Long Distance

At this point I have run just over thirteen marathons although it may be fourteen.  This is a very subjective review of some of these races:

 Royal Victoria Marathon-October 1996

This was the race that started it all.  I had been running strange distances all summer in my work as an intern at the Canadian Outward Bound School north of Thunder Bay.  The school was based about 70km down an old logging road.  Since I often finished work just after 5pm and due to the sun not going down until after 11pm, I (as Forest Gump once said) started running.  The great thing about this logging road was that every kilometre was marked.  Every evening I would go out and try to run a little further.  By the end of the summer I asked a colleague to drive me to the highway and with a peanut butter sandwich in my pocket and drinking from rivers I crossed en route, I ran the sity-seven km back to the base (in a time of 5:57).  When I got back, a colleague of mine asked me, “why don’t you run a marathon or something?”.  I chose to run the Royal Victoria finishing (think in a time of 2:53).

 Toronto Marathon 1999

This was done with a few friends from the Outward Bound School.  At this point I thought people trained by simply, “running a lot”.  I did no speed or hill training.  I remember hearing later that I looked like I was wearing an old gym uniform from the 1950s.  This was also the year the that the organizers thought it would be a good idea for the walkers of the Marathon to start a good three or so hours prior to the official start of the marathon.  This meant that in the final few terrible kilometres of the marathon I had to weave around walkers, sometimes walking hand in hand.  Time:2:43 and change.

Boston Marathon 2000

Boston is the promised land of the marathon runner.  This was a typical Boston year.  Temperatures hovered in low digits and there was a headwind most of the route.  I had a plan to try and run a 2:36 but in the excitement of the start which included kids playing Eye of the Tiger on a tape player in Hopkinton and high fiving while I went by, I threw out my race plans and went like hell.  I was on fire of course until the Newton Hills.  I think the wheels came off somewhere around Heartbreak but I have no real recollection.  All the hills seemed like heartbreakers at that point.  I remember, vaguely, entering downtown Boston, seeing the balloons and not caring.  This is when another runner came up beside me and said, “come on 1192, let’s break 2:40″.  I have never forgotten that.  Due to the rain and wind, I succumbed to hypethermia.  I have strange recollections of following someone to the medical tent and then having them disappear only to find myself in an alley alone.  Following this race I would not race another marathon for three years.  In the training following Boston I sustained three consecutive stress fractures in my left tibia and eventually convinced a children’s orthopaedic surgeon to insert a tib/fib rod and intermeduallary nail.  Three years later following an encounter with achilles tendonitis i was back at it, training for the National Capital Marathon.

 National Capital Marathon 2004.

No one ever really explains the hit your confidence takes when chronic injuries finally heal.  I just didn’t know if I could do it any more.  I wanted to run faster but as I stepped to the line, I just wanted to know that I could cover the distance again and perhaps, run sub-three again. 

Most of the time, he is a high school science teacher.  He wears a jacket and tie to school.  By day his students call him, “sir” and stand up when he enters the classroom.  On this Tuesday evening, as I hear his footsteps closing in, it’s impossible not to feel the same grudging respect.  Most nights I can take him in the 800 meter repeates.  Most nights I can hold him at bay in the tempos.  Most nights but not every night. and it is for this reason that I am here. 

It has nothing to do with fun.

Out here in the dark, in the cold, he is known by a different name and the rules of the rest of his regular existence not only fail to apply but have no coherence.  We call him Ironman because despite all kinds of reasoned and rational advice he ran the Boston Marathon on a stress fracture.  It makes him different but only by degree because out here we are all a little different and the identities that give us traction in the rest of our lives simply put, do not apply.  On the perimeters of this work out all of us have jobs and responsibilities.  We are rational men and women…just not here.  Out here I am part of a harder and unforgiving fringe element of society.  I act without hesitation and in the middle of an eight hundred metre interval my rage has a shape and form.  In my other life I hold the door open for women.  In my other life I let people merge in front of me.  In my other life if someone jumps in front of me in line or brings 12 items to the express check out, I rarely say anything.  In my other life I am like everybody else; part of the army of silent, acquiescence that is the real glue that holds society together.   

But not tonight.  Tonight I hold myself to an exacting standard and it is a standard that I freely apply to anyone else that inhabits this world.  It is a code that is as simple as it is rigid:  Show up on time.  Go hard. Do not apologize or make exuses for running miserabnly but silently strive to do better next work time.  Do not complain about anything ever.

My friends and I are part of the spirit of the marathon that no one ever talks about, the part that they don’t write books about, and the part they don’t make treacly films about and we are a dying breed in an era that values completion over excellence.

 Ayn Rand would have intuitively understood the plight and certainly would have recognized the Running Room movement.  There is right and there is wrong but the middle is always evil, she once opined.  It is the new elite and despite protestations to the contrary not all are welcome within it’s confines.  The Running Room operates under the kind of rules that are not the ones anyone writes down but the ones that are, nevertheless, rigidly enforced by a version of of adult peer pressure that is as subtle as it is compelling.  Run quicker than the instructor and one is quietly chastized under the auspices of safety.  Run too fast in a race and risk the censure and disapproval of your peers.  Show up without a Running Room bum-concealer jacket and without requisite utility belt packed with assorted high calorie goos and ointments and risk looking unprepared.  God help the poor soul who inquires about the availablity of racing flats.  Speed is frowned on here.  Speed, committment and excellence have been replaced here by a creepy sort of inclusion that quietly implies that if one is willing to renounce their previous beliefs that Stanton will provide you with sanctuary from the peaks and valleys of racing, training and, indeed, of life itself.

Unlike Ayn Rand, I do not believe that trains will crash and society will crumble without people who are willing to push the limits, to run injured and strive for excellence.  We will continue but in a way that that older generations will scarcely recognize.  Our children will never know what Roosevelt meant when he referred to, “the great enthusiasm”.  Instead of striving they will be satisfied.  Instead of committing they will settle.  Instead of risk they shall embrace safety and exist in a kind of low grade despair that will be known as happiness.

Don’t listen to your body.

This is a time when you will be cajoled by the treacly overtures of moderation.  Like Odysseus, resist this siren song at all costs.  This song comes courtesy of the Church of Balance, a mythological (and fictional) place where everything, “happens for a reason” and occurs in its own good time.  It’s the place where people get together and complain about the impending work out before put their running shoes on.  It’s the place where people warm up and then stretch, and then run.  It’s the place where people plan their next race based on the relative attractiveness of participation medals. 

This philosophy does little to help those of us with a more caffeinated view of this life.  It does not help the kind of people to whom running isn’t a means to achieve a moderate existence or a healthful life style.  To the minority that believes that running is a limited time assault on the clock and themselves, this is for you.  Consider this, the quick and dirty version of the Anarchists Cookbook for Running.  For those of you from the Church of Balance you will be offended. 

The truth is that there will always be a way to run through and with injuries until that one day when there isn’t.

You will know this day when it comes.  There will be a few indicators, the first and most notable clue will be that you are dead, collapsed in a bloody heap, hopefully having already crossed the line in what will be your finest athletic hour.  You will have died well.

If you are not dead than a debilitating injury will be the one that does not go away no matter how far you run.  It will express the kind of pain that will make you limp while you (and in the latter stages limp while you walk too) run.  This kind of pain will be resistant to any attempts to push it to the back of your mind.  In this stage, and likely most of the preliminary stages you will be unlikely to receive any help from your doctor.  For many physicians, including, ironically, a large percentage of sport’s doctors, your running injury is an indication that what you are doing is well outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour.  To many of them (and I must note, certainly not all) your injury is, more or less what you deserve.  You will be told to give up.  If you have reached the stage where you are limping and all thoughts are about pain, there is very little else they can offer you but if you are still getting through and race day is a few weeks off, there are dark arts available.

The truth is that most chronic pain, if you do not rest, will not heal but there are ways to buy time in order to get to the start line.  Some injuries even with rest do not heal.  However, between these extremes are some solutions that you cannot speak of in polite company.

Symptom: pain on the bottom of the foot.  The pain eases up at night but hurts after you take a few steps in the morning.  The likely cause is plantar fasciitis or small micro tears in arch of your foot.  What happens is that your foot relaxes when you sleep and begins to heal.  Those first steps in the morning re-tear the area that has begun to heal.  The solution involves the use of the
Strasbourg sock (available at Runner’s Life).  This extends the soul of your foot, subsequently, your foot begins to heal while extended.  Combine wearing this with ibuprophen or naproxen and you will expedite the healing process.

Symptom: pain in Achilles tendon.  Pain usually is most acute during the first ten or so minutes of running and then eases up considerably after this initial stage.  You may feel grinding or crepitus in the achilles in the latter stages. The solution involves wearing a “night splint” or boot while you sleep and operates on the very same principle of the
Strasbourg sock.  Again, combine the use of this with high grade anti-inflamtories.

Symptom: pain on the inside of the shin or shins.  This is often a sign of shin splints, especially if it occurs on both sides.  There are reams of literature on this in the pages of Runner’s World, just past the “Celebrities who jog” section.  Usually easing up mileage and rubbing an ice cube on the area helps.  Changing your shoes over also can provide relief.

Symptom: pain on the inside of one shin.  This can be the sign of a stress fracture particularly if the pain is over a small area.  In my experience (and I have had three stress fractures) the pain begins over a wide area around the tibia.  As the injury progresses that area will shrink.  Pushing with your finger into the bone will cause an immense amount of pain.  One test I used to do was the hop test.  When the bone finally cracks it will be difficult to put weight on that leg and will also be painful taking weight off the leg.  The bad news is once this starts there is very little you can do but cease the activity.  However, if
Boston is three weeks away this is not a palatable option.  There are a number of ways to buy time.  First, ice it after every run and work out. Second, hit the high grade anti-inflammatories.  Finally, if you can, find a doctor who will give you a cortisone injection.  It will not cure the problem but you will be able to run pain free for two weeks or more.  For a small minority this injury may never sort itself out and may become chronic.  I had three stress fractures in the same place due to a bent tibia.  A titanium rod was put in.  I have not had a stress fracture since.

Symptom: pain in your abdomen when you sneeze.  Pain in groin area.  This is a known as “athletic pubalgia” (aka sport’s hernia) or osteitis pubis.  It happens a lot to Aussie Rules football players, soccer players and quite a few hockey players in their thirties.  It also happens to runners.  Prior to May I had never heard of this injury.  The treatment often involves cortisone injections (either guided by x-ray or or ultrasound).  There has been some success with prp (platelet rich plasma) injections as well which is supposed to speed healing.

These are the ones I know.  I have exceptionally good knees depsite some ACL trauma in a ski accident.  I subsequently no little on these types of injuries.  There are a few excellent physicians that can help beyond stating the obvious, i.e. the need for rest.  There are a few good physiotherapists who will do more than hook you up to electricity.  If you are determined you will find them. The best kind of professionals to see are the people who are or who have been actually “in it”, people who have actually competed in sport, that have an edge to them and that think what you are doing is cool.  Be wary of sport’s doctors who’s offices are adorned with signed pictures of professional hockey teams and athletes or signed paraphenalia.  This isn’t an ironclad rule but usually these pictures indicate that the doctor may be trying to live vicasiously through these athletes and therefore may have very little time and interest in you.  They will also be difficult to see as many others will want to have association with “the guy who fixed X Raptor’s knee”).  The doctors with some edge are the people that will help and failing that will at least sympathize and find someone who can. 

Finally, running long distance hurts.  Racing in the marathon and, god knows training for one, is all about pushing reasonable thoughts and limits to the periphery.  There is no reason to put yourself through it and as George Sheehan put it, it’s the toughest sport out there because you can quit at any time.  

I wrote this for  those of us to who quiting is tantamount to surrender. 

For those you still in it, competing, go like hell. 

[This has nothing to do with running and since I am doing very little of that I felt this might be appropriate]

Life at Camp Tawingo did not start well for me.  It was the August of 1979 and I was seven years old.  Before my two week session was over, two facts would become abundantly clear.   First, I was never going to pass the swim test and, second, more profoundly I was never going to be Tawingo Material. 

Camp Tawingo worked on a value systems based on three crests; The Turtle, the Fox and the highly sought after and revered, Eagle Crest.  Each Crest demanded a certain standard of prowess in three main areas: canoeing, camp craft and my nemesis, swimming.  In this latter category campers were compelled to take a swim test which would not only ascertain their swimming ability but would require all campers to wear a coloured cord around their neck delineating their place and broadcasting to all what level they had attained.  This cord dictated where campers would be permitted to swim but like with any symbol the ramifications of the cord went far deeper.  It was nothing less than an aquatic caste system. 

Red cords were allowed into the deep end.  They also had soul access to the awesome curved slide.  If there is an afterlife and if there is a heaven and if I get to go there, the very first thing I am going to do is launch myself head first down that red cord slide.   Blue cords were not so lucky.  They had no slide but were not without hope.  They did have some access to water that went over their heads and their proximity to the red cord area must have been inspiring. From here things degenerated quickly, the yellow cord’s area permitted them the dubious privilege of splashing around in water no deeper than their waist and the green cords?   Well, the green cords…we got the wading pool.  Those of us unlucky enough to be green cords, we were kept under close guard. 

I was a green cord and I would be lying if I said that there isn’t a part of me that still identifies with it.  I think they call it the Stockholm Syndrome, the phenomenon where captives relate and identify with their captors or maybe the experience was closer to the Stanford Prison Experiment where it was proven that we take and play out the roles we are assigned. I am not sure if I will ever understand the full implications but I suspect I live with them. What I did know, even at seven year’s old, was that when you get the green cord, it’s not really earned. 

It’s imposed. Like any caste system, my status did not simply vanish the moment I left the swimming area; I was obliged to carry it with me everywhere I went and believe me that silly piece of coloured wire, influenced everything.  My status could not be maintained without the active collaboration of staff and campers.  The green cord curtailed my access to the canoes.  More profoundly it affected the way I was treated by others.  If this wasn’t bad enough, when my cabin traveled by canoe on our highly anticipated overnight I was obligated to walk on shore, always within sight of my counselor, quietly manning the stern.  

I think that some children and maybe a few malformed adults perceive self-confidence as a limited and finite quantity, which by its nature cannot be equally distributed.  In order to acquire it, kids learn quickly, that it must be seized and one’s long term possession of it is always threatened; one’s social position, never safe. Unless, of course, you are an untouchable, a green cord. I was always a shy kid.  Circumstances made me a lonely kid.  The lessons I learned from my initial camp experience ran directly counter to the narrow goals thatCamp Tawingo sought to perpetuate.  It did not ignite in me a desire to be a better swimmer or inspire me to ascend the ranks of the crest system.

  To protect myself from the taunts of others, I developed a quick mind, filled with ever ready retorts and put-downs.  I would like to say that I learned to use my fists and learned to fight but my build and fragile demeanor precluded this.  Instead, I learned to be funny, often and preferably at the expense of my tormentors and a few others in between if only to stay sharp.  I became at once trusting and suspicious of authority.  I developed powerful feelings of disdain and contempt for the safety blanket that Tawingo smothered me with and learned that things done in the name of safety on in the name of any other laudable belief are not always right.  I fought the tyranny of adults with subversion yet in the end I always sought their approval.  I fought hurt with wit.  But I also developed empathy.   And although I didn’t always use it, in moments, my empathy, my understanding could arrive suddenly and with no strings attached, asking only friendship in return.  I didn’t always act in kind ways but I always felt it.  Empathy became an intrinsic part of who I was and, on my better days, who I still am.  Yet, I knew even then, that I could grow old, move on in life, get a job and do a thousand things that I could only imagine at the time but that none of this would change anything.  I would always be the same seven year old boy standing on the edge of the dock, quite certain that again I would fail the swim test. I knew that the best I could hope for that summer was a fleeting two weeks of periodic humiliation and that maybe there was some kind of purpose to it all and that there was always the swamp behind my cabin and there would always be more frogs to catch too.  I think I knew then that I would always be a little weird inside and that my heart would always be a little broken and that I would always be seven. 

I couldn’t hide the green cord but this didn’t mean that I couldn’t find a way to hide and camouflage myself.  Maybe there was another aspect of camp that I could excel in.  I figured that if I could find one thing to be excellent at, one thing that I could do better than anyone else, that I would be afforded at least some protection. This was a faint hope. 

I could do something great, execute some spectacular feat, climb an impossible tree, perform heroics in British Bulldog but with one reference to my green status I was quickly put back in place.  Kermit the Frog was right; it’s not easy being green.   By the end of my fourth summer it became clear that the standard that Tawingo wanted everyone to adhere to was well out of my grasp.  While other campers climbed the ladder of achievement, first by earning their Turtle Crest, I was in the swamp behind my cabin catching frogs.  In my second year while my peers rapidly moved towards achieving their Fox Crest I was floundering, struggling to be granted my yellow cord hoping to take at least a small, incremental step away from the wading pool. When the elect and elite few soared to the rarefied heights of the coveted and rarely bestowed Eagle Crest, I was mired in the realization that, I was never going to get even my Turtle Crest.   

I think this is also the time where I picked up a penchant for swearing.  I have never been quite able to eradicate the standard Tawingo sing-song rebuke for words better left unsaid, “Hey now Rory, that’s not Tawingo-lingo!”.  I needed to escape. 

Ahmek was everything that Tawingo wasn’t.  Where Tawingo’s constant vigilance recorded my whereabouts every moment of every day, Ahmek seemed to trust that I would be okay.  Where Tawingo demanded structure throughout the day Ahmek, although adamant that I went to swimming and canoe class, was content to allow me to make my own decisions.   Best of all, there was only one swim test and once this hurtle was cleared, I was free to swim in any depth of water and could, if I chose, leap into the untrammeled space provided by the High Diving Board.   In the beginning Dave wasn’t even my counselor but I knew exactly who he was.  Beyond being my canoe instructor, he was the only person I ever wanted to be.  He had crazy dark hair, wore ray-ban aviator glasses and his left ear was often adorned with an ear ring fashioned in the shape of a noose.  

I never had a hero growing up. I never longed to be Wayne Gretzgy or the lead singer of a band.  My room was not adorned with pictures of Duran-Duran or The Culture Club or other icons of the 1980s but decorated with pictures of Sharks that I would get once a year with my subscription to World Magazine.  Dave taught me how to canoe and due to his location well away from the main canoe dock, he was permitted a great deal of latitude regarding his teaching methods.  Canoeing, according to Dave’s pedagogy, was about the music.  It was about the Violent Femmes, The Alarm, and the venerable Iggy Pop, music, bands and ideas that I had never of.  While we practiced our solo and tandem landings against the dock, itinerantly dislodging his ever-present coffee percolator, he would scream random non-sequitors, political epithets and very occasionally the odd bit of actual canoe instruction.  He was every mad Kerouac character rolled into one, a fusion of Dean Moriarty, Carlo Marx and Jaffi Ryder.    The next summer he was my counselor.  He would remain my counselor for most of my tenure as a camper.  At first, I never really knew how to take him and the long canoe trips he led us on, just seemed to accentuate what I came to understand later as a divine sort of madness.  The world according to Dave, was never as it appeared on the surface.  Everything had a hidden meaning and often a nefarious agenda.  We needed to be vigilant to catch the irony of seemingly innocuous packaging.  Forgettable sightings in the natural world were filled were portents leading to a myriad of untrammeled pathways of thought.  There was always some sort of concealed implication, not in one thing but in all things.  Prior to my second extended canoe trip, Dave had purchased a bag of popcorn.  The popcorn came in a clear cellophane package upon which was a cartoon of a somewhat overweight, sneering kid, with baseball hat askew.  The brand name was “Little Popsy Popcorn”.  Some people might notice the cartoon in a disconnected way as they consumed the contents but most would hardly give it a second thought before discarding the empty bag.  Dave not only kept the bag but he carefully cut out the picture of Little Popsy, carrying it around with him for the duration of the canoe trip.  I know that he considered the ramifications of Little Popsy a great deal and part way through the trip he took to sitting in front of his tent with the picture of Little Popsy stuck to his forehead, yelling, “Little Popsy knows a whole lot of things about you Richard!  He knows about the little games you play!”  My best friend Richard and I never knew how to take this.  To this day I don’t think that there is an appropriate response except an uncomfortable smirk and to quickly look busy. 
 

Dave taught us to tread carefully in the natural world, lest we upset the natural balance of the gods that could, if offended, produce head winds on long, interminable lakes and rain to fall for successive days.  The giant fish that swam under our canoe was not merely an aquatic anomaly, worthy of a moment’s awe, but the main character of a reggae song that he conjured on the spot.   I loved that he thought about these things; that he took the time to consider the madness of inane packaging and delved into the hidden life of things.  I loved that he kept a squeaky toy lizard in his pack, and that so many pictures that I have from this time include this lizard posed in scenic places or furtively tucked into the background of too many group pictures.  

Mostly, though, I loved that he instilled in me a belief that we are all a little weird inside, and that all of us struggle to feel adequate. And that within the chaos of these feelings lay shades of genius; that inside the tapestry of weird lay the very font of creativity. I don’t know what happened to Dave.  When I returned for my final summer as a camper, Dave was no longer there.  I heard that he had become a writer.  I always wanted to believe that he was writing incendiary articles for a radical paper or that he had joined some revolution that freed the oppressed.  Some years ago I tried to find him, if only to tell him that I never had become the writer that he wanted me to be but that I had made it on my own terms.  I never did find him.  The truth was I didn’t want to find him.  I never wanted to hear he had gotten old or divorced or that life had made him cynical and jaded. A part of me would always need him to be forever twenty-one, slightly manic, gloriously unhinged and ever idealistic.  After Dave’s departure, I lived in the legacy that he gave me, thriving in the fluid sanctuary of long canoe trips that spanned the entire summer.  I believed that only with a paddle in my hand, only with a pack digging into my shoulders, and a crumpled map delineating my next home for the night. Only with these things would I be able to find peace.  The rest of my life, the time in between the summers, became an ersatz and decaffeinated existence that I was obliged to endure.  Out there I had seen stars through the narrow confines of a slot canyon, and skied deep powder snow in May, cutting fantastic arcs above the tree line of the Coastal Range.  I had heard the perfect set of songs captured through the static of a failing radio as rain pelted my tent high on a mountain pass.  I had paddled 30 kilometres against an August head wind, collapsed and awoken to hear trees sing. By the time I removed my tattered hiking boots, the thick souls worn through, I had been a thousand places and done a thousand things and had borne witness to moments that made my heart stop, and my eyes widen and tear with wonder.   

The great writer, Ursala Le Guin wrote and believed that although we may carry a name that readily identifies us to others, that within each of us exists a secret life and a name that most will never know or hear.  Beyond my immediate family, Dave was the first one who believed that I had something deep and wonderful to offer this world and through his encouragement and his conviction I slowly came to believe this too.

His gift was never about doing anything.  His gift, quite simply, was an invitation and an invocation to be yourself.  For an all too brief moment in my life, he understood not who I pretended, purported or strived to be but who I was, and who I am.  J.D Sallanger might have called it the gasoline rainbows that live inside all of us, the uncommon beauty of the ordinary.  My finest hour was not finishing the Boston Marathon or getting my driver’s license or countless details that I have measured myself against.  My finest hours were not about any of the things that I had striven for or the achievements that I thought were important.  The best and most authentic part of my life will continue to live in the rarefied moments, the way my sisters could make me collapse into peals of laughter with the same inane joke over and over again.  How it felt to be five years old and to dance with wild abandon, running in ever tightening concentric circles until I collapsed into a heap of the purest joy I have ever known.  The quiet comfort of a cold vanilla milk shake shared with my Mom that helped me get through.  I don’t think these feelings ever go away.  We get to keep them.And somewhere in these feelings, somewhere between hope and sadness and joy lies the understanding of who we truly are.