It’s
always the next damn race. Such tests
of endurance are supposed to be over by now, but racing has morphed me into a
monster. Now I am training to die.
Back in February, Helen, my daughter living up north near the tundra, called from her
creepy college and suggested that I sign up for the Chicago Marathon. Last fall she participated as a volunteer in the marathon, handing out water and Gatorade near the 21st mile
marker, and she loved cheering on the thousands of runners passing by in all
shapes and colors.
“Dad,”
she said, “As bad as most of them looked, you easily could have been one of
them.”
Or
worse, I thought, given the longest I had run in the past twenty years was a 10K back in November.
“I
think you’re trying to kill me.” I responded.
A
runner friend of mine, who I saw from time to time at our gym, told me everyone he knew who ran a marathon after they turned sixty had had a heart
attack. Shaun experienced his in his
fifties climbing mountains in Europe, so I figured he must know.
“Forget
it, Helen,” I said over the phone. “I
have no money. Your inheritance will be
puny.”
Okay,
but on the other hand, since Helen will be a senior in the fall and given the strong
possibility this will be her last year living in the tundra, I agreed with my wife
Karen that this could be the one year where I actually would do it, run in a
major city’s marathon and experience all the pomp-and-circumstances that such
an event has to offer. Karen would come
with me, of course, and Helen, too, would join her to watch, and it would become
a full-fledged family event, one for the ages.
“You
little weirdo,” I said to my daughter over the phone a week or so later. “If I die, I’m holding you accountable.”
“Don’t
worry, dad,” she replied. “They have
tracking devices now that fit on your shoes.
If you die, we’ll know where to get you.”
“Jeez. Great...”
Okay,
okay, just so it is abundantly clear, I suffer no allusions of grandeur; I am
not trying to return to my lost youth, and I know from all the way down to the depth
of my soul (which isn’t that far down), I am not the runner I was in my
late-thirties; just check the mileage on my car, my years of running are long over.
Still,
back then, when I was there, back in my thirties, wasn’t I totally there, at
least, briefly? Didn’t I run a couple of
marathons and half-marathons before turning forty? Hey, and you can’t forget all of the 5Ks and
10Ks that came with the territory, can you?
None
of this craziness, back then, destroyed my knees or put me under a heart surgeon’s
knife, did it? Didn’t I survive to get
fat and happy throughout my forties and fifties, didn’t I?
Karen
said I should treat the marathon as the final test to prove to myself I had,
in fact, worked my way all the way back to where I was in my late thirties.
Ha! What was she thinking? (There's something about that woman that's strange, I swear.)
Okay,
okay, okay, I agree, from the vantage point of two years ago and being seventy pounds over-weight,
I decided, looking back, running was pretty easy for me. So why shouldn’t I do it again? Why couldn’t I start over?
Obviously,
if you looked at me at that time, you would have wondered if I was suffering
from dementia or debilitating delusions.
Things
had gotten that bad.
In
fact, when I showed up at the gym that first summer my daughter came home from
college, I couldn’t even run a lap on their indoor track without huffing and
puffing and gasping for air. Even then, though,
the idea of running was like a large brown seedpod in the back of my brain, waiting to burst
open.
If
I could handle nightly aerobics classes, like “step,” “circuit,” “spin,” and
“zumba,” why couldn’t I run? Besides, “zumba,”
I realized after a few sessions was too much of a “shuffling-around-to-pounding-Latin-music”
thing for me. Running soon replaced
“zumba” and, just like that, became an integral part of my cardio-weight-loss
program.
It
wasn’t long after that before I was contemplating a return to “racing.”
One
incident, in particular, stands out. Karen
and I were with a bunch of over-weight friends participating in a walk-a-thon as
part of a 5K race, and, as we stood waiting for the runners to take off before
us, I felt this incredible urge to jump in and join them, a longing to be part
of the pack, once again; I knew instantly where I belonged, and it wasn’t as an
pudge-man ponderously padding along with a bunch of fat people, pathetic grandparents,
and pear-shaped moms with squirmy babies sucking on chewed up pacifiers in
their juice-stained joggers!
I
told my wife that too!
Later
that winter, in a moment of bravado during a New Year’s Eve party, I announced that
I would attempt a 5K race in the spring and a 10K in the fall. Something to shoot for, I said, while drinking
my fifth glass of champagne and watching the ball drop on the TV. (Or was it going up?) My wife, writing down our resolutions, looked
at me with surprise, but only smiled. Subsequently,
Karen taped my entries to the inside door of our kitchen pantry. Thereafter, every time I opened the door to
get a cookie or a piece of chocolate, my goals screamed at me:
OH
NO YOU DON’T!
In
late spring, ten pounds lighter than I was at the beginning of the year and having
lost twenty-five pounds altogether, I realized that with the heat of summer fast
approaching, I needed to sign up for a 5K race before I melted into a glob of
saturated fat. Quickly I found a local
race a town or so away, and, with an inner thrill during a moment of madness,
signed myself up.
The
morning of the race, it was bright and sunny. I insisted with Karen on going by myself and, consequently,
that decision proved to be my best move of the day. She rolled over and went back to sleep, while
I ran what turned out to be a devastating debacle. Shortly thereafter, I slunk back home with my
tail between my legs, totally depressed over my performance.
By then my
wife was on the couch watching television with a cup of coffee.
“Don’t
even ask,” I said before she could say a word.
“I don’t want to talk about it.
Whose fucking idea was this, anyway…”
Even
now, I recall vividly how embarrassing it was to slog along with so much weight
wrapped around my waist, with so much fat oozing off my bones. I hated being heavy, out of shape, and
totally winded by the time I reached the finish line. I even smelled fat, like deep fryer fat, like
you could smell french fries on my belly.
During
the race, at one point I was running, maybe, ten yards behind a young, female
runner in her late 20s or early 30s. She
had a long, red ponytail that bounced on the back of her blue t-shirt. Tight butt.
Black leggings. Bright orange running shoes. She was maintaining a good pace and running
with a strong stride. Still, I felt I
could catch her.
Finally,
when we encountered a significant hill on the course, I passed
her.
Let
the games begin, I thought.
To
my surprise, on the downward slope, she passed me right back
and, just like that, my race with her was over.
I
never caught up to the red-haired, ponytail runner again. As the three-mile run progressed, I fell
further and further behind her. By the
end, she was totally out of my sight, like she had been an illusion, and not
someone I had tried to overtake and put permanently behind me.
Later,
I recognized her in the recovery area looking happy, laughing with friends. I saw she had a pretty face. Red hair, for sure. Highlights.
Nice complexion.
I
was standing a short ways from her. Hands on my
hips, dog-tired, thighs sore, and breathing too heavy to be comfortable – none
of the symptoms she seemed to be showing in her demeanor.
I
knew, twenty years ago I would have left her behind on that hill. She never would have passed me back, yet
alone pulled away so completely as to vanish in the throng of runners. I knew, back then, I could have eaten her for
lunch. Knowing that, knowing the
situation now, it sucked.
How
could this have happened?
I
would have thrown out the whole thing altogether, except that it angered
me into focusing on the 10K that fall.
“Pissed off” is perhaps a better expression.
Let’s
see, some of the notes I took from my 5K:
· Die, die, die.
· Someone kill me, please.
· Who is that fucking girl?
· When do they hand out
barf bags?
· What crazy person
measured the distance for this race?
You
get the point. It was bad, very bad.
In
September I began training in earnest for a 10K scheduled the first week of November. This would be a much bigger race, I realized,
with many participants running either a half- or full marathon at the same
time.
In
fact, as I discovered, no one seemed to be running the 10K but me. Why was that?
The local paper said there were
supposed to be 900 of us running the shorter 10K that day, but why was it that
I the only one standing there? Could
they have left early without me?
“No,
that hasn’t happened,” said one of the race officials at the starting
line. “They’re in this mass of runners
somewhere.”
(Then
he said added, in confidence, just to me. “We
only hold the 10K for former fat people.
Don’t say anything to anyone, or they’ll know what you were.”)
Yikes!
In
the throng of humanity bunched together like peanuts in a sack, waiting for the
race to begin, I remember standing, by chance, next to a man in a beat-up, old
t-shirt and tight elastic shorts that hugged against his thighs. He looked to be twenty years younger and
twenty pounds heavier. Even he – an
overweight and out-of-shape weekend-jogger – said he was running the
half-marathon.
“What
race are you running?” he asked me if only to test me into admitting my true
self.
“Oh
me? Ah… the… jeez… the ultra-marathon,” I lied, oh-so matter-of-factly,
shrugging my shoulders. “Once the race
begins I won’t stop until three days from now.”
“Wow!” He said.
“I didn’t know that was scheduled too.”
I
smiled, grimacing at my supposed misfortune, and ducked back into the pack, looking for the 900, the elusive 10Kers hiding in an incredible mass of
marathon- and half-marathon weekend-assholers.
Listen,
back in September, way before that ominous, race day in November, I was
determined that this would be a better experience than the 5K debacle. Clearly, I needed to lose more weight, get in
better shape, and, trust myself completely to the gods of racing. My wife also advised, just in case the gods
were off handling other races, learn to be happy no matter your performance. (What was she implying?)
On
the chilly, pre-dawn morning of the 10K, that early November day, Karen actually
got up before I left the house. Earlier
in the week I had asked her not to watch, not yet. Even though I had lost a total forty pounds, fifteen
pounds since the 5K in the spring, and, even though, I was in much better
shape, I was still too heavy and too slow for her to treat this race as anything
other than me satisfying my New Year’s resolution.
She
had agreed finally, so I was surprised to see her downstairs as I was getting
ready to go. She gave me a quick hug, and
wished me the best, (“Go get ‘em, Tiger!”), and went right back to bed!
Go get ‘em, Tiger?
Leaving
the parking lot where all the participants had parked their cars, I was in a
sea of runners slowly moving to where the race would start. I soon realized I was walking beside a short
and heavy-set Chicano woman. She was
wearing a running belt with four small plastic containers full of Gatorade, or
something like that.
As
we walked along, I asked her why she was wearing that belt, assuming she was
running the 10K along with me.
“No,”
she said with a heavy Mexican accent. “I
need the juice for the marathon.”
She,
then, asked me what race I was doing as I had no belt, no containers, no gel
packs, nothing but my t-shirt, shorts, a hat, and a watch.
I
realized for the first time, this would be a long day of swallowing my
pride.
“Oh,
you know,” I said, “the 10K,” and smiled weakly at her.
She
said, “Oh,” and started to push away from me, realizing, of all people, she was
walking next to a mega-loser, an amateur, or worse: someone whose very air
would infect her with self-doubt, that, like a cancer, would spread through her
body and keep her from reaching her 26-mile goal.
“—But, at each K, I am doing 50 push-ups!” I
said, realizing my mistake. (So there! What
do you think about that!)
“That’s
tough!” she said, slowing down to walk with me after all.
“Yep,”
I said, holding my head up. Feeling my
arms. “I’m ready.”
Adding
to myself, I may look like a pathetic, pudgy peon, but no wimpy 10K for me. I am, in fact, Thor, and he’s one tough
hombre!
Shortly
after that, I jumped into a long line at the port-o-johns.
Why
are short, stocky Chicano women running marathons anyway?
When
the horn sounded at the start of the race, I was reminded of so many other
races I had experienced in my life; the sense of effort needed to get going, to
push my body forward with hundreds of other runners clogging the road; the mass
of humanity standing behind ropes, cheering all the runners; the desire inside my
gut to speed up, to run faster, to push harder to get ahead of the crowd. But there is no getting ahead of the crowd. When the gun goes off, like a toilet lever flushed,
I am always part of the mass that swirls around and around and around before disappearing.
Okay. Let me say up front, not knowing the course
didn’t help, and, though I had studied the street map of the route, in my
defense, I didn’t have any sense at all of elevation. I was running blind in a way, and, over the
6.2-mile race, this proved to be tremendously difficult, as each climb was a total
surprise. (What! Not another hill!)
In
fact, the 10K finished at the tippy-top of a mammoth mountain taken temporarily
from the Alps. (What the hell!)
Needless-to-say,
I never prepared for a pseudo-Pike’s Peak in my six weeks of training, where my
focus had been on losing weight and just getting my distance up to six
miles. I simply was not ready to master
that last, long, son-of-a-bitch-of-a-monster-mile that refused to end and would
not even dip down one fucking inch. Who
designs such courses and where the hell are sinks holes when you need them?
Suddenly,
near the top, running through swirling winds, snow and ice, even cave men
throwing boulders at me, I heard my name!
I think it was my name. I looked
into the crowd – all those hateful people who didn’t want any of us to conquer
Mount Kilimanjaro-on-loan – and in a surprise move, there was Karen and two
friends cheering me on near the finish line!
“Why,”
I mumbled between large gasps of arctic air, “why aren’t you in bed?”
However,
immediately Karen was concerned.
She
told me, after I crossed the finish line, I appeared to be listing too far to the
left for it to be healthy. She said,
“You looked awful!”
I
felt awful! I had lost my upright,
classic, running posture somewhere back on K2 along with my ice-pick, rope, pitons, and
metal spikes.
I
could see in her eyes, Karen envisioned I would be the runner I was back in my
thirties: young, strong, virile – the man who kicked ass and ate up other
runners and spit them out just as easily. Not the soon-to-be-sixty-year-old who still looked
flabby and sickly and was struggling to find his breath!
I
knew the truth. I knew I was exactly
where I was for a reason. The facts, in
racing, never lie. I knew, it was all
Karen’s fault. For twenty years she allowed me to get fat
and lazy. It wasn't me at all. I was innocent. She was the
reason I was listing to the left, taking on water, and sinking by the second.
Later,
at breakfast, I decided I was okay with what she had done to me (she is my wife after all), and I was happy enough with my performance – that is, until I listened
to my friends. How depressing…
“You’re
fifty-nine years old,” they said. “So
what if you didn’t finish strong, so what if you were crunched-over and leaning so far to the left you looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa – you
finished without puking and you kept anyone from passing you!” they said. “Heck of a strategy! Besides, we didn’t have to cart you to the hospital either.
Be happy! – Say, do you smell French fries?”
Right
then and there, I decided I would enter one more race, and, rather than run a stupid 10K, I could run a half-marathon instead. I would train all winter and be ready to run it in the spring. I would lose even more weight, strengthen my
upper body and my “core” stomach muscles so I didn’t list to the left, and I would finish
that last damn race strong. In a blaze of glory!
– And the
Pudge Man would be on the attack. Bring
on the Chicano woman, the weekend warrior, the red-haired girl I should have
eaten for lunch. Enough of this old-age, blown tire, Leaning Tower of Pisa crap. I would be ready.
Let
the games begin!
Of
course, then my daughter called. Now I
am training to die.
****
