A new state of mind

A few months after my first triathlon and before my second marathon, I came across a quote from an ultra-marathoner. I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but it went something like this: “At the end of a 100-mile race, your mind is not the same mind you started with.”

I have always loved the spirit of that quote, even though sometimes I have used in ways that are misunderstood. Some take the quote to mean that a person has run out of gas, or that they’re on the verge of clinical insanity. I understand it differently, and I also interpret it metaphorically. In terms of how I understand it, any endurance project that one takes on is going to be transformative to mind, body, and spirit — regardless of whether it’s done “well” or “poorly”. (I put the latter words in quotation marks because those words are subjective. What’s “well” and what’s “poor” is very much in the eye of a beholder.) Metaphorically, the 100-mile race might be losing weight. It might be finishing a dissertation or a book manuscript. It might be completing an Ironman. In my case, today, it was completing this morning’s scheduled 18-mile training run.

If you’ve been following my Moving Your Body posts, you might recall that after several years of weight gain and poor fitness, I heralded New Year’s Day 2011 with a resolution to regain control of my health. I decided to make this resolution public by creating a Facebook status update that urged all of my friends in that social media universe to join me in moving their bodies for at least 20 minutes, to like my post if they did and to share what they did if they wished to do so. I kept up the campaign on Facebook through 2011 and off and on it since then. The end result has been that after two and a half years, I’m back at a healthy weight. I am eating healthy, no longer drink alcoholic beverages (which was easily my No. 1 vice), and I am running, swimming, and cycling at paces comparable to what I was doing at the time that I found the 100-mile quote.

My 18-mile training run actually ended up being 19.5 miles. I finished in a respectable-for-me 4 hours and 26 minutes, which included an unforeseen urgent bathroom break, fortunately at my house. Often, I have felt that the time it takes me to complete 21 miles in training ends up being the time that I’ll do the marathon on. If that bit of folklore holds up, all looks to be in pretty good shape.

But my mind … It definitely didn’t feel like the same mind that I started with. Before I left the house for the run, all of my usual preoccupations were buzzing at me: writing deadlines, paying bills, figuring out whether to freeze or can peaches since a half-bushel of them (approximately 21 pounds) are scheduled to arrive in our midst on Wednesday, one day before I leave town for a two-week family trip. In my usual chipper, top-of-the-sun morning manner, I made a to-do list that put all pending items on a schedule. And then I pulled on my running clothes, took one last swig of coffee, a sip of water, and trotted off.

Four a half hours later, the to-do list was but a dim memory. Everything that was wordly and “important” had receded from the realm of the immediate. My body was hot and sweaty, and my feet, knees, and hips ached from the miles and miles of running. But I was not in pain. I was in what athletes often like to call “the zone”. Or at least I think I was.

What is “the zone”? I’m not exactly sure what it is because nobody seems to have the proper words for it. I think, however, that it’s the feeling that your mind isn’t the same mind that you started with. The rhythmic regularity of the running step, the even metronome of breath, and the forward-up, backward-drop motion of the elbows seem to move from the background to the forefront of the imagination. Regular conversation feels trivial for awhile, as do chores and other commitments. The scoldings — from self or from others — that might come later for inattention are meaningless in the moment.

For people with too many responsibilities on our shoulders (and I would wager that this is pretty much all of us), being in the zone is an indescribably pleasant sensation.

I walked around my backyard for a few minutes to help my heart rate settle. I drank some water and downed a couple more Cliff Shot Blocks (which actually seem to work fairly well as nutrition for long runs) to help my stomach settle. Then, I took a shower and a nap. After about an hour, I woke up hungry for something that contained dough, tomato sauce, and melted cheese: pizza, of course.

This sensation took me back to Honolulu and the years when I was at my marathon-running peak. In those days, I was a graduate student who taught one course at the university and worked part-time as a copy editor for the Honolulu Advertiser. My newsroom shifts were generally from 4:30 p.m. to midnight, and I usually worked weekends which freed my weekdays up for school. During the peak running days, however, the Saturday shift ended at 10 p.m. and I had Sundays off. So nearly every Sunday was a long-run day, unless I was preparing for a triathlon and would do a multi-sport workout instead. Because Hawai’i was in the tropics, the long runs would begin early — sometimes as early as 4 a.m.

I often would end the runs at the beach, around 9 a.m. and relax with an ocean swim. Then, I would go home, put a frozen pizza in the oven, nibble on it and take a nap. I would end the day with a pasta meal: penne in a spinach and cream sauce. And, I would sleep deep.

That long-run ritual took me out of my head, and gave what was often a tiring and grueling work and study regime an innate sense of balance. Later, when my life changed, the ritual went away. With it went my health, my fitness, and, in some ways, a sense of meaning.

It is nice to see that it has come back. It is welcome to stay for as long as it can.

That is how my mind today changed before, during, and after my long run.

Eighteen miles

That’s the plan for tomorrow. Eighteeen miles.

My longest run for this marathon has been 14 miles, which I did two weeks ago. Normally, one wouldn’t jump from 14 miles to 18 miles, and the program I looked at earlier for preparing one’s self for a marathon in less than two months actually didn’t recommend any runs longer than 16 miles. I decided to go for 18 miles after taking a variety of factors into consideration:
* Training programs I’ve followed in the past.
* Places in recent trainings where I’ve hit “the wall.”
* The time I have left before this marathon.
* The travel I’ll be doing over the next three weeks.
* The weather forecast for tomorrow.

Let’s start with the latter. The weather forecast for tomorrow is glorious. Overnight lows in the Adirondack foothills may drop into the 40s, but the forecast calls for a dry sunny day with a high of 80 degrees and a low of 50. Perfect running weather, in my book, especially if I manage to start before 9 a.m. I’m aiming for 7:30. I considered the weather against all other factors and decided that if any day was suitable for a super-long training run, tomorrow would be the one.

Other training programs that I’ve followed in the past include at least one 18-miler and ideally a 20-21 miler. With the marathon occurring four weeks from tomorrow, I’m not sure that it makes sense this time around for me to do a 20 to 21 miler. The past programs that I’ve followed usually encourage one to do the longest run no later than three weeks before the marathon, though I have heard some runners say the longest run can come as late as 10 days before the marathon. Next Sunday, I’ll be in Chicago attending a wedding. While it would be possible for me to do a long run on the day before the wedding, I don’t want to chance it. I’m at home now, and a little more in control of my schedule than I will be next week. So I decided that if I can complete 18 miles tomorrow and continue to train at a reasonably good level over the next month, I’ll be able to go to the starting line of the marathon feeling as prepared as I can be.

I did consider staying with the suggested regimen of the seven-week program I looked at and doing only 16 miles. I have been completing the shorter runs in the program at the recommended paces, which has bolstered my confidence quite a bit. However, 16 miles historically has represented a bit of a “wall” in training for me. Everybody probably has a make-or-break point. Over the past 20 years, I’ve completed nine marathons. I also trained for three other marathons that I never completed. Why? In the first case, way back in the early 1990s, I did a 16-mile training run and the thought of doing an additional 10 miles more or less convinced me that I wasn’t ready to go the distance. Happily and with relief, I dropped out. In 2001, I was training for the Portland Marathon. After a 16-mile run, my body felt like it was breaking apart. When a scheduling conflict between a teaching commitment and the marathon arose, I was only too pleased to have an excuse not to run the marathon. The fact that I never have had any trouble working out scheduling issues so that I could both train for and run marathons since then offers to me one more sign of my readiness and willingness to do the race.

In the third case, which was 2011, the breaking point actually was not 16 miles but 14.5 miles. I had been training diligently and well. But my body and my mind were on a long recovery curve from years of being out of shape and inconsistent with exercise. The 14 miler went well and I took proper care of myself after. But as I started prepping mentally for the next run in the sequence, I felt less and less eager to do it. When a friend helped convince me to switch my registration from the marathon to the half-marathon and when financial constraints made it difficult to justify the travel to the event, I understood both once again as signs that I was not ready and willing to go the distance.

This time around, well, things feel incredibly different. I am very willing to go the distance, and I feel confident that I will make it. I am not quite sure that I’m “ready” to run a marathon in the way that I would like to run my next marathon. But I do feel that I will be prepared to do the race and that I will enjoy it considerably.

On Thursday, I get on a plane for Chicago. From there, I am spending about two weeks with my parents on a road trip through Iowa and back to their home in Muncie, Indiana, before returning to New York about ten days before the marathon. I know from past experiences of travel with my parents that getting out to do runs of anywhere from 2 miles to 20 miles will not be problem, especially once I am in Muncie. So I am timing tomorrow’s 18 miler with that premise in mind. I am comfortable committing to doing at least five runs or walks each week over the next two weeks. I am less comfortable at this point, however, with a rigid training regimen that would have me doing another super-long run. If my body feels okay, I will do it. Otherwise, I will be able to head into the last month of training secure in the knowledge that I have one 18-mile training run under my belt — after tomorrow.

Mind Control

The countdown is clicking toward the Adirondack Marathon. With it, the famed butterflies are flapping their wings in my stomach as if it is the cocoon from which they need to emerge. I applaud their desire to fly free. At the same time, their anxiety to escape is creating a rather interesting argument between two imaginary personalities who I used to describe as the “Bad Himanee” and the “Good Himanee”.

Suffice to say, the “Bad Himanee” often seems to gain the upper hand. The “Good Himanee”, however, ultimately and happily wins.

I’d like to detail the dialogue between these extremists as a way of highlighting how I’m coming to understand the role of mind control in preparing one’s self for such endurance events as marathons.

The dialogue begins with questions. I’m not quite sure which Himanee raises the questions, but they go something like this:

Can I run 26.2 miles in five weeks? Can I finish it in less than six hours? Will I come in last place — again? How many people will laugh at my snail’s pace? How many people will tell me that running is dangerous? Who will be the person who upon seeing me hobble says, “I told you so.”

The “Bad Himanee” has quick and easy answers. “You’re not ready to run.” “If it takes you an hour and a half to do five miles — like it did last week — there’s no way you’re going to finish in six hours.” “Do you really want to come in last place again? Remember, this is not Honolulu. They’re not going to keep the course open past 3 p.m. And when you come hobbling in, all the athletes are going to feel sorry for you, and all the non-athletes are going to say, ‘Hah! I told you so!!’ “

“Bad Himanee” isn’t exactly an optimist. But she does have some good evidence to back up her points: Nine days ago, I did a 14-mile run. It felt slow but steady. Coming just a week and one day day after my triathlon, I was pleased primarily that I went the distance.
Two days after the 14-miler, I tried a slow but steady five-miler. I logged the miles, but the run felt like a slog. I was queasy and sore, and ended up walking a good part of the workout. Following that slow and sluggish experience, I did a super-fast for me three-miler, running through the Saratoga Spa State Park at a slightly faster than 11-minute mile pace.

I felt down in the dumps after the five-miler, and ecstatic after the three-miler.
And, after that, I didn’t run for four days, which led to me falling into an abyss of self-doubt.

What I didn’t realize — and what “Bad Himanee” capitalized on — was the fact that my body was tired. Tired from the triathlon, tired from the 14-miler, and tired from trying to finish a book manuscript, manage money, and bring in our garden’s summer harvest. I have always believed in balance, but I sometimes forget that balance is less about doing everything all at once and more about dancing between a variety of different activities and most importantly interspersing those activities with plenty of rest.

Not accepting fatigue as a normal way of life and feeling pressured to log the miles that “training” says you’re supposed to be logging, I woke up this morning with the full intention of e-mailing the marathon organizers to switch from full marathon race to the half-marathon, and prepared my mind to settle for less.

Minds, however, are funny things. If your body is ready — truly ready — to do what you declared you would do several months earlier, they won’t let you settle for less. And that’s when the “Good Himanee” intervened.

“Excuse me,” she said sweetly, with a rather brilliant smile, “Didn’t you make a promise in this very blog that you would run this marathon for all those who experienced Boston? Isn’t your intention to celebrate the spirit of the marathon?”

Well, she was correct.

As I remembered the tragic events surrounded last April’s marathon, I remembered how I had vowed that I would do this marathon — my tenth marathon and my first one in five years — for Boston. I also remembered a young woman whom I had met at a hip-hop gathering organized by the Washington DC based Words Beats & Life hip-hop community group. She had never before run a marathon but was going to do one this year for Boston. For herself, to take control of her body and her health. For Boston, to honor those who had inspired her and hundreds of thousands of others.

Suddenly, running for Boston superseded any rational argument that “Bad Himanee” could raise.

Argument, however, isn’t enough. One needs evidence to support a point. “Good Himanee”‘s real point was that I was not only prepared to do this marathon but wanted to do it, as well. So she searched the history of my running to prove her points.

 
“What is your slowest marathon time ever?” she asked.

“Well, 6 hours, 21 minutes.”

“When did you finish that marathon?”

“Six weeks after my wedding, seven weeks after the Twin Cities marathon.”

“What kind of shape were you in when you finished those marathons?”

“Horrible, terrible shape.”

Just remembering those two back-to-back marathons and the casual remarks from people pointing to my belly and asking about the “baby” I was supposedly carrying made me realize that a four-day break in 2013 to rest the body wasn’t the same thing as the non-training I did in 2005. I was not only lighter and belly-fat free but healthier and quite decisively in shape. I was more prepared than I perhaps thought.

The “Good Himanee” had won the battle for mind control at this point. But she knew that victory is pyrrhic unless it comes with some lasting advice. In this case, she brought up the concept of pace, reminding me of “Galloway approach” that I had adopted when I first began running marathons in 2000 and had always come back to when I was seriously training.

Galloway is Jeff Galloway, a longtime contributor to Runner’s World magazine and a huge advocate of marathon training for the everyday athlete. His approach is fairly simple: You run five minutes, and walk one minute. Do this in training runs, and races. It teaches you pace, it keeps your body rested over the long haul, and it usually helps you finish faster and stronger than you could have ever imagined. 

I alter Galloway’s intervals, depending on the distances I’m doing and the shape that I’m in. In the slowest marathons, I sometimes walked four minutes and ran one, and worked my way up to five minutes of running and one minute of walking. More often, I’ll run for 10-14 minutes and then walk for one minute, or two. Since I don’t often run with a watch these days but do carry an iPhone which lets me log distances, I decided to try tonight’s five-miler by walking for one minute after each mile.

The plan worked wonders. I ran the first mile in about 14 minutes, the second one in about 12 minutes, and the remaining three in 10 to 11 minutes each. I finished the workout in a time that was very respectable for me: about 1 hour and 2 minutes for the total actual distance of 5.28 miles. More importantly, I finished feeling healthy and happy, and not tired at all. I also finished with an attitude of looking forward to the next one.

The butterflies were no longer kicking, and I am now anticipating my next long run: something that will be 16 to 18 miles, either on Friday or Sunday.

 

Moving Your Mind

 

I spent the past three days at a writers’ festival in Rennselaerville, NY, a small community about an hour and a half from my home. I drove out Friday morning for a workshop that lasted three hours and involved writing for three fairly longish intervals, reading articles, taking notes and sharing. I came home that night, and drove out again Saturday for a second workshop, a series of readings, and stayed overnight because I was part of a local writers showcase and was going to read a selection of my poems Sunday afternoon.

In between the workshops, readings, and local writers showcase, I wrote and I read. I also talked writing with other writers, and because so many of the artists I encountered also were backyard farmers, I found myself trading notes and stories about everything from the varied qualities of different animal manures to maximizing the uses of such items as pig intestines and old flour sacks.

I got home at about 6 p.m., headed for a chair on my deck, and collapsed.

“I’m totally exhausted,” I announced to my husband, Jim. “How can I possibly be so tired?”

Jim gave me a rather funny look. “Did you really think you could come home from a three-day writers festival and not be tired?”

Well, truth be told, I thought I could. My exhaustion was coupled with frustration. I have a marathon coming up in five weeks, and the last time I ran was Wednesday. A day of working in the garden wore me out Thursday, and the Friday evening that I was home after the festival, ended up getting siphoned off for laundry. I had thought I could run — or at least walk the steep hills of Rennselaerville at some point on Saturday but opted for a hot bath and late-afternoon nap in between events instead. Sunday morning, I woke up fresh and looked at the pile of books I had brought with me. All were sources I needed to consult for my manuscript-in-progress. I vowed to spend the quiet, alone time I had in Rensselaerville going through them, and that is what I did Sunday morning.

I thought I would run when I got home tonight. Instead, I headed for the deck chair and crashed.

As I continued to whine about fatigue, Jim brought up a topic I never thought would interest him: mind-body connections.
“You spent the entire weekend writing, talking about writing, and listening to people read,” he said. “You read, too. Don’t you think that’s a lot?”

“But it’s not my body that did the work,” I said.

“Is your mind not part of your body?” he asked.

Finally, it dawned on me that Jim had a point. Moving your pen across a page — whether it’s a physical pen-and-paper device, a computer keyboard, or a mental noting-down-while listening plan — is hard, intense work. Ideally, it should be balanced with proper nutrition, rest, and physical activity. But sometimes it is like physical activity, in and of itself. What drained my energy was not the work itself because the work — like a good workout — was invigorating. What actually fatigued me was thinking I could do both — intensely write and intensely work out — in a space of limited time.

Training plans for marathons, triathlons, and nearly every other endurance event emphasize the need for “rest days” — or days off so that the muscles in your body have a chance to recover from the stress that physical exercise placed on them. Most plans also emphasize the importance of limiting your hard training days to two or three a week at the most, and to intersperse those hard workout days with easy days. This blending of hard and easy also is about recovery from the stress of exercise.

In training for physical events, the strategy makes sense. What I wonder is why we don’t adapt it for our activities and projects in which the mind serves as the biggest muscle. With the advent of our post-industrial work ethic of always being available 24/7, with flexible hours and varying work schedules, we have created a certain level of freedom and autonomy in our work lives. Yet, we replace the freedom and autonomy with more work than ever. We double up on projects, aim our ambitions even higher, and offer ourselves up for service to others. All of these actions are noble ones. But ultimately they can tire us out, and perhaps lead to injuries of the brain.

An injury to a muscle, bone or body part is often easy to detect. We feel pain and we scream, “ouch!” We stop to rub the muscle, massage the limb, apply ice or heat, and we rest our body.

An injury to the brain. Outside of injuries that result from traumatic experiences, my sense is that the pain of daily wear and tear is much more difficult to detect. We don’t know how hard we’re working because the physical aspects of our bodies protect us. Instead of thanking our bodes for having our backs, we punish ourselves further, skipping sleep, passing on good meals, denying ourselves indulgences in order to work even harder. Ultimately, it seems, something’s got to give.
So what’s the message in all this? Well, I know that my mind probably can’t take a rest day for a bit. A looming project deadline, coupled with the revved-up pace of office work as our faculty reading period ends, are going to require my full attention. But perhaps the hard-easy strategy can be applied. A few days of intense writing — call it speedwork or call it the 18-mile training run. What follows both, ideally, are easy days and resting days — and sometimes cross-training days, where you do something other than the sport of the event you’re training for to help the muscles rest and lighten up the intensity a bit. I also can get a full night’s sleep and move my body tomorrow. Both the book project and the marathon project will benefit, I hope. And even if they don’t, I feel fairly sure that the mind and the body will thank me tomorrow.

Loca-Vore Challenge

In a moment of possible craziness, I signed up for a new monthly challenge. The challenge is the New England Association of Organic Farmers-New York’s annual Loca-Vore Challenge, which takes place in the month of September. The goal is “to inspire awareness and action in eating locally and organically,” according to the association’s web site at https://www.nofany.org/events/locavore-challenge and the challenge includes a range of possible action-steps that one might take.

I first heard about this challenge two years ago when it was in mid-process. I learned of it again last year but was uninterested because it emphasized things like eating at restaurants that get their products from local sources or hosting or attending community dinners. These actions cost money, which I didn’t have much of, and the list of actions that one could do for free didn’t really seem to include much of anything I wasn’t already doing. So I poo-poohed the idea as another yuppie-inspired creation and more or less forgot about it.

This year, I stumbled on the challenge while searching for information about a course that I had heard Adirondack Community College was offering on sustainable farming. I looked a little more closely at the different kinds of things that one could do to participate in the challenge and decided to give it a try.

The same caveats about spending money by eating at restaurants or going to community harvest dinners still apply. If anything, I will have even less disposable income this year than I did in the previous year, and frankly, I don’t think making one’s self a true “loca-vore” is about spending money.

The idea behind being a loca-vore is to try and obtain as much of your food from locally produced sources as possible. The rather shifty term “organic” gets embedded from time to time into this localism; however, the real goal is to get your milk from the local dairy and your meat from the farmer in the next county, rather than someone on the West Coast (when you’re living on the East Coast). The goal, as I understand it, also is to sidestep the national retailers and corporately produced foods.

My husband Jim and I grow about 90 percent of the vegetables we eat, and buy the rest from local farmers. We also buy all of our meat from local farmers, with the exception of an occasional purchase of prosciutto from Roma’s, an Italian and Mediterranean deli. We also raise hens, which means we produce our own eggs. We get our milk from a local dairy. However, we do buy cheddar cheese, butter, flour, yeast, oil, soda, beer, nuts, seltzer water, chocolate, granola bars, juices, and fruits such as bananas from the grocery, and because of our rather tight pocketbooks, don’t always buy the best-est most organic versions of such products.

So what might this challenge do to help me eat even more locally?

Here is a list of action steps I committed to trying. I will note that this list includes only steps I have not already taken such as committing to buying produce from local farmers.

* Building a makeshift root cellar for storage crops. This is a project that my husband and I have been discussing for a couple of years, so perhaps the challenge will give us the kick in the butt to actually make it happen.

* Using local honey and maple syrup in place of sugar. I’ve got stevia growing in my garden this year, so I’m adding that natural sweetener to my list.

* Making your own local organic butter, yogurt, or ice cream. I have given up on trying to make ice cream, but I will commit to not buying butter or yogurt — and making it myself.

* Making your own bread with local organic grain. I have a feeling that I might be priced out of this action step, but I will look into it, at least.

* Doing a community assessment to identify the strengths and obstacles in your local food systems. This project particularly intrigues me.

* Reading books on the NOFA-NY recommended list.

* Sharing the experience via a blog.

I should emphasize that there are a variety of other action steps listed on the NOFA-NY website that also do not entail spending inordinate amounts of money such as experimenting with canning or freezing fresh produce, composting kitchen scraps, or getting involved with grassroots political efforts to promote more availability of locally produced foods. I wanted to choose steps for myself that would challenge me to look at what I was eating and how I was obtaining it a few steps further, so these were the steps I decided to take. I will share the experiences as appropriate via my Moving Your Body and Sustainability blogs. Stay tuned!

Edible Issues

I thought this day would never come: The day when I would stop trying to lose weight and start trying to maintain my body at its current weight. I’m not quite sure that the day has arrived yet. But it is close.

There is an issue associated with the joyful moment, however. As I am transitioning from training for a triathlon to training for a marathon, I find myself wondering what I need to do to make sure I am not only eating enough but also eating the right kinds of foods.
A need to re-think my eating patterns surfaced this afternoon when I went out for a five-mile run, two days after doing a 14-miler. I knew that my body was still recovering from the 14-miler, so I decided on setting out that I would simply run the stretch of road on which I live — 1.2 miles — four times. Because my house is one-third of a mile from one end of the road and nine-tenths of a mile from the other end, I figured that if I felt a need to cut back the run I would have plenty of opportunities to do so.

I had eaten three slices of a hearty whole grain toast for breakfast and lunch, and had had a plate of leftover chili verde, squash and turnip greens about an hour before my run. I also had had several cups of coffee, which might have been my downfall. While coffee has certain benefits, it also can result in dehydration. Drinking more water before the run might have been a better option.

As I started my run, I felt pretty good. I decided to start by running the short leg of the block — the one-third mile between my house and the end of the road, which is a downhill. As I headed back up the uphill, I was feeling even better so instead of going all the way to the top of the road, I turned right at a bisecting road at approximately the halfway point. This bisecting road consists partly of pavement and partly of gravel, goes past a woods, a gurgling stream, and a no-kill animal shelter. It is one of my favorite roads because the shelter houses, among other animals, a therapy horse, an HIV-safe haven for cats, a de-horned bull, several chickens and goats. Today, there was a bonus: four deer in a clearing near this animal-friendly house, including, to my delight, the “white deer,” an anomaly of nature that has managed to stay alive in our neighboring woods for approximately two years. I hadn’t seen the deer since the spring of 2012 and was delighted to see how large he had become.

My plan, after turning, was to run past the shelter and then complete a 4.55-mile loop. Soon after passing the animal cages, however, I began to feel queasy and decided to turn around. I slowed my pace to a walk, and as I felt better, began to alternate between walks and runs. Back on my home road, I proceeded to run and walk short segments that ultimately added up to 5.25 miles. But the run was slow, and my stomach was queasy. My question was what to do to avoid a repeat performance.

In terms of vegetables, my diet is probably as good as it gets. I eat from the land. At this time of year, the garden is filled with green leafy vegetables such as collards, kale, and Swiss chard; solanaceous plants such as tomatoes, eggplants, squashes, and peppers; and plenty of turnips, carrots, and garlic, not to mention a growing supply of onions, potatoes, and green beans. In addition to these plants, our new hens are now laying eggs, which means we are getting anywhere from 4-7 fresh eggs a day. The yolk-heavy eggs of the new-laying hens are especially rich in protein. Our counter also is stocked with seasonal fruit, currently peaches, the first crop of apples, blueberries, and plums. We have been buying fresh fish two to three times a week, and usually have pork, beef, lamb, goat, or chicken on the other days of the week.

The challenge that I see is that the diet is dinner-heavy. This is related to labor. Picking food from the garden takes time, and so does cleaning, prepping, and cooking the produce. Meat also requires cooking time, and baking bread from scratch is a three-hour endeavor, at a minimum. All of these preparations enhance the quality of our food and the joy of eating in such a way. It is hard, however, to repeat the practice of meal-making three times a day. So my husband and I cook once a day, and sometimes there are leftovers that I can take to the office for lunch and sometimes not.

I do not think I was dehydrated during my run. Aside from the queasiness, I felt fine. I didn’t have cramps or any kind of body pain. I think that what my body was lacking was simply something that could have been converted to sugar that would in turn be able to be used as energy to power my body to keep moving. Sugar, of course, occupies a challenging place in the dieting discourse because it contains — that nasty little word — calories. Before I quit drinking alcohol, I knew that a large share of my excessive caloric intake was coming from the empty sugar calories in wine. Declining to drink has produced measurable benefits, including the shedding of about 12 pounds in the past eight months. With the removal of alcohol from my diet, however, has come a new desire for sweets. I find myself reaching for chocolate and drinking ginger-ale or root beer more and more often. While I think treats are okay, I do not want to replace one set of empty calories with another and so I have tried to exercise restraint. However, the more that I train, the more sugar that my body seems to require.

In search of answers, I found a few basic hints: more bananas, more nuts, eggs, lentils, chicken, and fish. I also found strong advocates for low-fat yogurt, apples, and other fruits as well as supplements that I want to avoid like protein shakes or powdered whey. While I try to eat as fresh and local as possible, I do hit the grocery store once or twice a week to buy things that cannot be grown in this climate such as bananas and nuts, and while I have not been a big fan of yogurt, I am willing to bring it into my diet.

I will end this report on a note about sustainability. It seems that the eating strategies deployed by athletes and those deployed by backyard gardeners share something in common: they’re about sustaining the self and prolonging one’s energy to live a longer, better, healthier life. The difference — and perhaps the tension — seems to lie in the means to the end: Is the strategy one of slowing down or of kicking up the pace?

Fine dining on the run

A question I posted on Facebook this morning to my friends who are endurance athletes — either for recreational or competitive reasons — yielded several great tips as well as some ongoing inspiration. One friend reminded me that her father has completed 21 Ironmans, and is going for his 22nd this month. Others reminded me that that they might single parents, working mothers, and busy educators and activists but are still hitting the road — or bicycles, pools, or all of the above — to move their bodies for a “big distances.”

My question was what to eat and drink during workouts or races that exceed three hours. Most people who train at this level are working toward at least a half-marathon or an Olympic Distance triathlon. Half-Ironmans, Ironmans, full marathons, and Ultra-marathons, however, top the list.

A bout of almost bonking out during my Olympic Distance triathlon last weekend triggered the question. I had fueled myself with a good breakfast of eggs and toast about three hours before the swim. In the hour or so leading up to that first event, I had sipped water, apple juice, and coffee (which is somewhat dehydrating but I can’t live without), and felt fairly hydrated and ready to go. After the swim, I drank a little more water and took half a “Cliff Shot” (one of several energy gels on the market, which are made up primarily of sugars designed to pump a quick dose of energy into your body without upsetting your stomach). During the bike ride, I continued to sip water and took the second half of the Cliff Shot. While transitioning to the run, I drank more water and took another half of a Cliff Shot. I tucked the remaining half-pack in my pocket and began running easily, figuring that I would drink water offered at the water stations as I needed it and take the rest of the gel if I needed it.

All went well until about mile 4 of the 6.2-mile run. At that point, I accepted some water, took a sip and started to feel as if my stomach was going to turn. Having experienced this sensation before, I knew it was best not to drink any more water. I tossed the rest of the cup over my head to cool off my body and since the run was nearly over, concentrated on getting to the finish line. I crossed, and headed for my car where I had stashed a bottle of ginger-ale.

Two sips of the ginger-ale, and I began to feel crazily nauseous. Not the throw-up kind of nauseous (thankfully) but the dizzy kind where you feel like the world is spinning and you’re going to faint. My husband urged me to keep drinking ginger ale or to eat a granola bar, but I couldn’t bear the idea of either. He thought I would throw up if I sat down, which is something he didn’t want to see and I didn’t want to experience. Eventually, however, I did sit down in the passenger seat of the car, lean my head gently forward, and after a few minutes, the feeling passed. I honestly don’t know if this was the best thing to do, but it worked at the moment. I then picked up the apple juice, and a few sips restored my sense of balance.

I suspect that what occurred was a bodily reaction to the loss of salts and sugars that my body sweated out through four hours of effort. The water didn’t work because water offers, well, water and nothing in the way of sugars and sodium that the body might need. I might have been able to compensate for the problem by drinking Gatorade or other sports drinks while bicycling and running, and possibly taking more energy gels. But herein lay my dilemma: I never liked sports drinks in my younger endurance sports days and worried that with my present eating regime that emphasizes whole foods, garden grown produce and locally produced meats with very little additional preservatives the synthetic substances in sports drinks might affect me adversely. In addition, high blood pressure issues have caused me to look with suspicion at anything that has added sodium. Coupled with that dilemma was the fact that I was having trouble swallowing the energy gels. They tasted to me too thick and too sweet. I digested them fine, but compared with my earlier marathon running days, where I would consume five or six during a single race, I could barely get 1-1/2 down my throat.

I wondered, as a result, if there were healthier options to sports drinks and energy gels.

From my friends, I have learned that there are. While many regular marathon runners and triathletes said they continued to do what I used to do — which was to dilute the Gatorade or other sports drink with water and to consume gels — they also suggested bananas, blueberries, almond butter sandwiches, and coconut water as options. The also noted that it’s important to listen and learn from your own body, rather than following a fixed formula.

From their advice and from listening to my body, there’s a few things I’ve learned:

* Water makes sense to drink while you’re actually engaged in activity — whether it’s a long training run or an endurance event. Unless it’s a very hot day, my body generally can manage a two-hour workout without water, as long as I’m well-hydrated and have had some good quality sugar before I go out and make sure to sip water and eat something like a piece of fruit soon after. Any workout longer than that, I need to have water.

* Gels work, if you take them with plenty of water. There are some gels on the market that are made with more natural than synthetic products. However, as a friend who has completed some Ironman distance triathlons notes, they can start to taste too sweet later in the race. The latter friend said he relies on bananas at that point, an alternative that appeals to me, because bananas when soft can go down easy (like a gel does), without adding a ton of fiber that can upset your stomach while running.

* Small, natural shots of sweetness might be good just before a workout. One friend said he used to take a spoonful of honey a few minutes before a race, and another suggested an English muffin with blueberries. I think the English muffin might make a good pre-workout or pre-race breakfast, though the processing and the preservatives in store-bought English muffins make me a little wary. I think a few blueberries just before starting the workout might add a little boost of energy. Similarly, almond butter (or peanut butter) sandwiches seem like good things to eat before a run but not perhaps during one. However, I can see a spoonful of peanut butter or even a quick dash of peanut butter with a natural fruit jam as a good way to start a workout.

* The coconut water sounds like a great replenisher, much like apple juice was. I do wonder, however, if my body will be able to take it as my family’s history to allergic reactions to foods has not been super-coconut friendly. Unlike my parents, I can take a little coconut, but more tends to leave a bad taste in my mouth. Still, this is an after-workout drink that I look forward to trying, and is probably a much healthier alternative to the grape soda that I was craving this afternoon!

* Overall, natural sugar seems to trump processed sugar. This might help explain why my body reacted well to apple juice but not ginger ale. This also might help explain why treats like granola bars with chocolate chips in them tasted so much better over the past week than my latest favorite — bars of Hershey’s chocolate (on sale in packs of six at the local Price Chopper … I swear I only eat one bar a night).

* Sips of anything liquid are better for the body while training — and in general — than gulps or guzzles. Perhaps this philosophy will put 7-11 out of business, but it seems overall to make sense.

In line with the advice to do what works for your body, I think I am going to need to find a sports drink. I did a 14-mile run today and carried a Cliff Shot energy gel and a bottle of water mixed with a small amount of a Super-Greens juice that we get occasionally. The water worked until it got hot. It still worked better at that point than plain water, but it tasted — well, rather like sweet slime. This prompted me to relegate juices to the category of after-workout, rather than something to drink during a run.

I finished the run tired but was able to replenish my body right away with a fresh peach and water. After a shower and nap, I felt rested enough to drive into town to work on some manuscript revisions at the local coffee shop, Saratoga Coffee Traders, which I knew also usually stocked the grape soda I was coveting. Sadly, it’s track season in Saratoga, which means most everything was sold out. I settled for an Izze drink — which is a blend of carbonated water, juice, and natural sugar — and did some quality work for a couple of hours. 

The countdown to the marathon is six weeks, which gives me at least a little bit of time to experiment.

Marathon mind-set

One week has passed since I completed my Olympic Distance triathlon, and my body has been itching to move. I rested until tonight, and did a fairly relaxed but enjoyable 2.2 mile on the indoor track at the Saratoga Y. The run felt good and smooth, and when a runner — much younger than me — lapped me for the third time in a row (which is not hard to do on a track that’s just a little over 1/10 of a mile long), I momentarily picked up my tempo to pass her. Not because I felt competitive, but just to see if I could. I took the fact that I wanted to “race” as a good sign.

I have actually been wanting to run for the past several days, but I have read enough articles about the importance of giving your body a chance to experience a fully recovery that I decided to heed the signs. Plus, I had other reasons not to run: revisions to a book manuscript with a pressing deadline to meet; summer squash soup to make; scads and scads of weeding to do in the garden.

But now with the first post-triathlon run under my belt, I am starting to think marathon.
The marathon is six weeks and two days from tonight. It is on Sunday, September 22. I am scheduled to be a writer’s workshop next weekend, and to be in the Midwest for my cousin’s wedding, a road trip with my parents to Iowa City (where they first landed as immigrants in 1961), and several days at their home in Muncie to help them prepare for a pending move out of their large house and into a small, more easy-to-maintain empty-nester unit in an “almost-retirees” enclave.

Can I do the distance?

Do I want to do the distance?

Is training for a marathon with just six weeks insanity of the ego?

To check these questions, I consulted the Internet. Yahoo.com’s “Ask Me” page suggests that doing a marathon six weeks after an Olympic Distance triathlon is entirely do-able, provided you’ve got some 13-milers under your belt. I don’t. Esteemed runner and training guide specialist Hal Higdon didn’t have a lot to say about triathlons, but did note that while running multiple marathons within a short time frame is somewhat insane, it can be done and that he himself has done it, more than once. A few other bloggers also have fessed up that they’re planning to complete marathons with six weeks or less of traning, and after a little bit of searching, I did find an eight-week training program that looked fairly realistic.

My husband tells me that I can do it, and my mind is telling me that I can do so, as well. But, even as I write this point, I wonder if I am doing so with a certain degree of false bravado. My last memory of marathon training ended with a 15-mile training run. I ran it carefully and at a good pace, and felt fine afterwards. But when I considered the series of 17, 19 and 21 milers that were to follow with a mix of 10s and 12s in between, my body rebelled. Not this year, it said. Perhaps not ever. Never again.

But … that was in the fall of 2011. I had begun traveling my path toward regaining good health and had lost about 16 pounds since I had begun weighing myself every day in the January of that year. Despite those great promising strides, I was still about 15 pounds over the minimum weight that BMI charts, my doctor, and nutritionists had defined as a reasonable weight for me.

Nearly two years later, I am at a healthy weight. I am 20 pounds lighter than I was when I threw in the towel after the Fall 2011 15-mile training run, and without the empty sugars of alcohol, feel more unburdened than ever.

And so …. it seems like I can do it. But how? Run it? Walk it? Run-walk? Train hard? Have fun?

I looked at the marathon website and laughed. I had mixed up the date. I thought the marathon was going to take place Saturday, Sept. 21. It’s Sunday, Sept. 22. One extra day to train!

The course closes after six hours, with a 9 a.m. start. There is an early start for non-competitive walkers of 7 a.m. I’ve kind of decided that I don’t want to do that.
I would like to try and finish in six hours or less. My heart tells me the goal is healthy and do-able. And, if the heart is in it, the mind and body surely will follow.

Memories of 2005 come back to my mind. My fiance and I had registered for the Twin Cities Marathon, which was to take place the Sunday before our Saturday, October 8, wedding. Back in those days, my body had just begun the spiral of weight gain that would result in me becoming obese, having high blood pressure, and needing to go on medication to control a lifelong history of troubles with cholesterol. We had fully intended to train for the marathon, and my goal was to finish it in six hours. The training didn’t really start to happen until about six weeks before the marathon.

But it did happen. We both made it to the start and the finish line. We ran separately, but we both ironically started to develop leg cramps around mile 17. I crossed the line in 5 hours and 56 minutes, with my leg cramping again when I stretched my body high into the air to wave at my sister, parents, and future in-laws who had gathered at the finish. I stumbled, but finished.

And seven weeks later, we were both back at another marathon starting line: the Honolulu Marathon in December 2005. We had decided to move to Seattle the following year, and I felt an emotional surge to complete one more Honolulu Marathon before leaving the islands that I had loved so much for good. I don’t remember much about that marathon, beyond the fact that I finished it, and that I did another one in Seattle about 11 months later.

So, where there’s a will, there’s a way. My body feels much more fit than it did in 2005, and my mind is much more at peace than it has been in decades. And, so adapting the eight-week program to a six weeks plus two days time frame, here is my plan:

Week 1 (this week, Friday, Saturday, Sunday)
Friday: 2.2 miles easy
Saturday: 3 miles easy
Sunday: 11 miles long, slow distance

Week 2
Monday: rest
Tuesday: 5 miles easy
Wednesday: 3 miles easy
Thursday: 12 miles long slow distance
Friday: 3 miles easy
Saturday: rest
Sunday: 6 miles with some speedwork tossed in

Week 3
Monday: rest
Tuesday: 5 miles easy
Wednesday: 4 miles easy
Thursday: 6 miles with some speed work
Friday: 4 miles easy
Saturday: rest
Sunday: 15 miles long slow distance

Week 4
Monday: rest
Tuesday: 5 miles easy
Wednesday: 3 miles easy
Thursday: 5 miles with some speed work
Friday: 3 miles easy
Saturday: rest
Sunday: 10 miles with some speed work

Week 5
Monday: Rest
Tuesday: 5 miles easy
Wednesday: 3 miles easy
Thursday: 8 miles, with speedwork
Friday: 3 miles easy
Saturday: rest
Sunday: 16 miles long slow distance

Week 6
Monday: rest
Tuesday: 6 miles easy
Wednesday: 4 miles easy
Thursday: 5 miles easy
Friday: rest
Saturday: 1 mile easy, or rest
Sunday: marathon race

The eight-week plan suggests one can finish in under 5 hours. I think that’s ambitious, but I do think this plan’s blend of short runs, longer runs, and speedwork makes sense. I especially appreciate its de-emphasis on super-long runs, which I think are good to do with a longer time-frame for training but might end up debilitating me because of the limits of time. We’ll take it one day at a time, and see how it goes. Stay tuned for more.

I won, I won, I won!

Preparing for the swim, amid wetsuits, sans wetsuit

There’s a piece of me that would like to begin this story about completing my first-ever Olympic Distance Triathlon by clinging to the lie in the title — I won, I won, I won! Reality is, I came in last place. 168th out of 168 who finished the race, 69th out of the 69 women who finished the race, and eighth out of the eight women in the 50-54 age division.

There were reasons why I finished last, but the second reality is the fact that I didn’t mind finishing last. Honestly. Let me explain why.

My finishing time of 4 hours, 2 minutes, and 53 seconds was about 17 minutes slower than the fastest I thought I could finish, and about 27 minutes faster than what I thought would be my slowest time. I finished the swim seven minutes faster than I expected I would, the bike ride right on target, and the run about four minutes faster. I have memories of triathlons in Honolulu where I rode my bicycle into the transition zone, tore off my helmet, and dashed out for the run only to feel my legs almost immediately turn into dead weight. My legs and my entire body felt well-oiled and smooth as I headed out for the run, and stayed that way for most of the 6.2-mile pace. Those results told me that while I learned a lot about how I could improve my triathlon skills from this event, I had trained for it as well as I could for the time and space that my body and my life are in now.

A second reason why I didn’t mind finishing last: I looked at the 2012 race results last night. The triathlon’s Olympic distance is apparently an event that doesn’t seem to draw many general athletes. Of last year’s finishers, the slowest had a time of 4 hours and 11 minutes, and the second slowest was 4 hours and six minutes. This year, even if I had finished as fast as my wildest dreams had allowed me to hope, I would have been in the bottom six of the total number of participants. The point was that I finished, had fun, and felt very good afterwards.

And received some good “swag”: a sun cap, a technical shirt, a water bottle, bottle opener, and a few complimentary packages of energy gel.

This is a significantly different scenario from a duathlon I completed 11 years ago in Honolulu. Entitled the Honu, it consisted of a run followed by a swim and a second run. There were fewer than 50 participants. I finished dead last.

I was angry at myself, even though all of my times were quite strong for me. I was ashamed when I crossed the finish line, and I thought all of the cheers from spectators, other racers, and volunteers were ways of mocking me, rather than supporting me. I remember going back to the sunny peaceful bay in the middle of the course where we had done the swim because that was the only place where I thought no one would find me. I sunk myself into a small lagoon by the beach and nearly snarled when someone did come by and congratulated me on a fine performance. I was so upset with the whole state of affairs that I stormed from the lagoon to my car. I was about to leave when I heard the announcer asking everyone to gather for the awards ceremony. Some little nagging voice inside me told me that I was being a poor sport and to at least have the good grace to show some aloha and applaud for the winners. I headed back, and to my surprise, I was one of the winners. I had come in last place overall, but there were so few participants that I finished third in my division.

“It’s really great that you came out for this race,” one of the top finishers from that event said to me later. He was an elite athlete, used to high-stakes training and racing. “We need a wider array of participants. Otherwise, events like this are never going to take off.”

Getting marked at the check-in

His words stayed with me for many years that followed. I felt today that I would express the same wish for the Fronhofer Tool Triathlon’s Olympic Distance event. I can understand how the Olympic Distance can intimidate, and how perhaps the fairly high cost of acquiring what’s coming to be seen as “necessary” gear (wetsuits for the swim, aero bars and high-performance foods, and super-light bikes, and costly shoes and pedals for the bike ride; and expensive performance shoes for the run) plus the prices one must pay to train with a group, access a safe lake in which to swim in a state park, and hire a personal trainer can completely deter participation. When I signed up for the triathlon in February, the very price tag of the registration — $80 — caused me to flinch. I knew I would be investing some money in getting my racing bike (which had been sitting in a box for six and a half years) tuned up and ready to roll, and that running shoes are generally good for about 300 to 500 miles. The fact that I was able to pull off completion without spending much more highlights the fact that the distance is do-able, and so I do hope I have more “general athletes” accompanying me in future years.

After the Honu (which by the way is the Hawaiian word for turtle, think slow and steady), I made it a point to stay for as many awards ceremonies as I could for the events in which I competed. Not to see if I won, as much as to cheer those who had cheered and supported me, not mocked me. My husband often has complained about this fetish of mine, and I don’t blame him, especially since we do sports in communities where we have virtually no friends who join us in our endeavors. It can be tiring — and maybe a little weird — to be cheering on strangers, strangers who usually seem to be surrounded by friends. Yet, I also remember him seeing a woman at the 26.0 mile mark of the Honolulu Marathon 12 hour into this amazing race where the course does not close until the last person crosses prepare to sit down on the course and quit altogether when she realized she still had to make it up the final pathway of Kapi’olani Park to get to the finish line. “Don’t do that!” he bellowed. “Don’t stop, now.”

He and I and a group of friends in Honolulu surrounded her with reassuring words, pointed our fingers at the finish line, which lay just ahead, and handed over several bars of chocolate as an incentive to keep her going. She was laughing so hard that she forgot whatever negative energy she was feeling previously and was striding strong to her finish as we parted.

Today began cold and drizzly. I left the house in cotton pants and a long sleeved shirt, and put on my swimsuit when we stopped for a bathroom break en route. The drizzly was an open rain as I racked my bike and set up my transition area. My hands and feet were getting clammy and cold, and I was afraid that my fingers would go numb. Pulling on my hoodie helped a little as did frequent swigs of coffee and general dancing to the disco beats emanating from the check-in area.

I went to look at the lake. It was clear, and one of the volunteers told me the water temperature was 71 degrees. The race organizers had recommended wetsuits if the temperature was below 74.

“Do you have a wetsuit?” the volunteer asked.

I neither own nor have ever swum in a wetsuit.

“Oh dear,” the volunteer said. “I feel for you.”

Another racer told me as we were standing in a picnic pavilion trying to stay dry that wetsuits help swimmers with buoyancy as much as they keep them warm. I had feared the price tag previously. Suddenly, thinking about numb toes and blue fingers, I began to wonder if I should have either found a way to budget for one or to have not registered for the triathlon altogether.

My spirits lifted as I saw another swimmer in a swimsuit, like mine.

Preparing for the swim

As we entered the water, my nerves were calmed. The water was quite comfortable, and once the race began, I felt very grateful that I did not have a wetsuit because my body was warm enough, as is.

Getting ready to bike

Running up from the beach, I noticed that the rain had stopped and the sun had broken through the clouds. I got on my bicycle, and within the first five miles, experienced my first calamity: my chain dropped off the gear shaft. As I unclipped my shoes from the pedals and got off my bike to fix the chain, three bikers passed me.

“Looking good,” they said. “Have a good ride,” I responded.

Between mile 10 and 13, I began to hit my groove. I passed one rider, and at mile 14, entered a parking lot, which served as a water bottle exchange site and a turnaround area. I waved to the volunteers handing out water, telling them I was fine, and began the return half of the bicycle loop. About three minutes out of the turnaround, I realized that something was wrong. My bike began to feel as if it was unbalanced and pulling me backwards. Carefully, I slowed down, unclipped, and took a look. My front tire had a flat.

“Oh shit,” I exclaimed, feeling like I’d probably have to drop out of the race.

I crossed the street, and slowly rode back to the transition zone, where the volunteers were beginning to pack up as the last rider had passed.

“I have a flat tire,” I said.

“I don’t have a tube on me,” one volunteer said.

“I don’t either,” I replied.

“Well, someone can probably give you a ride … wait, here’s someone saying they have a tube.”

That someone was Matt McMorris, who later introduced himself to me as the president of the Saratoga Triathlon Club. “Let’s get you back into this race,” he said. “You have plenty of time.”

I wasn’t wearing a watch and had no idea of the time. So I stole a look at his watch. 9:52 a.m. The course didn’t close until 1 p.m., and I figured I could bike the remainder and complete the run in two and a half hours.

“How’re you doing?” a deputy with the local sheriff department asked me.

“Oh, pretty good,” I said, looking at my tire.

“It seems like you’re having a challenging day.”

I considered the point. Then, I laughed. “You know, I’m not having a bad day at all. Flat tires happen. I’m having fun. I hope I can finish this race. That’s really all that matters.”

He whistled a bit, maybe in disbelief and maybe in appreciation.

After Matt finished replacing the tube and pumping my tired, we noticed several threads fraying out from inside the tire’s tread. He didn’t have anything to cut the threads with, so the deputy bent down and bit them off with his teeth.

“Now you can say you have kissed a tire,” I said laughing.

Finishing the bike ride

I estimated later that the time spent fixing my chain and dealing with flat tire added 15 minutes to the ride. Subtracting those minutes would have put me in at least second-to-last place and given me close the best finishing time I felt I could have hoped for. But woulds, coulds, and shoulds only matter when they become helping points for the future. Zooming along on my bike, I realized that being at the very back of the pack, at the actual end of the line, actually relaxed me. I decided to concentrate on pacing and on training, and to actually do what I always told myself events like triathlons and marathons were about — pushing yourself to do your best.

I pulled into the transition zone as several competitors were completing their runs.

Cars packed with racers were exiting the parking lot. Still, everyone who saw me cheered me on. I saw it as support, and not as a gesture of mocking.

My time was 2:45 as my bike rolled over the timing mats. Hmm, I thought. About what I had expected, pre-race.

As I headed out for the run, the announcer pealed out my race number over the loudspeaker and saying I was heading out for the run. Dozens of bystanders cheered, clapped, and yelled, “Go 85 (my race number)!” I felt the same way I felt when, after submitting my final dissertation to my university’s graduate division, I introduced myself to a group of dancers as “Dr. Himanee.” Their cheers, applause, and foot stomps lasted three minutes and brought tears to my eyes.

On the final leg of the run, a posse of motorcyclists began roaring past me. I think there were 300 men and women riding four to five people abreast. A volunteer on the course laughed. “You’ve got your own parade!”

As I headed into the final half-mile, I yelled to a volunteer, “What time is it?”

“Don’t worry about the time,” he said. “Just keep going.”

“Just tell me,” I said. “I need to know if I’m on track.”

He laughed, maybe in disbelief. “About three minutes till 12.”

Good, I thought. I’ll finish faster than last year’s last place finisher!

I crossed the line, was high-fived a few times, and handed a water bottle. My husband congratulated me, and asked me how I was feeling. I told him I felt great, had had a blast, and was looking forward to doing the triathlon next year.

Then, a wave of dizziness hit me, and I nearly fainted.

Is there a moral to this story? I’m not sure at this point. I will say that I felt that this triathlon lived up to its reputation of being well-run, carefully organized, and for having great “swag”. I think, though, that the best “swag” might have been the faces and voices on the course who helped keep me from stumbling and for offering cheers and well-wishes even if they only knew me as “85.” I also appreciated the learning I received from the experience, and look forward to the next great event: the Adirondack Marathon in seven weeks.

(All photos are by Jim Gupta-Carlson, professional photographer/personal husband)

Training, hip-hop and sustainability

        Tonight is one of the nights where I am cross-posting on blogs. This entry makes sense as a report on hip-hop, a report on health and fitness, and finally a reflection on sustainability. It is a little incomplete because it is coming the night before a triathlon that I signed up on February 1 to compete in. I should put compete in quotation marks, because, really, the only person I am competing with is myself.     

       As I mull the triathlon, a poem I wrote three years ago comes to mind. It’s entitled “B-Girl Warrior” and celebrates the b-girls I met and got to know in Seattle in 2008-10. Here it is:

The b-girl seethes, like a warrior.
She lets nothing show.
Her moves are like the white crane spreading its wings,
stretching past its earthly limits.
But her smile shines down to earth,
upon those the world ignores. 

What does she battle?
Frustration?
Injustice?
She won’t let on.
She’s a warrior;
She lets nothing show. 
At the cipher edge, she stands, cross-armed, waiting, watching,
hinting that she has a plan.

But until she answers the call
and steps into the ring,
nothing shows. 

  I need to be clear that as much as I would like to call myself a b-girl, I do not feel I can lay claim to that title. I do not battle in the way that these warrior women do. But I do draw a great deal of inspiration from them, which fed my training for the triathlon. I am sort of impressed with my competitor self: In the months between February and July, I lost eight pounds, and increasingly began to feel like the lean mean fighting machine that I’ve aspired for years to become. Giving up a big vice — drinking wine and other alcoholic beverages —  has made a big difference. So has getting the full eight hours of sleep, and so has being resolute with my training.

       I have been thinking, of late, of how my work with hip-hop and my training are connected, and how that connection nurtures an understanding of community building that is such an underlying component of sustainability. I always worked out, and I always felt that exercise was an important component to living a good healthy life. But I do feel like it took on a new dimension this year, gaining a level of seriousness and commitment that I didn’t have with it previously.

       I have been thinking of asking a colleague who I met through the Hip-Hop Education Center at NYU, if he would be willing to serve as a mentor for me in hip-hop. The individual is a few years younger than me but much older than me in his understanding of the community-based wisdom that emerges through hip-hop. I thought that one question that he might ask is what I think I might need a mentor for. I guess there’s a few responses that I could give to answer this question.

       The first and perhaps the most obvious is that I would like to have someone to guide me toward gaining a deeper realization of the oppositional consciousness that lies at the core of how one thinks about knowledge (or the fifth element) through hip-hop. I hear and appreciate the importance of academic types being in touch with communities, and at the same time I feel that looking at my own community — predominantly (but not entirely) white, rural, and traditionally grounded in the trades of farming, trapping, hunting, fishing, and logging — requires an oppositional consciousness that is not traditionally associated with hip-hop. Now, I could drive the hour to Albany or Schenectady to find hip-hop, but would that be my community or would it be constructing something artificial? I also could move. But the fact of the matter is that I chose to live in the place where I live. Not because I detest cities; on the contrary, I love cities and miss many aspects of the deeply urban environments where I used to live. We chose to live in the country because we wanted to grow food, we wanted to have the space to make art, and, well, truth be told, I think we wanted some peace and quiet. In a society that continues to harshly judge interracial relationships, female-breadearners and stay-at-home males, and desires to do daily life differently, we wanted to be left alone.

  I have a different sort of community via social networks. I have friends all over the world, and colleagues and like-minded allies in many different places. An increasingly large number of these individuals are associated with hip-hop. When we get together on Google Hangout calls, through Facebook, and face-to-face at conferences or hip-hop events, the interaction and exchange is refreshing. I think that community is an important one to build. But I also look at where I’m at, and I think it’s important to build in the place where I’m at, too.

      Artists and intellects have always — let me revise that to often — sought refuge in nature. B-Girl Naj, one of my first connections to the hip-hop community in Seattle, liked practicing outdoors, even as she professed not to really feel at one with nature. Some of her favorite memories were of getting into a car with her crew members and driving out to a park or beach, and then setting up a stereo and getting down with the moves. She particularly loved it when a crowd would gather to watch the group dance, and once in awhile, they would put out a hat, which always resulted in some extra income for their effort.

  There is peace in coming home to a quiet place, where I hear owls, see deer, and occasionally smell skunk. There is peace in spending a day under the summer’s heat pulling weeds, and gathering vegetables from my backyard to make into meals. There is peace in training on roads around my house, where “around-the-block” usually means at least a four-mile loop. It would be nice to have nearby lakes or clean ponds in which to swim right around the block, but they are in fairly good supply, just a few miles.

  The discipline of training is about helping me become a better person. Training keeps me off alcohol, and encourages me to cultivate vegetables, raise hens for eggs, and to support local farmers by purchasing the meat that they raise, usually in kind and sustainable ways. Training also helps me write better, and with more discipline because when I sit down at the computer, I do so with a healthier state of mind as well as a stronger body. Writing can be an exhaustive process, especially if you’re not writing with discipline or with an end goal to build.