Run On

On Monday I finished what I started with this blog back in September of 2008.

I ran a marathon.

It was the first and only such endeavor of my life and momentarily I will impart, in glorious detail, the day's soaring highs and near-death lows.

But first, a word to my sponsors, meaning those of you who forked over the cash to help people with AIDS and HIV, and so I could get the training I needed to do this thing.

Thank you.

If you're a faithful follower of Run On, you know that my marathon journey began with a diminutive brochure packed with big promises.

Run a marathon even if you've never run before!, it said, and raise money for people with AIDS and HIV while you're at it.

I did, and I did.

In fact I outdid. I ran longer and faster than I ever have in my life and I raised plenty more than I was asked to.

Plus I blogged about it, providing a fleeting weekly diversion for lots of people who may have never run an inch in their lives (not unlike myself, before September) but who read blogs because you can do that without moving.

Which brings me back to the sponsor part. Because if you didn't sponsor me, guess what? You can still help people with AIDS and HIV. Lucky, lucky you.

AIDS Project Los Angeles, the beneficiary of my marathon run, is a key source of care and services for thousands of Los Angeles residents living with AIDS and HIV, many of whom subsist on $10,000 a year. Imagine what your life would be like living on $833.33 a month. Now imagine what it would be like to live on that and have AIDS.

And now our governor, in his infinite wisdom, is planning to eliminate funding for medication for 35,000 indigent Californians with AIDS and HIV. Yes, we're in a budget crisis, but really? Really?

APLA does great work. They're helping folks who are being hit hardest by our current economic meltdown. They might even send a contingent up to Sacramento to talk some sense into the governor. If they could afford it. But their funding is shrinking like everyone else's. That's where you come in.

Think of the diversion from real-life concerns this blog has provided you, the vicarious armchair thrill lo these many months. How much is that worth to you? A hundred bucks? Fifty?

Click here and give it directly to APLA.

Do it now. I'll wait for you. Go on. You'll be glad you did.

[Pause.]

Hey, thanks for doing that.

Now we can get on to the marathon part, titled "My Marathon in Neurochemistry: The Brain Candy that Fueled Me, Nearly Killed Me and Then Sent Me Over the Moon, A Completely Unscientific Account of What I Experienced and Why Based on Cursory Web Research (mostly from the Runner's World website), Inference and Intuition."

Part I: Fueled Me

It's 6 a.m., Memorial Day 2009, when all right-thinking people are still in bed, dreaming of barbecue. We are standing at the corner of Fourth and Figueroa in downtown LA trying to grasp what it is we are about to attempt.

"We" is my group of eight, part of a larger group of runners trained by the AIDS Marathon fundraising outfit.

We've been together for months, training independently during the week and then together every Saturday morning. Our group is one of the slowest. We're not jocks, hell we're not even in particularly good shape. But for one reason or another we all signed up for this challenge and stuck it out.

We're all in the midst of some sort of drastic life change. In the months since we began there have been two marriages, a divorce, a home sale, a relationship breakup, a moving in with significant other, a set of adult braces, the purchase of a Mini (red) and way too many birthdays.

Now we're just trying to figure out how to make it through the next six, seven or however many hours it might take to run around the city and wind up right back where we are right now.

We make our way to the starting line, which is about a block long. The elite women start first and then there's a 17-minute lull before the rest of us are let loose. Cell phones come out for a last quick bout of texting.

Andrea takes a hit off my inhaler. Amy uses my Body Glide.

I show off the red marks in my right knee where I got a cortisone shot to ward off the IT pain that has wreaked havoc on my recent long runs and that I fear will wreck me today.

Rachel shows me how to position the strap I bought to wrap around my right knee in case the shot fails to do the job.

We stand. We breathe. We wait. We feel the adrenaline, which, according to Runner's World, "comes with getting excited for a race, [and] which also has the power to boost confidence and kill pain." Good.

The horn sounds and we're swept up in a giant mass of forward motion. We're somewhere in the middle of this massive crowd, but everyone is calm.

This does not at all resemble my typical crowd experiences, like the time I was on the green at Soldier Field for a Bruce Springsteen concert and was nearly suffocated in the press toward the stage.

Though we are all moving forward, we are each our own show. No need to get to the front for that.

The street is wide and after a short while there's plenty of space to move. The challenge is to go slow and stay that way for a good long while.

According to Coach Scott, who's been right about everything else, if you start off fast you burn through your reserves and risk flaming out before the finish. Best to keep it slow and steady, then if things go well build up speed later.

I am especially receptive to that message because I'm worried about my knee. If it's going to crap out I want to prolong the moment of collapse as long as I can.

Part of our group immediately pushes ahead. I see them in the distance, like a bottle bobbing away on the tide. We stay slow, like uncertain swimmers who don't really know the strokes.

We're running slightly downhill, which feeds the urge to speed up. But slow we go, south down Fig, then a jog around USC, then onto Exposition Boulevard.

The course looks like the profile of a Scottish Terrier, where the start and finish are the tail. Mile one is the butt and mile three the hind leg.

I think about the map from time to time throughout the run. Am I wagging this dog or is it wagging me?

The weather is gorgeous - a heavy marine layer that hangs on for most of the day. Rachel points out that for all our carping about the marathon date being pushed back to the end of May and how it was going to be miserably hot, we wound up getting a day that was better than either the original race date of Sunday, March 1 (unseasonably hot) or the President's Day alternative (windy, rainy and miserable).

Mile Five. Here's where the community begins: Jefferson Park, Leimert Park, View Park.

Stretches of chain link fences, empty storefronts and battered shacks are interspersed with well-kept homes and shady gardens. Children offer us bottled water and orange wedges.

A girl sitting on a plastic hair holds up a chalkboard with a message scrawled in pink: "Andale!"

A woman beats on a metal pot. Clank clank clank clank. We wave and she holds up a metal spoon in two parts. " I broke it" she says merrily. "I broke it beating it for you all."

A group of young men cluster, gesturing and talking loudly. They don't look at the runners. This is our life, their postures declare. You're just visiting.

We dip down onto Crenshaw, our southernmost point, then onto Martin Luther King. Then, around mile 10, we're back onto Crenshaw and the road begins to climb slightly.

I'm feeling good and strong and my right knee is quiet. Is it the cortisone, or is it anandamide, from the Sanskrit word for 'bliss,' and which, according to Runner's World, "is very similar to THC, and it produces pleasant feelings of relaxation and pain cessation similar to those often described by runners and pot smokers."

Whatever the cause, I'm sharp, focused and contemplating my environs. What would Martin think about all this running? He liked street theater. Would he find a way to work the marathon into his vision? It seems to fit. I can see him here, smiling, waving, rejoicing in this fleeting coming together in the places where brown and black people live.

By now we're well over two hours into the run and the top runners have crossed the finish line. And look who won.

Among the men all the winners are black. Among the women several are as well. They are Kenyan, Ethiopian. African.

So why does the image on the official LA marathon poster, t-shirt and pin feature a pair of white legs? Will LA, the land of illusion, ever embrace the value of reality?

Back on Crenshaw we head north across the 10 Freeway. Almost to mile 12, we swing onto Venice and head west. The vague gloominess of Mid City is brightened by the sight of Coach Scott and a few other AIDS Marathon trainers who run up and check on us, offering us water, sunscreen and moral support.

My knee is feeling fine, but I pop an ibuprofren just in case. Just past mile 13, I get a text message from the marathon pace keepers. They offered this nifty service where you could pre-register your runner number and cell number. Every time you cross a censor they send you your pace. This was second notification. The first, around mile 6, put me at a 15 minute, 5-second per mile pace. My predicted finish time was 6:35:27.

Now I'd been running just over three hours and my pace was 14 minutes 14 seconds. My predicted finish time was 6:13:10.

I'd started off slow and now I was slowly increasing my speed, just like Coach Scott advised. I'd trained at a pace of 14 minutes, 30 seconds per mile. Coach Scott said that if all went well (no knee tweaks or flame-outs) we could expect to run the marathon at a pace of between 30 seconds and a minute per mile faster than our training pace. Sweet!

Mile 14, Venice and Fairfax, the chin of the dog, and there are my husband Mark and the kids, Genevieve and Lucas. I stop and kiss them all, sharing my runner's fug.

"Hi Mommy! You're more than half way!" Genevieve hands me a new bag of fuel (fuel being the overpriced gooey chewy stuff that comes in glossy packets at running stores) and off I go. I pack my pouch and hand out the rest to the group.

By now the runners in the group begin to fall away. Though we've run as a group throughout the training, today we each run for ourselves. We agreed in advance that we're all going to push ourselves, which will probably mean something different for each person.

We're down to four and moving along, just far enough that the first wave of endorphin giddiness hits. Past the halfway point and feeling good. Yes indeed, all is well.

At water stops we revel in taking a few slurps and flinging the still water-laden cups willy nilly into the gutter. The joy of littering. A moment of marathoner exceptionalism.

Around Mile 15 I get a text message from Genevieve, who is 9 and very tech-savvy. "Hi mommy u rock keep going and eating ur chewy things ur the best love Genevieve." I giggle madly.

At Mile 17 we come upon a massive pair of hairy gonads. A Manny Ramirez sympathizer? No, just a guy with a sense of humor trying to build awareness about testicular cancer.

(This image is from a different event, but the costume is the same.)

Mile 18, Carthay Square, and there's the family again, for one last cheer before they head to the finish line to wait. "Did you see the man who looked like a giant peanut?" Lucas, who is nearly 7, asks. "Um, yeah," I say, glad to be off and running before the inevitable follow-up questions.

I get my third pace text. I've been running for 4 hours, 22 minutes and 54 seconds. My pace is 14 minutes, six seconds per mile. My predicted finish time is 6:09:41. I'm continuing to pick up steam.

Mile 19. Sixth Street, Hancock Park. The houses are large and lovely and set back. The road is curvy and hilly. A woman stands with a tray full of beer shots. "You can drink and run at the same time," she shouts, joyously. "Come and get it!"

Beer is the last thing I want right now. I'm starting to feel the urgent need that so horrified my friend and co-marathon champion Sara Stein when she heard about it early on in our training. A woman shakes a sign at me that reads "Sweat is Sexy!"

All I want is a bathroom. I pick up the pace to Mile 20. The Porta Potties are wide open. Disaster averted.

We're down to two runners, Rachel and me. And thus ends the happy portion of the run.

Part II: Nearly Killed Me

We continue on. The final Six-Point-Two. I try to think of that length in its smallness, in its manageableness, but somehow, even as I move forward, the finish line seems to move further away.

We reach Mile 21 and I'm feeling twinges of fatigue. Nothing specific, just an all-over, total-body twinge. I've forgotten all about my knee. What knee? It's fine. The cortisone miracle achieved. Instead I'm feeling an unfamiliar, universal heaviness.

Mile 22 and we start another uphill. Rachel tells me it's all uphill from now until the finish. Great. Whose brilliant idea was that?

By mile 23 we've reached Olympic. Treeless, shadeless, tedious Olympic.

The most I've ever run before this is 23 miles. Once. A couple of months ago. Every step I take from here on out is uncharted territory. Already it feels hard, harder than I'd expected, especially given that my knee is fine.

I'm hit with a gloomy realization - I've forgotten to take my fuel, and I know exactly when.

It was after that bathroom emergency at mile 20. I felt relieved, and not at all hungry. I had more fuel in my pouch and I was going to wait a while to make sure my digestive tract was settled before fueling up. But I completely forgot, which was a very bad thing, because it was at mile 20, when my natural reserves were entirely depleted, that I needed it most.

Where did my memory go? It's not like I had a lot else to think about. Blame it on the endocannabinoids, "substances released with exercise that produce an effect similar to a marijuana high," according to Runner's World. And maybe marijuana's forgetfulness, too?

Now it was too late. Once the reservoirs are empty, the body's entire process of generating energy is knocked out of whack. You can't just dump the goo into the empty hole.

According to the Ultimate Handbook, it works like this:

"When you run for long periods, you drain your muscles of glycogen, which is the form that carbohydrates take when stored in muscle tissue. When glycogen stores run low, fatty acids (released from fat cells) become a primary energy source.

"Now it gets tricky. Fatty acids require a special carrier to take them through the bloodstream. The problem is that there's another substance that rides this same carrier. That other substance is called tryptophan, an amino acid that the brain converts to serotonin. What happens is that during endurance exercise, increasing numbers of fatty acids bump tryptophan off its carrier. The free-floating tryptophan enters the brain (it has a biochemical "preference" to do this), where it converts to serotonin. The result? Serotonin levels increase, and you feel tired."

The perfect storm of fatigue, under-nourishment and continued energy-demanding motion are filling me with a venom of weariness and defeat.

I am thirsty. My mouth is sandpaper. I'm scorched, parched, burnt from the inside out. Where can I find something to drink?

Cups are scattered across the road, then the most blessed sight: a table with water. A man in an orange turban fills my bottle.

"Thank you," I say.

"Thank you for running," he says, in a voice so kind I nearly cry.

The road is wide and dry and dirty and overly bright. Mile 24, the back of the dog. Still on wretched Olympic. Everyone seems to be walking or limping.

What happened to the marathon, I wonder. Is it over?

And then it hits me. Of course not. This is it. This is what makes it a marathon.

For all these months I never really got it. Why do people think running a marathon is so hard? Unless you're an elite runner and going for a world record.

But if you're running at a comfortable pace, what's the big deal? You just need the discipline to build your mileage, and if you do everything as you should, all will be well.

True, if you get injured, that's a barrier and you try to take care of it as best you can. But barring injury and keeping up the training, what's the big deal?

Now I know. All the work that I'd done, all the care that I'd taken had gotten me this far. Right here. Mile 24. And this was as far as it was taking me.

My strength was sapped, my spirit was weak. There was nothing I could put into my body now that was going to get me to mile 25, let alone across the finish line.

"I started out strong, but at mile 20 I hit the wall," a man says into his cell phone. "No, no, not a real wall. I'm fine, I'm fine."

The dreaded wall. Is this my wall? Am I dying? Do I need to stop? Will I regret it if I stop? Will I regret it if I don't?

My stomach is pushing stuff up into my throat. My head refuses to stay up straight. Am I going to pass out?

"How's it going?" chirps a man in a bright yellow AIDS Marathon shirt who has popped up next to me.

"Okay," I say.

Or did I say it? I have to concentrate to get my mouth to open. Was I just thinking about saying it or did the words come out?

"Are you feeling light-headed?"

"No," I lie. What if I say yes? Will he make me stop?

"Great!" he says, grinning. Why does he have so much energy? Where did he get it?

"Okay," he says. "First let's get you back up to the center of the road."

I hadn't noticed that Rachel and I had veered off to the side and were running with our feet at a 45-degree angle. We follow him to the middle.

"Now, here's what you need to do. I want you to take it very easy until you get to mile 25. Then you can pick up the pace and enjoy that home stretch."

Okay, good idea. Take it easy. Can I do that? Is that okay? Is it okay to take it easy? Isn't that giving up? No, no. Good idea. I will do that, yes I will.

"Remember, you're helping people live longer," the happy man says before he jogs off.

I slow to a walk. Rachel keeps going.

"Keep going," I say, waving to her back. And for the first time in the race I am alone. I keep moving, but at a walk.

I concentrate on not throwing up or falling down.

I try to run but I can't. My body won't let me.

I call Mark.

"Tell me something good."

"Look up. See downtown? See the building where I work? See how close you are? That's where you're going. You're almost there. It's so close. Do you see it?"

That white wedding cake of a tower. I hadn't even noticed it but it's right there. Just seeing that building there is comforting. The world is fine. The buildings are standing. Everything is okay.

"Yes."

"See what I mean?"

"I do, I do. Tell me something else."

"Genevieve and Lucas are so excited and so happy and so proud. I'm so proud of you, honey. You've worked so hard."

I'm choked up and teary.

"Can I do this?"

"Of course you can."

"Okay," I croak, and hang up.

Mile 25. Just a mile and a smidge to go.

I start running. I want to puke.

My head feels like it has detached itself from my body and floated away. Good. Then I won't puke. I see a green balloon in the distance. Is that my head? If I cross the finish line without my head will it still count?

Will my body still move forward without my head, the way nails and hair continue to grow after a person dies? Or will I just fall down? I might.

No. Not now. Too close for that. Don't think about miles. Think about blocks. Miles are long. Blocks are short. Just a few more blocks. I envision my childhood home, a red brick row house on Chicago's Near South side, neatly laid out with dozens of other red brick row houses, all exactly the same, filling a city block. I see myself circling that block, once, twice, how many times around that block to make it to the finish?

Oh, finally off that hideous Olympic Boulevard. Why do they call it Olympic when it's so ugly and bright and stark and horrible? It's an Olympic feat just to run on Olympic.

Finally, yes, turning the corner onto Flower Street, such a pretty flower.

The tail of the dog and here are the crowds. They're cheering. They're excited. They're pressing in against the barriers. This is where it ends and everyone wants to see it.

Will it be a happy ending? Yes it will.

Somehow I'm running and smiling and waving, and there are Mark and the kids smiling and waving back.

I'm at the finish. I remember to hold my arms up over my head like everybody told me to.

Final time: 6:03:43. Pace: 13:53.

I did it. I'm done.

Part III: Sent Me Over the Moon

I float through the fenced off runner's zone. A medal is draped around my neck. I'm handed a marathon bag, some salt-and-pepper cashews and a shiny blanket thing that I'm supposed to wear like a cape, but I'm way too hot and dizzy and nauseous for any of it.

"How are you feeling?" a very handsome paramedic asks me.

"I'm fine," I say. "How are you feeling?" He laughs.

"Fine," he says.

It's odd and trippy. I trained for eight months, and in the past few minutes I've gone from marathoner wanna-be to an actual, real-life marathoner.

I see Rachel and together we work our way to the Bonaventure, where we're told there's a garden deck with food and music and massages just for the AIDS Marathon crowd.

We walk and walk and wander and I have no idea where we are. There are people everywhere eating and talking and going about their lives.

We go up some stairs and through some doors and we're on an escalator and there are Mark and the kids, waiting for me, and all the sick and dizzy falls away.

"Mommy!"

We walk around some more in the maze that is the Bonaventure, which I don't mind at all. It's thrilling just to meander without having to worry about throwing up or falling down.

Eventually we find the private garden deck area and I recline on a lovely cushioned sofa thing and Genevieve brings me an apple and a granola bar and Lucas massages my back with ice.

Mark holds my hand. I don't feel tired or achy. Just good. Mark's hand is the smoothest, softest hand I've ever felt.

Mark Nollinger, my life partner, my husband, the father of my children, endurer of this entire marathon training ordeal.

Thirty five Saturday mornings. Many more 5:30 a.m. weekday rustlings. Weeks and months of boring blah blah running obsession. "I didn't run the marathon," he tells me later. "I lived it."

There is no place in the world I would rather be than right here, with him. He is the most important thing, not the marathon or bills to pay or stuff to write or irritations or obligations or any of the other always-present baggage of life.

After 18 years, two kids, a million responsibilities and woes, I'm left with one plain truth, a truth that maybe in these recent months (years?) with all the other stuff going on that always seems to be going on I might have kind of forgotten: that I love him strongly and deeply and with my entire being.

It is the best, most wonderful, absolutely unexpected surprise of this entire marathon experience.

(Right about now you're rolling your eyes. Oh please, you're saying. This is all a bit much, isn't it? Well, yes, it is. But as unbelievably sentimental and silly and overwrought as it sounds, that's what happens when you're on drugs, even the running-induced kind.)

It is beyond a runner's high.

It is the pretty side of the ugly, cannibalizing neurochemical meltdown that nearly did me in.

The serotonin sweet spot. Nature's ecstasy. Hubby love.

From Science Daily:"Ecstasy, which is known chemically as methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA...causes neurons, or nerve cells, to release serotonin, a neurotransmitter that controls mood, pain perception, sleep, appetite and emotions."

From Scientific American: "What are the effects of the drug ecstasy? Feelings of euphoria, enhanced mental and emotional clarity, sensations of lightness and floating."

And I only needed to run 26.2 miles and nearly die to get there.

Since I'm sharing the love, here's an embrace for my fellow runners, the German Silvas (get the lowdown on the name here and here). We started out with 20-something and finished with a core of eight, a strong group, a mighty group.

Running is ultimately a solitary sport, but it was my team that got me (almost) through. Thank you to: Dwayne Johnson-Cochran (7:13:30) for planting the cortisone seed; Eun Kyung Lee (6:42:29) for urging everyone on; Sandy Lin (6:15:20) for the sunglasses that became my good luck charm; Andrea Cavanaugh (7:11:16) for cracking me up, back-up blogging and editing this extremely long piece; Amy Finn Bernier (6:42:28) for sticking with it; Rachel Tronzano-Ryan (6:02:45) for getting me to almost the very end on marathon day, and Gaby Vergara (6:11:14) for inspiring us all.

(Left to right, Rachel Tronzano-Ryan, Gaby Vergara, Dwayne Johnson-Cochran, me, Andrea Cavanaugh, Sandy Lin, Amy Finn Bernier, Eun Kyung Lee)

It's a few days out and the initial bliss has faded, but the residual joy is still going strong.

Out of 14,185 runners who completed the marathon, I came in at 9,615. There were 500 women between the ages of 40 and 44 who ran the marathon. Within that group I came in at number 329.

Not elite.

Not even average.

But who wants to be compared with a bunch of hyper-competitive, fat- and exercise -obsessed runners anyhow? Not my crowd.

In my crowd -- the soft, marshmallowy let's-have-a-beer-and-watch-a-movie-and-sleep-in crowd -- I did just fine.

As for the pain of recovering from a marathon, this video clip, courtesy of Coach Scott, paints an accurate picture.

That's the end of the story and the end of the blog. I've been at this for 35 weeks and as many posts (including two by Andrea Cavanaugh) and it's been a wonderful ride.

Thanks for joining me.

Posted by Sara Catania at 3:32 PM | Permalink

I crossed the finish line ahead of pace.

Running.

On my own two feet.

Just like coach promised.

And I feel very, very, very good.

And I really need a shower.

More later.

Posted by Sara Catania at 4:08 PM | Permalink

With the long-awaited marathon just three days away I could spend this final pre-event blog in numerous ways.

I could continue my weeks-long whining about my punk knee, for which I got a cortisone shot this morning from a fine orthopedist named David B. Golden, whose very name rings with promise, and whose impressive credentials include a stint as assistant team physician for the 2001 World Champion New England Patriots.

Dr. Golden is an expert in sports-related injuries, and while he didn't write the book on knee pain he did co-write a chapter - in the second edition of the Manual of Pain Management (chapter 17, between scroiliitis and foot pain).

He was reluctant to give me the shot. He warned me that it probably won't be all that effective in staving off the debilitating pain in my illiotibial band that has been causing me so much woe.

But I explained that this is a one-time deal, that I've been training since September, for fool's sake, and that I can't throw all that away because of some dang-blasted last-minute knee flare-up.

In a word, I begged.

He relented and administered the five minute procedure (a simple prick of a needle --less painful than getting your ears pierced) and I have the Band-Aid on my right knee to prove it.

Whether it will do the trick or not, I don't know. But I'm not going to spend this last pre-marathon blog posting going on about that.

I could go on about last-minute jitters, which one reader calls PMS--pre-marathon stress. Symptoms include sleeplessness, over sleeping, loss of appetite, overeating, and a vague sense of dread. But why dwell on the negative?

I could wax poetic about my final pre-marathon run, on the trail around the Silver Lake Reservoir. I was up and out by 5:30 a.m. - my LA Times hadn't even arrived (or maybe, I worried, they've gone so broke they've discontinued home delivery?) -- and the air smelled strangely, delightfully, of citronella and graham crackers.

The morning was cool and overcast, my legs and lungs were cooperating and I had the trail all to myself. Runner's nirvana.

I've been feeling a sense of calm all week - a type of calm that has come over me only three times in my life, once before I was married and then again in the days before the births of my two children.

It's a calm you have to talk yourself into after talking yourself down from a heightened sense of anxiety and fear. The choice is either to stay fearful and anxious or to remind yourself that you're heading toward something absolutely marvelous and completely of your own choosing and embrace a detached bliss.

But why go on about me? None of this would have been remotely possible without the superlative guidance of one Coach Scott Boliver, who made the 80-mile round-trip trek from his home in Brea to the training site in Griffith Park every Saturday morning from October to nearly June.

Scott is a prison psychologist who seems to spend every non-working moment of his life training marathoner wannna-bes. Our start time was 8 a.m., but Scott would routinely arrive two hours early to stake out our route, setting up mile markers for us along the way to help keep us from getting lost. He'd try to vary the route as much as possible and he'd hand out both maps and written directions. On the week of the pre-marathon 26-mile run, he got to the park so early that police took him for a hustler and bore down on him with bright lights and amplified commands.

As the runs got longer, he organized games like the Amazing Race and Runner's Poker to keep the runners engaged. Sometimes runners would groan about the games or choose not to participate, but they'd come around when they saw Scott (who paid out of his own pocket) taking the winning groups out to breakfast or bringing them special treats like popsicles and ice (which, like all cold things, are highly coveted on long runs).

He kept our brains occupied while pushing our bodies to do what we thought they could not. He once sent us up a very steep hill without any advance warning, but he heaped on the praise after we'd accomplished the task.

Each week he brought his posse with him. That included son Alec, a competitive swimmer on his high school team who refilled the runner's water bottles on the course, and his mom and dad, Pat and Ray Boliver, who every week spent their own money to stock a snack table halfway through the run loaded with pickles, peanut butter-coated crackers, peanuts, pretzels, Gatorade and the occasional home-made banana bread. On Easter weekend they brought coconut macaroons and mini brownie cupcakes topped with Jordan almonds.

Coach Scott exudes empathy. When runners would ask him about every little pinch and blister he'd take it all as seriously as the questioner required. He never talked about his own aches and woes. When the wildfires last fall came within a few feet of his home, he didn't mention it to the group and didn't miss a training.

The training for the LA marathon was supposed to end in March (and then February). According to that schedule, Scott and the other APLA coaches would have had a month or two off before they started training a new group of runners for the Disney Half Marathon this summer and the Maui Marathon in the fall.

When the LA Marathon got put off until Memorial Day, Coach Scott stayed on as our trainer, even though it meant he would be training three separate groups of runners for three separate marathons at once -- hundreds of whining, high-injury non-athletes just like me -- which he's been doing and which would have driven any normal person out of his mind my now. That's where being a psychologist comes in handy.

Scott is in his mid-40's and came to marathoning less than ten years ago -- fairly late in life. When he first started running he was morbidly obese - it took him more than nine hours to complete his first marathon. After losing more than 100 pounds he ran it in under five hours, and decided to start coaching.

When I first started training - and blogging about it - last fall, I got numerous emails from readers who told me how lucky I was to have Scott as my coach. Yeah right, I thought. Like I really need somebody to tell me how to run.

I've never had a coach before. Not a sports coach anyway. I've had writing coaches, and a friend's wife worked for a while as a life coach.

I never had any kind of organized P.E. at my inner-city elementary school, and I got enough flak from my meager attempts to learn double-dutch that I had no interest in ever attempting to join a team of any kind. I taught myself to ride a bike, my mother taught me to water ski and a girl named Donna who lived down the street showed me how to hula-hoop.

I weaseled my way out of all physical exercise in high school by playing flute in the band. In college we were all encouraged to coach one another (pity anyone who might have relied on me) and after that I pursued exercise of the non-coached variety (swimming, bicycling, yoga).

Before the marathon training, the closest I'd come to the coach experience was having an editor. The relationship is somewhat similar. You have to trust your editor completely, to follow his or her guidance and advice, even when you can't see how it's going to work. You do it because you share a common goal and because-- if you're lucky -- you like them.

I've had many editors, most of them adequate, some of them awful, a very few of them great. The makings of a great editor include smarts, empathy, wisdom, good judgment and the ability to manage people. A great editor, like a great coach, extracts from you your best possible self and your best possible work.

In a thousand small ways, Coach Scott has managed to do that. When I signed up to train I was a little grumpy and a little skeptical, an outsider observing and commenting on the process. Somewhere along the way I became a booster, a pace group leader, a true believer in the method.

This is my one and only marathon, and, as I've said before, the closest I'll ever get to a team sport. Scott Boliver is the one and only coach I'll ever have. Lucky me, I got the best.

Sure I'm still grumpy --and of late also gimpy -- but I'm in it to the end. Thanks, Coach.

Posted by Sara Catania at 12:52 PM | Permalink

For nearly all of what has turned out to be an eight-month training gestation, the marathon has seemed a remote happening. An abstraction somewhere in the ever-distant future.

For weeks, if not months, I've been wishing for the whole thing to get here already. As Coach Scott put it last Saturday: "You're trained longer than any group in AIDS Marathon history."

Yet now that it is finally about to arrive - a week from Monday, no less-- I feel completely unprepared.

The fear that worked so well for so long in motivating me to get out of bed every weekday morning at 5:30 to squeeze in a quick run ("If I don't get out of bed and get running, I'll never be able to run the marathon") has been overcome by a debilitating, fatalistic malaise.

"If I'm meant to run the marathon, I will run it," I tell myself as I turn off the alarm and pull the covers up to my chin. So my regular running routine is, um, a little off.

This circumstance has been brought on in no small part by the knee ailment I've been battling for the past few weeks, a common -- albeit uncommonly painful--condition caused by swelling of the illiotibial or IT band.

Last Saturday I ran ten miles with my pace group. I was running and chatting and feeling fine when the pain hit somewhere around mile nine. The last mile left me wondering how I am ever going to drag myself through the full 26.2.

To combat the (literally) crippling pain, I've been dutifully undertaking the stretches and exercises recommended to me by my orthopedist, which are pretty much the same old boring stretches you do in P.E. (Arms against the wall, feet flat, lean. Cross legs, bend at waist, hold. One leg back, one leg forward, lean. Yawn. Repeat.)

Just for fun, I've thrown in the stretches recommended by my co-runner (and co-IT band pain suffer), Rachel. Her physical therapist recommended that she position herself lengthwise atop a foam cylinder (like a hair roller on steroids) and move across the pained area multiple times daily.

Which I have, and which results in unnerving crunching sounds emanating from somewhere deep within the knee-thigh-hip region accompanied by evermore pain. But pain is weakness leaving the body, at least according to the Marines. If that's so, then weakness sounds like potato chips.

And which, look here, really are potato chips! Of which I've been eating more than I should as a palliative for what ails me, and which seem to have fallen under the roller. My chip consumption would horrify any serious runner (Ack! The saturated fat!) and will certainly only exacerbate my sluggish pace.

My co-runner Dwayne thinks all this roller/stretching stuff is nonsense and I should just get a cortisone shot and be done with it. "Get the shot and get back out there," he whispered as I limped toward the finish line. "That's what the pros do."

I'm calling the doc now.

Posted by Sara Catania at 4:00 PM | Permalink

When Coach Scott announced last Saturday that many of the pace groups, including the one to which I belong, were undergoing name changes I immediately invented my own explanation for the switch.

You may recall that last fall I wrote about our my pace group's namesake, an Olympic marathoner from rural Mexico named German Silva whose claim to fame was his navigational confusion during a New York marathon.

While in the lead he strayed from the designated course, was forced to retrace his steps, and still managed to win. For at least the past decade and possibly longer, Silva's name has graced the pace group to which I was assigned last fall.

As the name "pace group" suggests, one is technically assigned based on one's running pace.

But over the course of these many months of training, I've come to believe that my running mates and I were assigned to the German Silvas we embodied the Silva spirit of stick-to-it-iveness.

Thus my invented explanation last weekend for the switch: as is customary in competitive sports when a team retires the number of a player so superlative that no other player can wear that number, so the trainers at AIDS Marathon deemed our pace group so exemplary that it was time to give the German Silva name a much-deserved rest.

The truth is not nearly as flattering to us. "The organization just thought it was time to honor some of the more recent runners," Coach Scott explained.

Oh. You mean it's not because of our extra months of training? It's not about our remarkable development as runners, and as a pace group?

"Nope."

I'll stick with my modified reality. Whatever the reason, our group is the last of the German Silvas, which means we have a legacy to uphold, or create.

There's no way I'll have the chance to get lost during the marathon by running so far ahead of everyone else, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that, with my bum knee, I may be so far behind the other 25,000-odd runners that I'll stray from the designated route. (Note to self: bring a map.)

Speaking of my bum knee, when I described my injury (searing pain that appeared around mile ten, originated on the outside of my right knee and traveled up to my hip, becoming progressively worse until it caused my knee to buckle), everyone I spoke to identified it as an inflamed illiotibial, or IT band.

It's one of the most common running injuries and there are numerous websites with suggestions for stretches and strengthening exercises to combat it.

But, just to be on the safe side, I went to see an orthopedist. The first thing I noticed in the doctor's office is that everyone who worked there looked like an athlete. I guess it makes sense that if you're active in sports you might get interested in sports medicine.

A nurse who looked like a basketball player took me to see an X-Ray technician (football) who took me to see a doctor (golf). When he saw my X-Ray he got very excited. "Take a look at this," he said to the internist at his side (swimming). He walked over to the examining table, picked up my leg as if it were a treasured nine iron. "Feel this," he said to the intern as he handed her my bent knee.

"The fibblabla and the tibblabla are mortocorturalbla and extendo malto bla bla bla," he said. That's not really what he said, but I hadn't thought to bring my notebook and that's what I remember.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means everything is perfect," he said. "Your joints are in perfect shape."

Wow.

The doctor assured me that running 26.2 miles in the excruciating pain caused by the inflammation of my IT band would do no permanent damage.

"So when my knee buckles that doesn't mean there's something terribly wrong?" I asked.

"Nope," he said. "That's just your body responding to the pain."

Oh, is that all?

"There is one thing to keep in mind," he said. "That buckling might cause you to fall down, and then you really could injure yourself."

Lovely. But now that I have the Silva legacy to uphold I'm going to have to stick it out, collapsing knee and all. Even if I wind up not only the last of the German Silvas, but the last of the LA marathoners.

Posted by Sara Catania at 4:01 PM | Permalink

All that whining and complaining and dissing of running I did last week? I take it all back.

No sooner had I turned off my laptop and laced up my track shoes but the running gods turned the full force of their considerable wrath upon me.

As you might recall, I was heading off for a 26-mile run last Saturday morning.

But at mile ten, a mighty, searing pain did strike my right knee and all but smote me as I jogged with my running crew down Burbank's shady lanes.

Here I'd been thinking I was immune to injury. I'd followed all the rules, getting (almost enough) sleep, eating (sort of) right, sticking to the prescribed running schedule. I was a textbook example of the hubris of the uninjured: injury wasn't possible.

To be fair, I'd suffered a similar debilitating ache during the 23-mile run. Not knowing any better, I continued, mile upon mile, barley limping across the finish line. But within hours after the run, the awful, raw feeling of a knee made of grated skin and bone disappeared and I experienced complete pain amnesia, not unlike what one encounters after childbirth (as the mother of two children, I know if what I speak).

So when the pain revisited me on Saturday I was taken completely by surprise. Once it settled in, however, the memory of the 23-mile run came back to me with alarming clarity and force.

I knew I would not drag myself through miles of pain again. And so I did something I have never once done during this entire epic six-month training. I stopped.

Before setting off without me, my running crew hugged me goodbye. "Don't feel bad," they told me. "Take care of yourself." Off they ran, feet in motion, while I stood there, feeling strange to be standing still.

To console myself I imagined how annoying it must have been to all the other runners that I never tripped or ached or quit. Finally I was getting my comeuppance.

Serves me right, I thought, as I sat in the shade at a water stop, waiting for Linda Francisco, the fundraising coach, to haul me back to the start line. You gripe, you pay. I thought back on what I wrote last week and realized I hadn't quit on running. Running had quit on me. It was like deciding to dump someone, only to have them beat you to the breakup.

Linda was happily photographing volunteers who had set up special themed water stops in celebration of this 26-mile lunacy. At one stop, moms in sombreros served shots of Gatorade. At another, with a car wash theme, several young ladies in cutoffs lounged around an authentically massive 70's-era boom box.

Back at the start line, still more volunteers were setting up the finish line, complete with a red carpet and balloon arc. Linda encouraged me to stick around and collect my medallion, but it seemed silly to take credit for a 26-mile run when I'd only made it to mile 11.

It was all of 10 a.m., giving me plenty of time to do all sorts of things I hadn't thought I'd have time for. I went to my son's soccer game, helped my daughter wrap a birthday present for a sleepover party and shopped for curtains for our living room.

I thought about running the entire time.

I'd look at the clock and think: "11 a.m. - they're at mile 18 by now--I hope Rachel's knee is holding up. Noon - it's still pretty cool out - I bet everyone is cruising right along. 12:30 - hmm - did Sandy bring sunscreen?" And on and on.

The degree of my disappointment surprised me. I had no idea how much I'd been looking forward to subjecting myself to endless hours of repetitive, high-impact motion. But I had.

So what of this mysterious pain? Both times it showed up around mile ten, a searing ache that grew in intensity as the miles mounted. I'm assured by many running veterans that I'm suffering the symptoms of an injured IT band, one of the most common running ailments and eminently treatable.

But when I showed up for my appointment with an orthopedist this morning, it turned out that an error had been made (those damn running gods!) and my appointment isn't until next week.

Good thing tomorrow's run is only eight miles.

Posted by Sara Catania at 3:09 PM | Permalink