Long Run #11: Reunion

On Saturday, my 15-year college class reunion went on without me.

My (somewhat surprising) sadness at not being in Minnesota for the occasion was tempered by the satisfaction of being in better physical shape than in 1995.

(It helped that I was kicking ass on a 19-mile run, too.)

Yeah, you heard that right.  My route may have slapped me around last week, but on Saturday I did the ass-kicking.  Sub-3 hours. Almost sub-9s. Proper fueling. Energy to spare.

(We're tied now, baby.)

No marathon training season would be complete without the requisite Spectacular Wipeout Leading to Possible Injury (i.e. reunion with the road).  Saturday fulfilled this need.  At mile 5, as I came upon Mt. Lebanon Cemetery, my right ankle went out from under and I rolled into the middle of Baker Street.

While I was able to dust off and keep on trucking, my left shin got the brunt of the asphalt slide.  Left shoulder also feels like a 20-pound weight is sitting on it.  My right ankle, though, is the most seriously unhappy ... a sprain, perhaps ... enough to be swollen to twice its size and require a new addiction to ibuprofen.  Although it is not pain, per se. Not enough for me to yet reconsider the BAA Half-Marathon on tap for next Sunday.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger, eh?

Graceless?

I almost made a new post label today:

"The Road to 40."

(Why not? Only 1,333 days to go. And only 4,983 to 50. Woohoo!)

It came to mind mid-afternoon when I realized my left ankle and right kneecap, in tandem, had dully throbbed the whole day. Perhaps they're stiff because I didn't stretch this morning. Perhaps they're feigning arthritis due to the oppressive humidity of the last 4 days, even though I both slept in air conditioning last night and worked all day at a dry 68 degrees.

Who knows. When I have to get excited about a 4-mile training run tonight as 2 of 6 major leg joints hate me, I've completely lost my sense of humor.

Sorry.

But. About that same aching moment, when, seeing I had New Mail in my Yahoo! account, I clicked it open to discover that

"You may qualify for an electric wheelchair at little or no cost!"

thanks to some quick-thinking spammer.

Woohoo! (Again!)

It was the moment I realized I'm slightly worried about my ability to age gracefully, because I couldn't even bring myself to smile at the irony.

Although, again. Just yesterday a 19-year-old college student on the OKC "liked my profile," "loved my photos," and was "looking to meet some cool people for a casual relationship."

Which means maybe I'm getting slightly ahead of myself.

The 7 last (random) words of a Wednesday

1) Last night it was 20 degrees too cold to be wearing a knee-length skirt with no pantyhose. Someone please tell my cats to remind me that next time I leave the house.

2) But it was a warm enough too, yesterday, that the buds have popped on the flowering trees of Commonwealth Avenue. Pretty soon they'll explode and bring my pollen allergy along with them. Spring cometh soon.

3) I bought a pair of custom-made orthotics for my running shoes yesterday. They were made by Bill Rodgers' personal orthotic maker. I think that qualifies me as "cool" for at least a few minutes. If they succeed in curing my arch and ankle issues....I will be "cool" forever!

4) Lenten Soup Supper soup at my church is always the best soup ever. The crusty white bread that goes with it is also the best bread ever.

5) Which, speaking of....so my church. Like it did in my match.com profile, it has a place in my OKC profile. Tonight a man wrote who was, like,

"Woah! What is this CHURCH thing?!"

(Mildly distressing that he is the dozenth adult male to ask this same question, including the implied sk8ter boi tone. So much for mature discussion of the issues.)

Digging down into his profile....my suitor claims to have grown up Catholic but is now "agnostic and quite serious about it." So he's hitting on the Christian chick? To convert her to non-Christianity? During Lent?

6) I didn't go to work yesterday expecting my direct co-worker to be laid off.

But when I came back from my noon-hour yoga, she had been. Later, another colleague said to me, "there is more to come....that's what I heard." This makes me a little less excited about Thursday at work.

7) Which means that's as good of an excuse as any to go to bed. Right now.

Anger (Warning: adult content)*

Somedays I get angry at my feet for hurting. Last night I ran hills, and today my feet just hurt all day.

Then I get more angry when clients take their accounts away from our firm, and I have to help them do it. I helped millions of dollars of assets move today.

And then Damien Rice, my favorite Irish boy, comes on the iPod with *(warning: adult content) "Woman Like a Man". Wicked guitar riff to start. D minor. Sassy. I'm sitting at the computer, closing accounts and icing my feet, grooving to the walking bass, getting by. Damien wails. The chorus is a relentless chant. I'm thinking

this is my song today. It is angry. It is me. I need to be this song.

I play it many, many times, maybe 20 or 30, which is what I do some days to distract myself. Not so much listening to the lyrics. Then, perhaps on the 10th go-round, I clearly recognize a phrase: "wanna get f***ed inside-out." And then again.

I listen more closely. Damien's got a mouth on him, to be sure. Lots of metaphors, but between the lines, clearly an angry song about sex. Definitely not your father's Marvin Gaye put-on-the-moves song.

Reminded of something the CFO said when we were dating, after I'd send him snippets of blog entries that were, as any good date story should be, edited for public consumption:

"I do like reading how you view me and us in our time together, knowing Grandma might read it, and as I've said, I wonder how you'd paint the picture if (you had) complete anonymity...."

This is not an anonymous blog. I wanted to write about this song's effect on my mood today, and I did work pretty assiduously to not offend people....Grandma and otherwise.

And am generally not a fan of angry songs about sex. (Really. Play me the Cranberries singing about lingering if you want to woo me.) Before today, I really didn't know any angry songs about sex. But today I spent most of the workday listening to an angry song about sex. It did help me corral my anger. Go figure.

It would have been more interesting, probably, to paint the picture according to the CFO's wonderings.

How to tell it's time Karin needs a hug.

About 7:15 last night I hit up Mass General. There had been intermittent shooting pain in my left ankle since I finished a run Tuesday; the goal was to secure an x-ray to ensure there were no fractures or tears.

The Walk-In Unit waiting room was empty. The receptionist looked so unthrilled at my entrance that she forgot to process my co-pay. The doctor came out to usher me in as if I had awoken him from a nap.

Thusly weary, Dr. Ollendieck, who vaguely resembled the actor Hugh Laurie, did not choose to engage in small-talk (hallelujah!). He gestured me up to the waiting table and listened to me recite the symptoms. He asked me to remove shoes and socks and watched me do so without comment. Then he took my foot onto his knee and ran his hands over the tarsus and talus bones, with fingers as light as a Fred Astaire slide. Squeezed each of my toes. Traced each protruding vein. All the time in silence.

Sound erotic? (Well, remember the Hugh Laurie scruffy-beard look-alike thing....and, anyone, the great foot-tickler?)

Yeah, not so much. His three grown children and wife smiled down at me from the photo above his desk. My socks had been pretty sweaty. But it was entrancing, Dr. Ollendieck's continuous, benign, smoothing hands. For several moments, I looked down as he concentrated first on the left foot and then on the right, as a comparison, feeling, searching. I couldn't look away, and couldn't think of anything to say.

A reason I quest for a companion, sometimes, is that I miss that bare-skin contact. Sure, a swooping kiss on the clavicle that leaves me kissing the crown of his head. Or something as innocuous as his fingers resting in the cup of my palm as we walk down the street. Or his hand moving from the stick shift to my knee, driving me home from the bar.

Sigh.

By the way, no x-ray was prescribed. Dr. O didn't find anything outwardly wrong.

Good things come to those who take their time

I came home this evening to find an unfortunate piece of mail waiting: official confirmation of my participation in the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon (The Most Beautiful Urban Marathon in America) on Sunday, October 5. As the cover proclaims: "this confirmation booklet must be presented to pick up your race number."

Ah. In reality, this confirmation represents a non-refundable $95 registration fee for a race in which I can't compete. If you just joined us, last week I began running after a 3-month hiatus nursing plantar fasciitis in both feet. More recently, both knees ache as if attached to a retired MLB catcher's thighs. I can't run the 2.8-mile Longfellow-Harvard loop on the Charles without pain....although it is improving.

The confirmation represents rashness. I registered for the Twin Cities just days after finishing the 2008 Boston. Ha! Waiting an extra week to see if my legs would be up for it with injuries? Pshaw. But I was afraid registration would close without me. For that, here I sit -- not only can't I run in the race, but I have to pay for it. And I have to read all about it because certainly they will continue bombarding me with literature on it for the next four weeks.

However. My weekend is shaping up beautifully on a number of other fronts because, for reasons ranging from coincidental to brave, I kept my powder dry.

1) A date. I think, anyway. The CFO has been wicked busy since Labor Day, he said, writing his mea culpa e-mail after being offline for 9 days. He wants to be social....with me....soon. I am agitating, once again, for martinis and shellfish at B&G Oysters, since I now have the Medal of Female Patience pinned to my breast.

2) Recognition. My favorite theater company, The Longwood Players, just took home 8 awards at the Eastern Massachusetts Association of Community Theaters award gala tonight. Including best musical direction and ensemble for She Loves Me, a show in April on which I was the assistant musical director.

For three years I've also been this group's rehearsal pianist.....a no-pay job taking up evenings for months at a time. This isn't necessarily my big Boston Musical Break Moment. But it was fun to get a slab of glass with "best"-something engraved on it....in a scene this big and talented.

3) Big-time B.O. So for two election cycles I have resisted door-to-door canvassing for presidential candidates. This is sheer fear, my friends, of being seen as an agent of harassment. But as you know, I've been sucked into a Southie for Obama volunteer group.....and I don't know if it was the Bud Lite or the camaraderie or the nausea at the political blogosphere that converted me at our meeting Tuesday night: I agreed to drive to New Hampshire tomorrow to do that which I most hate.

And lo, just today, from campaign headqarters: news that the candidate and his running mate, themselves, are holding a rally in Manchester, the very town I was to canvass.

So not only do I get to hear Barack Obama and Joe Biden speak in person, the rally is replacing the canvassing.

Score another point for patience.

Pot sitters

On my way to bed a short time ago, I remembered hadn't yet done my physical therapy stretches. This takes about 20 minutes and I'm tired. But I need the plantar fasciitis to go away. (Hey, I know. We all need it go away, so I might stop writing about my feet.)

Hmmm. I'm online trolling about, to occupy my brain during these ankle contortions and rolling of golf ball with heel. Midnight is a productive hour to be on Match.com....it's busy! After all, you wouldn't be on match if you had a significant other to either be awake or asleep with. Lots of viewings. And historically, many of the more creative messages (anyone remember MRothko35?) have popped up about this hour.

So who has reappeared, but the Guy from Hartford. Fairly smitten in his prose, but who hasn't gotten back since my last e-mail to him....on June 13. His silence thus far had persuaded me to give him--and the idea of anything long distance--the heave-ho.

And, Mr. 22 from North Carolina hovers on the perimeter. You must recall from mid-June....

Mr. 22: "You're a very sexy women (sic)...."

Now I must confess to some intrigue at his boldness. And the part of his profile that said "I am an energetic, socially active and liberal university student." Scruffy beard, talent for photography, obsession with BMWs. All eventually endearing enough; I wrote back a few days later, for the hell of it, to wit:

K: "What's with the venture out of age range, young man?"

Inviting him to interpret me as a) creepy, b) sassy, c) or the cynical 35-year-old he hoped I wasn't. Maybe he hasn't yet recovered from me actually replying. I wouldn't know, because he hasn't come back with anything more. Yet he checks me out....for the second time in the last three days.

These men have messages in their inboxes that they do not answer. But they keep looking from afar. They are 20 years apart in age but act like identical teenagers scouting at the homecoming dance.

It is not my turn to write.

When are they going to either use the pot or get off it?

Are exclamation points also part of the cure...?

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Double Date....

So it has come to this: I have a match.com date this evening. With a computer systems gentleman from New Hampshire, recently relocated to Cambridge. He likes travel and scuba diving. We're meeting after work for a drink, at his suggestion, at the Silvertone on Bromfield Street.

(Note: this revelation is not license for everyone to come and view the festivities. Although I score my date points for choosing this particular bar.....a place often passed but never visited....mostly because I didn't have any one to take me there....)



Equally important is the date in the late morning w/my podiatrist, Dr. Coen at Mass General Downtown. I don't know if he'll cure what ails the foot ache, but I'm hoping at the very least for clarification on what the problem itself is. It would be pleasant if his recommendation was to rid myself of the orthopedic walking flats I recently purchased.....and trade them in for shoes that actually look like shoes a girl would wear on a date with a boy.

Like my patent-leather open-toed heels.

The doctor's office is located one long block away from the Silvertone. Maybe I'll ask Dr. Coen if he thinks that I should stay off my feet, if there's any real need to walk the 12 blocks back to the office between Date 1 and Date 2....so that maybe I'll just spend the day at the bar....just me and my stylin' shoes....

Wednesday morning update: The girl in front of me getting on the bus this morning was wearing these exact shoes! So at least two pairs of Merrells are doing the business-commuter crowd from Southie...

Duck umbrellas rule!

I've lived in Boston for going on nine years. Other than lack of ability to find a long-term relationship with a significant other, I pride myself on a certain level of boldness that might be summed up as such:

1) If there is something I want to do, I'll do it. I know from stupid.

2) If that something is walking home alone, at night, I'll do it because my confident stride will repel all evil-doers.

Of course, on one occasion in 2005, such chutzpah was no help. 12:30 a.m., two blocks from my Dorchester home, I was coming from the train after a late dinner in Cambridge. I'd walked that street, easily, a thousand times at all hour. But on that October morning, a man ran at me from behind and pulled my backpack from my shoulder.....which I fought for with great screaming, and ultimately lost when he ripped it away and I hit the pavement palms first, breaking several fingers.

That was the last time I've walked home wearing high heels and a skirt....major surgery and four months of OT will do that. Since then I've walked a lot of places, and it is all tennis shoes all the time. It also triggered my attacker-awareness-sensors....which had, before that, laid untested.

Last night found me in the Boston Common testing the reaction, once again. These things seem to always happen on nights where I'm ruminating on how nice it is to live in a city such as ours. A friend and I had just come from a French comedy at the Kendall Square Cinema, strolling and swinging our umbrellas in spite of the drizzle, across the Longfellow Bridge and back into Boston. At the point of the park he went his way, I went mine....and I was so filled with contentment and confidence that I kept on through the near-empty park, forgetting the hour and the reputation of the place.

Is it because my right foot is gimpy that my stride no longer has repellent-evildoer qualities?Seemingly. I was nearly across to Tremont Street when a fine gentleman--small in stature, hunched and wearing a beige windbreaker--crossed in front of me at a path intersection and began walking in step.

"Where's Washington Street?" he said.

"Straight ahead," I replied, still walking. This usually works.

"How far ahead?" he said, also still walking.

I pointed up the sidewalk. "About a block." My eyes started to dart, looking for other walkers.

"Say, miss, do you have some money I could have?" Now he had turned and was walking backwards in front of me.

Shit.

"No sir, not," I still hadn't broke stride. But he did, cutting me off.

"Oh, come on."

"Sir, please, leave me alone. No." He grabbed my right arm.

"Hey there, hands off!" I jerked away and began backing up. And started yelling for help.

"Don't do that!" he screamed back, whiny, as if insulted. He grabbed my arm again.

I batted his grip with my hot-pink duck umbrella. This made him let go, only to shove his hands into his coat pockets and fumble his elbows in circles. Still demanded my attention.

"Stop that! I have a gun!"

"You do not!" Backing away more now, I yelled. (I did? This I can't believe.)

He came back at me, again grabbing on.

"Stop that yelling! Come back here!"

"Hellllllllllllp!"

Two more swift whacks with the duck head to his arm, and I pulled away. Other voices asserted themselves in the distance behind me. Bad foot or not, I sprinted towards Tremont Street, to the relative safety of the traffic and the pedestrians coming out of the movie theater. He didn't follow, but called after me to rectify this wrong--as if I had embarassed him by creating a scene. For the next 30 seconds as I stood at the curb, heart about to come out of my chest, I could hear it "come back! hey! come back here!"

I crossed the street and hailed a taxi. I thanked my umbrella. Thanked God. And cursed my boldness.

Mood: not entirely conversational

This girl's psyche has been tried today.

On April 21, I ran the Boston Marathon... six weeks after being diagnosed with everyone's favorite over-training injury: plantar fasciitis, a severe inflammation of the foot tendons. The only cure for this is rest. At the time I visited a podiatrist who said...."ok, so you're still going to run the marathon. But keep in mind if you leg through it.....think of if you want to run or not after April 21."

So I legged through it and, I thought, went on with my life.

But the arch pain in my right foot has returned with a vengeance this week. General walking is not comfortable. This resulted in another chat today about it, this time with a sports medicine doctor, about what to do. He decreed: to heal the tendon, put the kibosh on nearly every impact or stretching activity you currently do. No yoga. No biking. No running. No walking at any great length. And no high heels. Probably for two months.

At the same time, all other components of life felt disturbingly unresolved.

The monthly paycheck arrived in the bank account today, but it is already spent. Tried to book a ticket to Minneapolis in June, but held off because the price has gone up $100 in the last week. Can't figure out how to get to D.C. for Memorial Day weekend without spending as much as a plane ticket. Pants feel tight around the waist.

The last straw was when some twerp newby from one of our clients' offices called at 5:30 demanding vague asset allocation information for the rep of a rep of the client. We snapped at each other.

In a perfect world, I would now like to visit a potato field 5 miles south of my hometown in North Dakota.... sink cross-legged into the dirt, and let the wind blow over me until the sun goes down. But I'm in Boston. And I should really go to the gym. To do time on the recumbent bicycle (allowed, yes!) to offset the calories contained in a drown-my-woes Frappucino from a couple hours ago.

Am I allowed to cancel my scheduled phone conversation with the comedian tonight because I've been in a foul mood most of the day?

(No, you say. You are not allowed to wimp out. )

Perhaps I should be thankful that he might, just possibly, make me laugh. Which of course is the entire point.

(Thank God for match.com! you say.)

One can hope.

So appropos of nothing, here is my absolute favorite YouTube video, which DOES happen to be a comedy routine. ...a couple of kiwis from New Zealand singing rap-style folk songs. (4.7 milion hits in the last year can't be wrong.)

In case the conversation falls through later, I'll need something on hand to come back to later tonight and laugh at.