RACING

Crisp Saturday morning. I'm standing with some friends, half stretching and half talking. Thousands mill around us, various versions of running apparel. It makes me think of my father, who picked me up this morning all snub-nosed with "You're gonna run in that?"
My father is always tied to my memories of running: feelings of adoration as we watched him from the streetside during marathons, running along next to him during my junior high years, or him on a bike next to me, coaching me as I ran. Memories of riding my bike alongside him, as he went on long runs, admiring the musculature of his thighs, thick and crab-like. My father was a strong man, and took physical fitness seriously. He was there at my first race, a mile in length, when I was maybe twelve. He was there at the end of my first cross country race when I was thirteen. For a long time I remembered my dad as being somewhere in the shadows, but this was the place he was at, the place of races.
Today it's race day, and I am not really sure I prepared well for this. I had the one decent run with C at the neighborhood track, but I was relying on my time with Britney to get me through. I wasn't even really thinking about it this morning, though, as I was having a heart to heart with a girl pal. We found our place where we thought we might be, time wise. I remembered to stretch my calves, always the tightness that would slow me down in a race. We heard the jubilant sounds of the first race kicking off. Then the line moved up. We moved up.
"We're going now," she says to me, as both of us are getting our Ipods on. I thought about the last time I did this race, with my sister. I didn't have any music that time, just our conversation. This would be good, I thought.
I had no idea, though, how that was gonna work out for me. If I had known, I would have lined myself up in a different spot. For very quickly, as we got into it, I turned to my friend. "This is the wrong tempo," I said. "Do you mind if I go?"
"Go on," she waved me on. And I took off, at the intensity I was dancing at those late nights in my living room.
The problem was, I couldn't go as fast as I wanted. There were too many people around. People all around me, moving next to me, people streetside. Too many people all up in my business. This was an obstacle I had to get around. I began a little game of thread-the-needle. The focus became finding the opening, finding the time to slip between bodies in motion.
I started to worry a little about what the people streetside were seeing. I don't know why that was even bothering me. It reminded me of my self consciousness dancing in my living room, a silly idea to even worry about what you looked like when you were alone. So I decided to deal with it the way I dealt with it then. Block it out. Put your blinders on. Come in deeper. Get inside my mind.
So I went in there, to this place inside where it was just my mind, and the music. In my mind, I always decided to be the star. I just decided to run with it. The problem is, I still couldn't run fast enough. I could only go as fast as opportunity presented itself. There were a whole lot of people in my way, too many people, too many obstacles. Gimme more, gimme more...I was ready to go.
I thought about how different this was from last time I did this race, remembered points along the route where my sister had been wanking out, wanting to walk. Finally, at one point, she broke. If I keep it up, I'm gonna be sick, she moaned. "I got to GO!" Go on, she waved at me, head down, defeated. I was stronger than that. This day, I thought about that race and wished I hadn't have stayed with her the whole time before that moment. I was stronger than that, so I should have just rolled with it.
Right after I passed the memory of this, I caught up with S, my best girl pal at work. There was hilarious girl drama this week about this race between her and our doc, who was also doing the race. S had left her a long time ago. I was full of it when I came up beside her, bumping her hip and messing around with her. "Let's go, girl!" I urged. She gave me an annoyed look, huffing with exertion. She was pushing it already. I tried keeping at her speed for a while, seeing if I could push the right buttons in her to make it a race already. We grabbed some water, walked a minute, tried to decided whether this was going to work out for us. I was willing to give her a chance, provided she could keep up.
The problem now was that we were coming up near the finish. I always got excited at the finish. We're not pacing it, we're racing it, I thought, as I neared the final turns. S wasn't feeling it, but I decided I didn't care. I had let too many others set the pace, this time I was gonna fly at my own speed and not feel a bit bad about it. I was tired of being held back.
And so I let it fly, and I didn't give a damn what anyone thought, not the people I was leaving behind, not the ones who were in my way, not the ones standing with cameras at the finish or those who were at the sidelines with bells and whistles. In the end, it was just me, racing to the finish line.

And my dad was there at the end, waiting to take me home.

PACING
There was a farmer/had a dog/and Bingo was his name-o
That little ditty was my introduction to "pacing yourself" during a race. Back when I was a "miler", that's the song I used to maintain the right speed for the distance. Three laps of this steady stattaco, and then the fourth lap, let the tune speed up a little faster in my mind, increasing speed by some imaginary 10% at each 100 yard line, until the last straightaway, where I would really let it fly.....
I was thinking about this last night as I started a running program again. I have always loved running, and sometimes I think it is for the same reason I love jumping horses - it's the sensation of flying, I think. It's also a good way to jar loose all those ideas in my head, give them some time to come together to a coherent whole. Sometimes, it's just the focus on nothing but breathing, and that relaxation it brings, that I think is the best part of this solitary sport.

I was a little apprehensive. I hadn't been running for any kind of a distance for over a year. I'd been dancing, but my version of dancing involves some stopping between songs and distractions. This girl from my neighborhood, a woman I know from church, had been running with a group of women and was already at a level I hadn't done since my peak. At the same time, I had a little competitive drive to see if I could keep up.

We met out on a semi-light track in the dark night. She was all business, filling me in on how the running group worked, and leading stretches. She had brought her Ipod, lucky her. I left my earbuds at home, so it didn't help that I had my Ipod with me. So, we decided to talk to each other instead. It was cold and damp on the dark track, the lights from behind the bleachers shining in random half-lit moments.

We talked about some things, the things she never knew but somehow did, the things that hadn't made sense in a long time but now were perfectly clear. We talked about the hard stuff, and she stopped and looked at me. She wanted to give me a hug, and we both thought maybe I would have to cry about that. But no, let's go, girl, it's cool. It actually feels better to keep moving ahead.

Since she knew better than I on how to pace this, I let her set the speed. She started out slow, but steady. I lost count of the laps before she suggested we walk. "How many miles?" "I think about two..." (damn)...we start up again...And it's my eye watching her shoulder, watching for signs to slow down or speed up. I try to think if my Bingo song matches, but no, it's an altogether different rhythm. It's the comfortable pace of conversation, it's the turning of the head, the listening. Running with her was nice, because I didn't have to do the thinking for us; I only had to follow her lead.