I’m on the Megabus heading to St. Louis after a five day visit with my younger sister in Kansas City where, among other things, I ran the Hospital Hill 10K. Today is an important day because it marks the official beginning of my training for the 2010 Bank of America Chicago Marathon that will take place on 10-10-10. That’s just over 4 months or, to be more specific, 124 days, 16 hours, 27 minutes and 45… 44… 43… seconds. To train, I’m using Hal Higdon’s guide for first time marathoners. Today I cross train. Tomorrow I run. Wednesday I run. Thursday I run. This weekend I run far.
I’ve been sitting on this bus for 2 hours reading nutrition guides, success stories, and inspirational articles by novice runners who tackled a marathon and lived to write about what a life altering experience it was. (Megabus has wifi.) I’ve been looking for a particular kind of success story—articles written by fatties, oldies, or invalids—you know, underdog stuff. There are some, but not many—at least not that I’ve found. (Though that could be explained by a fault in my search terms rather than a true lack of such stories.)
At 5’8’’ and 230 lbs. I don’t exactly fit the mold of your typical long distance runner. I’m more grizzly than gazelle, more “Post-fondue” than “Prefontaine,” more “Quit-for-Hershey” than “Joyner-Kersee.” The bottom line is, although I’m 100% committed to this goal of finishing the marathon, there is a very real possibility that, unless I lose some weight, I will fail.
This is one of the reasons I’ve been hesitant to tell people outside my immediate family about my plan to run, and why I’ve chosen to make this blog anonymous. I don’t like the way the few people I have told look at me. The way they smile and say “Oh, that’s great…” so that what you hear is, of course, “Yeah right.” Obviously much of this is me projecting my own doubts and insecurities on others… but not all of it.
The thing is, those people (real or imagined) are right. I’m too heavy and out of shape to run that far. This weekend I (slowly) ran the Hospital Hill 10K—a notoriously hilly course in Kansas City. I felt pretty good afterwards, but during the run I felt heavy—like sacks of dog food strapped to my back heavy. I ran the whole route and finished with a time of 1h 23m. My younger sister, who has dropped over 50 lbs over the course of the past two years, ran the Half-Marathon and set a PR of 2h 27m. She’s the one who convinced me to sign up for the marathon and is a huge inspiration not only for me but for about 7 other friends she’s singlehandedly turned into distance runners. And while my sister was the initial influence in getting on board with Chicago, now I’m trying to figure out why exactly I want to do this.
There are, of course, the superficial goals of losing weight and proving something to those doubting Thomases. More importantly, I want to make running a consistent part of my life—not something I do sporadically or only at certain points in the year. Why? Because I like to be outside and I like to be alone and thinking. It’s the same reason I like mowing the lawn—there’s no obligation to talk, to “be on,” and yet, you can be social. You don’t feel alone when you run—you feel more plugged in to your community, your life. Running, in particular, gives you a rhythm—something steady and effortless, like breathing, when you fall into it. The runner’s high—great as it is—can’t, in my mind, compete with this. The meditative buzz you get for prolonged periods of time. It’s sort of like when you space out while driving. You’re completely in control of your vehicle. You’re passing people, signaling, changing the volume on the radio—but suddenly the “spell” ends and you realize you just ate up however many miles without really being aware of it. Haruki Murakami is, I think, talking about this (more poetically and intelligently than I) in his gorgeous book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
I don’t have a job right now, I don’t have a boyfriend and haven’t had a real relationship in over a year and haven’t had a healthy, satisfying relationship in, oh, ever. A big part of this is due to the fact that I’ve spent my energy on finishing school. I have, for all intents and purposes, neglected my physical appearance. I’ve been eating whatever I wanted (apparently I wanted everything) and have been pretty sedentary. It’s not rocket science. It just blows. I’ve finally finished school and am looking forward to whatever comes next. Hopefully a job, a husband, kids, etc. but I need to put some work in on myself first. I want to physically work for something. I want to pour everything I’ve got into a goal that has nothing to do with grades, or money, or the judgment of other people. I want to do something hard (that’s what she said), and the size of my aspirations is rivaled only by the size of my ass.
Last, I want to do this for, and because of, my dad. He had emergency open heart quadruple by-pass surgery in November of 1996. Less than a year later, in October of 1997, he ran his first full marathon. The Chicago Marathon. Now, almost 15 years later, his cardiologist has warned him that further scarring and blockages in his arteries make it unsafe and unadvisable to run long distances. I know he misses running, misses being part of that pre-dawn elite society who jog our streets every day, misses the thrill of working towards, and finishing, a marathon. My dad taught me how to run and is the reason that even now, 70 lbs overweight, I know that no goal is too high or too far outside my reach if I want it and work for it hard enough. That sounds a little Hallmarky. I guess it is.
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