the start

They call it The Moment: the point in marathon when the runner knows she will finish. For me, this time, this first time, I think I'd call it The Start. I'd sat on the curb for nearly ninety pre-dawn minutes as Geary Street filled in around me with dozens then hundreds then thousands of runners. I stretched, and I watched, and I waited, as calm as I now feel in the comfort of my living room couch. I record this atypical absence of butterflies now both to remember and to verify that it was real.

The sounds in my memory are muffled; sharper is the edge of the cold breeze that blew up from the bay and the coarse cotton feel of my off-white throw-away gloves. The wind may have calmed as we shuffled then walked around Powell to Post to the gate to the next 26.2. I couldn't tell you. I know the black Goodwill fleece that I was coached to buy then discard heated through quickly and I left it a mile out with the gloves.

I boggled, slightly, at those who pulled off to the sidewalk to pose with the sunrise over the not-golden-but-grey Bay Bridge. They may well have passed me minutes or hours later, but race as photo op does not fit into the uninterrupted progress that is, to my mind by definition, marathon. Forward through the city streets, up the hills, up the hills, up the hills. Around the curve of the water, through the misty forest, down the glorious decent by the cliffs. Eyes lingering, mind memorizing, or trying, feet moving, always moving.

I'm not sure I remember everything I saw or could have seen according to the route and the map and the pictures, but I remember how I felt for every minute of that race. I was ready. And then, I did it.

portrait

She is quiet in what seems a particularly Asian way, hands folded and passive: a stereotype in a seat. Though she's making friends with those girls who can relate to her word-by-word journey, her voice is barely known to her other teachers. She comes and goes, sits and works, sits and thinks. And while, with the aid of the electronic translator we do confirm that even at home she is known as shy, she nods with the slightest of smiles when I say, "You're not shy with me."

I'm thinking, and so is she, of the times when the times interest and vocabulary fizz together and spill out in a gush of excitable pretty-much-English. Then she's herself, a sixteen year-old girl, and not a student not trapped by I-don't-know-how-to-say. She tells me of a squirrel she kept as a pet, of her plans for university, of a relative's unfortunate brush with the casino, of any topic we can muster. For weeks in this way I've been assembling a mosaic portrait, but today, through one exclamation in a little makeshift poem it felt as if I got a glimpse of the real person she is:

My name is Tiên.
My name
is important to me.
I am not Tina!
My name
is from Vietnam.
My friends know my name.

me

As far as they know, I'm a runner.

Let slip or exclaim you're doing a marathon soon, and no matter how you couch it-- I am a beginner; I am slow; sometimes I walk-- that tends to be the impression. And while I give myself credit for the grammatical progression from, "I run" to, "I am a runner," applying the label is still a novelty, a shade of identity still complete with the tags.

Forty years later-- perhaps coincidence, perhaps not-- I'm doing something new, something that most of my circle rightly greeted with, "What?!" They're with me now, alternately bemused and impressed as they look through the lens of Before. No one, of course, will support me or appreciate the accomplishment more than those who saw it unfold, but there are other useful perspectives out in the world. A stranger's acceptance of my self-description, while far less substantial, is a different kind of confirmation, a little lesson in reinvention. It's not permission, but perhaps it's a signal.

In a sense--a debatable sense, but one that means something to me--I am who I say I am. When those who have no reason to believe but also no reason to doubt take me at my word, I find it oddly encouraging. It's a reminder, not that I'm pulling it off, but that by doing it, I become who I am.

taper madness

I would totally feel better if I went out and ran around the block. I know this with absolute certainty. Nevermind that it's after eleven p.m., pitch black and cold, and that my street doesn't have streetlights not to mention blocks. Not to mention the fact that the ten godawful slow miles today already aggravated my knee, and I'd get barely anywhere before limping home feeling worse than when I started. That is entirely irrelevant. I need endorphins, stat. Or whatever biological compound that would quell these quite literal jitters. Perhaps I'll start smoking just so I can quit; that jones might outweigh this one. Maybe. Or at least distract me from the loop of based-oh-so-slightly-on-reality thoughts that are racing through what's left of my mind. Five months of training will pay off-or not--two weeks from today if the meantime doesn't kill me.

If I don't get sick. I think my throat hurts. What if everyone in school gets the flu? If I'm not more injured than I already know. If the physical therapy doesn't make it worse. Maybe the x-ray didn't show the real problem. If it's not too humid or not too hot or not too cold or if whatever fitness I've built doesn't drain completely away as I sit here and rest. I know it won't. How could it not?! They say it won't; I think they're lying. Not getting 20 in must invalidate everything; I bet you think so, too. If I don't gain weight or if my shoes aren't wrong or if halfway through I don't lose a contact lens. What if I get a migraine? If I don't eat the wrong thing. If there aren't lines for the johns. If I'm not too slow. What if I have to walk and they turn me around? What if those walkers get in my way? What if I just can't do it? With everyone watching!

I know that I can. I have come this far, and getting it done is the only option. I'll be fine. My knee will be better, and if it's not, I'll still do it. I know. I do. I believe. Or at least I would if I could go run 'round the block.