ever-fixed mark

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.

Massachusetts is light-years behind the rest of the country when it comes to gym culture. The first gym I ever joined here, in Cambridge, was a huge cold dirty warehouse crammed with universal weights and treadmills. The locker room was unspeakable. I’ve worked in inner-city schools with more ambiance.

The next gym I joined, near my office, was in the bottom floor of another office park, and felt like the health club version of a cube farm. The rooms were about six and a half feet high and the whole thing was fluorescently lit. Whenever I climbed up onto the treadmill, I felt like I was about to burst right through the drop ceiling.

When we moved to Port City, I joined the local gym. It was cozier than the warehouse and roomier than the cube farm. But the treadmills on the first floor only went up to 6 miles an hour (!). There were limited entertainment options in the cardio room, just two big-screen TVs with the audio blaring through an antiquated PA system. The water pressure in the showers was flaccid. Every class I took was off somehow; one time, someone left a yoga class early, and the instructor bitched, “I always knew she didn’t like me.” Namaste to you, too.

This year, I was motivated by the extended renovations to and subsequent closure of the YWCA pool to check out a gym across the river. Swimming is one of the best ways for the kids to get exercise in the winter months, and I was dreading a season without a pool. And the new gym was much nicer, although not anywhere near the amenity levels of the health clubs I belonged to in Chicago almost a decade ago. There are enough parking spots, though, and the treadmills go up to 7.5 miles an hour (maybe higher; that’s as far as I go). The locker room is comfortable. The workout rooms are nice. And there are TVs everywhere, although I’m not sure if that’s a plus or minus. Almost all of the cardio machines have individual TVs, with personal audio hook-ups, and there are additional screens in all the rooms with closed-captioning, if you prefer to listen to music while you watch/read television, like I do. Sometimes I feel the information overload is a little much, but then again, running indoors is boring, and a little trash TV really helps to pass the time.

Unfortunately, as I recently discovered, the TV reception in the club is confined to six channels: The NFL network, ESPN 1, ESPN2, the Sci-Fi channel, CNN, and some kind of advertising channel for the club that also has videos on it. Why would anyone assume that just because someone wants to play sports, that they like to watch them on TV? I certainly don’t, and since “Battlestar Galactica” was not playing on the Sci-Fi channel, I was forced to watch Christine Amanpour’s depressing report on orphans in Africa. I believe my feelings about watching CNN on the treadmill have been well-documented here, so I won’t elaborate, except to say that I would prefer some more diverting entertainment. Since about 80% of the population of the cardio room was female, I don’t know why the programming was so skewed to the male demographic.

As I was leaving, I noticed another room off the main cardio room. It had some cardio machines, a few weight machines, free weights, and (of course) five televisions mounted on the wall. It was separated from the cardio area from a glass wall, and I wondered what was special about this collection of equipment. Then I saw the plaque:

Women Only.

Hmmm. Women Only. How do I feel about that?

On one hand, I have a few female friends who say they don’t like working out in the same room with men, and most of them have joined a women-only gym as a result. Some say they feel intimidated by men who seem to know more about weight machines or exercises than they do. Some have complained about the unsightliness or unsoundliness (”all the grunting!”) of men at workout. Personally none of these things bothers me, and it is also quite a while since I have had to worry about men hitting on me at the gym. But I suppose I can see their point, and it does seem like a savvy marketing ploy on the part of this health club to compete with Curves.

On the other hand, at this crucial juncture in feminist history, is it really the time to start re-segregating? Today’s amenity is tomorrow’s ghetto, and once the gyms start instituting purdah, we’re on the slippery slope to A Handmaid’s Tale. And I think it might be hard to run in a burqa. If you’re intimidated by men at the gym, shouldn’t you just do a few more push-ups and get over it? And the gym doesn’t escape responsibility, either: shouldn’t they take pains to make the whole place welcoming to both sexes? (I suppose we won’t have really arrived at gender equality until not only the workout rooms but also the locker rooms are unisex, like on “Battlestar Galactica.” Speaking of…we’ve just started the third season, and, whoa! Starbuck wouldn’t ask for a women’s only room; she would just kill any man who looked sideways at her during a workout. But I digress.)

On the third hand (as my students used to say)…to what channels are the TVs in the “women only” room tuned? I’ll report back.

Tuesday was the day of the Big Race. In the heat of the afternoon, I put on my shiny new shoes, and Dog and I walked over to the registration desk to pick up my number. By the time I got home I was a hot, sweaty, tired wreck, and I also couldn’t deny that my shoes were hurting my feet. I don’t mean they were too tight, or rubbing in the wrong spot, but that they were causing a sharp pain under my left heel and arch. Now, I fear plantar fasciitis more than the Red Manace, halitosis, and Dick Cheney rolled up into one foul-smelling ball, so I reluctantly concluded that I was not going to be able to wear my new shoes for the race, and I prayed that the pain would not persist.

And then, after that, everything that could go right went right. The temperature dropped slightly. The humidity stayed manageable. I was able to drink enough water before the race that I felt hydrated, and yet hit the bathroom at the optimal moment pre-race so I didn’t feel like I needed to pee through the whole thing. My feet did not hurt. My back did not hurt. Nothing chafed, dug, or blistered. I felt a little breathless on Mile 1 and was feeling a little bored and tired on miles 2 - 5, which were on one long, straight road, but after I did the hill at the end of mile 5 and we hit the scenic part of the race, I was really able to relax and enjoy it.

The race, in its 48th year, is a real community event. The route goes right through town — in fact, right in front of my house — and the people who lined the streets to cheer the relatively quick-paced 5K runners and to see the elite cadaverous-looking 10-mile racers were kind enough to hang around to cheer for us, too. I saw so many people I knew. Are you familiar with the extended opening credits of “The Simpsons” where Bart flies through town on his skateboard and passes every major and minor character in the Simpsons canon on the sidewalk? That’s what it was like, for ten whole miles. There was every person I’ve written about in these pages —Jogging Jesus! The fence neighbors! The mayor! The play group! — and many more. There were people with hoses to spray us and people who had set up unofficial water stations and people blaring music and one little urchin who held out a half-eaten popsicle. I wanted to take it, too, because I found I was unable to drink any water from an open cup without choking while traveling at speed, and I was afraid if I slowed to a walk I would never start again.

The funny thing was, since we were so far behind the pack, not only were people cheering us on, but they were cheering us personally. Time after time someone looked directly into my eyes and said, “You can do it! Four miles to go! You’re doing great!” And time after time I felt compelled to say, “Thank you!” because, after all, the person was looking right at me; there was no one else around. It’s not what Joan Benoit would do, but it only seemed polite.

At mile 9 it was getting dark, and I found myself wanting to speed up to finish. A number of the 5K runners were already walking to their cars, and they continued to call encouragement to us. “You can almost smell the hot dogs!” one guy yelled, leaving me to wonder. Was that a euphemism, like “hitting the wall”? “How was the race, Joe?” “Well, Dave, I was great up to mile 9, then I totally smelled the hot dogs.” Then I did start to smell hot dogs, and I envisioned spectators setting up barbecues near the finish line to picnic among the carnage, much like the first Battle of Bull Run. But it was actually the race organizers providing food for the runners. The nausea that accompanied that smell was probably the worst I felt for the whole race, that is until I crossed the finish line and had to bend down to take off my ChampionChip. Hot dogs. Head rush. Whoa.

Checking the race results the next day, I was relieved to see that we were not the very last of the ten-mile racers, but we were last in the Middle-Aged Fat Lady division. I suppose there is a point of pride in running a race as slowly as you could possibly run it without actually walking. The best part, of course, was running through the familiar streets and having people we know hail us like we were real marathoners. What a great memory.

I can almost smell the hot dogs.

Every time I buy new running shoes, I go through this little charade:

1. Vowing to Support Local Businesses, I march downtown to the running store to try on shoes.

2. He never has shoes in my size, a fairly standard 9-wide.

3. I order the shoes on the Internet.

This time was no exception, although I tried really hard to give him my business. “Could you order the shoes?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” he said, “that would take weeks.”

I had mine in a few days.

Whenever I buy new running shoes, I also vow that I’m going to get some color, any color, other than white with blue stripes. They do make running shoes in other colors–not a lot, but some–but never in my size. I don’t get this; why can’t I have hot pink or orange or lime green running shoes, or even white shoes with a different color stripe? When I went on-line I was excited to see that Asics makes my shoes in white with orange stripes, but not in my width. White and blue only. (My training partner wears the same shoes, but hers have yellow stripes. She has enormous feet, and I was amused to see that the yellow shoes are only available in size 12. Can you imagine if other clothing manufacturers started color-coding items by size?)

When my shoes arrived, though, there was a nice little surprise: the tongue was blue. Such a little touch, but one that pleases me whenever I look down on them. Something different!

This reminds me of a story from one of the Little House books. Mary and Laura get to wear ribbons on their pigtails for church, but Mary always has to wear blue ones and Laura pink because their mother says that these are the proper colors for blondes and brunettes, respectively. One morning something happens as they are getting ready for church, and in the darkness and confusion their mother ties the wrong color bows in their hair. Each girl is delirious with excitement at getting to wear the other color. (Obviously, this is before Mary went blind.)

Whenever I recall this story I think how easily children are pleased by some little change in routine. Also, I think about what an uptight woman Ma Ingalls must have been. Enforcing ribbon color protocol on the prairie! Maybe her descendants work for ASICS: “Blue is for wide feet! Yellow is for big feet! Orange is only for normal feet!” and so on.

Maybe Laura was remembering it wrong, though. I tend to color-code Aitch and Minor, but not because of anything I’ve read in an etiquette book. Aitch is quite partial to red, and whenever I buy him something new, I’m mindful of the fact that he’s much more likely to use it if it’s red. Hence, his toothbrush, lunch box, and every pair of shoes he currently owns are red, and Minor’s (just for the sake of differentiation) are blue. I just hope that Aitch doesn’t take up running, because how will I find red running shoes in his size?

This morning, I decided to attempt a ten-mile run. I mapped out the race course on WalkJogRun.Net and then wrote down the directions on a sticky note, because I really didn’t want to make a wrong turn that would extend a 10-mile run into an 11-mile run. Or even a 10.1 mile run. Any extra yardage was pretty much unacceptable, in my opinion. I also noted the locations of a few key mile markers, and then I put the sticky note in the pocket of my running shorts. You know, that little rectangular pocket that gets all sweaty, the one with the fold-over flap to secure the contents, the flap that also makes it difficult to extract anything while you are actually wearing the shorts.

So I ran and ran and ran, trying to recall the mile markers I had recorded, reluctant to wrestle with the note in my pocket. Finally, I noticed I was coming up on the 95 overpass, a location I remembered as the halfway mark. I rejoiced as I hit the middle of the bridge, until I saw that I was running over the spray-painted words, You Will Die Some Day.

Hm, I think the artist missed the ominous note he was shooting for. Some day? Certainly, but with any luck not on this run.

Then I took out my sticky note and saw that the 95 overpass was the FOUR mile mark, not the five. And I did die a little bit. But not all the way!

And I finished the whole damn ten miles without walking once.