A different kind of workout

It begins six days before, just after work, with a brief message from him saying you need to call back. It’s urgent.  So you call, and get nothing but ringing.

You run through the possibilities. Maybe it’s about Nick, the best friend, the one recovering from bypass surgery?

Maybe it’s about the trip. They’re leaving the next day for Florida. Are they taking you up on your offer to run last minute errands? Maybe they need to borrow a suitcase.

Urgent though? Urgent isn’t about suitcases.

Is it about her? The one who didn’t call? The one who’s celebrating a tiny reprieve from infusion labs and laser beams, fatigue and dread? 

Instead of heading to your home, you drive to theirs. You pass the road that could take you straight to the emergency room in under five minutes.  You wonder if you should have turned, then remember how everyone always makes fun of you because you are the queen of imaginary worst case scenarios.   

The phone rings a mile from their house and when you answer it’s her and the shaking in her voice stirs up your insides. You smile because you read somewhere that smiling relaxes. You promise to be there in less than 10 minutes. You pull a u-turn on a busy four-lane road as the school at the corner is dismissing. You floor it, and get to the ER right on time. 

Then you wait with her. You get coffees and muffins and check Facebook. Every few minutes you leave your orange plastic seat and wave to him. He’s still in his street clothes, sitting on a hospital bed in the triage area behind the reception desk, which is a terribly open space. He gives you that smile that you’ve known your whole life, the one that means you’ve got to be kidding me. You give him the same smile and raise your arms in a what the heck way and he does too. Then you both grin, a real laughing grin  this time.

When the two of you are finally allowed to join him, you talk about many things including the swearing guy on the gurney in the hall. The police officer is asking swearing guy to stop with the bad words for God’s sake because these are nice people here.

You broach the subject of canceling the airport shuttle, the flight, the rental car.  The doctor arrives and says might as well, since he won’t be leaving the hospital for quite awhile.  Turns out canceling everything is easy. Dealing with the reality for the canceling? Not so much.

The next day is a snow day and you rejoice because you can sleep in though in truth your sleep is thin and you wake up feeling groggy rather than refreshed. You call the hospital and switch to high alert when they mention the ICU. Your heart rate drops to close to normal when you learn it’s because of overflow, not illness.

At the hospital you learn he got the bed at 6 a.m. and slept less than you because the ER was packed with noisy drunks and addicts.  You wait a lot. You get coffees. Finally, the three of you discuss the choices with two specialists: surgery or meds? The docs enthuse over the surgery. They are optimistic. The three of you agree on the surgery, which will be an hour away, in Boston.

The next day, he calls at school to say they will be moving him in ninety minutes, so he should be in Boston by 2 p.m.  You rush from school to pick her up on the other side of the city. You drive to Boston. At the Weston tolls, she jokes that maybe that’s him, in that ambulance. It’s ambulance number 80. It has the hospital name written in pretty purple type.

You arrive at Tufts Hospital which is a small city. You get lost multiple times before you make it up to the sixth floor of the North building, where he has a huge room all to himself. He’s just arrived. It’s way past four. It likely was him at the Weston tolls.

Thursday morning you wake early and hit the gym before dawn because you have a 20-mile race Sunday, plus the old adrenaline rushes are starting up again, which means your blood pressure is rising. You used to not know how to handle things back when your hair wasn’t specked with white, back in worst case scenario days. Now you self medicate by attacking cardio equipment.  

You drive to Tufts and wait.  The night before, you’d dined on Chinese noodles at a former theatre just a block from the hospital. He stayed back and ate salmon and fruit cup. It’s just the two of you at that restaurant. You talk about faded glory and gaudy chandeliers and say that the place reminds you of the nightclub where Rosanne Arquette did her magic act in Desperately Seeking Susan, one of your favorite movies.

The night of the surgery you stay in the hospital. You eat sandwiches you bought at a shop in the lobby. You are in a waiting room with lots of windows looking out over more waiting rooms. You daydream. You read. You have nothing to say that you haven’t already said two dozen times. When you finally see him, none of you can stop talking.

You leave work early the next day to get him home before the commuter traffic. You learn two things. First, his new roommate, a homeless guy with a growth on his heel, kept him awake all night, talking to air. Second, the operation was a failure. So he needs to start on new meds that have some serious side effects. You ask if he should really be going home. After all, they worked on the heart for six hours just a day ago.  The nurse says he’s fine. Plus, he’s sick of hospitals. He wants to be home. At least he can start golfing in two weeks.

You get in the car just as the evening commute is starting. It’s bitterly cold though it’s spring now. You’re making good time despite the stop and go nonsense at the Weston tolls and at Route 30 in Natick.

At the Westboro exit, in a snarl of traffic, everything changes. He says, “I’m having another episode.” He's talking about the symptoms that made the surgery necessary in the first place. 

“It’s okay. We’re almost home,” you say. Actually, you are twenty-five minutes from home.

Seconds later, there’s another episode, then another. You’re bolting down 495 now, in rush hour traffic. He’s panicking. She’s panicking. You use your left hand to drive, your right to scroll through your phone. You find the doctor’s number and you call.

A nurse comes on the speaker phone. You remember to be thankful that your old car died last year and you chose this one with a cool phone system, though last year at this time you were beyond stressed because your budget could have really used that old horse one more year.  

Your left hand is on the wheel. Your right hand is on his.

You explain the situation in between his cries which go like this: “Jesus I’m having another one! Jesus!” You try to check his pulse but it’s hard to do that and drive and talk to the nurse at the same time so you tell the nurse his color is good, which is the truth, and you hold his hand.

You exit onto 290 and traffic picks up. The nurse asks if you want her to stay on the line. At the same time, all three of you say yes. You can’t help but smile just a bit at that. You’re still 15 minutes from the hospital when your head starts to swirl and you recognize the signs that a panic attack is imminent. You rack your brain for any goody to help you cope. You tell the nurse he’s a golfer. You ask the nurse if she golfs. And the attack fades away as you hear him talk to her about his favorite golf courses. His voice is strained. You can tell he’s beyond stressed, but still, the timbre of his voice, the fact that he is talking,  soothes you.

You pull up to the ER where it all began just five days earlier. They bring him to the same triage bed as before, the one behind the glass, out in the open. Once he is safely in a bed, you start shaking. The adrenaline rush is overwhelming you. You grab a chair and sit and practice yoga breaths.  You call upon your lions of gratitude to tear through this sadness. You all made it there in one piece. That’s something.

There are tests and more tests and waiting of course, and you go home when he's admitted then go back and visit again. Also, you’re starting to carbo load because the race is less than twenty-four hours away and you haven’t been interested in eating much.

The night before the race he’s resting and comfortable and almost back to normal, except for the huge IV bag dripping ventricle-calming juices into black and blue arms that were pink just days ago.  You say you’ll try to stop by after the race tomorrow night. It’s out of state so you may be late.

“Nah, don’t bother stopping by. I’ll be fine. You enjoy your run.” He understands about your need for running. When you lean down to kiss him on his cool smooth forehead he says this: “You’re a good daughter.” At that moment, you feel so great you know you could rush out and leap a tall building in a single bound. Maybe even stop a steam engine with one hand. All he has to do is ask. You'd do anything for him.

You go to bed early because you have to be up at dawn to drive north to New Hampshire. The phone call comes at exactly 11:30. 

The doctor says he’s been moved to ICU, not because of overflow but because things haven’t been going as planned, though on the positive side his pacemaker is working beautifully. In fact, it worked beautifully four times in five minutes. 

“Thank God for technology,” you say. Your heart is beating so hard you barely hear your own words.

The next morning, the early alarm you’d set so you’d get to the race start on time goes off. You wake up surprised because you didn’t expect you’d ever be able to fall back asleep after that phone call. 

You dress in your favorite race shirt and some comfortable pants. You grab your bag, and make sure to put in a bottle of water and a banana. 

You drive south instead of north.  

You enter a quiet room with glass doors and one lone occupant. This is where you want to be. Nothing matters but this. This is your oxygen. This is your run. When he opens his eyes and smiles at you, you beam.          

On surviving Stu's and trusting the process

Yesterday I ran the race I trained for.  I’m shaking my head, still in awe today. What a great gift it is, to run the race you trained for. 

I’ve gone into many things with big hopes and plans, only to have everything crash down around me: various jobs, a marriage, some friendships. Granted, sometimes all the hard work pays off. You get to say, Yup. I worked my butt off and I won. I got the accolades. I got the prize. And I should have. After all, I worked hard. I deserved it.

But life is not always fair. You don’t always get out of it what you put into it. That’s how I see it sometimes. There have been far too many times when I did my best and got the rug pulled out from under me. Maybe instead of pocketing a payoff, I’d learned a lesson I wasn’t expecting and most definitely wasn’t prepared for. I’m talking big, life-changing things, like sickness and divorce and financial earthquakes. 

But even in running, you can’t often predict the end result. I’ve trained well for many races, only to get injured at the last minute. I’ve trained just right, and ended up slogging through heat waves and snow storms, my finish time far off from what I'd hoped.

Yesterday, I had two hundred sixteen minutes to think about process and baby steps and meeting goals and claiming victory. I was running an 18.6 mile race. I was less prepared than I wanted to be, and I knew it. I also knew this: That I have certain goals and if I want to reach them I’ve got to put on my big girl pants and get out of my comfort zone.  

Yesterday, I got exactly what I deserved.

I started slowly. I ended even more slowly. I smiled the whole way. I thanked every wonderful volunteer. I sang out loud. I swore, but not that much. I exchanged rasping quips with my fellow athletes: Looking good! Way to go! Sucks doesn’t it?  

At mile one, the sweeps truck drove by me for the first time. The sweeps truck picks up injured runners. The driver’s job is to check in with the back of the packers too, my people, and make sure we’re good. The driver, with a moustache like a hair brush and a voice that boomed like God’s, yelled out that I looked strong. I asked him if I was last. He looked behind me and squinted. He shook his head.  I gave him a thumbs up. He puttered off. 

I must have seen him a million times yesterday, as he drove back and forth along the course making sure we were all okay. Though the temps hovered near freezing, he never failed to roll down his window to tell me I looked awesome. Sweeps truck drivers are notoriously bad liars. But I’m okay with that.  

Near mile nine, the top of a ridiculously long monster, a friend showed up to cheer me on. Liz runs laps on our tiny gym track. One mile is nineteen laps. Friday, she ran an astounding nine miles. That’s 171 laps. And she thinks I'M tenacious?????

On race day, she helped me climb the last part of that blasted hill, holding in front of me a T-shirt from an Ian McCulloch concert. The shirt was the carrot, I was the sluggish wascally wabbit. Ian McCulloch is the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen, a group that made it big in the 80s with Lips Like Sugar and Killer Moon. Liz is a big EATB fan and has gotten me hooked too. I believe in stealing inspiration when I can’t muster it. I figure, if Liz's favorite group can pull her through almost two centuries worth of indoor miles, then maybe there’s some magic there that I could use.  So, I gamely went along and chased cotton T-shirt Ian. Plus he’s hot. Why wouldn’t I want to chase him? 

The next three miles were the toughest for me, which is weird because they were relatively easy. They were moundy, not mountainous. Yet, my legs were quaking; my hip pulsing. Doubts attacked.  I considered walking. I narrowed my gait and grimaced.

I’m taking baby steps, I thought.

Then of course the deeper meaning hit me. Duh. Of course they were baby steps. I hadn’t run this distance in nearly thirty months. I wasn’t exactly starting from scratch, but I wasn’t in my comfort zone either. Today was supposed to be hard and it was.

I took inventory. Yes. Everything hurt. But nothing hurt more than it was supposed to. Everything hurt exactly the way it should. 

And then I realized too that I only had six miles left to run. I could do six miles. I’ve done plenty of six mile runs. I picked up my pace. 

I eventually met up with a runner who waddled like a duck. I don't mean anything insulting there. Different runners have different gaits, some quite distinctive. I was shuffling like an old grandma. This guy was waddling. We got a tag team thing going. Sometimes I followed him. Sometimes he followed me. Each time we met up, we checked in with one another. 

Me: How you feeling?

Him: My legs aren’t working right.

Me, nodding: Mine are meatloaf. 

Every now and then, through gaps in the pines, I’d catch a glimpse of the finish line neighborhood, across a whole continent of frozen reservoir.  It was discouragingly far away, so I mainly focused on the pavement directly ahead. 

At the second to last hill I pretty much ran in place. I don’t know how I made it to the top. I passed the waddling guy one last time. We never met up again until after the race, when we traded war stories in the high school’s cafeteria, in between gulps of bottled water. 

Him: I did better than I thought.

Me: I was just glad to be out there. 

As I jogged past the red brick buildings of Clinton, I made sure to smile at the police officers who held back traffic like I was the Queen of England, or maybe the mama mallard in Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings.

 

The last mile of this race is a doozy. You’re finally on flat stuff for the first time in seventeen miles. It is glorious. You’re thankful because you are almost done done done and your legs are screaming that they need to stop. Then you turn left and face the last, most intimidating hill of them all. 

“Pray for me!” I shouted that to the police officer directing traffic at that intersection. I hadn’t shouted anything in several hours, but that’s not why my voice was thick. 

“I got you girl!”  He gave me a Pepsodent smile and a point and wink and I swear to God that right then I could have run up Everest. So I did. Very slowly though, of course.

Yesterday, I got to run the race I trained for. What a glorious gift. I wonder what next weekend will bring? More baby steps? Oh, I hope so.

WTF was I thinking?

                So, I’ve reached the “What the fuck was I thinking” part of my marathon training. 

                Let me bring you up to speed. Early in the fall, I took some time off from running because life sort of sucked and I was worn out. I kept going to the gym, but my heart wasn’t in it. I ellipted, I cybexed, I lifted some weights. I sometimes worked up a sweat. It was all just bleah bleah bleah. Yawn. 

                Then one day, winter just over that next hill, I got on the treadmill and started up again. First timidly and wicked slowly, for just a half hour at a time. Then after a few weeks, less slowly and forty-five minutes, then an hour, then seventy-five minutes then ninety then I did a silly thing and signed up for marathon number thirteen. I’m still not sure why. Maybe I needed a goal? Maybe I missed my blisters?   

                I plotted out a schedule, marked up a calendar with running routes, filled my shuffle with all new songs, and started out strong. Gym six days a week, three days of that running. A month later, astoundingly, I was running fourteen miles indoors. The miracle wasn’t the distance. The miracle was that I didn’t die of boredom. Running in place is only fun if you’re a hamster, and even then maybe not. 

                A few weeks ago, I took my considerably less than hot potential marathon bod outside for my first long run on pavement since September. I’m trotting along to INXS, happy in my own little 80s Aquanet world, feeling all long-legged and Kenyan and I’m winning the Boston Marathon and teaching everyone who ever put me down a lesson in yeah you got that, I AM awesomeness. Then I catch a glimpse of myself in a storefront window. Turns out, I am the living embodiment of the Travelocity gnome. Truly.  

                Still, even with that cruel reality check, and with temps in the glacial single digits, I aced that fifteen-mile run which was pretty much all ninety degree mountains no lie. That’s how tough I am. Then two weeks ago I did the same route, plus an extra two miles just for giggles. Yup. Seventeen miles straight up.  

                 

                Then, twelve weeks of training still ahead, I was done. My head had no desire to run anymore. My body rebelled too. My knees creaked. My lower back went all 95- year- old lady on me. My right hip screamed. 

                 I knew what to do. I took some time off, which in marathon-speak means I cross-trained. I ellipted. I cybexed. I gave myself a break. Instead of focusing on my heart rate and pace, I watched Jeopardy and called out lots of wrong answers. I checked out the hot guys. I sang, mostly to myself.

                Eventually, I started feeling alive again and once, for a half minute, I considered running. Unfortunately, I was near a computer at the time so without thinking twice I sat down and signed up for a race which happens to be one of the godawfullest hilliest races in New England and it is tomorrow. 

                What the fuck was I thinking? 

                I’m babying my hip. I’m planning on taking it more slowly than my usual slow. The run is 18.6 miles long. I have done this run before. It is not a run I love. But I have a plan.

                I’m going to smile the whole way and make sure to shout enthusiastic thank yous to all the race volunteers.  I’m going to sing out loud to Echo and the Bunnymen and Bruce. I’m going to remember that this  -- this What the fuck was I thinking phase – too shall pass. It’s just part of the process. 

                I’m going to trust that process. I’ll remember other times I bit off more than I should have been able to chew, and ended up having myself quite a lovely meal.  I might swear a little. Or a lot.

                I will remember that in the grand scheme of things, this is nothing. I will remember to think how lucky am I? 

                I mean really. The biggest problem in my life right now is getting through a little race. I’m not living in the slums of Calcutta. I’m not hiding myself and my books from the Taliban. I’m not sick, except for maybe this silly part of me that likes to whine poor me every now and then. 

                Seriously. Tomorrow I get to wake up in a warm house. I get to take my overfed over-educated aching butt to a race that no one but me cares if I run.  

               When you come right down to it, I’ve got nothing to complain about and everything to celebrate. 

                Honestly. 

                What the fuck was I thinking?