I’m an equal opportunity 5K race participant. Middle of the summer and straight up a hillside? Delightful. Dead of winter and through a dull neighborhood? Love it. Four loops around a mall parking lot? Pleasant. Christmas mad house downtown night-time gassy throngs of children run? Bring it.

What I’m saying is that I’ll sign up for nearly any 5K. I think I might draw the line at those slop-through-mud and climb-over-a-wall-and-collapse-on-an-obstacle-course 5Ks, because, obviously, those are just stupid.  

Otherwise, I really don’t care. I ran a 5K in San Francisco years ago dressed as a giant chicken. Didn’t care. For the past 5 years I’ve run a totally un-scenic 5k in monstrous heat where video of me hurling at the finish in ’08 is on YouTube. Don’t care. I’ve already signed up for a March 5K that is considered the crybaby weenie race for toddlers that accompanies the Important Half Marathon. Still not caring.

So when fellow-runners warned me not to run our local zoo fundraiser 5K, I was all, “Whatever, dude.” (Early on disclaimer: I wholeheartedly support this race’s cause, and it’s astoundingly well produced and organized in spite of, well, everything else.) I mean, I figured a race through a zoo would be pretty cool. Lots of animals and stuff. Sure, there were supposed to be a few turns, but it had to be pretty flat, right? And the walkways would have to be moderately wide and well-maintained, n’est-ce pas? An afternoon race is not my dream, but how bad could it be? And a big crowd? Oh, boo hoo.

Where to begin?

Cheryl was volunteering at the race (even she had said, “You’re going to run the Zoo Run? Really?”), so we got there 2 hours (SIGH) early. As it turned out, there were already enough volunteers to hand out timing chips (this is an exhausting job of handing people chips and saying, “here’s your chip.”), so Cheryl and I sat her car in the parking lot for an hour observing the throngs as they arrived for the race. And by “observing,” I naturally mean “making snarky comments.”

Let’s say it’s 47 degrees, a bit damp, and overcast for an afternoon 5K. What would you wear? Perhaps jeans over a pair of tights, gloves, a down vest over an imported Shetland sweater, earmuffs, and a balaclava mask? How about a full cotton sweat suit complete with a sports jacket and hiking boots? Maybe ski pants and a fur coat (at the zoo)? If you said Yes! to any of these sporty options, you would have fit right in. I exaggerate not when I say that the bulk of the crowd appeared to be gearing up for a major trek across the frozen Siberian tundra.

Camelbaks. We saw at least half a dozen. I know you think I’m making this up, but I’m not. Ask Cheryl. She never lies. I lie all the time in this blog, but she’ll be tediously honest about what we saw. Anyway, Camelbaks at a winter 5K. With water at every mile noted in the entry. Dear God.

About an hour beforehand, I started my warmup and was happy to only hear a few people loudly blast, “WHY WOULD SOMEONE RUN BEFORE A RUN?? HA HA HA HA!!!”  For what appeared to be well over a thousand people, I saw very few people doing anything other than rushing over to the activities center to cram themselves inside, flop down somewhere in exhaustion, and eat gels until the start. This was slightly troubling. I’ve seen pre-race lethargy, but this set a new gold standard of languor.

The start was a study in cell phone worship and the exuberant tossing of race etiquette out all windows.  After a couple of hours of previewing the participants, I was alarmed enough to position myself way closer to the front than I usually would. Nonetheless, there I was amidst a sea of grade-schoolers and astoundingly overweight 30-somethings all gazing placidly at their phones. I noted that a woman next to me had her timing chip tied around her neck. Just in front of me, a rotund young man was on his phone announcing, “Under 45! Under 45! That’s my mantra for this one!”

And we were off.

Do I really need to describe the horror of that first half mile? Let’s just say that there was substantial coming-to-an-abrupt-stop-to-text-someone not even a quarter of a mile into the race and leave it at that.

In my notes in my running log, I described this race course as “An inexplicably idiotic course of hills, constant switchbacks, gravel roads, and slippery bridges. Where was the fucking zoo?”

I saw some bamboo and flamingos around mile 2, but that was IT. Mostly, it was a tour of the employee parking lot, grounds keeping sheds, machinery, and weaving muddy gravel roads that connected these delights. Granted, it’s not like I was going to enjoy some pleasant memories with the elephants during a 5K, but come on! Zoo Run my ass.

Needless to say, it was crowded. There was also a higher level of extreme manly panic when I passed guys in this particular race for some reason. The highlight, really the zenith, of this race occurred around mile 2.5 when we were headed downhill and over a wet slippery bridge. Coming up behind me was a pretty huge dude I had passed on the prior uphill. His weight began throwing him off-balance and he was windmilling his arms and yelling WATCH OUT! as he barreled right into me. I may or may not have addressed him with a coarse oath.

Cheryl was working the finish line, clipping chips.  I careened around her for 15 minutes, a veritable fount of complaints. I said, “Never again!” about 300 times just in case she, and everyone around her, didn’t hear me the first 299 times.

 Later that afternoon, she told me that 3 separate people had asked her if the buckets for the chips were for puking. (Her response was, “Do you think I’d be sitting here if it was?”) At least two hundred had asked what the chip was for.  Nearly a third of the crowd had begun texting or calling or whatever people do on phones before exiting the finish area. At least a dozen people had gotten pissy with Cheryl when she had to run after them to get their chip because they were too busy cramming their phones to their ears to hear her.

Afterwards, standing in the beer line (thank you Jesus), I listened to three young women in front of me dissect the race in terms of treadmill walking settings.

“We did it in 4.1! I’m so proud of us!”

“I think I actually ran across the whole parking lot near the finish.”

“That second mile was tough. I must have dropped to a 3.9 or less.”

“I felt so bad for Ashley. She was like so not even 3.6!”

Maybe I’m just old and peevish. I’m all for anyone getting their lard ass off the couch and going to a race, whether they can run fast or not. But the bulk (heh) of people at races really don’t race anymore. The concept of a race as an event where everyone runs pretty hard, or at least to the best of their trained abilities, is mostly a dinosaur idea. I don’t think it’s an overestimation to say that 50% of people at a lot of 5Ks have not trained at all.

Every six months or so, ye olde “Were Runners Faster in the 80s??” question comes up on running boards. Younger runners get stressed and panty-wadded and old hags and farts get pompous and supercilious. But the obvious answer is No. Times are faster now. Loads of new records have been set. The fastest runners today are faster. Hello.

The main difference in the 80s was the fact that races were races. No one showed up at a 5k to walk or jog. The idea of “just finishing” was preposterous. Were runners faster? No. But people who ran races were.

Anyway, the Zoo Run aftermath wound down to a lot of (good) free beer, decent prizes, and seeing a lot of friends. I guess that more than made up for my idiotic race.  In fact, after the 4th beer, I was all, “This race is great!” Yeah, I’m an equal opportunity 5K race participant. I may even be back next year.

I ran 2050 miles this year.

That’s like running from Nashville to Bismarck, North Dakota, standing around for a while and saying, “Wow. This place sucks.” And then running back to Nashville.

In summation, running’s stupid.

Insights, highlights, whines, and epiphanies on My Year in Running, 2011! In no particular order:

Marathons: I am unabashedly and definitively over them.

Yes, folks, this is the year that I grew so ambivalent toward marathons that I removed the embarrassing 26.2 sticker from my car’s bumper and never even pulled my Look! I Ran Boston! jacket out of the corner of my closet. 

Why? I can’t exactly say. Of course, I’ve never been all that great at mega-distance, so there’s that level of understandable bitterness. And I attribute my months of injury this past year to training for 2 marathons only 8 weeks apart. Still, I can recall nearly every one of the 21 marathons I’ve run with some level of bittersweet fondness and pride. I recall every single finish line. That’s more than I can say for any other race distance. I could hardly say I hate marathons.

I think, perhaps, it’s more the weird obligation/insistence/perception that one MUST run marathons if one is a runner. It is the first question out of non-runners’ mouths: “Oh! You run! How many marathons have you done?”

Eesh.

Aside from the fact that I don’t really like being part of anything popular, I also cringe at the idea that racing has been distilled, in the popular mind, into a neat package of One Event that generally (anymore, for 95% of people) has nothing to do with actually running fast. It is a check-mark, a parade, a party, a cocktail conversation.

Even the majority of runners seem to be swept away with the idea that running is marathoning. When I now say that I’m done with marathons, I often get a bewildered, “What?!” followed by something that is a mix of sympathy and consolation. On occasion, runners are so perplexed that they just stumble away in a haze of confusion and angst.

Anyway. It’s okay. I still have a sense of self-worth. Contrary to popular belief, I’m still a runner.

Injury is Underrated: As some of you may know (ha ha), I suffered a pretty major injury this year. It took me out of running and racing nearly a third of the year. I know this is a very wrong, horrible, and frightening thing to say, but…..I really enjoyed the break from running. (AAAGGGHHH!!!)

I think the injury served as a nice nudge out of this period of obsessive running. What I mean is this: Since I was 17, I’ve gone through 4-6-year chunks of time where running becomes monumental, laser-focused, rock-like. Then, for one reason or another, running drifts for a while into something a tad more gauzy and sand-like. It’s always there (always), but it morphs and relaxes for a while. Otherwise, how could it ever peak?

For me, I believe this is the key to how I’ve continued to run all these years. I’ve never gotten over it, because it’s always new at some point.

More than a few times this year, in conversations with other runners about my injury (because I know every breathing creature on this planet wants to hear another harangue about the arch of my left foot) and how I didn’t run much for a few weeks, I’ve heard people say, “I just worry that if I ever stopped running, I would never start back.”

I don’t get that. At all.  To me, stopping running or cutting back on running for a while is like jumping down on the diving board. It’s the downward that creates the upward.

All this to say, I’m thankful for my injury this past year. Not running, keeps the waves in motion. I know that’s counterintuitive, but there you have it.

My Favorite Races! Naturally, having just dissed marathoning, I’d like to mention that the Mercedes Marathon was a serious highlight this year. Having reached a new level of elderliness, my time at this race qualified me for Boston by 23 minutes. But that paled considerably (or pretty much was meaningless) next to turning 50, feeling great, and loving running. I know that sounds kind of squishy and Pollyanna, but give an old hag a break, people. Plus, I discovered that I could drink an entire bottle of champagne within one hour of finishing a marathon and still feel superior the next day. Everything pales in comparison to that.

As usual, the Beer Mile rocked. Plus, it was my only PR this year, and while I know some of you think that kind of PR is a tad tsk, tsk, for a 50-year-old-woman, I think my age only makes it a more glorious and astounding achievement of the highest merit. Thank you, very much.

Between the Beer Mile and a 5K just a few weeks ago were a lot of moderately depressing or frustrating races. After my injury (and even before), my 5K times were averaging around 23:00. I cut myself some slack injury-wise, but I really began to wonder if I’d ever see sub-22 again. Maybe I was just slowing down that much.

Then, 3 weeks ago at a 5K, I hit 22:10, my fastest 5K this year. In many ways, this was far better than a PR. It proved I could heal. I guess it didn’t mean that much to me to return from injury when I was, say, 25 or 30 years old. Injuries were just temporary inconveniences to get over and forget. Then you went right back to your previous times.

It’s a lot different now. I’m never sure at all that I’ll actually return. So, it’s a really amazing and reassuring thing to realize that the body can heal and rebuild. It can even get better.  That has always seemed like a bit of a no-brainer to me. But this year it was a serious brain-filler. I think about it a lot.

Speed and an Old Trail: As this year ends, I realize that 2011 was a kind of return to what I originally liked most about running.

I like to run fast. I know that some years ago, when I first started this blog, I wrote about hating 5Ks. Actually, I think I had forgotten 5Ks. I was in my More Miles is Better phase, and I was mesmerized by the long mild ache of distance as opposed to the short sharp pain of speed. But that kind of pain was my initiation to running decades ago. It’s all I knew when I started racing.

So, it’s been nice to return to that. I like the exhilaration of losing my mind in a 5K and feeling like I’m going to die. I look forward to intervals with an old craving that I’ve never felt for the long run. Seeing a track pleasantly unnerves me. I’m not a fan of the Garmin, but I have a fondness for stopwatches. I like to run fast.

This past summer, I also re-discovered a nearby trail that I hadn’t run in maybe 15 years. Which is strange, because back in my early 30s I ran it every week. The first time back on that trail, I was repeatedly struck by all these random and vivid memories of certain trees, corners, hills, and hot afternoons from so many years ago. I recalled a sharp detail of a side trail where I had seen graves and daffodils one February. All things, possibly meaningless but touching anyway, that would have been completely lost if I hadn’t, for some reason, decided to run that old trail.

So now I run that trail every week. Again.

Anyway. It’s been a good year for running. It circles back on itself, it crumbles, it rebuilds, it starts over again, it keeps going, always an adventure and a reward.

Happy New Year!

1) Once A Runner.  I’m sorry! I know this book is the shrine and grail of chicken-bone wristed joggers worldwide, but having finally read it (after making fun of it for 3 years in blissful ignorance), I still have to say, What? Granted, it was funnier (intentionally…usually) than I thought it would be. And much of the actual writing about the experience of running was truly fab. Even the major over-the-top homoerotic love story obligatory in all Men Doing Serious Sports novels of the 1970s was amusing enough.

But still, I guess I must be missing something. Overall, it was just okay. Maybe part of the letdown had to do with how many times endlessly ad nauseum in perpetuum I have seen passages from OAR (this is how the adoring masses refer to it) quoted and bowed down to in hushed reverence. Trials of Miles! The Orb! The demons! If the furnace is hot enough…! Cassidy’s beard! OMG…Cassidy’s heartbeat!!!!!

And then, of course, I already knew he won the mile race in the end (oopsie! Sorry if you haven’t read it!) , so there’s that. And I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a sports book written in the 70s would mostly cast female characters as either predators or moderately annoying cling-ons who just don’t get why these crazy guys sacrifice so much for a sport they love. But I reached a point where if I had to read about Andrea worrying about Cassidy’s weight one more time, I was going to march right into the page and bellow, “For the love of God, he’s a neurotic and obsessive distance runner! He’s supposed to look like hell on two feet! Go have another donut with the Umbrella Man and get out of my sight!”

Anyway, this has been my entirely objective and important review of Once A Runner. I now feel qualified to start bashing Again to Carthage without having even the slimmest shred of knowledge of what the book is about.

2) Shunned Foods.  Recently, I have seen that many bloggers have done the “10 Random Things About Me” post that is puzzlingly intriguing. I mean, I’ll read, with rapt and undivided attention, about how an absolute stranger has to Q-tip her ears every morning or put Vick’s Vapo-Rub on her feet during hot weather. It’s maddeningly and stupidly interesting to me.

One of the obligatory random things on this list is “Foods I Won’t Eat.”  WHAT? Not, “One Food I Rather Somewhat Dislike,” but “FoodS I Won’t Eat.” One favorite blogger of mine listed, “Most cheese, though I have particularly strong aversion to bleu and feta, ham, tofu or any ‘fake meat’, chickpeas, avocado, mayonnaise, fish, crab, sour cream, refried beans, rare beef, bologna.”

OMG. Most cheese? Bologna is vaguely acceptable, but MOST cheese?! Tears.

I can honestly say that there is nothing that I absolutely won’t eat. I’ve enjoyed everything from pig intestines to roasted guinea pig with nary a gastronomical regret. Liver? Thank you! Anchovies? Bring it. Braised cow brains with soft-boiled eggs? Why not! Obviously, there are some foods I prefer less. Fruits that are full of seeds are a touch tedious. Cold soups are not a complete dream come true.

But, all in all, I’ll eat anything. Does this make me superior or just a pig?

3) Arguing Politics on the Internet. There are two guys at my gym who spend way more time standing around debating politics than throwing weights around. Because I can’t help overhearing them (read: blatantly eavesdropping), I’ve picked up on the fact that one dude is pretty conservative while the other is very liberal. They totally disagree about everything, but they seem to like each other. After a vigorous argument about the Occupy Wall Street protest, they’ll spot one another on the bench press. Three Obama slams and a Perry guffaw later, they’re making plans to get breakfast together after leaving the gym. Very Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf of them.

I recently saw an interview with Tom Brokaw (I don’t care if he sounds like his dentures are falling out, I love Brokaw), and he commented that the internet is partially to blame for the idiotically stubborn divisiveness of the Left and the Right. People (as in “real interacting human beings”) used to actually discuss opposing viewpoints face to face. I don’t think you can really overemphasize the value of seeing expressions, hearing a voice, experiencing a pause or a nod.

 Yeah, you really can’t post this cartoon enough.

I would guess that if the two dudes from the gym got into it by way of keyboards and imaginings of how insufferable and Unlike Me the other one was, they’d never remotely consider toddling off to Cracker Barrel together.

I know this is not a novel or groundbreaking point. I just felt like bringing it up since overblown online political  imbroglios depress me.

And if you comment on the irony of me bringing this up in a blog, I will formulate an argument to publicly crush you and prove that I’m right. Asshole.

4) Backyard Urban Chicken Bill.  Yes, folks, that’s right! Once again, a proposal allowing Nashvillians to keep chickens in their backyards has resurfaced. It was defeated three years ago but, darn it all, this is apparently just too important an issue to sweep under the rug.

“It’s a healthy way to have eggs in your diet,” claims one supporter of the bill. “And chickens make great pets.”

Oh dear God.

There’s so much to comment on in that one statement….I ….I really don’t even know where to begin.

But, briefly, let’s chat about chickens as pets. Aside from the fact that a supremely high-strung sack of feathers and claws makes for a cuddly companion, the chicken, with its marble-sized brain, can learn remarkable tricks. With little to no training, a chicken will shit all over your back patio and wake up the entire neighborhood at 4 a.m. for absolutely no reason at all!

Furthermore, chickens enjoy going for walks and have no problems whatsoever with leashes or even muzzles! Enjoy a rousing game of Frisbee retrieval with your chicken. Dress your chicken up in a KFC bucket for Halloween–she’ll love it!

Yes, chickens for everyone in Metropolitan Nashville. Let’s work together to pass that law!

So, yeah. Plantar fasciitis. Everyone has an opinion. Well, maybe not everyone. My next-door neighbor sits around eating cake all day and always bellows, “STILL RUNNING?” every time he sees me. He probably doesn’t give a rip about PF.

Anyway, after bitterly admitting to myself that I had real injury, I read everything I could find about it. Here’s the insightful information I found: PF can be healed. Or not. Healing is promoted by rest. Or by continuing running. Use ice. Don’t use ice! Wear that freakazoid sock thing to bed. The dumbass sock makes it worse. Stretch. Don’t stretch! Run barefoot. For God’s sake, wear shoes. Try massage, acupuncture, and yoga. Stop being a lame ass and flushing your $$ down the toilet and just get out there and run. Get new shoes. Wear your old shoes until they rot.

NOT HELPFUL.

So, I waded through this morass of “advice” and picked out a few things I hadn’t tried for injuries in the past. I mean, why not? New experiences are groovy. Nonetheless, I drew the line when it came to this experience:

Are you kidding me? And you’re supposed to sleep in this monstrosity? HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!! I mean, seriously, people, look at it. Nothing says welcome to your dreamy retreat into the tranquility of Snoozeville like a massive and unattractive sock complete with a strap that yanks your toes severely skyward all night long. I have trouble sleeping if I have a hangnail. There would be no rest in this lovely sock. None, I tell you. NOT A WINK!

So, instead, I opted for acupuncture! I was skeptical, mainly because everyone who had ever had it swore that it worked. Unabashed enthusiasm and support for anything makes me nervous. I know I would have felt better if at least one person had said, “Acupuncture. What a crock of whiny new age crap. You’re a loser to even consider it.” But no one did. Nonetheless, I made an appointment at a local community acupuncture place.

I’ve never been particularly worried about needles, but the idea of a total stranger tapping 15-20 needles into me was not entirely relaxing. But the strange thing was, the actual needling was, in fact, quite relaxing.  With the exception of the needles in my forehead and ear ( I know, right?), I felt no more than a slight touch. And then I got to kick back for an hour in a big, dim room with the sounds of water and birds and the occasional good-natured peep toad piped in for my enjoyment.

During this hour, I was supposed to fall asleep. Again, I ask you: Are you kidding me? I mean, for one thing, it’s 9:15 a.m. Who naps 3 hours after waking up? And let’s not forget that 22 needles are merrily sticking out of me. Who could possibly sleep?

Apparently, everyone else in the room. Snoring for days! In 6 appointments, I never did nod off, though by the 5th time I felt pretty happy. Almost drugged. Really just a kind of loopy, pin cushiony, generally encompassing ambivalence. Stick a few more needles in me? Help yourself! Get lost in the sounds of distant bugling elk in a piney mountain cove accompanied by harp and flute? Don’t mind if I do! 

Yes, Tanya, that’s nice. But did it cure your fucking PF?

Who knows! During the 2 weeks of acupuncture, I barely ran. I stretched, applied heat, wrapped the arch of my foot, and alternated headstands with cartwheels twice a day (J/K!! LOL!!!). At the end of all this, I could actually stand up in the morning without teetering precariously back and forth while testing my pain threshold and alternately saying “SHIT!” and “Okay. Calm down. Here we go.” 

Six weeks later, I’m just getting back to some speed work and longer runs. Some days, ye olde PF kind of hurts, and other days I barely notice it. In any event, it is waaaay better than it was back in August. Or May. Or 2010. I do lots of appalling-looking stretches, and I keep my arch taped for most runs. But if it begins hurting the way it was hurting before, the first thing I’ll do is take time off again. If I distill everything I’ve done and look at the end product, my sense is that rest (that’s right: not running) mostly healed me.

I know there’s substantial huffing and puffing about To Run or Not to Run With Fucking PF. What works for one person apparently never works for anyone else in the entire extended universe. However, PF is essentially a sprain. Like any sprain, it can be mild or severe. Some people can just jog their happy-ass ways right on out of their slight sprain. Other morons, like myself, keep right on running on a pretty bad sprain until, oopsy!, we can run no more.

 Then, like it or not, we’re going to be forced to take time off, stretch or not stretch, apply ice or heat, wear a fucktard sock or scoff at it, switch to puffy shoes or be an unshod faddist, and sit full of needles in a dimly-lit room as the strains of midsummer chickadees and titmice meshed with tin whistles and violins wash over our pathetic non-running selves.

YIKES!  (No, that’s not my foot. Jeez, people.)

I know you’ve all been on the edge of your collective seats just sick with worry. As crabby and reluctant as I had been to admit it for 10 months (TEN MONTHS), I was trying to push through an injury that just wouldn’t go away. I mean, it wasn’t something groovy or impressive like a stress fracture, muscle tear, or even my now-world-famous GROIN injury. It wasn’t something I could show off with crutches or with one of those ridiculously over-poofed walking casts. It was (good grief) plantar fasciitis.

I don’t know about you, but when I think of PF, I think of old fat people wearing mauve fanny packs and sensible mud-brown walking shoes. I think of the inane jingle for The Good Feet Store. I envision Early Bird Dinner Specials and reruns of Matlock and Flipper. I know that runners get PF, but I’ve always thought of it as a Wah! Wah! Oh Boo Hoo! sort of ailment that the same kind of whiners who freak out over black toenails get. It wasn’t a real injury.

So, when the PF started rearing its horns way back in, oh, November of 2010, I was all, “Whatever, stupid PF!!” I kept on running and remarking cheerily about the novelty of being unable to step directly on my left heel when I stood up in the morning. By January, I was submerged in the final weeks of training for the Birmingham Mercedes Marathon, so any pain short of a multiple compound fracture was tossed aside with a haughty snort. (That sounds pretty unattractive, actually.) And when I had to roll myself into the bathroom in a desk chair the morning after the marathon, I thought I was a real laugh riot.

I laughed right on through training to pace the Country Music Marathon and had a particularly good chortle when, after sitting down following the marathon, I couldn’t stand back up without Cheryl’s help. Then I could barely walk the rest of the day. Hilarious!

The amusement began growing thin mid-summer when I found that even easy runs made it hard to walk after sitting down for a while. Standing up in the morning was becoming a major and embarrassingly blundering undertaking. Even the cats began gingerly backing away from me when they noticed I was attempting to stand up and take a step. Finally, it began hurting while running. Then my race times began falling off. I stretched, iced, rolled, freaked, prayed, and whined. Nothing helped. In early August, I said, “Well, fuck. Maybe I’m really injured.”

I ran one more 5k in a compellingly dull time of 22:51, hopped around on one foot afterwards, and decided to take a break. I mean, 5 days off should do it, right? Wrong. Particularly when your first run back is a mildly jaunty 10-miler. Anything I might have healed, snapped and over-extended itself into an oblivion of tatters. But it had been years, decades really, since I had taken off more than 7 days for an injury. This couldn’t be happening. Or, rather, I wouldn’t believe it was happening. I trotted right out and did some relatively angry intervals two days later.

The very next day, I couldn’t run at all. I mean, AT ALL. I tried to do a Death Jog, and even that was too painful. I attempted the humiliating old lady 4:1 (or whatever the hell it’s called) and nearly stumbled. I walked. I stopped. I stomped. I was majorly pissed and just a bit panicked. Why hadn’t this gone away? What if it never went away? I progressed from “I’m ignoring my injury,” to “I’ll never run again” in about 50 seconds. I’m pretty sure that’s a PR.

What to do? Would I actually have to do something shameful and horrifying like not run for a couple of weeks? Would I careen zombie-like into the morass of general forums on running sites and publicly discuss the arch of my foot? Would night terrors of superior masters runners chanting, “Loser! Loser! Ha Ha, Old Hag!” haunt my restless sleep?

Stay tuned for the next absorbing segment of this injury docudrama: “My Life as a Pin Cushion!”

The other day, on a running message board (vague nod to running in this post), a friend asked everyone in general what the best way to traverse the United States might be. The northern route? Southern? Through the middle? Was Mt. Rushmore worth seeing? Where would be the best place to have a Jack Kerouac moment with apple pie a la cheddar cheese?

Just hearing these questions and then reading the varied replies made me all angsty and antsy and irresponsibly desirous of taking off across the U.S. for no particular reason at all. I-40 is about 1.2 miles from my front door, and the knowledge that, if I wanted, I could just hop on it and wheel right on out to Barstow, California is almost unbearable. Across the Mississippi, through the heartbreaking farms  and mini-mountains of Arkansas, Oklahoma plains and dust, past the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo where 72-ounce steaks are FREE ( I once ate an 8-ounce steak there that tasted like a bland old shoe), into the hushed and awesome theater of New Mexico where Route 66 is at its ghostliest, across Arizona from inferno to pine peaks to a corner in Winslow, and on into the bowels of desert land California.

One freaking road. Five minutes away. I can’t stand it.

I don’t know how many times I’ve traveled back and forth across the United States in a car. Maybe 10 times, maybe more? The first time was when I was 11, and it was in the backseat of a ’67 Chevy Bel Air station wagon during a majorly-extended family camping trip from South Carolina to San Francisco and back. The car broke down for 3 days in Merced, CA in 110-degree heat, some wacko with a shotgun was taking potshots at picnic tables at a campground in Texas at 3 a.m., my Dad opted for Spam sandwiches and Tab at rest stops as opposed to Dairy Queens and McDonalds, and in a godforsaken crossroads in Arkansas, a remarkably rotund woman in a Razorbacks sweatshirt asked my brother if he was married (he was 13).

I loved every minute of it. It was the kernel of the bug (mixed metaphors? Yes. Caring? No.) that sent me off on a decade of traveling and playing music 20 years later. The last time I boomeranged across the U.S. was 2002. So, what would I advise? Which route to take? Where to go?

I have no idea. The more I saw and experienced of this country, the fewer strong opinions I had. The more miles and far-flung corners, the greater the meshing of an overall affection for (almost) everyone, everywhere. For the ridiculous, and for the awesome. Red state Blue state left right crossroad megalopolis.  Sometimes I feel a little sheepishly Pollyanna or icky when I say I Love America. Vague images of cranky people in Wal-Mart parking lots with hands on their hips, cigarettes hanging off their lips, and Dodge Rams plastered with “I Love My Country!” “These Colors Don’t Run!” “Palin for President!” come to mind.

But still.

I suppose most of my trips were glaringly void of seeing the “sights.” Nearly all of this traveling was done with my then-partner, piano player, head-ripper-offer of asshole venue owners, driver, and excellent spotter of liquor stores, Kim. We basically had the same outlook when it came to traveling and performing: If we had to get somewhere for a show, we had to drive like bats out of hell. If we had a few days off, we wanted to see things, but not See Things. Getting lost on a 2-lane logging road outside Lander, Wyoming, for example, might take precedence over seeing the Grand Tetons. I know many of you are saying, “That’s just not right.” But there you have it.

Still, we managed to see “sights” galore from the Freedom Trail to Grauman’s Chinese Theater. But nothing stands out in my memory as much as the nameless sights:

Lost somewhere in a swampy area of Louisiana, we stopped at a gas station/store/crawfish blowout/bar kind of place to get directions. An old guy with one eye and amazingly scarred hands gave us directions in such a heavy Cajun accent that all I got was, “Down this road, okay?” Then we had endless Abitas and etouffee and found the interstate the next day.

For reasons I can’t remember, we decided to drive from Alexandria, Virginia, to Cheyenne, Wyoming. NONSTOP. I don’t really recommend this, but I’m here to tell you that it can be done. All day, all night, and most of the next day. We stopped to get something to eat just before sunrise somewhere in Nebraska. The woman who waited on us chatted merrily about the weather, coffee, and her feet. Then she eyed us warmly and asked, “You girls out here looking for cowboys?”

A friend of a friend near Belleville, Kansas, took us on a walk to three farms, nothing interrupting the horizon but grain elevators and silos. At each farm, they gave us something to eat and sent us on our way with something extra. At the last farm, we rounded a corner, and our friend said, “Oops..sorry.” On the ground were three massive buffalo heads left over from slaughtering the evening before…tongues lolling out, eyes all googly. Even so, we took the buffalo jerky the farmer offered.

In Clearwater, Florida, a wine-drenched midnight boat ride with mega-rich retirees. Sunflowers 7 feet tall in northern Michigan. Magpies hopping right into our car and yammering at us in Idaho. And gauzy disappearing ghosts (I swear) on a battlefield somewhere near Montpelier, Vermont, at sunset.

And so, where to go, which way to go, and what to see in a cross-country drive? I couldn’t begin to tell you. In the parlance of Kids These Days, it’s all good. Take as long as you can take, try to make at least one serious attempt to get lost, don’t miss the sights for the “sights,” and take a lot of walks or runs (vague nod #2).

Have fun. It’s an awesome country.

Above: The 2011 Beer Mile trophies that I covet beyond all reason and will never come close to winning

This past Saturday was the 3rd Annual Nashville Beer Mile. As I’m sure all of you remember, I attempted the Beer Mile two years ago when I had a broken groin, and managed a laughable 16:45. This year, with my groin entirely intact and two more years of beer-slamming expertise under my belt (not that I wear belts, but anyway), I felt pretty certain that I could go under 15:00. All I can say here is: HA HA! Dream on, Granny!

Beer miling talent eludes me. It mocks me and baffles me. How do the champions do it?

Luckily, the 3-time reigning and undefeated women’s winner of the Nashville Beer Mile (and a friend of mine…even if she did win that trophy. Bitch.) is here to give us an insider’s view. Amy is an ultra trail runner, an awesome blogger, and a truly unparalleled chugger.

Hi Amy! I’m not really worthy of your presence, so I appreciate your granting this interview. Feel free to belittle my lame 15:56 Beer Mile time as often as necessary.

No problem! Let’s try to make this snappy though, as I have a lot of press and photo shoot obligations lined up. I’m sure you understand.

 After your stunning ThreePeat win at this year’s Nashville Beer Mile, you must be beyond words, but try, if you can, to describe your true feelings the moment you crossed the finish line.

All I felt was the overwhelming urge to vomit.  All over the place.  Lucky for you and the other competitors and spectators, I didn’t.

Serious Beer Milers want to know: What’s your strategy? Is it in the belching? The beer choice? Well-aimed flatulence, perhaps?

Well-aimed flatulence… hmm.. ..possibly a good idea to try next year.  My strategy is simple: I only worry about the beer drinking.  And I definitely burp for at least an eighth of a mile. Loud, huge burps.  I also don’t drink anything for about an hour before the race.  And… I like to put my beer cans out on the table fairly early so that they have a chance to warm up a bit. I can’t chug cold ass beer.

And I bet you didn’t think I had any strategies…

I know that I attempted some highly specialized training prior to this event, clocking a PR beer slam at 52 seconds at my kitchen counter on a random Thursday, then running up and down the stairs while emitting an admirable series of deafening burps. Any chance of letting us in on some of your training secrets?

52 seconds? Really? Jesus Christ, that’s embarrassingly slow. Ummm… anyway… training secrets. There are no secrets to excellence… there is only practice.

Cork it, whippersnapper. I’ve been practicing for longer than you’ve been alive and look where it’s gotten me…. NOWHERE. That trophy might as well be the moon.

Anyway. There are a lot of namby pambies in East Tennessee that run a Chocolate Milk Mile. My question to you here is: What the fuck? Are we just more professional alcoholics here in Middle Tennessee, or are East Tennesseans morons?

What the fuck?!?!? That sounds like a race for toddlers. Or hillbillies. They should be having moonshine miles.

Like me, you grew up in South Carolina and attended USC (GO COCKS!).  Do you feel this background has benefitted you in your ability to drink 4 beers and run a mile in 11:28?  Did you enjoy beer at all during your collegiate career?

Umm.. you need to fire your fact checker… I grew up in Nashville (well, Hendersonville)… and went out-of-state to college at USC (long story short: of course I would end up at a school nicknamed the cocks).

Whoa, hold on there, missy! I distinctly recall a convo (yes, I said “convo”) with your dad at your last St. Patrick’s party during which we chatted about your old home in Irmo which is just west of Columbia and always cracks me up, because who names a town “Irmo” and furthermore…Well, anyway, that led me to believe you grew up in the Land ‘O The Cocks. However, just now it occurs to me that I was crocked when having that chat. Hmmm…. Perhaps you are, in fact, correct about where you grew up. Carry on.

Thanks.  To answer your real question… yes, my collegiate background definitely prepared me for the beer mile competitions. While you were at grocery stores finding misspelled produce signs, I was doing keg stands. Or at a bar in Five Points drinking pitchers of warm beer.  Lots and lots of pitchers.  A state school education is clearly an integral part to becoming a beer mile champion.

Go Cocks!! (2 years in a row!!!!)

For those of you wondering, Amy’s referring to the College World Series that USC just won LAST NIGHT. (As a side note, when I say USC, some of you may be thinking the other USC which would be a grave error. They’re the Trojans and we’re the Cocks. Pun Central!!)

Back to the interview. This year there were a couple of nice young ladies who, in the weeks leading up to the Nashville Beer Mile, questioned your ability to win. Any suggestions or comments you’d care to pass along now to these bitches?

Umm…  don’t get kicked out of the after party?!

Well, that certainly is diplomatic of you.

At this juncture in the interview, I’d like to bring the spotlight back to me. What do you think about a 50-year-old hag drinking warm canned Budweiser so fast that, in lap three of the Beer Mile, suds came out of her nose? Do you think this is attractive? Commendable, perhaps? Do you hope to be as classy as I am in 20 years?

Wait a minute. I didn’t know you had beer coming out of your nose! Wow… I think that might warrant a penalty lap.  And…Gross. 

Let’s talk recovery!  In the hour or three immediately following this race, what do you recommend drinking and eating and doing?  Can you provide any specific scenarios from this past Saturday’s competition?

My recommendation is to do exactly what I did on Saturday after the race:  immediately crack another beer (hey.. .they come in 6 packs, right?)… pound it. Crack open the other beer… pound it.  And then pull the “I won the beer mile for the 3^rd year in a row, so can I bum a beer ?” card and drink another beer. And then start eating brownies with blue frosting when you realize that you’re drunk and have only had beer for the past 5 hours.

For the past three years, your race nickname has been “USC Girl,” which, let’s just face it, is pretty freaking  dull.  However, inside sources (you) have told me that a new nickname was created during the aforementioned recovery period. Care to elaborate?

I think that my new nickname will probably be “Nips” or “Show Me Your Nips” girl. Because… yeah… someone asked, and I did.  And when they told me that just showing one wasn’t good enough, I then showed both. So… yeah.

 Here’s what I think is just a really sweet picture of me congratulating you on your win, only moments after I careened across the finish. You look so confident and superior here. Four days after your win, are you still feeling superior?  

After setting a new Nashville Beer Mile Female record time, then pounding 7 beers,  getting thrown in the pool with all my clothes on (although, let’s be honest, they told me it was coming), and showing my nipples at the end of the night… fuck yeah I still feel superior!

Finally, you just finished a 60-mile 3-day mountainous trail race a mere 6 days before convincingly smashing your old Beer Mile PR and annihilating your competition.  Naturally, many of us want to know: Is there something wrong with you?

You know, after years of mediocrity in organized sports… I finally found the two things I’m really good at: running/walking/limping up trails super slowly and drinking beer really fast. 

I feel  lucky to be gifted in these two areas. As a result, I give my all.  As Steve Prefontaine reminded us: “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”

I mean seriously.  This is the 2011 Moon Pie Festival t-shirt design, and though other years’ designs have been mildly enigmatic (last year featured what looked like an RC Cola flipping off a Moon Pie), this year’s design really takes the cryptic cake.

I wish I could find a larger version of this shirt for those of you outside the Bell Buckle Belt, but if you ran the 10-mile race and have a shirt, please let me know what you think this design is attempting to communicate. I’ve been staring at it intermittently for 3 days now, and I’m no closer to unraveling the mystery. As far as I can tell, this is what is happening in the shirt:

On the left-hand side, there seems to be some kind of ominous March of the RC Cola bottles through a dark tunnel. Either the two bottles in front are sharing a sort of scary Budweiser King of Beers style of crown, or they are being followed by a long line of RCs. This veritable cola army is beginning to crowd together as if to say, “Get the fuck out of our way! We’re RC Colas and we are COMING THROUGH!!”

This is troubling enough, but it is the design on the right-hand side that really creates an aura of terror. Again, it is nighttime. In the background, there appear to be some old buildings with nary a light on in any one of the gaping windows. Rising hideously behind these buildings is a truly gargantuan quarter moon….with a face. Granted, the moon is smiling, but this detail doesn’t make me feel any better about the whole situation.

In the foreground, we see what I can only assume are two Moon Pies with disproportionately small feet. One Pie appears to have a tail, but this idea is so upsetting that I don’t even want to think about it anymore. In front of the Moon Pie on the left is a disembodied hand waving at the leering moon. On the ground in front of the Pies is either an Oriental rug or an oversized book with Chinese symbols on the cover. There may be a purplish stovepipe hat involved with the Pie on the right side.

Capping this entire perplexity is the fact that both these scenes seem to be framed within the parameters of two giant conch shells. There’s a chance that these may be macrame plant holders, but that wouldn’t explain the conch-like horned tips protruding to the left and right. The rest of the shirt’s design is an entirely innocuous old timey poster kind of thing. Obviously, this is supposed to fool the observor into thinking there’s nothing insidious taking place within the inner design, but it ain’t fooling me.

If you think you have a clearer idea of what’s really happening in the 2011 Moon Pie shirt, please leave a comment below.

‘Prec.

Oh, and the race was the basic phantasm of extreme heat, humidity, and hills that it always is. But there are popsicles, Moon Pies (sans tails), and hay bales at the finish. There are a lot of quilts and fried stuff and fat chicks clogging. It’s in freaking Bell Buckle! One must run it every year, regardless of how petrifying the shirts are.

Growing up in the home of an English professor was actually not quite as tedious as it sounds. There were always a lot of books around, word puns and obscure literary zingers filled the air, and watching the local evening news was always a nice adventure.

“Did he just say ‘We might could use some rain’?” My dad would ask, looking as though someone had just blasted an air horn at him at close range.

Other bonuses included cherry-scented pipe smoke coming from my dad’s study, the use of “forsooth” in all seriousness when I asked if I could borrow the car when I turned 15, and crusty old collectors’ editions of Alice in Wonderland and Oscar Wilde’s Collected Letters sitting casually on the back of the toilet.

My dad was certainly playful with the English language. More than once, I heard him gravely asking our dog a question in Middle English and demanding an answer. He’d march through the house reciting “Jabberwocky” for no apparent reason. And when I graduated from college in 1982, he gave me a card that asked, “How many letters are in the alphabet?”  I opened it up and read, “Only 24. E.T. Phoned Home!!” He laughed his ass off over that one for a few days.

But my dad was not just your run-of-the-mill English 101 Catcher in the Rye keyhole form essay tweed jacket dry sarcasm bad hairdo Gallo wine kind of English professor. He specialized in Victorian literature, and with that specialization came a heightened, nay painful, sensitivity toward mangled language. This isn’t to say that Victorian authors didn’t get down with their bad selves, but they did tend to be, shall we say, a tad pompous and huffily accurate with language. In turn, my dad was given to, at regular intervals, correcting  grammatical errors in our household.

It was not uncommon for me to be entirely out of earshot of my dad, all the way down the hall in my brother’s room quietly discussing some bland detail of my angsty pre-teen life when my father would bellow: “Brenda and I can’t decide on which flavor lip gloss to wear! Brenda can’t decide, and I can’t decide. Not ‘me can’t decide.’ Brenda and I!!”

There would, of course, be major eye rolling and sighing and the standard, “Jeez! Okay! Brenda and I. Good grief.” response, and my brother and I would give each other the “whatever” look decades before “whatever” existed. At dinner that night, I would intentionally toss out a, “I did good on a pop quiz today!” just to see my dad’s haggard expression.

Nonetheless, the Bossy Correct English seed was planted in me. By junior high, I disapprovingly observed wrong verb tenses and misplaced commas in notes sent to me by my best friend. In high school, another tragic nerd and I actually went to the principal to let him know that quotation marks really should not be used for emphasis after we noted the school sign out front read, Cardinals vs. Spartanburg “Tonight!”  (There’s a real possibility that one of us may have mentioned that, had the quote marks been warranted, the exclamation point should have been placed outside the quote marks. However, we may have been thrown out of his office before this occurred.)

By college, things had really gotten out of hand. Two other English majors and I (ack!) made regular visits to a rather rundown corner grocery store to see how many wacky misspellings we could find on the handmade signs. We did this for entertainment. In the produce section, there were “fresh collars” and “canterloops” and “Swiss chord.” Once, in the infant care section, there was a huge sign announcing Baby Dippers “only” $1.99!! Yes, while other University of South Carolina students (Go Cocks!!) were out drinking their weight in beer, we were apoplectic with laughter in grocery store aisles on a Friday evening.

This is an illness that has, to some extent, followed me into adulthood. However, my pomposity was tamped down considerably when I started writing fulltime and experienced “helpful feedback” from copy editors. Returned manuscripts looked like someone had died on my computer screen. Red everywhere. Much to my shock and dismay, my grammar, punctuation, and syntax did not reign supreme. Not even close.

Still, I try to maintain some level of self-importance and jackassity by publicly correcting people on the internet every now and again. Not long ago, I noticed that one of my imaginary internet running friends had used the word “cloths” when he meant to say “clothes.” He’s a smart guy and an excellent writer, so I let it slide. Yesterday, I put on my running cloths and… “Running cloths.” What an amusing little typo! But when it happened again, I felt a slight pressure behind my eyes. By the third or fourth time, I imagined an inflatable kickball in my head. Every misspelling of clothes increased the pressure until, by the 7th or 8th instance, I was compelled to scurry online and bark, Clothes!! Not Cloths! For the love of God! CLOTHES!!

I sound like a lot of fun, don’t I?

Anyway, all this rambling comes down to a final grammatical horror story. For several years now, I have painfully endured the rampant misuse of ” have ran” when people mean to say ” have run.” And by “people,” I mean runners. How is this even possible? I mean, don’t we all obsessively read about how many marathons Joe Blow has run? Don’t we all know that what’s-his-face would have run Chicago if God hadn’t told him not to?

I’ll tell you how it’s possible: it’s become so commonplace that it’s accepted. Oversaturation. Everybody’s doing it!

And by “everybody,” I mean “me.”

I must shamefully reveal that only yesterday, in a moderately important email to a moderately puffy important person, I mentioned that “I have ran for 33 years.” It wasn’t until after I had fired it off that I noticed my error. Oh the horror. The abject humiliation. The ultimate payback for years of ridiculing quote marks, pronoun choices, and baby dippers.

In conclusion, I’m not perfect.

Still, I appreciate beyond words the love of words my father instilled in me, even if it came with an annoying helping of Grammar Superiority Complex.

So, wherever you are, Dad, Happy Father’s Day.

You done good.