Kickin' Butt

I ran the Get in Gear 10K on Saturday in some pretty miserable weather. Mid 50s, unending rain, breezy, no hint of sunshine. To make the experience even worse, I discovered 9to my horror) while lining up at the start that I had failed to charge my iPod. I am not a runner in silence, I need my music. So the prospect of a miserably rainy, musicless 10K was daunting and annoying. But evidently, that's when I run my best...

Most runs over 5K (and less than 10 miles) my pace is roughly 10:30-10:45 min/mile. But on Saturday I ran a 10K (6.2 miles) at a 10:11 min/mile pace, a vast improvement over earlier runs. I think the rain kept me cool and the annoyance factor made me fairly desperate to get the race over. I rarely pick up speed near the end but my last mile was a less than 10 min average. I just remember wanting to finish, get back to my car, strip off the soggy shirts and throw on the warm fleece I'd stashed in my backseat. In my mind this fleece was newly out of the dryer and steaming hot, which was not what awaited me in the car. But daydreams get you fairly far in races.

I remember being 14 and running the requisite one-miler for phys ed. I was miserable and struggled to make a 14 minute mile. To have run 6.2 miles at a far faster pace makes one fact very clear to me: My 29 year-old self kicks my 14 year-old self's butt.

So, despite the rain, that's an excellent day.

This is My Station

I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning driving to and from Grand Rapids, Minnesota thanks to a public hearing requiring my attendance. I've only been to a few public hearings but each one has led me somewhere new, which I appreciate.

The drive to Grand Rapids, birthplace of Judy Garland, is easy from the Cities, at least once you make it out of the endless stoplights and fits and starts of general suburban sprawl. Past Rogers you can actually get a bit of speed, leave traffic lights behind, coast with open fields on either side. The weather was perfect, cloudless and bright blue, with enough sun to make the whole world cheerful but not enough to make me miss the sunglasses I forgot at home.

Some people are adverse to lengthy bouts in the car, especially when driving alone. But I have always favored a good, long solo road trip. Part of it is genetic (or some hybrid nature/nurture thing) as my Dad is of the particular genre of human that enjoys waking the family for a 4a.m. departure for every trip to Disneyworld, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, D.C., myriad fishing trips, etc. He's a drive-straight-through kind of guy, never balking at the prospect of 14 hour days in the car. I can't say my affinity for road trips is as strong as his, but there is a bit of him in my love of a long stretch of road. I think of him whenever I'm looking for a gas station, and his constant refrain of "never exit unless you can actually SEE the gas station from the highway, you don't want to pull off and then see the sign that points you 3 miles to the left." Good advice.

Usually I have music playing the whole time I drive but yesterday I was sick of my CDs and in radio no man's land so for awhile I road in almost silence, just the sound of a bumpy highway and the (I hope) normal squeaks and occassional hums and rattles of an aging car. That kind of quiet can be oppressive, especially when your brain has been on autopilot for several weeks. But the quiet was good for me, solemn and solid and sunshiney.

April 2010 will not go down in history as the best month of my life. Even March left a lot to be desired. It's common, of course, to have hiccups along the way, frustrations or disappointments or little heartaches. But it's uncommonly exhausting to fight a thousand minor battles at one time. Those periods of defensiveness make every day feel like a maze, some puzzle to be worked out and completed with a reward at the end of hot tea, pillow, and a book. Nothing is simple, and all the completely right (with no regrets) decisions I make still hurt.

But a drive is such a simple, perfect thing. There is a starting point and a destination. There is refueling, some stops along the way to look at interesting things (pretty lakes), but in the end there is only a straight line from A to B. An arrival feels like some sort of success, even if it's later than originally hoped, and a car is a solid companion that carries you forward without asking where the road will end.

On the drive back this morning I saw a gas station, closed by the looks of it, with the name, "This is My Station." I don't know how I missed it on the drive North. It was large and red with white pumps and there may have been some boards against a few windows. I loved that loud, brave, obnoxious sign. This is my station. This is simply where I am and what I do right now. This where I belong or where I'm stuck. This is it, for now. This is where you'll find me. This is how far I've come and how far I have yet to go. This is all of it, rolled up into this small, hardy place.

I know the shop was closed and I guess I could write something about that metaphor, too, but I like to think the owner moved on for some greater station, some better location, some sweeter place beyond that one he fashioned along Highway 169. Perhaps it was a product of recession bruises, or perhaps it was a result of new dreams and opportunities, or maybe it was a combination of the two. Regardless, I liked that at some point he/she stated, for what it was worth, exactly where they were and what they were.

In the middle of the puzzle that is my Spring 2010, it's a visual I needed on my trip home. Despite the many minor and not-so-minor heartaches and worries and prayers and hopes of this season, I do know where I am. I know whose road I am on. This is my station, and that is no small thing.

Training

I ran ten miles this morning, the first time since October I've hit a double digit. Usually I run the Greenway to the Lakes and then do laps til I've hit the mileage. But today I just decided to keep running along the Greenway to see how far five miles (and then return) would take me. I'm happy I did.

I have loved trains all my life. And if I'm being honest, I'm sure part of my somewhat misguided affection for Atlas Shrugged (sacrilege for a liberal?) is wrapped up in Dagney Taggart's profession. Trains have factored into my days in intermittent ways. In New Orleans I was often late for various social excursions thanks to being stuck counting railcars. New Orleans' favorite methods for making me late were slow-moving trains and slower-moving parades. The number of times I asked a friend on the phone, while stuck in traffic to allow the passage of a parade, "is today a holiday? Another parade...", cannot be counted on my fingers and toes. I miss those parades. But I miss the trains more, and the terrifying Huey Long Bridge, with its tressle defying gravity. Humans are amazing. The things they build...

The Greenway near me pounds out in spurts beside train tracks. And about 4 miles down the way I pass under a small bridge of tracks, my favorite thing. A string of spray-painted cars were lined up on one set of tracks and I spent a good mile daydreaming about tucking away between a couple cars, riding South.

The ten miles hurt, the way I would expect it to after months away from serious mileage. But running beside train tracks makes for a happier pounding, a reminder that the slow-moving conduit still gets from point A to point B. Slow and steady, mile after mile after mile.

I am a train. I am training.

Spring

As we're comfortably established in April, without a speck of snow throughout March, I think most Minnesotans feel secure in welcoming Spring. Colors other than brown, more brown, and a little more brown, are finally starting to emerge (though we could use a bit more rain to speed that along), and sunshiney days aren't as few and far between.

Spring, for me, means it's time to relace the running shoes and get going. This time last year I was gearing up for my very first half-marathon. It's hard for me to believe I accomplished even that one goal, much less the big beast of a hurdle in the full Marathon last October. It's hard to believe largely because they feel like eons ago, and my legs have gotten a bit lazy with their elliptical gym time and leisurely treadmilling.

As is usually the case with me when revving up for a goal or a challenge, I blast out of the gate too early. I pick up too much speed in new-found joy or freedom or ability or affection and then mid-run I start to wonder if my legs are going to fall off before or after my heart explodes. In true form, I signed up for a May 2 Half-Marathon. That is three weekends from now. And I'm thinking that is bordering on impossible. I haven't run further than 6 miles since October. I could, maybe (helpful if I was being chased), run 8 or 9 miles without actually dying. But 13.1 seems very large to me.

I've decided that the money is spent ($60) and nonrefundable. The date is set and unchangeable. All I can really do is try my best to get nearly there, and when I wake up on the 2nd I will just decide whether or not it's a racing day. Nobody but me will be disappointed if I don't race on that particular day. And I'm already signed up for four other half-marathons so far, with two more in the wings. (And a possible marathon??)

After beating myself up a bit over my a-bit-too-optimistic goal-setting habit, I just got rather tired of beating myself up about it. I'm not sure if that's complacency or maturity talking, perhaps a hybrid of the two. I know that shooting too fast or too far leads often to disappointment but I've gotten good at scaring my way into success by forcing a too-big or too-soon goal upon myself. Fear is a lovely motivator. And with a race looming, my feet just fall a little more deliberately.