Monday: Run 5 miles
I decided that a Spin class counted as 20 miles, since I also had to ride to and from the gym (about 4 mi round trip) and indoor rides have no coasting. But the Y was closed on Monday, meaning that I would be short both a swim and a bike for the week. Instead, I ran 5 miles barefoot on the beach. My plan was to run for an hour, but 50 minutes in my big toes were so sore that I was afraid that I had open sores on them and was rubbing sand into my wounds. Can sand get picked up in your bloodstream and kill you? It probably can. When I got home, I saw why: Giant, twin dime-sized blood blisters on each of my big toes. I was hobbling for days.Tuesday: Run 10 miles
The next day was a running day as well, and I hit the ancient "paved" road through the trails. This used to be the old Highway One before they carved the new one into the sides of the cliff. The road is so narrow and windy, that it's no wonder that there are pre-war car carcasses rusting out all over the hillside. The trail leaves from near my house, climbs over a mountain, and drops you a few miles down the coastline. I had wanted to run all the way down to the ocean, but ran out of time only a mile or so from the end and had to turn around. Every time I run these trails, I'm blown away by them. I sp
end half the time with my head up looking over to the next hill and wondering how to get to the trails I can see going up the side, or wondering how long the little trail tributaries go and what's on them. I ran 10 miles that day, but I wanted to keep going and going forever. I hadn't even wanted to go on this run when I left the house.Wednesday: Swim 3000yd, Bike 20 mi
The next day I did a boot camp-style class with my new corporate client. The class went really well, but I'm embarrassed to say that I managed to make myself sore with the jump squats, lunges, Spiderman push-ups, and abs circuit. (Really?! An abs circuit made me sore?!) Then again, what really fucked me up was the Spinning class that night where I almost made myself throw up. I realized half way through that five and a half minutes of "Don't touch that dial, we're building leg muscles here!!!" was a bit intense, but if I touched my own resistance knob, the class would know. The next morning I couldn't walk down stairs.Oh yeah, and I swam that day.
Friday: Swim 2000 yd
Friday I still had 1000 yd I had to make up on the swim, so I joined the old ladies during lap swim at the local high school pool. It was a fantastic pool, but I hadn't realized how easy the salt water pool at the Y had made swimming. Now that I was in a regular old chlorinated pool (and a deep one, no less), I felt like I was swimming in baggy clothes. Originally I tried to tell myself that it was a 25m pool, not yards, and that's why my times were so slow. But no... I just sucked. After a warm-up I swam 10x100 IM. I love IM because I love swimming butterfly, but can't do it for more than 50 yards on the best day. IM lets me swim lots of butterfly without having to look like a fool hanging onto the deck and gasping. I don't know when I started loving butterfly so much. I used to hate it. But then I just woke up one day and I could swim 25 yd no sweat, and now I do it every chance I get. I think it makes me look cool. (It's probably better that I never see myself swim fly and preserve my self-delusion on this point.)Saturday: Bike 75 mi
Which brings us to the weekend. It was going to be in the 70's all over central California, and with no clients or races for the weekend, I decided to go down to Santa Cruz to ride through the mountains. You can't look in any direction in Santa Cruz county without seeing some sort of park or nature preserve, so it was no problem planning a route that took me through Henry Cowell Redwoods state park, Big Basin state park, Castle Rock state park... I knew it was going to be hilly. What I didn't expect was a 40-mile climb. Right: The new white bike. As my friend Tommie said, "Only virgins get to ride white bikes." Well, after what happened to my last bike, I don't think I can be called a bike virgin anymore.
I started near sea level a few blocks from the base of campus at my alma mater. In 2005 when I first started riding, I had ridden up Empire Grade (the road that climbs the mountain behind the university) twice: Once I took my ancient Pugeot that was 2 sizes too big for me, whose brakes didn't work, and whose friction gears kept ghost shifting so often that I carried a screw driver with me at all times to tighten the shifter bolt. I had gotten part way up the mountain, given up in despair in someone's driveway, and then ridden down the hill trying to make myself as big a sail as possible because my brakes didn't work and I still hadn't mastered descending. I thought I was going to die that day. The second time, Lorraine led me up there on the carbon fiber bike I would later borrow for my first half ironman (and then carelessly ditch at the side of the road with a spectator when I blew my spare tube). I had gotten off the bike in that same driveway and refused to go on until I caught my breath. Then she had flown away down the other side while I gripped the brakes so hard that I thought my arms would fall off.
This time when I passed the driveway, I was surprised at how high up it was; about 10 miles into the climb (how the hell did I get up this high on that 54cm steel Pugeot?!), and how I was still riding as hard as I could to get up the grade. Either I was stronger back then than I give myself credit for, or I'm weaker now than I thought. After 17 miles of climbing, I turned toward Big Basin and again rode down the steep, winding hill full of blind turns with my hands gripping so hard on the brakes that I was sure that they would fall off. At one point I tried to come to a stop to give my forearms a rest, and was unable to stop at all.
For another 20 or so miles I rode through the redwoods, climbing slow, grinding, relentless hills with reprieves that always came too late and were too short. I was running out of Chewy bars, and pretty soon I would be out of water. I hadn't passed a single store or gas station on the entire ride, and wouldn't find one until mile 60. Luckily, though, I finally reached the top of the ridge at mile 40, and hardly had to climb another foot for the rest of the ride.Life was perfect out here. All I could think about was how lucky I was to have this
weather, this bike, this body, and the time to be doing this. I hardly got any sun on my bare arms and legs because I was under the canopy of redwoods almost the whole time, but every once in awhile there would be a break in the trees and I could see the entire Santa Cruz Mountain range spreading out around me (given, I was afraid I would have to climb another mountain and wondered which one of those humps would be next every time I looked over the views). I kept thinking about how far I had come since I lived in Santa Cruz and started riding and running for the first time. I kept thinking about how this was exactly what I'd been trying to get back to for so many years, and how lucky I was that I was finally here, despite the misfortune that it took to get me here. I wished Lindsey could see me now and eat her heart out. I couldn't believe how good life was.When I got back to town, I met up with an old friend and Shane's ex girlfriend, Kat. We had both worked at the same gym in 2004-5 when I first got my personal training certification. I had done nothing with my credential back then and eventually let it expire, while she had been working in gyms ever since. Now we had both found our way back to personal training, her as a powerlifter turned martial artist and me as... Claire. She suggested we go to a tea room with a jacuzzi and catch up.
Slowly the conversation turned to training, and eventually body fat measurements. "I was below 15% before I moved out here, but now I've gotten so fat.." I told her. She looked at me in the borrowed bikini. "Yeah, there's no way you're 15% now," she told me matter-of-factly. It was a wake-up call. I was smarting from it for the rest of the night, until things went even worse and I had other things to feel bad about.
We went to dinner and to a small show with a bunch of bands whose songs all sounded the same and pretty much sucked. Suddenly I had a feeling, There's something wrong with my car! Kat had told me to leave the car in a shopping center where she promised that they never ticketed. I thought it was stupid to leave my car sitting there with the brand new bike in the back seat, right near where the junkies were known to hang out, even though downtown Santa Cruz looked like a church picnic compared to the San Francisco Civic Center area. When we got back to the parking lot, though, my car was gone altogether.
"Kat, where's my car?" I asked."What are you talking about? It's right there," she said.
"My car's not blue." Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! I had been working so, so, so hard to put together a savings account, to start to pay off my debt, to park carefully in San Francisco so that I wouldn't get towed or booted because I couldn't afford another setback like this. As with any misfortune, I wanted to blame someone else. I wanted to blame Kat for making me park there. I wanted to blame the towing company for being a bunch of fucking assholes who just steal people's money. I wanted to blame everyone I'd ever met in my life who I had willingly or unwillingly gone out to food, coffee, or drinks with. What I needed was to be alone and punch things, but instead I was in Kat's car having a panic attack about where I would get the $380 it would take me to get my car back.
Well-meaning, she tried to talk me down. "How can you be working so much and not have any money?" she asked. Because my life is out of control. I have so many business expenses that my real income is half of what it appears, and because I keep having to absorb financial setbacks. Because I constantly eat out because I have no time to cook. Because no one around me cooks either, so every time I want to hang out with someone, we have to spend money at a restaurant. Because I spend $50/week on gas. Because $380 isn't chump change! Then she started trying to solve my problems, which only made me feel more helpless. I can't cook! I don't have the time or energy or organizational skills or resources to be cooking for my schedule. Yes, I'm sure there is a way, but I sure as hell don't have the energy or the appetite for it. Because I have been emotional eating to get through my day and please, oh please, oh please don't make me face that demon too... I'm so exhausted from all of the things I've had to face over the past year. I just want things to be easy! Why oh why am I such a fuck-up. I recognized what she was trying to do; that I was stuck in my thinking and things are always better than you think, but I was just digging myself into a hole of frustration and self-loathing. I couldn't snap myself out of it.
I got my car back, and as I drove back to her house I figured out my real expenses in my head. I couldn't believe how much less money I really had than I thought. No wonder I still felt short so often! Why do you fail so badly at being a grown-up, Claire? Why can't you figure out this simple subtraction and addition? Kat continued to try to solve my mental block, but eventually she had to admit that I just needed to sleep it off. I didn't sleep it off, and was in a rotten mood all the next day (and deep into this week).
Sunday: Run 12.5 mi
The next morning I met up with Lorraine for the first time since the AIDS LifeCycle in 2008. We had a lot of catching up to do over our 12.5 mile trail run. "This has been my year of surgeries," she had told me over the phone. When I saw her in shorts and a tank top, I scanned her body for scars. I thought for sure that after all these years of ultrarunning, that her knees had finally given out, but her knees were unblemished. Her old shoulder issues maybe? But nope, those were good too.
"So what did you have operated on?!" I asked."My brain."
"WHAT?!" She had had a noncancerous tumor pressing on her facial and auditory nerve. They had had to sever the auditory nerve, which affected her balance making her run "like an old lady," as she put it. Well this 60-year-old woman who was running "like an old lady" after brain surgery still schooled me on the trails, but at least I was stronger than her dog, who was also getting old.
It was good to talk to Lorraine. My life would be very, very different if I'd never met her. I don't know if I ever would have gotten into trail running or even ultradistance stuff... or even cycling if it weren't for her. She taught me to change my first flat. She made fun of me for not having the right bike etiquette. Today I was telling her about my cracked frame and all the memories I had on it. Lorraine, who is not a very reflective person said, "You know, it's important to take a second to look back at how far you've come. When I met you, you were still riding that bike with a kickstand," (the Pugeot).
"I had that conversation with my doctor just a few weeks ago," she told me. "I was telling him that I felt like I still didn't have my energy back" (the surgery was almost a year ago). "He asked me what I was doing and I told him trail running, road biking, lifting weights, but I still wasn't mountain biking. He said, 'I have trouble feeling sorry for you because you're doing so much better than 99% of the other patients that I see."
"But he doesn't get that your life was bigger than 99.99% of the people that he sees," I pointed out. "You had so much more to lose! This is your life." It was impossible to stay angry around Lorraine, although I was still a bit sullen about my predicament. It really would have been the perfect weekend...
3 comments:
Ouch that sucks about the car, but on the finances I think about 90%of the country is in the same boat.
On the training it definitely seems like you've come a long way from the days of your rusted out Puegeot, and it's good to hear that your getting back to being the good ol' ass kicking Claire
And yes I am still jealous of the weather your training in.
The reality is that ALOT of people can't do the simple addition and subtraction that controlling your finances continue. I hope you're able to figure things out.
As far as your training goes; I read your posts and look at your pictures and try not to be SO jealous about where you live!
Major suckage about the car. I hear you on the not having time to cook issue. I have a handful of easy things to make when I am pressed for time and they provide lots of left overs. Let me know if you want any ideas.
Post a Comment