When not skiing in Italy or France, Aaron and I stash pb&j  sandwiches in our pockets.  The aim of our ski morning then becomes to not fall and squish the guts out of our sandwiches into our pockets.  The joy of the pb&j is that if you happen to come across a beautiful spot on the mountain, and it happens to be lunch-ish-time, you can plop yourself down then and there to munch.  Of course, this option is only realistic when the wind isn’t blistering your face, and the overlap between the time period when the wind isn’t blistering your face + the time period when there is sufficient snow to ski = the last two weeks of May.

Arapahoe Basin is the last ski resort in Colorado to close down for summer, due to its high elevation and pride.  The conditions aren’t great for ‘real’ skiing, so it’s kind of just a party — plenty of chicks in bikinis, one guy wore a banana suit, a bunch of dudes spent the day practicing their backflips off a jump.

Aaron, Boots, and I signed up for the Lurray International Distance Triathlon on August 16, 2014.  This will be my first triathlon.  Which apparently means that between now and August I need to learn to ride a bike.

I was exceedingly pleased with the bike I rented from Rebel Sports in Frisco, Colorado.  The sales dude referred to it as a ‘comfort’ bike.  Thirty-four miles later, after we had biked from Frisco to Breckenridge (sandwich break #1), back to Frisco and around the lake to Dillon (sandwich break #2), my ass was very grateful for the extra padding.

 

 

Road running is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  There’s nothing particularly thrilling or unexpected.  But it’s a comfort food, and sometimes it just hits the spot.

Lately I’ve been stretching myself athletically in ways I haven’t since way back when I was a kid.  It’s been exciting, learning new sports like swimming and mountain biking, getting back into skiing, running my first 50 miler at Bull Run.

But it’s all been a very humbling experience.  I’ve had to learn how to get passed.  How to half-drown and gasp in the pool as I try to thrash across 25 meters.  How to miserably watch all the perky ponytails go by as I sit barfy and queasy in a chair mid-Bull Run.  Aaron likes to mention how I’m the only person he’s ever seen get off a bike to go down a hill.

Ultra running has kind of bludgeoned a part of my self-image.  Since I moved to DC in 2008 I’ve raced the road marathon distance seven times, each time within a mere four-minute window, between 2:55 – 2:59, always managing to slip under the three hour barrier.  I’ve run injured, I’ve run sick, I’ve had stomach problems, I’ve pooped in the woods midway, I’ve been overtrained, undertrained – but I can always churn it out over those short distances.  I’m similarly consistent at the 5k (all under 18min), 8k (under 30min) and 10k (under 38min) distances.

I remember chatting with Ragan after one of the Women’s Half Marathons, and she admitted she was hoping I’d blow up in the second half.  I recall being somewhat stunned.  Me?  Blow up?  I’m 4-for-4 at the Women’s Half Marathon from 2009-2013.   And then I realized that Ragan knew me not from road racing, but from the ultra races.  Of course she figured I’d blow.

Because when I venture past the 26 mile mark, my race turns into a game of roulette.  At one end, I could have smooth sailing like at Highland Sky last year.  But problems that I can tough out over short distances take a much larger compounding toll over longer distances, and at the other end I could have Holiday Lake, Willis River, and Bull Run.

It’s eaten at my heart that I can’t be a rock-hard competitor at the ultra distances, that I can’t count on giving an expected showing.  Maybe others learned this a long time ago (I think Aaron’s way ahead of me on this one), but I’m just beginning to settle on the idea that it’s somewhat pointless to compete with intention at all at ultra distances — you just have to accept however the roulette happens to spin that day.  It’s not in my nature, I *love* competitive sports, and turning down that nozzle is hard.  But I’m beginning to accept that you can’t approach an ultra the same way you can approach a shorter race, with expectations.  You can’t will performance.  At least not at my low level of ultra experience.

So after a six month road running drought, there was something cathartic about getting to churn out a good old fashioned road marathon, to know exactly what’s gonna hit me and how to take the punches, to win and take the prize.  And even if it’s roasting hot, and even if my foot hurts, and even if my stomach sours and I have to scratch some leaves in the middle, I know exactly how to gut it out.

~                                  ~                                 ~                                        ~

‘So, are you planning to run the Boston Marathon next year?’ Aaron asked as we bumped along in our Jeep through eastern West Virginia.

‘Yeah, I gotta.  That’s 2015.’  (I’m on a three-year Boston plan: 2006, 2009, 2012….)

‘So, what are you going to run as a qualifier?’

‘Oh, crap!’  I responded, and nodded off again.  I had woken up at 4am that day, flown from Managua, Nicaragua, to Houston to DCA, gotten home that evening for just long enough to throw all my dirty clothes in a trash bag, and headed off to Canaan, WV with our cat Leda.

The problem with Boston registration occurring in September is that there are basically no marathons in the DC area in the months leading up to it to run as a qualifier (except an indoor marathon that’s like 200+ laps in Arlington in July).  If you haven’t run a fall or spring marathon, you’re pretty much screwed.  But we had run the Delaware Marathon last year (the last time I needed a last-minute BQ — although I later changed my mind and opted for Bull Run instead), and it was a pretty nice and convenient little race.  The $500 purse I won for 2nd place last year didn’t hurt either.

But we had big plans for the weekend in Canaan, so no way were we going to sacrifice those to taper. After a Saturday running through the Sodds, we upped the ante on Sunday and hopped onto some rented mountain bikes and headed into the Canaan wilds.  Now, a year ago you would never have found me on a bike or in a pool.  I had long declared a bicycle to be the Vehicle of Death.  In a pool I behaved much like a drowning cat in water.  Have you seen those Youtubes of them dropping the lion cubs in the moat for their ‘swim test’?  Yeah, that would be me.  I considered triathletes to be a separate species.  But Aaron is a sneeeeeaky bear, and he has been chipping away at these steadfast positions.  He got a big boost last fall when my fibroma was diagnosed and I had to find other ways to stay off my feet.

It was only my third time biking as an adult.  Aaron had told me that we were going to be biking on a ‘gravel road’.  I reminded him of that description when I found myself (a) biking hub-deep through lake-puddles, (b) getting flung over my handlebars when my bike sunk hub-deep into mud, (c) navigating steep rock chutes, and (d) biking up 1800 ft over a 4-mile climb.  But I LOVED it.  My butt bits were in a pretty sorry state after three hours of hard bouncing.  But my fibroma has sadly impaired my ability to run rocks, so it was a thrill to get to go mad-adventuring again.  In some ways, mountain biking reminds me of horse riding — well, a bit more like bronco riding, but I’ll take what I can get.

On Saturday we kept up tradition by running the Race for the Cure with my mom and Aaron’s mom.  R4C is my mom’s one big race of the year, and she rocked it once again in 41 minutes.  Aaron’s mom won her age group in ~29 minutes.  After Mother’s Day brunch with the moms at Old Ebbitt Grill, we skeetered off to Wilmington.  After our bulletproof-glass-registration-desk-nestled-between-two-strip-clubs disaster of a hotel last year, we treated ourselves to the Westin this year.  Best decision ever.

My foot was still hurting (I’ve now developed a second fibroma, about a cm towards the heel from the first one on the same foot), so there was a lot of uncertainty about how my race would go.  I opted to wear my Montrails to try to give the fibroma maximum protection from the pavement.  Aaron wasn’t sure how he was going to run either. I was still feeling the effects of our marathon bike adventure body wide.   So we just ran together, and let two other women go a ways ahead at the start.

I’ve come to really appreciate the charms of the mid-sized marathon.  There were about 500 people who finished the marathon, and about 3,000 total participants in the marathon-relay, half marathon, and marathon combined.  The logistics are beautifully easy.  It’s also fun to be able to compete for the prize purse, which at Delaware is pretty healthy given the relative strength of the competition.

I’ve also come to enjoy the mellowness of the small-city marathons.  When it’s not wall-to-wall fans, it’s easier to focus on the few energetic folks — the guy strumming Bare Naked Ladies on his guitar on the King St hill, the band near mile 16, the kid with the realistic sign ‘Go Stranger, Go’.  The course had good variety, starting along the river and winding up into the neighborhoods.  And, critically for any marathon held in mid-May, a good part of the course was covered by the shade of trees.  Despite Delaware’s reputation for ultimate flatness, the Delaware Marathon does have a significant 1-mile hill (for a road marathon) that they make us run twice (the course is two loops).

The woman in second place had dropped off the pace and I passed her on the first big hill (mile 6ish).  The stretch after the hill was a long straight boulevard and I could see the first place woman up ahead.  Aaron noticed that I was starting to reel her in way too quickly, and reminded me to cool it, illustrating reason #1 why it’s so much better running with Aaron.

After I took two gels my stomach turned and I desperately had to poop.  I was able to hang on for a while.  But when we hit the big down hill, I started to scope out escape plans.  There were some poop-friendly woods off to our right that looked awfully inviting.  But they were rife with poison ivy.  I had to poop, but I didn’t have to poop bad enough to plunge into a grove of poison ivy.  Finally I saw a little dirt trail that skeetered into the woods and I made the quick call.  I’m terribly proud of how efficiently I was able to drop trou and eliminate.  I really think I set a PPR (personal poop record).  Definitely a time to draw on one’s trail skills.

The major trade-off of the local marathon compared to enterprises like Boston is the small hiccups in race organization.  Overall, the Delaware Marathon was extremely well organized.  There were mainly just minor omissions — gels weren’t delivered at the aid stations they were expected at, it was a challenge to figure out which cups were water versus Gatorade at the aid stations, etc.  I started to get dizzy when the promised mile 14 gel hand-out didn’t materialize.  But Aaron handed me one of his own (reason #2 why it’s so much better running with Aaron).

But there was one major snafu: the volunteer who was supposed to direct runners at a key traffic circle around the halfway point was missing, and runners were mistaking the circle for the turnaround and doubling back too early.  Aaron of course knew the course and kept me headed in the right direction (reason #3 why it’s so much better running with Aaron).

At the turnaround around mile ~15 there was a chance to see where the lead women stacked up.  I was about 3 minuted behind the lead woman, and about 3 minutes ahead of the 3rd place woman.  An amazing Kenyan guy was running away with the men’s race.  We steered as many confused runners the correct way around the traffic circle and towards the real turnaround.  But some guys had turned early and the RD ended up re-calculating their times to make up for the lost 0.7 miles.

Around mile 16 you pass by the start/finish/relay transition area by the river that is teeming with people and you can’t help but pick up your pace amid all the cheers.  But you turn the corner and suddenly it goes blank quiet, you’re running under a grimy underpass with potholes everywhere, and it dawns on you that you have an entire second loop to go.  It’s around mile 16.5, and you can’t help but start to fantasize about quitting running for the rest of your life.

‘Did you see that?’  Aaron asked me.

I was too busy wallowing in my lowliness to see much beyond my feet.  ‘See what?’

‘The lead woman was sitting on the curb.’

I lifted my chin up.  ‘Seriously??’

‘Yeah, she was there with the pace bike.’

‘Sweet!’  (reason #4 why it’s so much better running with Aaron)

At that point, the race was only mine to loose, and we ran a spirited but conservative second loop.  The day was heating up, I wasn’t sure whether I was well-trained or not, and the woman was unlikely to catch me unless I blew up.  I still was having some stomach issues, especially after consuming any gels, so I decided just to run smart and controlled.  In the end was pretty darn nice to be able to finish a marathon not feeling absolutely miserable.

As Aaron and I were entering our final mile of the 2014 Delaware Marathon, it occurred to him that they better have a tape waiting for me to break at the finish line.  Aaron has been listening to me grumble for a while about how with all the races I’ve won over my 20 years of competitive running, including a couple marathons, I have never had that little thrill of breaking the tape at the finish line.  I know it’s trivial, but I’ve had it on my bucket list for a while.

We crept in just under 3 hours in 2:59.  I’ve run my last six marathons within a four minute window of 2:55-2:59.  It’s nice that my natural pace seems to be just under the critical 3-hour threshold– just pure lucky I suppose, as if the race was a mile longer I’d be over.

 

I chatted with the RD and a news reporter after the race, who ended up writing a nice little bit that included Aaron’s role keeping my race in check.  The interview got cut short by my desperate need to poop, and for about an hour or so my stomach was pretty sick.  But it was so much better being sick at the Westin compared to last year’s grungy little hotel where the maids were practically peeling me off the floor at check-out time.  I don’t take Immodium during races, but maybe I should(?)  My stomach always spasms.

As the first-place female marathon winner I won $1,000 in prize money, as well as a lifetime free entry to the event.  I decided to put the winnings into the Martha Health Fund towards massages and medical care for my foot.  I’ve made an appointment to see a new foot specialist in Baltimore in June, as I’m really disappointed that the problem seems to be proliferating.  But if my running career gets cut short, at least I had my little moment of breaking the tape.

 

 

 

 

The Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School track team filed off the cheese bus into an overcast Saturday morning at Middleburg High School. The heat wave that had singed DC for much of early May had finally lifted, and the 70-degree temperatures felt chilly enough to keep our vinyl blue-and-gold track suits on.

‘Damn!’ David exclaimed as he stepped off the bus, removing his headphones and pointing at a large dome structure ahead. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘It’s a silo,’ Alpha said tersely.  ‘Welcome to Middleburg.’

‘Say wh-at?’

Alpha did not respond. A senior, this was Alpha’s final 2A West Regional Track & Field Championships, and she could not be bothered with David’s unfamiliarity with rural Maryland.

Maduba lifted her beaded braids from her eyes as she scampered off the bus. ‘Man, looka all dem white kids!’ Maduba could get away with saying things like that because (a) she was from South Africa, (b) she had a black mom and white dad, and (c) she could run 400m in 60 seconds.  Maduba was also known for getting away with eating three hotdogs before running her 400m race and still outkicking the field.

We ambled to the track as a disorderly herd that bothered Alpha far more than our coach, Mike Flemming. Coach Flemming had been a star runner for Nebraska some forty years ago, and his coaching style was defined by a strong emphasis on calisthenics. In the next months, my parents would stage a coup that would remove Mr Flemming as our fall cross-country coach after twenty-odd years on the job. They had a legitimate complaint, as the girls cross country team didn’t even have the five runners required to field an official team. But little old Flemming had such cute twinkly blue eyes I still felt bad.

There was a lot of commotion on the track, and enough banners and streamers to look  like a state fair.  I watched a giant shot putter, bursting through his ill-fitting singlet, dip into a deep squat and hurl a metal ball across the field, much farther than anyone on our team could throw.  Someone was speaking over the loudspeaker, but there was too much background noise to make it out.

The metal bleachers were cold and reeked of IcyHot. Assistant Coach Smart handed out the order of events. Thankfully the mile came early so I didn’t have to wait around all day on edge.

Dave bounded from behind and grabbed me by the shoulders gleefully. ‘It’s do-or-die today! You ready, Min?’

‘I think I would rather just die.’

‘M-in!’

‘Regionals is the worst.’ I sighed. ‘There’s no glory, it’s just something you have to get through so you can go on to States.’

‘Hey, not all of us are guaranteed to go on.’

‘I know, I know. Last year qualifying was super exciting.’

‘Martha. Go warm up.’ Coach Smart was in full clipboard/cap/perky ponytail organization mode.

‘Already?’

‘One hour til gun.’

‘I don’t need an hour to warm up,’ I protested.

‘You’re always whining. Go.’

I unzipped the insides of my blue track pants with gold and white blazes on the sides, and reluctantly extricated myself from my giant grey hoodie. Underneath I had a mesh white singlet with scratchy blue and gold trim and B-CC in block letters, and the flimsiest petals of shorts, cut high on the leg and the trim coming undone at the bottom. We had no evidence, but I’d have bet all my lunch money that our uniforms dated back to the 70s.

I warmed up alone in the parking lot. The last time I had been to Middleburg was the regional cross country meet last November. Cross country was so much better than track. I missed the course walks, where we had 3.1 miles to stroll the course as a team, ostensibly learning where it went so we wouldn’t get lost in the race. But we goofed off so much I could never recall where the course actually followed, and my mother could always tell when I got that deer-in-the-headlights look when I came around the turn with absolutely no clue where I was supposed to run.

I trotted around the high school, right by the spot where seven months ago Tripp O’Connell had recounted his traumatic regional cross country race. Tripp had arrived at the race wearing spandex shorts under his uniform. But the power tripping race official had ruled that every team member’s uniform had to match exactly and made Tripp remove the spandex. Everyone wears spandex under their uniform in soccer and lacrosse and other sports. I don’t know why running has to be so fascismo. Especially when there is no physical contact. I mean, it’s understandable that you can’t wear a big chain around your neck in soccer, when you could whip someone in the face with it going up for a header. But running?? Besides, have you seen the kind of jewelry Gail Devers wore at the 100m at Sydney 2000?  God, track officials are the worst.

Apparently the inside liner of Tripp’s thirty-year old uniform shorts had worn out the elastic, and Tripp had to run most of the race with his hand in his pants holding it all from flopping out. He confessed that early in the race there had been some major slippage and was certain that some of the other racers had gotten a good show. With neither our boys nor girls cross country teams qualifying to go on to states (just three of us qualified as individuals), that was the last day we all spent together as a cross country team, howling over Tripp’s story.

I returned to the bleachers, where my parents had arrived. I checked in with them and then scurried to the track to get in a few last strides in. I was much more confident now than a year ago when I ran my first regional meet as a gawky freshman in clunky Nike sneakers.  Now, in my featherweight track spikes I knew the drill. But at the same time, everyone knew me.

My jittering intensified as the track officials walked us to the starting line, and my right leg shook uncontrollably. As always, I would let the pack burst out and then reel them in gradually over the next laps. I just had to finish top-4.  I would let the race unfold and let my finishing kick pop into a Q spot, just as I had at last year’s regionals.

‘Ready.  Set.’

The starting gun shot and the air smelled like gun powder. Nearly twenty girls jockeyed for position. On my second step I felt a chain around my neck clunk against my collarbone, and I realized I had neglected to remove it before the race. I stopped dead and jumped into the infield, all the girls flying by. I fumbled desperately with the clasp, finally got the chain off and threw it in the grass, while everyone else disappeared around the first turn.

By the time I hopped back onto the track the leaders had already completed the first turn. I tore after the pack with a panicked adrenaline, at least 50 meters behind. I trailed the pack alone for the first lap and a half , not seeming to make up much ground.  The only good thing about the mile is that you’re running so hard that you don’t have time to think or get demoralized.

In the second lap I caught the first straggler, then another, and something clicked. Runners were coming back to me, and by the third lap I had pulled myself to the middle of the pack. Entering the final lap, I slipped into my kick. The beauty of the mile is that your lungs are heaving so hard, you’re not registering anything else around you.  People might have cheered as I gained on the girl in the last qualifying position.  But all you hear is the thumping in your head, the gasping of your breath, and the wind whooshing by your ears.

I stumbled to a stop and rested my knees on my hands after crossing the line, lungs still heaving. Panting over my knees, I grinned ear to ear.  I had rallied to overcome what seemed an insurmountable deficit, and I had qualified.

There was a tap on my shoulder and I looked sideways to see an obese man busting out of the front buttons of his official’s uniform and donning an ill-fitting cap. He carried a large clip board.

‘Um, missy. I am afraid you are disqualified.’

I still hadn’t caught my breath yet. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘No jewelry permitted,’ he said flatly.

‘But I took it off.’ My throat constricted. ‘I only ran like four steps in it.’

‘Rules are rules.  Sorry.’

‘But the only one it hurt was me.’  My eyes were wide.

I sat down in the grass and placed my head in my hands and sobbed. Coach Flemming and Coach Smart quickly arrived and began discussing the matter with the official, but to no avail.

I’m sure the meet continued and other races were held. I’m sure my friends Rob and Dave ran. I’m sure Alpha demolished her competition and screamed at her relay team for sloppy baton passes. I’m sure the relay won anyway. But honestly I recall nothing else from that year’s Regional championship. Nothing but several hours of crushed sobbing that was met with extraordinarily sympathetic, consoling words from my coaches and teammates. Even Alpha.

After the final race of the day was run, the 4 x 400m relay, I said my farewells to the B-CC track team for the year and followed my parents to our Honda Civic.

As we walked through the parking lot, a thought entered my father’s head. ‘You know, if you had really been thinking, you would have run back to the starting line and taken your necklace off there. That way, you would have just technically started the race late. I’m sure there’s nothing in the rule books that says you can’t start the race late.’

‘I doubt you can start the race late.’

‘I bet there’s nothing in the rule book.’ He thought he had hit on something. ‘I mean, why would they have a rule against starting a race late?’

‘Whatever.’

‘I mean, just if you had really been thinking.’

I had finally stopped crying a half hour ago, but the tears began to well again.

‘Or, I bet if you had just left the chain on, no one would have noticed.’ He had concocted another plausible alternative. ‘I mean, it was just a tiny chain. You brought attention to it by taking it off. You could just have not touched it.’

‘Oh, Bob!’ my mother exclaimed.

But the economist in him was on a roll.  ‘You know, what you really need to have is a mental checklist. Before each race you go through your checklist of places where you might have jewelry: wrists, ankles, neck, ears, fingers.’

‘I never wear jewelry.’ My hands fumbled with the chain in the pocket of my hoodie. I had eventually retrieved it from the field, but I couldn’t bring myself to put it back on.

‘Well, clearly you wore it today.’

‘I don’t even know where it came from. I don’t wear rings, I don’t wear earrings, I don’t wear necklaces. For some reason I put on that chain last night.’

‘When you went out with your friends last night,’ my mother added.

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘Well that’s it. It went against your routine,’ my father explained. ‘Routine is very important in sports. That’s why tennis players bounce the ball the exact same way before each serve.’

I had not taken to tennis as a child, much preferring sports like soccer where it was harder to identify discrete errors.  But I begrudgingly picked up a racquet from time to time.  Probably the last time I had played tennis was in Los Angeles, during what had been billed as a friendly game of doubles with my father and I teamed up against my uncle Jeffrey and his friend David. Jeffrey loves retelling the story about how my dad yelled at me to get off the court when I hit the ball in the net too many times.

My head hung low and I stared at the pavement of Middleburg’s parking lot.  Running was the stupidest sport in the world.  But as the defending state champion in cross country, I could not quit.  My grip on my emotions faltered, and tears streamed down my cheeks again.  I would never be a state champion again.