8 Mile

november 21, 2004

saturday morning, energized by 3 hours of sleep and a bit of drinking the night before, I awoke at 5:45am, poked my contacts back into my eyes, and went to run 8 miles.

after my accidental foray into the sweaty arms of madness a few weeks ago, i've actually continued training for the freescale half-marathon in february. in fact, not until this last week did i discover that these people had actually paid $150 to be in this training group. so, i paid my fee, and now have the additional motivators of guilt and buyer's remorse to keep me going.

the previous saturday, i faced my greatest challenge, in a 7:30am six-mile run. to be precise, the waking up bit was the actual challenge, followed closely by my being on time. that done, running six miles was entirely anticlimactic.

sadly, the victory of conquering rosy-fingered dawn that morning was short-lived, as coach carolyn announced that the next saturday run would be eight miles, and would start at 6:30am. the terror of that would overshadow an entire week of my life.

nevertheless, i did it. i got up and showed up, even a bit early. again, i considered declaring a moral victory and going back home, but i looked into the faces of the supportive people i've met over the past few weeks. they stretched and chatted and smiled enthusiastically, with the same happy ignorance of their impending doom as on a dog being called into the car for a one-way trip to the farmlands outside of town.

i was ready. new shorts. new long-sleeve Nike dri-fit shirt. and i had peed twice in the last twenty minutes. a great mystery of my body, in which i have as of yet been unable to interest well-funded medical researchers, is in my urine-creating efficiency.

anytime i go running, here's the routine: pee before leaving work/house; get to running location, pee; run one mile... pee. we're not talking about some misfiring-nerve bundle false alarm. we're talking a good hearty making of pee, every time. and if i have to go at all, i'm useless athletically. i get all tensed-up in the... hipular area. i can't run smoothly at all.

but finally, on this saturday morning, i had anticipated the issue, and gone twice before leaving home. i felt good, in control, loose.

vasoline was offered to combat chafing, but i could not bring myself to rub lubricant on my nipples in front of 50 people.

soon, we were off, and i have to say, it was a beautiful thing. we ran along tree-lined neighborhood streets, in a misty darkness that was slowly and imperceptibly beginning to lift, indigo-tinted blackness losing itself to subdued shades of gray.

the melody of quiet, friendly conversation lilted lightly over the soft rhythym of running shoes that padded on pavement like brushes played lightly on a snare drum.

within the first two to three minutes, there was a truly peaceful and transcendent moment where the approaching dawn seemed to gather its breath, and as the light began to assert itself, the shirts and skin of the people around me glowed briefly, beautifully, as if in moonlight.

i had to pee.

later, i spoke to a friend of mine who has run two marathons, and whose desire to remain anonymous in connection with bodily functions i horribly underestimated. so, we shall call her "heather" in order to annoy and falsely incriminate my friend heather. anyway, "heather" suggests that i simply pee in my shorts, as i run, like the professionals do. in fact, she told me, some woman that won the boston marathon apparently crossed the finish line with diarrhea running down her leg. in yet more unwanted, increasingly disturbing fact, heather told me she knows two other people who have, in clinical terms, pooped themselves with explosive diarrhea in the course of running a marathon.

boxing, cricket and curling make more sense to me every day.

anyway, as i began to obsess about the state of my bladder, my hips tightened, the rigidity spreading slightly to my stomach and thighs. this was not good. i began to plod. to make matters worse, i had failed to align myself with anyone for the blessed distraction of company and conversation that can make the miles pass so much easier. no one around me seemed amenable to conversation.

i began to run only in hopes of getting to a restroom, but there were none on the route. at one intersection, i saw a park restroom in the distance, but i was afraid to break for it, afraid that people would think i had gone mad. i kept running in hope. stupid, stupid hope.

finally, at the four-mile turnaround point, we emerged from the neighborhoods into a commercial area, and I dove into a convenience store.

a few minutes later, i was out the front door, and immediately began striding, a new man - Running Man, phidippides himself reborn, glorious and swift, with the theme from chariots of fire crescendoing in my head and in my heart. this continued for about 5 minutes, before i realized that i still had four miles left to run, and that i had exhausted myself from trying to clench my entire intestinal system into submission for 40 minutes. furthermore, i had overdressed, and my cool new Nike dri-fit long sleeve shirt became a wet, heavy, nipple-chafing runner's hairshirt.

i began to struggle, and continued to struggle, but i made it. the bathroom break put me right behind a group of women that included mo, the first person i had met in the training group. i chased them all the way to the end, though even in a sprint to the finish, i was unable to actually catch them.

eight miles is a long freaking way to run. it's not so much fun on a bike, or even in a car. as i drove home, i thought of calling heather as i had the week before to trumpet my accomplishment, then it occurred to me that i had run eight, but she had run 26. twice. and while that may say something about her sanity and/or deep-rooted psychotic need to destroy or punish herself in some way, it says little for my own minor accomplishment.

it occurred to me that i had not even run 3/4 of a half-marathon. then it occurred to me that as hard as the half-marathon would be, it was only, well, half of a marathon. running 13 miles would be much more impressive if it were called something interesting and independent of its relationship to the whole 26-mile marathon concept. it dawned on me that running 13 miles had been named a "half-marathon" by some prima-donna marathon runners who wanted to make their superiority clear. i'm surprised they didn't go ahead and call it a "Half-Assed Marathon," or, as my friend mara would later call it, the "Pussy Marathon."

the next morning, after some sleep and after my blood-sugar level returned to normal, i reconsidered, and i realized two things.

i realized the zen-like lesson to be learned in this experience: that the challenge is not in the absolute distance travelled, but in the struggle, in pushing your body and mind further than it knows it can go. it may be 26 miles, 13 miles, 3 miles, or across a room.

i also realized that while i might only run 13 miles, there's no way in hell i'm going to shit myself.