Stop the presses, I did something amazing today!

Last night I met some friends at a great local restaurant (a little pricey, but heck, I never go out to eat, and this was some good food -- Mongolian barbecue style where you pick what you want stir fried together and they do it for you).

Anyway, someone there convinced me to participate in a 7.45 (or is it 7.6? Not sure!) mile Trail Run called the Siberian Express in a nearby state park. This race is done the first Saturday in January, no matter WHAT the weather. So given that it's usually below 0 windchill with snow on the ground this time of year, I think we lucked out with it being in the 40s and bright and sunny today.

Wow. So one of the tag lines about this 7.45 mile trail race that I just completed is "No Wimps!"

No Wimps? No kidding! My body hates me right now.

I had never done a trail race and I didn't know what to expect. I was told it was easy except for one famous hill. Well, there were a whole hell of a lot of hills, but none so bad as the One Hill.

Kickapoo Park is amazing in its beauty. It really is a gem, and only about a 30 minute drive from where I live. I started with my friend, but I told her NOT to wait for me because I was not really in any kind of shape to run 7.45 miles, much less on rough trails without doing some major walking along the way at some points. However, I LOVED this experience of trail running. I ran along this trail with a sappy smile on my face, just really taking in the scenery, really appreciating it -- the river, the ponds, the meadows, the woods, the ravines. About 4 miles into it, The One Hill came up. I was afraid. It was the first time I got a little freaky-deaky. The trail at this point was about 1 foot across and muddy and very slippery -- with a big 50 foot or so drop off on the side. I refused to look down, but just focused on crawling in the mud on hands and knees, grabbing for tree roots and hoping the person in front of me didn't slip and take us all down. When I reached the top, I had this HUGE GIDDINESS go over me that I had done that. I hadn't freaked out or frozen. I was badass.

I did have to stop and walk a few times, for sure. Trail running is NOT like running on a treadmill or even on regular sidewalks/streets. It's a lot harder. But the challenge of it and the scenery and the need to pay attention to where your feet are falling so you don't fall or slip is really a good distraction. My goal was to finish in under 2 hours, and I did finish 1:43! So not bad, considering I did stop and walk multiple times, sometimes very slowly to deal with slippery mud, and I did have to crawl on hands and knees a few times to navigate dicey parts of the trail!

I can does writing, yes?

To the average person looking at my life, it would appear that I don't write. After all, what do I have to show for it? Not too much, and my laptop isn't talking. Sometimes, during some periods of time in my life, this average person would be right to question my writerlyness. They might be right to question my actual work ethics. After all, I am now 41 years old and I was supposed to be published and wildly popular by the time I was 30. Of course I cringe whenever I think of my writing style back then. So young, so naive. And as for the published at 30 thing? I think most life plans are a joke anyway, and the people who actually attempt to follow and accomplish them are a little weird (yes, me, the writer, is calling someone else weird! Where does the madness end?). They are even weirder if they succeed at it. I always look at such planners with suspicion. They can't be real humans who make huge, life-changing mistakes and have random bad things happen to them to divert the planned course like the rest of us mortals.

So back to evidence of being a writer. A person who likes to knit or quilt will have a lot of physical evidence of their talent either as presents to their long-suffering nieces and nephews in the forms of fuzzy sweaters, hats, or scarves, or family quilts that get sent down through the generations because wow, that Auntie Lala could sure quilt. A person who paints will have paintings sitting around that guests to her house could, in theory, ooh and aw over. And of course our dear Saturday Sequins and other people who make jewelry also have their beautiful work displayed so people can see it. It's easy to show someone a piece of jewelry you made or a painting. It takes one minute.

But what about writing? You can't very well make everyone at your family gathering shut up so you can read them what you have of your novel so far. Well, maybe if you passed out enough alcohol. And let me tell you, I guarantee it would be a helluva better entertainment than watching Dancing With the Stars or any of the other insipid reality shows out there these days.

What people don't know about me is that I have way more writing stored in my computer than you all can possibly imagine. I have so much writing on my computer that if you were trapped on a desert island for a year and could only have my computer (no internet) as entertainment, that you would most definitely keep yourself entertained for a long, long time.

Some of this writing is the six or seven (eight?) versions of the novel that I've been picking at since 1995. I've referred to this novel as the bad boyfriend who wears leather, drives a motorcycle, drinks a lot, is rude to me and cheats on me, and yet I still keep coming back to him. Yes, this is the bad boyfriend that I keep trying to change, keeping trying to break up with because we're definitely better off with other people, but no matter what, I always go back to him. After all, THIS time we're going to make it. THIS time he's not going to suck. Because let's face it, he has charisma and character and he's really hot. I've finished this novel multiple times but it's never enough.

Aside from that, I have a really strange novel I started soon after that while I was in Scotland in 2002. There are at least 100 pages of it. I have another that had started right around that same era that I really focused on more in 2003 when I came back from Scotland and was in school. I have a metric ton of fiction written based on some movies (more than you all can possibly imagine). And by the way, I keep that life VERY separate, so please no more said about that part. I only mention it as a point that I have written so much more than most people reading here can possibly imagine. I have short stories galore, my Nanowrimo novel from last year, multiple starts of brilliant ideas in which I got about 70 pages in and then decided to go back to bad boyfriend mentioned above. Recently I got a short story published in a Trinidadian collection of short stories. It has not been published yet, but it's in the final stage.

But because I don't display these things or offer to show people these things, it is as if it doesn't happen. I might even look somewhat normal to the outside world. After all, I have a day job that people ask me about all the time, and I will talk and vent about that, too, although after a time, I bore myself to tears talking about work. I think my big fear when it comes to what people think of me, which pretty much comes rarely since I usually do not care that much what people think of me, is that people will think I'm a poser because I talk about writing and being a writer and then obviously have very little to show for it. And maybe my even bigger fear is that they will be right because lately I have not spent nearly as much time on my craft as I should.

Although right now all I can think about is how sore my legs are from a six-mile run I took yesterday at a faster than usual pace. And because I randomly added in a detail about my running in this post about writing, I think that some day you guys should suffer through a post about how running and writing are actually very much alike. You non-runner writers will appreciate that.

Adventure Run

Sorry, it's been awhile!

It's been a rough week for me, between being sick with a cold at the beginning of the week and then some work drama that was mostly embarrassing and stupid.

So this morning I went on a long run. Well, long for me. Six miles. Yeah, I'm badass. Bow to me. But only after I bow to my friend in Chicago who completed 20 miles in a single run last week. Now the funny thing about today's run is that I was sort of half-assed about the whole thing as I was getting ready for the run. I had slept until eight, which stop the presses -- I can't even tell you what an amazing feat that was because sleep? Some time I need to go into a whole long post about my insomnia. Although come to think of it, that would probably put you all to sleep. But I'd be happy about that because I'd know that at least SOMEONE would be getting some sleep, right? But this isn't about sleep. This is about my run and my state of mind before and during. So I was all proud of my body for letting me go back to sleep after I had awoken at 5 a.m. all wired and ready to go. I woke up at 8 thinking that must be a wild and bizarre dream or a sick joke because my body never lets me sleep that late. You have to understand that 6 a.m. is generally sleeping in for me. A night I can sleep through the whole night? Never happens. So anyway, I had this "eh whatever" feeling when I was getting ready for my run. I could take it or leave it. Maybe I'll run 5 miles or maybe just 5 minutes. It was all the same to me. But all I knew is that I was craving that run.

I figured it would help with this sick, anxious feeling I've had in the pit of my stomach all week. It's a variety of things causing this low-grade anxiety -- some silly, some momentous life-changing type things. I've been thinking a lot for some reason about the era in late 2007 just before my husband (who shall from now on be referred to as Mo in this blog) and I took off for the island of Trinidad. I was teaching, same as I am now, in a research literacy job that I loved. I lived in the city of Jacksonville, a city that while was not perfect for me in every way, was really sort of glamorous for me (Palm trees! Ocean! Great restaurants! Southern hospitality! Warm weather in winter! Alligators sauntering down the sidewalks! Hurricanes!). It was the last time that Mo and I lived together as a real family unit with our two cockatiels and our humble home by the St. Johns River and our daily walks. What triggered this surge of nostalgia you might ask? I recently came upon a notebook that one of my work friends there had given me as a goodbye present. It had a beautiful tropical scene on the front and in the inside she had written,

Wish I could be with you to celebrate your dream sabbatical to a desert island where you can immerse yourself literally in the setting of your book. I'm really going to miss you. It's hard to lose someone I thought of as, I guess like a soul sister. We have a lot in common and see things in the same quirky ways. You're the only one I think I can share my thoughts and ideas with and not have them think I'm a little out there. I hope you love it in Trinidad. Having lived on an island myself for a year, I can only say it's the experience of a lifetime. Enjoy!

Aside from my heart constricting with gratitude for a friend's sweetness followed by my sarcastic thought of, "yeah, THAT worked out really well, didn't it," my other immediate thought was, "YES! I want THAT me back again." I miss that me that can give away all her belongings and fly off into adventures far away, never needing to live that "normal" life that everyone else is relegated to. I fly my freak flag. I'm different because I'm not meant to live a normal life. Not that a normal life is bad. Oh, sometimes a normal, stable life is so comforting I can almost feel the cotton sheets and the down pillow on my cheek. Sometimes I envy people who have lived in the same area all their lives surrounded by the same friends and family. When people have worked at a job for over three years, I marvel at that. How can they not get bored? How can they not go out of their mind wondering what else is out there? How can they not crave adventures? (No, going to a classy resort on a tropical island for vacation is NOT an adventure unless of course, the crocodile eats your friend, your passport is swept away by a massive tsunami that hits the island, and you are abducted by pirates who eat crispy hexagon cereal for breakfast in anticipation of how much they will make off your organs on the black market). Yeah, THEN talk to me about adventure, yo.

These things I thought about as I ran this morning. Along the way I stuck my tongue out at a sign advertising something or other in front of someone's house that said, "Like us on facebook." I happily felt immune as I ran past some thuggish teenagers (nobody mugs runners -- they carry nothing--), I met a twin to my niece Miss Rose (same first name, same birthday month), and I watched people already getting drunk in anticipation of a football game in tailgate parties that must have started by 9 a.m. Are these not adventures, I wondered? Can you not have adventures in your own backyard, however so humble? Last weekend I hula hooped in the park with Saturday Sequins and Mr. Sequins. Mr. Sequins even had his ninja bike with him. Is this not coolness to the extreme of coolness? Yes, I agree that it is! Okay, so you don't really need a tsunami and pirates to have an adventure, although at least they might have made the children at the nearby birthday party stop screeching.

I finished my run an hour and fifteen minutes after I set off and felt like a new person afterwards. I had not set out to do six miles. It had just happened. Just like there were so many things that I did not plan in my life. Things happened, things were set into motion, and life happened. Life is today. Life is now. Every day is an adventure.

Or an opportunity to sleep, so says my Siamese, who is curled at my feet right now.

Running Without Being Chased

Whenever I tell someone I am training for a marathon, it sounds ever so much more badass than it actually is. I mean, a marathon is 26.2 miles and thus is indeed badass just by existing. The longest I’ve ever run is a 10K (6.2 miles) and that came with great suffering on my behalf. So in order to finish the marathon, I just have to do that like 4 more times! In the same race. On the same day.

However, at this very moment? I am not in a good training space. I am not into it. A little bit of rain yesterday wimped me out. The other day it was because it was 10 degrees too hot. Sometimes it’s because I’m too lazy to gather my stuff to go to the gym.

This rebellion on my part would be understandable if I were not into it because maybe I was burned out from all the mileage I was putting in, but when you’re only walking and running for 20 to 30 minutes, there is no excuse.

When I was a pre-adolescent, I had a lot of inferiority complexes about a lot of things. One of them was feeling like I was bad at sports in comparison to my friends. To me, running was my thing because let’s face it, I was otherwise no athlete. If a ball was going to hit anyone in the face during gym class, it was going to be me. And don’t get me started on all the traumatic memories surrounding picking teams in gym class.

But at some time in the early 80s when everyone else was prancing around in their aerobics leg warmers and Fame leotards, my dad took up running. He trained almost every day, and his goal was to run in as many 10K races as possible. He trained with a friend who was into marathons and who pushed them to run extraordinary distances (to me, 10 miles seemed, well, crazy talk!). My dad had been quite chubby and within a short period of time, he was a lean, mean, runner living off endorphin highs. Oh, how I longed for my very own endorphin high.
At the time, I was taking ballet lessons, which I did not like. I think I wanted to like ballet, but it was definitely not for me. For one thing, the ballet classes met during the precious few hours of daylight between school and dark when I wanted to be outside playing with my friends (yes, readers, this was before the internet, before video games, before decent television – kids actually played outside in those days!) But more importantly, imagine someone with three legs who had had reached her full, towering height of 5’2” and development at the age of ten being in a class of flat-chested little girls not being the elephant in the room. Impossible, right?

When I started running to imitate my dad and also because my mom told me I didn’t need to take ballet lessons anymore if I took up running for real, something clicked. The endorphins might have clouded my mind a little, but here was a sport I could do. It did not involve balls flying at my head or teammates screaming at me or prancing elephants. As far as pre-adolescent embarrassment, the worst I ever got from running was one obnoxious boy who used to sing the Rocky theme whenever he saw me running by (did I mention it was the 80’s?).

I loved making running challenges for myself. I loved how one week I could say I was only running 1 mile per run, but the next week I could move it up to 2 miles, building up slowly until I was running for an unimaginable 4-5 miles. I loved how fast I could get in shape, how marvelous the endorphins were. Sure, I was suffering while running, cursing every step, every gasp, but afterwards? No other sport since has ever given me the kind of endorphins that running does.

That’s why running is impossible to quit for me. Every year I say I’m going to quit running. It’s bad for my knees, not necessary to keep in shape, and it’s hard on the joints. It’s sweaty and messy. It’s time-consuming. And so every year I make a melodramatic announcement that running is not for me anymore, that tragically I must leave running for the people without knee and back problems, who are ten to fifteen years younger than me. But then that itch comes back, that need to create challenges for myself, that need to suffer until I hit that high.

So today I am training for a marathon. Doesn’t that sound badass to you? I thought so.