Running Christmas List

 By: Unknown    Tuesday, December 24, 2013  Boston Marathon, christmas, christmas list, marathon, running   No comments

It's been increasingly difficult to create a Christmas list as I've gotten older. No more lengthy lists requiring endless mall visits or early morning wrapping for mom and dad. For what else could I really ask, you know? With a great school, wonderful family and friends, and plenty of traditions, there isn't much I need or want. When my parents ask for gift ideas, I can't offer them more than a few book titles or a bow tie suggestions. While I can't ask for much under the Christmas tree, there are a few running-related wishes I have. Not for anyone in particular. Not entirely practical. Christmas running wishes nevertheless. 

Training during the winter is rarely pleasant, but it's what make the spring goals achievable. Plowed roads and shoveled sidewalks would be wonderful, but I couldn't be more thankful for Comm Ave. and its immaculate carriageway during the winter. I'm more than willing to pay someone for a path shoveled around the Res. It's my favorite loop with the greatest view of both BC and the Boston skyline, and I'd really like to avoid slipping into the Res itself. If I just make it through these next months of winter running without falling again, I'd be thrilled.

What's the most badass things about training during the winter? The frozen beard. There's nothing I want more than to be able to grow a beard. I have absolutely nothing to show for these past few months of not shaving. If anything, it's a sad imitation of Spencer Pratt's beard circa The Hills. All I want is to come back from a brutally cold run with a badass frozen beard to show for it. Maybe that's vain. Maybe I'm just bitter that I'm too much of a cherub to even grow a beard.

For that dog who has barked at me almost every day for the past two years, I'd like for you to have some peace of mind. I'm not so sure what's so threatening or frightening or intimidating about some scrawny boy running in split shorts or running tights that drives you mad. Every time I near your yard, I hope in vain that you won't bolt to the fence and stand on your hind legs, ready to take me down. While I'm relieved that you haven't hopped the fence yet, please know that I am not nearly as malicious as you perceive me. I'm just looking to log a few miles. 

Speaking of split shorts and running tights. If I could just exist and wear my short shorts or running tights without getting the oddest looks, that would be enough. I get it -- they are quite short, the running tights are quite tight -- but it's what I wear to train. I'm not asking to wear a flannel and running tights to class (though that sounds quite warm and comfortable) nor am I asking to wear my split shorts when I go out on the weekends. Can I not just make a quick stop in the dining hall for some post-run Cho or chocolate milk without some disproving gazes? That would be enough. Really it would. 

An end to after-run-stomach-aches. There are few things more terrible than lying in bed, writhing in lactic acid agony, asking existential questions. How many hours have I spent curled up on the bed, on the floor, in the car after practice or a run? These most usually occur after intense workouts or long runs. After sacrificing your body during a workout, the stomach aches exacerbate the pain and the exhaustion. Maybe it's just another sign of an honest, hard effort for a workout. Along with this stomach issue, let's just eliminate all kinds of gastrointestinal distress during runs and races. There's nothing else to be said about that.

What about some better tasting gels for race day? Some of the gels just taste foul, like the tears of missed personal records or something. Even the gels that agree most with me aren't terrible pleasant. A gel equivalent to Picky Bars would be the perfect stocking stuffer. 

Give me some great runs with friends over break and at school, and that would make winter training more bearable and certainly more fun. Winter training is brutal without a team or friend to run with, to make those freezing workouts, those dark runs easier.

What would be the greatest Christmas gift of all would be an injury-free, successful training period for Boston. If it were guaranteed that I could log the all the miles without falling and keep raising money for WEF, I'd be the happiest boy on Christmas morning. 

For everyone celebrating Christmas, I'd like to wish you a wonderful holiday. Enjoy family and traditions and Christmas morning runs, if you decide to log some miles tomorrow morning. It may be frigid and icy, but try to stay warm and stay on your feet. 

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Beyond Words

 By: Unknown    Thursday, December 19, 2013  boston 2014, Boston Marathon, college, marathon, running, writing   No comments

It is with great relief that I say the semester is over. Finals finished. Trek home completed. While I wish I could say this semester has been easy, it's been anything but easy, what with a fairly demanding course schedule, marathon training, being heavily involved at BC. For as stressed and as exhausted as I might have been at times, I'd say that it was worth it all. Worth the long runs on some struggles of Sundays and the paper edits at midnight and the longest life talks with roommates and the existential crises induced by an abundance of work and a scarcity of time.

It might have been the late and hectic (looking at you, Black Friday) Thanksgiving and the significant amount of work and the insufficient sleep finally catching up with me, but by last weekend I could feel the burnout. Only for so long can I write and edit and study without feeling spent. By the end of it all I was sick of words. Editing some fifty pages of writing and dissecting a lease word-by-word had done me in. When I ran after the weekend snowstorm I was more anxious about falling in the Res from the unplowed, icy path and not being able to turn in my final papers and sign our lease. While I'm satisfied with my work and stoked to have a home for next year, it's difficult to convey the immense relief I felt after turning in my final papers and signing our lease on Monday. Out of words. Over words.

Don't get me wrong. Words are everything good. As a human, reader, writer (and English major?) words are all I have. A semester of battling with language, struggling with syntax, fixing poorly translated French, inspecting leases, editing emails, and establishing meaning had left me wordless.  They're imperfect, but they're all we have. Sometimes it's exhausting to work with words -- to define ideas, to communicate clearly to make meaning. Ask my roommates how many times in a state of desperation I have questioned "What is is?" "What is what?" That might just be all the modernist and postmodernist works I've read over the past semester, but sometimes words just don't seem to be enough -- they struggle to mean. But that's what I love about working with words, written or spoken, scholarly or personal, to create something meaningful. 

It's exhausting though. For all the things I had to write and edit during finals, I needed that time away from the words and the analysis and the meaning-making. Often people seem to forgo exercise when the work and the stress accumulates, but running is exactly what I need when I find myself overwhelmed with work and words.

Running is the only time where I just be. Often I lace up with the intention of thinking things through or planning a paper, but nothing ever happens. For a few strides thoughts can start forming, plans can be made. It all dissolves into motion though. Running alone on pavement or trails, my mind doesn't wander. It's my body that wanders. Empty of thoughts, merely a body in motion. Hours of over-thinking exchanged for an hour or two of pure being. Maybe it's endorphins or something else biological, but it feels right to run. It's not about thinking, about defining yourself. It's ambiguous, I guess. And while ambiguity is problematic when working with words, that state of being running can reach is relief. Over-thinking limits, it separates. When running I become part of everything. No thoughts to limit or to stress. Pure motion, empty of thoughts, simplicity of being. A body breathing, moving, being. Out of the head, into being. Don't get me wrong though, racing and training require one to get in one's head. The sport's as psychological as it physical. But you can still get lost in the workout, in the race. Where pace calculations stop and the pain diminishes and it becomes simply about moving, about being.

Words are inadequate to describe the state. Running is singularly being in a way that I usually can't. With all the work and the stress that comes with college and life right now, running is what enables me to do things that I love. It's worth it all. When running I'm out of my head, out of words, over over-thinking. Simply moving. Being. 

For now though, I'm stoked just to be at home. Ready to recharge for next semester and to start the training cycle for Boston. No more books to read or papers to write right now, just some much needed reconnection, family and friend time, and holiday traditions. 

Hope everyone is finishing finals or enjoying their break and holiday season. 

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Running from, Running for

 By: Unknown    Wednesday, December 11, 2013  Boston Marathon, marathon, running   No comments

Since we were young we have been taught to run. To run from whoever is "it," to run for the ball, to run for first base, to run from the monsters, to run for cover. It seems to go deeper than that though -- our fight-or-flight instinctive is the foundation of it all. Running is an ultimately human response, a reflection of something at our very core. 

Whether anyone admits it or not, we all have something from which to run. It's only instinctive for us to run away from these things, to bury them beneath months of training, to put miles between ourselves and whatever is giving chase. These things from which we run often divulge the most true and most intimate parts of our individual selves. Whatever it is though does not matter, for it causes this flight, this run. Beneath the things for which we run -- exercise, pleasure, championships, fulfillment, health -- are these things from which we run. 

It's a natural response to run from. But is it the best one?

The flight is singularly motivated by whatever it is we're running from. If this a response for survival, are we really surviving so much as biding our time? In fleeing try to outlast that thing. There is no direct confrontation, no true effort to defeat whatever is giving chase. Though we may wish to, we cannot possibly run forever. The flight cannot indefinitely last, for the thing from which we run gains, and we cannot help put slow up at some point, exhausted. Entirely spent. Momentum lost. Legs locked. 

There's something ineffective about running from, and it seems to arise from its isolated state. No one else can run away That's the fundamental difference between running from something and running for something. A singularly motivated solitary flight and a highly dynamic fight for survival. 

Running for something implies the thing for which we run is essential, necessary for survival, necessary for simply being. For years I had a team for whom to run, to provide the motivation when I lacked it, to push me harder when my legs and lungs didn't want to respond. Coming to college without a season and a goal race and team did not undermine my love for running, but it certainly made me question what I was running for. For a while, I admit, I was running from a sense of failure, from unfulfilled goals, from an unsettled feeling about what I had accomplished and what I wanted. 

And only when I flipped that flight, giving chase instead of being chased, did everything change. When we start we running for things, there's an inevitable increase in momentum. While the impulse of the flight derives from a single source, the motivation of the flight is , gathering momentum from everything that supports it. I realized that during my first marathon -- that I was running to finish, but I was running for more than myself. Though my legs were beginning to lock and my body was spent, momentum was not lost. We may run for a single goal, but we run for the things which support us and our flight, the things which motivate us.

I might've been running for that finish or for a time goal, but I was running for so much more. For my family who have supported me and this often ridiculous thing I love. The team and the coaches who inspired and challenged me. The friends who don't necessarily understanding why I run, but who certainly accept me for it. The friends who listen to me occasionally talk about splits and races and elite runners. The roommates who haven't been angry with me as I struggle to pull on running tights on dark winter mornings. The roommates who haven't thrown my out for wearing short shorts around the dorm. The regulars I see on my runs, whether back home in Duryea or here in Boston, in whom I find comfort, whether they acknowledge me or not. The friends-and-fellow-runners who have challenged with me or passed miles with me.

And in these next few months, I'll find myself running for Boston. A city and a sport with an incredible tradition of resilience and strength. The Wellesley Education Foundation. Something more than a race.

Everything changes with that realization - that we're running for so much more.

With all that momentum, anything seems possible. 

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