The Impossibles

I began this year with a botched attempt at a New Year's Day half-marathon. The weather was awful, the road slippery, and my stomach was doing its own celebratory countdown before, I assumed, it was going to implode upon itself and leave a small black hole where my body used to be.  Note to self: do NOT eat your weight in 'lil smokies the night before a half-marathon, even if they are wrapped in sugared bacon and laced with crack. 

It wasn't a great start.  I quit at the halfway mark, sticking to the 10K distance and comforting myself with the knowledge that 99% of humanity was still snug in bed whilst I was out kicking off the New Year with a solid sweat (and stomach cramps). 

I remedied January's disastrous start with a half-marathon a few weeks later, and thus began the only New Year's Resolution I ever kept: run at least one half-marathon (or longer distance) race every month of 2012. 

February belonged to the aptly-named Hypothermic Half, a small race with noisy, exuberant supporters and a scenic two loops around a couple Eden Prairie lakes.

March, April, and May were easily checked off the list with races I'd done in prior years (the Get Lucky, the Trail Mix, and the Minnetonka). June was a loftier month as I wrestled through Grandma's full marathon a mere 3 days after returning from Europe.  While I'd like to say that I used my two weeks in Europe to taper as every good marathoner should, I really just used those two weeks as an excuse to carbload with an unholy number of croissants. Needless to say, Grandma's was the slowest of my three marathons and my most painful. 

July was home to the Afton Trail Race, my sister's first of the 15 mile distance, and her company made the agony of those hills a bit more palatable (even if the young one did smoke me by a good 20 minutes). My trail races only served to reinforce my preference for that medium.  I will always favor the company of trees over storm drains. 

August brought the Urban Wildlands Half, a race that I seem unable to participate in without it raining. I'm clearly bad luck for the other runners so I'll likely avoid this trek in the future.

September saw another trail race, the Surly Half in Theodore Wirth, which this year I managed to complete without running face first into a tree (my first attempt at this race two years ago resulted in a scraped nose).  Warm lefse at the start and cold beer at the finish made this race one of my favorites of the year, and one I will surely repeat for years to come. 

October was a busy month running-wise.  I ran/hiked my first trail marathon in Duluth with a dear friend, getting lost along the way and thus bringing our total mileage north of 28 miles. I've never eaten a burger with such abandon before, and never had that particular muscle in my ass make itself known quite so vociferously. As I like to really exhaust myself, apparently, and I'm a sucker for a cute running jacket, I ran the Monster Dash half for the third (fourth?) time this year, too, at the tail end of that month. A pretty day, but that's the best I can say for that one.

November is the month of my birth and as Minnesota was unwilling to organize a half-marathon ANYWHERE within its borders in my honor, I organized my own. Several intrepid friends ran all or a portion of the race with me, several others came armed with gummi worms and mulled wine along the route, and others happily toasted my finish with beers and burgers downtown.  It was, by far, my slowest half-marathon of all time, but also one of my happiest.

And this past weekend, I finally sealed this resolution with 13.1 miles around City Park and Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans at the Ole Man River Half-Marathon.  I carb-loaded with my favorite pizza at Reginelli's, got a high five at the start from a giggly, snuggly two-year old, and ate back every burned calorie with gusto in my favorite former home. It was a worthy end to a long, exhausting ride, a ride that started with giving up halfway through my first race of the year.

In 2009 I ran my first half-marathon, the Stillwater Half, in May of that year. Days after completion of that race, I signed up for the Twin Cities Marathon and ran that race for the first time, too. When I signed up for that first half-marathon three and a half years ago, I never would have dreamed that one day I'd be running this distance (and sometimes longer) on a monthly basis. I didn't know that was possible.  Had my disastrous January 1st race been my first attempt at a half-marathon, that experience would have surely chastened me, made me skittish to attempt another trek. But a few years of experience makes it easier to distinguish between Bad Day and Impossible. I'm not sure how many half-marathons I've completed, likely around 30. And I know that despite being tired, despite my calves being stiff, despite the exhaustion of 12 months of maintaining this level of training, I could run another 13 tomorrow if that was necessary (it's not). My definition of "impossible" shifted with that first half-marathon. It shifted again with my first marathon. Again with this year's 12 months of racing. 

So, impossible is relative. Relative to what I'm willing to sacrifice and how much effort I'm willing to expend. How many times I'm willing to start over. How many mistakes (lil smokies) I'm willing to forgive. 9 times out of 10, impossible is a choice not to test possibility. And I'm getting very good at assuming most of what I want to achieve is in the realm of possibility. Running gave me that in 2012. And now it's time to start pondering what running may give me in 2013. 

An overabundance of possibilities, to be sure.

Wandering Within The Favorite

I lived in New Orleans years ago. And as with most experiences, I failed to recognize how happy I was there until I made the conflicted decision to leave. I return when I can and imagine I always will, long after my best loved New Orleans inhabitants move away. And every time, every quick weekend, every lazy wandering, I remember what it feels like to fit into a place.

I am certainly not unhappy in Minneapolis. I've built a warm, connected circle of friends here, watched my sister grow up there, and treasured the novelty of living so close to my parents after years away. And after a few years of constant yearnings to get back South, I finally love it enough to be comfortable with the thought of making it my long term home.

But that feeling has been crafted out of necessity and as a result of great effort. I had to make myself love Minneapolis, something I never had to do with New Orleans. I loved her instantly. And more than loved, I felt at home within her streets from day one.

In New Orleans, I am not a noisy woman. I'm pretty boring, maybe quiet, by New Orleans standards. Comparatively, I feel (and have been deemed by some Minnesotans) boisterous, overly neon, a bit too giggly in certain situations. The difference, I think, is simply a matter of ambient noise (or lack thereof). Minneapolis is a quiet city compared to New Orleans jazz, jackhammers, hollers, and horns. I feel noisy in Minneapolis because there isn't enough sound to drown me out.

My first few years in Minneapolis I thought that it must be impossible to be happy in a place where one doesn't fit. And I'm not sure if the shift in my thinking is a reaction to knowing that a move back to New Orleans is likely not in the cards, or perhaps a result of having nestled into Minneapolis just enough to make "fitting" less important. My comfort level in Nola, if I'm honest, also made me physically and spiritually lazy.  So perhaps I'm better served in a city I have to force myself to embrace on occasion.  Perhaps I am a better version of myself when I live where I don't necessarily belong, but wander from time to time in a city that reminds me of the version of myself I found easiest to love.