ever-fixed mark

Question 1: Math. You have two children, a full-time job, and a 40-mile commute. When, where, and how far do you run? Factor the following into your answer: A. Waxing and waning of available daylight at your longitude/latitude B. Temperature, windspeed, and relative humidity C. Duration of your commute relative to the time you leave.

Question 2: Short essay. Evaluate the impact of your run on A. Your prospects for advancement at work B. Your children C. Your spouse D. Your sanity E. Your hairstyle.

I keep shifting around my run in the hopes that I’ll hit on some combination of time and place that makes it all suddenly seem easy. That hasn’t happened yet, but I did try something new this morning: I drove to work in my running clothes and ran in the city before work.

The advantage to this approach is that I drive when traffic is light and run when the sky is light (as opposed to running at home in the morning, which leaves it the other way around).

The main disadvantage to this approach is that I have to pack quite a bit of gear to get me presentable for work post-run. I am terrified that I’ll forget something important and emerge from the shower only to find I’m missing a left shoe, or (worse) a bra.

This morning, as I was completing my run, I was forced to go around three cars (lights on, engines running) parked in the bike lane in a no-parking zone. About ten feet down the street was a clump of parents and children waiting for the bus.

Thought #1: Who DRIVES to the bus stop? (Note: this is not a rural area where someone would have to walk two miles from his or her farm to R.R.#3 or similar.)

Thought #2: If you’re willing to take the trouble of driving two tenths of a mile to the bus stop, why not travel the extra 1.2 miles and drop your kid off at school?

Thought #3: Even if you’re so lazy that you would only drive two blocks and no farther, couldn’t you park about 20 yards down the street from the bus stop in one of the many spots that are open on 7:00 a.m. and WALK THE REST OF THE WAY?

I had three goals for the big ten-mile race this year:

Let’s see how I did, shall we?

We started off slowly enough, thanks to the crowd. I had vowed to try to stay with my friends for at least a few miles, with a stretch goal of running at their 10-minute mile pace for the whole thing. So when they picked up the pace, so did I. I was feeling a bit winded already by the half-mile mark, when I told them I wanted to run on the right side of the street for a bit so I could wave to the kids as we passed my house. I moved to the right: no kids. I moved to the left: no friends. I picked up the pace even more, hoping to catch up with them, but they were nowhere to be found in the crowd. At the one-mile point I marked the split time with my watch and goggled when I saw 9:17:59 — much, much faster than I wanted to be.

I slowed down a bit but felt pressured by all the runners passing me. I knew from experience that by mile 7 many of them would be walking, while I would still be running, but I still didn’t feel like I could slow down to a comfortable pace. For mile 2, my pace was 9:30; mile 3, 10:11. I felt the worst between mile markers 3 and 4, just like last year, and finally decided I was going to have to slow way down or I wouldn’t be able to finish. I was hot and thirsty and rubber-legged and felt just generally weak and awful. I was cheered here and there by the appearance of my friend C., the one who said to me in April 2007, “We’re doing the 10-mile race this year,” who had run the race with me last year but damaged her ankle so badly during the race she hadn’t been able to run since. She was dashing around on her bike intercepting the runners here and there, shouting encouragement. I ran mile 4 at 11:09 and started to feel more of a rhythm. I finished mile 5 at 11:50 and panicked a bit — too slow! — but by then I was rounding the corner to The Hill and my only concern was getting up without stopping.

Hills have never bothered me; I grew up running hills, and I always treat them as something to get over as quickly as possible. I felt physically awful going up that hill, but I didn’t feel intimidated. When I got to the top, this sense of relief washed over me, but at the same time I felt like quitting. I wasn’t having fun. Running alone was not exhilarating; it seemed pointless. By now I had learned, through C., that one of my running buddies was about five minutes ahead of me, and the other about five minutes behind. At this point I thought seriously about running back to meet my friend. I turned around to see if I could spot her winding around the course, but my body recoiled at the thought of retracing a step.

My splits were getting slower and slower, but I still felt like I was working hard. My left foot and leg started cramping, something that had never happened to me in 25 years of running. Suddenly, I remembered that I had given up bananas that week in an effort to cut some calories. Now, I’ve eaten a banana almost every day for most of my life, and it wasn’t until that moment that I realized that the potassium was the only thing preventing my muscles from knotting up into big painful charleyhorses. Idiot!

I had reached the cool, shady part of the course where last year I had gotten a second wind. It was about this point that C. caught up with me again. She could see that I was hurting, and she rode alongside me for the remaining four miles, keeping up a steady stream of conversation and organizing all the people she recognized along the race route to cheer for me, personally, by name. Might I have finished without her? Maybe. Would I have had any fun without her? Definitely not. She totally got me through it, and I was grateful that I got a chance to “run” it with her again.

I finished in 1:50 and change, an eleven-minute pace. When I got home and looked up the results, I saw that this year I was not dead last in the Middle Aged Fat Lady division; I was 88th out of 91. Whoo-hoo! Also, I beat one of the deputies that C. and I smoked during the Frigid Fiver two years ago, and this year I had the pleasure of beating the county sheriff as well.

I may be a Middle Aged Fat Lady, but I can still outrun the Law.

It has been storming continually for about a week here: round-the-clock thunder and lightning, like those scenes in the first season of “Battlestar Galactica” where Helo and Sharon are fleeing the Cylons on post-apocalypse Caprica. You know those scare stories that the local news runs every summer, about people getting struck by lightning? Well, NPR ran one last week. NPR! You know it’s bad when your Serious News Outlet features “When Weather Attacks.”

There was one break in the weather, Saturday, which was the day I had planned to take Aitch camping. The local wildlife refuge was running a special one-night family camp-out, a sort of Camping Lite for those of us who are not completely one with nature. The idea is that we would come in after dinner, pitch our tents by the visitors’ center, go on a hike, come back and have snacks and stories in the barn, brush our teeth in the restroom, then bed down. The following morning we would have breakfast, go on another hike, and then leave.

It sounded like a great way to camp without all the muss and fuss of cooking over a fire, peeing in the woods, and so forth, but after I signed up and got the schedule in the mail I began to have some reservations. Aitch has historically not been good with structured group activities. He does fine at school, but when we have tried to enroll him in some type of lesson or class, he can be really resistant. I suppose I should be worried, but I have chalked it up to his being a Not Quite Five who needs to do his own thing when he breaks loose from school. If he doesn’t want swim lessons or karate classes or soccer right now (or, frankly, ever) that is OK by me; from what I’ve seen we’re not risking any great loss of scholarship money by failing to hone his skills at this critical juncture. So I have adopted a policy of enrolling him only in one-off activities, and then only if I can accept his bailing out after five minutes. I decided I could accept that outcome, although I really hoped that we could have a nice mommy-and-son trip.

I had to wake Aitch from an unplanned nap to get to the campsite on time (Danger, Will Robinson!) and then tear him from the arms of the father he had not seen for a week (Danger!), but he was in a good, if silly, mood as we put up the tent. The camp leaders really did run a tight ship; after half an hour they briskly called us together to commence hiking. We had not yet finished putting up the rain canopy on the tent, but the leader said, “Oh, you won’t need that, it’s going to be so hot tonight,” and I thought about the weather forecast and how nice it would be to see starts through the tent mesh, and I agreed.

The hike was an hour and a half in duration, conducted at the measured pace of the leader. Our boys are not able to keep a measured pace off-leash any more than the dog can, and I found myself having to tell Aitch to slow down, or hurry up, or stop digging for worms, and kind of resenting it all the while. I mean, I understand the value in a group activity, but this was camping. Shouldn’t the kids be running barefoot through the woods wielding sharpened sticks? Then after about half an hour, Aitch started complaining about bugs. I had not lavished DEET on his head and face, as I always do for myself, thinking to preserve his fertility for future years. The skeeters were fierce, though, some of the worst I’ve endured. Lately I’ve been noticing that Aitch’s best tantrums are accompanied by allergic reactions. I’m not sure if the allergy causes the bad behavior, or the tantrum just exacerbates his allergies, but I did know that I was not looking forward to a public meltdown in the woods. Luckily, he held it together until we made it back to the barn for snacks.

Finally, the kids were able to relax and play freely for a bit, but then the leaders decided to read a story. They chose a compelling tale about the founding of the Audubon society. A sample:

Fashion was killing birds as well as women’s chances to have the right to vote and be listened to. For who would listen to a woman with a dead bird on her head? And if the senseless slaughter for a silly fashion was not stopped, in a few years the birds with the prettiest feathers would all be dead, gone forever, extinct.

This is not exactly the kind of deathless prose that inspires five-year-old boys to sit open-jawed around a campfire. I had to ask Aitch to settle down a few times, and I was getting kind of irritated at the situation and tired of the sound of my own voice. He was, though, as well-behaved as could be expected.

Finally we settled down to bed. It took Aitch a while to fall asleep (he was, no doubt, contemplating the origins of the Audubon society), but he was happy. And I was relieved that we’d made it through the whole evening without any major incidents or demands to go home.

I woke up around 4:00 to rumbling sounds. “Amazing,” I thought, “You can hear the highway all the way back here.”

Then there were flashes. “Heat lightning,” I thought.

More rumbles. More flashes. I looked up and realized I could no longer see the stars through the mesh in the tent. The weather report had lied, and I was going to be struck by lightning and, even if I lived, I would set off metal detectors for the rest of my life, just like the people on NPR!

Maybe it will pass, I thought.

Then I heard the pitter-patter of raindrops on the tent. “We left off the rain canopy,” I remembered. (Reading comprehension test: did you catch the foreshadowing way up there in paragraph 4?) We had two choices: Put up the canopy before the storm hit, then wait out the dangerous part in the barn; or just strike the tent and get out of there. We opted for the latter, and managed to get everything packed up right before the worst of it. I felt like an idiot for not putting up the canopy in the first place, but in the circumstances I think it was the best we could do.

So, after a rainy Sunday and Monday we are experiencing another storm-free day — so far. It happens to be Race Day, and now I can add to my list of Race Worries (number 1: the starter’s pistol will trigger a Pavlovian response in the form of a need to urinate) fear that I will get caught in a freak thunderstorm.

With any luck, the lightning will give me superpowers, like the ability to run ten ten-minute miles.

Damn. I just spotted a guy running down the high road pushing this stroller containing what appeared to be three sleeping three-year-olds. That’s about a hundred pounds of kid being propelled down the main thoroughfare at six miles an hour in very heavy traffic.

Dude, I cyber-salaam you. You are truly worthy of the medal.

…a purple speedo with a red swim cap that doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.

As you’ve no doubt heard, Dara Torres, a 41-year-old mother of a toddler, qualified for the Olympic swim team last weekend. Score one for the middle-aged athlete! She didn’t just qualify — she bested her own record AND smoked the competition.

I’m not the only one who found this surprising, because swimming is a sport that owes more to physicality than strategy. I mean, it’s a sport where body hair is an impediment; one would think that the depredations of age and child-rearing would automatically disqualify an athlete from the top ranks. I heard a commenter on NPR, though, say that because swimming comes down to fractions of a second, it causes intense psychological pressure, and therefore a seasoned athlete does have an advantage.

I’ve never swum competitively, so I can’t speak to that. But I do know that after more than 25 years of running, I can (finally!) go farther and faster than I did when I was 16.

I have been training again this year for our town’s 10-mile race, and one of the women I have been running with likes to keep a 10-minute-mile pace whether she’s doing three miles or ten. On long runs, I often succeed in slowing her down (you’re welcome!), but overall she has succeeded in speeding me up (thanks!). Last weekend, we did a little over 10 miles at a pace between 10 and 10.5 minutes per mile.

When I was 16, I would never have thought to run that far. The most we ran in practice was 7 miles; although there were marathons and other long road races back then, average people didn’t compete in them. (Also, if I ran for more than an hour I would have had to flip the tape on my Walkman twice, and who wants to listen to the same music?)

So here I am, thanks to the miracle of modern iPod technology and a running partner who is half my size and twice my speed; stronger and faster. Just like Dara.

Dear Wellness Week organizers,

Thank you for your recent efforts re: Wellness Week. The posters are colorful and plentiful, and nothing says fun like “Free Mammograms at Work!”

I must object, though, to your declaration of “No Elevator Fridays.” Now, I’m as big a proponent of “wellness” as the next guy (back in the day, we used to call it “health”). I ran twenty miles last week! I took two yoga classes! I ate ten apples!

But…look at me. Over here. I’m wearing high heels. I’m carrying fifteen pounds of computer and accessories. Do I look like I want to schlep up three flights of stairs to my office? No. Here’s a clue: If I were interested in engaging in activities that promote wellness (back in the day, we used to call it “exercise”), I would be wearing athletic shoes and a running bra so strong it could subdue a guerrilla insurgency.

In short: I will take the damn elevator if I want to.

Yesterday just to mix up the training a bit, I went to the MIT track to do some speed work. Although the track is only blocks away from my office, I studied Google Maps for about fifteen minutes before venturing out to find it. In Cambridge, there is no “Point A to Point B,” even on foot. I had to run through two parking lots and down a path between two fences and across train tracks and through a construction zone to find the football stadium.

The track was a very high-quality springy material, and I was grateful for the cushioning. But MIT’s football stadium in scope and grandeur was on par with the one at our local middle school. There were a few bleachers on the “home” side, nothing at all for spectators from visiting Salve Regina or whomever else the Engineers face on the gridiron. (Click the link lest you think that’s a joke. Yeah, I thought Salve Regina was a girls’ school, too.)

The whole time I was running my intervals, there was a man hanging sitting on the field. He had work clothes and equipment, so he didn’t look like a loiterer, but he wasn’t actually doing any work. It reminded me of that ’70’s movie, One on One, in which Robbie Benson is a hot-shot college basketball star who is pampered by the university alumni with money, a car, a tutor to do his homework, etc. He has a work-study “job” turning on the athletic field sprinklers, which come on automatically. Strange the things that will course through your brain when you’re in oxygen debt.

It’s a testament to the gullibility of the 1970’s moviegoing public that we would ever accept Robbie Benson as a college-level athlete. Or, for that matter, a straight man.

I was sitting in a meeting the other day (I have lots of meetings now; when I die I expect the newspaper will publish minutes in lieu of an obituary), and I found myself absentmindedly playing with my wedding ring. I had moved it back and forth over my knuckle a few times when it suddenly hit me: “My God, it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to do that!”

My finger is thinner. For years I’ve barely been able to fit that ring on my hand. I’ve hardly worn it the last year or two — shocking! A female misrepresenting herself to the general public by refusing to don her culturally-accepted signifier of marital status! Now it slides on and off, not exactly with ease, but at least without bacon grease.

The new gym has a small basket on the reception desk in which people can drop their keys as they enter, presumably so they won’t lose them in the locker room or on the workout floor. I always take advantage of this amenity, but there is always a moment of weirdness as I put my keychain into the basket. I half-expect some ugly weightlifting dude to interrupt the kick-boxing class to tell me that I have to go home with him, because he picked my keys.

It’s been awhile since I last took kick-boxing, and I forgot how much fun it is to PUNCH! and KICK! The petite little thing who leads the class is especially encouraging, shouting things like, “Do you know what that knee is for? To SMASH SOMEONE’S HEAD! Smash it!” Years ago, when I first started kick-boxing, I had a particularly awful boss who was on the imaginary receiving end of my blows. Now there is no one in my life I hate that much, although I wouldn’t mind wiping that smirk off Mitt Romney’s face.

Every girl should be taught to land a solid punch. It’s very empowering. As a result of this class, I really believe I could administer a severe beating, as long as there were an appropriately rhythmic dance music remix playing within earshot.