What I'm Doing With My Evenings

I don't think I told you, did I, that I'm training for a half marathon. That would be the Oklahoma City Marathon half marathon, which occurs a little over a month from now, on April 27th.

For those of you not up on your mileage calculations, a half marathon comes out to be 13.1 miles, while a full marathon -- you guessed it -- tops out at 26.2 miles. I've been concerning myself with the former, though, figuring that one should ease one's self into what my wife calls the Thunka Thunka Lifestyle. (Thunka Thunka being the continual and neverending sound of one's soles on the pavement/treadmill/insides of your brain as you sleep; it's the runner's equivalent of the Buddhist Ohm.)

Training goes like this:

Monday run. Tuesday run. Wednesday "crosstrain on your own" . . . which means rest on the couch and nurse your sore calves. Thursday run. Friday run on your own. Saturday run a long long way. Sunday rest.

That's a goodly amount of Thunka Thunka.

I was telling one of my fellow runners yesterday that when I was a little chubby band geek in junior high, I had no good concept of what being athletic meant. Physicality was so tied up in the seventh grade caste system that I not only didn't participate, I discarded the idea of being active completely. It was for either the King and Princes of the homecoming court or the guys who rumbled in the parking lot at lunch. Neither of whom were part of my group. I played percussion, and on the weekends played D&D. That's a lot of sitting in chairs and thinking about things, but not a whole hell of a lot of moving around.

So you grow up not believing your body. What it tells you and why, beyond some rudimentary indications (I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm drunk, I'm horny, etc) is almost always unrecognizable. At the same time, when called upon to perform in some specific way -- like football out in the yard in the summer, or onstage practicing your pratfalls, or trying to remember the steps to you and your wife's first dance -- I can tell you that there is a fervent moment of prayer: Body, don't fuck this up!

At that point, trying to throw the spiral or not cracking your skull on the parquet is more about risk than habit. For the D&D band kids, it's the risk of social humiliation. For the Homecoming King and Princes, it's really just habit born of hours and hours of practice.

All this means is, to discover that you can communicate with your body outside of simple declarative sentences is really kind of astonishing. And in your thirties, when all the blitheness is finally gone and you're more aware of what's coming down the pike than you might have been (and what's coming down the pike is your 40s!), it's the right moment to hear what a deep breath sounds like, or to feel each muscle in your calf after running five miles up and down hills. And after that long weekend run, to come back, eat a huge breakfast, take a shower, pad around the house in your sweats and feel one limb after the other loosen up and sag until you're asleep on the couch.

It's astonishing, because who knew I could do this. This isn't about achievement, not a "look ma, straight A's on my report card" kind of not thing. We're not filming Chariots of Fire here. It's more, look at what this vessel that carries around my brain is good for! Look at all the new gears I just discovered, and look what they do!

Is it impolite to say that I just got a new toy, and the new toy is me?