--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last year I lived with 2 gal friends, Jill and Danielle. They're both running freaks, and because of the constant exposure to them, and their freakish running habits ("it's 25 degrees out, but I need to keep up my training, so I'm ONLY going to run 16 miles today"), I slowly made the final transition from soccer-player-who-runs to soccer-player-AND-runner. I began to up my mileage, and slowly went from running 3 miles to running 4 . . . and 5 . . and 6 . . . and 7. And around that point, Danielle decided to get me drunk enough that she could take advantage of my body . . . by getting me to sign up for a half-marathon she was running on Memorial Weekend, despite me never having run a race over 5 miles. The half marathon was on May 30. I signed up for on April 30. That . . . was a mistake.
Over the course of the next month, I trained as reasonably much as I could train. I went to 8, then to 10, then to 11 miles. Granted I hit 11 miles a week before the race, and most training regiments apparently say you should be hitting that 3 weeks before the race, but who cares? I'm a bad-ass. I'm 31 years old, play 3 soccer games a week and only sub out when I get dragged to the sidelines kicking and screaming. I have no stop button . . . or at least I have no stop button for the 70 minutes that out soccer games last.
"Too Much, Too Soon" - my half-marathon training / many a girls response to my advances
On race day, I felt pretty good. Despite the rookie mistake of missing the first water station, I hit the turn (it was an out-and-back race) at around an 8:30 per-mile pace. Probably a faster pace than I should have been setting, back again, who cares? Bad . . . . ass.
At around the 8 mile mark (coincidentally about the length of my soccer games), I got caught by Danielle. Up to that point, I had actually thought she was ahead of me, so to finally see the veteran runner catch me at that point kind of gave me a runner's high . . . that lasted all of about a 1/4 mile. I then promptly waved good-bye to her and sent her on her merry way, as my body decided to say "Hey dummy. You're 30. You've never run a race over 5 miles. You want to run a half-marathon? Maybe you should have put a little planning into it, fuckhead." I tried to reason with my body, but all my engineering logic is sadly located north of my equator, and the dogged legs in the south ended up winning the argument (actually, that's the usual case when it comes to arguing with any part south in my southern hemisphere, especially my Cape of Good Hope (too many geography metaphors? Whatever. Look at map. It makes sense, I swear)).
So with 4 or 5 miles to go, the occasional walking began. A good 45 seconds worth, about every 4 minutes. I ended up finishing the race in 1 hour, 57 minutes and change, with a 8:59 pace. BUT . . . who cares. I am a bad-ass no more. I finished. I finished in a decent time for a first half-marathon. But I walked. And to continue the half-baked sexual metaphors, it was the difference between sex and masturbation. Sure, they both get you to the same finish line, but one is a way more satisfying way to get there, and far less embarrassing than the other. Sigh. It was a tough realization to face - I fought my body, and my body won.
When I was in Chicago last month, I went another round with my body, this time with the Northern Hemisphere, as I went indoor rock climbing with my friends Megs. Megs works at a college as a rec sports something or other (sorry Megs. You can define this in the paperback version), and she has full access to their facilities, which includes an indoor climbing wall. So I jogged a mile over to her work from where I was staying, we geared up, and we attacked. Oh, one thing I should mention - my lifetime preperation for this moment was about as thorough as my half-marathon training.
Besides mandatory weight lifting for 6 weeks in gym class in high school, and a very brief period before I started actually getting off my ass and running where I thought I could sit on my couch and do a few curls for 10 minutes and develop a 6 pack overnight, I haven't lifted. I find it boring, and I kind of just figured I'd wait until (maybe) having kids and then gaining my Dad Strength (you cannot beat your dad at arm wrestling until you've owned a house for 5+ years and had kids for 2+ years. Its science). So me climbing a rock wall was like bring a knife to a gun fight, as pictures from the chest waxing post clearly show that I do indeed lack guns.
So yeah, the rock wall. The wall itself had 2 parts. The main part was 10 feet up, and just a giant wall of grips. To get there, you could either use a ladder and start at the bottom of that section, or, you could first traverse the very bottom part of the wall - the much tougher lower section that actually went into a 30 degree inversion. Being hard-headed and forgetting anything my body had previously told me about no longer being a bad-ass, I went the inversion route . . .
. . . and I failed. I got my hands on the grips on the main section, but couldn't overcome the inversion. So I tried again . . . and I failed again. So I tried again . . . and I failed again. So I then said fuck that, we got the ladder, and I started at the bottom of the main wall . . . and I failed again.
So after seeing Megs conquer the wall, I decided that quitting is for quitters, and that I should give it one more try . . . and I succeeded. I rang the bell. Hooray for me. I'M A MAN!
Bu the damage had been done. Like the half-marathon, I had finished, but I had basically "walked" my way up the wall with multiple stop-and-go's. Success and failure all at once. What a country!
Sadly with my upper body stamina, the whole indoor rock climbing excursion only took about 10 minutes. I was sweaty. I was tired. Afterwards, I needed a nap. I finished after the girl, and that was after she had made me feel embarrassed . . .
(insert final sexual metaphor here)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Thanks to Megs for the free indoor rock climbing
- After having done generic yoga and then hot vinyasa yoga, Friday I did bikram yoga (thanks to Katie, Sarah and Malinda), also done at 100+ degree temperatures for 90 minutes. It was a quality ass-kicking, and I dug it more so than the hot vinyasa (though maybe it was just teacher dependent). The vinyasa was like going on a distance run - a constant exersion of of a moderate amount of energy. Bikram was like playing soccer - constantly going back and forth between going as hard as you can and taking short breaks.
- Friday - bikram yoga in Harvard Square. Saturday - degenerate gambling at the horse track (post forthcoming). Sunday - an exhibit at a Boston Library (another post forthcoming), followed by an impromptu 3 person pub crawl . . . I am a man of many faces.
No comments:
Post a Comment