Pudgy Me 11: Racing

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 21^st 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.

****

Pudgy Me 10: History of Running, Part II

Lived with cross-country runners my first two years of college. Not sure I was the best person to land in their midst.  Haven’t seen them since. 

After high school, could have joined the Army and fought my way through Viet Nam -- or gone to college.  Not qualified for either.  Went to college. 

Should have left my hometown sooner.  Skipped high school altogether. 

My mom sold our house my junior year.  She left town to live with her lover.  She took my younger brother.  

My older brother warned me.  You ignorant fuck, he said, before shipping off to Nam on his last trip home.  Leave. 

My sister too.  She saw it coming.  In a dream.  Mother’s crazy, overly-possessive, creton hates us all.  Run, she said.  Across the country.

My sister dropped out.  Never told anyone.  Hid with her boy friend in State College.  

Instead.  Mother left.  

I stayed.  Even after the house was given away.

Mother thanked me for understanding her situation.  I understood all right. 

To gain my freedom, I sacrificed my little brother.  Wasn’t long before he was shipped out to a military academy in Virginia. 

Rented a room in town.  Lived on my own that spring, that summer.

My senior year.   

Could have escaped while it mattered.  Could have been in the anti-war movement.  

By 71, it was over.  Kent State a year earlier.  Trapped in fucking high school while the campuses were on fire.     

Didn’t even bother applying to college.  Wouldn’t be accepted.  Not now.  Not after years of free-falling.  Courses every summer.  Graduating fifth from the bottom.  

A ton of clueless kids in front stuck in the county forever.

That is, if they didn't lose it.  Drinking on the county roads.  Dying in Viet Nam.
      

Who cared.  

In my cap and gown, looking down, puking in the grass.  Looking up, the sky bursting into a thousand colors.      

Late May, the English teacher, just out of college, stopped me after class and asked me my plans.  Why I could never fathom.   

Told him, New York or San Francisco.  Like Steinbeck and London, like the Beats in the Big Apple.  Living the life of a writer.  Or run across the country, crazy, like Kerouac, or even, Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.  What about Whitman and Twain a century earlier – wasn’t this how they started? 

Heard my name.  Listening to the Dead and Airplane.  Reading the poets of Soho and the Village.  Even here in nowhere, I too “saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn.”  

-- Only, ours was a cow town.  Here it would be stupid farm boys dragging themselves drunk out of their twisted suped-up cars, flopping dead into bed at dawn.

Ask my brother.  

Mr. Witt listened.  Seriously.  Hands on his desk.  He heard me.

Told him, I hadn’t decided in which direction to go.  To become a poet or a writer.  Still, I had all summer.    

He suggested a compromise of sorts.  College in some cool city, but only temporarily.  Experience city life.  Write but keep going until the situation felt right.  

He suggested Pittsburgh.    

Where I was born.  Where my mother and father were born.  Where my father had died two years earlier.  Pittsburgh had schools for me.       

I can’t get in.  I said.  Though never tried.

Witt went to Guidance.  Called Pittsburgh.  Got one to mail him an application. 

A community college, he said, convincing me he was right.

When the application arrived, he filled it in.  I signed it right there and he mailed it that night.   

Witt and me, we made a great team.   

He made me a college man. 

With a knapsack full of pot, a sandwich bag of psychedelics, a serious addiction to cigarettes, and a love of alcohol.  Joe College of the 1970s.  

Packing along my prized possessions: an old typewriter, a notched dictionary, and a beat up copy of “Leaves of Grass.”

 

To Pittsburgh, a city I could celebrate.  Like Whitman said, “Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same…”

It was meant to be.

Still, reality meant finding an apartment.  By necessity, a roommate to share the rent.  No dormitories in community college.  Just kids living in the city, at home, or discharged from the military. 

Checking into things that summer, traveling by bus three hours to meet my mother.  She gave me a day to visit the city.

Two hours to Pittsburgh, a campus walk on the North Side, a block or two from the Allegheny River, and, minutes later, the visit was over.   

Before leaving, a secretary in Admissions suggested seeing the coach about my living situation.

The cross-country team stayed in the North Hills, several miles from school.  The team rented apartments in an old brick building.  Two were available for “out-of-towners.” 

Coach preferred kids who could handle noise and the team’s odd hours. 

With my mother writing a check, signed up for a spot.

Mother was pleased: her final decision effortlessly resolved; shipped off, shipped out, shipped away.  She could be back by dinner.      

Never heard of a community college sponsoring cross-country.  Coach recruited runners from everywhere.  Kids ran to receive scholarships. 

Coach’s team was ranked number one among junior colleges.

Until that fall semester.  Typewriter in hand, knack sack over my shoulder...

I arrived fucked up.  By October, we were fucked up together.

****

Pudgy Me 9: I Have Come to Realize

I have come to realize that if my weight-loss plan is to exercise, then it is imperative that I follow the plan and exercise.  The only way this plan works, I have discovered, is to do it, to exercise, to burn more calories on a daily basis than what I consume.

 

If I am not dieting – and I am not, this is clear from what I eat and when I eat it – exercising is my only option; yet, I have come to realize, for me, exercising alone over the rest of my life is a recipe for disaster. 

If you know me, you know my will power is not the best. 

Do you really see me exercising ten years from now? 

Unfortunately, it is true too I don’t have much of a stomach for dieting, and I can’t imagine living the rest of my life on a limited meal-plan.

That said, I swear I have changed already my eating habits these past two years – simply, if nothing else, by being more conscientious of what I eat, what I purchase at the grocery store or in restaurants, or what snacks I buy at the gas station.  (Why am I buying snacks at gas stations?) 

Clearly, this new phase of my nutritionally fine-tuned “attainment” has not been significant enough that it alone will result in weight-loss or even equilibrium within my body.  No, I’ve discovered, my body is simply not that willing to give it up.  

In fact, I could argue, the opposite is true.  My caloric intake continues to overwhelm the life I live.  I guess you could say, sitting at a desk all day is not the most fat-burning thing one can do…

This leaves me, I have come to realize, alone in the gym with the endless ritual of exercise as my only option… for the rest of my life!

It’s a despicable truism: exercise, lose weight; don't exercise, gain weight.

Decisions.  Decisions.  To be a stork… or a hippopotamus.

****

Met with Erica, the physiologist at the Health and Fitness Center who has been tracking my progress.  She surprised me the other day by taking my weight on one of their scales.  I was nearly two-and-a half pounds heavier than a month earlier.  She was shocked with my weight gain, given the amount of aerobic exercise she sees me doing on a daily basis. 

She said my eating is the problem.  

“You need to talk to a nutritionist,” she said.

What does she know about it anyway?  She’s thin as a rail, cute as the dickens, and probably doesn’t have an ounce of fat on her.  I would hate to eat what she calls dinner.  

Besides, talking to a nutritionist has to be one of the most horrible things one can do in life.  Like taking eighth-grade health class once more.   Ack!   

“Let’s go over the food pyramid, again.  At the bottom of the pyramid is…”

****

My eighty-five-year-old uncle, who has been a runner, a mountain biker, a river guide, and an avid golfer, thinks nutritionists are for the birds.  He says he will be my nutritionist, and it won’t cost me one-red-cent.  His advice on how to lose weight, he tells me from years of experience, is not eat. 

“It’s all about what you stick in your mouth,” he says in a humph, like I should know this.  “Quit sticking so much crap in your mouth.” 

****

Erica wants me to track my calories.  Awhile back she had me put an “app” on my phone to help me count my calories.  She says she uses hers all the time.  Now she wants me to use it. 

Yet, when I did, I immediately went into a funk.

 

I have come to realize most of what I eat is boring and repetitive – the same food and food combinations over-and-over, meal-after-meal, day-after-day.  There’s no mystery here.  My app depresses me.

Besides, if Erica wants to know why I am gaining weight, my app can’t tell her.  My app says I should be anorexic. 

Something is wrong with my app.

****

I noticed when I set a goal for myself, say, on what I want to achieve over a two- or three-day period, or over a weekend or the week ahead, I fail to get any where near what I had hoped to accomplish. 

I can show through the tracking on my phone I am a total fuck-up.  Even my “app” has given up.  When I click on it, it says, “You again.  Why bother.”       

****

I am at the door and about to enter a room I must cross to get to paradise beyond.  I need to cross this room and go through the door on the other side.  I can see through the door on the far wall that the world I will enter is beautiful.  Trees green and full of ripe fruit and the grass luscious and inviting.  People are milling around, smiling and calm.  Some are even waving for me to come join them.  I will.  I will.  I need to focus now on crossing the room and keep that open door in front of me, in my sights at all times.  This room I must enter is so dark and mysterious, I almost don’t want to go.  I am standing at the entranceway, peered in.  I can’t see a floor anywhere, but I have been here before.  At this exact spot and I know there is a floor.  On previous occasions I even have taken a tentative step or two into the room.  The floor is like glass.  I must have the will power to let go and trust myself to walk on glass, to pull away from the wall and go into the room, to pull farther and father away. 

****

My old doctor comes over to me and says, "Your fever is back up.  You had it down for a day, but it spiked up again."  I say, “It was that macaroni and cheese, I bet.”

**** 

I am with my priest, "Father, I will never be free of this addiction."  He shakes his head and gets up from the kitchen table.  "You want some peanut butter and jelly on your toast?" he asks.

I am dreaming.  I must be.  “May I have some eggs and bacon too?’

****

I am with my nutritionist on aisle three at the grocery store.  His nametag says Dave, and he is bent over stocking cans of beans onto a shelf from a box on the floor. 

“Beans are better than potatoes or rice,” he says, looking up.  “Besides, if you buy ten cans, you get the next one for free.”

****

My yardman comes and sprays the yard with crap about once a month. His literature left behind on my front door knob says the solution he uses is nutritious as all-get-out.  When he arrives at the house one day, I go out and see him.

“Hey, do you make smoothies?”

****

I am standing next to a great room.  It’s dark and forbidding inside.  It waits for me.  Paradise is through the door on the other side.  I am alone outside the room and need to push forward once again to get to the entranceway.  How did I screw up so completely that I fell out of the room?  I was looking at the door on the opposite side and felt I was inching my way toward it – finally, pulling away from the wall, trusting myself, slowly inching my way across the glass floor and then – suddenly, I am back outside looking in. 

****

Wait a minute – am I in my kitchen?  Is this hell?

****