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how not to stop
October 02, 2006
the green, beige, and white checkered turtle-shell dome of austin's palmer auditorium is gone now. it was demolished, along with most of the rest of the structure, for a complete renovation, leaving only the interior circular crowd-moving ramps visible, as if only the rings remained where saturn once was.
probably 25 years ago, i was running my own rings around the structure, chasing another boy my age who had hit me. it seems i was a magnet for this sort of thing, because i was a little ignorant on the finer, or rather, blunter points of male posturing. i figured everybody should just be friends, an attitude that endeared me to adults, made me asexually attractive to girls, and marked me as someone who needed to be punched in the nose to lots of other boys.
i was there with my dad, for one of the gunshows he frequented back then. the shows were exciting to me not just for the auditoriums and convention centers full of military surplus and other stuff i found cool at ten years-old, but for the other kids my age that were usually running around loose like me. those trips offered a rare opportunity to interact with other kids outside of school.
on one of the laps around the building, my dad was there under a tree smoking his pipe. on the previous lap, he had asked what i was doing, and i told him. on this lap, he told the kid and me to stop, and the battle was on.
in no time, i was in a position i would be familiar with over the years - on the ground, getting fairly well pummelled. before some adult pulled him off, i remembered hearing a couple of men commenting impressedly about my dogged refusal to take my attacker's offers to let me give up.
through my life, that was something i remembered and held on to. there are certainly things i've failed at, not given a hundred percent of my will and abilities to, but when i believed something important was on the line, if nothing else, i knew i would try, and i would not quit.
yesterday, i quit.
after my first time running the IBM Uptown 10K last year, i had vowed never to run it again. the course was dull and tedious, and the weather last year was in the mid 70's, overcast, with extremely high humidity.
this year, there was a little application of peer pressure, and the need for a boost. the long summer of training for chicago was interspersed with no races to speak of, except for the july 4th marathon relay, and the experimental duathlon (5K run/30K bike/oh, look, we're running 5k again, goddammit) in august.
and lately, i had been grasping at straws to find motivation and confidence, and had lost more than i gained every time.
there was also the promise of the recently cooler weather - mornings in the 60's, with somewhat more reasonable humidity.
and then, cruel fate's coup de grace - i won a free entry to the race.
so, i concocted a master plan - i would bounce back from my recent failures, both running and otherwise. having never run a 10K in anything approaching favorable conditions, i had a conservative race plan that still had me setting a PR (personal record) by a good 3 minutes. during my previous PR, I had averaged 9:16 per mile, but that was on a hilly course, with a stop for a shoe problem, in hot and humid weather.
surely, i thought, i could run this: mile one at 9:15; miles two and three at 9:00; and the remainder at 8:45. i figured :55 seconds for the last 200 meters. for some reason, the courses for 5K's and 10K's and any metric-based distances, for that matter, are marked by the mile. i curse that tipping point in the 1970's where we got halfway to a new system, and high-centered as a society, teetering awkwardly between the ancient system dictated by the british, and the new system pushed by the british. incidentally, the british are also responsible for lengthening the marathon from 24 miles to 26.2. he who makes history apparently paces it off, as well.
friday night, i went, picked up my race packet, with the bright orange shirts people's opinions seem to be split on, and my race number - 13. that's it. two digits, presumably because of the complimentary registration, and it was 13.
packet pickup was at northcross mall, where the race would start, so I took my four mile easy run there, running the first two miles of the course, then turning back. i would try my first two miles of pace, to familiarize myself with the feel.
mile one - 8:46. thirty seconds fast. not good, but better than too slow. i pulled the speed down slightly.
mile two - 9:28... 28 seconds too slow, even with most of it being a slight downgrade.
i walked part of mile three, then ran mile four, which took me over 10 minutes.
i blew the results of the test run off. i was running at night, and it was warm and humid. i'd be better in the morning, in the coolness.
sunday morning, i crawled out of bed at 5:30, with mixed feelings about running. i got ready, turned on the local news channel as i usually did.
74 degrees, overcast, 100% humidity, 87% relative humidity.
the voices kept saying no, no, no, don't do this, but i had to.
i got to the mall, with audioslave's latest excellent album giving me a little charge, but i still had a sense of foreboding about the race.
i ran the two mile warmup with other people from rogue. i felt the left hamstring emit a slight thud of pain with every step, felt it shorten and slow my gait just a bit. it had done that friday night, and i had run through it. i could run through it.
i saw friends, and my heart was riding fast waves. some got lukewarm greeting and chatting, some got a cold shoulder (sorry, erin, you got the cold shoulder before, and the one everyone else got after).
i hooked up with my friend tiffany, one of the first people i met two years ago in the running program. we had been through a lot of battles together, and she knows me better as a runner and a person than anyone else out there. a reader of the blog, she wanted to go to breakfast afterwards to talk.
the horn blew, and i immediately said, "well, shit," and we laughed at the overwhelming positivity.
we ran the first mile together, and i was pretty happy. it was like the old days, and i felt comfortable running at that pace with her.
at the first mile, though, my watch showed 10:29, over a minute off pace. this would be difficult to make up, but i had enjoyed the time with tiffany so much, and the feel of being in the race amidst all the people, that i decided it was ok - i'd make up what i could, and still get my PR. i said goodbye to tiffany and paul, and began to move carefully, steadily ahead.
i knew mile two was mostly downhill until the last couple of hundred yards. i was careful not to push too much, and i settled into a pace just short of one that had me breathing too hard.
i was moving much faster, passing people who had mostly ensconced themselves in the paces they would be trying to stick to for the next few miles. i passed people i knew, and would chat a little in the window of time i had passing them.
i kept my pace up on the slight incline. i looked at my watch, and saw the sign ahead, and knew i was a little off. 9:16. 16 seconds slow. i was a little disappointed, but ok, i could deal with that. i just needed to pick it up a little bit more.
i felt good. i passed one woman laboring up the incline, and told her she was kicking ass. it made me feel good, to be in a race again, with people that were challenging themselves.
we turned right onto the improbably-straight mile-plus stretch down great northern. the previous marathon course and the 3M half-marathon course both run the opposite way down that stretch, and it's a psychological monster, with it's barely-perceptible grades. much in the same way motion sickness is brought on by the inconsistency between the inputs from your inner ears and your other senses, your legs can definitely sense the almost invisible inclines of great northern, inducing anything from annoyance to despair in many runners.
i kept up the pace, focusing on posture, turnover, breathing, anything but the runner-filled mile ahead of me. i felt the hamstring tweak like a pained piano string on some stretches. looking at the time, i began looking ahead a bit desperately for the three-mile marker.
i hit the marker at 9:28. i cursed, slammed my fist into my watch, and... i stopped. i just stopped.
while i don't quit many things, there is something else i've always done, at a point where neuroses collide. it turns up most noticeably in video games. if i lose a video game life before a certain level or score, or i achieve an objective sloppily (three badguys, four bullets), i start over. yes, this is quitting, but it's not, because i'll play through the night until i get do it perfectly. unfortunately, i am horrible at video games, so it takes me forever to get through games, and i try to stick to ones that reward mass destruction over accuracy.
at mile three, i felt the game, the race, was irreparably blown. there would be no PR, even if i ran the next two more difficult miles at a pace i hadn't recently shown the ability to maintain.
i stood and watched people go by. i saw tom, who i had started the freescale marathon with. i had seen him before the race, and he was trying to do the distance challenge and the marathon training by himself, because his schedule didn't allow him to join rogue again. he was walking. he didn't look happy, either. it flashed through my mind to call out to him, maybe to join him, but my mind was aflood again, with rage and the feeling that it was all lost.
i had hung so much on the race. i didn't need it as a predictor of my performance in chicago, because it doesn't relate. i just needed a win, to maybe renew my love and hope for running. more importantly, i needed a win, a story, some meaning, right now in my life. i needed to cross the finish line faster than i ever had, and there was no chance of doing it - i was only getting slower, despite my efforts.
i watched for a while, crouched at the curb, saw all the faces i'd passed pass me. a logical battle roiled in my mind - why go on? i knew i should go on, but why? running 6.2 miles was meaningless for me - i had done it days before. i just couldn't find the "why" for it. and maybe i also felt that i couldn't even have maintained the effort that had been in vain, anyway. so, i crossed the street, left the course, and walked back.
i walked, and felt the race recede behind me like the noise of the feet and the spectators, and with it the last scraps of meaning there might have been out there that day.
i walked up the home stretch to the finish, and saw people i knew finishing, others who couldn't run or had already finished cheering them on.
i realized too late what the difference was. doing poorly would have only disappointed me, further disgusted me. quitting, though, added shame. rather than the race just saying something about how well i did on a given day, it ended up saying something about who i am.
i couldn't face anyone. i slipped into the rogue area, tried to be polite to the people that asked me how my race had gone. i had to wait to tell tiffany that i couldn't make breakfast. i'll admit there are times i've been upset, and i didn't mind someone finding me, and i often even sort of want that. but that was not the case sunday, and it was hard finding a place to watch for tiffany and not be seen.
i got home, and couldn't escape it all. i opened a beer, showered, and decided i would try to get drunk enough to forget or not care. two beers deep, i fell asleep, and stayed asleep until the evening.
for once, the dreams were kind to me, and for a few moments when i woke up, i forgot. that ended quickly.
dreams are wiser than men - omaha saying
through all the years of not feeling like i was good enough at this or that, i always had the fact that i would not quit. now, i had lost even that, and it occurred to me that when i could quit a race, i was close to quitting everything. but i can't commit to it - cowardice, the knowledge of what a shitty thing it would be for the people around me, and yeah, that part of me that knows i'll just go through the cycle again, that if i just make it through alive this time, i'll feel better, i'll even be happy again, maybe, and it'll all be about forestalling the next episode.
today, i got to work, tried to quietly and politely make it clear that i wanted to be left alone, and people largely obliged.
i got emails from the half-marathoners i coach, and one from another group that i met on the rogue forum. some questions, a lot of chatting. one had run the race yesterday, and she asked how i did. i felt i had let my team down as a coach, but i didn't want to lie to her - she already saw something was up.
she said, "Sure, you can't get this race back, but that should motivate you more for the marathon. It's not going to get better unless you want it to, right?"
i read the race reports from other runners on the forum, and saw one from rhonda ("the enforcer"), an ex-collegiate tennis player, and someone with a strong competitive burn. she had a bad race, but listed four of her own "PR's" to celebrate:
PR#1-longest it has ever taken me to complete a 10K
PR#2-most water stops that I've ever had to walk through
PR#3-greatest time difference between first half of a race and second half of a race
PR#4-first race completed while entire body was cramping
another of the runners i coach explained her suggestion for our team's name - team gracias. aside from the (shared) love of mexican food and it being one of the few words in her limited bilingual vocabulary, she said she was grateful for being able to run.
i talked to my friend tricia, and she said something about my trying to force running to be something, and that doing so was ruining what it had meant to me.
"why..." - two years of this blog, and the recurring question in it is "why?" i keep thinking i find answers, or satisfying non-answers. i found so much solace in zen teachings ten years ago, learned and reinforced learning the practice of basketball. i learned that when the player is absorbed in the good or bad thing he just did in the past, or is thinking of the good or bad he's about to do, he's not playing the game, he's not present.
you run because you can, if you can. you run to see what you can do on any given day, with the body and heart you brought that day. and you run and you don't quit, even when it has you down on the ground, until you can absolutely not fight anymore. i understand that, and understood it sunday, but i also saw that there is a heart to running, and the problem is that my running has lost its heart.
Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.- Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan
maybe i've been doing too much talking to running, trying to command it, make it be what i need from it, rather than letting it be what it is and what it can be for me, rather than letting it speak to me. maybe this is what i've been doing with my life, and why the idea of shabd resonated with me so much.
i have to run five tonight. i'm loading the little iPod with music again, hoping music will move me, and my heart and body will follow. i'll listen to music, and i'll run and be quiet, and also listen to what the running has to say.
epilogue
i plotted out a five-mile route on Gmap Pedometer, one of the coolest things ever. i modified my 6.25 mile route to one right at five miles, by turning down Panther Lane. i decided it would be an appropriate homage to my coach that goes by the name "panther."
it had gotten late, after my long conversation with tricia and my errands, and i left the apartment at 7:37pm, the last greyish-blue draining from the skies to the west.
there was lots of audioslave on the shuffle, and i felt its push. past a mile, and my shoulders were back, head high, turnover quick. i could feel the slight syncopation in the rhythm of my stride, the left leg striking down just a little quicker in its more limited motion, and i worked to turn it into the rock's steadier beat.
the rippling bassline of "yesterday to tomorrow" came on around mile three:
and not like the times before,
from yesterday comes tomorrow
when life comes alive,
the past moves aside,
no regrets and no remorse.
we squeeze the blood out of life,
and say goodnight to the silver of old.
and even when wrong we're right.
far beyond the world of diamonds and gold.
i've come to realize
where happiness lies,
I want you to know I know.
near mile four, on Manchaca Boulevard, i still felt strong, but nowhere did i see a sign for Panther Lane. i kept running down Manchaca, and back home, knowing it would be close to five miles.
finally, up a long hill, then into the home stretch to my apartment, more driving beat from audioslave, and my heart beat strong, and it soared with chris cornell's voice, chanting "running from the sound of a gun."
i knew i had run at least four. i looked at my watch - 42:21. i was fine with the time, better with the feeling. i didn't know how it would translate to 26.2 miles, but the voices in my head were quiet, and, ironically with the help of music, i heard what my body and running had to tell me.
after the shower, i went back to Gmaps and carefully plotted the course I had run - 4.62 miles.
9:09 per mile.
i don't know what will happen tomorrow when i run, or the day after that, or on october 22 in chicago. but i am just going to run, and try to be thankful just for that. i will have my challenge, and i'll fight to finish it and to do as well as i can, but i will try not to fight the running itself. that's all i can do, and i think it's enough, and maybe it's everything.
Posted by Rob at October 2, 2006 03:09 PM
Comments
"We may never find our reason to shine,
But here and now this is our time.
And I may never find the meaning of life,
But for this moment I am fine."
- Rob Thomas (Streetcorner Symphony)
Posted by: Jane at October 3, 2006 03:49 PM
YES!!!
Posted by: Tricia at October 3, 2006 07:52 PM