Happy Valley Sprint Triathlon results
July 2, 2017/ State College, PA
Aaron’s powered on adorableness
Some people think triathlons were invented as a way for running stores to stay financially solvent. I think they were invented to make people do sports they really suck at. And learn to get over themselves.
Aaron glanced over at Penn State’s outdoor pool as he rode by, beginning the bike portion of the Happy Valley Sprint Triathlon under the shrills of AC/DC. The pool had cool saline water, and was surrounded by a couple dozen people with either a clipboard or a lifeguard buoy. Aaron could make out just one lonely yellow swim cap still in the pool, thrashing her way from one wall to the other, many minutes after everyone else had vacated for their bikes.
I bet even back-float boy crushed me.
I had warned the three guys sharing my lane that I was a late-entry with no business being in the fifth and fastest heat of the day. I promised to cling to the lane line and try to stay out of their way. They periodically hit my feet as they passed, and my attempts to hug the lane line mostly resulted in me hitting it with my elbow a lot, slowing me down even more. In the end, it took me over 22 minutes to swim 750 meters. Out of 144 participants, my swim time ranked 122nd. Since all the slow swimmers had started in heat 1, I was DFL when I came out of the pool, and had a lonely bike ride with no one in sight.
Aaron and I had registered for the event that morning, snagging the last two slots. Twelve hours earlier, somewhere near Syracuse during our drive from Lake Placid, New York to State College, PA, I had decided that maybe we should change our plan for Sunday morning. Some of my happiest memories are of running with friends in Rothrock State Park, belting out songs and making crude jokes. But Tom had reported that no one else wanted to join us. Something about fly infestations in the forest and prior commitments to volunteer at the Happy Valley Sprint Triathlon.
If everyone else was going to be at the Tri, we decided we might as well too. We had just spent a week at our friend Michaela’s house on Rainbow Lake in New York, so we had our swimsuits and goggles on hand. I had my mountain bike. And we had some really stinky trail running shoes that looked like swamp things after that morning’s 2.5 hour run on the trails around Lake Placid. After a week of rain, the trails were reduced to puddles in good places and marshes in bad places.
Rainbow Lake is full of surprises
Aaron pointed out that didn’t have a bike. And we weren’t going to arrive in State College until sometime after 10pm, due to a delayed start after spending most of Saturday morning wading through Lake Placid’s marshes.
No problem! I promised Aaron the Nittany Valley Running Club (NVRC) would come through for him. I graduated from Penn State almost a decade ago, and most of the folks I knew from the Biology Department are long gone. But most of the runners are still there, and it’s a tight-knit community. So a last-minute email blast to the NVRC produced an outpouring of folks willing to let Aaron borrow a bike for a day. Our friend Judd, who’d won the Loch Haven triathlon that morning, won the bonus prize for Best Late Night Tri Gear Hookup. When we rolled into his Lemont home at 10pm, we found him in his garage working on a newly washed Trek road bike. In addition to the sweet ride, he threw in some gels, some baby powder for the transition zones, a toolkit, a water bottle, and a helmet.
Meet Thunder and Lightning
When Aaron and I grabbed some late-night dinner at IHOP, it donned on us that we were actually going to do this thing. Our week of adventures in the Adirondacks could not be described as ‘tapering’. On Friday, Aaron had convinced me to swim a mile roundtrip to some island in the middle of Rainbow Lake, more swimming than I’d done all year in total. And running in the Adirondack mountains is not particularly leg-sparing, with 1,000-foot climbs that the trail decides need to be completed within a half-mile. On the one day when it wasn’t downpouring, I’d discovered that thick sand is not so easy to bike in. It was all great fun, and most days required dunks in the lake to get all the mud off. But it’s not what one would optimally do in the week leading up to the first triathlon attempted in two years.
A typical New York trail
Aaron and I managed to snag the last two available spots in the HVST by waking up at 4:45am and getting our butts out there bright and early. Of course, the only two slots still available were in the final heat with the studs. I suggested we go back to the hotel and sleep another hour, but Aaron has a lot of experience with triathlons and knew it was better to hang out and take our time getting things prepared. And by ‘prepared’ we mostly mean that we were able to put our incredibly stinky wet shoes out in the increasingly hot sun until they were mostly dry by our heat’s 8:45am start time. I was enthusiastic about how quickly the sun dried our shoes. And then realized that sun’s heat would soon be directed at our backs for a couple hours.
Aaron spends a good deal of his life wondering when his wife’s next bout of tears is going to hit. So it was a moment of great relief when he saw me grinning ear-to-ear and waving enthusiastically on the out-and-back bike ride. I was dead-last, completely alone. On a clunky mountain bike that moved like a draught horse in the Kentucky Derby. But if I was perturbed, I sure wasn’t showing it. And I tend to show it.
The bike ride rolls along the road that goes to State College’s puny airport. My ride out was a lot more fun than the ride back, when I was all alone with no one to even wave to. But it’s a beautiful stretch, with meadows on either side, and in my solitude I spotted lots of birds: indigo bunting, eastern phoebe, american kestrel….
I’ve only done two other triathlons previously. My first, Luray Triathlon, I got off the bike feeling fresh and passed tons of people during a sub-40 minute 10k. The second, Anthracite Triathlon, I came off the bike with jello legs and suffered through the hot run. So with an N of two, I didn’t really know what to expect coming off the bike this time. But one thing I was absolutely sure of: no matter how I felt, I was going to be alone. So I enlisted Tom and Mike to run the 5k with me and boost my spirits.
M&T got five-star reviews for boosting my spirits, even if they ran less than a mile with me before complaining that I was running too fast and leaving me to run the dreaded ‘four hills’ on my own. For a moment, I thought maybe I should slow down and just jog it in with them. Isn’t that what folks at the back of the pack are supposed to do? But I hadn’t raced in a while on account of the carb-restricted diet I started in April, which had brought my running to its knees for several months. I had to skip Manitou’s Revenge in June, and considered that I might never race again. And then I had an extremely useful consultation with Dr Stephanie Howe-Violett, who added one key tweak to the low-carb diet my endocrinologist had prescribed: permitting me to eat simple carbs during exercise, and 30 minutes before and after. Because it turns out you process carbs differently when you exercise, absorbing the sugars directly into the muscles and avoiding the insulin spike. The low-carb diet is still a challenge, particularly to get enough calories each day, but at least this one little change gave my running new life.
I reunited with M&T on my way back from the hills. They goaded me on for a quarter mile and then threw in the towel again. But they did their job well, and even at the tail end of the pack, with nothing to run for, I dipped under 19 minutes to run the 4th fastest 5k out of the 144 participants, finishing the HVST on a high note. My 5k time beat the next-fastest female by 3 minutes and finished 60th overall. Aaron finished 23rd, pretty remarkable given that he’s done like three bike rides all year.
F&)!K the carb-restricted diet
In the end, the HVST was all I’d hoped it would be. Sure, I stunk my usual self in the pool. And I was unusually slow without a lighter road bike. But there’s a warmth and friendliness about the State College community that always makes me nostalgic. Whether it was Judd adjusting Aaron’s bike seat so it fit just right. Or Meira unsuccessfully trying to splash me with water at the mile 1 aid station. Or our post-event finale at Meyer Dairy, the absolute happiest place on earth. We were in State College for only 16 hours, but I always come out of there feeling more hopeful about the world.
View from Lake Placid’s Mt McKenzie
The Lake Placid region has also become one of my new favorite places, and Aaron and I will be returning there at the end of September. It was, of course, first and foremost a work trip, as Aaron and his co-business owner Michaela had at least three VR shoots that week in the Lake Placid area. I towed two government laptops along, and had pretty standard work days, complete with 7am conference calls with Bangladesh. One of these days, Aaron and I will take a bonafide vacation. Where we actually leave our laptops at home. And bring at least one outfit that couldn’t be worn trail running. (I’m still owed a honeymoon…ahem…Pantanal, Brazil….um…..giant anteaters and jaguars…..). But until that day, I will remain a diehard fan of Noncation.
Noncation at Rainbow Lake ain’t half bad
Manitou’s Revenge. I had to google it but Manitou is “the spiritual and fundamental life force among Algonquian groups in the Native American mythology. It is omnipresent and manifests everywhere: organisms, the environment, events, etc.”
Revenge is a dish best served cold, but apparently for Manitou, it’s a dish best served warm, humid, and slowly, over the course of 54.3 rugged miles in the Catskills. Hence, the name “Manitou’s Revenge.” But what did we ever do to you, Manitou?
Forsaken by the Wussies, Trevor resorts to more loyal friends
A highly successful WUS outing in 2015 led Marthon to try to spearhead a 2017 edition. Surely it would be just as successful. Revenge, it seemed, would strike early.
Joey vanished for a few months and never signed up. Martha did sign up, but was then struck with a general malaise that made her typical minimal training even more minimal [Editorial note: This spring, Martha was on a severely carb-restricted diet prescribed by her endocrinologist that made running about as fun as eating dog poop.]. When Martha dropped just a few weeks out, Boots was plucked off the waitlist. Hooray! But, then she was burdened with work commitments—#NYC—and had to bail. Boo.
This left the miniest of mini-WUS Trains: Julian, running the race for the 2nd time, was using it as a training run for Hardrock. He’s a few weeks away from becoming a veteran Hardrocker—contain your jealousy—so, let’s be honest, his attendance at the start and finish line was never in doubt. And I, deputized by Martha with the task of writing a blog post, was obligated to show up and finish.
Julian drove up from DC on Friday. I was coming down from a Maine taper-vacation with my wife Keli, who is invaluable crew, and our two dogs, who would be decidedly unvaluable crew. In trying to meet up, Julian and I quickly learned that Phoenicia lacks cell phone reception. I also learned that Alex Papadopolous was running the race, and we chatted a bit at Brio’s—definitely one of the top 5 restaurants in town—before I ate a full pizza (see 2-minute pit stop at mile 20).
Manitou’s is a lowkey, east-coast, point-to-point race that does not try to limit itself arbitrarily to a distance in miles at or very close to a multiple of 10. It is similar in that way to Highlands Sky 40, which this year was run on the same day. Not coincidentally, these are both great races. Tough choice to make in future years.
The 2:45 wakeup call was a little rough, but Julian and I drove into Phoenicia, where the race finishes, and took a 45-minute bumpy, windy bus ride to the start. The powers that be require the race to start in waves of 15 people, separated by 5 minutes. After a 3 mile stretch of road, you head onto some nice trails for essentially the duration of the race. The first ~30 miles were wonderful. You have some good steep climbs, some runnable sections, and some technical descents.
The forecast had been for rain and maybe t-storms all week, but we got lucky and the rain largely stayed away, minus a few periods of brief sprinkles. But, it had been raining a lot during the week, so the ground was wet and the rocks were slick. It was also very humid all day, so you’re dripping wet basically all day. My lubing technique was subpar, so I had one of the more painful showers of my life afterwards. Don’t be like me.
Early on, we were in and amongst the clouds and fog at times, but we also got a few vistas where we were ~4,000 ft up, looking down on clouds at lower elevations and green mountains as far as you could see. All gorgeous, but no pics. Sorry. I was running with some locals and marveled at their ability to navigate the descents with ease. I took my time to avoid catastrophe.
When you roll into the Platte Clove aid station at mile ~31, you’ve covered well over half the distance, but you are less than halfway done—I’d bet that every single person runs those last 23 miles slower than the first 31. I was feeling great at this point, and the race thus far was by no means a cake walk, but this is where things get a little more serious.
Sadie tells Trevor to get his a$& back out there and finish this damn thing
For those interested in logistics, I was very happy to have included a last-minute drop bag here, because the few miles before this aid station were very wet and muddy, and the fresh pair of socks I threw on were helpful. Keli plus dogs were also there to crew me—as they were at the previous aid station—but the later aid stations required muddy hikes in. I told them I’d see them at the finish.
I imagine the Devil is at least a little bit disappointed with the casual manner in which his name is assigned up above. This disappointment would not, however, extend to the naming of Devil’s Path, which covered the ~7-8 miles to the next aid station.
How bad can 7+ miles be? Very. You ascend and descend 3 peaks: Indian Head, Twin Peak, and Sugarloaf Mountain with several thousand feet of ups and downs. Pulling yourself up by roots and tree trunks and whatever handholds you can find is the easy part. Martha describes it as “fun,” and that’s not totally inaccurate. But the novelty wore off for me on the way down. It was at times more of a controlled freefall, likewise holding onto roots, tree trunks and rockholds where possible. There was one part of the Twin Peak descent, where we essentially descended what felt like a 8-10 foot cliff with one small ledge in the middle. It was a bit harrowing for a 6’ 2” person with long legs. Honestly, a little bit of upper body training wouldn’t be a bad idea. All the modified pullups going up and partial tricep dips coming down added up to some sore arms by the finish.
After the next aid station, you’ve got one more steep long climb up Plateau Mountain (still on Devil’s path). This one felt a little longer than the previous ones, and it didn’t help that we’d just come through the hardest stretch. If you look uphill and try to see the top, all you see are trees towering hundreds of feet above. Best just to put your head down and march your way up.
From the top of Plauteau Mountain, the worst of the climbing is done, but by now my quads had about had it and my stomach was not that happy either, so I took it down a half gear and rode the struggle bus from here on out. I’d slipped and stubbed my toes plenty of time, but managed to stay upright until sloshing through some wetlands at mile ~45 where I took a little bath. There’s a stream crossing that soaks your feet soon thereafter in case they weren’t already sore and blistery enough.
The last descent drops close to 2,000 feet over less than 3 miles on an old jeep road that is largely covered with (slippery) rocks. This hurt a lot, and just for good measure, I had one more fall as I slowed down in the last 50 feet of trail. A mile and change of road and you’re done back in Phoenicia.
I slipped in under 14 hrs, and Julian, though running a bit slower than he intended, beat his previous time by 3 hours and won his wave. We both had fun and got some good suffering in (which is an alternative form of fun for Julian), so, minus the pre-race casualties, it was a success all around. Who’s in for Mani2k18?
Trevor thought that including lots of doggie shots would distract me from noticing that his grand total pictures of Julian = 0. It worked.
Bob shares expertise on the developmental biology of adolescent females
‘You know….ah…the bodies of teenage girls change a lot during development.’ Aaron ducked as my father swung his glass of bourbon as he spoke, the liquid sloshing against the side. Sauvignon blanc spurted through my nose.
Our dinner guest, Kim, was my mother’s younger sister’s friend. She had brought her teenage daughter, whom we were meeting for the first time. My mother often asks me to join when a guest brings their kid. To make sure the conversation includes more than my father’s recent op-ed on ‘charter forests’. Because companies always run things better than government.
But given the choice, I’m sure Kim and her daughter would have preferred an oration on Federal land management over my father’s description of the collision between my teenage running career and puberty.
Nothing my father was saying wasn’t true. It was just twenty years too late.
We still coach young female runners as if they were boys. With dire consequences.
I had soared to success as a sub-100 pound running sprite my freshman year of high school. I was tiny, and running came easily and naturally. My nickname in elementary school had been ‘Boney Butt’. Track went so well in the spring, I decided to forego field hockey and run cross country the next fall. I got a side stitch my second race and finished fifth. After that, I won every race, right through the Maryland State championship in November.
But I never won another state championship. I wasn’t terrible. I still finished top-5 at states. But it was a far cry from what I was expected to be doing. What ires me to this day is that no one — not parents, not coaches — seemed to recognize that a perfectly linear running trajectory was an absurd expectation for a young female runner. I was a late developer, and my body changed dramatically my junior year of high school, including four inches in height. A women’s capacity to create new little human beings is a miraculous feat of nature, and it shouldn’t be altogether surprising that the biological changes required won’t always align with efforts to improve mile times.
Boys have it easy. Teenage boys get linearly faster each year, as they transition from gawky freshman to muscled men. Increased testosterone and muscle tone are gifts to the young male runner. For girls, it’s quite the opposite. Lots of girls come out smoking as freshmen and sophomores, and then flounder as juniors and seniors. Puberty is hard for any girl. But it’s hell for young female distance runners trying to live up to their prepubescent selves. Many girls fight it as hard as they can. Starvation. Bulimia. Overtraining. And many coaches encourage it. Not always directly, but by celebrating the performances of clearly underweight female runners.
Being anorexic or bulimic wasn’t in my nature. So when I started losing races my junior year, and no amount of training seemed to help, I simply lost heart. Sometimes I would drop out of a race, other times I’d just go through the motions. By my senior year, I didn’t care at all. I’d decided I wasn’t going to run in college, and just did high jump and relays. No one knew what to do with me. My parents sent me to a sports psychologist. Coach Smart cranked up the training. A single Coach Smart workout was more than we did all week with Coach Flemming, who was at the helm my sophomore year. And yet I kept getting slower.
I cannot overstate the damage this experience did to a young female psyche. I considered myself to be a fierce athlete who always rose to the challenge on big days. Hitting buzzer-beaters in basketball. Playing through broken bones and bloody noses in soccer. But suddenly I was subjected to the worst stereotypes about female athletes. Girls are lazy….girls aren’t competitive…girls don’t like pressure…girls just do sports to hang out with friends and meet boys…girls are timid…girls are head cases. And suddenly I was plagued with self-doubt.
Today, kids increasingly focus on one sport at a young age. This is a terrible idea.
The saving grace was that I was a multi-sport athlete. The extra bulk I put on my junior year had sunk my running, but it did worlds of good for my soccer game. As frustration with running mounted, I threw myself into soccer, reveling in my newfound strength and speed and becoming a captain of my team. Suddenly, twenty pounds heavier, I wasn’t getting pushed around anymore. Soccer wasn’t going to get my into college. But it sure was fun. And kept me from turning on my still-growing body.
Being well-rounded provided other advantages. It turned out I didn’t need running to get into college. Realizing that my grades and test scores would get me into a school of my choice was liberating. I could go to Stanford without any pull from a coach.
The perfect teachable moment….wasted
One of the most important lifelong lesson you can impart to a kid is that progress is not always linear. There are going to be setbacks. It is going to feel like the bottom’s falling out. But setbacks are not failures. They’re simply part of the process. And here we have a golden opportunity to teach young female distance runners how to ride out a difficult time with patience, and deal with what seem like dismal failures with grace, and help them understand that failures are not their fault but part of a larger process. And — most critically — to trust that their bodies will adapt, and bounce back with a new ferocity. To embrace — and not fight — all the crazy changes their bodies are going through. The timing will vary from athlete to athlete, and some might have to wait until college. But the dip is temporary.
I did eventually have a comeback, after many years of healing. It wasn’t until my junior year of college that I would lace up my cross country spikes again. And I did return reborn, besting my prior 5k PRs by over a minute. But most girls never get a second act.
The corrosive environment of collegiate running
I will never forget the last dinner I ate with the Amherst women’s cross country team. Carter and I, both rookies, had both finished All-America, leading our team to a 7th place finish at the NCAA Division III National Cross Country meet, the best finish in school history. Spirits were high as the eight women celebrated with our head coach Ned and our assistant coach Seana.
I was so hungry, I didn’t even wait for the busboy to fully get my plate down before I launched into my burger and smashed some french fries into the corner of my mouth. My first season of collegiate cross country had been rough. I hated Ned. I’d spent a month of the season suspended. But I’d persevered and hammered through the last four meets of the season, getting faster and faster with each race. Now we could celebrate, stuff our faces, and take a hard-earned break.
As the waiter dished out my teammates’ meals, my spirits dulled.
‘Garden salad? No croutons, no cheese, and dressing on the side?’
‘Here.’
‘Another salad….dressing on the side. One more….no cheese, croutons and dressing on the side….’
Everyone was eating as if we were bikini models. Except Ned, who had a burger too. I devoured my plate. I didn’t eat all the french fries, and offered them to the table, and my teammates took one or two. I had sacrificed a lot to be a member of this team. I had left Stanford after my freshman year to attend a school where I thought I could be a balanced student-athlete. After an auspicious winter track season my sophomore year, I agreed to finally give up soccer, the love of my life, to run cross country in the fall. I’d set aside my differences with Ned and worked my ass off to get back in shape for the final championship meets. In that morning’s National championship, I’d dropped almost 40 seconds off my 5k PR to cover the rolling golf course in 17:42.
But that night I realized this wasn’t my tribe. I’m not sure how I escaped the pitfalls of many young female runners, but I have to give some credit to my great, non-negotiable love of burgers and ice cream. And it certainly helped that I played lots of sports like soccer that have healthier attitudes about women’s bodies. Sure, the Amherst women’s soccer team ate salads, but only before the main course. I knew anorexia was rife among female college runners. My teammate would spend the next semester in the hospital. Ned, of course, was oblivious. In fact, a few weeks later he would publicly extol this runner’s sudden drop in 5k times as a sign of ‘hard work’ at our end-of-season banquet. Ned never encouraged anorexia per se, but he did a lot of things to encourage it: telling girls they needed to lose weight, and praising those who did. I noticed that Ned, in his round up of the season’s achievements, did not even mention my name. He was still seething because I’d told him I was spending my spring semester abroad at the University of Melbourne, and would miss the indoor and outdoor track seasons. Running, I acknowledged, was not my first priority. And frankly, I needed a break.
I never ran for Amherst again. During my international adventures in Australia and Africa I got really sick. I had Campylobacter, which couldn’t be treated with antibiotics because the Epstein-Barr virus that was causing mono had infected my liver and giving me hepatitis. I was bedridden and feverish for weeks, too sick to even read a magazine. I sweated through the sheets so thoroughly they had to be changed multiple times a day. But, hey, it was nothing compared to being an adolescent female runner.
A plea
I know a lot of folks who coach high school cross country. Most of them groan about their problematic female runners. I hear the same stories over and over: talented female who stops thriving her junior and senior years. These coaches would probably rather crawl into a hole than have a frank discussion with their female runners about the impact of puberty on their performance. But our reticence is doing them a great disservice.
Folks who run with me know that I talk pretty openly about ‘female stuff’. Some give me the TMI line, but I scoff. As if the epidemic failure of our running community to squarely and openly recognize the complexity of female physiologies hasn’t done women enough damage, physically and emotionally. Every high school cross country coach should explain from the onset to the team, boys and girls, the fact that girls will have more complex running careers than boys. That it doesn’t mean that girls are washed up, or not trying their best, or inherently weaker. Girls are just going to have a dip. It’s going to be frustrating as hell. It’s going to seem terribly unfair. But a couple years of off running is a small price to pay for the power to bring life into the world. And, most importantly, if a girl, and the community of teammates, coaches, and parents, keep their heads, weather the down times, and avoid the pitfalls, she’ll come roaring back.
Acknowledgments
I’m very fortunate that I survived a very long career in running. And still hitting the races to this day. I’d be remiss without pointing out a few folks along the way who kept me well fed and sane:
- Chase W.: I’m sure Chase would be very surprised to find himself on this list. He only ran one season of track during our final semester of high school. Chase was not an athlete. He only joined the team because he got busted with pot, and his mom thought running track would keep him on the straight and narrow. I immediately designated Chase as my new favorite running buddy. He was irreverent. He didn’t care about running. He had a bright yellow Mercedes that was ancient and felt like it was going to fall apart any moment. And he liked chatting openly, like a girl, but with a male perspective. So when I grabbed a chunk of belly flesh and moaned about how fat I’d gotten, and how I couldn’t run fast anymore, he responded: Girls are supposed to be soft. You look so much better than you did before. You were all angular and tendon-y. Trust me, this is better. I quipped back that I was still slow as shit, but the comment sunk in. And I didn’t feel like ripping off my squishy belly fat quite as much afterwards.
- Tom C.: LUNCHES. Keeping me fed is a full-time job. Tom’s heaping lunches kept me out of the underweight-red-zone for many years when I was living on a grad school ‘salary’.
- Antonio’s pizza, Amherst, MA: I had trouble feeding myself when I got to Amherst. There was only one dining hall, and I hated the food. I dropped five or six pounds my first year. I finally got a family doctor to write the dean a note and I was exempted from the meal plan. Antonio’s pizza is walking distance from the college and serves up delicious slices with funky toppings like chicken tortellini. If you ever have a chance to visit Amherst, Antonio’s should be at the top of your list.
- Finally, this blog was inspired in part by a beautiful letter that pro runner Lauren Fleshman wrote to her younger self.
I keep a life list of regrets. Certain events that I wish, with all my heart, that I could undo. One regret is Phoebe. Phoebe was a Rhodesian Ridgeback. We got her as a puppy when I was in eighth grade, a couple years after our dog Sam died of cancer. My mom’s sister Winnie sent us Phoebe from Los Angeles. Winnie and Jeffrey had a pair of Rhodesians they thought the world of. Phoebe was an adorable, playful puppy, and I loved her deeply. She had a mind of her own, and wouldn’t play fetch, so instead I played chase-the-puppy-around-the-yard trying to get the stick.
Phoebe had a mind of her own in other ways, too. Whenever we left the house, she slept on the couch and toppled over the trash, spreading it around the house. Looking back, we totally should have crate-trained her. Or secured the trash better. Instead, if we got home to strewn trash, my dad would beat Phoebe with his fists. It got to a point where whenever we raised our voice, she would preemptively lower to the ground and cower with her tail between her legs, whimpering.
But the beatings had no impact on her behavior. At some point we could no longer delude ourselves into believing that the beatings had any purpose, other than to take out anger on what we had concluded was a bad, overbred, neurotic dog. Phoebe was no Sam.
Sam had been a mutt — some lab, a dose of golden, some german shepherd. Sam was a real dog. He tore apart bones. He fetched tennis balls like it was nobody’s business. Even if you threw them 30 feet into the lake. Or deep into our bamboo forest. And he observed the household rules to a tee. There was an imaginary line on the floor leading to our bedrooms that Sam never crossed. My dad boasted that you could drop a steak on the other side of the line and Sam would still not cross it.
Sure, Sam had his own quirks. Like attacking people and terrorizing friends and neighbors. He sent my friend Stephanie to the hospital for stitches. His jaws snapped through the car window and bit a kid walking by on the sidewalk. But our family just considered that the natural behavior of a real dog. We never punished Sam for attacking the mail as it came through our door’s mail slot, stripping the wood from the door with his incisors.
My friends loved Phoebe. She had deep dark, doe-like eyes. And a sleek light brown body, with a strip of hair that ran the opposite direction along the top of her back. Ridgebacks were originally trained for lion hunting in Africa. And we constantly ridiculed Phoebe for it: ‘What kind of lion hunter lets the cats take your cushy bed, and make you sleep on the wood floor?’ Compared to Sam, Phoebe was a total sissy. She had a delicate stomach, and wretched up any bones. She would only go into water as deep as her knees. She didn’t even like baths. Instead, her favorite activity was basking on the armchair in the back yard for hours. I tried to take Phoebe on four mile runs in the woods, but she had no interest, and just lagged behind while I dragger her along with the leash.
Over the years, I came around to see Phoebe the way my dad did: as a pretty worthless animal. Another neurotic female. My dad used to throw tennis balls all day with Sam. But he never walked Phoebe. Never took her to the park. I still remember how, when Phoebe finally died, my dad was driving our station wagon to her favorite watering hole in Rock Creek Park to deposit her ashes. Only he drove the family to the wrong spot.
My mom was nice to Phoebe. She took her to the park every day and let her wade in the water, even if it was just up to her knees. Sam was never allowed to play with other dogs at the park. He would have ripped them to pieces. But Phoebe had her set of special doggie friends, the calmer ones that didn’t try to jump on her, and she’d race around the field with them. In many ways, Phoebe was a way more normal and well-adjusted dog than Killer Sam. The fact that Sam was perceived as the ideal dog, and Phoebe derided as chicken-shit, speaks volumes to how the Nelson family valued male traits of power and virility over female traits of sociability and sweetness.
It breaks my heart, but I have to admit how cruel I was to Phoebe. She would run up to me, her ass swinging side to side and her tail hitting all the walls and furniture, trying to squeeze between my legs so I could pat her sides and rub her ears, just like I did in the old days. But as the years wore on, I’d ignore her and nudge her out of my way, convinced she was a dud. Just another weak, neurotic female, undeserving of love.
The pain will never go away. She was my dog, and I didn’t love her, let alone protect her. But I can try to understand my behavior within the larger context of Nelson family dynamics. There were no ambiguities about where power resided in our household. Everything that came out of my father’s mouth was gospel. Things that came out of my mother’s mouth were dismissed as the nags of a neurotic, intellectually inferior female. My mom never won an argument. She barely succeeded in getting me and my dad to remove our stinky socks from the living room floor.
I grew up determined to be a Bob, and not a Jill. I killed myself trying to prove that I was just as smart and strong and skilled as the boys. The alternative seemed to be a life condemned to constant cooking, laundry, and calls with internet and cable providers. And rather than gratitude, my mom’s efforts were met with derision: never buying enough ears of corn, overcooking the steaks again, and called neurotic if she requested participation in any form of tidying. Like removing the stinky socks still languishing on the living room carpet.
My freshman year, Mr Mathis had a parent-teacher conference with my parents. He described me to my parents as an unusually bright and gifted student. Right, she’s a very good student, my parents accepted. But Mr Mathis pressed his point. My parents furrowed their brows, and for the first time were confronted with the possibility that a female in their midst might actually be clever, and not just good at organization and attention to detail.
Unfortunately, Phoebe wasn’t the only one I failed to defend. Every time I didn’t pick up after myself I was participating in my mom’s trampling. I absolutely went along with the family perspective that my dad was right about everything. I can never make it up to Phoebe, who passed years ago. But I can keep clawing away at the warped values still twisted into my psyche, whispering that a woman’s words have less weight than a man’s. And my female family members should be aware that I know acutely what it’s like to be trampled by Bob. If they think that piles of achievements somehow exempted me, they are gravely mistaken. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and shake that little Martha, and warn her the game is rigged.
Yesterday I was speaking with my mother in the car, explaining how I’m still struggling to view myself as an equal in my marriage, to give my words the same weight as my husband’s. Even though Aaron is the world’s most supportive, progressive husband. And I’m a successful NIH scientist. Somehow my hardwired brain still picks out all my shortcomings and presents them as evidence that I, being female, am inherently weaker and inferior. Just because I can’t ran as fast or speak as forcefully. As I struggled to find the right phrasing, she interrupted, ‘Oh, well, Aaron is just so intelligent and capable.’ And I fell silent, processing the dimensions of the battle ahead.
Fifth grade.
I was in elementary school when our gym teacher Mr Palmer made us run a timed mile around the gym. The gym was barely the size of a tennis court, so we had to run 26 laps around a rectangle defined by four orange cones. We split into teams of two: one person ran the laps, while the other counted. Odette was my partner.
I was a kid with too much energy. I used every piece of furniture in the house as my personal gymnastics vault. So I skidded around those 90 degree turns like an over-sugared rocket, finishing the mile in 6:57. I beat everyone except two boys, Jonathan Kosack and Pablo Wolf. Mr Palmer phoned up the high school track coach to tell him he had a killer 10-year old coming his way.
But there was one thing Mr Palmer didn’t take into account when he anointed me Bethesda’s next track star. And that was Bob. Bob wasn’t like the other dads. He drove around in his convertible with the top down drinking gin from a glass. Without a seatbelt on. Bob didn’t like the Nanny State telling him what to do. Or his Nanny Wife, for that matter. She was a real toughie, trying to get him to take showers and all….once a week. My poor mom did her damnedest to keep the stains off his clothes. But she couldn’t get him to shower. He had a toenail fungus that crept all the way up his shins like ivy. His toenails turned greenish brown and thickened, growing over the tops of his toes so they clicked the floor when he walked. One day my dad came to pick me up at school, and I had to defend him from Mr Grapes, our school security guard, who was escorting him off the grounds because he mistook the man dressed in stained, tattered clothes for a vagrant. I’ll never forget my squeak, It’s okay, Mr Grapes, this is my dad!
For a lot of my life, my dad’s anti-establishment libertarianism made him my hero. Stick it to the man! Mom couldn’t yell at me for leaving socks in the living room when dad did the same — and his were stinkier. But you know how every neighborhood has one family that everyone looks kind of sideways at? Looking back on it, I realize that was totally my family. We had a big dog named Sam. For some reason we didn’t neuter Sam. I still don’t know why, because he bit my friends, terrorized our extended family, and had to go under house arrest. Our neighbor walked his rottweiler Rex every night with a ski pole, just in case Sam got out. I’m not quite sure why we didn’t neuter Sam. He was a giant mutt, and we sure as hell weren’t breeding him. I guess my dad thought neutering would make him a sissy. The kind of dog that couldn’t hold his gin.
But getting back to the point…..A Note To All Future Dads: if your daughter dashes a mile in a fast time for a 10-year old, maybe take her out to Baskin Robbins. Maybe buy her some proper running shoes. Or, heck, maybe just do nothing and keep on reading the Times. But whatever you do, don’t do what Bob did.
Bob’s response to his daughter’s mile was, Huh, I wonder what I can run a mile in. So one Saturday morning he dragged me out to the local high school track (a proper outdoor track, not the gym floor outfitted with cones) and made me line up with him. It was a dull, cloudy day, and we were the only ones there. He started his wristwatch and dashed out to the lead. I couldn’t keep up, and dragged behind him for four laps, weighing the pros and cons of dropping out. More and more distance spread between us, and he finished exuberantly in around 6:30. I plodded in despondently after him in 7:15. As we drove home, he marveled at how an old guy like him could run so fast, and I feigned enthusiasm. He had crushed me.
Any interest I may have had in running was drained that day, and I wouldn’t race again until high school, when the field hockey team made me.
Ninth grade.
The Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School field hockey team ate the competition for breakfast. They were Maryland State Champions in 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2004. They all wore fancy jackets with an embroidered message: The Faces May Change, but the Tradition Remains. You know why that tradition remained? Coach Amy Wood.
My best friends were all field hockey players.
Coach Wood was all business. Her temper was as fiery as her hair. Beneath her khaki shorts her legs were rippled with muscles. She wasn’t afraid to make girls cry. Or make them work. After all, she made them champions. As part of pre-season training, she also made every JV and Varsity player run a mile in under 8:30, or else they couldn’t be on the team. Adding to her Fear Factor, she ran the mile with them, and kicked everyone’s ass every time.
Amy Wood, Washington Post Coach of the Year
Entering B-CC as a freshman, I had never held a field hockey stick. But the school’s best freshman athletes vied for the coveted spots on the JV team, and I was determined to get one. But they sure made you earn it. Try-outs were held in August, the week before school started, with two sessions each day, morning and afternoon. August is brutally hot in DC, and every day was Code Red on the ozone index, meaning that we weren’t even supposed to be outside. But Coach Wood didn’t give a s&$t about air quality. Our days were filled with wind sprints, stairs, push-ups, and hills. And finally, the dreaded mile.
The course consisted of two laps around the high school grounds, right by the very track where my father had proudly beaten me four years earlier. We all set out together as a clump, but spread out quickly. The hot air made It hard to breathe, but the trees along the sidewalk at least provided some shade. I started off in the thick of the pack, but steadily moved up until the only ones ahead of me were the superstar All-Met Washington Post Moe Denney and Coach Wood. I sheepishly moved past Moe’s larger-than-life aura, and settled in behind Amy, paralyzed. I was terrified of her.
But she would have none of it. Come on! Coach Wood yelled, beckoning with her hand for me to approach.
I hesitated.
Come ON! she repeated, becoming exasperated and flicking her hand again.
And then, it sunk in. She wanted me to pass. My throat choked up. She wanted me to beat her.
With a burst of energy and exuberance, I flew past Coach Wood and up the hill to the finish. I did the two hilly loops in just over 6 minutes, finishing in a place that overlooked the very track where I had run with my father. I was the first B-CC field hockey player ever to beat Amy. And she was ecstatic.
It’s been more than 20 years since I played field hockey at B-CC. But whenever my running gets in a dark place, I still think of Amy. There are just a handful of moments in life when someone gives you just the right nudge, at just the right time, in just the right way. And changes your life forever.
I turned out to be too scrawny for field hockey, and switched to cross country my sophomore year. My toothpick legs surprised the field by winning the Montgomery County Championships. But Parents of the World, let’s be real, you have no idea who your teenage kids are. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll find out something later in life when they start blogging.
