Run On

It was just one of those things
Just one of those crazy flings
One of those bells that now and then rings
It was one of those things

I'm sick of running.

Sick of thinking about running, talking about running, writing about running.

I'm sick of Saturdays sunk into mile upon mile of concrete and searing knee pain followed by headaches and fatigue.

I'm sick of being an enthusiast and a booster and a jock. I want my lazy, lethargic self-absorbed life back. I want to drink beer on Friday nights and sleep in on Saturdays. A girl can only suck in her gut for so long.

In a little more than 12 hours I'm supposed to be setting off on my longest run yet--a 26.2-mile pre-marathon marathon. It makes sense, training-wise. For non-athletic, completely non-elite runners like me, running a full-on marathon-length run before the actual marathon helps build confidence and condition the body for the real marathon.

It also makes me exhausted just thinking about it.

It was just one of those nights
Just one of those fabulous flights
A trip to the moon on gossamer wings
It was one of those things

Today I went to my local running store and geared up for the big run. I bought some body glide to prevent chafing, some gooey goo to down for energy every hour or so and a "fuel belt" to transport the goo for the long haul.

I thought that being in the running store, with its walls covered in shirts and medals from runs conquered, would shake me out of my anti-run blahs. I even ran into another marathoner who was cheerfully chatting with the sales girl about various optimal clothing options.

"Getting ready for tomorrow," she asked me giddily

"Yeah," I said, trying not to look sulky.

"We're so slow we need a lot of fuel," she said, grabbing twenty or so packs of goo.

We are slow, aren't we? I thought to myself as I realized that tomorrow I am going to be running for six, maybe seven hours.

Why hadn't I thought this through from the start? I have a month to go until the actual marathon and it would be ridiculous to quit now, but somehow it also seems ridiculous to continue with this seemingly endless training when there are so many other things that need to be done, that I could be doing during those six hours.

I could be playing Legos with my son, or taking my daughter to the mall to buy earrings for her friend's birthday. Or organizing my desk. Or working in the garden. Or working on my book. Or having an actual conversation with my husband that isn't rushed by work or bed time or chores. Isn't that what weekends are for? Why am I spending all this time running around in the streets of greater Los Angeles?

I've already run 23 miles. Isn't that close enough?

If we'd thought a bit about the end of it
When we started jumpin' town
We'd have been aware that our love affair
Was too hot not to cool down

The two-month delay in the date of the marathon hasn't helped. I started training in late September, and I've kept my momentum up fairly well. It's only been in the past couple of weeks that I've begun to feel enough already.

If the marathon had happened in early March, as it has most years in the past, I'd already have slung my medallion over my bulletin board and moved on. A sweet October-to-March dalliance with the world of organized sports, or as close to it as I'll ever get.

Instead I'm feeling the weight of a million obligations as I set aside yet another Saturday for, um, running. My husband, who treated me like an Olympic hero for the first few months of my training and wanted to know the mileage I'd traversed on each long run, is now mainly interested in knowing what time I'll be home.

So good-bye, dear, good-bye and amen
Here's hopin' we'll meet now and then
It was great fun
But it was just one of those things

With apologies to Cole Porter

Posted by Sara Catania at 3:08 PM | Permalink

Before I started training for the marathon last fall my life was full. I have two young kids. I teach journalism to college students. I'm writing a book. I blog. I freelance. I also do all the shopping and most of the cooking.

So when in the world am I supposed to run?

I've talked to runners who extol the virtues of running at odd hours. They dash out for a run during lunch, or right after work, or between dinner and bed time. But whenever I try to do that the run winds up getting squeezed out of my life by the need to do an interview or grade papers or meet a deadline or run to the market or pick up the kids. Before I know it two or three days have gone by and no running has happened.

The only way for me to get my daily run is to steal it from sleep, before dawn, when no one wants or needs anything from me. I'm up at 5:30 a.m. and on the track around the reservoir in Silver Lake by 5:45 - 6 at the latest.

It's quiet, the perfect time to meditate and work through story ideas and thorny book concepts, before the confining tightness of the day emerges. I've seen raccoons and egrets and heard woodpeckers. I've seen the entire basin socked in by fog, invisible just a few feet away. I've seen pinks and yellows in the sky, which hangs low and heavy before the sun pushes everything away.

By 6:30 I'm home and ready for the communal day, already having accomplished something and seen some things and had some peace.

That's the idealized version and it is a true account of my experience nearly all of the time. The other version, which comes upon me as suddenly as a stranger approaching in the dark, is one in which a stranger approaches in the dark, sending my heart racing and leaving me wondering about this foolhardy notion of running alone in the dark in Los Angeles.

So far, for me, strangers approaching in the dark are only on the way to their cars, or heading down the path, like me. But each time it happens I wonder.

What in the world makes me think this is safe? In my normal, non-running life I would never think of setting out on foot, alone, in the middle of the city, in the dark. I've somehow persuaded my brain that by donning running shoes and an AIDS Marathon cap I've created a protective bubble around myself, impermeable by unsavory types on the prowl.

It reminds me of the notion people get when they step into one of those crosswalks that don't have an accompanying traffic signal. A crosswalk is just a few lines painted on the asphalt, and yet pedestrians believe that those lines will protect them from the massive blocks of metal hurtling toward them. Sometimes people who walk in those crosswalks are hit by cars.

And sometimes women who run alone in the dark are attacked.

A Daily News story by Sue Doyle earlier this month described the ordeal of Emily McDivitt, a 33-year-old computer analyst who was out for a pre-dawn jog in the Valley when a stranger approached her in the dark, wrestled her to the ground and covered her mouth.

McDivitt recounted the attack for the Daily News:

"He clasped my mouth shut to the point of where I couldn't breathe. He had my nose," she said. "I thought I was going to die."

It was 5:45 a.m., and the blinds were still closed on the windows of tidy homes lining the 6200 block of Blucher Avenue.

Knowing attackers feed on fear, McDivitt tried to defuse the frenzy. She threw her hands up and stopped fighting him.

He took his hands off her mouth and said, "No scream," McDivitt recalled.

Then she threw a curveball... McDivitt began talking to her attacker, asking what his name was several times. The man never responded to McDivitt's questions. She was unsure if he understood English. He continued to grope her. And that's when she punched him across his face and grabbed his groin.

After he walked away, McDivitt scrambled to her feet and dashed home. She flung open her front door, screamed out for her husband David, 40, a retired Marine, and collapsed in the doorway from the draining surge of adrenaline. They called the police.

It turns out McDivitt had some martial arts training, which helped her fend off her attacker. She escaped with nothing more serious than a bruised hip. Still, she told the reporter, she felt lucky.

The story continues:

In 2007, there were 477 rapes reported in Los Angeles, 50 more than in New York that year despite its much bigger population, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report.

McDivitt reflects on that disturbing day and wonders if there was more she could have done. She thinks about what could have happened if her attacker had weapons or if wasn't alone.

"They tell you to run from your attacker," McDivitt said. "But I was running. He was running with me."

How often have I had that same thought? If I'm running already, how do I run away? So I continue worrying, and continue running.

Posted by Sara Catania at 3:41 PM | Permalink

Guest blogger Andrea Cavanaugh is my personal savior during this busy Easter week, filling in with a post about the possible return to a Sunday marathon -- though not until next year. I wrote an LA Times op-ed on the subject in March, and Andrea adds a whole 'nother perspective:

Three Los Angeles City Council members made a motion this week to return the LA Marathon to a Sunday in March in 2010.

As those who have followed the soap opera "As the LA Marathon Turns" over the past two years know, the race was moved to a holiday Monday this year after the City Council caved in to a coalition of religious leaders. The church leaders complained that holding the race on Sunday - the day marathons are held in cities around the country - disrupted their services.

The drama continued to unfold as the organizers abruptly changed the date from mid-February to Memorial Day - May 25. A day that's far more likely to be blazingly hot than any day in February or March.

The City Council members who introduced the motion to return the race to a Sunday in March were responding to pleas from runners but also, more practically, to greatly reduced participation and the absence of network television coverage - both of which run counter to the city's interests in developing the race into a world-class marathon.

So religious leaders be damned - the City Council has finally come to its senses. I'm glad that City Council members Tom LaBonge and Janice Hahn introduced their motion - complete with comments about What Would Jesus Do if faced with a Sunday marathon - because I think they're acting in the best interests of the city and the race.

However, they aren't doing a thing for me. I'm not one of those dedicated souls who run the marathon year after year. This is it for me. This is my year. I won't be doing this again. I think running a marathon is insane. This belief, which was fairly fuzzy when I embarked on this adventure, became far more concrete on the day I completed my first 20-mile run. That was the day that my running bra and my skin melded together in the heat into a new substance that was neither animal nor vegetable.

I'm terrified about the prospect of running a marathon on a hot, smoggy day. Fortunately, future participants in the LA Marathon will be less likely to face this prospect if the race is held in March in years to come.

I know the city's religious leaders probably aren't happy about the bid to move the marathon back to a Sunday in March, but I hope they will turn the other cheek and pray for cool weather on Memorial Day. I think that's what Jesus would do.

Posted by Sara Catania at 6:12 PM | Permalink

Shortly after Gaby Vergara turned 18, she went to her mother with some weighty news.

Gaby grew up in Watts and she'd seen more than a few of her girlfriends get pregnant or fall prey to drug addiction. Her mother waited anxiously for the youngest of her six children to continue.

"Mom," Gaby told her solemnly, "I want to join the AIDS Walk."

Gaby's mom was delighted --and more than a little relieved. "She was like, 'Whew,'" Gaby recalled.

Nine years and as many AIDS walks later, Gaby is more committed than ever to fighting the spread of HIV and AIDS. She's run one marathon benefiting AIDS services and is now training for her second, which is where I met her last October when we were assigned to the same pace group to train for the LA Marathon on May 25.

In the months since I've been training with the AIDS Marathon program to raise money for AIDS Project Los Angeles I've been struck by the socioeconomic distance between those who run to raise money to help people with AIDS and those who are helped. Talking with Gaby reminded me of that distance.

In recent years the spread of AIDS has been relegated largely to poor communities of color. While there's a fair amount of ethnic diversity among the people training alongside me, most of us are either solidly middle class or members of the "privileged poor" - highly educated with limited financial means at least in part by choice (given access to college and grad school I chose to pursue journalism rather than some more lucrative profession, which would have been just about anything else).

Most of us have never been to Watts, let alone lived there. Gaby has never been on an airplane and works as the office manager at a company that sells corporate promotional products like pens and visors. She stopped her education after graduating from high school, though she's beginning to think about getting a college degree so she can become a counselor or social worker.

Appearance-wise, Gaby fits in easily with the rest of the Saturday morning crew --- tall and fit, with her long, dark hair pulled back in a braid for the run. But her sunglasses give her away-- "Watts" is inscribed in glittery gothic script across the arm. "My aunt gave me these," she said. "She told me, never be ashamed of where you're from. Be proud, and I am."

I knew someone close to Gaby had died of AIDS, but I didn't realize how deeply she identified with the cause until last month, when she showed up with an AIDS ribbon tattooed on the inside of her right forearm and her runner numbers - for the past marathon and the one coming up in May - permanently stenciled on her right wrist.

"I mainly did this for myself because I want to show what I feel," she said. "But also it's because when I'm out there trying to raise money, some people still look at me like this punk kid from Watts, like 'Sure, I know you're just gonna use this to pay rent.' View me as you want, but this is what I'm doing. I'm serious."

Fundraising is a serious issue. For the AIDS Walks, participants raise what they can - sometimes as little as a hundred dollars. Gaby usually manages to pull in $1,000 or so. But the marathon requirement is higher. Each participant must raise a minimum of $1,600 or pay it themselves. Today is the cutoff date to reach the minimum requirement.

Gaby has tapped all her usual contributors and has come up $600 short. Today she's transferring that sum to the AIDS Marathon program out of her savings to make up the difference. "It's going to tough," she said. "But we'll get through it."

If she can manage to raise it through pledges in the coming weeks, the program will return her savings to her.

Gaby is particularly pleased that APLA funds the Watts Health Foundation and a clinic at her alma mater, David Starr Jordan High School. "So many people rely on those services," she said. "I can see the benefit of it."

On Saturday, as we embarked on our 23-mile run -- our longest yet - I asked her to tell me her story. I wanted to know how this young woman from Watts became so attached to fighting the spread of AIDS.

"It might take a while," she said. We both laughed because we knew that in the context of a 23-mile run - which is what we were facing --the longer the story the better. Miles fall away and before you know it you're standing at Pat and Ray's snack table, downing banana bread, popsicles and pickle-topped peanut butter crackers.

Gaby first learned about AIDS when she was 7 or 8 years old. She'd heard the Queen song "We Will Rock You," and asked her older sister if she would take her to see the band in concert. Her sister told her she couldn't because Queen didn't exist any more -- Freddie Mercury had died of AIDS. "I asked her what caused AIDS and she said no one knew, but that if you got it you died," Gaby said. "That scared me, but then she told me kids didn't get it."

A couple of years later, Gaby's family learned that her uncle, Jesús Muro, had AIDS. Some members of the family worried that the illness might be contagious and they wanted Jesús to eat with different plates and utensils. But Gaby's mother would have none of it. "She told everybody to stop all that," Gaby said. "She told us to give him all of our love and support, to be positive with him." And so they did.

As Jesús' health deteriorated, the family moved him to a hospice nearby. Gaby would go and visit him with her mother, using her allowance to buy him chocolate or a card or some special treat. She was not allowed inside, but she would stand on the porch and peer in, staring at the other patients, many of whom were much worse off than her uncle, their bodies contorted and covered with lesions. "I would just stare at them," Gaby said. "I'd never seen anything like that."

One morning, the hospice informed Gaby's family that Jesús had only a couple more weeks to live. The news so upset Gaby's mother that she packed Jesus and her children into her car and drove eight hours to her sister's home in the town of San Luis in Sonora, Mexico, where she helped Jesus get settled. "Everybody agreed that we needed to have my uncle with the family," Gaby said. "He liked it there - he got to eat whatever he wanted and he was comfortable."

Nearly every weekend for the next two years, Gaby's family would travel to San Luis to visit Jesús. "It was like a big family reunion all the time," Gaby said. "I got to see people I otherwise wouldn't see, and we would all be there together, spending time, being a part of each other's lives."

For Gaby, her dying uncle became a symbol of family. When he died --peacefully, in his sleep - Gaby vowed to keep his memory alive.

She does it with the AIDS walks and with the marathons, and by telling the story of her uncle to her 11 nieces and nephews, especially the younger ones, whom she baby sits regularly. On a recent trip to the supermarket, one of her nephews rejected a product with a pink ribbon, telling her they "needed to find stuff with a red ribbon, to fight AIDS."

That's the end of the tale. I'm going to Gaby's pledge page on the AIDS Marathon website to make a donation right now. Won't you join me? Grab a credit card and click here.

I'll give Gaby the last word: "You don't have to be rich to help people. You just have to want to do it."

Posted by Sara Catania at 12:15 AM | Permalink