I've been neglecting you
Okay, so I got busy. I've been dating like a madwoman, and I've been working my ass off. I'm posting an old thingy just to post something and also to honor a friend of mine who is running the Chicago Marathon on Sunday. Enjoy!
When you run long distances, unpleasant things happen to your body. Your toenails blacken, your bones can develop hairline fractures and, least pleasant of all, your nipples can spontaneously bleed. Charming, eh? It would be too easy to say that I signed up to run a half marathon for charity because I’m a masochist. I actually did it because I’m too cheap to join a gym.
I’ll skip the boring parts of signing up and training except to say that one-day, I reached the limit of my goodwill for my fellow man. Even though I was slogging through long sprints in the rain to eradicate blood cancers, I was at the end of my rope. I dragged myself, panting and projectile sweating, up to my training coach and said, sotto voce, "I will set you on fire. I swear by everything that’s holy, I WILL set you on fire."
The half marathon itself was, by and large, the most surreal experience of my life, due in large part to the fact that it was in Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach is like Atlantic City…only further south and without the refining influences of casinos. The only reason people go to Virginia Beach late in August is because they have melanin addictions that can only be satisfied by painting themselves thickly with baby oil and iodine and sitting on the beach for eight hours a day. There are no varying ethnicities in Virginia Beach…everyone is a dark, crackling tan. It was like we were preparing to run an endurance race on the face of the sun. What genius thought this was a good idea?
The night before the race, hopped up on Gatorade and pasta, I went to a place billed as "The Time Machine." It was a carnival ride in the middle of a strip of depressing beachwear stores that was basically Virginia Beach’s answer to the now-defunct Disneyworld creation "Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride." I would like to say that I laughed jadedly throughout the ride; smirking at the fiberglass dinosaur that leaned down from the ceiling and knowingly chuckled at the dusty dioramas that unexpectedly and rather geriatricly moved. That’s not the case, though. When the "Walls of Pompeii" began to shudder and tumble, I covered my eyes. When a real ,live human being turned and said "Bang!" in the middle of a display of the wild, wild west, I screamed. When we came through the "alien invasion" portion of the ride, I was weeping copiously like a giant scaredycat pussyfairy. Thirteen point one miles didn’t scare me, but dioramas did.
On race day, all of the members of my charity racing squad grouped in our hotel lobby to choke down bagels and warm Gatorade. I am confident that I am the only member of our team who snuck away for a cigarette before the race. We boarded buses to the race start line, with fifteen THOUSAND other people. We had cleverly painted our names on our racing singlets so that people would cheer for us by name as we ran. That one action taught me a very important life lesson: What seems like a good idea at Mile One can seem like sheer stupidity at Mile Thirteen. "Good job, Amy!" "Way to go, Amy!" "Hey, Amy! Made you look!" "Amyamyamyamyamyamyamy." Oh, shut the fuck up!
The race started about ten minutes before I started to run. The elite runners and various other ectomorphs started at the front of the pack as we regular folks shuffled forward at a snail’s pace. Finally, I crossed the start line and realized "Oh, shit! I’m already tired!"
At mile one and three quarters, we hit the first "hill" of the course, a highway onramp. Miraculously, all of the bad smells in Virginia had congregated in the low area before the hill’s gradual rise. I swear I heard someone say "God! Whose ass came here to die?!" At that moment, the elite runners appeared in front of us and we forgot about the wretched smell. No, we weren’t catching up, they were doubling back. They had reached mile 8 while we were earnestly pursuing mile 2. We cheered for them: freaks of nature doomed by genetics to be supremely fast. "Oh, look at the poor fast things run!"
Long about mile two, the Poops caught up with me. I made it to one of the five trillion festering port-a-potties, thank goodness. Along the half mile leading up to the transitory toilettes, though, I had seen scores of folks who didn’t make it. All along the woods, unsheltered by any kind of flora whatsoever, stood and squatted runners in various states of relief. It ain’t pretty, but it’s prettier than crossing the finish line with stinky drawers. As I exited the leased loo, I ran into a teammate of mine; "How are you holding up?" I asked her. She gave me a thumbs up as she choked down a Power Gel ™ from the ample supply strapped to her body. On closer inspection, I noticed that she had enough provisions and emergency supplies strapped to her diminutive person to supply a nursery school through a year’s worth of snacktimes. (For the uninitiated, a Power Gel is a performance enhancement product’s brand name. It is basically a foil packet of something like cake frosting that has no nutritional value whatsoever. It is just a handful of viscous calories, flavored slightly like chocolate and containing ungodly amounts of caffeine…hence the "Power.") Considering it was mile two and she was already breaking into her supplies, I felt sure she’d resort to cannibalism before we got to mile 8.
Along the way, people shouted encouragement to us… "Lookin’ good!" "Way to go!" Sometimes we heard "Way to go!" or "Lookin’ good!" On a rare occasion, they would shout "Lookin’ good!" and sweetest of all was to hear "Way to go!" I’m guessing they used up their creativity on the elite runners who had passed their way some eight and a half hours earlier. This particular race featured rock bands and cheerleaders as well as the average marathon fan. At mile 3, there was a ska-metal cover band playing "Sending Out an SOS." For some reason, that didn’t seem the least bit encouraging. If it was their attempt at tongue-in-cheek humor, well, they’re fucking assholes is all I have to say. The cheerleading squads had obviously modified football game cheers for us, but their efforts were still sweet. My favorite cheerleaders where the group who did a rhythmic cheer that ended with the cheerers stopping their rhythmic clapping in unison and saying "Whoop! Hooooooooooo, they runnin! Oh yeah, they runnin!" followed by pelvic thrusts and grinding. At least it wasn’t "Be aggressive! Got to be aggressive! B-E A-G-G R-E-S-S-I-V-E aggressive!"
At mile 6 or so, we were at Camp Pendleton. Surreally, there was a group of residents dressed as the Village People, lip synching to "In the Navy." Clearly these military personnel had forgotten the second part of the "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" edict. I saw people in front of me, muddy to the ankles. These were the Woods Poopers from mile 2.
Long about mile nine, the Poops came a’ callin’ for me again, but this time I didn’t feel like such a wuss because pooping at mile nine is way less wussy than pooping at mile two. Cruising past mile nine and into mile ten, I felt like a rock star. I was passing folks and waving at the crowd and generally behaving like someone intensely full of themselves. Then, we turned onto the boardwalk. Suddenly, instead of a rock star, I felt like the drummer of Def Leppard being asked to clap: I couldn’t do it anymore. I was all done. Nothing was going to help me anymore. It was over.
I wobbled on, hoping that a strong wind would come along (about a month too early for Hurricane Isabel, unfortunately) and carry me past the finish line. My legs killed me and it was discouraging to see really thin, fit people broken down on the sidelines, sucking oxygen from tanks like they were Dennis Hopper in "Blue Velvet." If these people couldn’t make it, what hope did I have?
Near the very end of my abilities, and the end of the race, one of my race coaches drifted in beside me. She had been waiting for each of our team to get to her so that she could help them run the last few feet. She matched my stride and said "You’re almost home and I am so proud of you!" One of the best feelings in the world was knowing someone was waiting for me the whole time just to tell me that they were proud of me. The other best feeling was when she peeled off, leaving me alone with the words "Now PICK IT UP AND GO!" So I did. I pushed with everything I had left and heard the girl who had been running next to me say "Rock on!" We sprinted in together. I made it in two hours, thirty five minutes and thirty six seconds. I called my mom from the finish line, crying. My Mom, midwestern to the core, said "Yeah, you did real good."
So, I was a half marathoner. I ran 13.1 miles all at once. That was a remarkable personal achievement for me. Beyond that, though, was the reason I was running. I was part of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program. I ran in honor of two people from New York who were beating or had beaten Hodgkin’s disease. I was also running in honor of a classmate of mine from high school who was fighting leukemia. I was running for a million people I’ll never know who have blood cancers. And I was running for the baggage handler at the Norfolk airport who, when he saw our "Team in Training" luggage tags, said "I can’t thank you enough for what you’re doing. My son survived leukemia. He’s a survivor. He’s alive." Sadly, less than a week after the race, my classmate succumbed to leukemia. He died as he had lived…surrounded by friends and family who loved him.
Personal challenges can turn into great public charity. Please go and give blood and register yourself as a bone marrow donor. Get involved. Be your own inspiration. And, more than anything else, pick it up and GO.
When you run long distances, unpleasant things happen to your body. Your toenails blacken, your bones can develop hairline fractures and, least pleasant of all, your nipples can spontaneously bleed. Charming, eh? It would be too easy to say that I signed up to run a half marathon for charity because I’m a masochist. I actually did it because I’m too cheap to join a gym.
I’ll skip the boring parts of signing up and training except to say that one-day, I reached the limit of my goodwill for my fellow man. Even though I was slogging through long sprints in the rain to eradicate blood cancers, I was at the end of my rope. I dragged myself, panting and projectile sweating, up to my training coach and said, sotto voce, "I will set you on fire. I swear by everything that’s holy, I WILL set you on fire."
The half marathon itself was, by and large, the most surreal experience of my life, due in large part to the fact that it was in Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach is like Atlantic City…only further south and without the refining influences of casinos. The only reason people go to Virginia Beach late in August is because they have melanin addictions that can only be satisfied by painting themselves thickly with baby oil and iodine and sitting on the beach for eight hours a day. There are no varying ethnicities in Virginia Beach…everyone is a dark, crackling tan. It was like we were preparing to run an endurance race on the face of the sun. What genius thought this was a good idea?
The night before the race, hopped up on Gatorade and pasta, I went to a place billed as "The Time Machine." It was a carnival ride in the middle of a strip of depressing beachwear stores that was basically Virginia Beach’s answer to the now-defunct Disneyworld creation "Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride." I would like to say that I laughed jadedly throughout the ride; smirking at the fiberglass dinosaur that leaned down from the ceiling and knowingly chuckled at the dusty dioramas that unexpectedly and rather geriatricly moved. That’s not the case, though. When the "Walls of Pompeii" began to shudder and tumble, I covered my eyes. When a real ,live human being turned and said "Bang!" in the middle of a display of the wild, wild west, I screamed. When we came through the "alien invasion" portion of the ride, I was weeping copiously like a giant scaredycat pussyfairy. Thirteen point one miles didn’t scare me, but dioramas did.
On race day, all of the members of my charity racing squad grouped in our hotel lobby to choke down bagels and warm Gatorade. I am confident that I am the only member of our team who snuck away for a cigarette before the race. We boarded buses to the race start line, with fifteen THOUSAND other people. We had cleverly painted our names on our racing singlets so that people would cheer for us by name as we ran. That one action taught me a very important life lesson: What seems like a good idea at Mile One can seem like sheer stupidity at Mile Thirteen. "Good job, Amy!" "Way to go, Amy!" "Hey, Amy! Made you look!" "Amyamyamyamyamyamyamy." Oh, shut the fuck up!
The race started about ten minutes before I started to run. The elite runners and various other ectomorphs started at the front of the pack as we regular folks shuffled forward at a snail’s pace. Finally, I crossed the start line and realized "Oh, shit! I’m already tired!"
At mile one and three quarters, we hit the first "hill" of the course, a highway onramp. Miraculously, all of the bad smells in Virginia had congregated in the low area before the hill’s gradual rise. I swear I heard someone say "God! Whose ass came here to die?!" At that moment, the elite runners appeared in front of us and we forgot about the wretched smell. No, we weren’t catching up, they were doubling back. They had reached mile 8 while we were earnestly pursuing mile 2. We cheered for them: freaks of nature doomed by genetics to be supremely fast. "Oh, look at the poor fast things run!"
Long about mile two, the Poops caught up with me. I made it to one of the five trillion festering port-a-potties, thank goodness. Along the half mile leading up to the transitory toilettes, though, I had seen scores of folks who didn’t make it. All along the woods, unsheltered by any kind of flora whatsoever, stood and squatted runners in various states of relief. It ain’t pretty, but it’s prettier than crossing the finish line with stinky drawers. As I exited the leased loo, I ran into a teammate of mine; "How are you holding up?" I asked her. She gave me a thumbs up as she choked down a Power Gel ™ from the ample supply strapped to her body. On closer inspection, I noticed that she had enough provisions and emergency supplies strapped to her diminutive person to supply a nursery school through a year’s worth of snacktimes. (For the uninitiated, a Power Gel is a performance enhancement product’s brand name. It is basically a foil packet of something like cake frosting that has no nutritional value whatsoever. It is just a handful of viscous calories, flavored slightly like chocolate and containing ungodly amounts of caffeine…hence the "Power.") Considering it was mile two and she was already breaking into her supplies, I felt sure she’d resort to cannibalism before we got to mile 8.
Along the way, people shouted encouragement to us… "Lookin’ good!" "Way to go!" Sometimes we heard "Way to go!" or "Lookin’ good!" On a rare occasion, they would shout "Lookin’ good!" and sweetest of all was to hear "Way to go!" I’m guessing they used up their creativity on the elite runners who had passed their way some eight and a half hours earlier. This particular race featured rock bands and cheerleaders as well as the average marathon fan. At mile 3, there was a ska-metal cover band playing "Sending Out an SOS." For some reason, that didn’t seem the least bit encouraging. If it was their attempt at tongue-in-cheek humor, well, they’re fucking assholes is all I have to say. The cheerleading squads had obviously modified football game cheers for us, but their efforts were still sweet. My favorite cheerleaders where the group who did a rhythmic cheer that ended with the cheerers stopping their rhythmic clapping in unison and saying "Whoop! Hooooooooooo, they runnin! Oh yeah, they runnin!" followed by pelvic thrusts and grinding. At least it wasn’t "Be aggressive! Got to be aggressive! B-E A-G-G R-E-S-S-I-V-E aggressive!"
At mile 6 or so, we were at Camp Pendleton. Surreally, there was a group of residents dressed as the Village People, lip synching to "In the Navy." Clearly these military personnel had forgotten the second part of the "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" edict. I saw people in front of me, muddy to the ankles. These were the Woods Poopers from mile 2.
Long about mile nine, the Poops came a’ callin’ for me again, but this time I didn’t feel like such a wuss because pooping at mile nine is way less wussy than pooping at mile two. Cruising past mile nine and into mile ten, I felt like a rock star. I was passing folks and waving at the crowd and generally behaving like someone intensely full of themselves. Then, we turned onto the boardwalk. Suddenly, instead of a rock star, I felt like the drummer of Def Leppard being asked to clap: I couldn’t do it anymore. I was all done. Nothing was going to help me anymore. It was over.
I wobbled on, hoping that a strong wind would come along (about a month too early for Hurricane Isabel, unfortunately) and carry me past the finish line. My legs killed me and it was discouraging to see really thin, fit people broken down on the sidelines, sucking oxygen from tanks like they were Dennis Hopper in "Blue Velvet." If these people couldn’t make it, what hope did I have?
Near the very end of my abilities, and the end of the race, one of my race coaches drifted in beside me. She had been waiting for each of our team to get to her so that she could help them run the last few feet. She matched my stride and said "You’re almost home and I am so proud of you!" One of the best feelings in the world was knowing someone was waiting for me the whole time just to tell me that they were proud of me. The other best feeling was when she peeled off, leaving me alone with the words "Now PICK IT UP AND GO!" So I did. I pushed with everything I had left and heard the girl who had been running next to me say "Rock on!" We sprinted in together. I made it in two hours, thirty five minutes and thirty six seconds. I called my mom from the finish line, crying. My Mom, midwestern to the core, said "Yeah, you did real good."
So, I was a half marathoner. I ran 13.1 miles all at once. That was a remarkable personal achievement for me. Beyond that, though, was the reason I was running. I was part of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program. I ran in honor of two people from New York who were beating or had beaten Hodgkin’s disease. I was also running in honor of a classmate of mine from high school who was fighting leukemia. I was running for a million people I’ll never know who have blood cancers. And I was running for the baggage handler at the Norfolk airport who, when he saw our "Team in Training" luggage tags, said "I can’t thank you enough for what you’re doing. My son survived leukemia. He’s a survivor. He’s alive." Sadly, less than a week after the race, my classmate succumbed to leukemia. He died as he had lived…surrounded by friends and family who loved him.
Personal challenges can turn into great public charity. Please go and give blood and register yourself as a bone marrow donor. Get involved. Be your own inspiration. And, more than anything else, pick it up and GO.
posted by Unknown at 3:18 PM
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