A chilly day in hell

My plan for New Year’s day was to ride the Santa Cruz Randonneurs’ Grey Whale 200K. Some events just seem to be doomed from the beginning. First, the website listed the town that the ride began in, but got no more specific than that. When I tried to find a “Contact Us” link to find out more, I found only a snail mail address. No email, no phone number. I found a facebook group, but I’m Facebook retarded, so I couldn’t figure out how to ask there. Finally I found a Google group and managed to send out a WTF in e-smoke signals.

But the complications didn’t end there. The course was an out-and-back along the coast from Aptos to Moss Landing. Going north on the Pacific Coast Highway is the windiest place on the planet, and I felt no small amount of trepidation about riding 62 miles into a severe headwind, especially with sub-par cycling fitness. Oh yeah, and it was going to rain. All day. But then again, as far as I could tell, Aptos and Moss Landing are only about 20 miles apart, so I couldn’t figure out how the hell they were going to get 125 miles out of that anyway.

To be at the 7:30 start an hour and a half away, I was going to have to get up at 4:30. Like a good little girl, I was in bed by 9:30, but my neighbors weren’t behaving nearly as nicely. They were drunk and rowdy, and most of all, LOUD! I pictured them walking around with lampshades on their heads as they kept me up until midnight, then came outside to set off fire crackers and be loud in the yard until 2 in the morning. When my alarm went off 2 ½ hours later, the Weather Channel said it was raining in Aptos and I rolled over and went back to sleep.

I was furious at the world all day. If there were only 52 weekends in a year to ride the world, then I had just gotten the first and most important 1/52 of 2011 stolen from me by a bunch of drunken old people. I decided that I would pay $60 to run a half marathon the next day, and I would run it like a punishment. So far, my new year’s resolutions weren’t going so well. They were:

-Stop letting small hiccups get in the way of my getting back in shape, and be organized to miss fewer workouts

-Save more money

-Not race for anything but enjoyment for six months, and race EVERYTHING that looked like fun

I slept at Scout’s house the night before, and we were in bed by 10:30 like good little girls. All I needed was to get up by 6, but when she got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night I looked at my watch: 6:50. HOLY FUCK! I sprang out of bed, got dressed as fast as I could, ran to Starbucks (priorities, people! Starbucks, please sponsor my blog), and was on the road by 7:10.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly for me to arrive in plenty of time for the 8:30 start when the freeway came to a dead halt. One exit before mine, they had closed the freeway. So five lanes of traffic suddenly had to exit onto a back street. It took me 25 minutes to get to the exit 100 yards away. Now I was certain 2011 was doomed, and I was wondering if it was worth going home and getting really fat before I jumped off the bridge, or whether I should just pull over on the Bay Bridge on the way home and get it over with.

I got to the venue with 10 minutes until start time and sprinted through the throngs of 5 and 10K runners. Their races didn’t start for another half hour. Lucky fucks! I found the registration tent and asked the girls at the front of the line if I could cut them like I owned the place. “You know they pushed the start back 10 minutes, right?” they asked.

“So I have 14 minutes rather than just four?” I said, trying unsuccessfully to be polite. I sounded rude. I did my best to make up for it by thanking them every 10 breaths for as long as I was at the registration table.

“We’ll send you your finisher’s medal tomorrow,” the registration lady said.

“Oh god, I so don’t care!” I said.

“Don’t lie!” said one of the ladies I’d cut. “You have a trophy case at home.” For the record, no, I don’t. All my finisher’s medals and trophies stayed home in Boston.

After sneaking off into the weeds to have a quick (and very, very necessary) pee, I got to the start line just in time to tie my shoes before the countdown. The pee-splattered, nicely-tied shoes were my racing flats. The website had said that half of the course was paved and the hills were similar to the training-bra-flat course that I’d run on Thanksgiving. Since I planned on running like I stole something, my racing flats seemed like a better choice than my bulky trail shoes.

Big mistake.

The first mile or so were paved bike trails over rolling hills much like the Thanksgiving course. I was running fast-ish, but nothing like I used to race at. Also, it seemed that since I moved to San Francisco, I’d gotten old. My joints felt rickety, my muscles non-compliant, and my lungs grouchy. Then we turned off into the mud for the 2.5 mile, 900 foot climb that would make up the major feature on the course’s elevation profile, and there was mud.

All the people wearing Vibram 5 Fingers started slipping all over the place, as did I. At one point, every time I stepped up, my foot would slip back to its starting point before the next foot could land. My Garmin autopaused and didn’t resume until I crested the next ridge. I walked, scrambled, and slipped up the majority of the next couple of miles.

When I got to the top of the steepest part of the hill, there was a woman standing at the top screaming. Because of the acoustics of the hill, I had been listening to her shrill screaming for minutes and was looking forward to punching her in the face --or at the very least giving her a dirty look--at the top. Of course, when I reached her, I just stared at the ground in front of me so that I wouldn’t get a mouthful of mud.

“WHOOOOOOOOO!” she screamed. “THERE ARE ONLY A FEW IN FRONT OF YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

A couple of what? Rodents of Unusual Size? Eventually I figured out that she probably meant ‘women.’ ‘A few’ is a relative term.

At the top of the hill, there was still more hill to climb, but where the last inclines had been far from what the race organizers had called, “runable,” these were the kinds of hills that don’t interrupt your stride and just make your life miserable. Life was miserable for me right now, if you couldn’t tell. My body wasn’t feeling all that snappy, and mud was seeping in the vents in the soles of my shoes. I was also finding loud noises really disorienting, which was really getting to be a problem because I’d been running next to a shooting range for a mile or more.

I kept hearing the CRACK of rifles and then a rumble. I don’t like guns. Guns make me nervous and they make too much noise. They make it too easy to kill someone. The snapping in my ears was making me feel like maybe I was going to be next. If I’d known I was going to be running in a war zone, I would have stayed home --or at least worn a brighter colored shirt.

All the gunshots had been over my right shoulder, but suddenly there was a loud gunshot off my left shoulder. “JESUS!” I said, out loud.

Jesus delivered me a friend. “That’ll get you to run uphill faster!” the guy I was about to pass called over his shoulder. “What time are you shooting for?”

“I was going for sub-2, but now I just want to finish with enough time to get all my errands done for the day.” From there a conversation started, which is how I found out that this guy was Me in Boy Form. We were both personal trainers who worked within a few blocks of each other. We both had the same susceptibility to surprise over-distance rides. He was big for a runner, just like me. His name was Chris, which is what a lot of people think I say my name is when they’re not really listening.

Me as a Boy and I spent the next six or seven miles talking shop and swapping stories of rewarding training experiences, and outdoing each other with 'stupidest thing I've ever done at a race' stories. I didn’t even notice that we were running anymore, or passing people. If we were passed, I didn’t notice that either.

“Holy cow!” I said. “We’ve only got a couple more miles of this nonsense!” We were back on pavement now, running down a steep downhill that we were going to have to turn around and run right back up once we got to the bottom. Me in Boy Form decided that he was going to walk part of the hill, but since I only had about a mile and a half to go, I thanked him and plugged on alone up the hill at what could barely pass as a “run.”

I had seen another chick in the out-and-back segment that I decided that I would try to reel in. Once I hit more shallow hills and my body’s signals could be trusted again, I noticed again that I was tired and old. I saw the girl that I was reeling in at the top of a hill when I was at the bottom of said hill, but couldn’t bring her back in the .2 miles I had to the finish.

I reached the finishing area all by myself, and could see the finishing arch about 10 yards in front of me. The crowd was pointing to a line of flags to my left, away from the finishing arch. “What the hell is this?” I yelled. “The finish line’s right there!” I could feel people chuckling as I rounded the small grassy field to the finishing arch. I slipped and slid on the muddy grass as I tried to sprint across the line. I had to put on a show now that everyone was watching me: the chick who bitches. I finished in about 2:08 (2:06:59 according to Garmin).

“It must have been a fast course today,” a photographer told me at the finish line. “Last year the winner finished in 1:50 and everyone was surprised because they thought that was fast.” What the hell kind of race can you moonwalk 2 miles of and still have a “good” time?? It was enough to convince me to stick around until the results were posted. “Look,” the photographer said, gesturing to a woman with a fuel belt. “You never see middle-aged women finishing in under 2:30.” Where the hell was I? You see middle-aged women finish in under 1:30 all the time. If you were fast enough to be at the finish line yourself before they finish.

It must have been a pretty frigid day in hell, because I’d made third in my age group. And there were more than three people in my age group too. Twelve to be exact. Or someone with the same first name as me and all the same consonants as my last name and the wrong vowels got third in my age group, anyway. (They also had me down for living in the wrong town). I got 46th out of 221 overall, and 8th female.

As much as I would like to think that I’m “all that and a bag of chips” as Michelle says, I know better. I don’t think I was in any better than low-1:50’s half marathon shape, which in Boston would barely get me into the top 40%. The middle aged ladies routinely beat me, and snatch up all the extra small t-shirts before I get there. Boston is a running city. I picked up my bronze medal and didn’t know what to make of it. Should I put it in my imaginary trophy case? I kind of felt like I’d cherry picked the medal; like I’d shown up with a motorbike at a cycling race.

Over the next 24 hours I had to accept that Old was contagious, and I’d caught a bad case of it from Scout. My knees were cranky coming down the stairs, my quads were sore (imagine that! I never get sore! Not me!), I was deathly tired, and a cramp in my traps kept me awake deep into the night. I guess when you get to be 27 1/2, you can’t get away with what you used to be able to get away with when you were 27, and you need to be more on top of your stretching and recovery.

But I don’t LIKE yoga!

Glass Elevator

Side note: On my Christmas ride I told the story of a particularly irritating trashy lady in the local Escondido Starbucks (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog!). Well, the following morning I walked into the same Starbucks and who was behind the counter ready to take my order, but the yelling cup lady with the good dye job! She worked there (making it even tackier that she was last-minute gift shopping at Starbucks on Christmas). I tipped her well and got away from the counter as fast as I could, telling myself there was no reason why she would recognize me, and that even if she did there was no way for her to know that I hated her guts. I walked up to the table with the cream pitchers, and as in many Starbucks there was a bulletin board above the little island introducing me to my local Starbucks baristas. There at eye level was my friend with the dye job. Her name was Marsha, and in big, swoopy handwriting she had written that her favorite day of the year was the day that Starbucks comes out with their Christmas cups! This was too weird. I fled.

On RAAM, there was one descent that everyone was talking about for the whole trip. It was a 10-mile descent just outside San Diego called the Glass Elevator where our guy hit speeds of over 60 mph. If there's anything that catches my attention, it's a free 60 mph descent. Of all the roads across the whole country, it was the Glass Elevator that everyone said was the coolest. We in the RV hadn't gotten to see the Glass Elevator because of the steep grades and narrow road. It wasn't until my descent off of Mt. Palomar on Christmas that I remembered about the Glass Elevator and decided to take the time to check it out.

Much more to my delight, I found out that the Glass Elevator, also known as Montezuma Grade was alongside a place called Hellhole Palms. Clearly, this was something that I couldn't pass up, despite the 1:30 drive I would have to take to get there and the fact that I had no clean shorts. Oh well, a few pustules on my ass from humping a saddle in filthy shorts never hurt anybody, right? Maybe I could even snag a picture of a sign that said "Hellhole."

When I woke up, though, there was wet on the ground. It's never supposed to rain in San Diego, but there it was all over the streets. I wouldn't be so worried about the rain, except for the fabled 60 mph descent. I did not want to die smeared across the road in some place called Hellhole. I was having vivid mental images of how far my teeth would be thrown from my mouth if my wheel slid out at 50 mph or I got a blow-out on a straightaway. Okay, I'll drive out there, and if it's too wet at least I will have seen it, I told myself. When was I ever going to find myself in East San Diego again, anyway? As you can see, there's nothing out there.
Funny thing about California is that the climate can change so much if you just cross the street. The hills trap all the weather systems where they are, creating completely different weather from one town to the next. I drove nearly due east through an hour of cows and drizzle, and as soon as I reached the top of the ridge, the road was dry and KAPOW! just like that I was in the desert. On the other side, the sun was out.

I had the choice to either park at the top of the hill and do the descent first, or drive over to the other side and earn my descent. I decided to park at the bottom of the valley and ride up, mostly because I wanted the air and my body to get as warm as possible before I started whipping down the hill tucked into a tight ball. I hopped on my bike and immediately began pounding back up the way I'd come. If all I was riding was one measly climb just to come back down, I might as well ride it hard, right? For the next hour and 20 minutes I motored up the 3,700-ish feet to the top as fast as I could, maintaining a heart rate that started at around 155 and slowly drifted up to the low 170's by the time I reached the top (my normal "steady" climbing heart rate when I'm warmed up is 165). It wasn't until much later that I realized that this could actually have been considered a pretty hard workout. I wondered again at how my mental space could make something seem completely daunting or like a piece of cake depending on how I framed it. Maybe reading all those books was bad for me. There is, after all, an angel that watches out for the stupid and makes sure that they achieve everything when if they'd known any better they'd know was impossible.

The road was a steady 6% grade for 10.5 miles. If there were steeper sections, that's when the full-face wind decided to come through with a royal Fuck You! By the top I was pretty ready to be done with the whole thing. I was chilly, I was tired, and I had been climbing balls out for 1 1/3 hours. That was a lot for a ride that I was determined not to notice that I was doing. Despite some anger at the mountain for not cooperating and ending early as I'd hoped it would, I realized that when I rode, my inner monologue was totally different from when I was running. When I run, I tell myself what a piece of shit I am. My inner monologue during a road race usually sounds something like this:
Don't fuck this up, Claire. You can hold this pace. Don't fucking slow down, and don't fuck it up by speeding up either. Just keep running. God this sucks! When is it going to be over? Why do I suck so much at running? My stomach hurts. Is there anyone around me? If I fart, will anyone hear me? Can't fart. Push. Nope, still nothing. No relief. God, will this ever end? 1.5 miles to go. That's just six times around the track. How much is left now? 1.48 miles to go. God, this sucks. Why do I do this shit to myself? When is it going to be over?

On the other hand, as I slogged my way to the top of Montezuma Grade, as cold, tired and thirsty as I was, my inner dialogue sounded something like this:
Don't stop, Claire. You can do it. Just keep pedaling. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Just get to those rocks up there. Just keep pedaling. Then you'll be falling down, down, down, down. Just keep it up. You got this, keep it moving. Whatever you do, just don't stop pedaling. Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggggggg! Why won't this wind leave me alone? Just relax. Just keep spinning. You got this. You just have to get up there...
Not that I was feeling full of joy and love of life. I was feeling distinctly miserable and if the Flying Spaghetti Monster had blown me off the mountain, it would have been a welcome break from my misery. But The Voice is much kinder to me when I ride than when I run, coaxing and cajoling me to the next landmark rather than yelling epithets, insults and abuse at me the whole way. Interesting...


I reached the rocks that I had given myself permission to call "the top," put on a jacket, and turned around. I didn't actually hit 60 mph on the descent. I doubt I even exceeded 40. It was just too cold and I wasn't feeling loose enough to take switchbacks at 40 mph. So I just rode down, feathering the brakes lightly and watching my hard-won mile markers flash by seconds apart.

That was it. There wasn't much of a story. I didn't see a single other rider all day. I had gone to a cool place, I had ridden the cool part of it, and then I had gotten off my bike. The whole thing had taken less than 2 hours, but I felt neither mentally or physically exhausted. I just felt... glad I'd done it.
I suppose I must have gotten some kind of high from it, because as I drove the 2 hours to Coronado, I was filled with that old, familiar I love San Diego! feeling. It's really gotta be the best riding in the United States, and the best climate... I will live down there someday. Grad school perhaps?

Green Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone! 2011 is almost over, and in keeping with tradition of distilling 8,760 hours down to “good” or “bad,” 2010 has been a pretty “bad” year. A year is never made up of 100% "bad" or "good" moments, but my "bad" was pretty weighty this year, while the "good" is only just beginning. So I’m ready to be done with the old, bad shitty year and get started on the new, “you’ve earned it,” good year.

One of the more superlatively shitty parts of 2010 was the fact that I haven’t spoken to anyone in my family except my mom since I was accused of ruining Christmas last year. I did not ruin Christmas, but that didn't change the fact that no one is willing to admit that they are wrong, and so I will be excommunicated until pigs fly (for the sad, lurid “Running with Scissors” type details, you can read this post). So I was relieved to have an excuse to not come home for Christmas.

I have never, ever in 27 years missed a Christmas at home. Wherever I was and whatever I was doing, my parents always bought me a plane ticket and made sure I came home. I've missed all the other holidays, but never, ever Christmas. I really like going home for Christmas, so it helped soften the blow that it never really felt like Christmas in San Francisco. Sure, there were lights around and you could see Christmas trees in people's windows, but it's never really Christmas until it's so cold that your nose runs every time you go outside, you've had to dig your car out of the snow at least once, and... well... you've gone home. So even though all the lawns in my working class neighborhood are so lit up that you can see them from space, it looks a lot more like "tacky" than like Christmas to me.

But what to do for Christmas? My Rockstar Housemate from Boston would be visiting his brother in San Diego the week between Christmas and new years, why not drive down a day or two early (I would never dream of interrupting his Christmas with his family) and get a hotel in the least wintery place in the lower 48 states: San Diego! Nothing to make you forget it's Christmas like a room with citrus trees growing outside!

My plan was to ride Mt. Palomar, and the rest of a 130-mile loop that brought me through Temecula and back to Escondido. There were some problems with my plan, I discovered in the morning. First, the sun is only up for about 10 hours a day around Christmas, meaning that I would have to haul ass to cram 130 miles and tens of thousands of feet of climbing into 10 hours. Also, I would have to leave before the hotel breakfast began, which meant no utensils to eat yogurt or oatmeal, and NO COFFEE! Even worse, I apprehensively drove by the nearest Starbucks on the way to the beginning of my route, and it was CLOSED! (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog.) This wasn't going to be a Merry Christmas after all.

I found a 711 (711, please don't sponsor my blog) and walked inside for some bad coffee that would stave off the caffeine headache, and what to my wondering eyes should appear? Two grown adults in red and green elf suits complete with tights and jester-style three-peaked jinglebell hats at the coffee island. The female elf was serving herself coffee, while the male elf was serving himself liberally from the hot cocoa dispenser. This is too rich! I thought. At first I thought maybe the elves worked at some department store and had been out drinking all night to celebrate the end of the Christmas season, but when the male elf looked at me and yelled, "Hey! She's wearing tights just like me!" the novelty and excitement he expressed about his costume made me realize that the outfits were just one of those things that appears in your life when you're drunk. Who knows where they come from, they just are. Never mind the fact that I wasn't actually wearing any tights, I was wearing black and purple shorts.

Once I started riding, I thought of another problem with my plan: I was woefully underdressed. Just because the highs were going to be in the 60's, didn't mean that the lows wouldn't be in the 40's. I guess I had been a little optimistic when I packed only shorts and a wind-permeable jacket.

A fifth problem (but who's counting?) was that I had pulled the cue sheet for my ride verbatim off of the MapMyRide's automatically-generated cue sheets. Have you guys ever used those things? I don't recommend it. They're terrible! Forget the fact that the mileages are wrong, the names of the roads are wrong too. (And while we're on the topic, WTF with the new MMR site, I can't make head or tail of it!) In the first four miles I'd already gotten off my bike to consult the maps in my phone twice and amended my route just as many times. What would I ever do without my iPhone?

As much as I wanted to be in a good mood, I was not. It was beautiful out, and I wanted to enjoy the beauty, but I kept coming back to the fact that I'd sent home gifts for my dad and even my thuggish brother, but only Mom had sent Christmas gifts for me. I had a suspicion that my gifts would go unopened again this year, just like last year, and father's day, and Dad's birthday. And damn there was a lot of climbing on this route!

As I rode through towns like Escondido ("Hidden") and Rincon ("Corner"), and thought about other California towns with silly names like Las Pulgas ("The Fleas") and La Mirada ("The Look;" not 'view,' 'look'), I wondered who was responsible for naming these towns and whether it was really just a dim 7th grader with a Spanish dictionary opening the pages up at random. How else do you explain a town called, "Rafts" (Cayucos), "Hellhole Canyon" (this one in English), and Coalinga which admittedly doesn't mean anything but bears more than a passing resemblance to 'cunnilingus.' I saw one street named "Whaaat" (3 a's).

I was also surprised at how many cars were on the road. Not like there was traffic or anything, but I just assumed that anyone who had someone to be with on Christmas wouldn't leave the house, and certainly not before 8 in the morning. But do you know the surest way to bring a steady stream of cars on a deserted country road, even on Christmas morning? Pull down your shorts to pee. That's when 15 cars will suddenly be driving through the orange groves toward nothing but a mountain whose parks are closed. Know the second best way to bring a whole bunch of speeding cars out of nowhere? Take your hands off the handlebars to eat a snack. And what were the only stores that were open? Why, liquor stores of course! So even though it was 8 in the morning on Christmas day, it was a perfect day to be speeding through switchbacks drunk.

I have to admit, this ad at a liquor store was a little bit beyond me.

After what was already much climbing (and a little more getting lost), I reached the foot of Mt. Palomar. I was probably already at about 1000' of elevation, so I just had about 4500' to go over the next seven miles. Piece of cake!

And it was. It wasn't a hard climb with the average grade only being about 6 or 7%, it was just lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ong for someone who hasn't done that kind of riding in awhile and doesn't want to admit how out of shape she is. Thinking back on it, I didn't have any major melt-downs (the hallmark of a Claire biking adventure) but I was definitely counting down the distance to the top by tenths of a mile, so I must have been at least a little bit unhappy.

I was a bit confused by this one too. Sure, it's a mountain, but if in December it's about 55 degrees up here, are snowballs really a big problem? And a $500 fine or 6 mos in jail, isn't that a bit steep?

The real unhappiness came after I reached the top. First of all, I had been long out of water and sweating for over 3 hours of mostly climbing. There was a general store at the top of the mountain, but surprise, surprise, it was closed. Oh well. All I had to do was hold on for a 10-mile downhill and then there had to be something open at the bottom, right? Right??

I tipped my front wheel down the other side, but was getting a little lost in the signage. I was in the state park now, and stopping off at every camp ground to try to find a water fountain. All I found were picnicking Latino families, and I didn't really feel comfortable asking them if they had any water to share. Then all the "Exit" signs were pointing back the way I came. When I found myself at a dead end in the middle of a Christian Retreat center, I finally pulled out my phone again to plan my own retreat. No signal. Worst-case scenario, I was going to have to go another two miles back up to the top of the mountain and come back down the way I'd come up.

I climbed back out of the Christain colony and made my way back toward the summit. About half way up I stopped at an intersection with a clear view of the sky, and miracle of miracles I had reception! Praise the Lord! Thank you, baby Jesus! Find me, phone! I beseeched. The little blue dot showed me that I was back on the path to where I wanted to be. A Christmas miracle! Then I looked at the path where it wanted me to go: "Road Closed."

I briefly considered just riding around the "Road Closed" sign, but then if I figured that I got 4 miles down the road before I found the road was completely impassible because of a mudslide or something, I definitely would throw a temper tantrum if I had to climb back up again. Also, this meant that I wouldn't be able to get out to Temecula.

Okay, truth be told I'd given up on going all the way out to Temecula hours ago, and between rousing refrains in my Pity Party Anthem ("All I want is a fucking drink of water! Is that too much to ask?!" --in quotes, not italics because it was whined out loud), I started to beat myself up for being so relieved to cut my ride in half. Why was I so bent about riding the longest Palomar loop on MapMyRide? Why did I always have to do the longest option of everything? Surely I was long past that "I can't compete, so I'll just do events that I can be proud to complete" mentality. Right? I mean, I run marathons on a whim just to thumb my nose at those people. I see your marathon and raise it by not training, you pussy! What the hell was I trying to prove anymore?

Just like any drug, if you dip into the depths of your own stamina and self-control too many times then you start to abuse it. You don't get high anymore from it, you just kind of start to feel used up. But you can't stop. A 10K just isn't enough if you know there's a half marathon being offered. You know you're too spent to be able to push yourself in the shorter stuff anyway. If you doubled your distance last season, then you have to quadruple it this season, just to prove that you've still got it. No, fuck that. That doesn't sound like fun at all. The mountain was enough.

Didn't I say the mountain was enough? As I rode back, I tried to cut out all the hills between me and the hotel. It turned out to be impossible. No matter which way I went, there were hills. I had tracked down some fluids from an open liquor store, but every time I hit a bump my dehydrated, undercaffeinated brain was rattling around in my skull making me want to get off my bike and fall asleep in the broken glass, trash and cacti at the side of the road. Finally, 6 hours (only 5:20 of which were riding) and 70 miles later, I pulled back up to my car.

Driving back to the hotel I stopped at the 711 for more coffee, but then driving by the Starbucks (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog) I noticed that... are those people sitting outside Starbucks?! Okay, I'll admit it. I actually drove into the parking lot hoping it would be open before I actually saw signs that it really was. (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog.) I got out of my car and got in the ridiculously long line.

Rant Alert!

Now what kinds of people do you suppose go into a Starbucks on Christmas day? There was the woman who was ordering 15 complicated drinks for everyone in her family; a woman obviously unfamiliar with the whole Starbucks ordering procedure. Even though these 15 orders were all perfectly written in Starbucks syntax, this woman had to ask 5 questions about each drink to the lone register girl taking her order. Pet peeve no. 1: When there's a complicated order and the line's backing up, pull someone else to the second register to take orders!

Behind the woman ordering in bulk was the Impulse Buyer. This woman stepped across the aisle and was checking out every piece of syndicated crap that Starbucks had for sale. This was not just the casual glance of someone bored and flipping through products while she waited for the woman in front of her to order a truckload of coffee, this woman was engrossed in the children's books and sample gift sets. She was so engrossed that she was blocking the only path from the bar to the door and people were asking her to excuse them, then bumping in to her as they passed, and she STILL didn't move a muscle. Pet peeve no. 2: If you are going to be engrossed in a public place, step to the side and make sure that you won't be in anyone's way. If you do find that you have been inadvertently blocking someone's way, then excuse yourself, step aside, and find a less heavily trafficked place to be absorbed.

Then there was me. I stank. I was covered in salt and bike grease. If you know me well, you know that I am paranoid to the point of obsession about smelling bad. When I know I smell bad, I don't want anyone within 4 feet of me, which is hard when you've got a Starbucks full of clueless people.

Then behind me there was the type of mother-daughter pair that only southern California can produce. The mother was portly and frumpy, a fact that was not hidden by her impeccable dye job and expensive jacket. She was also obviously stupid, as evidenced by the conversation she was having with her 90-pound, 5'9" overly made-up 20-something daughter handling the travel mugs across the store. "Maybe we should get one for Alex. Do you think she has one? It's cute. Do you think she would like it? Well if you think that she's already got one like it...? I've also got some of those special Starbucks gift cards. We could put some money on that and put it in the cup, but if you don't think it's a good idea..." The conversation itself wouldn't have been so bad except that it's gouche to A) reuse an already-used gift card and B) be shopping for Christmas presents at 2:00 on Christmas afternoon. Not only was she yelling this whole conversation across the store, she also had her back to the direction of the line and was ever-so-slightly backing up... into me. Pet peeve nos. 3 & 4 people who bump into you and don't even realize it, and then continue to do it without apologizing, and people who violate your personal space and THEN yell into your ear... even if they're not talking to you. Pet peeve no. 5: people who yell conversations across public places.

For the hundredth time today, I missed Boston. In Boston, these people go to Dunkin Donuts (Dunkin Donuts, please don't sponsor my blog.) and leave the Starbucks to the far classier entitled set of rude people, who turn their nose up at yelling and distance themselves from people who smell.

Revisited

Back at the dawn of time (in this case, 2004) when I was training for my first marathon, my friend Lorraine (a trail runner and accomplished ultramarathoner) gently suggested that maybe I might want to try a race (any race) before I did my Big Marathon. Since I was in a state of constant anxiety for months leading up to said Big Marathon, and since everyone seemed to respect Lorraine, I took her up on her advice. Not knowing what race to sign up for, I also took her up on a trail run in her favorite series: one that offers a 50K at every race. I signed up for the Pirate's Cove (now called Rodeo Beach) 20K. At the time it was the longest run I had ever done in my life. I was unable to walk normally for days afterward. I learned of pain.

Flash forward to the dawn of today, or a couple hours before it to be more specific. The 25 mph winds and driving rain had kept me up part of the night, and I really wasn't feeling all that thrilled about running for 18 miles through that shit. Especially since my running has been sporadic at best and a bit scant in the mileage department. I had tried to sign up for the 20K, but it had been sold out at the time. When I got to the race (just on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge), I found a whole table designated for people changing distances and met a girl who had just signed up for the 20K the night before. I was slightly miffed that I had missed an opportunity to slack, but I had a reputation to uphold here! I had said I would run 18 miles and 18 miles I would run, dammit!

I remembered very little about my last go-round on this race except climbing a set of stairs right at the beginning, and running a quarter mile in deep sand at the end. Then I remembered getting lost in Sausalito on the way home. That's it. So I stood at the start studying the course profile, which looked like this:

If you can't see it, a subtitle in the corner says "Gain: 4203'."

Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. "Heeeeey! What are you doing here?!" It was Sponsor. I gave her a huge hug. "Last minute trip to Sports Basement?" she asked, pointing to my jacket and zipping her own up higher. We were wearing the exact same jacket. We were also wearing almost exactly the same shorts.



"Well that's embarrassing!" I said.

"Dude, these trail runs have changed my life!" she said. I'd turned her on to the series months ago and then had never been able to make a race because of work commitments. I wanted to tell her that I was glad to have returned the favor, but it didn't occur to me to say it until several miles into the race. "They're amazing. This one old guy spent like a mile helping me find a place to pee with no poison ivy 2 weeks ago. No road runner would ever do that!"

We began running together, and immediately the trail started climbing steeply, but not so steeply that you couldn't run some of it. "Holy shit, when's this going to end?" she asked after walking the better part of a mile. I looked at her. We'd barely started and it wasn't all that steep. There was some more tough stuff to come. "It's just that I've been...mffmmmmb"

"What?" I asked. My hearing's not so good and I lose a lot of what people say, especially when they're out of breath.

"I'm ashamed to say it here," she said. There were runners right up our asses and we in turn were up other runners' asses. I guessed more than heard that the missing word was "smoking."

A million emotions ran through my head: shock, disappointment, sympathy, the desire to gloat. Drinking hadn't been the only bad habit that I'd gotten back into when I jumped off the wagon, and drinking wasn't the one that it took me longest to kick either. She had given me a relentless hard time about it. Now the tables had turned. "What happened?" I asked.

I wasn't in any kind of a hurry today, but eventually I couldn't wait for her any longer and set out on my own, running up the hill. For the most part the rain held off, but the fog was still so thick that you couldn't see 50 yards down the trail, let alone to the bottom of the cliffs we were running along (which is probably a good thing for me).

Somewhere behind that fog there is a cliff and then stunning views of the ocean, or maybe the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco skyline, or maybe a pot of gold or the fountain of youth. The world may never know.

On a drier day, the trails may not have been too technical: mostly dirt singletrack and fire roads with very few rocks and roots. However, I had never run on a surface that was both slippery and sticky at the same time. When we came down the first long descent, it was like running on wet clay. Actually, it wasn't like running on wet clay, it was running on wet clay. I passed one guy slipping and sliding down the hill more than he was stepping. "Slippery as hell out here!" he said to me as I ran by.

I wanted to tell him, "It's much easier if you don't resist it!" but I was already way down the trail. I realized that that was true of a lot of things in life. I felt very zen for the next mile as I resolved to go with the flow more often.

Much to my surprise, I was feeling great. My butt was a little bit sore from some squats that I had done to shove it in Jillian Michaels' face, and my hips continued to be sore, tight, and bothersome, but my fatigue factor never exceeded about a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. The hardest part (just like all the old people say) was the downhills. Most of my running lately has been on treadmills, so I was in great uphill running shape, but there's no downhill on the dreadmill and my hips seemed to be taking most of the pounding. I'd never actually felt my ass contracting to brake my controlled falling downhill before. Weird.

Somehow the miles seemed to be disappearing behind me faster than I could appreciate them. Even though it was shitty and foggy and wet and it started to rain around mile 10, I was still in one of those states where I couldn't believe that this was actually my life! Here I was running up and down these mountains (which I'm sure had wonderful, stunning, amazing views), along trails that I recognized from ultrarunning blogs (Miwok, Marin Headlands, etc.), back out in California, and I had the fitness to actually rock up to one of these things any time I wanted to without being out of commission for a week afterward. How many other people were lucky enough to even have the fitness to have the OPTION to enjoy something like this? I loved my life.

"Isn't this so much better than spending the morning hung over?!" I asked a girl as I passed her (and almost slipped and fell on top of her) on some singletrack.


"I think I'm going to feel hung over for the rest of the day," she said.

I didn't feel that way. I don't think I had a single low moment for the whole race. I passed another guy, who got out of my way without my even having to say anything. "No hurry," I said to him. "I'm just having one of those moments where I feel so lucky that this is actually my life!"

"Well enjoy it while you can, because THAT won't last!" he told me.

It lasted. He was a humbug.

Somewhere around mile 15, I started the long, roller-coaster-like descent to the finish. Then the open hillside in my immediate vicinity (which is all I could see anyway) gave way to misty forests. I didn't want it to end. I wanted to keep running in those misty forests for another 10 miles. I can't remember ANY race that I didn't want to end. Ever.

Despite my hips being sore, I still felt light and fluid. I ran the last flat mile into the finish (not a deep sand finish, thankfully) somewhere around 9 minute pace. Nine-minute pace isn't so bad when it's mile number 18.5 and you're not particularly trained for running.

I passed the timing tent and asked where the finish line was. "You're done, honey. You can stop running now," the guy told me.

"Oh." Damn.

I finished about 20 minutes before Sponsor, and have no idea how I finished in the pack. In fact, I didn't remember that there WERE other people running this until somewhere around mile 16 and I realized that I just simply didn't care.

As I was running I was trying to figure out the reason for my good mood. How could I recreate this in every race I ever did for the rest of my life? I realized that a few things were different about this race:

1. I was out here because I WANTED to be out here, not because I wanted to beat a time, come in somewhere in the pack, add another feather to my cap, or train for another event.
2. I was fresh. I hadn't been training my ass off (or hardly at all) for over 6 months.
3. I didn't give a flying fuck where or when I finished. I was just out here to be out here because there was nowhere else I wanted to be at that particular moment. I had no idea what my body was capable of and was happy for every pain-free step that I got. I know that this is nearly the same as number 1, but it bears repeating.

So will I go back to being a trail runner? A cyclist? A triathlete? I had also been going through old race photos for a Christmas gift for my grandmother and realized that the happiest year of my life was the year that I didn't have any race goals and did every race under the sun. It wasn't until I actually tried to DO anything that I mucked up my happiness with goals. So maybe that's what my 2011 focus should be: going only to the races that I want to go to, and going only as hard as I feel like going.

...And build up a new crop of Straight Men Over 40 to keep me company while I do it...

The New Experiment

ANNOUNCEMENT: Claire is getting her social media worked out.
Many of you have complained about the pop-up asking for a password when you try to view my blog. That happened when I figured out that whenever you google my name, my Twitter account is the first hit. Since I use words like "shit" in my tweets, I found it necessary to block my tweets from prying eyes (potential clients). I have dropped the Twitter feed from my sidebar (tear) so that the password popup is gone. If anyone knows how to get my real name OFF my speedracer twitter account, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!

In the meantime I have recently created more professional Facebook and Twitter accounts that I will be updating more regularly sans the cursing and with more information than just "first satisfying bowel movement in weeks" as my tweet content. My newer "professional" twitter name is @ClaireLunardoni, and my Facebook is finally linked up to my real name (and if I went to high school with you, no I STILL don't want to be your friend!). Hit me up!

Winter is my season of experimentation. In the winter of 2008-09 I experimented with giving up sugar, caffeine, processed grains, and dairy. It was great but completely unsustainable. In 2009 I tried a training program to do 1000 push-ups in an hour that I KNEW was bunk. I proved it was bunk when I gave up on Christmas Eve after achieving 500 push-ups in an hour and 15 minutes. My shoulders are STILL rounded forward from it.

This year's experiment is a doozie... for me anyway because it requires me doing something that I absolutely LOATHE: counting calories.

Many of my clients ask me about Biggest Loser. Even though I personally love Biggest Loser for many of the same reasons I loved both the Anna Nicole Show and Lifetime Television, as a trainer I'm also obligated to poo-poo it because of the negative impression that it gives of our profession. (Although I don't know if ANY trainer should be complaining about a show that is basically a 2-hour commercial for their services). Nevertheless, despite practically living in a gym (my desk chair is a plyo box), I don't know any better what goes on behind the scenes at Biggest Loser than my clients do. How much are they eating? How much are they exercising? What exactly is the composition of their diet and exercise program? Are Bob and Jillian really like that behind the scenes? Uhhhh... hold on, I'll just pull out my How the Fuck Am I Supposed to Know app.

Some internet research told me that they're doing some 4-6 hours of exercise a day (including at least 90 minutes of intervals) and eating somewhere between 1000 and 1500 calories a day. With a deficit of several thousand calories per day, bodies that are screaming to be given a chance to heal, and cutting all the processed crap out of their diet, it's no wonder they get results. There's also some severe dehydration going on to cut weight, but that's beside the point.

In a quest for more detailed knowledge of their fitness and nutrition plan to report back to my clients (and because I'd recently had a dream that Jillian got drunk and insisted we have sex on her motorcycle), I picked up a couple of Jillian Michaels' books. Around this time, one of my heavier clients said to me, "Yeah, but it's easier for someone like you to lose weight than someone like me." Well that was it. Not only was it completely untrue, but the best way to get a Claire to do something extreme and possibly stupid is to make it into a competition, even if it's just an imaginary cage match with scrunchy-faced "fitness guru."

One of the Jillian books I had picked up was "Making the Cut," which promised me that I could "drop the last stubborn 10 to 20 pounds once and for all" in 30 days. Sure, okay, whatever. Who doesn't want that? Rather than being aimed at the morbidly obese, this "plan" is closer to what participants on her spin-off show "Losing It" probably do: a 30-day diet for drastic results for one specific occasion (wedding, high school reunion, that day that you finally "accidentally" run into the ex).

Here's a summary of the diet: you only get to eat your BMR's worth of calories, and you're supposed to do these high-intensity "advanced" weight-training circuits 4 times a week, plus cardio for like an hour every day. There's this 50-question questionnaire that tells you what kind of metabolism you have, and I'm a "slow oxidizer," which means that I get 65% carbs, 25% protein, and 15% fat (more carbs than the other two oxidizing groups).

Problem No. 1 with The Plan: I'm a vegetarian. Most of my meals are high in carbohydrates from vegetables and whole grains. My protein sources tend to be toward the high-fat (cheese, eggs), high-carb (legumes, whole grains), or no-no foods anyway (soy, tisk tisk). Of course I feel full after eating a lot of carbs, because I always eat lots of carbs. Of course I find high-fat meals satisfying if it's pretty much the only time I get both fat and protein in my diet. So how am I supposed to answer a question like, "You concentrate best when you eat: A. fruits and grains, B. nothing in particular affects my concentration, C. meat and fatty food"? Well, A is the only one I've tried so...

Problem No. 2 with The Plan: Michaels gives me a formula to figure out my BMR, but doesn't take into account body composition. I have way more muscle than the "typical" person my size. I weigh 130 pounds, but I have 110 pounds of lean mass. I'm also WAY more active than most people. I'm a trainer. I'm lifting, spotting, demonstrating, and riding my bike around the city for 12 hours a day 5-7 days a week. According to Jillian, I'm not allowed to eat more than 1385 calories every day. According to the Katch-McArdle formula for BMR, my BMR is more like 1450, and my. My daily caloric expenditure is somewhere between 2500 and 3000 calories per day. Michaels' answer to any excuse I may have, "It's only 30 days -- suck it up!" (that's a direct quote).

The real reason that I tried the "The Fuck You Jillian Starvation Diet" (other than, I'll admit it, wanting "my sexiest body ever!"), was because I thought it was a terrible idea. I have several clients who are subsisting off of fewer than 1500 calories per day, and they're the ones who aren't losing any weight. But how do you tell a frustrated dieter that the best way to lose weight is to eat more? And how do you sympathize with someone trying to cut calories when your 5'2" frame has processed 2500-3000 calories pretty much every day for the past 10 years? Finally, I knew what was supposed to happen when you go on low-calorie diets, but I wanted to see for myself.

Diet Strategy Number 1: Don't Keep Your Diet a Secret
I told every single one of my friends, clients, and coworkers that I was doing this diet so that I wouldn't chicken out. Let me tell you, I would have given this stupid shit up on the first day if it hadn't been for that!

My typical day's eating looks like this:
4:30 am -- apple
8:30 am -- oatmeal with 1/2 a scoop of protein powder and a tablespoon of chia seeds
10:30 am -- lift weights for an hour. Feel like shit. Am able to lift way less than I usually would. Take extra long breaks because my recovery is shit. Am successful in not fainting.
11:30 am -- plain nonfat Greek yogurt and a banana
12:30 pm -- run, ride, do yoga, swim for 30 - 90 min, high intensity. Cardio actually felt okay through the whole experiment
2:00 pm -- eat some sort of grain salad with veggies
4:00 pm -- eat a fruit salad and worry about going over on my carbs
8:00 pm -- 4 egg whites, sauteed spinach, be glad for the chance to go to bed and not be hungry anymore

Diet Danger Number 1: If You Severely Restrict Your Calories, You Will Lose Muscle, Not Fat.
After 10 days on the diet, I had lost 2.4 pounds. I had lost 1.9 pounds of muscle, despite lifting weights for over an hour four times per week. Yes, this was a very short time for a weight training program, but I wasn't really looking forward to having lost 8 pounds of muscle by the end of the program.

Diet Danger Number 2: If You Are Hungry All the Time, You Are Unlikely to Stick to Your Diet and You Will Gain the Weight Back Sooner Rather than Later.
I was so hungry! I don't mean like tummy grumbling hungry. I mean like feeling like I was in a constant state of bonking hungry. I managed to stick to my calorie limit for 10 days, keeping all my macronutrients in the right proportions. Every time I stood up, I would be dizzy for a good 30 seconds. I would lose count while counting to 10. I couldn't remember what people had said to me that morning. I was nearly getting in accidents because I was driving around in a fog. I was loathe to demonstrate an exercise because I was afraid I would collapse and my muscles would burn for the next 10 seconds. I could think about nothing but how hungry I was. Walking past restaurants was torture. I began fantasizing about food.

I was a total wreck, not just energy-wise. I was going crazy. I turned into a control freak (more than ever, like I was when I was a teenager and I used to pitch a fit if somebody wanted to watch something else when it was my turn to watch Ally McBeal all alone and do my crunches). If something unexpected came up, I was more likely to cry until I get my way than to get it done. Clients would ask me to reschedule appointments and I would get extremely put out. "You want to come 15 minutes later? Fine! Let me put an ALERT on that so I don't FORGET." (Fucker!)

I was even more scatterbrained than ever. I would tell my clients to do 12 of an exercise and stop counting at 5. Supersetting squats and shoulder presses? I'll forget the squats. I'd spend eons staring at my phone because by the time I've turned it on, I've forgotten what I was checking, so it times out and puts itself to sleep. Then I'd turn it back on and try to remember.

I couldn't deal with anything mentally trying, which really sucked because in day two of the Fuck You Jillian Starvation Diet (28 days till pizza), someone smashed my window right outside of work and stole my new bike out of my car. I don't know how I would have reacted normally, but as I dealt with insurance (bike's not covered), the autoglass guys (what do you mean you have a Massachusetts insurance company?), called the cops ("yeah, sure, we're on it."), listened to my coworkers tell me how stupid it was to leave my bike in my car in the first place, and filed a police report ("how does a bike even fit into the back seat of a Corolla?"), if I'd had a gun and ran into the crackhead who violated my car and my bike, I would have shot him in the face without thinking twice. Then I would have continued to shoot when he was on the ground. Yeah, sure, it's a violation. They stole something that I worked my ass off for; something that was perfectly fitted to me and only me with the tiny frame, extra long stem, and aggressive fit, and they sold it for $20 worth of meth. But I don't like guns. Still, I was feeling violent. That night I saw Scout and laid into her so bad that she told me that she didn't want to hang out with me anymore tonight.

Starvation not only affects your energy for exercise. I had no sex drive, and didn't even want to be touched... or be around other people. Meals are so precious and so restricted that any person demanding my time or my energy may rob me of precious calories, or worse force me to cheat. I might miss some of my 8 hours of sleep that are my only escape from this shit. They may demand a portion of my already severely-depleted energy stores. I started isolating myself.

Diet Danger Number 3: If You Aren't Eating Enough Calories, Your Workouts Will Suffer
I'm an athlete getting back into training. It's bad enough that my workouts have been shit. I've got an 18-mile run on Saturday where I'll be burning 1.5 times my daily calorie allowance in the race alone. I've got a 120-mile ride on New Years that will require about 2x my daily allowance. My workouts were already crap. I was ending them early and turning down the heat because I was so low on energy. I wasn't recovering properly. Things that normally wouldn't make me sore were tearing me up. I quit one hill repeat workout short because my hips were so stiff I was afraid that I would slip out on the 40 mph descent, not crap out on the 7 mph ascent.

After 10 days I was absolutely dead. I had been hungry and able to think about nothing else for a week and a half. I couldn't imagine another 20 days of this, and the mental fog and hunger were only getting worse. My job performance was suffering. I felt sick, not in my stomach, not in my head, but in my body. I already knew the answer to this experiment: It was a terrible idea. Did I really need 10 more days of this torture to figure this out?

Diet Danger Number 4: Most Dieters Wind Up Gaining Back More Weight Than They Lost/Hunger Leads to Binging
On the 10th day I got home from my ride starving and couldn't stand the thought of having to get through the next 4 hours on nothing but a container of nonfat yogurt (I'd already eaten the banana out of desperation to get through the workout at all). I ate the yogurt, then I ate another banana, then I ate my dinner, then I ate a granola bar that had survived the pantry cleansing I had done 11 days earlier.

Then I went to the mall to go Christmas shopping. But I couldn't concentrate on finding any gifts because all I was really looking for was a Sweet Factory. I found Godiva Chocolates and See's Candies, but I couldn't very well walk around the mall eating bonbons out of a box. I had to find something that would require as little unwrapping as possible and where I could reach into an opaque bag discretely as many times as I needed to until I had eaten so much sugar that I was going to throw up. Having walked 2 laps around the mall and not found the type of binge haven that I sought, I went to the Trader Joe's next door and bought a container of Almond Butter Toffee Chocolate Dipped Whatever Things at 170 calories each. I ate all 8 of them in the package as I bought gifts in Borders. Then I went out to dinner with Scout. I was jolly and happy again and willing to be touched.

The next day I felt alive again. I was able to focus on what my clients were saying and deal with the unexpected. I went to Target to pick up part of a Christmas gift and found myself wandering the grocery aisles wishing all the other shoppers would leave so that I could design the perfect binge in peace. I hadn't eaten this way in years! What was happening to me? In the car I couldn't shove foil-wrapped white chocolate pieces and blue corn and flax seed tortilla chips into my mouth fast enough. I ate so much that I thought I really was going to vomit, and then I had pizza for dinner. This was terrible. Normally I enjoy eating with friends and pride myself on craving healthy foods. What I was doing right now was addictive behavior. What had Jillian done to me?

I know that my eating will normalize shortly, and I look forward to getting back to my own workouts rather than Jillian's mind-numbing light-weight, high-rep circuits that use half the equipment in the gym.

I have also learned valuable lessons about myself in this experiment:

• I do have willpower when I have a very specific program, but when I relinquish any control, then I lose all control.
• I need way more than 1385 calories per day to function. I should probably go no lower than 1800 calories per day to avoid going crazy.
• I still don't eat enough protein.
• Everything that they say about diets is true. The hard part is actually following the only one that works: proper diet and exercise.
  

No! and then Yes!

Gone are the lazy days of Thanksgiving where I had almost 4 full days off (almost). This week was back to a normal schedule of 12-hour days and lots of running around. To complicate matters, this week Lindsey was in the area for a workshop only about 1.5 hours away in a suburb of San Jose called Morgan Hill.

Shithead had told me that she would be in town from Monday till Friday, so I blocked off Monday night and possibly Wednesday night to see her. Late Sunday night she told me she wouldn't be in till late Monday and couldn't do dinner. Thanks a lot, fuckwad. I've only been asking for your flight itinerary for 2 months...

Shortly after having this conversation over text message, I went into the supermarket. I was in the personal care aisle and saw that they sold lube. Scout and I had run out of lube that weekend, so I pulled out my phone to ask her if I should pick up some more. Practical problem, innocent question.

When I got out to my car I noticed that I in fact hadn't texted Scout about the lube, but instead I'd asked the last person I'd been texting: Lindsey. Fuck you, iPhone!
Still, I assumed Lindsey had figured out what had happened and would still be down to have a very G-rated dinner on Wednesday night. I took Wednesday afternoon off of commitments and canceled my Thursday morning appointments so that I wouldn't have to be up at 3:30 in the morning the next day. I heard nothing back from Lindsey on Monday night confirming she could do dinner. Nothing by Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday evening I called and left a message asking her where/when I should pick her up. It wasn't until I was getting in bed Tuesday night that I got a call back from her. "There's nowhere to eat around here," she said.

"Lindsey, I don't care where we eat, that's beside the point. I don't care if we go to Denny's."

"Oh, well there's a Denny's right outside."

"Okay, well I don't really want to go to Denny's." I then went on to tell her about how I'd cried myself to sleep over a little old lady I'd seen eating oatmeal alone in a Denny's on Thanksgiving. I kept saying "we" as I told the story.

"Who's 'we'?"

"Me and The Girl."

"How's that going by the way?"

"Really good, actually." End of sentence. End of topic as far as I was concerned. I didn't want to get into that with her. It was none of her business.

"So what was that text message...?"

"Uhhhhhh, yeah. Sorry about that. That wasn't meant for you... I just... you know how I text the wrong person sometimes..." (this has happened before).

"Yeah, I was with my girlfriend Jenn when I got that and..." Dropping the girl's name sounded forced. I rolled my eyes. Whatever. I knew the new victim couldn't have been around for more than a month anyway. Poor sucker didn't know what she was in for.

"Well I'm embarrassed about it, so let's not talk about it anymore. I'll pick you up at your hotel at 8."

At 6:00 the next morning she called me. "What's up?" I asked her after I was out of my session.

"Oh sorry, I must have ass dialed you. I'll let you know later if I'm still up for tonight."

Long pause. I was deciding whether to throw my phone across the room or give her a piece of my mind. I'm sorry if me taking off of work to drive 1.5 hours down there and buy you dinner is inconvenient to you, you stupid cunt! I wanted to say. "Yeah, whatever," I said in my flattest, you're-the-biggest-fucking-loser-I've-ever-met voice I could muster. "Just let me know before 6 if you're going to be a flake." Then I hung up.

No confirmation at noon. No confirmation at 2. No confirmation at 3. At 4:30 I texted her to see if we were still on. At 5:57 I was getting out of the shower and hopping in the car when I got a text message: "I've got an exam tomorrow and I've gotta study and get to bed at a decent time. I'm really sorry."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to drive down there and tear her throat out. I wanted to call her up and tell her just how much of a fucking loser she was. I wanted to stomp her face into the pavement. When half of life is just showing up, she still can't get shit done. I'd thought that suddenly and unexpectedly being in the same neighborhood after 5 months she would take an hour out of her day because that's what you do. But no, Lindsey has never done a single thing in her life that she could possibly get out of. She almost missed her brother's wedding. I wouldn't be surprised if she missed her dad's funeral.

I texted her back saying, "You've never studied a day in your life" (you stupid cow, it's only a 2-day workshop anyway) "and I've been up since 3:30 and already put in 12 hours' work. I don't have to play this Chase After Lindsey game anymore. Go to hell."

I was furious. Not because she'd ditched me. Over the past couple of weeks I couldn't see anything positive coming out of the reunion at all. But what made me so pissed was the inconsiderateness and disrespect of it all. This whole time I had thought that she had treated me like shit because she was trying to prove something, and people do horrible things to each other when they're breaking up. But no, she really just is that self-centered, stupid, lazy, and disorganized. She hadn't even taken the time to be vindictive. She'd just discarded me like a CD she was sick of listening to. And I had let reading into her malfunction ruin my life. I wanted to drive over there and tell her what a fucking loser she was, then I wanted to call all her friends and tell them the same. Then I wanted to sell her dog to a nice family with a dog house to make the beast sleep outside every night.

I vented and then I moved on.

The next day I was in a session with a client when a certain well-known San Franciscan, Korean-American gay activist comedian came on TV. "She's not looking strung out anymore," I said. "She must be off the coke if she could gain weight after being on Dancing with the Stars. I'd love to see what her training looks like..."

Yeah, be careful what you wish for.

That night I got an email from Ducky with a lead. His line said, "You want it?" and then began the forwarded message:

Hi, I'm looking for a personal trainer to do a bootcamp style class for Gargamet Show [name changed to protect the Claire] and 2 others on Saturday at 4pm. It would need to be at the venue she's performing at, the Nob Hill Masonic Center. Please contact me if you have someone that might be interested.

Uhhhh, YES! Okay, well my first though was, will there be cameras?! But I told Ducky I'd do it.

Immediately Lindsey was forgotten, except that I wanted her to know that while she was so self-important about a workshop for a job that paid her less after 3 years of being a mechanic than I used to earn after 3 months selling bikes, I was now making about three times her yearly income and training celebrities. Loser!
But I was frightened too. I would be in unfamiliar surroundings, with no equipment, and training not only a celebrity, but someone I had been a huge fan of since high school. The rest of the week I was shitting bricks.

I did not have a quiet day to get ready for My Big Break. Instead, this was the morning of the Lollipop Run 5K; the culmination of all our hard work with the elementary school girls. It was pouring with rain in Golden Gate Park, but 8 out of the 11 girls showed up to run anyway. Still, more Running Buddies (adults who volunteered to run with them) came than we had girls. As I walked to the start, I started to get a little misty-eyed. A 5K is a really long way for a 3rd, 4th, or 5th grader, especially our girls who didn't get much physical activity. Most of the girls wore a bigger shirt size than I did, and all of them had actually started to grow on me. Yes, I actually loved these girls and I was just so damned proud of them! I made sure I hardened up before I actually had to see anybody though.

The rain stopped before the start, and the girls and their running buddies set off. I waited until all the girls and all the Running Buddies from all the schools in the Bay Area had crossed the starting line, then I started running through the pack. As I caught up with each girl I talked with them for a little bit. They'd all started out too fast, they'd all gotten a cramp, they were all tired, and they all finished. I ran through the crowd from the very back to near the front and heard the same conversation: (little voice) "I'm tired, my legs hurt..." (big voice) "Do you want to walk?" "Let's run again when we get to that tree." "You're doing great!" "Pace yourself, slow and steady." And then one, "You can walk when you finish!" As they crossed the finish line, each one had a huge smile on her face, even the ones who were too cool for school in practice. I couldn't have been more excited.

I rushed across town for one more session before going home to change, then coming back to pick up some yoga mats and dumbbells for Gargamet Show. I came into the empty venue and they showed me to a room in the basement where I would be training her. They introduced me to the security guys who would be protecting us, and pulled down the blinds so you couldn't see the room from the street.

When she finally came in with another one of her roadies, I stuck out my hand. "Hi, I'm Claire."

"I'm Gargamet," she said just at the same time as I was saying, "I know who you are and turned my attention to the short girl next to her and asked her name."

I make a fool of myself in front of celebrities, so I just stuck to my job. Fill out the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (How would you rate your state of health? "Excellent" circled), sign the liability form (AUTOGRAPH!), discuss training history and current aches and pains briefly. Train.

We started with bodyweight squats, and somehow I wound up leading them like an aerobics instructor. Here I am, doing squats face-to-face with a woman who used to dominate my headphones back in the days of Napster, and she's watching me do squats. "You have really nice legs," she said.



"Thanks," I said. "Cyclist."

"Is that what does it?" I shrugged. I was resisting the temptation to tell her exactly HOW MUCH weight I'd gained since moving to California (10 pounds, but 5 of it muscle somehow).

I had them moving the whole time, and kept small talk to a minimum. Gargamet Show didn't really seem interested in stories, she just wanted to train. By the end of the session, the ice had melted a bit though. "Am I going to get made fun of tonight?" I asked finally.

"No," she assured me. "I do this in every city. It's not part of my act. I've had 30 trainers in 30 cities though, and this has been by far the hardest. I like it."

"That's fantastic!" I said. I handed her my card. "Next time you're in San Francisco, give me a call."

"I will put you in my phone," she said in a funny "tough guy" voice, actually looking at it.

"Thanks!"

I started explaining to them that if possible they should keep moving for the next hour or so to prevent soreness. "I don't know exactly what you guys do to prepare for these things, but I don't want you to be stiff on stage tonight."

"Are you coming to the show?" she asked.

"No, I kind of had plans..." (to buy more pants for work) "I didn't even know you were in town until I got the email on Wednesday."

"Well a couple of my friends can't come tonight, why don't you take their seats?"

"Okay, I've been trying to be cool about how I'm a huge fan," I admitted.

"You're sweet!" she said in a voice I suspected she reserves for ga-ga fans. "You can bring your... friend? or? whatever...?" she was looking at me inquisitively.

"I'm sure she'd love to come," I said.

"Great!" she said. "Thanks. You kicked my ass!" Then she left.

"You kicked her ass!" the roadie told me. "You're going to have a really great time at the show tonight. It's a good one. She's really funny."

"She said you kicked her ass!" the publicist said when she came in to pay me. She took my name to put me and my Plus One on the guest list.

Three hours later, Scout and I stopped by the bathroom on the way to the will-call window and ran into Esbie. "Look!" she said, bubbling over with excitement and showing us a vinyl album with the cover signed. "SIGNED! I didn't know you guys were going to be here."

"Yeah, neither did we until Claire scored free tickets a couple hours ago," Scout said. I was a little bit embarrassed. I didn't want to upstage Esbie, so I kept my mouth shut.

When we picked up the tickets from the will-call window, the woman left and came back with two back-stage passes as well. I looked at Scout like 'Oh fuck!' Then the usher escorted us to the center of the orchestra seats about 10 rows back. We still couldn't see because we were behind some tall queens, but that could have happened in the second row.

The show was funny, if a bit crude and afterward we debated whether to go to the afterparty at all. "The guy next to us just texted Michelle Tea," I wrote to Scout. "We're among the creme de la creme of San Francisco gay society." I usually shun the "cool" gay crowd in the city.

Still, we decided to stay in the surprisingly small crowd (about 20 people, one of whom I had worked with in Santa Cruz almost a decade ago and so we had someone to talk to) and drink bottled water and diet coke backstage waiting for Gargamet to come out. When she did and began moving her way through the room and posing for pictures, I just continued my conversation. I would NOT be one of those people.

Finally she noticed me. "HI!" she said. "You know I'm high from that workout. Like seriously. High. I feel great!"

"Oh good!" I said. "Are you sore at all?"

"No, I walked around for the next 45 minutes just like you told me to," Just like I told her to! "And I feel fine. Just like in la-la land."

There was a matter of a birthday present: a sex toy that resembled a chainsaw, then some more chatting, then she told everyone that she was tired. "SHE" (pointing at me) "really kicked my ass today."

Too bad the hipster sex toy crowd didn't look much like the type to be potential clients. Their fitness programs consisted of coke, trendy fixies, and organic food. I thanked her for the tickets and said good night. "Thanks again," she said.

"Give me a call next time you're in town," I said. "We'll do it harder." I was proud to draw a laugh from the coolest gay kids in SF.

And if I were a 16-year-old girl writing in my journal, I would end this entry with:

Best!

Day!

EVER!