exhibit B
If ever I travel away from my normal stomping ground, it is uncanny how quickly I will create a “home loop” from wherever I’m staying. Over Memorial Day week-end, my in-laws treated the whole family to a vacation in New Bern, NC and though we were downtown (with no trails to sniff out), I did manage to run the same loop every morning and see the same townspeople at the same time. I could have been in some scientific experiment (like The Truman Show) where they plopped me down in town A - as exhibit B - to see how quickly I would adapt my running routine.
Right away, it seems. On the first day, I did an exploration run with Dave - always a great way to check out a foreign city; on day two, I repeated the exact course with my daughter (even crossing to the other side of the street at the precise spot I had the day before); and on day three, I did the loop as a warm-up before some intervals. In just three days, I knew where to avoid the potholes and noticed the gardener had trimmed the hedges on Front Street. I was even angry that someone’s dog poop hadn’t been scooped - as if I actually lived in that neighborhood!
Why is it that a runner can make the unfamiliar familiar in only three days? How was I able to come up with a work-out so naturally in the middle of a mostly-paved downtown? I have found that the terrain of a place “presents” the intervals you should do … maybe the way a composer knows (or feels) how a piece of music should be written. New Bern presented me an overpass to train on … a small one (not like the monster hills of South Carolina’s famed Cooper Bridge Run - as seen in the painting above), for a small, “vacation-sized” work-out. After my warm-up loop (now my New Bern standard loop), I started on one end of the overpass, running against traffic on a single-person pedestrian walkway, and ran hard up and over to the other end … guessing it would take me between 90 seconds and 2 minutes. My plan was to do just 4 - out and back, X 2. I ran the first up hard, feeling the pure pleasure of my solo effort early in the morning - the salty wind hitting my face at the crest of the hill - then counting the metal beams as I ran down the other side 1.2.3.4.5.6.7 - with 10 seconds between each. All focus markers to become immediately familiar in my 11-minute symphony.
My total time on #1 was 2:00 even. Perfect. With 60 seconds recovery, I set off on #2 (on the other side of the road) for 1.2.3.4.5.6.7 to the top, and downdowndown for a 1:59. #3 was 1:56 and #4 was 1:55. Then it was back to the home loop, in reverse of course! (or what I call “pool” - loop spelled backwards) for the cool down. Exhibit B passed her test with flying colors.
Am I weird, or do all runners find a home on the road like this?
5/23/2006
eagle-eyed strangers
Over the week-end I went to the wedding of one of my former UNC athletes. While there, I had unfinished conversations with so many of “the guys” that a part of me longed to go back to those interminable van rides so I could talk track late into the night. It was weird to look into the fleshier faces of former sub-4:00 milers, ACC champions, and 100-mile-a-weekers knowing their intensity was now directed toward making money and building families. Many still keep up with the sport of track & field and some still compete as fast amateurs, but that fierceness … that urgency of running blind to prove something (to make their mark in the world) is nothing but a memory.
I wonder if they saw the same lack of ferocity in me? Sure, I’m a dangerous mother bear if anyone were to threaten the well-being of my children (grrrrrrrr!) … but where is the woman who ran so hard she lost peripheral vision on nearly every hard work-out?
In Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “most of us have a favorite, a heroic period, in our lives.” The years I spent “training for the Olympics” and my time at UNC, when we were all working together to realize our dreams as runners for the team and for ourselves (much like soldiers on a battlefield) was undoubtedly heroic … but wouldn’t it be a shame if that were my favorite.
In each phase of my children’s lives I think, “THIS is the best, definitely. Lizzie at, say, 3 years-old telling her knock-knock joke about the volcano … “I lava you.” But then I hear her in the other room (just now, right now in fact, with her dad) reading the word “giggle” on her own - out loud - and I think, no THIS is my favorite.
Says Fitzgerald, “It is confusing to come across a youthful photograph of someone known in a rounded maturity and gaze with a shock upon a fiery, wiry, eagle-eyed stranger.”
Maybe not, Scott.
Maybe underneath we’re all still fiery and wiry.
Lizzie, living large!
5/22/2006
The key of C C C
I have a sticky “C” key
which makes very cranky
whenever I type ice or nice
I have to hit “C” twice
or thrice
or, C-C-Christ!, delete
again
now back to C-C-C
and then
I’ve lost my fuccckin’ thought …
How kan I live without my “C”?
It would be a katastrophe!
5/17/2006
going berserk
I am fit to be tied. Like I said before, I currently coach the CC Pacers, a local running club for kids. As is our custom, parents are invited to participate as coaches/helpers, mostly to run along at the back of the pack as “sweepers” so we don’t lose anyone. Well, last week a newly-minted Pacer dad showed up with his 10 and 6 year-old sons and announced that they were to be in the big dog group (despite the fact that the middle dogs would be a better age-appropriate fit for his 6 year-old). “They run 5 miles a day,” he boasted.
Okay, big dogs it is. They handled the pace and distance with no problem on our first outing, but it was the dad who pissed me off … one-stepping me and running up in the front with son #1 when he had no idea where we were going and encouraging none of the other dozen young runners. Son #2 was also up near the front, beet-red and panting in an effort to get his father’s attention. At one point, bitch me barked, “Hey, who’s sweeping? Nobdoy’s back there with the last runner.” Immediately, one of my stalwart moms circled back, “I’ve got it,” she said. But I wasn’t yelling at her! I am wondering if superdad would have treated a male coach thus. Was it sexism that caused such boorishness?
It gets worse. Yesterday, we had a mile time trial at the track. I set it up beautifully (if I do say so myself); I had the kids write down their names and their predicted times based on the 400m and 800m races we had run earlier in the season (and knowing that pacing comes into play). When they crossed the finish line, they were instructed to listen for the time I was calling out - varying from 6:12 to 8:49 - and then record their actual times on the back of their paper.
On your marks, get set, go! 30 kids, middle and big dogs combined, bolted off the line for the 4-lap race. 30 kids and one dad, that is. I was amazed and shocked, dumbfounded and dumbstruck to see superdad pacing son #1 … out in lane 4. The only parent on the track, he looked like Big Bird loping along with the young ‘uns. A cartoon character. Surely he will stop after one lap, I thought, truly aghast. But, NO, he kept on going for another lap, encouraging only his son, “Go get her! You can pass her!” As the children earnestly charged around each turn, I was trying to model (loudly - because “to the hard of hearing you must shout!” said Flannery O’Connor) good Pacer etiquette: “Goooo Pacers. Work together. You look great! Keep pushing. Everyone’s going to break 7:00 today,” etc.
When I realized my indiret message wasn’t getting through to Big Bird, I stepped out into lane 4 after the second lap to face my (now) enemy. “Hey, Dad!” I commanded. “Would you please stop pacing your son. It’s rude to the other runners.” Not to mention illegal. Can you imagine a dad striding out to right field during a baseball game to give his kid some pointers on how to field a grounder? “Keep your glove down, son. Always put your body in front of the ball,” etc. The coach would go berserk, like I did.
