Run On

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.

Sosanna, 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 Boliver, 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.

Posted by Sara Catania at 10:31 AM | Permalink

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!

Posted by Sara Catania at 1:27 PM | Permalink

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!

Posted by Sara Catania at 2:41 PM | Permalink

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 Boliver 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.

Posted by Sara Catania at 4:05 PM | Permalink