Choking on my medicine

Background

I'm still looking for a catharsis, or at the very least an escape... or at the very, very least to feel like a shadow of my former self again. At the 12-hour race two weeks ago I thought that I was getting there, or at the very least the race had calmed my nerves enough to let me think clearly. And when I got home, we had a wonderful week where it was almost like Grease Monkey and I were back together again.

All I needed was stability, but then Grease Monkey went out to dinner with this girl from work. The girl from work is the kind of lesbian who wants to be your friend just because you're a lesbian too. I don't trust those girls. In my mind, the only reason for behaving that way after high school is because you're constantly looking for new potential girlfriends. To make matters worse, this girl already had a girlfriend. But when Grease Monkey came home from dinner, I came down to get a cup of water and saw that she was dressed up. Then I noticed that she'd been doing her hair before work for the last few weeks, while normally she doesn't even shower often. Then this horrible girl got her a flower for fixing her bike... and a bottle of tequila... and a case of beer. "Do you like this girl?" I asked.
"Kinda," she said.
My world ended.

Now I know that everybody thinks that I just need to get over her, but I simply can't. I just can't make my mind go there. I'll be alright one minute almost thinking I'm going to survive, and then I see her, and every single fiber of my being just wants to curl up in her arms. People also think that she's treating me like crap. That's not true either. Things mostly get bad when I can't deal with the situation as it is and try to push her to get back together, which usually has the opposite effect of setting off a several-week tense period. And I know that some people think that we shouldn't be living together, but neither of us have anywhere else to go. And I think that if she made the (well-though-out, and triple-checked) decision to move in with me, and then dumped me 3 weeks later, then it's her responsibility to make things liveable. Neither of us are happy when I go crazy.

Race Report

But I digress... It was in the midst of all of this, and with an intense desire to get some perspective that I started looking for something to do on my birthday. There were no good bike races that weekend, so I started looking elsewhere. I'd kind of been itching for the simplicity of a marathon since the Boston Marathon last month. I've never felt as accomplished as I did after some of my marathons (such as Cape Cod or Disney). So seeking to recreate that sense of accomplishment, I went to marathonguide.com and looked to see what was going on in the area. What I found was the Sugarloaf Marathon in Maine.

Now mind you, I haven't run more than 5 times in the six months since the Ironman. More than half of those runs have been on dirt and trails, and all of them have been under 7 miles long. I knew full well that this could hurt me, possibly for the season, so I sat on my decision for awhile. But when the Other Girl turned up, I decided that it would be best to get out of Massachusetts for a little while. The final catalyst to my decision came from the very unlikely source of a Wal*Mart-shopping fat lady:

I was catching up on Biggest Loser while riding on my trainer on Thursday afternoon (the last day to sign up for the race). The week's challenge was for the contestants to run a 5K with a bunch of local unfit people in Houston (or was it Dallas?). Anyway, among all these people who took nearly 2 hours to finish a 5K, there was still one woman who was way, way, way behind. When the camera found her, she was closing in on her last mile and could only make it a few steps before she would have to stop and use her daughter's shoulders as a walker to relieve the pressure on her knees. But that lady made it to the finish line. She was sobbing and crying and everyone was feeling empowered when she blubbered, "I just walked a 5K. I can't even walk a mile! I have to take a kart in Wal*mart." That floored me. If this lady who only got out of her seat to reach for the Ho-Ho's on the top shelf could get up off her ass and walk 3 miles when her knees were about to blow out under her weight, then I, a young, physically fit healthy person could rock up to a marathon on no training. I hoped that it would be such a grueling challenge that I would achieve the quantum leap in self-image that the Wal*mart lady had achieved. I wanted to dig down deep into the silty bottom of my soul and find out what I still had in there. This marathon would hurt like hell, but that was the point.

So I did a quick google map search to see where this place was, and found this:
Why, that can't be more than 45 minutes from Portland! I thought. I can stay with Mindy the night before, and then have a nice, easy drive home afterward. That pinprick however is where the marathon took place. To my credit though, that region is mountainous.

Here's the problem. This is the Sugarloaf that this race was at (about 2.5 hours north of Portland):

Note: that squiggly line just north of the pinpoint is Canada. So I was closer to Canada than to Portland. Damn.

But it was too late for second guesses now. I was $80 of committed to this thing. So I drove up to Portland on Saturday afternoon, had some dinner with Mindy and Mister Mindy, and went to bed at 8:30. As soon as I lay my head down, though, I started picturing what Grease Monkey may be doing with The Other Girl in my absence. I was never a jealous person before all this, but the situation has turned me into a headcase. At 10:30 I had to text her under the pretext that I was worried whether my cat had been fed to make sure that she was home, and NOT with the Other Girl. Four hours later, at 2:30 in the morning I was up again to drive the final 2.5 hours up to Carabassett Valley to catch the 5:30 shuttle to the start.

It was a very small race. It wasn't even chip timed.

I took a Sharpie with me and wrote "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!" on both my arms before hunkering down to wait for the start. I hoped that the signs on my arms would have people cheering for me when I felt low. I need not have worried about the warning that shuttles would leave at 5:30 *sharp,* because runners continued to arrive for the next hour. I listened to a couple of marathon geeks talk about which of the 50 states they'd checked off their list. I listened to another woman say, "Did you see that there was a town called 'New Portland' on the way up here? Haha, why go to the regular old Portland when you can stay in New Portland???" I wanted to say, Yeah, and I passed a York on the way up here too. Maybe they'll have a New York someday and everybody will stay there rather than going to the old York and it will become a bustling metropolis! Basically, I had no desire to talk to anyone.

The course was a point-to-point, starting at about 1000 feet and climbing about 600' between miles 7.5 and 10.5 before it dropped about 1100 feet over the last 16 miles. I had no pacing strategy other than never to run hard. I figured that as long as my breath was under control I'd be alright.


Miles 1-7 It's funny how biking and ironman training has warped my sense of time. These miles seemed to be over in a flash, and I was surprised how easy they felt. I mean, I figured the pounding would have for sure started to bother me by this point. I felt like I'd just started the race a minute ago and here I was already over an hour into it.



Miles 7.5-10.5 (the hill) Starting at about mile 3 I had tempered my over-enthusiastic 8:15/mile pace, and people had started passing me. Now I saw the group pull ahead slowly up the hill. I didn't mind. There was nothing that was keeping me from running my own race today. I didn't really care if the road went up or down, and when it finally started to turn down again, I couldn't believe how fresh I still felt.

Miles 11-17 I was only now beginning to feel the miles in my legs, just like I might in a regular marathon. There was a twinge in my right plantar fascia, but nothing to be worried about. I tried to stay on the soft shoulder of the road whenever possible to spare myself from the pounding. I couldn't believe I crossed the 13.1-mile mark in about 2 hours. I had fully expected to run a 5-hour marathon today. Well, who knew what was going to happen up ahead.
By mile 14 I was thinking, Only one more mile until 15, and then it's only 3 miles to 18, and from 18 it hurts no matter what. But this is a piece of cake!
At mile 16 I remember thinking, Ten more miles? I can do 10 more miles. I started counting them down, but not because they were dragging on forever yet. No, I was counting them down because under 10 miles felt like a short way, and I was bored.
Mile 17, as predicted, was my last fairly comfortable mile.

Miles 18-21 Starting at mile 18, the miles felt longer and longer, and the wheels started to fall off. The constant downhill had my left quad burning with every step, and my right foot and calf were starting to feel really tight. But still, I didn't feel like I had to walk. I still didn't feel like I'd been running for very long. Mile 19 was exponentially harder than mile 18, and mile 20 exponentially harder than that. But what marathon doesn't feel like that? Mile 21 was the last mile that I didn't feel the temptation to walk. At this point I had realized that no one could read my arms, and I wasn't going to get any birthday wishes.

Miles 22-23 Now I was in a world of hurt. I was tempted to walk for a minute at each mile marker, but I realized that I wasn't in that much pain. I wanted this to be over more than I wanted to walk, so other than the aid stations I just kept running. I wished someone would talk to me and distract me from all this, but all the people who passed me were either wearing headphones or didn't want to talk.

Miles 24-26.2 I really, really wanted to walk at this point. I wanted to be out of my head so that I could dissociate from the pain. I knew that I had a terrible marathon shuffle going on, and could feel myself waddling like a lame penguin. But still, I was disappointed to find that I didn't have to dig very deep to find the motivation to keep running. All I wanted was for this to be over, I wasn't getting anything rewarding out of the experience. To occupy my mind while the miles disappeared at a glacial rate behind me, I started reciting the only poem I've ever memorized start to finish:

When the Pawn hits the conflict he thinks like a king,
What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight,
And he'll win the whole thing 'fore he enters the ring,
There's no body to batter when your mind is your might.
So when you go solo you hold your own hand,
And remember that depth is the greatest of heights,
And if you know where you stand, then you know where to land,
And if you fall, it don't matter cuz you know that you're right.
(Fiona Apple)

But still, the poem was wooden in my head. I would recite it rhythmically 5 times to myself, then check my watch and start over. I recited that damned poem the whole way to the finish line. I hadn't spoken more than a few sentences to anyone in over four hours. I'd only gotten about 3 Happy Birthdays. I hadn't reached any ground-shattering conclusions. I hadn't learned anything about myself except that marathons weren't a challenge to finish anymore, under any circumstances. I just wanted it to be over. When I crossed the finish line in 4:13 and change, all I felt was relief. It didn't even feel epic, just painful. It was actually over rather quickly.

I suppose I could have been happy about the race. I think I might have beaten my Boston time from 2008, a race that I'd trained all winter for. I could have been proud that I finished the whole thing without walking (except maybe 3 or 4 aid stations), but not even that had done it for me. Despite my lack of training, this marathon had felt exactly the same as every single other marathon I've ever run. The deterioration felt exactly the same, and the pain felt exactly the same. I'd only run 15 minutes slower than my best marathon time ever. The only thing that was missing was a sense of accomplishment. I felt more like I'd bought a giant chocolate bar to make myself feel better, and instead had given myself indigestion.

The whole way home I continued to work myself up about Grease Monkey. I had hoped that my being away would recharge our delicate relationship, but when I called her from the finish line to see what her plans were for the evening, she seemed bored with me. The whole 4.5-hour drive home I worked myself into an insecure frenzy to the point where when we finally got dinner (my request), I couldn't help but force her to tell me where we stood. I begged her to give me one more chance, I cried, I restated my case for the millionth time, even though I knew that these were the surest ways to push her away. She ignored me with an uncharicteristic calm.

It wasn't until I was already laying in bed trying to process everything that it hit me. Something that she'd said about the Ex that Came Before Me came back to me. "It's because I'm not Sandra, isn't it?" I asked.
"Yeah, I guess you're right," she said in that way that I knew I'd finally hit whatever she hadn't had the balls to say.
All the puzzle pieces came together at once: she'd been excited to start our lives together until she unpacked all her (their) stuff out of storage, how she'd told me the day she dumped me that I wasn't the girl she wanted to marry so it was pointless to lead me on, how she hadn't needed space until I made a fuss about not liking her (and Sandra's) headboard on the bed, how she said she didn't want to be in a relationship with anyone right now (anyone that wasn't Sandra)... And like an idiot I'd just pressed and pressed and pressed until she was so sick of me that who can blame her for not wanting to get together with me. You know she didn't even actually say she wanted to break up until I asked her a million times if she was trying to break up with me and she answered with an exaspirated "YES!" (Then I kept pressing, trying to make her take it back.)
"You know, I can never be Sandra," I said. "But I made a pretty great Claire for awhile." That made her laugh, but it wasn't enough. I need a good, long time of not being psychotic for either of us to be okay with me again.

Lying in bed, sore and bloated from the marathon I now felt worse than I ever had before. How could this not be something that would blow over? Surely she would get over me Not Being Sandra pretty quickly, right? I mean, she'd been in love with me for a year without Me Being Sandra. But I'd gone crazy when she dumped me, when she didn't get over it fast enough, I just kept pushing and pushing. And now this little hoochie gets to be the next Not Sandra rather than me. And how am I supposed to stand by and watch her date the Other Girl or anyone else without going berzerk again?

To make matters worse, the hoochie is now single and Grease Monkey's spending more and more and more time with her. I feel as bad as I did when she first dumped me. And now all I have is a growing list of things that aren't helping me move on, and aren't making me feel better. I did drop about a tablespoon of salt into the water that The Other Girl's flower was sitting in, though. That helped me feel a little bit better. Who buys lillies for someone you like anyway? That's a funeral flower...