The ugly: Smoke and fire everywhere. By Saturday morning the Sayre fire was already so bad that the 5 Freeway was shut down and Steve, our pace group leader, was stuck at home on the other side. As the rest of us headed from Griffith Park into Burbank over the Riverside Drive bridge for our weekly group run, our delight at spotting a flock of egrets bathing in the LA River was soon eclipsed by alarm at the growing grey-black gob on the horizon. By the time we returned to the park mid-morning – about two hours later -- the air was heavy with heat and smoke.

Our coach, Scott Bolivar, who schleps from Yoruba Linda every week, returned home on Saturday (after 2 ½ hours of detours and delays) to find the houses across the street being evacuated. By Sunday his own home was full of ash. It was still standing, though, so he wasn’t complaining.

In my 19 years as a Californian, I’ve witnessed many horrible fires, from the massive Oakland Fire of 1991, which took 25 lives and wiped out more than a 2,000 homes, to the many Malibu fires, to the Griffith Park Fire, to this. As with all disasters, fires bring out the perverse nature of reporting. The bigger the fire and the accompanying devastation, the bigger the story. Hence the bigger the opportunity for a hungry journalist. These days, thankfully, I’m not out there sucking smoke for a shot at page one. As a marathoner wanna-be, I can worry about my friends and family and fret about the air quality like everyone else. It would be hard to imagine worse running weather.

The bad: Absorbing the news that the marathon will, indeed, be held on Memorial Day-- more than three months later than previously scheduled. Linda Francisco, a fund raising coodinator for AIDS Project Los Angeles, told the runners gathered at Griffith Park on Saturday that at a meeting the day before, the marathon folks were apologetic. “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” she told us, and encouraged us to use to delay to raise more money for the cause. Linda also said that contrary to reports, APLA was not in on the date change and learned about it like everybody else, from the press release.

For those of us committed to training with APLA, the new date means not only three-plus additional months of training, but those same three-plus months of Saturdays given over to running and taken away from our families and/or non-running lives. My husband and kids are making a big sacrifice for me to do the training. No mom on Saturdays. They’ve been incredibly supportive, but I know as the months add up it’s going to get old.

On Saturday there was a fair amount of grumbling from the group, especially from those who already have other plans for Memorial Day weekend. What’s the point of all that training if you miss the payoff? Dwayne, a documentary filmmaker, will be out of town for a film shoot, and Mae is scheduled to give her father a partial liver transplant.

Eun, who is an acupuncturist, was philosophical about the date change. The training is too long now, she said. She will probably quit at some point, though when, exactly, she isn’t sure. “I will run,” she said, “until I stop.”

For me, the new date obliterates my plan to run a marathon by the time I’m 40. By May I’ll be 41, which doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. My friend Sara also turns a year older in March. “By May I’ll be in a whole new demographic,” she moaned.

For the APLA fundraising organization, it’s a potential disaster. Participation among runners in AIDS fundraising in the recent races in Honolulu and Amsterdam was disappointing, organizers told me. The coaches, the fundraising staff, the supplies and equipment all cost money, and fundraisers trimmed three weeks off the training schedule in LA (before the owners made the first date change, to February) as a cost-saving measure. Now the owners have gone and added in another three months, and the fundraisers have to find a way to make enough additional money to cover the added expenses.

One guy wondered: "Can we get the address of the marathon owner so we can send him a big pile of poop?"

The good: Not everyone is unhappy. A runner named Diane could not be more pleased. For her, the marathon training is part of a larger life change she’s been working on for a while and plans to continue, including diet and exercise. So a few extra months of training is gravy.

Coach Scott told us, in his typical understated way, that he’d actually been quite worried about our ability to be ready for a marathon come February 16 (the previously scheduled marathon date). (Him and me both!) Now, he says, he’s sure we’ll all be in fine form.

And for those of us who are still a bit poky on marathon day, my co-runner Andrea points out that by May, Daylight Savings will be in full swing, so, while it may be hot, none of us will be left to run in the dark.

I haven’t written much about the actual experience of running lately because when it comes down to it, there’s not a whole lot to say. You put one foot in front of the other and move forward until it’s time to stop.

It’s not all that exciting, really. What makes it interesting is what goes on in my head and inside the heads of the people around me. How we interact, how we react to the running experience, and what we think about how we’re reacting.

I was going to get to all that, but I was waiting for something momentous, like mile ten.

Then mile eight happened, and it felt more like mile 18. True, I can’t talk about running 18 miles with any authority, having never in my seven weeks as a runner attempted anything close to that. But that’s the comparison Coach Scott made, though he didn’t get around to mentioning it until we were done.

I’m coming to learn that Coach Scott is a pretty understated guy with a high tolerance for pain. Not a surprise, I guess, for someone who works as a prison psychologist, and whose dad -- who volunteers at the site every Saturday along with his mom-- showed up a couple of weeks ago in the pouring rain attached to a portable drip bag because he had undergone some sort of intense medical procedure.

Not a problem, he assured us, as he urged us to help ourselves to more of the pretzels and orange slices and candy corns he and Scott’s mom supply for us along our running route every week. Then there’s Scott’s son, who also volunteers every week and who was back at the site a week after undergoing brain surgery, shaved head and all. Strong stock, the Coach Scott clan.

We runners all gathered at 8 a.m. on Saturday to gear up for our eight-mile run, feeling pretty good. Seven miles last week was a cinch, so we didn’t pay much mind when Coach Scott started talking about hills and hydration and special running form for steep inclines.

We should have.

Saturday’s run took us up and over the formidable rise known as the Cahuenga Pass. It’s not the real Cahuenga Pass, which extends through the Santa Monica Mountains from the Los Angeles Basin to the San Fernando Valley. Runners and bikers seem to have bestowed that honorific upon this particular long and steep incline, which runs from Travel Town past the golf course and the old zoo, to accord it the respect it deserves.

On the (real) Cahuenga Pass two major land battles were fought, the first, the Battle of Cahuenga Pass, in 1831 between settlers and the Mexican-appointed governor’s squad and the second, the Battle of La Providencia, 14 years later between settlers over possible secession from Mexico.

On our pseudo-Cahuenga Pass we soon found ourselves in the midst of a struggle of our own: the Battle to Stay Upright and in Motion. According to Coach Scott, we would best achieve this by avoiding the temptation to lean forward, by maintaining our rhythm but slowing our pace, and by taking short steps and keeping our feet low to the ground.

That was all well and good, but we were still straining to move forward.

We’re typically a fun-loving group, and everyone was feeling particularly cheerful at the beginning of the run, buoyed by the Obama victory and a bright, sunny morning. When we all realized that the “hill” we were on was more like a never-ending incline, up and up and up, then down a bit and up and up some more, the strain of staying in motion sent us all into silence.

I won’t bore you with the gory details, the pinches, the strains, the cries of agony and the blinding sweat. Suffice to say that two hours later, all nine of us managed to make it to the end, in varying states of physical distress. The bananas and peanut butter sandwiches on the snack table were a revelation.

Was this my future for the next three (make that six) months? Was the reality of training for a marathon catching up to me? I needed the insight of a veteran runner to put things in perspective.

Fortunately, my friend Sara Stein, a real runner, is also training with APLA for the marathon. I hardly ever see her because she is in a fleet-footed group that is dispatched early (so they don’t have to run past all us slow-pokes) and long gone by the time we finish. Sara is an even-tempered person. As the proprietor of a public relations business in the fashion industry, she has to be. I called her as soon as I got home, but I barely had time to say hello before she launched into an uncharacteristic tirade.

The run was “terrible,” she said. “Horrible,” “humiliating, unnecessary and wrong, just wrong.” Sara, it turns out, had a hard time keeping up with her co-runners. She’s one of the few women in her pace group and the only one who’s given birth --twice. Back in her pre-kid days she used to take the hill on her weekend runs, but only one side, not both, and even then it was a big challenge, she told me, and she and her husband would come and gaze at it afterward and marvel at her strength and stamina. She hadn’t attempted it lately, and hadn’t intended to. But here she was, being left behind, only to be regaled by one of her running mates with tales of struggling runners losing control of their bowels. “Oh. My. God!” she shrieked into the phone. “The horror!” Then she added: “Congratulations! It’s great that you made it.”

I was left feeling both proud of finishing a hard run and sheepish at having to be told the magnitude of what I’d accomplished. It reminded me of my second day in California, in the fall of 1989. I’d moved to San Francisco fresh out of college and was unpacking my boxes when the radio went dead and my third-floor flat began to quiver. I grew up in Chicago and didn’t know from earthquakes. It was freaky to feel the earth move, but after a quarter of a minute it was done and it seemed there was nothing to do but go back to unpacking. That was Loma Prieta. By the time of the Northridge quake in ’94 I was living in Southern California, and when the shaking began I knew enough to feel the requisite, involuntary dread.

According to Coach Scott, we’ll be taking Cahuenga at least two more times during our training. I can only hope to keep the dread at bay.

The date for the 2009 LA Marathon had been changed -- again-- by the Frank McCourt team. The first change pushed it back, from early March to Presidents' Day, Monday, February 16. The latest change was reportedly made to accommodate runners who don't get Presidents' Day off. The new new date is Memorial Day, Monday, May 25.

Here's an excerpt from the evolving LA Times story:

"We think the Memorial Day date does two things," [Russ] Pillar said during a phone interview with The Times. "It lets us honor the city’s wishes that we have the race on a holiday Monday, and it lets us create a better runner’s experience than we could have on President’s Day. We've spent a lot of time talking to all of our constituencies -– runners, charities, volunteers –- and while there's never a good time to be changing race dates, the fact is that this will give us enough time to put on a great event."

So they talked to charities? Okay, but apparently it was news to the AIDS Marathon folks, the group I'm training with on behalf of AIDS Project Los Angeles. My guess is this is going to further strain fund raising resources -- the training folks had already shortened the training season by a couple of weeks (to save money, I'm told) before the first date change was announced. With a limited fundraising budget that must now cover an additional three-plus months of work, this can't be good news.

Here's part of a memo to us, the runners, from the AIDS Marathon program director:

We've received some very surprising news today. The new operators of the Los Angeles Marathon are moving the annual race to Memorial Day, marking the second calendar change since September for the race that, for 23 years, has been run on a Sunday in early March. The new owners of the event have decided to change the date of the marathon to Monday, May 25, which is Memorial Day.

While this date change is completely unexpected, the good news is that we'll now have more time to train and more time to raise money for AIDS Project Los Angeles. To prepare you for the new race date, we have modified our training schedule. We'll be handing out the new schedule at the run site this weekend...

We have also extended the fundraising deadline to February 6. This means that you now have three full months, not only to reach the $1,600 fundraising requirement, but also to achieve your own personal fundraising goal. We hope you will take advantage of this extra time to raise even more money for people living with HIV/AIDS in the Los Angeles area.

Here I was, feeling mighty proud and proudly mighty for all my great goodness in training for the LA marathon with AIDS Project Los Angeles. I would run a marathon (as in one, and one only), raise a few bucks and be done with it.

But that was before I started talking to my fellow trainees.

Within my running group of ten or so the cup of goodness overflows. Gaby is on her second marathon with APLA and her tenth year of fundraising for the group (she's done the walkathon every year). Andrea volunteers at a homeless shelter teaching writing. She also donates time to School on Wheels, which brings tutors to kids living in LA’s homeless shelters. Sarah, who is a documentary film producer, volunteers at Streetlights, which promotes the inclusion of ethnic minorities and at-risk kids in the entertainment industry. She walks every year for the Alzheimer’s Association and has volunteered for the AIDS Research Alliance, contributing to their monthly magazine as well as producing and directing a nationwide public service announcement.

Monica is studying to become a nurse with the hope of going on missions with Doctors Without Borders. Rachel, who works as a labor and delivery nurse and is about to be married, is planning to spend her honeymoon in South America volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. Amy works at a non-profit that develops affordable housing and serves on the board at the Center for Nonviolent Education and Parenting. Steve, who is on his fourth marathon, first trained with APLA in 2000 and was so inspired by the experience that he decided to devote himself to non-profit work. He took a job with Covenant House California, a Hollywood-based agency helping homeless kids, where he is the web and publications coordinator.

It’s an impressive group, one in which everybody but me could up and quit the marathon training tomorrow and no one would think they were shirking their do-gooder duties. But raising money – and consciousness – through marathon running holds a particularly elevated spot within the realm of good works, and in particular within the realm of physical exertion for a cause. The extreme nature of the feat, the fact that it requires a degree of risk and pain most people are unwilling or unable to commit, makes those same folks sit up, take notice, and, often, donate.

In one particularly compelling instance from the annals of twentieth century world history, Stylianos Kyriakides, a bill collector from Athens, Greece, was heartbroken over the plight of his country, which had been ravaged by World War II and by civil war, with thousands still dying of hunger in the streets. A champion runner, he persuaded his boss to buy him a plane ticket to Boston in 1946. Though he was living on rations and faced starvation himself (he was 5’7” and weighed 130 pounds) he trained relentlessly.

Kyriakides vowed to win the marathon or die trying, and win he did, coming in at 2:29:47, a world record. More important to him, though, were the boatloads of food, clothing and medical supplies his victory inspired Americans to send back to his ailing nation. According Running With Pheidippides by Nick Tsiotos and Andy Dabilis, one reporter for the Boston Herald wrote, “There’s seldom been more drama behind any single human being’s athletic effort and none probably felt himself so truly obligated to give better than his best in an attempt to do something for others.”

Kyriakides managed to extract much-needed donations at a time when most Americans were themselves feeling the post-war pinch. Likewise, the generosity of my co-runners is particularly inspiring to me given the economic moment we’re in now, when most of us are making do with less and the natural inclination is invest every ounce of one’s energy in keeping one’s own head above water. Instead, Gaby gathers five-dollar donations toward her pledge goal from anyone who can spare it, Andrea foregoes fancy running wear, and everyone keeps running.

In helping others, as in running, I have some catching up to do.

I possess the navigational acumen of a hamster. Within the confines of my proscribed habitat I’m fine, but beyond that I lose all sense of direction as I dash hither and thither in a mad scramble for the familiar.

So I was more than a little glad to learn that the group I’m training with for the LA Marathon is named for a famous runner named German Silva. A native of rural Veracruz, Silva overcame his hardscrabble roots to become a champion athlete before retiring this year at age 40. But what resonates with me most is the way he won his first New York City marathon 14 years ago.

Here’s how the New York Times put it the day after the race:

As the runners headed out of Central Park onto Central Park South and were crossing Seventh Avenue at the 25.5-mile mark -- seven-tenths of a mile from the finish -- the unimaginable happened.

With a police officer gesturing for him to continue west toward Columbus Circle, Silva veered instead into the park…. As a second police officer pointed back toward the course, Silva turned and saw that [he] had taken 12 strides in the wrong direction….

Silva regained his composure quickly…. He reversed his course, took a right at Central Park South and the chase began. Silva lost 12 or 13 seconds, by his own estimate, but easily slipped into another gear…. Rapidly, Silva made up the gap as the runners continued along Central Park South for a final crosstown block before turning up into the park at Columbus Circle. Just before the 26-mile mark, … Silva gained the lead. …Even with that unintended detour, Silva covered the last mile in 5:15 to win by 2 seconds.

That’s my kind of marathoner.

My internal compass is so skewed that frequently I set off in precisely the wrong direction and proceed that way for quite some time before I realize my error. Consequently, on any given trip there comes a point where I doubt the direction I’m heading and double back -- even when it turns out I was right in the first place.

I’m from Chicago, a fairly forgiving town for the navigationally challenged. The lake is always east and the city radiates outward on a grid from a central point at the heart of downtown. In LA, no such luck. Streets wander and end without warning. Mountains push everything off course. And the ocean, somehow, is not always west. Once, on my way to a baby shower in Pasadena, I got so lost that I finally gave up and went home. I mailed the gift. When I’m behind the wheel, my nine-year-old daughter and six-year-old son automatically add 15 minutes to an hour to the trip.

Somehow I manage. The day I moved to Southern California sixteen years ago I became a lifelong friend of Tom, as in Thomas Guide, and in more recent years I’ve accumulated a thick folder of MapQuest printouts. But the vagaries of urban travel mean there’s only so much a book of maps or a computer-generated directional device can tell you.

My personal GPS is my husband, Mark, an LA native who minored in geography in college and seems to have internalized the globe in both macro and micro forms. I simply call with my coordinates and destination and he – after a brief pause to marvel at my utter ineptitude in this regard– proffers the perfect route. The path from any given point A to any given point B is so obvious to him that although we’ve been together for 17 years, and although he’s known about my directional deficit from day one, he still can’t quite believe it. When he’s in a meeting or out of town and I call, it adds to the surreality to the exchange. Recently he was at an after-work cocktail party in New York when I phoned, seeking Hollywood’s elusive Argyle Avenue. Fortunately my directional difficulties are confined to vehicular travel.

Or were.

Now that I’m training for the marathon that’s all changed. Each Saturday morning, I’m dispatched with a group of other runners into the wilds of Burbank along routes that are increasingly long, winding and confounding. At first I felt confident that we would be fine. After all, I have the worst sense of direction of anyone I know. Surely everyone else in the group could follow the map and the written instructions provided by the coach and return us to the safety of our home base in Griffith Park. What I’ve learned is that runners are terrible navigators.

Susana, a veteran marathoner who trains regularly with AIDS Project Los Angeles, told me that during one of her training runs her group got so lost they took two extra hours to get back. A runner named Sarah told me that while vacationing with a friend in the mountains of Vermont they set out for a brisk 5-mile run and wound up running 11 miles before they found their way home. “It was miserable,” she said. At every turn in the road, my own running group is beset with confusion. “Where did we come from? Where are we going? How will we get there?”

Actually, it’s not that runners are inherently bad with directions. It’s that the act of long-distance running consumes every ounce of brain space. At a certain point the mere act of putting one foot in front of the other takes precedence over everything else. There’s no room to pay attention to where you’re headed or where you’ve been.

On our first day of training, our coach, Scott Bolivar, warned us that “runners get stupid.” We become so absorbed in the act of running that a sort of mental vacancy sets in. We fall off curbs, stumble into traffic and wander into the paths of highly annoyed bicyclists. Even the pros are susceptible. When German Silva veered off course, he’d already been running for 2 hours in high humidity with a stitch in his stomach.

One thing I know: I have a great new excuse for getting lost.

Unless you’re a veteran marathoner, you probably assume, as I did, that those in training adhere to a life of strict asceticism marked by grueling runs, flavorless, “healthy” foods and zero caffeine or alcohol.

Oh, how wrong you be.

Now that I’ve been running for all of a month (and raised my required $1,600 in pledges for AIDS Project Los Angeles, which is footing the bill for my training), I’ve gained admittance to the Secret Society of Running Revelry. Otherwise known as my weekly running group, the society consists of the dozen or so amateur APLA runners I meet up with once a week in Griffith Park for ever-longer run as we build toward our seemingly impossible 26.2 target.

Far from the self-denialists of popular imagination, runners are serious rewardists. The tougher the run, the more indulgent the prize:

Massages
My friend Amy, who sportingly agreed to take on the marathon challenge with me, spent an hour last week getting an elaborate hour-long foot massage that included toe cracking, and a deep tissue work-over. She’s already looking forward to her next appointment.

Carbs, Carbs, Carbs
Forget Atkins. Bring on the brioche, the pizza, the forbidden rice. Some runners have been known to host pasta parties before a big run. In runner world, carbs are king.

Naps
A runner needs her rest. All the books say it, I swear. Yes, I was a napper before I began training, but now I have a darn good excuse.

Margaritas
Runners sweat a lot, which leads to a craving for salt. What better way to replenish, one of my co-runners observed, than with a refreshing, salt-rimmed beverage.

Double Pancake Breakfasts
“The secret is to eat twice,” a fellow runner confided. “You eat some pancakes before you run, and then you eat some more when you’re done. That way you never get tired.”

Coffee
I wasn't a coffee-drinker before I started running. I am now. Even the experts say that an cup of Joe an hour before you hit the trails will help keep you going, so have at it.

Cute Jock Clothes
Having never entered a running store prior to last month (having not actually been aware that they existed) I find the range of sporty, high-tech, stylish attire a revelation. I hardly notice I’m sweating. Dri-Fit anyone?

The great thing is, it’s all in the name of self care: anecdotal studies conducted by me show that incentives coax the body through each successively greater challenge. My longest run so far has been a relatively wimpy five miles and already I’m inhaling chocolate croissants with impunity. Imagine the treats when I hit 20!

What do Pheidippides, Jim Fixx and Ryan Shay have in common?

All were marathoners, and all died either while running or shortly after.

Pheidippides, of course, was the original marathon man. Jim Fixx brought running to the masses (oh those legs!), and Ryan Shay was one of the most recent casualties in the phenomenon afflicting athletes known as “sudden death.”

The whole run-til-you drop concept contributes mightily to the mythology and macho-ness of marathons. Though I suspect that in this era of Ironman, extreme sports and Jackass, the notion of running a long way as ultimate physical test holds sway mainly among us 40-and-over types. Still, despite the occasional high-profile death, the likelihood of keeling over from running is pretty slim

The all-too-real danger is injury.

On Saturday I did my second group run at Griffith Park, joined by ten other runners of approximately the same fitness level and speed. Only two in the group had ever run a marathon (update on last week: though I had been chosen as a “pace group leader” because I possessed a watch that counted laps, our numbers had dropped sufficiently so that I was able to cede that task to the other, more experienced member of our group who had also been selected). The rest of us were drawn to try it for similar reasons: the desire to challenge ourselves physically and the chance to raise money to help people with AIDS and HIV. Our course took us over the 5 Freeway into Burbank, past the equestrian center and lots of condos. The course was two miles out and two miles back. It was a breezy, sunny morning. Great for running.

We cruised past a couple of runners sitting off to the side – they were in a faster group than ours but one of them had injured his foot and they were waiting for help. Then, just past the halfway point, a woman in our group named Hollie stepped off a curb sideways and twisted her ankle. She hadn’t been tired or sweating or running too hard. She was at least as fit as anyone else in the group. She simply put her foot in the wrong place.

Among the marathoners I’ve talked and corresponded with via email in the past few weeks, injury supplants the weather as the universal topic of conversation. Descriptions of physical ordeals are frequently subsumed beneath a euphoric reverence for the sport. Stress fractures, muscle pulls, shin splints, iliotibial band syndrome, plantar fascitis and achilles tendonitis. You name it, if it’s an impact injury affecting the lower body, runners have it.

One website claims that most running injuries are caused by the “terrible too’s”: too much training, too soon, too often and too fast. But most of the runners I’ve heard from would, I think, disagree. For them, running and injuries go together like most of life’s pleasures and pains. As my nine-year-old daughter would say, you’ve got to give something to get something. The question them becomes, how much of your physical well-being are you willing to give in order to get the ultimate running experience?

One marathoner who emailed me put it this way: “It's an amazing experience and an amazing transformation from 0-26.2 miles. You will not regret it (although you may suffer through some pain and injury).” He continued:

You will learn if you continue that you can ‘run through’ a great deal of this. I had calf pain at mile 2 on a 16 mile run and I pushed on. I had alternating calf spasms at mile 10 on that same 16 mile run (and my teammates all walked with me because I couldn't run--the greatest moment of solidarity during training for me). I ran when I was sick and I ran when I was well. I ran when my IT band hurt and sometimes I just couldn't go. But I used to think I had to feel good to run and now I know that I will most often feel better after I run even if I don't feel so well to start.

Another marathoner predicted “your feet will blister over several times until the shoes are broken in. You also will most probably lose a toenail or two from the constant pounding. It’s part of the price.”

This from yet another, who ran one marathon four years ago and none since: “Nearly wrecked my marriage over it, and wound up having foot surgery for the bunion I incurred while training. So… have fun with that!”

One woman of about 60 told me she was an avid runner and had never suffered serious injury. Her secret? Never run more than ten miles. “But it’s wonderful that you’re doing the marathon,” she added quickly. “I wish I had.”

One former runner I met at a party was waxing enthusiastic about running until his wife appeared. “Tell her why you stopped running,” she said. He smiled sheepishly and said nothing. “He broke both his legs,” she said, matter-of-factly, taking a sip of her drink.

Oh.

The good news is that if you can make it through your marathon years without killing or maiming yourself, you’ll be better off down the road. In a definitive study conducted at the Stanford University School of Medicine, researchers compared the physical health of serious runners 50 years and older and their sedentary counterparts over eight years. Their finding: “Older persons who engage in vigorous running and other aerobic activities have lower mortality and slower development of disability than do members of the general population." According to the study, running is particularly beneficial to women of a certain age. This is a heartening conclusion, especially given that the study came out in 1994, just a decade after women finally persuaded the powers that be that running would not “ruin” them and were permitted – for the first time – to compete in an Olympic marathon.

Good to keep this in mind, for inspiration, as I shuffle along my extremely non-Olympic way.

I was going to stop there, but it seems only fitting that an essay on marathons, injury and death should end with Pheidippides. His famed run from Marathon to Athens, to announce the victory of the Greeks over the Persians, was a mere 25 miles. Not much for a professional runner, a man who ran hundreds of miles at a stretch, carrying messages to and fro.

In this rendering of his fate, as imagined by Robert Browning, we see the ultimate intertwining of sacrifice and exaltation.

He flung down his shield,

Ran like fire once more: and the space 'twixt the Fennel-field

And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through,

Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we conquer!" Like wine thro' clay,

Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died, the bliss!

I did it.

On Saturday I went to the first marathon training for those of us planning to run 26.2 miles in February to raise money for AIDS Project Los Angeles. I ran three miles in Griffith Park, surrounded by other people doing the same thing. And I did not make a total fool of myself. I was timed at 13 minutes, 30 seconds per mile. To find your training time you add a minute, so I’m in the 14-minutes-and-30-seconds pace group.

At the end of the timed run the runners met briefly with our coach, a man named Scott who has run many marathons. He coaches part-time, and he told us that his day job is as a prison psychologist, an exercise in physical and mental discipline that can only be helpful in dealing with marathoner wanna-bes like me. He also told us that only half of the 200 or so people who showed up for this initial run would actually make it through the training and go on to run the marathon.

The main reason, he said, was not failure of physical ability. It was lack of fundraising follow-through. Each participant is responsible for bringing in $1,600 by early December. Those of us who don’t make it have to fork over a credit card and sign a form agreeing that if we still haven’t raised the cash by some time in January, then the fundraisers can charge us for the amount that we’re short. (They’ll reimburse if the money comes in later.) Clearly the thing to do is raise the money now, to avoid the drama and personal expense.

For me, fundraising is the easy part. I’ve squelched my qualms about asking friends and family to fork over a few bucks for a good cause. How hard can it be to open your wallet to help people with AIDS and HIV?

The training is another story.

I have never been good at sports, and organized sports, or any kind of sport that involves delivering a certain level of return for others, are especially fraught. My first and last team sports win was in second grade, when Stephanie Brown and I came in second place in the three-legged race. Sports at that time and place (1970’s, inner city Chicago) mostly meant things that could be played on concrete, like basketball and double-dutch, neither of which I was particularly good at. I did better with solitary endeavors, where the performance pressure was low. I could roller skate, bike, and jump on a pogo stick.

My elementary school didn’t include physical education or group sports in its regular curriculum. Occasionally, when the quantity of rain or snow surpassed even the high tolerance threshold set by school administrators, we’d be ushered into the auditorium basement for “motor skills,” which consisted of jumping jacks, sit-ups and a lot of hopping around. I managed, but I can’t say I was particularly adept at any of it, especially compared with most of my classmates, who seemed to have tapped into some secret knowledge about making physical exertion look effortless. Outside of school I was made to take ballet, where my ungainliness was impossible to disguise. The teacher’s amusement usually manifested itself in a sort of half-smile that I’m sure she imagined I didn’t notice. On one occasion my execution of a pirouette was so off-kilter that she burst out laughing.

By the time I got to high school so sure was I that I lacked all physical aptitude that I opted to join the school band (playing the flute) rather than take phys ed. Unbelievable as it might seem today, I made it through four years of high school without one moment of organized exercise of any kind. When I arrived at college I fully intended to continue on in the same way. But I’d enrolled at St. John’s, a small liberal arts college given over to the Great Books, an approach to learning that encourages both intellectual and physical development. Nearly all sports were intramural, and every freshman was assigned a team and encouraged to play any and all sports. Alas, my college sports career was brief. I showed up for a basketball game, but when the ball landed in my hands I was so flummoxed that I ran across the court without dribbling. Soccer baffled me (all that running around for nothing), and I lacked the hand-eye coordination for softball.

Sometime in my mid-20’s I discovered the joys of the gym. Meaning organized classes in pleasant, air conditioned spaces where no one expects anything of you. You can stop mid-class and sit down, or go get a drink of water, or not even show up and no gets upset or let down. Unfortunately the gym life fed my personal vanity (so many mirrors, so little time) and encouraged some unhealthy proprietary tendencies (a spinning bike became “my” bike, a certain shared locker became “my” locker).

Running these past couple of weeks has been the perfect solution. Solitary, humbling, and unencumbered by anyone’s expectations but my own.

The thing I learned at Saturday’s gathering is that training for a marathon with APLA is anything but private. Everyone is assigned to a pace group. You depend on the group and the group depends upon you. Your group members are your training companions, your support and comfort. You work toward your goals together. In other words, running as team sport. Not only that, but I have been appointed a pace group leader, not because I was acting particularly leaderly, but because I own a sports watch that counts laps. It will be my job to keep pace for the entire group.

So much for the loneliness of the long distance runner.

I have never run an inch in my life (except under duress), let alone 26.2 miles, but I have decided to do this most insane thing. I've signed up with AIDS Project LA, which promises to train you -- even if you are a complete novice -- so that in four and a half months you can cross the finish line of the Los Angeles Marathon. Not walking, not staggering, but running. I also have to raise a minimum of $1,600. The kick-off party was today. Training begins next weekend.

I can give you many reasons for why I'm doing this, like my friend and mentor Marlon Riggs, a documentary filmmaker who died of AIDS in 1994. Like Dorothy Travis, whose last few months I chronicled and whose young children were orphaned when she succumbed to AIDS in 2001. Like that incredible moment in the Cheney/Edwards vp debate in 2004 when both professed ignorance of the spread of AIDS among African American women in the U.S. Like the fact that even though many Americans continue to be infected with HIV and AIDS, it has migrated in our minds to so-called “developing countries” in Africa. Today Los Angeles has the nation's second-largest population of people living with AIDS, yet it has fallen off the radar of our collective concern.

There are other reasons, unrelated to the cause. Having turned 40 this year it would be nice to have something to show for it. “I ran a
marathon” works for me. I'm also pushing hard to finish a book, which has engendered in me a new respect for marathons of all sorts. One might argue that running a marathon is yet another distraction from completing that daunting task. But the idea is that I will tether my training to my book progress -- each week I will cover more ground in both realms.

I'm sure there will be many opportunities for conflict along the way. Already I'm annoyed that fully half of the money I'm raising goes to administrative costs (I learned this after asking lots of questions at an orientation meeting). And then there's the running shoes scam-- I've been scared by the AIDS marathon fundraising people into buying $120 running shoes because I was told that if I didn't my feet would really hurt. But I bought the shoes and in my pitiful first attempts to “run” my feet still hurt! Would they hurt that much more if the shoes cost $100? And even more if they cost $50? The truth is, when you buy your shoes from certain recommended outlets, the AIDS marathon people get a kickback. So the more you spend, the more they get. Hmmm.

But the truth is there is no way I would do this on my own. With two small kids and a work life that is a constant scramble I find it impossible to justify taking time to exercise. I need the excuse and pressure of a cause to get me off my butt. The other truth I’ve come to learn, in my vast two weeks or so experience now as a pre-runner, is that runners treat shoes with deep reverence. It’s not just the organizers who want you to spend big money on shoes. One veteran runner gave me two pieces of advice: 1) get the best shoes you can afford and 2) take it slow. I’ve managed the first, and as for going slow, I don’t think I’ll have much choice. I’ve been attempting to run around the Silver Lake Reservoir near my house – a whopping 2.2 miles. The first day I was winded after all of two minutes. Each subsequent run I’ve added a few minutes, but it takes me more than half an hour and a lot of walking breaks to make the loop. Let’s see, that means at the very least I have to improve my stamina a mere 1,200 percent by marathon day, February 16. I hope the APLA marathon trainers are good.

The way the program works, you do two runs a week on your own and a third, major run in Griffith Park with your “pace group” and a coach on the weekend. Next Saturday, October 4, will be our first group run. This is where they’ll decide what pace group I belong to. The only hitch is that I have to run three miles in order for them to make this determination. It’s hard for me to imagine, with less than a week left to prepare, that I’ll be able to make it.