Tuning Up

Damn. Today is day three of my race training schedule, and I seem to have missed one and two. Damn.

No excuses. I am not waiting until Monday, even though Monday is a perfectly legitimate day on which to start things, and it is, after all, only two days away. I am just going to view the two days I seem to have missed as "administrative matter days," days numbered in small Roman numerals. It's how we used to justify blowing our finals studying schedule back in law school. Days i and ii, sometimes even iii and iv, were like the opening pages in a text, the print too small to capture full attention but a vague heralding of the real work to come.

The "Hot Chocolate 15K." In truth, every day for the past twenty-nine and a half years has been a small Roman numeral day in my preparation for this race. I have vivid memories of a beautiful Monday in April 1983, standing for hours on the sidewalk near my Boston apartment as I watched the Boston Marathon. It was a time when mass production of the new Sony Walkman had somehow turned thousands of ordinary, intelligent people into a generation of folks who ran around in circles, ending up exactly where they began. I had only recently caught the bug, venturing out every day to the beat of my favorite running tapes (playlist? what's a playlist?). My adrenaline rushed in synch with the rhythm of Michael Jackson's Thriller, my step took on an extra spring as The Weather Girls screamed It's Raining Men into my foam padded headphones. It took very little time for me to get hooked.

Still a running virgin, I watched the marathon that day with a giddy mix of awe and envy. I vowed to someday run one. Some day before I die. For years I kept the promise, to the extent you can keep a promise without actually ever doing something about it. Though I never even made it to the Roman numeral phase of a training schedule, I kept that promise in the back of my mind as I ran through rain and sleet and deadly humidity and the occasional shin splint or heel spur or unsightly gash on my face after slipping on black ice. I toured foreign cities on foot, planned brilliant lectures for my law school classes, conquered eating disorders, solved some of the bigger problems of the universe. It was cheap therapy, as long as you don't consider the toll it takes on your body.

Two years ago, when I finally figured out that being barely able to walk for two weeks after a three mile run might have actually had something to do with that three mile run, I stopped. Middle age had been nipping at my heels for some time, and had finally chased me down. I resigned myself to the idea that if I was ever to fulfill my promise of running a marathon, it would likely happen after I die, in that "other world" where we all get reunited with our dogs and lots of really cool and impossible things happen. I told myself I would be fine, I could live without the endorphin rush of a long jog, the head clearing exhilaration of a solitary journey over miles of pavement. If I really felt the need to escape into that zone, that parallel universe where heart rates sore and reality seems to melt away, I would just have to get into reality TV.

I stopped, yes, but I never fully gave up on some version of what I suppose has become more of a dream than a promise. So when my daughters mentioned they were going to run the "Hot Chocolate 15K" next month I think all I heard was "hot chocolate," and I certainly didn't to the kilometers to miles conversion, because if I had I would not have been stupid enough to sign up. And while a long ago promise to myself to run a marathon is one thing, a promise to myself within earshot of my doubting daughters is quite another. Their eye rolls and extreme disdain and talk about having me committed have only served to spur me on, to enhance my resolve. C'mon. Hot chocolate. How bad can it be?

Today could be day iii, but I'm going to do my darnedest to make sure it's simply a belated Day 1.  After I take care of a few administrative matters. Like searching for The Weather Girls on iTunes while I sip my hot chocolate and search the Internet for the best running shoes out there. Time marches on, and I can click my heels as many times as I like, but I am definitely not in Massachusetts anymore.