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?

Nu Shooz*

I don't know the exact date that I took up running, but it was about a year ago. My wife and I had just quit smoking (her for good; me, limpingly), and she suggested we inch our way into running a 5k. The 5k in question was the Y ME breast cancer awareness run. Being the preparedness junky that she is (and, not incoincedentally, an ex-girl scout), she sussed out an excellent resource for ex-smokers who want to start running, the Couch to 5k program. And it's not just for ex-smokers, it's for anyone who's currently on a couch, which, in our country, is a much larger quorum.

Anyhow, we got fitted for shoes. The Couch to 5k program says you should have some good ones, and the knock offs at the Target shoe section don't qualify. You need a light shoe, and one that has room for your foot to spread, and one that can breathe. There're other criteria, but I was still a newbie, and could absorb only so much expert information.

At the suggestion of the running store guy -- a runner himself, lean and owlish at the same time, and not altogether comfortable with people -- I bought a pair of Asics Gel 2120. I ran em up and down outside the store. It was late winter in Chicago, and I remember dodging mounds of sidewalk ice. I taking deep frigid breaths (still a novelty for newly clear lungs). Felt good, so far as I knew. The Asics sure as hell beat my Target specials.

So I ran my first 5k, and then ran two more last year. I don't have an odometer but figure I've put about 250 miles of training and on those Asics. Lots of road grease. Lots of treadmill rubber.

This Christmas, using a generous gift card from my Pa, I raided the shelves of the local Sports Authority and came up with another deeply discounted pair of Asics. Turns out the Gel 2130 line is shouldering out the old guard -- among which my shoes belong -- and they were mostly giving them away to make room on the shelfs.

So all this is to say, Happy New Year. Look at the wear and tear on 07's pair, look at how gray and frayed. They're a touch collapsed. Compare with the 08 model, which is blindingly white, plump and healthy. I can't tell you that I have a necessarily rosy outlook for the year, or that I'm constructing a bulwark of resolutions to make then one by one fail at. But let's just say that if I can make those shiny new 08's look even a little like the 07's, we can consider it a small-scale victory for will power, optimism, and the absence of the much-mourned Camel Lights hard pack.

*80's hippie-pop band, known in certain circles -- mostly my circles -- for their top forty hit, "I Can't Wait."