365 Days of Reflection

http://emailbri.blogspot.com/2006/11/my-wrestling-match-with-bertrand.html

Brian wrote about his wrestling match with philosopher Bertrand Russell I think I will let his words speak for themselves. Again this was BC, BC: Brian Charles, Before Cancer.

My life has been so blessed with two amazing children. As I retire and take advantage of the opportunity to reinvent myself I want to pledge to daily post some tidbit of wisdom inspired by love.

Ecology of My Soul

I have spent the last week in a arid desert climate. I met a young doctor of acupuncture on my flight Anchorage in June. I asked her what she would recommend for a woman going through men
to help in menopause. She said that in this transitional period of a woman's life she is drying up. Dry skin, hair and vagina, Ha, ha I know... not what I expected to hear (although I can't deny the manifestations of the physical being). She recommended avocados, water, flax seeds, chia, and soy. All of these find their way into my vegan lifestyle but it made me giggle to think that this doctor implied that menopause implied a drying up of my physical form.
When I found myself in the desert, in an environment that caused me to dehydrate with every breath, it made me more sympathetic to the arid environment that I had always avoided and squinted at when I was required to face it. Animals that are adapted to the dry environment are nocturnal to avoid the suns rays, too intense to be active during the day. As I am challenged by my menopausal consequences ( I hate to call them symptoms, because that implies a pathogenic origin and it is not a pathogen), I find a kinship with the desert creatures. The night used to offer sleep and regeneration of life giving energy, now I battle to sleep after the sun goes down, Restless legs, hot flashes and my brain refuses to turn off and allow the subconscious to take over, leading to mornings that I wake with the sunlight feeling unquenched but restless.
I saw some scorpions on the road close to the finish line yesterday at the Extraterrestrial Full Moon Midnight Marathon in Rachel, Nevada. Normally they would have creeped me out, but they managed to adapt to an arid environment and my crunchy dry menopausal soul respected their ability to crawl around in the desert with their little poison points at the end of their curved tails and find a way to survive. Speak softly and carry a big stick.
Wisdom of the Day: Eat Avocados!

Fifty States!

Ten years ago, 2004 on Labor Day I ran my first 5K. I had always run two or three miles for fitness a couple of days a week since my daughter Stacy was born in 1991. But the summer of 2004 I met some amazing geology teachers up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula at a graduate class in mining. We blasted rocks, climbed rock piles and I ran every morning with some of the teachers. That Saturday there was a 10 mile race, the Canal run in Hancock that some of my new friends were going to run in. I noticed that while many of the runners were amazing athletes, fit with 6% body fat, many of them were like me middle age average folks fighting off those nagging few pounds. I thought maybe I could try and train for a 5K. A friend from the class coached me via email and by Labor Day I was ready to run. It took me 33 minutes to finish my first 5K. I was frustrated that I couldn’t keep up a 10 minute mile. I decided to try a half marathon and little did I realize I was hooked. The challenge of tweaking a race routine, experimenting with different distances, and meeting all sorts of people has kept me pushing and testing my personal limits for the last 10 years.

My journey since then has been a difficult one. Personal challenges: divorce, remarriage,  my son’s life against cancer, and relocating to the Upper Peninsula have kept me exhausted and pushed to my emotional limit. Running gave me a space in time that I could own and be present in. Every year I added races to my calendar. I met some runners from Tulsa that belonged to a club called the Marathon Maniacs. Some people say that my running helped me through those challenges. Perhaps, but it feels like the more life pushed me the more I pushed back. I’m not sure that that extra effort made things easier. I just felt the ownership of those accomplishments and when it seemed that life was pruning and clipping the things that I cared about the most, running was a space that I could own. Many people who have loved ones in harms way, whether it is due to deployment, hardship or medical battles, understand what it means to feel that fear, helplessness and loss of hope. Prayer is the one fortress to allow you hope, and running is the venue that my prayers are most pure.

My mission or objective is so simple, to run a marathon in all fifty states while my health and finances hold out. The beauty of that endeavor is that I have a platform to honor those who have meant so much to me. And I have shared this journey with some amazing people. My fabulously talented daughter Stacy has been with me through this story from the start. She was at the finish line of my first marathon, the Bayshore Marathon in Traverse City, Michigan and is coming with me this weekend to support me. We have battled together side by side, without her I would be lost out on some lonely road somewhere.

My second marathon and first trail marathon was shared with the man that I’ve chosen to spend the rest of my life with. At the time I was reeling from a divorce and trying to figure out what my new identity was. I was surprised when he met me at 5am at the Grand Island Ferry Dock to come support me on the trail. The Grand Island Trail Marathon in Munising, Michigan is still my favorite race and it is the only race that I have repeated. Three years later Gary proposed to me at the north beach of the same marathon.

My first out of state marathon was the Disney Marathon in 2006. It was the first time that I noticed the presence of the purple Team-N-Training folks. They had support out on the course that made me a bit jealous and annoyed, but towards the end of the race I noticed that many of their shirts were honoring loved ones who had lost their battle with Leukemia or Lymphoma. It moved me to tears out there running through Epcot. Little did I know that 6 days later I’d be admitting my beautiful and healthy 21 year old son to the hospital for symptoms that would be diagnosed as PCNS Lymphoma, a form of inoperable brain cancer.  Within three weeks I was being educated and supported by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society people as how to advocate for my son. Anyone supporting a loved one with any of these conditions can receive the same support at www.lls.org . In the next three years I continued to run marathons as we battled the dragon. Brian proposed to and married the love of his life, Katie. The cancer remitted then relapsed three times, more frequently each time. He demanded to maintain poise and grace throughout, blessing all of those people on his team and in his life. He insisted to live his life intentionally and to not let his existence be defined by the adversity in his life. The last time the cancer relapsed he was undergoing chemo. We lost him that fall. November is a difficult month and I find it fitting to conquer this journey in this month. His goal was a mission to fight social injustice in the world. As I run these races I bring his ashes with me and I spread his ashes in a body of water. He was a lover of the ocean and water. The Chattahoochee river will carry his ashes to the ocean this weekend.

Serving the global good, starts with these fifty states and in choosing the Soldiers Marathon I am looking forward to honoring those who have dedicated part or all of their lives to serve our nation. I am honoring a former student, Matt Weber who gave his life in Iraq. I will be wearing a bracelet in his memory. My two cousins Brian and Clark have dedicated their lives to serving in the Air Force. I will be honoring them by wearing pins that they sent me. I have had the honor to teach with other former service people. They now serve our nation’s youth as educators. I also want to dedicate this run to my students who have served or are currently serving in our military. I have had students in all branches of the military and have written letters of recommendation for many students that have been accepted into the Armed Forces Service Academies. I follow and am proud of their achievements.

In 2007 I ran the Green Bay Celcom Marathon and saw my first fifty state marathon shirt. From that point on I was calculating and looking at calendars to see how I could fit my races in.  That day at the finish line I met Nancy Krusic. When we first met our runs were more counseling sessions, sharing our trials and tribulations. She was there for me when I lost Brian. She and Janet are my first real running buddies. I had always cherished my alone time running, but found such a bond with these two ladies that my training runs were brought to a totally new place. Nancy and I have run many states together. She and her sisters have been brave enough to come some of my crazy adventures. My PR is thanks to Nancy. She called me on a Thursday one April day and wondered if I wanted to go to Dearborn to run the Martian Marathon with her. She knew that I would be crazy enough to say yes. That was a 4:41 race. My goal Saturday is to finish! I don’t know if the excitement of the finishing finish line might power me to a faster race or if it may wear me out. Either way, crawling or leaping I will do my best to cross that line!

In the running adventures I have met many other runners. It always seems uncanny that when I run a race with people at my pace, how many parallels our lives seem to hold. If I tried to name them all this would be a book. Cathy from Texas is one of those people. We met at the Go St. Louis marathon last spring and I asked her what was next on her calendar and she said that she was running the Wild Women Marathon in Washington in July. It was a very small new trail marathon that fielded 300 relay runners and marathoners. Out of nearly 8000 Marathon Maniacs she and I were the only two that had signed up for that race. We ran it together and talked the whole time about our lives. So many losses and joys and similarities, it was a great race.

I’ve shared many races with my friends from Tulsa. This year I had the chance to run the Bataan Memorial Death March. This is a life changing race, dedicated to soldiers and marched by soldiers from multi-national armed services. I marched with German, Canadian, Coastguard, Army, Navy and other service people whose badges I could not recognize. I saw more colors and versions of camouflage than I could have imagined. I ran with John one of our Tulsa friends. He is joining us this weekend. He has a way of finding the most marvelous and challenging race venues. Nancy and John both mentioned the Soldiers Marathon in the past. John’s son was stationed at Fort Benning and Nancy has been invited by military friends to run it before. When considering my running calendar this year I wanted a race that was meaningful and logistically easy for friends to travel to.
Lately when runners ask me how many miles I run per week it doesn’t take long to calculate. I run between 26.2 and 40 miles per week. In 2012-2013 there was a twelve month period when I ran 16 states. So I was either recovering or tapering between races. I have reached a physical milestone this last year as menopause has kicked in. Last winter I reached my pre-running weight. Before I started running I was 152 pounds. In training for my first marathon in 2005 I got down to 130 pounds and kept it off. So it was frustrating to be running so rigorously and gaining weight. The menopause upset my sleep patterns with the hot flashed and to maintain my work schedule and energy I was craving and eating high carbohydrate sugary foods. I’ve never had a sweet tooth, but to get the burst of energy before my after school run I would have a bag of popcorn. Nancy had suggested years before that I try a vitamin shake that she was taking, but at the time I felt confident in my vitamin regimen. In January of this year as I tipped the scales and was energy deprived, I was sharing my frustrations with a friend, Marco and he mentioned the same vitamin shake that Nancy had been taking for the last three years. Her times and health were improving while mine where getting worse. I decided to give Reliv a try. Marco suggested that I try the Soyesentials, Now and Innergize for starters. The first shake that I took lifted the brain fog that had permeated my experience and with a month my hot-flashes were one a day and within two months they were gone! I have lost 14 pounds and am not craving sweets. I have recently decided to choose a vegan lifestyle and am feeling stronger then I have felt in years. This was the best health decision that I made since starting to run. I wish that I had done it when Nancy first suggested it.

I am a sixth grade teacher. I spent the first 25 years of my career teaching higher grades. I’m enjoying working with the younger students and have a map of the United States posted on the wall. I have recent race numbers taped around it and have marked off the states that I finished. Last year one of my sixth graders told me that I had inspired him to try and play a golf tournament in each of the fifty states. I told him to enjoy every one of them. I think the last few years I have been rushing finishing, partly do to fears that as I age I might not be able to continue, and partly to save money. Doubles and consecutive weekend summer road trips save travel expenses. I have a friend, Houstotonic Paul, who is managing to run all 50 states in less than 4 hours, and another Cory who is trying to BQ (Boston Qualify) in all 50 states. Lichu Sloan has run the 50 states 3 times, and 7 continents twice. There is a couple from the U.P. who are running all 50 states in alphabetical order. Nancy has BQ’d twice in the last two years and is planning on running Boston. All of these accomplishments eclipse mine.

Many people have wished me well on my Grand Finale. This makes me fearful. I am not done after Saturday. As to my next mission or objective: I haven’t decided what to do next. I have a house project to finish with my dear Gary. He has been sacrificing his summers supporting and accompanying me on my marathons. I think I owe him at least one summer without a month long tri-state journey. I am really enjoying trail races. I just ran my first 50 K in Vermont with my friend Stephanie in honor of her 50^th birthday, so maybe a 50K in 50 states? I love Canada and would love to run a race in each province. Another option is to run the seven continents. Maybe I should do a race in each country in this hemisphere to start with? I feel like a kid in an candy shop. So may races, so little time. I want to be present this weekend, so that decision can wait.

Fort Benning, Georgia: here I come!!

Resonance

Recently one of my best marathon finishes was on one of the hilliest courses. It was a run in New Hampshire around Newfound Lake. I was either running uphill or down and the hills were longish and steep. But it was just right for me. I could gain momentum on the downhill and gauge the uphill ahead, plot the distance that the momentum could take me and attack the next uphill plotting the point where I would either need to walk or switch to a lower gear.
I thought about this race last weekend in Jackson, Wyoming as I plodded up the seemingly endless bike paths with maybe a 5% elevation gain. It was one of those courses where you doubt your training and stamina until later you review the course and notice that indeed it was not flat but climbed ever so slowly. After the long gradual stretches there were these little hills up to roads that crossed the bike paths. I normally love little hills, I used them to get my heart beating a little faster then pick up the pace on the inevitable down hill that follows. It felt like every little pop up hill was followed by more 5% grade. This is where I began thinking about resonance frequency. I just couldn't get into a rhythm. The sections where we were out on a road the shoulder was too narrow to trust and the paved part of the road was crowned so that the footing was never dependable.
The high altitude, 6243 feet was enough to make breathing strenuous, but not impossible. Just enough to again make you doubt yourself. I love chatting with people while running marathons. The friendships that I have formed in this journey are so priceless. I was not able to do this at first. Throughout the race I kept leapfrogging with a woman with a matching marathon maniac shirt. Hers had short sleeves and mine was a singlet. She seemed strong and was doing the Jeff Galloway run 3 minutes walk 1 minute strategy. I try to get to mile 16 then walk 100 four beats 20 four beats. On a good day this takes me one mile. Last week I started feeling week at mile 9. There were run/walkers all around me so I started my "survival shuffle" way early. The weather forecast  was 47 at the start and rain by 9 am. I have gone to races when the rain picks up and soaks you to the bone. Any exposed skin gets numb with the energy required to evaporate the rain. I decided to wear my tights and my arm sleeves. The tights are very thin and I thought that even if it was warm my sweat would cool the thin fabric. Well it never rained (until 5 minutes after I finished). So I was very warm. Maybe I should have stopped and taken my tights off. In my bedraggled mind I figured that if I had to stop at a porta-pot again ( I had stopped three times already when I started feeling warm) I would take them off and tie them around my waist.
By mile 20 I was plodding along trying to just break up the last 6.2 miles in my head into doable chunks. The cut-off for the race was 6 hours and I was a little worried that I wouldn't make it. I went by the aid station and my twin (younger looking and stronger) but in the pink marathon maniac shirt was sitting on a park bench. She invited me to join them and I said that I wouldn't be able to get back up. Soon she caught up to me and we started talking. Resonance, it is so interesting how when you find someone at your own pace it seems that you were destined to meet and how often you have shared such similar backgrounds that your parallel lives were destined to intersect. We talked about jobs and family. We told each other about our sons. Her's was born with cerebral palsy and she shared her guilt at leaving him. I told her about losing Brian and how the guilt of leaving him and Stacy to move to Manistique still haunts me. We talked about our supportive husbands and our running friends. We crossed the finish line together and shared Facebook contact information. Cory Hove took our picture and the sky opened up and it poured.
The next day she posted the awesome picture that Cory took.... Two days later she posted that her son had passed away. Lovely lady, how hard it is to lose a baby. We try to make them whole and make their lives perfect. They bless us in an infinite number of ways. Our lives are so full through them and with them. When they are gone....
We both have other children to brag about and dote on. The wound will heal but the void will always be there. My son's voice resonates in my memory "Take better care of yourself Mom." How can I do that when the very soul of me was gutted? I run. I fill that void, incompletely with amazing people. My Stacy has grown to be an amazing woman. She has blossomed in ways that fills those empty areas with joy. Katie, Brian's wife is still finding her way. Longing for the love that she lost.
Thank you Denise Carter for finishing the race with me. May your pain be eased with peace and love.

Triple Play

I often joke about the idea that I am running so many marathons that I don't have time to train. When you talk to a distance runner don't ask how many miles they run a day, rather ask them how many miles they run per week. A typical training schedule calls for 40-50miles per week at the end of the cycle. When people ask me how many miles per week lately my honest answer is 26.2 miles. My last marathon was Illinois in April so theoretically I had 6 weeks to actually train for June's trifecta. I ran 16 marathons in the last 365 days and my times kept getting slower. I was hoping to have time to rest and train enough to get back into the five hour range. My spring schedule is full. I teach full time, tutor high school and college students and. I coach the Junior High boys track team. Realistically resting is not possible, but I did manage to get a couple of long runs in.
Gary teases me about over planning the trips that I drag him on. But this time I didn't have any idea where we were staying. I bought the tickets to Hawaii and registered us for the races, but beyond that as of the end of school I had nothing.
May 31 was the last day of school, so the next day I made the arrangements for inter islands air travel. We called up Uncle David to see if we could stay with him Thursday night on the way to Nebraska. Then we left. Talk about a leap of faith. The smart phone and the navigation on the BMW would be our tools to make up the itinerary as we went.
The car was full of camp gear, clothes for all kinds of weather.
Uncle David spoiled us with Wisconsin hospitality and bratts. Uncle David and I enjoyed finishing off a bottle of wine and I woke up the next morning reminding myself to rehydrate for tomorrow's marathon. We had a nine hour drive to Nebraska to get to the packet pickup. The trip from Wausau west is getting very familiar to us and we made good time to where we needed to turn south to Cherry County, Nebraska. The expo was is a saddle shop in Valentine, Nebraska. The smells of leather boots triggered memories from my youth. Gary decided to volunteer to help during the race and the race director gave him his assignment. He would be in charge of aid station at mile nine. They gave him a tee-shirt and race packet. We asked about camping and got great directions to a campground on a reservoir and on a Friday night we were the only campers. I think everyone else checked the weather channel. It blew all night long, so I had maybe an hour of sleep and a wine hangover to start the triple trip.
I have to be honest, I was thinking that I was going to die. But Gary brought me to the start out in the middle of cow pastures. It was dark and we were the first people there. The only thing that made us think that it might be the start was a pair of portajohns on a trailer. We parked and I made sure that the pot worked. Soon other runners showed up and one fellow was carrying a shotgun. I wasn't sure what that was about. The sun came up and the wind picked up. We lined up and at 7:16 the kid with the gun said on your mark get set and BOOM. We took off. My plan was to stay hydrated as much as I could with Gatorade. My stomach was having a hard time digesting the grassfed Nebraska angus steak that Gary and I shared the night before. I was a little nervous about how much support for portajohns there would be as my tummy churned. The three mile aid station had a portajohn and about a mile up the road the portajohns from the start passed me:-) every pair of portajohns were on a trailer and pulled behind a truck. So they had a total of six portajohns and they leapfrog through the marathon. When the last runners pass the John they pull it to the lead runners aid station.
What a great system! With the anxiety about tummy issues solved I could relax and enjoy myself. The course was lovely, rolling pastures dotted with windmills. The road was trimmed with wildflowers and the cattle grazing in the fields would come over to check us out. One beautiful bull was bellowing to a rival bull in the next field so for fun I mooed seductively to him and he started galloping towards me. I looked away and picked up the pace. He got bored and jogged back over to face his rival. This race could be hot, but the weather that day was amazing. Breezy, some sun, ideal. Then the finish brought the best surprise, the finisher award is a spur with the race information engraved in it. They had a grill with angus burgers and I saw someone with a beer. "Donde estan Los cervesas?" I don't know why I asked in Spanish but the fellow who I asked cracked up and had his wife bring me a beer. He gave Gary one too. We met the financial advisor who was the sponsor of the portajohn parade. He was voted the best of show,...really... And I didn't even get to vote.

All Points West

One of the challenges of running this nation is to fit the races in a teacher's calendar, with a teacher's budget. Paul Misur is a good friend and fifty states runner who has added the goal of completing each marathon in less than four hours: 50<4. When we compared calendars he suggested that Gary and I could save money by driving west, running a couple of races then take advantage of cheap airline tickets to Hawaii. It seemed silly until I did my homework and found that there were two races on consecutive weekends the week before the Kona marathon. In 2013 the marathon calendars listed Sandhills, Nebraska and Estes Park, Colorado on the first two weekends in June. The first of the three marathons to open
their registration was Kona, so I registered early. Then. January 14, I received an email that Sandhills was opening. I couldn't get a confirmation on my phone and decided to wait until the next morning to register at the computer at work. I get to my classroom by 7:30am and logged on to the website and the race had filled in ten hours!! Argh!! Panic and desperation set in. I am not the kind of runner that bothers race directors, but I posted a tweet and an email begging to be able to register. Andrew, the race director was very nice and allowed me a second chance. Phew, now all I had to do was arrange air travel and wait for the Estes Park to open. By the end of February the calendars that I was watching changed the date of the Estes Park Marathon to June 21! Again, panic! I couldn't be in Kona on Sunday and Colorado on Saturday. No problem, Colorado has so many marathons that plan B would be easy to figure out. I pulled down calendars for Colorado marathons from every online source that I could find. I posted a plea on the Marathon Maniacs website for a Colorado race on June 14. I need to be entirely honest, there is a race in Colorado on June 14: The Leadville Trail Marathon. I love running trail marathons, but realize that they can be tough. This one has three huge elevation gains. It's elevation chart goes from 10,500 to 12,500, back down to 10,500 then up to 13,500, back to 10,500, up to 12,500 then back down to 10,500. They had an 8:30 time limit so I thought I could make it happen. I registered and arranged airline travel from Denver to Hawaii.