There once was a girl from Nantucket...

I have only been to the islands off of Cape Cod once: Martha's Vineyard when I was about 8. All I remember was that I was too young to pick strawberries at a farm there, we drove around following signs we'd seen on the other side of the island for another strawberry farm, and wound up at the same place. My memory of the islands ends there. I have never been to Nantucket, except in vitro. The story goes that my mom and dad were standing in a windmill overlooking a cranberry bog when my mom got nauseous and told Dad that she thought she was pregnant. Understandably, I don't want to know too much about this story, since I come from the stork and my parents have never touched each other inappropriately. However, when my friends in college got wind of the story, it started the rumor that I was conceived in a cranberry bog on Nantucket. Which could lead to all kinds of fun limericks such as this one based on today's race:

There once was a girl from Nantucket
Who woke up with a cold and said, "Fuck it."
She'd been ill for too long,
And didn't feel strong,
But when they told her to stay home she said, "Suck it!"

Only the race wasn't on Nantucket, it was on Martha's Vineyard. The Martha's Vineyard 20 Miler. Martha's Vineyard doesn't offer such cool limerick possibilities as Nantucket, though. There once was a girl from Martha's Vineyard, Who hung her iPod on a lanyard... Never mind.

Our story begins on Thursday morning when I woke up feeling a little bit under the weather. I can't be getting sick again, I thought. I'll just go for a long swim, a chlorine soak will do me good, and then I'll get a good night's sleep tonight. Only I didn't make it to that night. By the time I got home from work my nose was like a faucet. Friday was worse, if that's possible. Now before you go telling me that I've been training too hard, let me assure you that I've been training less, significantly less, since I got sick. And intensity has gone out the window. The problem is my damn job. I've been working 50+ hours a week for the last month or more, taking the late train home (which is always delayed), I get home, rush out to work out as fast as I can, and barely have 20 minutes to shove some food and water into me before bed time. I'm probably not adequately fed or watered by bed time. And I haven't been sleeping well, because I just dream about what I've been doing at work all day and wake up a million times a night. So if I hear anyone say I'm training too hard, I'll release all the wrath of an overworked under-compensated worker on you (you know, go postal).

Friday night (the night before the race) I was so congested that I couldn't believe that so much snot could come from one person's head. But congestion was my only symptom, so I figured I'd be okay. Have you ever heard of Afrin? It is best thing ever. You spray it up your nose, and magically, within 30 seconds you're not sick anymore! And you stay not sick for 12 hours. Like I said: best thing ever. The second best thing ever is Nyquil. I took a giant swig around 8:30 and had the lights out before 9:00. And then the trouble started. The only thing that Nyquil does for congestion is put you in a coma so you don't notice you're snotting on your pillow. But my great gobs of snot were so out of control, that not even Nyquil could knock me out. Finally I dropped into a fitful sleep where I dreamed that I had to keep careful track of how long I lay on each side to make sure that my nostrils had an equal amount of snot for the table of contents I was writing, so they could check it at the race: I was dreaming about work and my cold at once. Not a very restful sleep. Then, around 1:00 the phone rang. I woke up, worried that it might be bad news. Eventually, I dropped back off to sleep. Then, around 2:30 I got a text message. It woke me up, then I couldn't fall back asleep because my snot had become completely unmanageable. I squirted some Afrin up there, but it took awhile to calm down and fall back asleep. Then my cell phone rang at 4:15, right near my head (it's really loud). I looked at who it was to make sure it wasn't an emergency and hit ignore. It took awhile to drop back off. I was getting annoyed. And fucking A, wouldn't you know, at 5:30 it fucking rang again!

When my alarm went off at 5:45 I finally checked the messages. Text message, 2:04 AM, Andrew in Grass Valley, CA: "Hi, happy late Valentines Day. Call me if you're up." Now, one would think that when I didn't call, I wasn't up. Voicemail, 3:54 AM: "Hi honey, I was jus' calling ta see if youwere awake. I called your landline and your momanswered, and she sounded a little pissed... And then I realizedit must be like 1 in the morning out there..." and the message goes on for 2 minutes slurring about how he's sorry for waking my mom up. You DON'T CALL SOMEONE AT 4AM AND APPOLOGIZE FOR WAKING THEM UP AT 1!!! Next message: 5:32 AM: "Hi honey, I just wanted to see if you were awake. I was going through some old pictures and I found pictures of you and me and Paul and Sarah... and I just want to catch up and see how you're doing, so if you get this tonight, why don't you give me a jiggle," (I remember that phrase because he said it twice). "So I hope everything is going well at the publisher... Sorry for waking your mom up..." and on and on. I think this is one of the situations where murder is acceptable.

So my morning was already off to a rotten start, especially since I needed that good night's sleep so desperately. The morning wasn't nearly as dramatic as the night before, so we can cut to me climbing on the shuttle from the parking lot to the ferry. I was surrounded by geeky club-runner-types and struggled to suppress my cough for fear of someone telling me what everyone already knew, that I shouldn't be doing this. The ferry was filled with runners and adolescent hockey players (and their hormones). As far as transportation goes, I think ferries may beat out trains as my favorite way to travel. There were comfortable, padded chairs, plenty of room to move around, and lots of personal space. I took stock of the empty seats looking for a safe introspective-looking companion who wouldn't stick their nose in my business and tell me not to run if I coughed too much on the 45 minute ride. I picked a (very attractive) woman who looked a lot like Mary-Louise Parker. I think Mary-Louise Parker should marry me, by the way. Meet Sheryl. As I sat down she let out this barking cough. I was delighted. "Oh, you have it too?" I asked, hiding my glee with commiseration and let out a little cough.
"Yeah, I woke up with it on Thursday" (me too! maybe we're soul mates!) "and my fiance told me that I was crazy and that I should just stay home." (Fiance? Damn.)
"Yeah, I've heard that one before," I said.
She then pulled out a nose spray much like mine (only it wasn't Afrin, this might explain the outcome of later events), tore off the cellophane safety seal with her teeth. I could tell that in different circumstances this woman and I could be great friends. She started squeezing the top of the spray to get the pump started and jumped when a 6-inch stream of water squirted out. "Shit! I thought it was going to be a mist, not a frigging jet!" she said, and shoved the thing as deep into her nose as it would go. "Cough drop?" she asked, handing me a roll of Hall's. I've developed a Hall's addiction this past month. "I have Dayquil, too," she said as we sucked on our cough drops.
"Wait, you've already taken it, or you're going to take it after the race?" I asked. That's strong stuff. You have to have a pretty high tolerance to be able to run or operate heavy machinery on that stuff.
"Ummmmm, I'm gonna take it. No, I mean I've already taken it. I had to think about that one..." she said. This woman was definitely some kind of soul mate.

"The thing is," said Sheryl, "I never know what to wear at these things." She opened up her back pack and showed me a selection of no fewer than 4 jackets and sweatshirts. I was crazy to hope this chick was gay. That's okay, I'm in love with Mary-Louise Parker, Sheryl's just cool. She bored me to death weighing the pros and cons of every possible combination and went off to the bathroom to change. I wish she hadn't bored me with describing the outfits and had entertained me with the changing part... but I'd be rewarded later. We'll get to that. We spent most of the ride over having a non-committal conversation until it came out that she'd done Goofy last year, and then we had enough to talk about to get us all the way to the island and then some.

In line for the bathroom I let out a couple of deep coughs to rearrange the shit in my lungs. A 6' British grandmotherly type behind me said, "You sound like someone who shouldn't be running 20 miles in February."
"Yeah, it sounds like that, doesn't it?" I said in a tone of voice that really said, "It sounds like that, but really I'm a grown-up and nobody can tell me what I can and can't do, so THERE!" I ran into Sheryl a few more times, and also finally saw Gadfly Thom in the 45 minute wait for the start. For someone who's been emailing me incessantly trying to get me to go to races, Thom was surprisingly distant. I was almost offended.

We went down to the start and I paid special attention when they announced that they were going to sing the national anthem. I wanted to see if The Chick who always sings it was a real person or a recording. Instead the singer was some local Vineyard boy. "I encourage everyone to sing along to get your lungs warmed up," he said.
"Hold on, we gotta find a flag," a runner yelled. Someone pointed to the top of a building behind us about 300 yards, so all the runners turned their backs to the starting line and began to sing. It was really pretty amusing to see. I did everyone a favor, though, and didn't sing. Then we turned around in time for the cannon to go off and we crossed the starting line, which an Official USATF Course Measurer Dude had moved back 200 feet from last year (thanks a lot, asshole).

Poor, poor Claire with a cold,
Who thought herself sufficiently bold,
She felt like ass,
But couldn't possibly pass,
On a 20 mile run in which she was enrolled.

Almost immediately I knew that today just wasn't going to be a speedy day. I ran the first mile in somewhere over 9:30, and couldn't have picked it up if I wanted to. Not that I was pushing that hard, it was just a 1-gear running day. That was okay, I didn't want to blow up like last week. There were these women yapping away behind me for the first half hour, talking about how beautiful the weather was, picking which houses they would buy when they won the lottery, and just generally talking about how happy they were to be running. "You guys are so positive!" I said. "I wish I could have you over my shoulder for the whole race!"

"We're our own best cheerleaders," one of them told me. They took me in to a growing group of women that I ran with until mile 5, but eventually I fell behind and didn't make much of an effort to catch up. I was running very conservatively, I told myself. Really, their pace was just a little too fast for my one gear of the day.

At mile 5 we ran about 2 blocks up a road and turned around and came back, and I got a look at the people that were behind me. My god, there was hardly anybody! I tried not to let it get to me. This was my one speed today, and I was going to stick to it. Now that I've seen my splits and I think about it, it was probably more because of the competitive running atmosphere this time of year in Boston, and the kinds of fields it attracts rather than my actual running ability. But we're not going to worry about that. I just wasn't in a hurry.

The weather forecast had been predicting weather in the mid-twenties so I had bundled up in a t-shirt, a medium-thickness Under Armour jacket, and my thermal ninja sweatshirt. (I put the John Rocks! t-shirt off for a week, figuring that this race would be too long to not have the option of re-arranging layers). I was burning up. The cheerleaders had been stripping layers the whole time I was running with them and laughing at themselves as they stabbed themselves while re-pinning their numbers. I thought for sure it must be about 40 degrees, but when I touched the hair on the back of my neck, it was frozen. Weird. Sheryl came out of nowhere at mile 8 and said hi. "I had to stop and take off one of my layers," she said. "I tied it around my waist." I could see that. "You should do it too," she said, when I told her I was sweating like crazy. "I feel like I can breathe a lot better too." Breathing a lot better sounded pretty good since I was still coughing a lot. I waited until the 10-mile marker and stripped down to my t-shirt and took off the Under Armour. Stopping set me to coughing, coughing led to more coughing, and I was just beginning to get it under control again when I started running again. A spectator was watching me, looking alarmed. "It's not as bad as it sounds," I assured her and ran away before she could tell me that I shouldn't be doing this.

It just so happens that around the 10 mile mark is where we leave the beach and turn uphill into the woods. My god! It was FREEZING. The chilly wind cut through my ninja jacket and I was accutely aware that my nipples were very, very visible to anyone who cared to look. Well maybe now that I'm cooler I'll run faster, I thought. I wasn't making bad time. I'd hit the 10-mile mark in about 1:30, but my hamstrings were starting to ache and I could feel the beginnings of blisters on my arches. Really, it wasn't a big deal, but it was so lonely out there and I had nothing better to think about. Hardly anyone was around, and I was either passing or being passed, but wasn't falling into stride with anyone. God, I was bored. Going up a hill half way through mile 11 I saw this pack of the funniest looking birds I'd ever seen. They looked like pigeons that someone had stuck a basketball into their tummies, so they had this tiny little head and these big, fat bodies. There were about 5 of them. At first I thought they were wild turkeys, but they didn't have the butt poof that turkeys have. I would have taken a picture, but I was over it. "What the hell are those?" I yelled to the guy 20 feet in front of me (translation: "Please talk to me!").
"I have no clue," he said and ran on. Then one of the birds made this weird EEE-eeee sound that sounded like a rusty mattress, which I think is weird fat pigeon bird speak for, "What the hell are those?"

Putting all the hills at the end of the course was a pretty rotten trick, even if they were small.

I really wasn't feeling too bad, but when I hit mile 13 I was feeling pretty over it. I had no idea how I was going to get through 7 more miles of this lonely rolling hill bullshit. And then I came up behind Sheryl. She was walking, and when I pulled up next to her I could see she was crying. I stopped to walk with her. It's not like I was in a hurry, right? "I just feel so shitty," she whimpered. "My head hurts, my legs hurt, I can't breathe, I'm so cold, and I can't stop crying..." she sobbed and then burst out with a dry coughing fit. "I just want to drop out, but I have no idea when the next aid station is." We'd just passed one at mile 13, so I knew she had a ways to go.
"Come on, I'll walk you there," I said. This was a damn good excuse to not run for awhile, and it gave me someone to talk to. "You know," I said, "you think you got it bad, I pee a little bit every time I cough." That made us both laugh, and cough.

There once was a runner named Sheryl,
Who couldn't choose her winter apparel,
She thought her cold'd be bearable,
When I found her she felt terrible,
And was crying like she was in real peril.

"I just don't want to come home with pnemonia," she said. "My fiance is going to say 'I told you so' when I get home." Ugh, I told you so. Avoiding that was exactly what was keeping me going. "I'm just so freezing!" she whined.
"Well why don't you put your other sweatshirt back on, silly?" I asked. She still had her Under Armour tied around her waist. I'd put mine back on over my ninja sweatshirt a mile ago.
She gave me some excuse about not being able to put it on over the other layer because it was too tight. Then she looked around and said, "Screw it, all I see are women around anyway," and stripped down to her bra to change. Yes! Once Sheryl warmed up she started to feel a bit better. She decided to walk/run, but I got a side stitch and we wound up doing more walking than running. "If I make it to mile 15 then I might just keep going," she said. We got to mile 15, and she decided to keep it up. "Mile 16 will be coming up soon, and then we only have 4 miles left!" she said. Suddenly she sounded like she had more energy than me. Who was helping whom here anyway? But pretty soon Sheryl started to flag again, and she dropped out as soon as she could find a spectator to bring her back to the start. Shit, I thought as I ran away, what am I going to do now? I still had more than 3 miles to go and now my legs had cooled off and frozen up.

I pulled up along side a guy that was running markedly slower than I was, but slowed down to keep pace with him. At his first grunt I said, "How you feeling?" which really meant, oh god, talk to me, talk to me, talk to me!
"Great!" he said. Oh thank goodness, someone positive!
"Yeah? Well I feel a hell of a lot worse than I did when I left this morning, I'll tell you that," I said. His name was David, and he and his buddy (I forget his name, let's call him Wilbur) were training for their first marathon under their third friend, Russ's training. This was their first 20 miler ever, so they were thrilled with every step they managed to squeeze out past their previous record of 16 miles. I ran with David, Wilbur and Russ straight through to the finish. Every time the conversation flagged I kept them talking about anything. A couple of times I even said out loud, "For heaven's sake, someone SAY something!"

It is what it is, nothing impressive, but finished. Splits are a little off because my GPS stops when I'm going slower than a 17 min/mile (about .4 miles).

We came into the finish line after exactly 3 hours and 31 minutes with them doing this funny windmill thing with their arms and me looking exhausted and confused. As we shuffled into the chute I yielded to David. "Get behind her, she was first!" the volunteer growled at him.
"Yeah, get behind me or I'll punch you. No cheating!" I snarled and smiled at him.

I went into the high school and got my No Weenies race t-shirt (which is my new favorite t-shirt). I shoveled some noodle stew down my gullet (not nearly as exciting as the clam chowdah everyone else was eating, but it hit the spot) and set off to stand in the line for the shuttle to the ferry to the shuttle to my car. Boarding the ferry there was a ramp about one story high. "Oh god, another hill!" I whined. This seemed like a pretty good moment to quit running forever. Once on the boat I did my best to stretch out, and then put my feet up on the back of the chair in front of me, until the passenger next to that chair (a non-runner) gave me a dirty look. I chatted with the guy next to me and watched a group several rows up crack open one bottle of Sam Adams after another. God, that looked good. I was so jealous.

I waited forever and a day for the shuttle back to the parking lot with the Sam Adams group still knocking 'em back. When the shuttle finally came, the ringleader pulled out yet more bottles. "Where are you getting all those from?!" I asked.
"You think this is the first time we've done this race?" the ringleader asked. "We have a very kind friend. You want one?" Did I ever! But then again, once I started they would have had to take me home with them and keep me. That might have been more than they bargained for. Four hours and forty-five minutes after finishing (after getting lost all over south eastern MA) I finally trudged through the door, ready for a big dinner and bed.

Surprisingly, today (Sunday) I'm not even sore. Not even the least little bit. Pretty amazing.

(Coming soon: Some of the UGLIEST pictures of me ever taken)