cold and impending bluster, but worse, a body that really really didn't want to run.  A body that was heavy and slow and really really wanted to go back to bed.  Upon checking my e-mail I saw that the evening group run had been moved up half an hour, so I could theoretically go back to bed and run in the evening and still make my meeting.  So that's what I did.

When evening came, it was still cold and damp and blustery, but I always run on Wednesdays.  And I had run 19 days in a row!  Yes, Jack Daniels would have allowed me to stay warm and dry and go to my meeting after a nice warm dinner, but my streak wouldn't allow it, so I went running anyway.  I'm not sorry I did.  Running outside is a good way to make peace with the kind of weather we had last night.  Walking from house to car, one gets cold.  Running six miles, if dressed appropriately, one can sweat.  The other people who showed up were men, and since I was conscious of time and my upcoming meeting, I ran a little faster than Jack Daniels would have wanted me to run.  And finally, after 20 days of running and not resting, of speedwork and tempo runs and long runs and just regular runs, my body told me to knock it off.

I started out tired, but after five of the six miles, my right leg went back to its old tricks and wasn't working.  I was trying very hard to make it work again and still keep up with the fast men I was running with, but I found myself working harder and harder and yet falling further and further behind.  When one leg is not-quite-responding to the neural impulses, no amount of guts or effort is going to produce an admirable pace.  And so I stopped.  I stopped with only a quarter mile to go and stretched and got the leg turned back on enough to run me back to the parking lot.

Once home after my meeting, I gritted my teeth and got down on the floor to do some of the exercises my physical therapist had prescribed when I was regularly losing control of my leg.  They have, over the past couple of years, become rather effortless.  Not last night.  Every muscle in my body begged to stop.

And so this morning, when I could have run an easy two or three miles, I allowed myself to sleep in.  I could have run while my daughter was at preschool, but I did not.  I could have gone down to the treadmill while she was taking a nap, but I also curled up for a nap.  My legs are still tired, and I feel it every time I go up a flight stairs.  Today would have made my streak a nice even three weeks, and I'll admit it was hard to let that go, but it was the right thing to do.  I realized, just in time, that had I run, although neither my body nor my spirit were going to benefit from it, what started out to be a blessing and joy would have become, instead, my master.

So the streak is broken, and I am free from it.  Tomorrow, when I return to my training plan I will be back in charge of my running, not being required to pay homage to the numbers any more.  Free to remember that I run because I can, because I love to, because of all of the benefits I receive from running.  I will not be tempted to serve the numbers instead. 

Monday, October 17, 2011

Where to begin

I was going to write about fasting today, but now my covenant group has a new assignment.  (OK, full disclosure: I wasn't going to write today at all, but here I find myself with a quiet house and a few minutes before I have to start dinner and the floor already mopped.  Yeah, some days I feel more like writing than others.)  I actually do feel like writing about something Jen brought up: the idea of ministering to your own neighbors. 

It's been bugging me that I am, as someone trying to follow Jesus, supposed to be visiting, feeding, and clothing the poor.  I participate in Third Tuesday suppers to the extent possible given my other obligations.  I donated my cucumbers.  I've baked desserts.  On the rare non-band third Tuesday, I have really enjoyed volunteering.  I donate clothes to rummage sale twice a year.  (Hmm.  Somehow, I never run out of clothes.)  But the truth is (ugh, how stupid and immature this sounds) I don't know any truly poor people.  The truth also is that I don't do much to remedy that, so shame on me for that.  Leaving aside the fact that I ought to make it my business to associate with the poor, let's consider how I should minister to the rich, who happen to be my actual physical neighbors, not in the sense of the "Good Samaritan" parable, but in the sense of the people who I see and talk to on a regular basis.  Because here's something important: Jesus said that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.  God has some miracles to work amongst us, and since I'm hanging around here not doing much ministering to the poor, I might as well give him a hand.

But how?  Is it harder to minister to a rich person than a poor one?  The rich people do not need me.  I have nothing that they do not have bigger and better and more stylish already.

I wonder if ministering to the rich can be accomplished by showing them life otherwise.  To use a secular example, I walk or bike my daughter to and from preschool.  When, a few years ago, I started doing this with my son, I was the only one.  I walked him to school when I was nine months pregnant.  I walked him to school two days before giving birth, and the only reason I didn't wallk him to school the day I gave birth was that there was no school.  And people looked at me funny.  I enjoyed the walks, but I did not enjoy being a spectacle.  I was that one who....  Then I walked my son to school with my newborn in a stroller, days after giving birth.  I had to switch to driving when the weather conditions were not suitable for a stroller or infant, but otherwise, we walked to and from every day.  Most days, I was the only one.  But I did have a few conversations with a few moms who said, "Hmm.  I should...."  And a couple of moms did a couple of times.  Often they were too rushed and the car was easier.  One woman, though, several times drove to her mom's house, which was between my house and the preschool and joined me, walking her daughter, her baby, and her dog.  It was quite a parade.  Yes, it was a hassle, but I think everyone liked it anyway.   And who knows but that we didn't make a little difference?  Three years later, here I am walking my daughter to preschool every day and biking to pick her up.  And, wondrously, most days, I'm not the only one.  Granted, the day we walked to school in the drizzle (it was not very cold and we really wanted to use the rarely-enjoyed umbrella anyway,) we were the only ones walking.  But I wonder: did some moms look out their car windows and think, "Oh, I could have...."  I suspect most were not tempted, but I also suspect that most, had they tried it, would have had a good time, as my daughter and I did. 

It's a silly example, but cannot anything we do mindfully become a witness to the Teacher who shapes our hearts?  If someone were to ask me why I walk my daughter to school in the rain or (I hope) snow, I could say, "I enjoy it," and that would be true.  But I could also say, "It's my way of enjoying the gift of the weather," or "It's one little way I take care of creation," or "I remember as I walk the people for whom walking is the only option."

I do this with being vegetarian.  Yes, I do believe that vegetarianism, done well, is a healthy lifestyle.  But that lifestyle probably doesn't include cookies.  Lean meat is probably more healthy, really, than some of the desserts I allow myself daily.  And so, when people ask about being vegetarian, which they always do, I try to explain that I do it as an acknowledgement that the way meat is produced and consumed in our society is just not fair.  It hurts the planet, it hurts the animals (which is worse than killing and eating them, in my opinion,) and most importantly, it distributes our resources in such a way that someone must starve for me to enjoy a barbecue.  If I were eating meat, I would be using grain that could feed people to feed my food and letting the people go hungry.  Does one person not eating meat solve that problem?  I'll admit that it probably does not.  But it's how I make a little difference in my own kitchen, which is where I spend a lot of my time.  And, I hope, it ministers to the rich just a little bit.  Or at least witnesses.  Yes, we may be fortunate, but remember, all you meat-eating, SUV-driving, smartphone-addicted rich people, that most of the world does not (because they cannot) live as you do. 

These are things I do and things which take up a fair amount of my time, both in execution and in planning and preparation.  And yet they are small.  I am thinking, however, that there are more such things that could be done, or at least  named.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Hope Training

This morning, two days after the Chicago Marathon, I had the track to myself.  Truth be told, I wasn’t sure even I was going to show up.  Last week I ran 46.5 miles.  Between Sunday and Monday I ran 17.5 miles, biked ten miles, did about a thousand squats at my kettlebell class, and canoed for 12 miles.  And I was a mother and wife and daughter and friend.  I went to bed last night feeling tired.  I didn’t run a marathon this weekend, but surely I deserve a break too.  And yet this morning I woke up just after 5am.  I got my body functioning.  I ate a mini Clif bar and one Gu chomp, and then I headed out into the still-starry night, off to do 200s and 400s in the dark.  I wasn’t feeling particularly speedy, I’ll admit.  My first 200 was a second slow, as was my first 400, even though I felt like I was running as hard as I could.  Boo.  But I ran all four sets: a total of eight 200s and four 400s.  Some of the reps were faster than I needed to go; all of them at least met expectations once I pushed myself past the first set.
The question is (always is) why?  Why did I feel the need to get up and run sprints before dawn?  Why stick with them when they looked to be going unwell?  Why do a two-and-a-half-mile cooldown when one mile would have sufficed?  What am I training for?
Ah, there’s the question that hangs around a runner’s neck.  I am as guilty as anyone for asking it.  On Sunday I passed a woman twice, once on the way out, and then again on the way back.  I wanted to reach out to her, have a short conversation, so I asked, of course, if she is training for anything or just running.  She was just running while her son was at baseball practice.  And me?  Why was I out running 14 miles?  What am I training for?  I’m daydreaming about a marathon in Arizona in February, but, honestly, I don’t know if my injured foot can take that or if the impending blizzardy winter is going to allow adequate training.  So if I’m honest with myself, there’s a reason why I haven’t signed up.  There’s a good chance that it’s not going to happen.  I am planning to run a 10K in November, more to redeem this summer’s 47:01 10K (ugh) than because the course is particularly inspiring.  I’m not likely going to regain my former glory there, where I once set an age group record.  And so, last week, when there were two other people at the track doing 200s in preparation for Sunday’s marathon, and one of them asked what I was training for, I didn’t really have an answer.  I said, “Just to get back in shape.”  One might argue that I’ve been in decent shape for some time.  So “shape” for what?  I don’t know.
Today, while attending a study on Genesis, I decided that getting up at 5am and doing speedwork in the dark is as much about hope as it is about anything.  Near the end of class, someone made the comment that because of the stories of the Bible, even when we are in the midst of our own messes we know God will make everything come out for good eventually.  Yeah, good, but, as our pastor pointed out, that’s only comforting if you’re OK with the eventual good not happening during your own generation.  That message only applies to people who are willing to take the long view rather than the short view.  It’s for people who, like Abraham, are willing to live by promise rather than by having.   It seems, does it not?, that God wants us to live faithfully, to endure trials and wander in deserts and live and pray and work and witness and maybe martyred all for the sake of an unspecified someday, with no promises that our plans for ourselves will ever come to fruition.  In the new testament, Jesus promises to return: he warns us to keep our metaphorical lamps filled for that someday when he will—and it’s been 2000 years!  How many generations is that?  Evidently, we are always training for a race we may not even get to run.  We go to Bible studies and hash out what we think different stories might mean, and maybe we will be the ones who get to see it all worked out, but probably not. 
I don’t know, exactly, why I am running quite so much or quite so hard, but I have a vague general idea.  I am running so much because “getting in shape” is, for me, an act of hope.  Hope that my foot is going to be fine soon.  Hope that I will get to the starting line of some beautiful race someday.  But even if I still have a long journey to heal this foot problem, even if Arizona doesn’t work out, there is a bigger and more nebulous hope that gets me out of bed in the morning/very very late night.  This vague hope maybe more often gets called gratitude.  I get up and run speedwork because I can, because even though it’s hard, it’s also a privilege, a gift.  Even though my foot is still injured enough to make my future plans unknown, to call tomorrow’s run into question, it’s also well enough today to run on for eight miles, and hallelujah for that.  If I was given a body to run with, an hour to run in, and a track to run on, you better believe that I’m going to be running and grateful for every step.
In the end, I don’t know what will happen with my life or my running.  In the middle, though, I think I am called to live as though the things for which I hope are possible.  And I think, in the middle, that is the message of the Bible as well.  We are called do some silly things sometimes, even if they seem so small or so ridiculous or so far removed from the hope that inspired them that we can’t even say for sure what that hope will look like when we get to it.  Even if I do not get to see the Promised Land, walking (or running) towards it makes more sense than accepting death in the middle of the desert.  If, for me, hope means track repeats in the dark, then I will take my blessings and run with them.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Many happy returns


Oh, my foot.

On Monday I went back to the surgeon.  He had told me, some months ago, that at four months post-surgery, my foot would be feeling good.  At six months, it would feel great.  The reality, however, is that tomorrow is seven months, and my foot still hurts.  I was holding out hope that when I went in to see the doctor he would say some version of "Well, for some people it just takes a long time...."  Instead, he did another set of x-rays, found a spot where the bone is separated a bit, and came up with no conclusions.  The bone thing might not be it.  Some peoples' bones are just like that.  So... he doesn't know.  He says that by seven months he would expect me to be pain free.  I am not.   So he advised that I get another opinion.  Or another scan.  Or both.  Ugh.

But achy foot aside, the highlight of my week has certainly been running.  Oh, how I love running.

On Wednesday evening I bought a new pair of running shoes, a purchase that was well overdue.  Then I got to running club a bit early.  My club meets at a trailhead across the street from a local cross country course, which was all marked for cross country season.  I went over to the course for 15 minutes and ran through cool, rugged, wooded trails and sunny grassy mowed paths.  And time folded in on itself.  Trail running invites a certain loss of the sense of time, partly because one must concentrate more on not falling into ruts or holes or tripping over tree roots, partly because time is always obscured under a leafy canopy, and partly because of some magical quality that is less identifiable.  And so it didn't seem like 20 years had gone by since I first ran on that course.

Yes, twenty years.  I joined my high school cross country team in the fall of 1991, thinking it would help me to get in shape for the spring soccer season.  In those twenty years, I've had a fairly comprehensive array of running injuries: achilles tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, runner's knee, hamstring pull, shin splints, a floppy leg, IT band problems, broken foot, sprained ankles, and some less identifiable issues.  I've had a miscarriage and two live births.  I've run four marathons and many more shorter races.  I've had some long lay-offs.  But through all of those ups and downs, I have remained, at heart, a runner.

Finding running, back in 1991, was discovering myself and my home all at once.  My body loves to run.  My soul loves to run.  My self loves to be a runner.

So achy foot and all, I've run 42 miles so far this week (with one day left,) and loved every step of it.  I've done a two-hour run on crushed limestone, a track workout of 200s and 400s before sunrise, a group run, a short easy run at dawn, a tempo run that started under stars and ended in daylight.  My legs have felt strong, have felt fast, have felt tired.  Running has, without doubt or even any serious competition, been the highlight of every day this week and of the week itself.

It sounds absurd that I should have been running for 20 years.  It makes me sound old.  But at the same time, it seems entirely right.  Running has been my refuge, my delight, my hobby, my sanity, my identity, my connection to the seasons, my social life, and my true friend for longer than almost anything or anyone else has been present in my life.  

Here we are at our 20 year anniversary, and I am, impossibly, even more in love with running than I was back in 1991 when I ran the regional cross country meet back in that same forest preserve.  Running has seen me through a lot of life, and I couldn't ask for a better companion.

Happy anniversary, my love.  Many many happy returns on the season. 

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Sticking it out for one more day

My writing lately is awfully  moany and complainy, and that's too bad.  But it's where I am.  Writing is an outlet and a safe-zone for me.  I've already snapped several times today and cried at least once, although I'm possibly repressing the memory of other cries, but as soon as I sat down here, I felt better.  Not good or optimistic, exactly, but better.  I'll take better.

So I validate my need to somehow express the way I am experiencing life right now.  I know from a conversation yesterday that others feel at least corners of what I am feeling, and I also know that suddenly learning that you are not the only mother in the world who seriously SERIOUSLY considers the logistics of running away (which are many and difficult) can make you feel less crazy, less guilty, less alone with your loneliness.

Nonetheless, I feel called to acknowledge that from the depths of my pit, I can still recognize that beauty exists.  I may not be in a place to be all silly and exuberant about it, but merely taking the step to see that it is there is helpful.  Knowing (because I've rather frantically tried to work it out) how hard it would be to disappear, it sometimes helps to think of the things that I would miss about this life.  It makes staying here for another day (that's all I can handle at the moment) seem a little more acceptable.  So I'm going to start a list of reasons to stay here on this planet, a list of things I appreciate and would miss.

*the color of a freshly roasted beet, right in the center.  I swear it is such a luminous color, it almost glows.
*yellow trees against a fall-blue sky
*the way a pile of leafs sounds under the wheels of a bicycle
*the weight of a four-year old on my lap
*chai, and then a little more chai (having a whole box of concentrate down in the fridge)
*sitting in the sunshine on an October afternoon
*running under the stars
*200m reps with 200m recovery: run fast, recover fully to do it again
*feeling the rhythm of the bass drum through the soles of my feet and the backs of my ribs
*apple cake
*"Pas de Deux" from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker
*a soft bed with clean sheets
*hot showers
*friends who knew me back when....
*friends who really know me now (and like my anyway)
*chocolate

I'm going to bike the girl over to soccer class.  

Later, I may still write about my quitting fantasies, since between the computer and the driveway I will have to walk through the house.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Falling short

Surely it must be a flaw in my soul, this prideful idea that I am meant to be something special.  But no, that sounds wrong.  Everyone is destined to be something special.  What beloved child is not something wonderful, amazing, and special in his or her own way?  I guess my problem is that I let myself compare my special with the special of others and pretty much always find myself not special enough.  I look around at the blessed life I lead, a life filled with remarkable friends, healthy family, abundant food and more than adequate clothing and shelter, and I think, "And this is it?  This is all I'm meant to be?"  Where does the notion come from that I should be always more and more and more?  When, at the end of every day I feel like I've completely used up all of my available resources, why do I still feel like I'm not doing anything?

It could be, of course, that I spend hours every day on stuff no one else respects or even notices, stuff that is undone as soon as I do it.  But let's leave that bit of bitterness alone for today.  Let's just say my house is never in order.

I have a friend, not a close one, but a friendly acquaintance from 20 years ago and still today, who last year didn't qualify for Boston.  She considers me the runner.  This year, she beat her BQ time by over ten minutes and got in.  This year, I am running short and slow.  I didn't get into Boston.  It's not like the Olympic trials or anything.  It's a silly marathon run at an inconvenient time of year that most of my running friends have already done.  Even so, I haven't made it there.  And really, I don't see why I care other than it seems to mark me as not-all-that-good at running.

I am barely adequate when it comes to music as well.  I am the weak link in my section.  Even after practicing the Barnes piece almost every day, I still couldn't keep up at rehearsal last night.  I didn't major in music.  I put my horn away for a decade.  I don't practice enough.  I'm pulling us all down.

Mostly, I suppose, I get down because I used to feel like my mind was something special.  I used to think I must be destined to do something interesting.  I have always always wanted to be a writer.  For a while I wanted to be a scientist.  For a few years I was a decent teacher.  And now.... Well, it turns out I don't have anything to say, I don't have any special knowledge to contribute, and I quit teaching.

Yes, go ahead and say that I am doing the most important and valuable job in the world.  Yes, I've heard that, and I don't necessarily have an argument against it.  A good mother is invaulable.  But let's be honest here, I'm not all that spectacular as a mother.  I'm sitting here bemoaning my uselessness while my daughter is watching Robinhood.  I don't do interesting crafts or field trips.  Most days, even the ones where one kid is at school all day and the other goes to preschool and nap, by the end of the day I can't even listen to them anymore.  I am impatient and uncreative and weary when it comes to parenting.  I do make really good food for my family, but they would rather have hot dogs or grilled cheese anyway.

My life is beautiful and perfect, and many days it feels like I'm trapped in a hole anyway.  A lovely hole, but one where I'll never accomplish anything of much worth, where I'm missing out on the bigger world I was meant to inhabit.  Some day they'll throw the dirt in over me, the grass will sprout, and I will have disappeared without having done anything worth remembering.

[P.S.  Mother Theresa smiles at me with pity and says, "We can do no great things, only small things with great love."  Another load of laundry, take Gretchen to soccer class, drive to the bread store for wheat-free bread.]