Marathon Training, Frozen Tundra Style...

So this is how it's gonna be. Well, Happy New Year from the land of permanent First Night Ice Sculptures. 

It occurred to me that this is my third winter in a row filled with marathon training. I ran Hyannis in February, 2012. That was the mildest winter of the three, hands down. Warm, little precip, a joy for training. 

A fluke. 

We appear to be in year two of an ice nightmare winter trend. Cold, wet, icy, snowy. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Erasing all memory of spring leaf, flower, fastball. 

This past Saturday, I ran thirteen miles on semi-plowed suburban sidewalks. In single digit temperatures. I overdressed - three layers on my legs and five layers of shirts/jackets. Three layers over my ears (balaclava, hat, turtle fur)! A pair of gloves under my mittens. 

I could have subtracted a layer from my legs and probably two from my tops but the wind chill was supposed to be in the minus twenties and I hate the feeling like I'll never be able to warm up after I've gotten chilled. The feeling that sets in November and doesn't lift until mid-May without me even leaving the house. 

At this point, with road shoulders plowed like clogged arteries, darkness, and bouts of arctic air, winter feels insurmountably constricting. (Though around here we are now getting more than a minute's worth of additional daylight each day, and finally sunrise and sunset are both moving backwards to more humane hours.) 

I so want to just stay in bed. But. Boston is calling and I want to run it like I own it because there will never be another one like it...and I'm not sure I have another one in me. So I train. 

I so want to just stay in bed, but Samaritans takes 350 calls each day - 24/7 - and I am honored to be able to use my running to make sure resources are available for each individual seeking help. I think about caller 351 - will that be someone I know, care about, depend on? Will Samaritans be able to take that call? 

I was asked why I'd run 13 outdoor miles on a day like Saturday, especially since I have a treadmill available. If I didn't get out there, winter would win, and I've got far too many years left in me to be cowed by an entire season. Even if I'd prefer it act more like 2012 and less like 2013/2014. I know what it's capable of and am disappointed terribly in this winter's failure to live up to that potential! 

With a heavy heart...

So. This is a training blog. Through which I will share my journey from here to Copley Square.

This is week one of eighteen leading up to the Marathon. For the next 18 weeks, I will obsess over every twinge, sniffle, hill repeat and sprint. I’m currently watching a finger, both IT bands, and a hip, for those keeping score.

However, as I lay out my training plans for the next few months, this week reminded me that this marathon, like last year’s, is about something more important than how much I'll be running.

My community has suffered another loss, another teenager who, like her friend in whose honor I have been running, fought depression hard. At the funeral, her Rabbi made a point of describing her parents as good parents. Her family read poems and talked about the child’s love of all life aquatic and appetite for adventure. Her curiosity. Her ability to draw connections that most of the rest of us would never get to on our own. Her brother said goodbye. What felt like ten thousand people from our community almost immediately surrounded the family (both families) with hugs and food and memories.

And I’m thinking to myself, I’m running only a marathon. Only 26 miles. Not nearly enough to measure out my grief or the empathy I carry for families who’ve lost children, especially this way. 

I have two really important reasons to run this marathon in support of suicide prevention and grief support services, but really I have about 4500 just counting the kids in my town. I know I cannot stop every suicide, but I can do my part (with your help) to make sure that support is out there for people at their most vulnerable, and for those who have to learn to live with loss.

Hug them hard. Make sure they know that there are people out there who will reach back, without judgment, if they need to reach out. And make sure that they know they can volunteer, too, to answer calls, chats and texts from kids like them. Every one of them has more to offer than they know.

http://www.samaritanshope.org

Anxiety Meds

Play Soundtrack in new window: These Days, Jackson Browne...

I learned years ago that extensive endurance training rattles loose long-forgotten, emotional memories. Riding north of 100 miles on a bike I would grind home with swirls of high school nights flashing like planetarium laser shows. I'd conjure people, scenes and emotions I hadn't visited in years, hadn't thought I would ever resurface through the accretion of life and maturity in the years since.

While emotional, surprising, and totally not under my control, I came to savor the richness of the snowglobe effect distance training has on my brain. 

This past week I ran an early morning 9 in single digit degrees then went to work and came down with a touch of flu. Feverish for a day, I slept two days and kept still a third. 

I don't care what happens but I absolutely cannot keep still another. 

I don't know if the parade of nightly horribles keeping me from sleep the last two nights comes from the virus's last stand or the longest stretch of endorphin-less time I have spent in years.

You whom I have wronged, failed, inadvertently insulted or let down, who through inexperience and short-sightedness I have committed transgression against, all the jobs I haven't gotten or even applied for, the work not done well, the achievements I have through sloth or ineptitude, left for someone else, the daughter, partner, sister, parent, niece, aunt, cousin, friend, superhero I could - should have been...has all this and more haunted my recovery from this light brush with flu-like symptoms. 

The money I haven't saved, the money I spent, the cookies and candy I ate when I shouldn't have, the food I didn't eat when I should have, the donations I didn't make when asked, the non-sustainably sourced food I have consumed, the fuel burned on my account for reasons substantial and trivial, the food I have microwaved instead of prepared slowly, ... yeah, far enough overboard that even I eventually figured out that some rheostat up there went miscalibrated. 

I know, I am catastrophizing with all the shoulds, and all the slights I debit on your behalf against myself (I have really thick skin, so please don't worry  that I spend all my time tallying imagined, unintended hurts). And all the underachievement. If I were well I would consider the leadings a compass. My point is that the data coming through in the teeny hours was overwhelmingly absurd.

I have got to get moving again stat. Running does that for me, calms the anxiety, calibrates the rheostat controlling these racing, anxious, self-flagellating, wild insomniac thoughts. 

It finally dawned on me sometime after midnight the connection between the last few days of no moving around and this toxic, only partially honest, sludge causing insomnia and a racing heartbeat and composed mea maxima apologia at all random hours.  I so appreciate being well enough to move and am totally fine with facing the consequences if I false start and relapse for not sitting still long enough. I gotta get going.

Samaritans, for whom I am running, answer calls from brains like mine operating under a severe happy-hormone deficit. I am honored to support them. And getting my soccer shoes on for some cross-training. Join me!

"Don't confront me with my failures, I had not forgotten them." 

Cold. Windy. Hilly. Late. Do I have to?

For the first time in a long time today's run took effort to get started. Off schedule, step back week, icy cold wind. Why bother. Only 10 miles. Other things to do. 

All the advice says go out for 10 minutes. Even if it's only 10 minutes.

I've read running described as an "undifferentiated" activity - it allows one's thoughts to go wherever they want while your body does its fairly repetitive activity requiring a minimal amount of mindfulness. I consider it like Tuvan throat singing (find info here), where the singers somehow emit two notes at at same time. My body does one thing, my brain (other than making sure I don't run into traffic) another. I cannot throat sing. 

Here's the rough trajectory my brain took as I ran all ten miles the doctor ordered: 

I head out into the 24 degree wind, uphill. Remind myself why I'm doing this Marathon for Shaira and everyone else in need of an ear in a time of crisis. How fortunate I am to be able to run like I do - some people would commit crimes to be able to run like this. Ok, it's not so cold out. 

None of the miles Team Samaritans run will bring anyone back, I get that, but at least two good things result: the money we raise will make sure that Samaritans will be there for the next person who needs. That's one good thing. This hill isn't so imposing. The other good thing? Keeping the memories of those we run in honor of front and center. 

I take it back about the two things. I wasn't expecting the third set of good things happening after I committed to run this race. I get to experience an enormous amount of support from everyone who sponsors me, asks me how training is going, asks me how to donate, offers to run with me, tells me where they plan to cheer us on. 

I am so blessed. And grateful. And humbled. 

And old, which brings on the other half of my thought process this morning's solo run, the other reason I am doing this thing, this marathon, this running. 

I recently had a short conversation with a very young grandmother whose granddaughter turned 15. "When I reached 15," she said, it was the first time I was aware of growing old. It is half of 30!" Which echoes what my next birthday has me thinking (it is not a round number), that it is half of an absurdly big number. It's time to take all that public health aging stuff seriously. I'm pretty healthy, but not perfect. I'm hoping really hard that the physical challenges I put my body into will help me live healthier for longer.... 

Thinking of 15 put this song in  my head. Hmm. How old was Al Stewart when he recorded that song? Probably half the age I am now. Oh, I bet the internet will know - and because the internet will know, and because I am going to figure it out, it is what I will leave you with. 

Also, I will leave you with the suggestion that I might be convinced to do a stand up comedy set at a fundraising party I'm planning for the middle of March. Bring your phones and set them to record!

Time Passages album released 1978 (alstewart.com); Al Stewart born 1945 (wikipedia). 1978-1945 = ok, not half my age now but pretty damn young. And I am older than I look, people. Besides. What would a 33 year old singer songwriter have to be nostalgic about?? 

I wonder whether I would look older if I stopped running or younger. Which finishes my blog post, and my ten mile run.