The Agony of Training, the Stench of De Feet

Everyone has been clamoring for more stories of the pain and hardship I go through to train for this (CLAMORING, I tell you!) and of course I must oblige. So, here, not necessarily in order of most painful or most disgusting to least, are what some of you mere mortals might call "hardships." For us half-marathon trainer types, they are annoyances barely worth noting. But (SIGH) what my adoring public wants, it gets.

STENCH: The first thing I noticed was the smell of my shoes. As mentioned previously, they do get pretty darn wet every time I run, which is 4-5 days a week. I let them dry out in a sunny spot or near a vent every day, but still. They started to give off an odor of mud, and rotting vegetation, and swampy water. Meh, I said. I'll put them in the sun a few more hours. Doesn't bother me. Then I noticed a similar, yet far ranker smell coming from my hamper where I throw my used running clothes. One whiff and I was nearly knocked on my butt by the stench. I gathered them up and threw them in the laundry as fast as I could, before they could contaminate the other clothes in the room. Then I came in the house one day after cleaning other people's house's all day - and ya know how scents are more apparent to you after you've been in someone else's house, or even outside? I smelled something stale and latrine-like right away. In fact, it smelled like the kitty litter needed to be changed. So I went downstairs and changed it. Went back upstairs - the smell was still there. Went back downstairs, plugged in the oil-based air freshener thingies that my husband always unplugs because he can't stand them. Went back upstairs. Still smelled like a sub-arctic outhouse. Went outside again. A diesel truck went by, and that was fresh as a daisy compared to my house. Stood on the porch for awhile. Scanned the immediate area for dead squirrels or birds, or rotting fruit. The hairs on the back of my neck started to stand up as a little voice in my head whispered "Suzy- I think the smell is coming from INSIDE the house!"
Went back inside, cautiously. Left the door open so fresh air could get in. Followed my nose around the living room, dining room (really the same room)and into the little hallway to our bedrooms- right back to my closet/hamper area. Yep. Was it the hamper? Nope, I'd just emptied it of all stinky items. Closet? Just dust and some shoes on the floor. Something... near... here... and then I saw it. The hydration backpack-thingie I had last used about a month earlier. Yes, the remaining water inside could certainly be moldy by now. But this was different. I gingerly removed it from the hook on the door. Unzipped the main compartment. And nearly lost consciousness.

Not only was month-old electrolyte water in the bladder, but I'd forgotten about the running clothes I left in there from a training run one Saturday in September - an exceptionally sweaty, timed "speed" run, after which I bicycled straight over to the PBS kids event downtown to meet my sweeties. Entonces, extra rank-ness. Smell is the sense that apparently is connected straight to your brain's receptors without any silly left-brain translational interference going on. Which is why smells are tied so closely to certain memories in our heads. It goes back to when we were hunter/gatherers and this kind of thing was actually useful. E.g. you have no choice but to remember that acrid-smelling cave where the saber tooth cat ate your best friend, AND that sweet-smelling place in the cedar grove where the deer like to sleep and are easy to sneak up on and kill.

I wish my memories were that pleasant. This one took me back to the time my brother left one of his baseball practice jerseys thrown carelessly over a chair at the kitchen table, when we both were in high school. His room was in the basement by then, as it should be for all teenage boys, and usually his clothes went right down there with him. For some reason, this special day he just HAD to unburden himself of that jersey right in the kitchen. And leave it there. Around innocent food, and people. I kid you not, we couldn't even walk through the room without gagging. Instead of subsiding over the next few hours, the smell intensified, and got worse. We opened windows. We opened doors. Nothing helped.

Finally I braved the general area and flung open the door to the basement. "JIIIIMM! TAKE YOUR SHIRT DOWNSTAIRS - IT STINKS!"
"Cha. Does not. Whatever." (teenage boy grunting)

Finally, even our mom, who usually thought his poop smelled like roses and golden drops of ambrosia fell from his lips every time he spoke, caved to the stench.

"JIII-IIM! COME GET YOUR SHIRT RIGHT NOW OR I'M THROWING IT OUTSIDE!" No answer.
The dog, whose food and water bowls were near the table and said stench, started to whine. Finally I think one of us took the longest-handled tool we could find, stretched it out as far as we could while one person held the door to the basement open, caught an edge of the contaminated fabric and flung it downstairs as fast as possible, while the person holding the door slammed it shut.
Years later, while talking to someone who had majored in Physical Education or physiology or something, I learned that teenage boy sweat actually holds phenomenal amounts of hormones, mostly testosterone- not surprising- but also, get this: PROTEIN. As in, slabs of steak and eggs, muscle-building, protein. So when it is allowed to sit out for hours without being washed away, guess what? It starts to rot. Just like a huge, unwashed bison carcass in your living room.
Similar to what I smelled a few days ago in my hydration pack. I had no long-handled instrument to assist me, so I just had to dump the whole thing in a basket and again, run down to the laundry,dump about a pound of detergent on top of it, crank on the HOT water (which I never do) and hope for the best. It's hard to come up with adequate verbiage and adjectives to describe the reeking- but trust me, friends, this was some weapons-grade stench. If it fell into the wrong hands, I shudder to think at what would happen.

So if I don't knock out my teammates with deadly fumes wafting from my slow-moving body, I will complete this half-marathon. By gods, I will.
Next week's hardship in detail: butt chafing.

Speed is Relative

This is not about speed, by the way. I don't care about speed. Speed is for suckers. I'm going for distance, and endurance, and time measured in hours, and possibly days. A half marathon in half a day sounds good to me. As I used to tell my fire crew-mates who were amazed that I passed the "pack test" (the fitness test where you carry a 40 lb pack for 4 miles in under 45 minutes), I'm more of a mule than a racehorse. But not in that drug smuggling way.

Ever since I started running again last October, I told myself that I would be relaxed, and non-crazy, and listen to my body. And by gods, that's what I've been doing. If the body needs sleep, I sleep in instead of run. If the body needs yoga, I do yoga. If the body needs to walk instead of run for a while... you got it. Those are the same principles that Chi Running applies, in a more formal and well-thought-out way, and which I am practicing right now. Miss Nancy turned me on to the Chi Running last year, and I have to say it's done wonders for my lack of injuries, and relative endurance, so far. More on that later.

We have a training schedule for Team Challenge, but I haven't been keeping to it religiously. (just a little joke there, Coach Carrie and Coach Tim! ha ha! Seriously!) I've been listening more to my body than a piece of paper is what I'm saying. This morning, I ran about 3 miles in 35 minutes. Not bad, I guess, especially because by the mid-point my shoes were utterly soaked, and every step was marked by a distinct squishing sound. Also, I wasn't dressed warmly enough for the chilly morning, and the combo kinda killed my mojo. No excuses. I AM SLOW. AND PROUD.

Since I prefer to run on soft surfaces like grass, and am fortunate enough to live near a long greenway where I can do this, the grass is often still wet from the sprinklers first thing in the morning - and thus gooshy. A few months ago I came home from a run with those little tiny slugs all over my shoes. Ick! I pointed them out to my husband, who dryly remarked, "you musta been going really slow."

So much for his idea of using sex as a "recovery day" activity.

The Non-Half-Assed, Fully Rock n'Roll Marathon Training Blog

There's no turning back now, it's a BLOG! I am officially in training for the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation's Team Challenge Half Marathon, to be held December 5th in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. For you avid runners, yes that's part of the Rock n' Roll Marathon series, and yes the Vegas version is supposed to be a mixture of Bolder Boulder craziness and well, Vegas. Meaning, there are running Elvi by the hundreds, people getting married while running the course, live bands, juggling, and probably lots of sex and drugs. No, I will not be dressed as Elvis, getting married, playing music, or doing any of those other shenanigans while running. I will, hopefully, be running.
I'm doing this for a few reasons, some of them selfish, and some altruistic. Firstly, my friend Miss Nancy Freimuth was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis/Crohns over 10 years ago, and she ran the Team Challenge half marathon in Napa a couple years ago. You may know of her excellent blog account of the experience, "The Run to Erase the Runs." http://nancyruns.tumblr.com/
She raised over $5,000 for that effort, and was so impressive in general that CCFA immediately set about hiring her to be part of their fund-raising staff! Smart folks, those CCFA'ers.
Which brings me to the other reason I'm doing this particular half marathon- I am pretty darn impressed with CCFA in general. Those of you that know me know that I'm an insufferable pompous ass, who is, not coincidentally, usually NOT too damn impressed with humanity in general and their/our feeble efforts to survive. In other words, I'm an anthropologist. But all kidding aside, I'm very pragmatic (some would say "cold and clinical") when it comes to diseases of the human. There are many I don't think we have a chance in hell of curing, and I don't waste my time or money on them. These days, it seems a new disease or disaster pops up every ten minutes, and we are all suffering from bad-news exhaustion, coupled with the crippling paralysis of believing we can do nothing about it. Donating money to these causes feels like you're just throwing it into a huge black hole, at times.
The Crohns' and Colitis Foundation is not one of those black holes.
In fact, it is the polar opposite of a depressing black hole. Picture that hole covered with a huge, yellow smiley face of hope- and you get the idea. These digestive diseases are something I believe we can cure in our lifetimes. That is, completely eradicate. Kaput. Kerfllooeeey. GONE. Is what they will be.
My anthropologist spidey-sense tells me that digestive diseases are the result of an industrialized diet (which humans were really never meant to eat), over-prescribed anti-biotics, background pollution, water pollution, and basically STRESS with a capital T that's flipped all our genetic switches to "CODE PURPLE" for - well I really shouldn't curse here. The folks at CCFA are cognizant of this as well, and for agreeing with me, I commend them. :) Their approach is very open-minded and supportive of whatever treatment you seek, rather than pushing certain drug protocols because they are essentially sponsored and funded by certain drug companies- like some "disease-based" foundations I could name. Nope. The latest research, in fact, includes very promising results from poop transplants, and re-introducing worms to the gut. You read that right. Poop, and worms. Not too many people in America are going to open-arm those things, but CCFA does because it's actually helping their constituents. Take that, Foundations Who Will Not Be Named!
The selfish reasons I could list include the Phorty Phreakout that a woman of my age inevitably goes through- wanting to get back in shape lest I continue the slide into a big pile of goo; and introducing a type of discipline into my life that feeds and enriches me. Namely, I'm doing this training in conjunction with trying to get my writing muscles back in shape too, and I think the discipline/mind clearing of running will help me get there.
However, most of these blog posts will probably be whining about how difficult it is to train when you have a recalcitrant 4 year old daughter who won't stay in her own bed, but keeps me up all night pulling my hair and kicking me because it soothes her. And most of the pictures will be of me lying down, on the grass, "recuperating" after a run. Or, they will be self-portraits of my feet.

I'll end with this quote from one of Naropa's founders, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, because my husband put it up on the wall today and it made me laugh:
"In the Garden of Gentle Sanity
May you be bombarded by the Coconuts of Wakefulness."

run hard,
Suzy