Catt Scratches

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Race Day.

For those of you who skip to the end of stories, or read the box scores without looking at the article about the game, I finished; I was #774th overall, 369th of the female runners. 28th in my age classification. There were 906 finishers but some of them were relay runners. The weather conditions were miserable. The temperatures were in the mid-forties and for the first four and a half hours it rained a nasty, driving, blowing, hard rain.

But I nailed it. With a Personal Best. Six hours and forty five minutes and fifty three seconds.

But that’s not the way I usually tell a story. I tell a story in perspective. Like my dad. When my dad told us a story about what it was like to grow up in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, he started with a brief history of the Roman Empire.

When I arrived in Bar Harbor on Thursday, the forecast for Race Day called for rain. Gradually, they got more specific: rain was to start overnight, and continue all day with temperatures in the forties, rising to the mid-fifties.

I’d gotten steadily more and more nervous about it. I thought I had it conquered in my head when I had gone to the race expo on Friday and talked to some veterans but as the starting time approached, the angst mounted, coupled with the fear of wetness. My daughter handled me well. She was mildly solicitous, then exasperated, then she would remind me that my behavior was moving beyond eccentric and into psychotic. Then I would shut up.

On Saturday morning, I did the pre-breakfast run, and then ate three meals at breakfast. Gina showed up for the end of breakfast, then we had coffee at the International Opera House Cafe in Bar Harbor, cleaned up and then we took off for Bangor. We got cash at the Bank of America in Brewer, I stopped off at Tim Horton’s to use the bathroom and buy coffee. We drove into Bangor proper.

We ate at Giacomo’s, and went to Top Shelf Comics. We learned from our mistakes. Last year when we ate at Giacomo’s, we ordered too much food: sandwich, soup, bread. This year even though we were just as starved, we satisfied ourselves with just sandwiches. I remembered last year, that the place we ate at had a mural dedicated to the death of some gangster, named Brady at the very intersection where we were eating. He may have been in the process of robbing a bank when he was killed.

We visited a comic book store which we went to last year called Top Shelf Comics. It’s not like Atlas, my regular comics store in Chicago. At Top Shelf, there are no people making fun of other people. They actually seem to be working on comic book file maintenance there. I believe that the owner or manager actually reads comics at Too Shelf unlike at Atlas. I don’t think they have named themselves after Super-Villains, like we do at Atlas. In fact, they seem the type to have named themselves after Super-Heroes, and maybe only Golden Age Super-Heroes. The Whizzer, Human Torch, Miss Liberty, and the like. They remembered me and Gina from last year. I guess they get even fewer female comic book fans than Atlas.

I was jumpy the whole time. Saying goofy out of context things like Rain Man. Gina was very patient with me. But sometimes, I felt like she was at the end of her rope. I felt handled but it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, it was comforting. Driving around Bangor, I got confused a few times but Gina knew right where we were and how to get to our destination. We went for a little walk after lunch but it was getting late and I was anxious to get home. We discussed the pros and cons of hanging around Bangor for a while or driving home. We walked up a block we knew and felt the feeling of small town Northeast.

We drove home and stopped off at Hannafords to get beer for her and blue berry soda for me. I also got some local trail mix with blue berries and cranberries, walnuts and almonds. I kept picking things up, carrying them with me and putting them back. I went to the natural food section, where they have bins of different kinds of trail mix and I sampled them like a stand-up cow in a market, but I couldn’t decide. It was all birdseed to me. I found stuff that you could add to water to enrich it with vitamins. Its most attractive selling point was that it cost 22 cents. I don’t know what I was thinking because I didn’t intend to carry water since the water because you could get water and Gatorade 2 miles. At the cash register, I told the cashier I didn’t want it. Just because something is 22 cents, doesn’t justify buying it.

We went back to our rooms. I napped for half an hour and called G to go for pizza. We were going to bring it back to the room and watch TV. It was a cold walk to Rosalie’s; my erratic behavior continued. We were about to order Pizza and I asked Gina what she wanted. She wanted Garlic and Basil and I vetoed the garlic because I didn’t want to burp up garlic during the race. She said, “I’ve never seen you turn down garlic, before.” We ordered plain; they told us twenty minutes. I found a table in the back where we waited. I kept standing up and walking around. I thought twenty minutes had passed; Gina assured me it was five. I went and got a red pepper shaker to bring back to the room. Gina said, ‘We’re not going to do that. We’ll ask for little packets of red pepper flakes.” She took over for the rational part of my brain while visions of sneakers ran on wet leaves through my head.

We got the pizza back to the room, arranged the chairs. Thank god, or whomever is in charge of the universe or is watching disinterestedly, that the good people of Maine, slice their pizza into eight triangles instead of stupid little squares. I don’t know how they came up with that practice in Chicago.

We watched an NCIS marathon. I’m glad the episodes were repeats because I could not have grasped the complexities if the plots were new to me. We maxed on the ‘za- didn’t leave a slice or even an errant glob of cheese.

I started getting my gear together for the race: neon green dri-fit sox, my Ghost 5 Brooks sneakers, my new hat, black sports bra, black singlet, black and teal long sleeve dri-fit shirt and black pants with the zip up calves; head band for my ears, hat and dark blue micro-mesh hooded jacket. I opened my race packet to get my bib so I could pin it to the shirt.

There were no safety pins in the packet.

I looked again. I looked all over my room to see if maybe I had packed safety pins, knowing that I did not. It was just a kind of Hail Mary pass. I texted Edith. I don’t know why. Just to commiserate.

I tried to figure out if there was anywhere on the Island where I could get safety pins. The restaurants start to shut down around nine and the bars keep going on a Saturday night, especially on Race eve, until Whenever. Bars don’t sell safety pins. Everything else, including gas stations, drug stores, souvenir shops, shuts down around 8 which was about an hour and 15 minutes ago. I think about Wal-Mart in Ellsworth. Aaaarrrgh. I did not want to do that but I couldn’t race without a bib pinned to my chest.

Finally, I remembered the Ugly Duck Bodega, which is the convenience store for the Island. No 7-11 or White Hen allowed here. The Duck was just an independent store where you can buy the things you need late at night: beer, cigarettes, rolling paper, munchies, condoms, adult magazines. The six basic food groups.

We walked in and looked around. Gina liked the look of the place. I told her they get mad if you suggest the smoking aids are for anything other than tobacco. There’s even a sign there that says if you imply you will use rolling papers, pipes or bongs purchased there for illegal purposes, they will throw you out.

The woman at the register asked me if she could help me. My tongue froze. It was as if I did not know how to talk to anyone other than Gina. I could literally feel in my brain, little letters forming themselves into words and getting ready to come down out of my mouth. I said, “I’m running tomorrow and they forgot to put safety pins in my race packet.” I don’t know if I explained to her why I would need safety pins or if she just accepted my word. She said, “okay, let’s see if there are any over here.” There were none among the band-aids and playing cards. “Okay, let’s look over here.” She went behind the register and looked inside a cup used for holding pens, pencils, paper clips, small office supplies in general, I suppose. She asked how many do I need. I brightened up. “Four, if you have them.” She did. I had my phone with me and I said, “You are my new hero. Do you mind if I post your picture on Facebook?” She said, “Not at all. Tell the world about the Ugly Duck.”
I promptly posted her with a short explanation of how she saved my actual life. I would have melted into a puddle of goo, not Gu, if I had had to drive twenty miles to and twenty miles back from Wal-Mart to get safety pins. I have to remember to ask the MDI people if I was the only person who had a Safety Pin Crisis.

I think Gina was ready to put me to bed. We finished the current episode in the NCIS marathon: as the next one was about to start, I said, I’m done. I’m not sure if it was 11 or ten o’clock, but I flossed, brushed, washed, creamed, emu oiled, read a Thor comic and went to sleep. I woke up twice during the night at 1:30 and 4:30 and went back to sleep both times without trauma. That’s a lucky talent I have. I don’t toss and turn.

I got right up at the proper time. I took vitamins with my nano-green moringa powder concoction; I ate two chiobani yogurts. I forgot to eat the pumpkin toffee muffin, but it’s just as well. For some reason, I decided to wash my hair. I think because, Saturday was the day I should have washed my hair and I hadn’t and I didn’t want to go another day or half day with dirty hair. In my mind, I just decided, do what you think you have to do and stop thinking about what you’re going to decide to do. I can be forceful with myself at times, but I can’t always stop myself from doing something futile.

I suited up. I thought about how members of religious orders pray over each article of clothing. I have a great deal of respect for inanimate objects. I knew that each item I wore would work hard and that at the end of the day each would be soaked in sweat. As added protection, I had a hat, a head band for my ears, a jacket. I carried a red bandanna I bought at Dave Alvin show. I had a new waist band, which was expandable. I filled it with my cell phone and ACCEL, a Gu-like substance. It would be a different run without water or gatorade bottles. I looked forward to running without the weight and bounce on my hips.

Down the stairs and out the door. I got Gina and we walked around the corner to the start line. As anticipated, it was raining. I didn’t hear the rain or perceive it through my window so I almost believed that the rain hadn’t come. But, it was steadily drizzling: not big drops but many of them.

But I was part of something huge. I was undaunted by the rain. There were more than two thousand runners and supporters on one of the Bar Harbor streets of souvenir shops and restaurants: laughing, stretching, talking, smiling, eagerly anticipating the challenge of a run which consists of a big hill which bumps up into a bigger hill and then unfolds into fourteen smaller hills and then one more big one which slopes down into the beautiful town of Southwest Harbor. There was indefinable rock music playing, something heavy metallic, a driving instrumental. I couldn’t identify the artist but it felt right for the moment. Walking through the crowd that morning was like entering a big furry, buzzing cloud.

Last year I followed instructions more diligently and arrived at the start line by 7:30. This year, I got there at closer to 7:45. I didn’t stretch this year either: I had started the practice of not stretching before a run. I didn’t talk to anyone except Gina. We watched, always amazed at the bodies of my fellow runners. Nowhere will you see a better assortment of calves and thighs. We checked out the running clothes. Some people were really underdressed considering the temperatures and the rain. Shorts and tanks seemed like no clothes at all to us.

Gina said to me, “You seem relaxed, today. You were a wreck yesterday.”

I kissed her on the cheek and said, “It’s the best day of my life.”

That’s an exaggeration. The day she was born was a better day. It wasn’t raining on the day she was born.

The warning horn went off, I tuned into the start of the race, waved to Gina and started moving towards the starting line. Last year, I wasn’t really hip to race etiquette and I got to the front of the line. This year, I knew I wasn’t going to be in the top 300 finishers so I stayed back a bit and let the big dogs go first.

Boom. The race cannon went off. I started off with a mild jog. Edith told me to run my race in the first ten miles, so I started at my usual, deliberate, “more than a trot” pace. Somebody, a guy, solid, muscular, short brown hair, no-hat, long sleeves, didn’t like my pace and shoved me out of his way on the right. I lost my balance and the outside of my left foot curled under as I tried to compensate from the shock of the hit. I thought I was going down but I recovered. My foot hurt for a second as bad thoughts raced through my brain, but I was okay. Nothing could stop me. Unfortunately, I could not think of a smart rejoinder. I just said, “Nice manners, Clyde!”

I crossed the start line. I had announced on Facebook that I was running certain miles with certain friends in mind. Gina had given the first mile to her other parent, a person from my darker, less sober, past, not my present. I was upset when she did that, but I acknowledged that it was a gracious, positive thing. I gave Gina Mile two.

People passed me. But unlike the last marathon, I held my own against some and even at my trot-plus pace, I passed a few people. The first mile is always a struggle. Usually, my mind goes into reflexive rebellion and starts questioning the wisdom of running, let alone running in the rain. Maybe because it was Race Day, my mind was less resistant than usual and I moved through the first mile into the second, without questioning what the heck I was doing running in the rain. Or maybe my mind was shocked into silence by the absurdity of what I was doing.

The first two miles slope upwards. I ran through the first two; usually, I don’t stop when I’m going up. I like the resistance; I like the thought that if I can go up, it will be that much easier once I am at the top. This could be the result of my early experiences with Catholicism.

Right at the top of the hill, just before mile two, you hit the first drink stand. The volunteers cheer madly and offer gatorade or water. I always take Gatorade for the calories.

Here, I started pacing number 1038. We talked idly. He was about my age. I looked him up later; he was a fellow midwesterner. He was good natured but grim. I passed him, he passed me, I caught up and we ran together a little. He was experienced but not for this marathon. He said, it seemed colder where we were. WE were by the Tarn, mountains on both sides but a lake on the right side of the road. I told him the temperature dropped 5 degrees here but it would get warmer. That made him less grim. I broke away from him. I was skirting the double yellow line and he yelled at me that I could be disqualified if I crossed the line. I looked back. He was laughing. Those wacky midwesterners!

Cleared the Tarn, a few hundred feet more, I’d hit the top of the second crest. That would be mile three. Mile three was Danny’s mile and I thought about the length of time I’d known him, 40 years, and what a fiercely loyal friend he’d been to me.
I had spent part of my training this year running the boardwalk by his house in Long Beach, Long Island, NY. That boardwalk was destroyed later in the year by Hurricane Sandy.

The fourth mile was my dear friend Mary’s mile and I celebrated it with a couple of bites of the snack I brought. It was weird that I was so hungry so soon, but I knew I should eat feed when I needed. During the fourth mile, a guy with a synthesizer and a drum were playing a rock riff out of the back of an SUV. I caught the spirit and started to dance while I ran. It was so silly and so exhilarating. The musician got excited too and started pounding out the beat. I’m running and jumping from side to side, kicking my legs up and just acting crazy. It reminded me that I was there for the fun, not just the run.

The fifth mile brought me through Otter Creek. In May when I was training, I ran this stretch. I had gotten to Otter Creek hoping the small general store was open there. It wasn’t but there were a few older men, true Mainers, hanging about in front. One of them looked at me. I was soaked in sweat and panting. I said, I’d been hoping to get a water at the closed store. He said, nah, it’s closed. I’ll get you one. I said, you don’t have to. He said, I’m not doing it because I have to. I’m doing it because I want to.

Otter Creek is a town that was founded in 1789. It baffles me that it was settled thent. I cannot perceive of a reason for its existence. Lobsters, I suppose.

In mile six I started pacing a man who was 79 years old. He had run his first marathon when he was 56, just like I did. He said he wasn’t supposed to be running, his doctor told him not to run this race, but he was just stubborn he supposed. He also said, he’d been sick for the last month. Then he passed me and kept going as mile seven approached. He was the same old guy who passed me last year!

I love this race and I love these people.

Around seven to eight, the course leaves Route 3 and goes down to the water. The rain got heavier and the wind picked up. I was running down a wooded country road, which didn’t even have a painted dividing line and then it was open on the left side and nature splashed in my face wetly. I kept my eye on the next sheltered portion of the road and just fought to get there. Once I had trees on both sides, I was a little more comfortable.

The eighth mile was OJ’s mile and I ran it with confidence, grateful for the pep talk he gave me day before. Grateful for my memory of him from Sophomore year of high school with huge Afro, like a Puerto Rican Jimi Hendrix, walking around in his basement.

I was running without an iPod again. Well, I had an iPod strapped to my right arm, but with the headband around my head and the hat and the jacket, I couldn’t work the headphones into my ears. It was too much bother. It wasn’t boring without music. I heard the wind, the water, the voices in my head. Occasionally, a driver would honk its horn. Someone would yell “Good Job!” or “You’re doing great!” The run kept me alert.

I partnered up with a young blonde girl from Maine; she was in her twenties, jogging slowly. It was her first race. We kept the same pace for a while, then I passed her. She was favoring her right knee. I’m sorry that I never got her name. We passed the spot where last year a kid riding in the backseat of his parents’ van called me poky. I told the girl running with me that I was hoping to see the kid again so I could tell him, I’m not Pokey, I’m Gumby! She said she doubted he’d get the reference. At least she got the reference.

I carried all my friends with me through the miles. When I ran Farber’s mile, I thought about the time he came to visit me in Chicago and when we had our snapshot taken, sticking our faces in animal heads at the zoo. When I got to Billy’s mile, I thought of his smiling face the first time I handed him a joint and how a few years later he turned down a hit and a shot of Jack Daniels because he was in law school then. When I did Rosey’s mile, I thought of the nights we laughed together at Nathan’s. When I got to Ed Hayes’s mile, I thought about our link through music and how he always came through for me at work. When I got to Ed Walsh’s mile, I thought about our seventeenth year together and all the trouble we got into and all the real trouble we avoided and how lucky I was to survive my childhood and how lucky I was to be alive.

That’s the theme of this run, I thought. I am so fucking lucky to be alive. I mean, who gets to do this stuff? Run through the mountains in the rain at the age of 57? It’s insane!

I ran on and off for the last 13 miles. Usually, I would run the first and last part of each mile, and take off a little bit in the middle. I made it a point to always be running when I approached a mile marker. If I needed a rest, I would keep it as brief as I could. And when I resumed running after a rest, I would count to 300, which was an approximation of five minutes, five times a count of sixty.

Mile 15 has the poster child of the race, the Somes Sound Tree. It’s just a tree but for me and other runners, it is Ygdrasil, the Norse Tree of Life. It has a long trunk. Its top looks like the head of a woman with her long wavy tresses blowing to the left. It stands alone by the sound, which is studded with many colored lobster traps. When you pass the tree and run next to the sound up a hill lined with a sturdy brick wall on one side and the solid stone complexity of Norumbega Mountain on the other, you feel that you are as starkly beautiful as the Maine Coast. If I had a religion, this would be its temple.

The free Gu table is here and as I passed it, the Gu rep was getting ready to leave. There were a couple of other runners near me at the time and we all scarfed up our favorite flavors and filled our pouches and pockets. For the uninitiated, Gu is a packet of sugary energy and electrolytes with a consistency like chocolate syrup enriched by gelatin. It’s delicious because when you eat it, you crave it.

The next miles were through woods, isolated houses, occasional restaurants, boat repair shops and a school bus yard. It’s all green and up and down. Part of it is gravel, part dirt. The road is dotted with those little cylindrical newspaper delivery boxes. It’s not uninspiring but it seems relentless like the serial pounding of my feet on the ground.

The end of the race went faster than the beginning. Edith had told me to run the race like this: first 10 miles, take it easy, the next eight were just another 10 K and the last eight mile section was the real race. The eighteenth mile was Edith’s and ironically, it was a mile in which I walked a lot. Mile 19 had a lot of downslope and I ran most of it. And the rain eased up.

I approached, talked to and passed Denise, the woman I almost hit on Friday. She was walking with a guy, older than both of us. I marveled over the way our lives had touched this weekend because my car had almost touched her.

Just before the 20th mile is a killer hill. It’s more of an upslope than a hill. It reminds me of a dump truck when the cart part of the truck has been dumped fully and is almost perpendicular to the ground. The slope is about 100 feet but from fifty feet away, it looks like it goes straight up. I always run this slope. I grunt right through it and I tell myself that I am a hard ass when I do it. As I was running this slope, I passed two older men. I don’t even know if they were in the marathon, because they weren’t wearing racing clothes. One of them said to me, “How’s it going?” I said my new catchphrase, “Best day of my life!” I heard them repeat it and laugh behind me. When I got to the top of the slope, I saw a race spotter sitting in his SUV. I thought he was calling me over to check my bib; it was covered by my jacket. I said this to him as I approached; he said, “Naah, if ya crazy enough to be runnin’ in this mess, who cares if ya have a bib or not?”

I don’t remember when it stopped raining. All day, I noticed when it stopped and started up again but at some point, I think around 19 or 18, it stopped and didn’t resume. It was a relief that I wasn’t even aware of as hyped up as my senses were. I must have just become numb to the drip, drip, drip of the rain. And I was fully soaked, from hat to socks. Once the sponge is full, you can’t make it any wetter. Maybe I had become one with the rain. Ha, ha, ha.

I turned on to route 102 and then I was in the last six miles, Somesville stretched out before me, home to a beautiful library near a covered bridge and a great lunch spot with killer chowder. I had trained on this last leg of the route most often. As you leave Somesville, it gets deserted quickly. Houses and businesses are scarce; it’s Acadia National Park land.

I passed Echo Lake. On the right is Acadia Mountain. There’s a park station with a bathroom on the opposite side of the road. Then you pass St. Sauveur Mountain. I approached three women; two of them younger than me, one of them about twenty years older. The older woman was walking with poles. They were chatting and laughing and just enjoying this unusually long walk. I walked with them about a half a mile then got back to running. I passed the Top of the Hill restaurant and then an arts and craft center where I had bought Maine Beach Glass earrings for everybody in May.

Gina passed me in the car. I told her that my phone had died en route. She said okay, I’ll meet you at the finish line! Then I passed a gatorade table staffed with people partying like it was 1999. In the miles since about 10 or 11, most of the volunteers were gone leaving behind tables with hundreds of cups with gulps of gatorade and water. The 23 or 24 mile table was staffed with families, kids in costumes, young moms and dads cheering and speakers blasting “Y-M-C-A!” Of course, I danced out the letters as I passed, to great cheers and satisfaction of the volunteers.

I slowed down to rest for a quarter mile. I wanted to run the last two miles. I can’t believe I’ve been by myself for these many hours of running. I wish I could tape everything in my brain. This journal is but a poor attempt at that. What a marvel the human being is. I can’t believe that at one time in my life I was mired in cynicism and resignation. I no longer believe in Impossibility.

There’s a shopping center at or near mile 25 on the approach to Southwest Harbor and at that point I resumed my run. I picked up speed and kept looking around me amazed to see that I was doing it again. I was filled with joy, not like anything else I had ever felt, not even on the last race. The last one could have been a fluke, “oh, look she managed to do a marathon! How nice!” This time, I proved to myself that I was a complete beast.

Gina showed up a little before the 26 mile marker. I stopped and gave her my jacket and iPod and I sprinted the last two tenths of a mile. People were cheering as I crossed, and one of the race administrators hugged me and asked me if I was alright. I gave her my mantra, “Best day of my life!” and she helped me wrap myself in one of those silver blankets. I got an apple, a cookie, a water and a banana.

Gina got me some cool presents: a pumpkin muffin, a love charm to attract a new love for my life, a motley stuffed moose and a cup of coffee. She congratulated me and told me how proud she was of me. I don’t think that a parent can ever get a greater gift from a child than her admiration.

I felt no pain. I was barely tired. I was the luckiest woman on the planet. And up until that day, it was the best day of my life.