Running Like Crazy

What kind of person would swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, and round out a nice little afternoon with a marathon? Or how about just a nice 50 or 100-mile run? It seems like recently I have met more and more people who just aren’t satisfied with finishing triathlons, marathons, or century rides as landmark accomplishments in their lives. They need to bring it to the next level and trump the simple people of the world who can barely carve out the time or enthusiasm to train for a half marathon. Some consider these people to be the epitome of a display of dedication and the definition of true athletes. I just consider them excessive.

Let’s delve a little deeper into this topic. I think my recent overexposure to marathon runners and triathletes is 90% me moving to an area of the world that has such beautiful weather that no one ever stays inside and 10% dating a marathon runner and triathlete. In sunny San Diego, gym memberships are drastically cheaper than in north east American cities because their treadmills are in competition with a sunny, moderately temperate boardwalk. People are more likely to spend Saturdays hiking in the glorious weather than hung over watching the Food Network. This is been a welcome change for me, but I still feel a twinge of guilt when I think about how Rachel Ray would probably consider me a traitor. Bobby told me he didn’t run for more than a few miles at a time before moving to San Diego from Northern Virginia, but it’s hard to justify staying indoors when you can be outside on the bay or beach in 70-degree weather every day. Point taken, but the weather hasn’t caused me to overdose in running, so there must be something else going on here.

I think it’s great that some people can focus on and love running so much that they can do it for several hours straight. Honestly, there aren’t a whole lot of things that I have ever done for 3-4 hours straight, except breathing or sleeping. I have an attention span that can only compete with someone who has lost 100% of their short-term memory, so I would more than likely get distracted once taking off on even a 5-mile run. I picture myself, iPod full of my favorite tunes, newly purchased cute running outfit that probably took longer to pick out that the time needed to run 100 miles, and with all of the intensions to get into a state of spiritual bliss enjoying the scenery and fresh air. Then I picture the inevitable reality of being distracted by a homeless man locking his shopping cart to a telephone pole or a delusional elderly person wandering out of the house without pants on. Without any thought at all I would be stopping mid-stride to stare in awe, looking for a bench to sit on in order to watch without being so obvious, all the while cursing myself for not finding a running outfit that has a place to store a camera. It wouldn’t take long for me to forget why I was even wearing sneakers and an obsolete pink sweatband and matching tube socks in the first place. The confusion of my outfit would probably only last a minute or two before some irrelevant memory of a sale on wheat thins at the grocery store would pop into my head and I would decide that my afternoon would be better spent at the petting zoo or the bar. There are so many bars with great outdoor seating on the beach and they practically call out my name when I walk by them. How did I get here, again? Who cares; I just know it’s time for me to move on to the next thing and find a theme appropriate outfit for whatever I settle on doing.

Generally speaking, my train of thought is as broken as most American marriages, which doesn’t say much for anyone. I need to choose athletic activities that hold my attention and don’t involve any sort of cadence. I was a gymnast in my more formative years, a sport that can hold anyone’s attention. The longest any one routine lasts in just over a minute and each skill lasts only a second, which is much more in line with how I function. Obviously, at 5’8”, my days as a gymnast were numbered the second I hit puberty. I later took up track and field, but I never ran distance. I was a sprinter/hurdler, threw javelin, long and high jumped, and pole vaulted. Luckily I was decent enough at each thing to not have to be subjected to only one area of the sport. I may never have been able to practice any one area enough to go to college on an athletic scholarship, but I didn’t care because I would no doubt be bored with track in another year or two anyway. I always wondered how the cross-country runners were able to able to run a whole three miles without going off the track or trail to make wreaths out of dandelions or take a nap. I figured they must know something that I don’t. Maybe they have tricks to keep themselves occupied, like practicing times tables or naming their imaginary children. I wasn’t sure how they did it, but I certainly never felt an urge to find out for myself. Now that I have discovered that people actually train to run 100 miles, those cross-country runners in high school don’t seem so impressive anymore.

Back to the loose minds of people running ultra-marathons and ironman competitions; even if I had a desire and the attention span to run, swim, and bike for an entire day, I don’t have the time. Moreover, I don’t want to have that much time on my hands. You can’t fit much more in the day besides, eating, sleeping, and working if you are training for such an extreme race. Forget reading, following celebrity gossip, or solving world hunger. I don’t see Brad and Angelina doing Ironman’s, after all. You live, breathe, and shit working out. I have known a few people in my life who use excessive running as a means of purging. The girl I used to see in my hometown running when I drove to work, my lunch break, and home all in the same day wasn’t just working out. She didn’t fool me at all. It was as obvious watching someone down epicat and laxatives, without the associated smells that make them so socially unacceptable. I know not everyone who runs marathons has an eating disorder, so please hold the outrage, but I do find them equally as crazy. One family friend of my parents had six children and was such an avid runner that the doctor had to put this plastic thing in her koslopus during the last month of her sixth pregnancy to keep the baby from falling out because she refused to stop running until she was actually spread eagle in the hospital. Really, lady? You’re more concerned about getting those runs in then a baby dropping out of you onto its head? This kid was destined to have a lot of mommy issues, but if I was the kid I’d probably be trying to drop out early too so I wouldn’t have to jounce around all day as my lunatic mother ran for a few hours.

I have always considered myself to be a well-rounded athlete. There were gymnastics days, then field hockey, and track and field. College introduced me to fitness classes and yoga. I was a certified spin instructor, life guard, and personal trainer. I rarely missed a day at the gym and loved the energy it gave me and how great my triceps looked. I also grew fond of ellipticals and Stairmasters at peak gym hours so I could stare at the asses of the people on the machines in front of me. Fitness and working out was always second nature until I moved to Philly in my early twenties and traded my sneakers and spin shoes for cigarettes and booze. I never had an issue staying thin or looking like I hit them gym when the only thing I was hitting was the bottle. In fact, quite the opposite happened and I got pretty sick during the time frame that I wasn’t in the gym. I got so thin that I had to go to a nutritionist for six months to break into an acceptable weight and was still quite slender. Those were the beginning of my modeling days and everyone around me must have assumed that I was running 50 miles in a weekend. Quite the contrary, I was sleeping, smoking packs of cigarettes, sleeping some more, and calling it a day. The weight gain period didn’t even allow me to work out. I was under strict orders to limit any physical exertion in order to pack on pounds. I would set an alarm and wake up in the middle of the night for junk food and chug milkshakes during the day, washing them down with tubs of lard before going back to sleep. Now I have more than gained back the weight I lost, quit smoking, moved to a beautiful place, remained unemployed long enough to have walked to the moon and back, but I still get exhausted just thinking about getting up at 5am to do anything other than run to the bathroom to pee.

I have to draw a few conclusions about people who run ultra marathons or ironman’s or any other excessive amount of exercise that doesn’t hand out a paycheck like the NFL or the NY Yankees. The most obvious is that these people need a plus one, because if you are getting laid on a regular basis, you really don’t have 3-4 hours a day to run; unless your lover is into these races too, in which case congratulations on finding someone as crazy as you. They also couldn’t really like their knees or shins very much. In some cases, they don’t like their vaginas either. They are less than likely to care if their skin looks like leather by the age of 40 from the excessive sun exposure. They definitely can’t be fearful of skin cancer (I can relate to them in this area, but only because of the vanity of my generation). Finally, they are also probably well-suited for such occupations as “sheep counter” or “jack-in-the-box functionality checker” or some other tedious, awful job that requires you to do the same thing over and over for hours on end.

As a supportive girlfriend, I give Bobby the go-ahead to do all of the marathons and Ironman’s and other athletic endeavors that give him the bragging rights he clearly desires. However, I do have some stipulations. He needs to choose races in places that I want to visit, especially if he plans to be gone for 12 straight hours and then recovering for a day after. I need to be able to entertain myself, plus I don’t want to waste plane tickets on going to somewhere lame. Also, if he is going to spend all of that time training, then he needs to be understanding of me spending all of my time reading, watching Glee, tanning, and sleeping. I also don’t want to hear complaints about how he is tired or sore. No shit you’re tired and sore. I predicted as much and he’s the jackass who signed up for this lunacy. Most important, don’t ever expect me to choose watching any race over a Phish festival. Not saying it will happen, but I’m putting it in writing now just to be safe. Finally, since I watched him in the Boston Marathon this year I don’t have to go again next year if it falls on Coachella weekend again. In fact, I reserve the right to be annoyed should he choose Boston over Coachella. Relationships are about compromise; I will watch you run if you listen to music and drink with me. The truth is that I hope the recent trend in extreme races goes out of vogue as quickly as Hammer pants. I speak my piece now, but will stay quiet and hope that they fade out.