Media Challenge Race #3

I had been unaccountably anxious going in to this race. Maybe it was nerves, or an allergy, but there were oddball dreams. One was about finding my father's dentures in the basement, and then another about a woman whose daughter was kidnapped and never seen again, except many years later, in a blurry video image. I got to Central Park last night fairly early, thinking I was probably late. Start time was at 7, and I wanted to leave time to warm up, find other people on my team, and figure out what to do - since I had no idea how or where this race went, and had never met my teammates. Also, I had never in my life run in the evening. Or with a team.

I went to the benches specified in the email I got from my team captain, and found a runner already sitting there. I thought he looked just like L., a lanky Parisian I had known in college who had studied math and philosophy. Over our long and intermittent friendship I methodically annoyed him with my interest in sleeping with his girlfriends (in another era I would have died like Lermontov, except L. was a fencer, so my death would have been messier). After graduation he studied massage therapy, then got a PhD in something mystical, maybe biology or computer science, and then business, and I lost track of him a few years ago. He might be in India running some kind of startup, or managing someone's money.

So I struck up a conversation with the man with L.'s face, whose real name turned out to be the same as mine. Naturally he was there for the same race as me. We chatted, and waited for something to happen. It was a beautiful evening, the air slightly cooling, the sky clear. The Sheep Meadow was full of people on blankets writing breakup emails, or talking about their operations, or plotting crimes while plucking absently at the grass. When our polite conversation had run out of steam I wandered a few steps away to stretch until other runners began to show up.

The Media Challenge is a series of 3.5-milers, in the spirit of friendly competition between New York media companies. Many of the people gravitating toward our bench wore t-shirts from NewsCorp, New York Times, ABC News, McGraw-Hill, etc. There are cordial rivalries and minor scores to settle I suppose. Myself, I found the prospect of running with coworkers exciting and it also made me tense. Racing has always floated blissfully free of my daily life, but this race would seep somehow into the highly-charged circus of my office. And whose office isn't a little intense this year?

Three and a half miles is a short distance, and therefore a painful one. Once the starting horn went off I spent the first mile leapfrogging other racers and casual joggers to get some room. This was an informal event, meaning racers had to flow through the slow metabolism of the Central Park evening crowd. I dislike crowds, so I ran the first mile at about 5:45, probably too fast. My chest quickly began to hollow out, my breath was strangely dry and irritated my throat. I settled in alongside a man wearing compression socks and a woman who seemed to be running with him. They pulled a little ahead of me and I just stayed a few feet back so they could make all the decisions about how to dodge the joggers. I found myself thinking about a Canadian woman I had met through L. several years after college. He was with her when I bumped into them by chance at a gallery in Tribeca. The Canadian and I were together for 6 months or a year. She was a sculptor and heiress from Montreal and we fought about everything. Her work was concentrated and wonderful. That year the Knicks were in the playoffs (such a very long time ago), and when I cheered at Larry Johnson's three-pointer from behind the line, she said, "I wish you were that excited about anything I did". I had to admit she had a point, and while I did get that excited about her sometimes, we only lasted a few months more. I saw her about a year afterward. She had dyed her hair blonde and was discovering hallucinogens.

I started to feel a stitch in my side. I looked at my watch - we were running around 6:20 or 6:15.

Gradually a runner in a green singlet pulled up to our group and began to pass us. This was too much for me, so I finally ditched the cute couple and drafted behind him. I had just repeatedly played the video of Usain Bolt finishing the 200m in Lausanne in less than 20 seconds, so I imagined myself following the green man and then out-kicking him at the finish with crazy long Bolt strides. At this point my heart was grotesquely engorged and my spine creaked like wicker. The green man and I were running 6-minute miles. By the time the finish finally came into view I had lost the desire or the capacity to beat him, but when I heard someone else breathing hard behind me I put together a kick and held on to my 7th place finish.

Immediately after the race I felt my body finally begin to loosen. I chatted with other finishers, including Brenn, the guy in the green Edinburgh singlet, who in fact was on my team. I was relieved I hadn't wasted energy trying to beat him. I met teammates Sue, Gregg, and Richard, and would have loved to go for pizza with them afterward, but wanted to get home for dinner with the missus. Our team did very well, taking top rank, and in a good position to win the series of five races. I had even met one of my personal goals.

The evening was still calm and lovely. As I walked to the subway I stopped and stared at the polished obelisk of the Time Warner Center. I was sure that I had not escaped whatever I had been fleeing during the race. But now the subway, now my house, now my wife and daughter, and a good night's dreamless sleep.

Achilles Hope & Possibility

hope
Originally uploaded by niznoz

My favorite races are the ones without the money prizes. Less competitiveness, more celebration. Today's Achilles Hope & Possibility doesn't even count as a marathon qualifier, so everyone was there because they wanted to run THIS race.

I had planned to run a mile before the start, but I found myself drawn to the start of the hand-cycle race, about 20 minutes before the foot start. At the front of the crowd of recumbent contraptions was a group of young veterans, most missing one or both legs. They wore khaki t-shirts that said on the back, "We were just doing our job." I was struck by how young they were, you know, half my age. I was moved and misty-eyed for them. They had gone to war, and lost body parts. I felt sad, but filled with admiration that they were racing.

I had a great time running, cheering on the cycle and wheelchair racers, watching the cheering crowds. All the racers seemed to be in a good mood. On the last stretch my speed was frankly falling off, I got passed by a guy, then a woman. As the next guy was passing me he leaned in conspiratorially, pointed to the next runner, and said, "I'm gonna catch her".

Today was my long run day, so after I finished I took another loop around the course, to take advantage of water stations. Now I started noticing other racers. There was a boy, no older than six, running on a prosthetic right lower leg. His dad would lift him every so often, but then he wanted to be put down and ran joyfully, like all children run. There was a girl in braids, maybe 8 or 9, on a prosthetic blade, also running just like every kid in the world.

I found myself filled with happiness, and I realized I had made a mistake at the handcycle start. I had felt a kind of sadness or pity for those soldiers, for what they'd lost, whatever they'd been through, for whatever feelings they might be having. But that was my hangup. Everyone seemed to be having an awesome time. The kids I might have felt bad for were doing kid things in a happy kid way. They were complete.

Every race is a celebration. Sometimes its theme is mourning or memorial, sometimes commemoration. But whether or not it's a race "for" a cause, essentially everyone races like kids. Kids run and are happy. It's enough.


Happy child
From New York Road Runners

Running Krap Tcepsorp

dilo_carmirror
Happy Birthday niznoz!

During my Tuesday run I noticed for the first time just how crowned the Prospect Park loop road is. Since I always run the same way (I dislike all the tiny negotiations that running against traffic causes) one leg has to reach down farther than the other almost the entire way. Essentially, my regular route makes me run as if my left leg were 2 inches shorter than my right. In a strange coincidence, my left leg is having problems.

So today I ran the opposite direction, clockwise around the loop rather than counter-clockwise. The park is completely different in that direction. The lake, for example, is shown from a much more advantageous angle and takes a different shape. The trees, obnoxiously lush from the insistent rains, now create unfamiliar blind corners. The park is always changing, from any angle, but in its mirror state it's a parallel universe.

My college film teacher once made a short film called "The Wonder Ring," recording New York's 3rd Ave. El just before it was to be demolished. Joseph Cornell then cut together the outtakes from this film and showed them sort of reversed and upside down, calling his film "Gnir Rednow". The original is musical and lovely, a record of form and light. But I remember thinking Cornell's mirrored version was transformative, showing hidden aspects and a sort of animist spirit in the condemned trestles. Cornell always preferred time that flowed backwards, or at least turbulently.

I had a good run, with some quick, gentle intervals. When I got back home my watch had stopped.

BFF!!!

tree heart
Originally uploaded by niznoz

Dear, sweet Running,

Do you have any idea how much I missed you? Six weeks ago you told me, I think we need to take a break. You said, It's not you, it's me. You said, I just need some time to think this through. And then you were gone. I was sure I'd die right there.

It was hard to be apart.

And then you came back. Last Sunday in the park with you, it felt just like before. It was so good to be back together again. Like the day we first met. That morning the leaves were greener than they've ever been, the sky bluer, the ground softer. The trails rose up to embrace our every step. Little children yelped with joy as we passed. Dogs looked up from whatever they were gnawing on to watch us in wonder. Old men on benches bowed their heads in nostalgic reverie.

Last Sunday I knew as soon as I saw you again that we can make this work. And I think you knew it too. But a few things have changed.

Running, let's sit down.

Well, here goes. I've been seeing other workouts. Let me explain. While we were on our "break", I was so lonely. Long story short, there was Yoga and, um, I don't know, it just happened. Don't look at me like that. Nobody planned it. It's just that Yoga was there and you weren't and I desperately needed someone. I don't think it's a forever thing. And anyway, between you and me, Yoga's really high-maintenance. It could never be like you and me, Running. I need you to know that.

And don't be angry, but I've also been thinking of trying something a little unusual. Yes, a bike. Because here's the deal, and I have to be totally honest with you: you and I were so intense, seeing each other every day, I think that's what caused our problems. I wanted more of you all the time, it was like a craving, and eventually it got unhealthy. So I think it's best for me - best for us, Running - if we keep it to three or four times a week. At least at first. Yes, I might hang with Core Workout or Bike on other days. But you know you're the one I love. Core Workout makes me feel good, but it's never the same as when I wake up to find you there.

Are you OK, Running? Good.

A bond as deep as ours won't suffer just because we explore other things. In fact, that is what makes us stronger! And no, it's not you, you're awesome. It's just how I'm built. I thought I wanted just one workout all the time, every day, but I need to be free to discover life. Frankly I'm not getting any younger. And you're not getting any older.

I'm so glad you're OK with all this. I was sure you would be. You’re so best. In November, when we're together for the Marathon, it'll be just golden. Nothing can ever take that away from us.

Right, Running? Right?

Love,
Daniel

Brother Sport

No
Originally uploaded by niznoz

I don't usually work blue, but:

I can't fucking wait to get running again.

I break horses

my friend
Originally uploaded by niznoz

I rode out on a broken horse. . . .

It's hard to know what to write, as long as I'm not running. The rubber therapy band isn't as inspirational as the long, looping ribbon around the park. But my blog needs some sugar every once in a while, if only to keep it in shape.

I'll be running again soon, with no other goal than getting the most out of every second of the summer and early fall. Those weeks of sun and honey. At the end of it, just before the rigors of winter, there is the New York Marathon.

I've tried to replace running with yoga and some weights, in totally good faith and with all my heart, but it's not the same. Nothing tastes as good as the stillness of the park before sunup.

To all of you who are starting your own marathon run-ups, I'll be with you. And to those who have other marathons to win, be it getting out the door, or sitting through 16 straight episodes of Lost, or cleaning out your wallet, or finally finishing 2666, or whatever, I'll be with you.

How'm I s'posed to get any ridin' done?

Horses running away
Originally uploaded by niznoz

The PT says she thinks my lower legs just didn't absorb the those 50 mile weeks. Anyway, my calves stopped wishing to accompany me on my runs. So because I would not stop for them, they kindly stopped for me.

I haven't been able to run 10 feet let alone 10 miles, and I even walk funny, my gastrocnemius hanging off my bones like an old rubber band.

No runs for damn near 3 weeks now. I've filled the time halfheartedly with fitful core workouts, bouts with the elliptical machine, and some weight training. But I don't have much patience for staying put any more. I just want to run, calves be damned.

I trained for the last 4 months for next weekend's Brooklyn Half-Marathon. Now I'm not sure I can even run it, let alone "shred." Physical therapy a couple of times a week and there's some improvement. But it's a long-term thing, and one more week is unlikely to put much spring back in my step.

Will I have to give up my big race? And if I decide to race it, am I setting myself back? It's all a big ol' spin of the wheel, a soap opera, a blind date in a leaky boat.

So I wait, I wonder, I hope for fresh horses. If I can't run next week, the weekend will be peevish, and both my wife and I are tiring of the peevishness. But there're other races, and my running is a long-term thing. I could be a pretty fast old geezer someday. That's the whole point of The Long Rush.

I'm about to try a short run this afternoon. Maybe it'll knock something into place, or out of place, or some sense into my head, or just piss me off.

It's a long-term thing. Damn it.

UPDATE: Chased by dogs, paced by a rooster and some spooked cows, and netted in caterpillar silk, I managed to complete 6 miles, in a gorgeous, green late afternoon, at a decent pace. I'm vacationing in rural Pennsylvania, where the air, as they say, is like fine hooch. So it was a great thing to run again, even if it set me back, even if it hurt some, and even if the hills near did me in. I like to run.

Came back to help dig a big hole to roast tomorrow's pig in. And now it's time for a cocktail and fat fabulous steak. Like the man said, I am running to Paradise.

Believe in the crash

street poem
Originally uploaded by the amazing niznoz

April was a slow month here at The Long Rush, slow in every sense, not least because I kept taking time off from running to nurse new injuries. Actually I don't like to think of them as injuries, or not as running injuries - or really anything that could be my own damn fault.

The routine goes like this. I run a really good 50-mile week. The Sunday long run is blissful and hard. But then whammo, Monday is a bitch. Legs like lead, sharp pain in one place or another, one week it's in my side the next time behind my knee. I have to rest, ice, and elevate for a week, and it's my own damn fault.

And all I can think of for that week is how much I want to get back out on the road.

The attractions of such a cruel mistress might seem strange. I guess I'm one of those guys who wears his claw marks proudly. In fact the pain and the recovery from pain is not just an interruption of the affair, but somehow its consummation. One way to stir the stale life of the office chair is to go fight dragons. The dragon, to paraphrase Pogo, is always us.

So I push out against what seemed to be my limits. I want my 50-mile weeks, dammit. By now it's pretty clear that 50 miles is a lot for me, when I've only been running 4 months. I can't stop myself trying though, and each time the crash gets a little easier and the recovery quicker.

I've been haunted the last few weeks by this soundbite, from a story I read in the paper:

At this point, I like that fine line of balancing right between injury and not injury, seeing what I can get out of my body. Sometimes I lie in bed at night and wonder if I’ve done all I can, and if I haven’t, I go out at night and do more.

Obviously, that guy's even crazier than me. But how wise too, this idea that you can't know where injury waits except by charging toward it, that not-injury lies just this side of it, and somehow on that razor's edge you make your life your own, your own damn fault.

All the tired horses in the sun

I have finally recommenced the rites of running, after a week of lapse because of an imaginary cracked rib. In fact I probably pulled a muscle in my side running "hard" up Park Slope. My upper body strength has totally atrophied, or maybe I have flamboyant arm motion. One way or another, I seem to have pulled a muscle by flapping my arms too hard.

I missed the Scotland Run, and its fabulous t-shirt. A poet on a running shirt, and I freaking missed it. I quickly registered for today's Run As One 4M in Central Park, same course as my last race, just to get back in the saddle.

This morning I woke with last night's carousing weighing heavy in my head. After feeding myself, feeding the cat, kissing the wife still adrowse (I wish she'd stop telling me to "break a leg"), and a bad moment deciding which shoes to wear, I hopped on a train full of shy, sleepy runners.

The festival atmosphere at the lung-conscious Run As One rivaled that of the Colon Cancer Challenge, if only because there were thousands more people. But there was no one dressed as a bodily organ (or border state) this time. I made good time picking up my number, but then things fell apart. The t-shirt line was endless, there was even a wait for safety pins. The baggage area was carefully hidden up a hill and behind the Bandshell. I had to pee twice. It was pretty late by the time I was able to run my warm up.

I ran up and down the transverse, with a detour to pee again. My watch only will display the stop watch or the time, so arrived a little a late to the start, everyone already in position. A marshal directed me to my corral, but I was blocked by a big tough in a fluorescent vest. "But the marshal told me I could enter here," I whined. "Yeah?" he drawled like he was a cop in a Mack Sennett picture, "Bring him to me. Nobody gets in after time." I slinked down a little from Officer Pupp and hopped the fence, but I was still in the next corral down from mine.

This put me with a few hundred worthies who ran slower than me. Once the horn went off the pack didn't budge, and I began to get itchy. When we started to walk slowly about a minute later I thought I was going to lose my mind. We finally got going, but real slow, and I spent a half mile trying to find a place to hit my pace. I started flapping my arms to make some space, but that began to hurt my pulled muscle, so I just threaded up as best I could. This was an insanely crowded race (7500 people), so that was no mean feat.

I spent the whole race picking people off and passing them up, which was fun, but I felt like I was trying to catch up to a will-o-the-wisp. I couldn't concentrate on my splits, I just kept trying to cut the line. When the finish line finally showed up I felt great relief. I didn't pull out much of a kick till the last few feet, but I did manage to finish spent.

It was such a joy to find my cheering wife and baby there. It's hard to get the baby out to Central Park, and it's a rare treat to have my crew there. She had hooked up with some friends of ours, who waited very patiently while I kept waiting for the results.

I don't know why I needed to know the results right away. I was a little grouchy about my stressed pre-race, and just needed some immediate gratification I guess. After the results were finally announced (no plaque this time) I finally ran to catch up with the group for a lovely picnic in Riverside Park.

Apart from the crowds and the stress, I think of this race as the first of Spring. The weather was perfect and magnolias and bulbs were in plenteous bloom all over the park. Birds were chirping up a storm, jumping away as we ran past.

After almost two weeks away from running, it was lovely to flap my arms again.

(Photo from NYRR website.)

Ugh

Platypus
Originally uploaded by seancrane

After a long and wonderful run on Sunday, Monday found me stiff, achy and complaining of a weird middle-back ache. I cut short my easy run yesterday and ran not at all today. Still feeling punkish today, and wondering whether I'll be able to make the Scotland Run on Saturday. And I just had my racing kilt pressed.

So here's a picture of a platypus. Enjoy.