Can't Run Away Forever

In October of 2004 I ran the Marine Corps Marathon, and in November, I ran a Thanksgiving day 5k that would be my last race. It also turned out to be one of the last times I ran. From marathon to nothing in about one month. I can look back now with regret and understanding, but mostly regret.

I guess the story starts a lot earlier than that. I served four years in the military from 1996 to 2000. They made me run there and I garnered nothing but disgust for it. When I left the service I thought I would never run again and rejoiced in it. Then came the cushy desk job and the extra weight. Living a very active live style I didn't realize how easy it had been for me to gain weight. Weight is a sneaky thing though. You don't put it all on at once. It comes a little at a time until you wake up one day and your really heavy. You try to eat better, but that is only moderately successful. By the fall of 2002, I had decided to change.

That fall had many changes in store for me. I had decided to quit my cushy desk job and return to school. I picked out some running clothes and really crappy running shoes for my wife to get me for my birthday. I started running again. This was torturous and monotonous at first. I started out on the indoor track at the Middle Tennessee State University Recreation Center. It was six laps per mile and I would go in on Tuesday and Thursday evenings after a late class and do twelve laps. Of course I couldn't complete them at first but I soon found myself able to do them slowly and then at a fair speed. As the weather cooled down, I moved outside. I don't know if it was the cold air, the wind, or the hills, but running outside was completely different. I was set back a little but continued to improve.

In February 2003 I went to the campus employment office to find some part time work. To my surprise I found a running store in the listings. I applied and, again to my surprise, was hired. Working at a running store will do wonders for your running. All the employees ran and the store had organized fun runs. I immediately had people to run with and set dates and times to run with them. Up until this point I had only run a few race with very limited success. I had set PRs (personal records) at both, but hadn't really met anyone or made any friends. As an employee at a running store, the people you meet at races are customers and you get to see first hand how your advice and customer service has helped. It is very rewarding.

Fast forward to spring of 2003. My running has greatly improved. Everyone I know is running marathons. On a whim, I sign up for the lottery for the Marine Corps Marathon. In my life to that point I had won a cake (in a cake walk) and a gift certificate. Wouldn't you know that I won the Marine Corps Marathon Lottery. It was time to start training, and training I did. Still working at a running store, I had access to any and all information and expertise that I needed. I knew how far, how often, and if their were any groups doing a training run of that distance. I had a training schedule in hand tailored to me and all the support I could have ever wanted.

During my first twenty miler, I felt me legs tighten up on my in the last mile or so. In my second twenty miler, I had severe knee pain that stopped me at about mile 17. I had Iliotibial Band Syndrome. I had two weeks until the marathon and I almost completely stopped running to give myself the best chance of being able to run it. I mean, I had plain tickets, hotel reservations, and I had trained the entire summer for it. I tried all the stretches, I tried the bands, and I tried frozen golf balls. I was determined to get my IT band back in performance shape before the race.

Race day; seventeen thousand runners line up at the starting line. I line up with them. I had made the fatal mistake of arriving in DC two days early and doing site seeing in the interim. I am packed like a sardine in the midst of other runners who are planning on finishing in 4:30 hours. There is no sweat yet, just an electrical charge of excitement that surpasses anything I have felt at a 5,10, or 15k. I can't even see the starting line. It isn't that I am too crowded, but that it is too far away. The gun to start the race fires and I don't move for five minutes.

Once we get moving, I feel great. I am in the moment. I am keeping my pace. At ten miles, it happens. It feels like someone has stabbed me in the knee. I look down and of course there is no knife. My IT band is throbbing. I power through. I keep running I see my wife at twelve miles and she graciously rubs my down my leg for me. I get back up and keep running. By mile fifteen I can't bear it anymore and I have to stop and walk for a prolonged period of time

For anyone that hasn't had IT band syndrome, the most frustrating thing is that it doesn't hurt to walk on it. Stairs and hills hurt but normal walking is fine. In everyday training this is bad enough, but in a Marathon it is multiplied exponentially. You know that you trained for it. You know that friends and family are following your progress. You know they just saw a huge drop in your time form checkpoint to checkpoint. You can look at your perfectly synced specialty running watch and see your goal time slip away. You are walking and you are not tire and you are not in pain. I think frustrating only slightly scratches the surface.

I finish in 5:38 an hour and eight minutes slower than my secondary goal. The only goal that I achieved was to finish the race. I should have been happy. I should have felt a sense of accomplishment. I didn't. I felt betrayed by my body. Well, at least by one knee. The rest of my body was a well oiled machine. And, as funny as it may sound, I was embarrassed by my time. To be honest, I still am. Yes, as much as my knee was hurt, my pride was hurt worse.

Of course, I took time off after the race. I dropped my distance way down, but it wasn't helping. I was now getting pain at about a mile. I entered the Thanksgiving race immediately after the marathon thinking I would be healed. The Thanksgiving race was as bad as the marathon. I couldn't keep my eye off of my watch or the pain from my knee. I finished in 26:46, ashamed. I attempted to run several times over the next six months. Every time with a continuation of pain. Sometimes I would just feel the pain for now reason. Very quickly I had got out of the habit of running.

Now, four years later. I have put the weight back on, maybe more. I am back in a cushy desk job, my blood pressure is up, and my energy level is down. I have no physical relief to stress and my shame in self image is by far overshadowing that of running a 5:38 marathon. I don't have friends that run anymore or a fancy running watch. I still have all of my running clothes even if they do fit a bit tighter. Luckily, I have a pair of brand new running shoes with only a few miles on them that have been doing nothing but collecting dust for the past few years.

This morning, I went out for a two mile run. I was surprised at my muscle memory. My legs still knew my pace, but they were screaming at me to bring it down very quickly. My heart and lungs were making that call to slow down come across in stereo. I was disappointed in myself again. Not in how slow I was going or that I had to stop and walk a lot, but because of what I had let myself become. I don't know if I will ever run another marathon. I don't even know if I will ever run another race. I do know that I need running. I need it to stay in shape both mentally and physically. I need it to feel good about myself again.

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Learning to Fly

Learning to Fly

My whole life, all I wanted to do was jump out of an airplane. Maybe it stems from the mystique of my grandfather, who was with the 101^st Airborne, or my uncle, who was in the 82^nd Airborne. To me both of these people were men in the highest esteem. Both had endured the right of passage that is Airborne school. As a child, not unlike other children, I was obsessed with all things military. I loved watching war movies and on some level, I saw my uncle and grandfather as heroes; both had parachuted into foreign countries during battle. Short of joining the Army, jumping out of airplanes was one way I could come closer to emulating them. Maybe it is something genetic that made us all want to do this, but I knew that one day I would take steps to make that happen.

Somehow, when I was fifteen, I discovered that it was possible to take skydiving classes at sixteen with parental permission. My uncle wanted to try skydiving as opposed to military style parachuting. By sheer perseverance, I was able to convince my aunt and uncle that I was serious about wanting to do it. Since my uncle was interested as well, he decided that it would make a good birthday present. I was finally going to achieve my dream.

The 82^nd Airborne had a program on post for people who wanted to do “civilian skydiving,” as they called it. A club provided training, trainers, equipment, and locations at which to jump. This was a time before tandem jumping was popular so a week’s worth of classes were required before going up the first time. We even had to learn how to pack our own parachutes. One of the training simulations in the class involved hanging in a harness suspended from the ceiling and pulling the rip cord. The first person is always the butt of a joke. I was this first person. I got into the harness just thinking that it was a realistic simulation of pulling the cord. So, there I was, hung about 3 feet off the ground about to experience what I would soon learn was called hanging agony. The instructor tells me to go through ripcord pull procedures and wham! I am no longer three feet in the air, I am now only a foot in the air and my face is as white as a ghost, but it got red fast. All the military people knew what was coming because they do it in jump school. It was a good laugh for everybody including myself. The rest of the class went smoothly. We passed our written and practical exams, and there was nothing left but to climb into the plane.

The next weekend we headed to Raeford Drop Zone. This is a pretty well known place; the Golden Knights actually train there. People are lined up everywhere talking to each other in flashy custom jump suits with matching jump caps about the newest gear and the daily grind of their jobs. I felt their eyes upon me and my club drawn, two sizes too big, used Army flight suit and hockey helmet. Everyone seemed to know everyone else and seemed to look down their noses at our beginner class. We looked around in awe of everything around us. The large field that served as a drop zone had a pit of gravel that formed a bull’s-eye in the center. The drop zone was bordered by about twenty lanes for repacking parachutes, the clubhouse, a house, some trees, the highway, and an airstrip with what seemed like very small planes to me.

Growing up, I watched all kinds of movies with skydiving in them, and in every one of them, the plane was huge and the people jumped out. In front of us was a C-182. The C stood for Cessna, and the 182 was definitely not the seating capacity. There was one seat and that was for the pilot, there was room for one person to sit on the floor next to the pilot, one behind the pilot, one in the tail of the aircraft, and the jumpmaster between us all. Outside the door was a twelve-inch metal bar. This bar would serve as the step as we would ease ourselves out of the plane and onto the wing strut. At this point we would hang until given the command to let go. This method allowed for plenty of chicken out opportunities. There was no taking a few deep breaths and making that bold leap.

We went over everything one more time and practiced our PLFs (parachute landing falls) before loading up on the plane. They slotted me as second for some reason. If you ever have to do anything scary, the middle is the best place to be. There is someone doing it right before you do, and someone that has to do it right after you. This lets you know that it can be done and that someone will see you, if you chicken out. As the plane started up, the adrenaline started to drip into my blood stream. It sat at that consistent drip, keeping me wide-awake and alert. As we climbed in altitude I started to question my sanity, and then it happened. The door opened! “Whooosh!,” the wind rushed in and my heart exploded with the adrenaline that was now flowing like a river through my body. The temperature was fifteen degrees lower all of a sudden and the air pressure had dropped. I could not hear anything other than the whining of the engines and the rushing of the wind. They threw out the tape to gage the wind and determine the best place to drop us. I watched as the first person shimmied out of the door, let go, and disappeared below us. It was then my turn. The river of adrenaline then turned into class five rapids. The jumpmaster told me to get in the door. He screamed in my ear to get out on the wing. Slowly my feet swing out the door and shakingly found the step. This step seemed a lot smaller now that I was trying to position myself on it from three thousand feet. Finally, I got my feet situated, reached out, and grabbed the strut. I slid my hands out past the red tape that marked us clear from the step. I let go with my feet and weightlessly hung there. I looked back to the jumpmaster who was thrusting his finger in my face. This was the sign to let go, but I did not need to know this because the gesture alone scared my grip off the plane. The first thing I did was look down, ignoring everything taught to me in class, and then before I could do anything else, “Wham!,” my parachute opened and I had a canopy over my head. The class five rapids emptied into a serene quiet lake.

The ride down in wide-open space, just floating, was amazing. Just like a bird, I was flying and there was nothing in between the sky and me. As I was approaching the landing area, the trees directly in front of the landing area, approached even faster. I made a quick decision and decided to chance landing myself over landing in the trees. It was a hard landing that I did not feel because of the adrenaline. I pulled in my chute and walked back into the staging area. The word that came to my mouth is the same word that came to everyone’s mouth: Awesome! Everyone found this word and I was no different. The experience itself cannot be described otherwise.

I have made a total of seven jumps since that October day in 1993. Every time the door opened, so did the floodgates, as adrenaline poured into my heart. I guess you never truly feel more alive than when you are closest to death. I know I have not. That day I grew. Maybe, I grew in the eyes of my grandfather and uncle. Maybe they saw me as more of a man, but I truly grew in my own eyes. I did this on my own. I fulfilled my dream. I knew then that I was capable of doing anything. I came of age that day not by having my heroes look at me differently, but by becoming a different person to look at.

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Vox Hunt: It's All True

Book:  Show us a great non-fiction book.

The Zombie Survival Guide

Max Brooks

But seriously:

 

Wild Swans : Three Daughters of China

Jung Chang

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