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how to fit a mastodon into an ambulance

January 09, 2006

there's a scene in the latest iteration of king kong, where computer-generated, stampeding brontosauruses/brontosauri finally trip each other up, and they tumble down a ravine in one snowballing mass of dinosaur. very quickly, no one can tell which clumsy oaf misstepped and caused the avalanche. or maybe i just can't tell because all brontosauruses/brontosauri look the same to white and asian people.

as even my own recent history has shown, i'm prone to avalanches that are just as loud and dusty and destructive. it happened again lately, though this has been one of the longer, but more gradual tumbles. and it is, indeed, difficult, and probably unimportant, to tell if it began with a failure of confidence, a failure of motivation, a failure of chance, a failure of my own, a failure of faith or hope. i only know that i wasn't much able to stop it as it gained momentum.

running also fell off. in the last year, it had, at times, been the one thing i could really make myself do when nothing, including my efforts, really seemed to matter. but lately, i had even lost track of that, and the question of "why" was increasingly overcoming blind discipline.

but whatever scrap of discipline remained caused me to log on and register for the Runtex Store for Psychotic Running People 20-miler. with little else to look forward to, i think i just wanted the momentary buoyance that running the furthest i ever had would give me. there was also the promise of a shiny finisher's medal to consider, and what was rumored to be an unusually cool finisher's shirt.

during registration, i saw, as in other races, the available "clydesdale" weight class, for men, real men, who weighed over 190 or 200 pounds. i have, of course, been labeled a "clydesdale" before. but for once, "clydesdale" wasn't the last choice on the list. it was joined by "rhino" and "mastodon."

and i, apparently, am a mastodon.

i thought briefly of backing out, just from principle, but i also realized that i have to be ultimately responsible for the consequences of my enchilada-eating, queso-shoveling, chocolate milk-drinking, pecan pie-scarfing actions. there was also the promise of a shiny finisher's medal to consider, and what was rumored to be an unusually cool finisher's shirt.

i ran wednesday night with the training group. and i found, as i feared, that in a few weeks' time, that i had fallen heavily out of running condition. we ran 5 miles on a track, a quarter mile fast, then one slow, over and over. i ran to what i thought at the time was exhaustion, and once again was able to get out of my head a little, and back to that simple, zen place of just doing, driven a bit by some very un-zen-like desire to hurt myself just a little.

i didn't run thursday like i was supposed to. friday and saturday were also suspiciously devoid of anything that looked like running. saturday came, and for the first time, pre-race jitters went beyond apprehension, beyond fear, and straightaway into panic. logically, i knew i wouldn't die or anything, that i could just stop and walk, or just stop if i really, really had to... right? because i had... not done that before. but theoretically, i knew it to be an option.

sunday morning i woke, with not enough sleep. big pot of oatmeal, just like mom used to make me before bike races. it was always really a bit too much, but by the time the race started several hours later, it was perfect. i ate my oatmeal and continued to panic.

i arrived at the race site, outside the dell diamond baseball stadium, with only about 15-20 minutes to spare before the start, due to the locals' weird choice to open only one entrance to the stadium's parking lot. i went to the rogue training group tent, and looked around. there are so many nice folks in the group (which is by far, and for so many reasons, the best on the planet), but none that i had really bonded with, and i really wished my old running crew - janay, katy and tiffany - had been there.

i did, however, find frances, my first coach, the original Evil Woman With the Clipboard. i grabbed her and let her in on my deep, horrible, mortal fear. i can't at all recall what she said, but at the time it helped. i moved out to the starting chute, and waited, realizing that, maybe partly out of choice, i was going this one alone.

the race was two loops of a ten-mile course through the long, slow hills in round rock, which ranks somewhere between pflugerville and tikrit in places i would live or like to visit. the temperature was perfect, in the fifties and sixties, and the skies were clear, but then there was the wind.

the wind. the damned, damned, wind. of the damned.

20-25 miles per hour of it, with gusts up to 30. the crosswinds were not at all better than the headwinds, and round rock, texas being as it is, there's little to shield the roads even from a crosswind. so, together with the course being as it was, the wind battered all of us, tried (and was fairly successfully) beat us back over three-quarters of the race.

i discovered, however, that i felt pretty good, and that i was hardly alone. during the first loop in particular, there were plenty of people from the training group. we may not have yet developed the same bonds as i had with my old running partners, but the support and good humor were there, and i didn't feel alone at all.

my training group's race plan had us running the first 14 miles at our calculated (and so-far frighteningly accurate) marathon goal pace, or "mgp". and i did just that. later, the coaches would say that we were doing well to add anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds per mile to our pace. over the first ten miles, i averaged only about 5 seconds slower than my mgp. between mile 10 and 14.8, averaged 50 seconds slower, but that's also counting an extra 3-4 minute pee break at just past the 10 mile mark. there was a line.

nevertheless, at around 15 miles, just turning into the firm headwind, things began to come apart. the pain from the stress fracture in my right foot was becoming less of an issue as it was quickly joined by other problems.

i struggled to maintain a proper running form, but the energy was leaving me at an exponentially increasing rate, as if the wind were blowing it all right out of me. my will flagged, and i wanted to stop, knew it was really okay if i stopped, that the training plan had us taking it easy after that first 14 mile stretch. but i couldn't do that.

just before mile 17, i turned to face another hill, waved at the man sitting in a lawn chair in the bed of his longhorn-flag festooned pickup, and thought of the conversation i had with my friend amber just a few weeks earlier. we talked about struggle, and how having it in your life was both important and dangerous. we agreed that we're both wary of seeking it out, but we also relish it, in a way - having something to measure our strength, will, character, so much of our worth, against. i discovered that basketball was a way to engage in struggle, and i've found the same in running, but to an even greater extreme.

i tried to get the right lift back in my feet, tried to make the calves fire. i straightened my spine, tucked my hips back under me, pulled my feet into proper alignment. in turn, fatigue became annoyed and responded with a greater effort, returning me to the sloppiness and plodding, and an even slower pace.

the mile marker sign at 18 had blown down, and i felt lost. my coach, janie, had already finished and was standing somewhere around there to cheer her team on. the long stretch uphill to the stadium, and the wind was really blowing, then. people passed me, i passed no one. another turn, and there was half a mile left.

then, frances and other coaches were there, and they shouted that i was less than a quarter mile from the finish, and i realized what i had done. i realized that the pre-race panic was not physical, but the fear that if i failed, that i would lose the only thing i had been leaning on lately, that just as much as i was pushing against it, the running pushed me back, and held me up.

i also knew that nothing after the race mattered, and i found another gear, started speeding up. i was still moving far from "fast," but speed, of course is relative. it was enough to cause my body to complain. the cramps in my calves and thighs and hips that had been whispering at me for several miles, that i had carefully worked around, began yelling obscenities. really rude ones, the kind that would make a hernia blush.

i dramatically forgot/underestimated how far a quarter mile was, but people walking up the course past me saw me lurching and grimacing, and occasional grunting, and they responded by egging me on. i hit the last turn into the finish chute, and the annoying announcer guy said something supportive, and i broke into the closest thing to a sprint that was going to happen at that point.

i got my shiny, shiny finisher's medal at the line, as promised. i had standing issues. people asked if i was ok, and i grunted at them. another runner handed me a water, and i grunted him. i staggered to the table where they handed out the shirts. i had difficulty saying "XL". the shirt was, indeed, unusually cool, as rumored.

by leaning heavily on the table and timing my grabs between the wheezes that weren't going away, i managed to grab a cookie and a banana. i got back to the rogue training tent. i tried to lower myself to the ground, but my legs cramped and my arms failed, and i kind of plopped into a crouch. i saw someone i used to run with and always meant to get to know better, and she came over. then she said, "hey, you know what, i'm just gonna go ahead and get ruth."

the medics were very nice, although between the first medics, the managing medics, and the emt's, i was asked for all my information about 4 separate times, which is no fun when you feel like you can only get two words out without collapsing both lungs. it was also difficult to beg them in two-word bursts, through an oxygen mask, not to call the ambulance (too late), or to try to convince them that i could totally just walk under my own power to wherever they were (they were coming down the highway, and i couldn't even sit up under my own power).

so, in front of my fellow runners, i was lifted onto a gurney and trundled into an ambulance, a mastodon fallen, a not quite extinct example of the importance of good hyration.

the hospital was nice, but a bit dull for a while. i had finally, after about an hour, become able to breathe without as much difficulty, and the iv seemed to be dripping strength into my veins. the very kind nurse brought me some cranberry juice, some crackers, some water, and some ice, then left. for several minutes, i looked from the snacks, to the needle in my left arm, to the pulse oximeter on my right finger, and wondered if this were some sort of test of intelligence.

frances and ruth and debbie showed up at the hospital, and hung out with me for a while. granted, the paramedics had inadvertently put ruth's jacket, cell phone, and car keys on the gurney with me, but i decided that the world did, in fact, revolve around me.

they told me that only one other runner had been sent to the hospital - he had collapsed, like, out cold, in frances' arms just short of the finish. i saw him in the emergency room lobby, waiting for his wife to pick him up, and we were both already proudly (and necessarily) wearing our cool new black finisher's shirt. i realized later that i might have had my medal on, and i feel bad that he pretty much finished, but didn't get the shiny medal for it. we talked a bit, and both agreed that we were still going for the freescale marathon, except that his wife might have something to say about it in his case.

today, just walking down the hall made me want to sit down. and, the dinosaurs are still in a pile at the bottom of the ravine, and the dust has yet to settle. tonight, i'm still feeling a bit pointless. but right now, i feel that my strength and will have been vindicated, in one of the greatest victories of my life. i pushed my body, and it pushed back, but not before i did what i had set out to do.

of course, i also received a shiny medal and a very nice shirt, and placed 5th among the ten men registered as under-40 mastodons.

Posted by Rob at January 9, 2006 03:13 PM

Comments

Posted by: Janay at January 10, 2006 12:33 PM

Posted by: shahnaz at January 17, 2006 09:42 PM

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