Blue Serge Suit

The Other Mothers

Tonight, as my wife was putting m to bed, they began to shout together. I couldn’t make it out at first, but when they repeated it, louder the second time, I rushed in to join them. My daughter was giggling like the three year-old she is, and my wife was encouraging her to say the words louder still.

“Happy Mother’s Day, G–!” they shouted, and this time I joined in.

Today is a celebration, in the U.S. at least, of mothers. Mothers who stay up all night with their sick kids. Mothers who cook and clean and bake and wash clothes and make beds. Mothers who work all day, come home exhausted and still find the energy to sit on the floor with their toddlers and play fort in a turned over living room chair. Mother’s who bathe and scrub and kiss boo-boos and comfort a crying child when they spill their ice cream in the grocery store. It’s a celebration of mother’s who paint with their kids, who draw with them, who play dress up with them, who paint their nails and watch Disney Princess movies with them. A celebration of mothers who sacrifice their careers and their sleep cycles and their hair for a child who offers them pittance in return. For a life in which there is no gratification except the eventual satisfaction of seeing a son or daughter graduate from college, and only eight or ten years later do they realize the sacrifice their mother made and offer a thanks.

As I listened to my daughter and my wife call out to my daughter’s birth mother, I realized that this celebration was about much more than the mothers who gave so much to raise their children. This is also a celebration of mothers who gave up the very idea of motherhood, who sacrificed the one thing that would make them mothers. Who not only sacrificed the job and the car and the house, but who sacrificed literally part of themselves. They gave the ultimate sacrifice so that their children could have more stability, more discipline, better schooling, a better life. Those mothers gave their most precious gift so that a man like me could be a father. So that I could raise and care for and nurture their children, and never let them forget where they came from, never let them forget the woman who made the ultimate sacrifice.

To all the mothers out there, the mothers who bore them and the mothers who bear them today, I salute you. Happy Mother’s Day.

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Race Recap: Shiprock Marathon 2013; or, I am my own DJ

The day began cool, in the mid 30s, with they sky clear and the air still. The former would last throughout the day, but the latter would kick in shortly after the race started.

I arrived at the start with four members of my relay team. We were on the last bus to leave and so found ourselves in the end of the line for the port-a-potties. Standing in these lines is a right of passage for any race. Talking about the port-a-potties, their cleanliness or how many are available, is som ething we all like to do. Standing in that line is a pre-race ritual, like stretching or retying a shoe lace or swallowing that last bit of water. No marathoner wants to start a race with either of the B’s (bladder or bowel) full. I stood in line as as the line grew shorter and shorter the starting line became more crowded.

Seeing it from afar, I realized how small this race really was. Race organizers had increased the total number of available marathon spots to 300, though I don’t know whether the race maxed out or not. Combined with the 100 or so runners for the 5-person relay teams, the numbers here looked a lot like the numbers at the start of the Javelina Jundred. More people run a 5 mile race in New York City’s Central Park than were even registered for this event. For that matter, nearly as many people run a 5 mile race in Central Park as live in the Shiprock area!

After my pre-race pit stop, I dropped my bag in the back of a black pickup and raced away to the start. I saw a couple of runners from the Dine College cross-country team and asked about their coach. I’ve run with the team a few times and have enjoyed it tremendously. Unfortunately, I haven’t made enough time to do it more, but that’s been my choice. Having a kid at home means I have had to sacrifice things like that, but I’m happy with my choices. I’m happy with where I am and happy with what I have done while I’ve been out here.

The First 8–Hills:

I missed the singing of the national anthem, and the playing of drums, but I didn’t miss the start. Just a man with a microphone who said, “Go!” And we were off. The first two miles of the course were uphill and lead to the highest elevation on the whole route, just above 6000 feet. JZ passed me, plodding, methodical, her rhythmic steps and running form like a metronome. She looked strong. My neighbor, A, running only his third marathon, was gone as well. I took my time, made my slow way up the long first hill. At the top I skipped the first water station since I had decided to do the Javelina thing and carry my own hydration. I would wind up skipping most of the aid stations until about 15 when I needed to refill my bottles.

The scenery was spectacular, and while I knew this would probably be my second slowest marathon ever, I set out to simply enjoy myself, run strong and consistent, and keep moving forward. I chatted with a couple who were born in Shiprock but now live in Flagstaff. He had run this same marathon last year, which was his first, and since then he’d run three more. In one year he was already running his fifth marathon. “It’s addictive,” I said. Soon he separated from his companion whom I ran with for a couple miles. She had never run this race before, so I gave her some tips that I’d learned from last year.

“The race will thin out after you pass the first five mile marker at the relay exchange,” I said. “Afterwards you’ll be running a lot by yourself. After about 18 miles, you’ll begin to pass the slower half-marathoners and when you feel like stopping you can tell yourself that you’re passing people who’ve run less than half the distance you have and maybe it’ll make you feel better. Be cautious of the last six. They may be all downhill, but it’s still six miles to go. Don’t think you can coast, and save some quads for the pounding you’ll get in the final two miles.”

Soon it was time for me to turn off at hit another potty, so I bid my companion farewell and mentally prepped myself for slogging through the rest of my race in my own head.

At about mile 7 or so I came upon the World Record holder for the heaviest man ever to complete a marathon. He ran the LA Marathon last year in 9h48m. He was wearing a tye-dyed T-shirt that read “Super Dad” on the back, and as I came up behind him I shook his hand and said, “Super dad, indeed. Good luck!” He didn’t look as big as I had been led to believe by pre-race rumors, and until I read reports about him online I found it hard to believe he was even a sumo wrestler. But he is, and he’s apparently quite a good one. I have a lot more respect for those guys, now. Kelly Gneiting is a dense man with a lot more muscle than fat on his frame.

It’s hard enough to run a marathon, to lace up shoes and get out of the house three to five days a week to get in the training; to mentally prepare for toeing the line and hearing the starting pistol fire, or the man say, “Go!”; hard enough to slog through the miles, one step at a time, knowing the kind of pain you’ll be in at the end, knowing the cramps will probably come and your mind will tell you multiple times that you just have to stop and you have to dig deep and overcome all that, you have to tell yourself you can do this, you can do anything, just keep putting one foot in front of the other. It’s hard enough to do all that, but then to do it with this physical and metaphorical weight on your shoulders, to set out to prove that sumo wrestlers are athletes who have endurance and stamina and strength, both mental and physical. That takes the kind of courage most of us don’t possess, the kind of courage that makes marathons, and the people who run them, amazing athletes and amazing people. We all get up and run ever day, and we all run with and through our demons, and somehow when we get to the end we have overcome those demons, overcome those doubts and those questions and we’ve crossed the finish line. And we’ve won.

These thoughts plowed through my mind as I made my way down the long straightaway that is miles 6 through 10. Around mile 8 I passed a sign for a church, and I mentally marked it as the end of the first part of my race.

The Second 7–Slowing down:

Mentally I wanted to speed up along this long flat stretch of road. Physically I knew I would pay the price later. I made the effort to slow down and, using my Garmin, kept my pace in the 9 minute/mile range. Give or take 30 seconds, I didn’t do bad. I monitored my breathing and ran even up the hills so that I could still keep up a converstation. Not that there was anyone there to talk to. Somewhere around mile 11 or 12 Z caught up with me. I turned to find him climbing the hill steadily behind me and I ran backwards for a couple hundred feet to get a view of the valley behind and chat with him a bit. I slowed down and as we ran together I told him his wife blew past me in the first mile looking like she was going to win the thing. He looked strong, like the sun and the altitude were not having any effect on him. I knew my pace would hold him back, that from here I would keep it at or above 9m/m, so he took off. Before long he was gone.

We passed the Shiprock Wall, dike-like wall called a minette. It literally looks like a wall and stretches from the Shiprock itself (Tsé Bitʼaʼí in Navajo, or Rock With Wings) south along the western edge of Red Valley. Here a long slow climb took us back up to an elevation of almost 6600 feet, past the starting line of the half marathon and the techical halfway point of our race.

For me the halfway came three miles later, just past the fifteen mile marker, where the only medical tent was stationed along the course. Two of my friends were manning the station, and this being mile 15 (the distance of each loop at Javelina) I thought it would be a good time to stop and chat for a minute or so, take a breath, relax, remind myself that I was out here to have fun and not to win any awards. It was nice to see some friendy faces, and I got a laugh when I asked for cortisone or steroid injections in my feet. Soon, though, it was time to move on. I refilled my bottles and waved goodbye, then kept moving.

The Third 6–Making the Turn:

By mile 18 I had caught up with the half marathoners, and I was moving at a slower pace. I’d taken a few pit stops at aid stations, devouring orange slices like they were water. The real test of the marathon was about to begin. The last several miles had been slogs. My legs had turned to lead bricks. Lifting each one was a test of will, a study in the concentration of the mind. Now I was passing the half marathoners, and as I did I urged them on. It is much harder, in my opinion, to run a slow race than to run a fast one. In this climate, with the heat of the sun bearing down on a runner, the longer one is moving over the hot, radiating asphalt, the harder it is to motivate oneself to keep moving forward.

I made the turn at mile 20 and determined not to make the same mental mistake I made last year. It was foremost on my mind: the last six miles are all downhill, so they must be easy, right? Wrong, if only because one still has six miles to run. This was stretch in every marathon, where mettle is tested, where the mind must overcome the matter.

The Final Five–”You are Your Own DJ”:

I knew at this point that making a sub-four hour marathon would be difficult if not impossible. I would have to run these last five miles in less than 35 minutes. That’s sub seven minute miles. On a good day, when I was well trained and in great shape to speed through a marathon, those times might be doable. Today, coming off a couple of injuries, not having run much in four months, I was not prepared for that. So I walked a bit, slowed down, ate more orange slices at the aid stations, cheered on my fellow runners, and focused.

Above a blue sky spreads
Into infinity where whisps of
Clouds first show signs of forming.
A yellow truck rumbles towards me,
Followed by a green one.
I pass a runner and urge her on
While inside my head the voice tells me to stop.
Before me there is only the white line
And my feet falling on it,
First this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one.
And all I see is the white line, and all I hear is the voice in my head.
And all there is and all I see is the white line.
There is not sky, there is no road,
There is no yesterday and no tomorrow,
There is only right now
And there is only the white line
And my steps,
This one, and this one, and this one, and this one.
There is only the white line.

In the middle of my meditation, my focus on the present, on the here and the now, I felt a light touch on my arm, and I jumped out of my skin. I think I may have even screamed a little. A boy, a teenager, no more than 15 years old, sped past me. I could not see his bib. Probably the final leg of a relay team, because that kid would not be passing me from the half marathon.

“Looking good,” he said. “Keep it up.”

I was knocked from my internal dialog, thrown back into the race and back into the world in that moment. Traffic roared around me. Suddenly there were other runners, and I was not alone, and the world was big and I was in it, moving forward, still moving, still running! Amazingly.

And then the cramp. With three miles to go I pulled up lame, at close to the same place I did last year. My left hamstring just tightened up completely. I stopped, stretched. A half marathoner was there and he sympathized. An ambulance slowed and an EMT stuck his head out the window. “You all right?” the EMT said. “I’m fine. Just a cramp.”

I stretched, yelled. “Oh, you little bastard. Come on, stretch out, you.” After about thirty seconds I began to move again. I drank some water and took a couple glasses of Gatorade at the next aid station, and then I determined that this was it, the show would end soon and I was not going to limp across the finish line. Waddling at first, as my legs began to loosen, I moved slowly into a more natural gait. And then I began to sing. At the top of my lungs I began to sing, “The Gambler,” by Kenny Rogers. It’s the first song I ever learned, a song I sang at a talent show when I was in third grade. A song I still remember every word of to this day.

You got to know when to hold ‘em
Know when to fold ‘em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run!

I was screaming now, my throat hoarse, my mouth getting dry, but I didn’t care. This was my race and I was going to sing my way across that finish line. I sang the song twice, and then I caught my breath for a bit, and then I sang it again, thanking the police officers as I passed. One runner, wearing the brightest orange shoes I have ever seen, said, “You are your own DJ.”

As I made the final turn onto a sandy dirt road I changed tunes. “Defying Gravity” came out of my mouth, and though I couldn’t remember all the words I remembered the most important ones.

And nobody, in all of Oz
No wizard that there is or was
Is ever going to bring me down.
Tell them how I’m defying gravity
I’m flying high defying gravity
And you can’t keep me down!

I ran the last mile in just over 8 minutes, and my pace for the final 0.2 (God Save the Queen!) was a little over 7 minutes per mile. Those were my fastest miles on the whole coarse.

My final finish time was 4:08:38, almost exactly one hour slower than my fastest marathon. That’s what comes from being untrained. Oh well. The important thing: I had a great time out there. And singing myself across the finish was definitely the way to go. My neighbor, A, finished 11th male overall and placed 2nd in his age group. JZ finished 3rd female overall and placed 2nd in her age group, too. I may not have gotten an award, but I’m glad to have seen some of my friends win what they deserved.

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I’ll be there in 2014

For two days I’ve been crying whenever I see photos or read stories of the Boston Marathon. For two days I have worn my Boston Marathon shirts in commemoration and solidarity for those who lost their lives and those who lost their loved ones and those who simply lost. This morning it was the tale of Jeff Bauman whose gaunt and scarred face and bloody legs being pushed away from the carnage in a wheelchair was the iconic image of those early hours. That same photo was the way his father found him, in a hospital, both legs amputated, too much damage to repair. The man in the cowboy hat, blood on his hands, Jeff Bauman’s savior. I think about the 8 year-old boy who ran to give his father a hug after seeing his dad cross the finish line, then ran back to his mother and sister standing near the finish line. The boy is dead, his mother and sister clinging to life, his father struggling with what should be a victorious occasion that turned terribly, terribly tragic.

I read these things and look at these terrible images, of blood on the sidewalk and people helping people, video of police, volunteers and rescue personnel tearing down barricades to get to the wounded, and I hear stories of runners who, having just run 26.2 miles, continue to run to hospitals to give blood, and of other runners who, in the moment of their greatest triumph, turned and ran into the crowds to apply tourniquets, strip off their shirts for dressings, offer comfort and aid where they could. I read these things, and I see these images, and I am a mix of emotions. Saddened, horrified, angry. I cry for the loss, I cry for the people, I cry because two years ago I ran that race and my family stood in that spot and watched me finish my first Boston Marathon. I cry because Jeff Bauman could be my brother, my father. I cry because Krystle Cambell could be my wife, my mother. Because Martin Richard could be my son, my daughter. Because these are the people who have cheered me through countless races, the nameless faces who line the course of every marathon and cheer for the runners, cheer for me, who lift me up anonymously when I’m feeling low, who boost the morale and the spirit of every marathoner when they need to dig deepest and struggle hardest.

I cry because this attack feels so personal. Because running is my sport and Boston is my marathon. I cry because the people who are injured, the people who were killed, are my family, they are my cheering section, they are my friends and my fans. I cry because this atrocity didn’t just attack the city of Boston. This was an attack against all of us, all of us who run or who know someone who runs. Anyone who’s ever laced a shoe and taken two steps out the door. Anyone who has watched a friend race down a street with a crowd of other runners. Anyone who has ever stood on the sidelines and cheered. I cry because today we are not runners and non-runners, we are not spectators or participants, we are not volunteers and race officials. We are all Bostonians. We are all Boston.

Runners are a resilient lot. Training for and running a marathon takes dedication, determination, stick-to-it-ness, an unrelenting drive. Runners run in the heat and in the cold and in the wind and rain and snow. We run when we hurt and we run when we feel good. We run to exhaustion and then, for fun, we get up and run some more. I ran Boston in 2011 and 2012 and decided after my second that I would not run Boston again. I’d had my shot, twice. Time to let another runner race. My goal has become longer distances, longer races. But right now, I feel a drive, a tugging, a force, a voice in my head. It’s the same voice that drove me to two Bostons and the same voice that pushes me out the door when the whole world and my own mind and body tell me I can skip running today. The voice is telling me that next year I need to be in Boston, either to run or to spectate, to cheer or to be cheered. Because running is mine and no one, not some nut with a bomb or an organization with a grudge, no one can take that away from me. No one can take that away from us.

So next year, whether runner or watching I’ll be in Boston. Cheering. Supporting. Running. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. It’s who we all are.

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The Great Field of Running

I’ve run the Boston Marathon twice, in 2011 and 2012. The first time was my fastest marathon, and one of my all time favorite runs. What I remember most about both of those races was turning onto Boylston Street for that last great mile. At that point in the marathon, my legs were screaming and I was fumbling in my head to keep myself moving forward, to stay on my feet and keep going. When I turned onto Boylston I turned from a narrow street onto a major road, three or four lanes wide, and in the distance, nearly a mile ahead, was the finish line. Big as day. Bright and shining and blue banners overhead proclaiming the end. Both times I ran this race I ran that last mile as hard as my weary legs could carry me. I pushed until there was no more pushing to be done, and when I crossed the finish line I held my hands up and let out a barbaric yawp, proclaiming to the world, and to myself, that I had accomplished something spectacular.

I thought of that moment, my first moment crossing the finish line, today as I watched runners cross the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon. They were struggling to complete the race of their lives. Their eyes were lifted to the finish line that loomed before them and they were excited and hopeful and thrilled and eager and despite their exhaustion and their weary minds and bodies, they were about to accomplish something great.

We runners are a hardy lot. We run in the toughest of times. We run when we feel good, we run when we hurt. We run because something inside of us compels us to run. And when we run, the world seems to vanish. Running isn’t about geographic borders or politics. Running is the sport of every human, man, woman or child. Running brings us together. Binds us in ways no other sport can. Sure, anyone can play football or baseball, or even soccer or cricket, but during the Superbowl or the World Series, or the World Cup, every human is not playing the game. With running it’s different. In Boston, the same course that the superhuman Lelila Desisa ran in 2h10m, the common man, too, can run. Runners play the same game and on the same field as Paavo Nurmi, Emil Zatopek, Dean Karnazes, Abebe Bikila, Haile Gebrselassie, Joan Samuelson, Paula Radcliffe, among other greats.

On that great field of running that is Boylston, tragedy struck today, but that tragedy will be just one small part of the larger story that is the Boston Marathon, that is marathoning, that is running. Because running is our sport, it is for all of us. And nothing like this can take that away from us. We are runners, we are human, and we’ll continue to run, continue to fight, continue to push ourselves to our limits and continue to find the turn onto Boylston Street and look up in the distance and see that big blue banner proclaiming victory.

Tomorrow, I’ll wear my Boston Marathon shirt, and my jacket, in honor of the tragedy today, and in honor of the runners and their families, and those who just came to watch. You are all in my thoughts and prayers.

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John Dies at the End by David Wong

John Dies at the End by David Wong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

John Dies at the End
by David Wong

There’s a lot going on in this novel by the editor-in-chief at Cracked.com. Most of which has only partially to do with the John of the title actually dying. Which he does. At least once. This is a paranormal fantasy acid trip of the highest order, a tall tale of time warps, interdimensional travel, and monsters made of frozen meat. There’s a dog, Molly, whose presence is never fully explained. She dies repeatedly. I don’t think I’m revealing any major plot points there. There are monsters from other dimensions, ruled by an evil shadow man who calls himself Korrok and who speaks like a perverted seventh grade boy showing off to his friends all the dirty words he learned on late night cable.

Dave Wong and his friend John stumble across a drug, called Soy Sauce, that seems to imbue them with the power to see into other dimensions. As Spiderman’s Uncle Ben taught, with great power comes great responsibility, and Dave and John discover that they seem to be among an elite group of people on whose shoulders the fate of the world rides. They take on this herculean task with the fervor of a mouse going into battle with a cougar. Especially if the mouse were a cynical, sarcastic, angry, petulant early twenty-something human with a chip on his shoulder.

This novel is full of wit and scathing sarcasm, humor in the right places and enough acid in the tongue of the narrator to give the hardiest of Oscar Wilde aficionados heart palpitations. It’s a fun, compelling, driven read and each pages makes you want to turn it and keep reading more. And yet it feels like multiple novels, multiple stories, crammed into one. The novel seems to be broken into three parts, and though there is an underlying story of Korrok tying it all together, each piece feels almost wholly separated from the others, so much so that I kept wondering if I was reading the same book or if I’d somehow gotten transported myself to another dimension and was reading an alternate version of the same titled novel. Maybe it’s just the second story, the weather man and his love, that seems out of place. Thematically it fits, but physically it just feels weird, like padded walls in an already close room. Still, the characters compel you to keep reading, and the humor with which Dave recounts his life as a 21st century Ghostbuster, makes John Dies at the End well worth the read.

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The Daughter-Daddy Run Returns

It was a beautiful morning, and m wanted to push her stroller. She was having a ball, pushing the thing down the street, running behind it, turning it, shoving it into the curb when a car came. When we got back to the house, I stood on the street talking with a neighbor for a bit. I wasn’t paying much attention to what she was doing, only saw out of the corner of my eye that she was still there and still having fun with the stroller. Before I knew it, she had backed the stroller all the way up to my neighbor’s car and jumped in. The stroller moved down the slope of the driveway, right across the street (no traffic coming) and I ran after it to stop it before it hit the curb. She squealed with delight, jumped out of the stroller and pushed it back up the driveway. When she stopped it at the bumper, she leapt back in it and rode it, again, down the driveway and across the street. Again, I jogged behind it and grabbed it just before the front tire hit the curb. She was having a grand time, squealing and laughing each time she plopped into the seat and set off on her mini-daredevil excursion. After five or six times, I noticed she was sitting as flat as she could in the seat, her feet pressed against the front of the stroller. She was preparing herself for the stroller to hit the curb. The next time she did it, I let the stroller go, stood in front of it to make sure it wouldn’t flop over, and the front tire popped over the curb! She laughed even harder! Now I just watched from the sidewalk on the other side of the street as over and over she plopped into the stroller and thrilled at the speed she achieved just before the front tire hit the curb and popped up over the top of it.

After a while she’d had enough, of course, as all things like this get old. But she didn’t want to get out of the stroller. “Daddy, can you go get How Many for me?” she said. This was a pink bunny she had received from some friends for Easter. I smiled. “You can get How Many,” I said. “She’s just right inside the door.” We went back and forth like that, her insisting that I should get How Many for her. Finally, I said, “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll get How Many and Tree (the other bunny she got for easter), and you go for a run with me.”

She smiled. “Okay,” she said.

That was all I needed. I ran into the house and changed into running shorts and a shirt, put on my shoes and grabbed the bunnies. She was still outside when I got back to her, still sitting in the stroller waiting. I hadn’t gotten a drink of water, hadn’t even gone to the bathroom yet since I woke up two hours before. I pressed go on the watch and went. I didn’t know how many miles I had in me, or how many she had in her. I ran just to enjoy the run. She pointed out things to me as we ran, birds flying, or a dog on the other side of the irrigation ditch. When some dogs behind fences barked at us, she barked back at them. “I’m just trying to get them to stop barking,” she told me as I laughed at her barking at those big dogs. At two miles, when I could turn back or go down through the First Wash, I asked her which direction we should run. “That way,” she said, pointing north through the wash. And so we continued on for another two miles, about 32 minutes total one way. At four miles my watch beeped and we turned back. Eight miles would be enough for me today.

We continued to chat as I ran. She saw the Shiprock and marveled at its size. She saw more dogs, and birds flying in front of us. “What’s that?” she said when we passed the irrigation pipe. I told her. “I saw a big rock,” she said. “How big?” I asked. She held her hands about four inches apart. “This big!” she said, like it was the biggest thing she’d ever seen.

“Are you having fun?” I asked as we headed back.

She laughed. “I’m having a great time,” she said, giggling.

In the last two miles we passed two runners, one woman sort of running with her dog and her young son. Then the second man listening to headphones. I said hello as we passed each other and he gave me a slight, nearly imperceptible nod. Little m said, “Daddy, that man didn’t say hi to you.” She sounded almost offended.

I said, “He was listening to headphones. Some people don’t like to talk while they run,” I said, panting. “It can be hard to do.”

“You talk while you run,” she said. “Because you have a little girl in your stroller.”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “A wonderful little girl.”

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Forgiving the Walk

I hit double digits on my run yesterday. I figured it would be tough to do and I was right. I have only run farther once since Javelina, the day of the first Munchkin run when I calculated that I put in close to 17 miles. Mentally I didn’t doubt I could make the distance. Physically I wondered how well I’d perform. I ran the length of Sand Canyon, from McElmo Canyon Road on the south, to the northern trailhead. I didn’t get all the way to the trailhead, which is about 6 miles. I ran 6.2 miles before I decided, because of time and my physical endurance, I should turn around. It took me more than an hour to get that far, which seems slow until you consider the terrain. The first half mile is an incline up steep slick rock until the trail begins to level off into rolling hills at just past the first mile and the ground becomes soft sand, mostly, with some rock and, since it’s spring, some clay soil hardened from being baked in the melted snow. At around 4.5 miles a sign indicates that this section of the trail is the most difficult, with steep switchbacks cutting up the slope of the canyon wall. That lasts for about a mile.

On many of these sections, starting with that first half mile, I walked. I walked because I was winded and because the terrain was steep and because the altitude was high and because, for me, the first thing to go when I don’t run for a while is my breathing. It comes back quickly, but in the beginning that’s definitely the hardest part. On the way out, despite my walking–or maybe because of it–I felt great, mentally and physically. When the trail leveled off I moved more swiftly and felt like the earth was a treadmill I was moving with my feet. I was out there to enjoy the sunshine and the warmth and the coming of spring and the feel of my feet on the ground and the wind in my face and to feel my lungs burn and my legs burn and know that I was running again. That’s all. Just running.

It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of walking during a run was, for me, tantamount to failure. When I began running again in earnest in 2007, I was determined to push myself farther and faster than I’d ever gone before. Walking during a run was wrong, it was giving up on myself, it was quitting. Walking during a race was a testament to a poorly trained body, a poorly prepared mind. Walking was failure, and I determined that I would not allow myself to fail.

Sometime in the last couple of years, though, I came to understand something different. As I trained last year, especially, for my century at Javelina, walking became part of the routine. I knew that in order to complete 100 miles I would have to walk. It would be the only way to make sure I got all the way through. As it turned out, walking became a big part of that run when my right knee began to swell and putting weight on it, especially the impact of running, sent shrapnels of pain through my body. But the mental shift happened long before then, during training runs up steep inclines in the desert here, or on trail runs up in Colorado. To save my strength for the distance I wanted to run, I would walk the uphills, or at least take them much more slowly. On my regular run, which has a steep down and uphill at two miles, and then again on the return when I’m two miles from home, walking was sometimes that only way I could get up the hill. In those training runs, and in learning and adapting my body to run at altitude, I began to understand that it’s okay to allow myself to walk sometimes. That sometimes what the body needs is the chance to walk. I began to understand that running isn’t necessarily about running all the time, but about pushing the limits of my body and my mind. Sometimes that limit gets pushed by running, and sometimes that limit gets pushed by adding some walking into the routine. In doing so I learned how to forgive myself of something that had at one point seemed unforgivable.

I have always been hardest on myself, have held myself to a high standard and put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed. And when I haven’t succeeded as I thought I should, when I haven’t lived up to those standards, I’ve berated myself mentally. Told myself I should have done better, could have done better. That I was a failure for not having done better. In running I’ve learned that not reaching those high standards is not a failure, that I am not a failure. I’ve learned that in order to achieve, you have to reach and sometimes you have to fall, you have to stumble, you have to walk along the trail in order to get farther along to the trail. In order to reach a higher goal sometimes you have to take a side road or even stop to rest for a while. Or even just walk. A lot has happened in my life in the last six months, and the last several years. I’ve done some things I’m proud of and I’ve done some things I’m not proud of. The important thing is not that I have walked, but that I kept moving, kept going forward. I decided I would keep chugging along, keep running or walking or limping or even crawling if I had to, but I would keep moving, and if sometimes I stumbled, sometimes I walked, if sometimes I slipped and fell, that would be okay because that’s part of running, that’s part of the trail, that’s part of life. I forgive myself the walk because sometimes that’s what you have to do to catch your breath and keep moving forward, to keep running at all.

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Trail Porn

Oh yeah.

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Munchkins, Part Deux

Yesterday was the second Shiprock Marathon Munchkins event, and it was a success on many levels. Like last time, I had the group meet in front of the hospital. A small crowd showed up: the fast racing cousins from Newcomb; two newer kids on the team; and a family that moved into our neighborhood a couple months ago. A(m) and A(f) have two kids, G, three, and S, 12 months. G and m have become fast friends since the former’s arrival to our little community. Oh, and m came out with me this time. I brought the stroller so I could push her if she didn’t want to run herself.

Getting m out the door was a heartache in itself. She squawked and balked and said she didn’t want to go and I had to nearly drag her out the door. She sat in the stroller until A(m) and A(f) arrived with G, and then m was a ball of energy, doing sprints in the hospital parking lot before the run even began.

For this run, I was, I realize now, the race director. I planned a short route before hand, down a dirt road that runs along the highway, then a right turn through our neighborhood, past both ours and G’s house, then up a short but fairly steep hill through the ER ambulance parking, and then back to the front door. The total distance, as measure 15 minutes before race time, was about 1.5 miles. Not inconsiderable for some of these kids. Last time the distance was only a mile, but one little girl, “3″, had a hard time even getting through one-tenth that distance before breaking down. This time would be much different.

I explained the route to all participants and then said, “On your mark. Get set. Go!” I don’t think I’d ever said that before. The last time I considered a fun run and had just gone for a jog with the kids. This time I thought of it as a race. A(m) helped a lot. He jogged ahead and directed the kids to turn where they were supposed to turn. His wife, A(f), ran with m and her daughter, G, while I took up the rear with the stroller.

Little m was a ball of energy. She ran and kept running, thrilled at the idea of it. The look of joy and excitement on her face was priceless. She wore a red plaid dress that she calls her Dorothy dress, as the Wizard of Oz is her favorite movie right now. And rather than wear any sort of proper foot wear, she was wearing little red ruby slippers. Yes, just like Dorothy (save without the heel). I hung back to run with her while far ahead the other kids raced away.

The lead was the middle child from Newcomb who shot down the dirt road and sprinted away from the rest of the crowd so fast A(m) had a difficult time keeping up with her. I watched him race past the other kids to try to beat her to the first turn. He didn’t make it. He told me later that she was standing there waiting for him when he arrived. He told her which way to go and she took off again, sprinting like Usain Bolt. While A(f) ran with m and G, I ran the race backwards. By the time I got to the second turn, which was 3/4 mile from the finish, the lead runner was already waiting at the corner wondering which way to go. She was at least a full minute, if not more, ahead of the next runner.

I waited on that corner for all the kids to come around, snapping pics of them as they passed me, slapping high fives and saying, “Good job!” as they ran. Even the little girl, “3″, who last time had spent the better part of the race crying and complaining, was still running with her sister. These kids were amazing. Eventually m and G came around the corner, too, and to my utter amazement m was still running, still pumping her arms, still moving. We passed our house where her mother was watching from the front window. I had originally thought that m would balk at going any further than home, but she kept going, kept running. I thanked A(f) for staying with her and sprinted ahead. I wanted to get back to the start/finish so I could hand out the muffins I’d made, and some water bottles and my wife had bought, and for which she had designed logo labels.

I don’t know how fast the winner ran, but that didn’t matter. All the kids finished amazingly well, sprinting up the final hill. Even “3″ sprinted the last 100 yards in an attempt to beat her sister. She almost managed it, too, but not quite. I handed out muffins and water bottles to all participants and their parents and we sat around talking until we saw m and G coming around the corner. They were still running! A(f) told me they both got a ride in the stroller for a short bit of the course, but other than that they ran the whole way! Little m crossed the finish line, sprinting into my arms, with a huge smile on her face and a spring in her step.

Even after she was done, m had more running in her. She wanted to run home! She put in another half mile just to get back to the house!

The Marathon Munchkins are halfway towards their goal of 25 miles by April 25. We plan on doing this again in early April. I’ll mark the course better next time with cones and maybe even chalked arrows on the road. I think I might even set up a start/finish line. I’m getting a taste for race directing, and I like it.

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The Marathon Munchkins

I ran my first 10K when I was six years-old, but I didn’t sign up for the race. I didn’t get myself to the start. I don’t remember training. I got up one morning, my father dressed me in layered pajamas, and drove my older brother and I to the start of the race. Then he told us to run.

It was snowing that day, and cold. My father and my brother ran ahead on the out-and-back course. My clearest memory was seeing them running towards me, they having reaching the turn around while I lagged far behind. I remember the snow falling, and the socks on my hands instead of gloves to keep them warm. I remember the misery of the cold and of running alone. And I remember a few weeks later when I found my father in our living room with a man in a suit who shook my hand and gave me a small plaque. “Youngest Finisher,” the plaque read, with my name and time (54:45).

On Saturday, I did my first run with the group I’m calling the Marathon Munchkins. For this year’s Shiprock Marathon, the organizers have put together a great idea to get the kids on the reservation interested in running the race: a kids’ marathon. The rules are simple: a kid, in grades Kindergarten through 8 (basically old enough to be in school but not in high school), runs 25 miles total by April 25th, and logs those miles. By April 25th, he or she registers with the Shiprock Marathon folks, and hand in a log sheet thereby earning a marathon T-shirt. The shirt gets the runner entry to the marathon itself on race day where she’ll run the final 1.2 miles of the course. When the kid crosses the finish line, she’ll get a medal.

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