I try to make all the big
of me small, small, small.
~ Elizabeth Acevedo, from “The Shit & the Fan” in The Poet X
Photo: The List – What really happens to your body after Thanksgiving dinner?
Running. Not with Lorena.
November 29, 2019 by 50 Comments
Thanksgiving Day.
8 a.m. 43° F.
I haven’t run in weeks. Weeks. I don’t wanna run.
The TV in background is running a Netlix preview for The Irishman. Ah, yes. I’ve been waiting for this flick. I pause to watch the trailer.
The momentum is shifting here, I’m wobbly, a topple back onto the couch is so seductive. Rest DK. Take the morning off.
I stand shirtless in front of the mirror. And stare. Eyes drop to the nipples*, they are firm, no slouching, and in so much better shape than the rest of me. I apply Body Glide, like an amateur cross-country skier rubbing the wax stick on his skis, or in this case my entire upper torso. God knows, if I get going, chafing could run wild. The rest of me may come apart on this run, but there’s no chance Boobies** are going down.
Mind drifts to a short (but moving) 28-minute documentary I watched the night before: Lorena, Light-Footed Woman. Lorena is a 22-year old indigenous Raramuri woman from the Chihuahua region of Mexico (think mountainous territory, no others within miles.). She’s been a top finisher in ultramarathons (up to 62 miles) and runs in Raramuri dresses and sandals. Sandals! And not made by Tory Burch. A notable scene has her opening up a gift from a running shoe manufacturer, a pair of fluorescent orange, slick all-pro running shoes. She delicately opens the package, looks at the shoes, carefully places them back in the shoe box and says: “I don’t think I’ll use them. The people who do…are always running behind me.” And she bows her head turning away from the camera. Don’t you just love her!
And so it goes, Lorena the night before, and the indigenous Connecticut Man on Thanksgiving Day.
On goes my sweat-wicking running shirt.
On go my running shorts.
On go my smart-wool socks.
On go my running pants.
On goes my running jacket.
On goes my Apple watch.
On go my running shoes.
On goes my fanny pack.
In goes my Smartphone in the fanny pack.
In goes the bottle of water in fanny pack.
On goes the Tuk. And it’s a Tuk. Not Touque. Not Tuque. Or whatever else the French Canadians want to take credit for. Tuk was founded in Western Canada in the mid to late 60’s in a town called Castlegar. Don’t like it, re-write the story on Wiki. [Read more…]
Running. With Jelly Donuts.
August 31, 2019 by 84 Comments
I open my eyes. 5:35 a.m. I close my eyes, and take inventory.
Right groin, an old catcher’s mitt, stiff, cracks in the leather.
Knees, throb.
Three middle toes on right foot, blistered. Raw.
This is about where Tanya Donelly would say: “But you can change your story / And throw a hand up from the mud.”
But that’s not how we roll here. No Tanya. No.
This story (or catalyst) starts Wednesday after dinner. The 7 pm to 8:30 pm witching hour(s). The Big Cat starts to pace, and circle. I want it. I need it. I crave it.
After taking inventory in the fridge, the cupboards, the pantry, none of the required provisions are available. I jump into the car and head to Palmer’s Market. Talenti Mint Chocolate Chip Gelato. (4 Pints). Nacho Cheese Doritos (Extra Large Bag). Chobani Fruit on the Bottom Yogurt, Pineapple flavored. Stonewall Kitchen Sour Cherry Jam (to chase the Yogurt). And, then, in the glass case: Donuts. Strawberry Jelly filled donuts.
The belt pulls the items towards the clerk. “Good evening Sir. Do you have a Palmer’s Card?” A wee bit of junk food with Dinner, Sir? “Sir, I don’t see a 2 pound bag of Domino Premium Pure Cane Granulated Sugar here. Shall I run and get it for you? And, Sir, in Aisle 3, we have hypodermic needles and rubber hose tie-offs. Step behind the counter here with me, and I’ll inject it for you, it will only take a minute. [Read more…]
but for the chemical rush in the hour after, for the night of dreamless sleep
August 31, 2019 by 8 Comments
Exercise was always in extremes — a distance to traverse, an impossibly high number. Every summer spent in the vicinity of a pool, I was to do 100 laps per day. This, too, was referred to in a shorthand — “doing the laps” — that made it sound like normal penance for any vacation. Counting to 100 was a feat, much less swimming there, and my mind went numb with boredom while my family ate watermelon by the pool side. I associated exercise with punishment, with the glossy magazine’s injunction to achieve the perfect body, a waifish small-breasted form that no amount of hotel-room yoga would ever transform mine into.
And yet, when I graduated from college, something shifted. Left to my own devices, I discovered exercise could be as hedonic as any other indulgence. It was a matter of reframing the goal: not to become thin, which was as unlikely as tall or blond, but for the chemical rush in the hour after, for the night of dreamless sleep, for the feeling of my body, a diffuse, frontier-less thing…Exercise was time that was mine, where I owed nothing to anyone, and the next day’s aching muscles could be as secret a pleasure as bruises left by a lover.
Now every summer, whenever I can find a pool, I do the laps. The size of the pool may vary, but I always swim until 100. At the ocean, I choose a point as far away as I can — a distant boat, a rocky outgrowth — and swim to it and back. The pleasure is partly in the terror, halfway there, when the beach umbrellas are as small as glitter, that I will never make it back. The pulse of deep water, the blue-black whisper of down down down, the atavistic tremor as my body realizes, as all bodies have always known, how slight it is against an ocean. And then the adrenaline: thighs and waist and biceps concocted into ropes of steel, hands that slip and reach under the surface as softly as under a skirt, feet that pound impossibly far behind, until I am as long as the shoreline. I’m a strong swimmer but not a good one, and I gasp only to the right, eyes stinging with salt, until I can hear the shrieks and lifeguard whistles and ice cream bells, the sounds of the civilization I almost slipped away from. In the water, my body expands, loses itself, weightless. Back on the sand, blood still pulsing with the ocean’s beat, I contract back into shape, my shape, whose boundaries are finally my own.
The Hedonic Rush of Exercise” (NY Times, August 27, 2019)
Photo: David Hockney’s “John St. Clair Swimming, April 1972” from “Twenty Photographic Pictures by David Hockney” (1976). CreditCredit© David Hockney. Photo: Richard Schmidt.
‘New Year, New You’ B.S. (Hear! Hear!)
January 1, 2019 by 26 Comments
And now for “27 ways to feel bad about yourself while the last piece of Christmas pudding you’ve ‘indulged’ in is still making its way through your intestinal tract…”
As the new year dawns, you’ll notice that without ANY space to breathe whatsoever, what was once a newsfeed saturated with sequins, pints and party platters becomes one bursting at the seams with resistance bands, Nutri Bullets and all manner of “New Year, New You” rhetoric. If that works for you, great. If it doesn’t, keep on reading…
So, if you insist on resolving to do something, do this: go easy on yourself, be your own benchmark for success. And think about the kind of lifestyle you want to live. Happy New Year.
~ Caroline Foran, from “6 reasons I no longer subscribe to ‘New Year, New You’ BS” (Mashable, January 1, 2019). Caroline Foran is a journalist and a best-selling author of “Owning It: Your Bullshit Free Guide to Living With Anxiety” and “The Confidence Kit: Your Bullsh*t-Free Guide to Owning Your Fear“.
Running Away. From the Salt Benediction.
December 15, 2018 by 74 Comments
We have a bad situation here. (Very)
One needs to take personal accountability. Yet, if I could, I would, find anyone, anything, to blame.
The digital Nokia scale (Nokia Body Cardio WiFi Smart Scale in Black) was a Christmas gift from the kids last year. The gift wasn’t a subliminal message, but a blow with a blunt instrument. They see it, I can’t hide it. Man boobs. Pooch maturing to hang belly. And everything else, sliding, down, down, down.
So, for the next ~320 days, the morning ritual is the same. Step on the scale. Step off the scale. The Scale wirelessly sends the data to the iPhone app. The app fires off a notification:
“New weight measurement available. Stepping on the scale every morning and opening Health Mate regularly will help you stay on track.”
Right. Right.
Tuesday:
Nokia alert: “Good job. Your weight is up only 0.3 lbs from the day before.” Monday. Box of chocolates from colleague as a holiday gift along with a thank you note. A constant beckoning presence on my desk, a siren call. I put the conference call on mute. Pop a chocolate covered caramel in my mouth. Close my eyes. Let that blessing melt down my throat. [Read more…]
Running. The Day After, and Spewing…
November 24, 2018 by 59 Comments
That’s me running. The morning after Thanksgiving. Actually, no, it’s not. It’s not even close.
I’m not running near the ocean. I don’t have Ray Bans. I don’t have orange Nikes or a tight fitting orange running jacket. I can’t have anything that snug around the belly that would trigger IBS, as one can’t be too careful a few miles out without facilities.
16° F. What the h*ll am I doing out here? It’s her. She’s responsible.
My posture is not that. My chest isn’t raised, leaning forward, taking short sips of cool air. I’m hunched over, panting, and I’m a mere 1.3 miles out. And oh, I’m damn sure, that if she were a runner (I don’t know that she is), she would look like this. With her sh*t all together.
While I know jack about my body parts or their workings, I do know that something just ain’t right between my right hip and my upper thigh – we’re hobbling here, not running.
I’ve never met her. She’s a WordPress blogging acquaintance. Unclear why she Follows, but I’m sure it’s rubbernecking. She’s a writer. Like a real one. Professional. Not like this show. [Read more…]
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
October 29, 2018 by 33 Comments
Who says Allie Kieffer isn’t thin enough?
Allie Kieffer, one of the best Americans running the New York City Marathon next Sunday, spent a lot of her life feeling as if she didn’t really fit in among the competition. She was good enough to land an athletic scholarship to college and hoped to continue running after graduating. But she wasn’t as thin as the women she raced against. Her coaches suggested she diet. She eventually gave in, and her body broke down…
After a few years, she missed running and started again — but this time was different. There were no goals, no opponents to compare herself with and no times to record. Everything was on her own terms…She began running more miles than ever, she was healthier than ever, and she was happier, too. And then something unexpected happened: She got faster. Much faster.
Last year, Kieffer ran the New York City Marathon and finished, astonishingly, in fifth place. She was the second American woman, and she logged her best time by nearly 15 minutes in one of the world’s most competitive footraces. Barely anyone knew who the unsponsored 30-year-old American with the topknot sprinting past Olympians in the final miles of Central Park was.
Suddenly, Kieffer wasn’t just trying to be one of the hundreds of elite runners in the country. She had become one of the best runners in the world…
In doing so, Kieffer has given us a powerful example of what can happen when we stop trying to force ourselves to meet preconceived notions of how to achieve success — especially unhealthy, untrue ideas — and go after our goals on our own terms. When we focus less on fixing what we consider to be inadequacies and more on reinforcing our strengths, we can realize potential we didn’t even know we had.
“Sometimes, the act of trying takes so much energy that it can prevent you from actually doing the thing you want to do,” Brad Stulberg, the author of Peak Performance, told me. “If it starts to feel like performance shackles, you’re going to want say screw it, to break out of rigid patterns and rip those shackles off. And only then are you able to really achieve what you were trying for the whole time.”
Kieffer’s story also proves that we can achieve far more when we value all women’s bodies less for how they look, and more for what they can do.
Not that being underestimated can’t serve as motivation.
“I’ve always gotten a lot of satisfaction by being the big girl everyone thought they were going to beat,” says Kieffer…
There is a growing movement telling us to embrace the bodies we’ve got — thank you — but it’s hard to drown out the other messages. Whether it’s for a race or a wedding, women are told that they are at their most valuable when their bodies are their most diminished. Resisting the impulse to feed yourself is an accomplishment we praise. You don’t have to buy into these values, but you’ll probably still be judged by them…
By conventional standards, she is doing nearly everything wrong. But she’s beating a lot of the people who are still training the “right” way, so perhaps her path shows there’s room for a more flexible definition of what the right way can be. This is probably true for more than just distance running.
~ Lindsay Crouse, excerpts from Who Says Allie Kieffer Isn’t Thin Enough to Run Marathons? Success that shows we might be able to achieve even more when we break all the rules. (The New York Times, October 27, 2018)
Inspired by:
- “Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?” -Terence McKenna, Nobody is Smarter Than You Are
- “I don’t think that you have to get all your inner stuff together and totally integrated before you can actually be what you’ve realized. You’re going to wait forever if you wait for that. Just start being what you know now.” ~ Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing
Truth (In Step Counting)
July 28, 2018 by 30 Comments
“The goal is to take ten thousand steps per day, and once you do, it vibrates.” “Hard?” “No,” she said. “It’s just a tingle.”
I bought a Fitbit of my own…Ten thousand steps, I learned, amounts to a little more than four miles for someone my size. It sounds like a lot, but you can cover that distance over the course of an average day without even trying…I was traveling myself when I got my Fitbit, and because the tingle feels so good, not just as a sensation but also as a mark of accomplishment, I began pacing the airport rather than doing what I normally do, which is sit in the waiting area…I also started taking the stairs instead of the escalator and avoiding the moving sidewalk…
To people like Dawn and me, people who are obsessive to begin with, the Fitbit is a digital trainer, perpetually egging us on. During the first few weeks that I had it, I’d return to my hotel at the end of the day, and when I discovered that I’d taken a total of, say, twelve thousand steps, I’d go out for another three thousand. “But why?” Hugh asked when I told him about it. “Why isn’t twelve thousand enough?” “Because,” I told him, “my Fitbit thinks I can do better.” I look back at that time and laugh—fifteen thousand steps—ha! That’s only about seven miles! …
I was averaging twenty-five thousand steps, or around ten and a half miles per day. Trousers that had grown too snug were suddenly loose again, and I noticed that my face was looking a lot thinner. Then I upped it to thirty thousand steps and started walking farther afield…
I look back on the days I averaged only thirty thousand steps and think, Honestly, how lazy can you get? When I hit thirty-five thousand steps a day, Fitbit sent me an e-badge, and then one for forty thousand, and forty-five thousand. Now I’m up to sixty thousand, which is twenty-five and a half miles. Walking that distance at the age of fifty-seven with completely flat feet while lugging a heavy bag of garbage takes close to nine hours—a big block of time but hardly wasted. I listen to audiobooks and podcasts. I talk to people…
At the end of my first sixty-thousand-step day, I staggered home with my flashlight knowing that now I’d advance to sixty-five thousand and that there’d be no end to it until my feet snapped off at the ankles. Then it’d just be my jagged bones stabbing into the soft ground. Why is it some people can manage a thing like a Fitbit, while others go off the rails and allow it to rule, and perhaps even ruin, their lives? While marching along the roadside, I often think of a TV show that I watched a few years back—Obsessed, it was called…
For reasons I cannot determine, my Fitbit died. I was devastated when I tapped the broadest part of it and the little dots failed to appear. Then I felt a great sense of freedom. It seemed that my life was now my own again. But was it? Walking twenty-five miles, or even running up the stairs and back, suddenly seemed pointless, since without the steps being counted and registered, what use were they? I lasted five hours before I ordered a replacement, express delivery. It arrived the following afternoon, and my hands shook as I tore open the box. Ten minutes later, my new master strapped securely around my left wrist, I was out the door, racing, practically running, to make up for lost time.
~ David Sedaris, from “Stepping Out” in Calypso (May, 2018)
Photo: Thad Zajdowicz with “Keep Walking“
Running. With Potpourri.
July 5, 2018 by 58 Comments
I’m off. Running. 6:05 am and it’s 76° F, already. Humidity is thick, legs are heavy, body is huge, mind is resisting, all of it groaning under the pressure of NO.
Scenes of the last 3 days flicker by.
pot·pour·ri (n) a mixture of things
In a small patch of grass, with Holly Pond on its right, a guard rail on the left, and Post Road to the North, is a flock. Not of a like-kind. But 2 adult geese, 3 toddlers, a mallard and a sparrow. All quietly feeding as I approach. Mother Goose, protecting her young-uns, approaches, neck fully extended…tall and fierce with her wings spread wide…hissing. This luncheon is human-free, and I was not welcome. All these creatures, peacefully feeding, and yet we, a higher level of intelligence can’t seem to sit in a room and have a civil conversation.
I’m in the dentist chair. Not flat, but with feet higher than head. Hygienist is wearing a face mask and magnified eye goggles. Poking, scraping, suction, flossing. I’m lolling in and out of nausea and claustrophobia. Overhead lamp beams down. I’m Dustin Hoffman in the scene from Marathon Man. Blood rushes to my head. I swallow, shift my legs and grip the arms of the chair. Hygienist notices the discomfort and withdraws. Breathe DK, breathe. I regain my composure.
Feet and legs have been hurting after my runs. Time for new shoes. I’m third in line, waiting to check out at Dick’s Sporting Goods. It’s late afternoon on July 4th. I’m watching one of three check out clerks. She’s large boned, broad shouldered, and tired. I walk up and hand her the shoes – with an intense desire to see what shoes she is wearing. She’s been standing since 10 am on a statutory holiday. She places the shoe box into a plastic bag, drops in the receipt and offers an obligatory “Thank you.” I’m walking out the door. Should have tipped her. Should have. Should have. Should have. [Read more…]
