“For one white singing hour of joy… (the Marysville Marathon Festival)

I’m running down the wide gravel bike trail, feeling nearly airborne.  It’s been years since I’ve run this fast, years since it hasn’t hurt.  Flying, I pass the runners who left me behind on the steep uphill, as well as the ones who blew by me on the rough downhill.  I don’t mean to pass them.  I’m simply running free for the first time in two years.

Still, we’re only four kilometers into the 21k Marysville Half-Marathon, and I think to check my pace.  I gasp: I’m running a 4:10 kilometer!  My training pace varies from 5:30 for my fast intervals, to 8:30 on the steep hills.  What in God’s name am I doing, running this fast!  I tell myself to slow down, to conserve my energy for the many kilometers to come.

But I don’t; not right away.

I continue to run just as fast as I can because it feels so tremendously – so life-affirmingly – good.

There’s a lot of water under this bridge.

I’m 49 years old.  At the top end of my 40-49 year age category.  I began this category Adventure Racing in Hong Kong, a lifetime ago.  Now, nearly ten years later, I’m back in Australia, and my passion is trail running.  It’s been good to me.

But since 2013, since my last Marysville Marathon Festival, in fact, I’ve been injured in various ways.  I hurt my knee the week after the marathon, then my ankle, then my foot.  I had a bit of surgery to remove a dodgy vein in the middle of all that, and thought I thought all had healed, it hadn’t.  I ended up with a severe case of Plantar Faschiitis, and a damaged Posterior Tibialis.

After doing the 2015 Roller Coaster 21k Run in March, I took a break.  Though I completed that race, I did it the hard way, in pain most of the way, and just dragging myself over the finish line.

Since, I’ve cross-trained, rehab-ed, grown stronger, and hopefully grown smarter.  And I’d set my sights on Marysville for my comeback run.  On the way, I had the joy of the Salomon Trail Series in the middle of the season, where I did a 5k as well as a 15k race, loving both, feeling my strength and speed return.

Marysville though, felt elusive.  Things kept hurting as I went longer, until about two weeks before the race.  Then, during a 20k solo training run in the Dandenongs, I felt it all come together.  My gluts woke up (ha, funny the way runners talk!), and I found myself running with much shorter, faster, powerful strides.

But in the clever way I have of adding a stir to the pot just when it is setting and cooking nicely, I decided to bring home a new puppy three weeks before Marysville.  So what, I hear you say.  What does a puppy have to do with a half-marathon?

Well, here’s the thing.  If you read my last blog, you know that I wasn’t afraid of running this time.  I was afraid of driving!  (See https://patriciaabowmer.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/the-long-road-to-marysville-half-marathon-2015/

The puppy meant my husband and children weren’t coming; he wasn’t driving.  I was.

Turns out my fear of the drive was well-founded.  I missed the first major turn off of East-Link and drove through a strange, long tunnel I didn’t even know existed, practically crying, as I thought I’d never find my way back.  I talked to myself aloud all the way through that tunnel, telling myself it would be ok, I’d find my way back, and I did.

The trip to Marysville, though,  involves a two-hour drive for me, with the last 15k of that on a single-lane twisty-turny terrifying mountain road.  That was the bit I was most worried about.  I did ok.  But still, cars backed up behind me, tailgating, forcing me faster than my confidence allowed, and I was often too scared to even pull over to let them pass.  When I did, I would count one, two, three, maybe ten cars go by, and then I’d pull back on the road to drive alone for a while.  But I made it there, with white hands from gripping the steering wheel so tightly!

Black Spur, image from mapio.cz as I couldn’t possibly take a photo on this road!

The actual race I remember in the moments.

The flying downhill at the bike trail; Red Hill being just as horrible and painful as I remembered from the Marathon in 2013; passing and being passed by the same three or four people again and again.

There was the mean woman, who when I politely asked to pass, snarled at me and said, “Sure, you can pass”, saying clearly, “if you are able to” and being unwilling to let me by on the rough single track where passing without her stepping slightly aside was impossible.  That saddened me; that doesn’t tend to happen in these friendly country races, that degree of nasty competitiveness.  We all want to run our own pace; I always let people by, stepping to the side, knowing the joy in moving at one’s own best on whatever terrain we can.

Forget her, though.

There was the delight of children cheering me through by the oval, and my ability to run up the steep road (short stride, gluts firing, power in me I’d forgotten), and the utter joy when we turned off into the woods, unlike the first year I’d run here, when we ran all the way up the road to the falls.

Coming back on the road, steep uphill, fighting to keep running, being told how well I was doing by others, pushing and pushing, knowing the top was coming soon, then the turn-off to the waterfall, stopping a moment to gaze at the water flowing, to say a quiet, I love you to the waterfall, because I was just so thrilled to have made it there.

Steavenson Falls close-up from my 2013 race

And then…

The last 3k to the finish line.  The downhill gravel track, where two years ago, my feet were hurting so badly I could barely run, where I just couldn’t wait for it to be over.

Today…God, today.  My white singing hour of joy.  I flew down that trail.  My feet found their way.  Nothing hurt.  Not my knee or my foot or my ankle.  I had plenty left in the tank.  I felt unstoppable and alive and young and free.

There was a final stretch through the woods.  After being surrounded by so many people as the different race distances had converged, I was surprised to find myself alone, with perhaps one kilometer to go.  I could hear the crowd at the finish, cheers and cowbells and music, but I was utterly alone in the green of the trees.  I began to sing,  Bon Jovi, of course, “I don’t wanna be another wave in the ocean, I am a rock, not another grain of sand, wanna be the one you run to when you need a shoulder, I ain’t a soldier but I’m here to take a stand, because we can…”

That’s how good I felt.

Right before the finish, I saw the girl in pink shorts in front of me; we had passed each other a hundred times during the race.  I suddenly wanted to catch her.  So I bolted.  I passed her, and it took me a little while to realise that this wasn’t the finish line.  I had to keep right on bolting for the full 3/4 lap around the oval and I don’t even now know where the finish line was!  I do believe I stayed in front, though I can’t be sure.

All I know is I found my one white singing hour of joy.  My moments of delight that come from dancing in this glorious body, fully well, feeling courageous and full of light.

By the way, the poem I began this blog with is called Barter, by  Sara Teasdale.  I memorised it in college when I was 21, and often recite it to myself when I run.  Funny thing though – I was looking up the original poem for this blog, and realised I’d altered some words in my memory.  She says, “one white singing hour of peace”.  I say joy.

I utterly love the last two lines:

“For a breath of ecstasy, give all you have been, or could be.”

Thank you, Marysville, for my breath of ecstasy.

 

Here’s the full poem:

Barter

Sara Teasdale, 1884 – 1933

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And childrens’s faces looking up
Holding wonder in a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit’s still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

This poem is in the public domain.

The long road to Marysville Half-Marathon 2015

Screw your courage to the sticking place.

That’s what I’m telling myself a few days before the Marysville Half-Marathon.  And oddly, it’s not even the running that has me scared.

It’s the two-hour solo drive.

I wish I could be one of those fearless people who just do things.  Like drive solo to a trail race without terror.  But I’m not from around these parts.  I’m from New York.  Place names and road names don’t mean as much and navigating alone to a new place is hard for me.

But so what?

I’ve been aiming at this race ever since the Roller Coaster Run Half-Marathon back in March.  Back then, I was running with a bad case of heel and calf pain, and right afterwards, I commenced a six-week break from running.  The plan was to cross-train and get strong again, in all the ways I had lost over my last two years of long-distance running.

A very gradual build from a 3k walk/run in late April has finally got me to the 20k mark, and relatively healthy.  My heel still hurts now and again, but the strength has returned to my gluts so I can power up hills in a brand-new way.  I managed my favorite run at Mount Dandenong two weeks ago, for 20k in 2:47 (heaps of elevation, though I was consciously going slow, I say defensively).  So I’m ready.

But always, at the back of my mind, there are these niggling doubts. Which hydration device to use?  Will there be snakes around and will I step on one?  Is Red Hill as bad as I remember from the Marathon a few years ago?  Will the roads be twisty and windy and scary to nagivate?  Will the cars back up behind me and beep and force me to go faster than I want?  Was substituting two swims a week for two runs a good cross-training plan or utter stupidity? Blah, blah, blah.

Usually, my family would go with me to Marysville.  My husband would drive, and I’d relax and nagivate.  This year, we’ve added a ten-week old Cavoodle to our home, an adorable puppy named Billy (a Cavoodle is a poodle and King Charles Cavalier cross – he looks like a tiny black teddy bear with sharp teeth but he thinks he is a Labrador-Kelpie because that’s what his sister is). He was going to the source of a blog called “The Stupidest Thing I’ve ever done: Part 2” but I’ve been too busy cleaning up after him, and laughing at the antics of the two dogs playing to write.

Anyway, strangely, my husband doesn’t fancy shepherding the two kids and two dogs around Marysville while I gallivant in the woods for a few hours. Go figure.

So I’m on my own (except for all the cool trail running friends I can’t wait to see!).

Trouble is, those cool friends won’t be in my car with me to tell me where to turn.  And where not to. So I’m going to have to harden up and do this on my own.

Screw my courage to the sticking place.  That quote is from Lady Macbeth, according to my Google search.  If I recall my Shakespeare from college correctly, that story didn’t turn out so well .

Perhaps I’ll think of this other old favorite from Mark Twain, that I’ve borrowed from http://www.quotegarden.com

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.  Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.  ~Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, 1894

Please be kind if you see me on the road (I’ll be the one backing up traffic), and know I’m summoning up all my courage to get to the start line.

I still fall on my face sometimes…

Ah, Jessie J, you’ve got it so right tonight, I had tears streaming down my face as I listened to your wonderful song.  It gets to the heart of things.

There are confidences I cannot give away whilst blogging, and this makes it so hard to tell the truth.  Suffice it to say it has been a tough day.  One of those days where the dark cloud seemed to follow me around no matter how I tried to blow it away.  There are good reasons for the darkness, reasonable reasons, and yet, how I Hate IT.

So, when I’m sitting at home after finally getting the kids to bed after cooking two separate dinners and waiting for the third one to finish in the oven, well, everything seemed to sort of suck.  I’m too tired to come up with a poetic way to put it.  Everything sucked.

I spent three months renovating my home office so I could have a great place to finally write my masterpiece, but in the renovation, my computer got filled with dust, the internet broke, and I could no longer print to my printer.  In between, I spent a week in New York far-welling my elderly Aunt, a week in Sydney celebrating my 20th wedding anniversary, and lots of time soul-searching.

There is a book in me that is itching to be written.  I’ve started it three times, in three ways, and am now trying to merge them together to make a masterpiece.  What with family, and work, and pets, and laundry, it is so hard to find the time.  I keep falling on my face.

I think we’re doing okay, then a day comes like today, or yesterday, and pulls the rug out from under me, pulls me under like a rip-tide, and I know if I went for a run I’d run way too far to just run away from this black dog at my heels.

Instead, I’m going to breathe and blog, and accept that today was just one day.  I’ve had plenty of bad days, bad weeks, bad months, but I’ve always come through.  The dark I live in today will power my writing in the future.

I still fall on my face sometimes.  But it’s okay.  Because Jessie J does too, and she writes masterpieces that move me to tears.  I’m just going to dust myself off, put on Rachel Platten’s Fight Song, and get on with thinking about my new masterpiece.

Running?  It’s going okay.  But that’s a blog for another day.

On the road (trail) again….

I always begin in fear.  Always.

At Mount Dandenong on the 31st of July, after nearly three months away, it was no different.  I’d been playing games with myself for days, wondering whether it was the right time for me to re-visit my mountain playground.  I’d been back from my New York trip for a week.  I was feeling distinctly unsettled.  Each night, deep in the middle of the darkness, I’d wake up and not know where I was.  I’d look at the outlines of pictures on the bedroom wall, and wonder why my wedding picture was above the bed in the hotel room.  Why the small picture of the Dandenongs was where it was.  I would panic, not knowing where I was, or even which country I was in.

My foot was mostly healed, and I’d built up to 9k on the gentler trails of home, the treadmill, and Central Park, New York.  But I still wasn’t sure I was up to the bigger hills at Mount Dandenong.

Then I got the news that my Aunt had died.  This Aunt who was the last survivor of my parents’ generation.  She who had bought me a tiny bottle of Chanel #5 when I was 14, telling me without telling me, that I had become a woman.  When hurricanes hit our low-lying beach suburb, we used to flee to her high-rise apartment in New York City.  She would cook Yorkshire Pudding and Brussel Sprouts for Christmas dinner, serving while drinking vodka on the rocks that she would mix with her little finger.  On my bookshelf is an entire collection of Charles Dickens she bought for me one book at a time.  She was elegant; an actress in New York doing one-woman shows, living on her own in her apartment for the forty years of my awareness.  And now, she was gone.

I was full of jet-lagged exhaustion, contemplation about where home was, worry about my foot being hurt, and profound sorrow at the loss of my Aunt.

I go to the woods when I need soothing, when I need to meditate and reflect on things.

So early on Friday, I went.  It is an hour’s drive from home, plenty of time to let my nerves get jangly.  The parking area at The Basin Theatre was more populated than usual.  This played on me too.  I like it deserted.  It feels safer somehow.

I trotted off into the woods in quest of a 9k run.  The thin, technical trail from the car park helped me to focus my mind on the physical.  I slid down a steep incline at its end, to cross a road and join Edgars Track.  This is my least favorite section.  It’s so close to the road that I almost expect bad guys to jump out from the trees.  I have to coach myself to run and not look behind me, to be in the moment.

A short while later, I turn right onto Golf Course Track, slanting uphill, working harder.  This leads me back to the hard-packed dirt road, which I follow uphill to the Stables car park.  Here’s where my heart settles.  The track is rocky and slants downhill.  It’s studded with rocks and littered with gum-tree bark in long strips.  It smells of earth and trees and life.  I fly down, leaving fear behind, galloping in joy.

At the end, a steep uphill makes me walk, and links me to Bill’s Track, which reminds me every time of an old New York friend who died (his name was Bill), and I think of him, miss him, then shimmy-shammy my way down the trail, trying not to face-plant, and find myself back on Edgars Trail again at the bottom.  I know the steepest hill is coming and I plan to walk it, but don’t plan for how unfit I feel after months away.  It is surprising and joyous because I know I’m on the comeback now.

At the top, I turn right onto Camelia Track, which is my favorite part of this run.  It is so lovely, it’s unbelievable no one else is here.  White birds of Freedom (some call them Sulfur-Crested Cockatoos) heckle me from the side of the trail, but wait for me until I’m right  up close before flying up into the trees.  I say hello because they are friends of a sort, and I’ve missed them.  They belt out their raucous cry, the one I love, full of abandon and noise and so lacking in self-consciousness it makes me wish I could be them.

The trail takes me gently downhill, not too technical, and I soak up the colors and smells and think of nothing but the next footfall.

At the end of Camelia Track are a few small trails I’ve not yet explored.  I bookmark them in my mind to explore another day when I have more km’s available in my healing legs.

At the end of the trail, I exit through a gate, and turn back onto the hard-packed dirt road that will take me back to my car.  The ground feels hard after the gentle trail and I’m aware that my foot is not fully healed so I go slowly until I’m back at my car.

Beautiful Mount Dandenong

The nine kilometers has given me the perspective I needed on the big events I’ve been facing.  It is a simple but priceless thing, a run in the woods.  Time and again, the trail takes me out of myself and then delivers me back home.

 

And so three months have passed…

I’ve kept quiet.  This journey back to health seems to have silenced me rather abruptly.  Perhaps a part of me thought it would make dull reading, which underestimates my reading audience – I expect many of you runners have been injured and felt much of what I’ve felt in the process.  Maybe you would have liked to share my journey?

Here’s what’s happened, in a nutshell: I maintained my commitment to returning to running slowly and healthfully, beginning with a small 3k walk/run as a dip-my-toe in strategy.  The increase has been super-slow, to a 4.5k week, then the following weeks total km of 6, 8.2, 10.7, 12, 13.3, 15.2, and 16.85.  Then I dropped back again, to 15, and 15.76, a forced decrease due to travel.  I’m still running in shoes with a slight heel lift, which I hate, and make my hips hurt, but I’m going to do this until my foot feels perfect.  I’ve done one race since the Roller Coaster half-marathon, the Salomon Trail Series Studley Park 5k, a fast and thrilling run, that reminded me why I love speed!

In the midst of all this return to running, the momentum I had long wished to sweep me off my feet finally showed up.  Kind of like a tsunami.  After seven years of planning, I spent June having my office torn apart.  It was an ugly mustard-yellow, with huge built-in robes that I’d stuffed full when we moved, and left alone in dismay all this time.  It was a mess and not a place that inspired me.  So I hired someone to design a brand-new bookcase, and someone else to tear out the ugly old wardrobe, re-plaster the wall, and paint the room a warm, clean white (I’ll share the photos in another blog).  The bookshelf is due to arrive in September, and I’m still on the search for a beautiful reading chair in aqua, and a warm charcoal-grey rug.  It is feeling more like home, more like me, than ever before.  The bonus was I got to go through all my old books and papers, and revisit my roots, and think again about who I am, and who I intend to be.

I saw this on a stall outside of Central Park, where I was walking alone, thinking…

Only trouble was, my computer got full of construction dust, and died.  It took a week or two to get it fixed, and with that, time slipped away.  No writing on my new novel; no blogging.  Just a lot of vacuuming up construction dust and choosing paint.  But all for a good cause.

Just when I was getting back on my feet, I learned, to my great sadness, that my favorite Aunt was dying of cancer back in New York.  I had let my passport expire, so spent a few weeks chasing up a new one, and then, just last week, had an emergency trip back to see my Aunt and say goodbye.

It was wonderful to see my friends and family after eleven long years away.  I had a sense of homecoming, of being surrounded by familiar accents, food and places.  I ran around the local neighborhood on Long Island where my brother lives,

 

A run along on Long Island

in a nature reserve with my best friend, on the treadmill in my hotel on 57th Street, and finally, in a small, lovely touch of home, with a friend from Australia who happened to be in New York, on a 9k loop around Central Park.

Central Park, New York

Those running moments were my touchstone, my way of finding my way home again.  Yet I missed my family in Australia with a terrible ache.

Six days ago, I returned to Australia.  I’ve felt unsettled and uncertain where home really is.  Yesterday I got the news that my Aunt had passed away.  I’ve been pondering life and death and home.  I’ve been running and swimming and lifting weights, and hugging my children, husband, dog and cats.

In the next few weeks, I hope to get back to blogging more regularly.  Please excuse my long absence.  Life seemed to whisk me away from my computer, and my blogging skills feel rusty and strange.  If I think too much before I press publish, I’ll scare myself out of telling the truth so bear with me as I learn to write compelling, exciting prose again.

Seems I have to stumble around a bit in writing as in life to get back on my feet…

My new Brooks Pure Grit trail shoes…hope they help me find my feet again!

The Injured Runners’ Swimming Club

Seems like every second thing I read from a friend these days has to do with a running-related injury.  We’ve all been pushing the limits, testing them, finding them.  The trouble comes when we have to accept that we have over-stepped the line.  How are we to know where the line is, if we never over-step it?  I’ve done my share of over-stepping in the last year or so, and I know well the emotions that stalk the injured runner.

For me, it starts this way:

Oh, that was an odd little niggle.  Ouch.  Not so sure about that pain.  I think it will go away if I keep running on it a little longer.  And it does.

The next run.  OUCH.  It hurts again.  Maybe I’ll try shortening my stride.  Increasing the cadence.  Ah, the pain isn’t so bad.  I’ll keep running.

Two weeks later.  I’ve become accustomed to this pain.  It happens every time I run.  If I wait it out, maybe in 5k it will lesson.  Ow, ow, ow.  Now it’s gone numb.  That’s better.

Three weeks later.  OW!  How come it hurts to cook my kids’ dinner?  I’m not even running!  Maybe if I balance on one foot whilst cooking, it will challenge my stabilisers and fix things.

Three months later.  It hurts all the time.  Okay, maybe I’ll change shoes.  Still hurts.  Where are the anti-inflammatories?  Oh good, a large box.  That’ll last me a bit.

Six months later.  La la la.  If I sing loud enough while I run, maybe I won’t notice that every step is agony because my goal race is coming up and I can’t miss my goal race.  I wonder if I have a stress fracture?

Eight months later.  My physio says I should take some time off running and do some cross-training.  He/she’s obviously not a runner.  And an idiot.  Both, non-runner and idiot.  I hate him/her now and will have to find a new physio.

Eight and a bit months later.  How come all the physio’s don’t get it?  They seem to think I can just STOP running and be okay with this?  Time to Google this injury and really get on top of it.  Must be some YouTube videos on how to fix it instantly.

Finally, I meet a running-oriented physio who doesn’t tell me to stop.  She gets it.  In fact, she’s training for a big race herself.  And she gets injured.  And stops running.  It’s after she’s helped me hobble my way through my goal race, to achieve what I’ve set out to, that she stays stop.  And I do.  Because if someone like her – a runner, who has run herself into injury – if she says stop, I know I must.

So I do.  And I don’t even miss it!  That’s the irony.  It’s a relief to not have to run in pain anymore.  I miss my mountain trails and the woods, but it’s okay.  I realise this is needed, necessary, vital, this rest.

Fast forward: eight weeks later.  I’ve taken seven solid weeks off running.  I’ve begun swimming twice a week, and can feel my strength and speed sky-rocketing.  There’s power in me I forgot about.  I’m back to lifting heavy weights at the gym.  I’d forgotten how meditative weight-lifting can be.  I’ve downloaded a mindfulness App to my phone and am meditating in five minute intervals, three times a day.  I’m playing piano better than ever, and my foot doesn’t hurt to press the pedals anymore.  I’m happy.  Content.  Healthy.  With a vitality (and muscles) that had gone while I was running too far for my body.

Here’s who I don’t want to be anymore: a runner who can’t stop running even when injured.  Who uses running to meet all these super-important mental-health and physical-health needs, all whilst not noticing that running has actually become a problem in itself.  An out-of-balance runner who loses perspective on health in pursuit of a race goal.

With time off, I have found a new perspective.

Last week, the physio told me I could run again, for  up to 3k, 2 minutes running, 1 minute walking.  And I was scared.  Scared I’d go right back to who I was, running too far, running over injuries, forgetting that my health is my most sacred value.  So I kept the brake on for a few extra days, to remind myself that it is me who is in charge of when and how I run.  That running is an add-on to an exceptional life, and not the key to it.  I want to run mindfully, and notice what hurts, and respond to it, instead of trying to mask it or wish it away.

I ran my 3k.  My foot hurt afterwards.  Then felt better.  So I tried again on the treadmill last night.  It began to hurt at 1.5k.  I stopped the treadmill.  I got off.  I listened.

There is wisdom here.  I can feel it.  When I stop long enough to hear what my body – indeed, what my mind – is saying.  Stop, it is saying.  Rest.  Please.  Listening and responding to this wonderful machine that I live in feels so much better than pounding it into the ground.

The future?  Balance.  Running with mindfulness.  Running without pain.  And doing other cool stuff too.

I joke with my running friends that I have started a new club, called the Injured Runners’ Swimming Club.  It is growing rapidly.  But somewhere along the way, I discovered something.  I like swimming.  And cycling.  And weight lifting.  The world is a much bigger place than it was eight weeks ago.  And I’m going to keep it this way.