It Happens Like This Sometimes

Today started with a tiny feeling, just behind my sternum.  It was little, so I tried to go for a run and burn it away.  It stayed.  I got a headache instead and had to stop and then I forgot to eat breakfast.  It happens like this sometimes, this feeling.

On the drive to work, it got worse.  It started growing, but my chest cavity was shrinking and now there’s a too big thing in my too small space and I don’t know if it will rupture.  So I’m very afraid.  Tense.  I’m not looking at people and it hurts to smile and the tears have been burning my eyes for minutes now but I can’t blink them away because I have to hold very still.  If I’m still and small I can outlast it and it will go away and I can be regular again.  Regular Marley, who smiles and laughs and knows this will come again and smiles and laughs harder because you have to while you still can.

 

It’s very hard not to cry, but I won’t cry because there isn’t a reason to.  There’s no good reason other than the little bits and bobs in my brain decided to have a shit day and spill it all over me.  But the thing in my chest is still too big and I am still too small and it makes things hurt.  It makes me hurt.  I hurt, and that is not a pleasant way to spend a day.

So I will hold still and small and wait until it passes and I can be regular again.  I am sorry if I am still and small to you today, but it’s how I have learned to manage.  I do not want to be like this, but I haven’t found any help that has worked.  I mean, other than being still and small.  I do not like it this way.  The help is almost as bad as the hurt, but only almost.

So I will hold still and small and wait until it passes and hope it passes and I can be regular again. 

It happens like this, sometimes.

Colorado

When I first got in to the Denver airport a few weeks ago, I was running on less than 2 hours of sleep and a lot of caffeine.  In that state of energized delirium, I caught my first glimpse of the mountains and wrote the piece below.  It doesn't do any justice to the sight (or to my state).

Was leaving the airport on the bus and saw the mountains.  At first, I didn’t know what they were.  At a distance they were just a darker blue, the snow on top the clouds, so I thought they were sky.  But then I realized they were earth and the majesty of them hit me like a million waves, crashing over me with awe and joy and I teared up and almost started to cry, but instead I wrote this down.

The first wave was my guess at the technical definition.  Because I’m me, so of course it was.  A land formation so tall that the tops are always covered in snow.  And there it was, the air so cold that the water couldn’t stand it, so it froze up and went to meet the ground.

Then the beauty of it.  How they looked like the sky, but were the earth, and the blue turning to brown as we drove and saw them from different angles and got slightly closer, but they stayed distant, their sheer size allowing them to deny us even the sense of motion when in their presence.

Then the enormity of them.  Two enormities, really, if enormity is a word you can pluralize.  The first enormity, and the smaller of the two, is the insane physical presence of them.  Once I realized they were there, they stayed with me.  I tried to think of how big they are, how much earth how much rock how much snow, and my brain kind of fizzled out.  I haven’t seen something like that in a long time, and it really just serves as a reminder of the overall enormity of our planet, because these giant massive brain-fizzling things are just a tiny piece of the overall blue marble hanging in space. 

And then, brain still fizzling from how BIG they are, I slipped into thinking of how old they are.  That washed over me and left me still.  (Can you imagine me still?!)  They were built by the violence of the earth, crushing and gnawing at itself as its pieces ground together in the mindless, blind, apathetic frenzy of nature.  The earth clawed its way up and over its own bones to reach the sky, touching the clouds and claiming the air.  That was eons ago.  Days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia, they have all passed by and the mountains still stand.  They are the definition of weathering the storm. They were here before anything we knew began, and they’re still watching.  Like they’re waiting for something, and one day they’ll rise up and swat us down like gnats, for disturbing their sleep.

I’m running on two hours of sleep, a caramel macchiato, and the excitement of being on vacation for the first time in so long that I don’t really know what my last vacation was.  I’ve been on the ground in Colorado for less than two hours, most of that has been spent in a plane and on a bus.  I’m gross and travel-weary and I can feel the exhaustion in my eyes, trying to burn its way through the caffeine.  And I kinda never want to leave.

Race Recap - New Moon Half Marathon

**If you're looking for a quick summary, check out the tl;dr at the end of the post.  Otherwise, read on!**

Saturday, May 27, 2017
Delaware, Ohio
Overall grade:  B-

I registered for this half marathon on December 2, 2016.  At the time, it sounded like an amazing deal.  It was on sale, after all.  I got half off the earliest registration fee, so I wound up paying around $35 for a fully supported half marathon.  This included a t-shirt, a finisher's medal, and refreshments after the race.  When I signed up, there was one big piece of information that I overlooked.  The race started at 6:00pm.  My bedtime is normally around 10:00pm, which was when I figured I'd be driving home after the event.  It was a bit of a shock, but totally my fault.  While it caused me some concern, it was absolutely no fault of the race or its organizers.

By the time I arrived at the start area, I was already tired, but packet pick-up was super easy, with almost no line, and I was left with about 45 minutes to waste before race start.  I drank some water, hung out with friends, and then lined up in the start corrals.  The corrals were a bit odd.  Corral A was the entirety of the 5k field.  Behind them, in order of estimated finish time, were the Half and Quarter Marathoners.  The field for this race was small, I'd say no more than a few hundred people.  Even with the corrals starting in waves, we crossed the start line in about 5-10 minutes.

I will say here that I am a slow runner.  On a good day, I'll average 12min/mile.  This was not a good day.  It was late, hot, muggy, and there were hills.  Ugh.  Plus, most of the folks I knew who were running at my pace were doing the quarter marathon, so I was a bit worried.  Fortunately, my concerns were unfounded.  Not only did I find a running buddy my pace who was doing the half, but the course support was flat-out awesome.  Folks weren't lining the streets, but I will say that coming up on three hours into my race, there were still folks sitting out on their porches with hoses (in case anyone wanted to get misted), handing out pretzels and other candy, and cheering us on.  The aid stations were well stocked with water and TWO FLAVORS of Gatorade.  Usually you just get yellow Gatorade, which I really cannot stand.  But here, you could get yellow or blue.  I adore blue Gatorade!  This was a pleasant surprise throughout the course.

As a slower runner, I'm very used to empty streets and things being shut down on me.  But having folks out on the course the entire time, never losing their smile and cheering the whole way, was a huge plus factor for this race.  I was really truly enjoying it.  Then I got to the finish.

The description for the race indicated that finishers would receive a finisher's medal and a New Moon mug.  I either don't take, toss, or give away my race medals, so I was particularly excited about the mug.  And when I say mug, let's be clear that I was picturing the kind of ceramic thing with a handle that I can use to drink my morning tea.  What I got was not a mug, but a cheap-y plastic cup that was obviously designed simply to hold the free beer we received at the finish.  That was my first disappointment.

I will say that the medal, although not specific to the half-marathon, is very nice.  It is also a bottle opener, so if you drink anything that comes out of bottles without twist-off caps (this is not a thing I do), then it is also functional.  So, although it is cute, it is not a helpful tool for me.

After getting my medal and "mug", I went to grab some food.  Here was my second, and probably biggest, disappointment.  They had burgers, which were mediocre but tasted amazing since I'd just run a half, pretzels, and chips, which were great since I needed the salt.  They were out of the following items:
- cheese for the burgers
- chocolate milk
- cookies
- yogurt (some brand was giving away cases of organic whole milk yogurt, just not when I got there)
- Gatorade (they were out of both the yellow AND blue varieties)

I would note that the course has a 3.5 hour limit.  I finished under that by about 20 minutes, and yet it felt like the party had wound down ages ago.  While I am used to things closing on me (like finish line parties), it doesn't make it any less crummy when it happens.  It was a real bummer that things were just gone by the time I got done and I wasn't even at the course limit!  One other thing about the finish line area that really bugged me was that there were no bottles of water.  If you wanted a drink, you filled your cup.  But for folks like me, who had a drive of 20-30 minutes to get home, it would have been nice to take something for the road.  The only portable food item was some small pretzels, which were almost impossible to swallow without some water.

Speaking of things that were missing, there are a couple other things that I wasn't able to get.  The first is a race shirt that fits me.  The shirts were sized SUPER small, so my large is like a second skin.  I'm not a slender person, but I don't think I need an extra-large just to have some room between my lungs and my t-shirt.  We were supposed to be able to exchange at the finish line, but larger shirts were just another thing they were out of by the time I finished.

The last thing that is missing is my results.  I just checked the page, and the results say I finished in 1:29:23.3.  At best, that's a joke.  In fact, when I went to check it again right now, the results for the half had been taken down (Quarter and 5K are still up), so maybe they're fixing it?  Either way, it's over 24 hours since the race and results are just another thing I don't have.

tl;dr -
If you're interested in a moderately challenging course on paved streets with lovely views, this is a great race.  The evening start can be rough for folks, like me, who are morning runners, but they try to make up for it with an after party.  If a large part of the reason you race is for the swag/party, then this race is NOT for slower runners.  Given how many things were flat out gone by the time I finished, I felt pretty certain that the organizers and vendors either didn't care about me, or figured I wouldn't make it.  It was an incredibly disappointing way to finish what was otherwise a grade-A race.

Have you run New Moon?  What did you think?  Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts!  Until next time, friends!

Gorsuch and SCOTUS - Take Two

I've been thinking a lot about Gorsuch since my first post on the issue.  In that time, my views have somewhat changed.  And by "somewhat", I mean "very radically".

My initial opinion of Gorsuch and his nomination rested on the assumption that our system of government is still, in principle, hearty and hale.  It may not be perfect, but it functions well enough that we can continue to work within it and maintain or increase the progress we have made towards true equity in our society.  However, since Gorsuch's nomination, the world has continued to turn.  Nominations have been made and confirmed.  I have watched the system begin its slow regression toward a time of open hostility towards any folk considered different, other, not from around here.

In short, I now see the first tiny flames licking at the base of our democracy.  And I am no longer inclined to fight them.  This may be a transitionary phase, a mere vehicle for getting me from my initial post to some final conclusion on the state of our country that is less filled with flame and more buoyed by hope.  But in the meantime, my stance is now decidedly one of destruction.

"When they go low, we go high."  I've tried to use that as my rallying cry, but I just can't do it any longer.  The satisfaction of holding the moral high ground doesn't help when all you can do is watch the world burn from your rosy vantage point.  While I try to be happy with holding to the morals of modern democracy - morals of civility, calm, and equity - I watch as those same morals are trampled into dust by people who don't give a flying fuck about any of that shit.  Civility?  Why bother when it serves as nothing more than a soundbite?  Calm?  Nobody watches the news if things aren't burning down.  Equity?  Not if it means giving up the opportunity for folks already in the catbird seat to get just a little bit more.

This is the atmosphere in which I shout about kindness, and evenhandedness.  But nobody hears, or if they do they just don't care.  What does this have to do with Gorsuch?  My initial position on his nomination was that we should go back to the way things were.  We should treat him like any other nominee.  We shouldn't be the harm that we raged against in the system.  But where has that gotten us?  It has gotten us on the bottom of a very rotten pile, and digging ourselves out is not guaranteed.

Filibuster Gorsuch.  Refuse to meet with him.  Stall the vote in every way possible.  When he does come up for a vote, hold a sit-in.  Vote no and publicly comment on the crap that was done to make him the nominee.  Will it actually get us anything?  Probably not.  But why bother maintaining the illusion of democracy when there's nothing behind it?

The system has failed.  It may be broken, irreparably so.  How do we fix it?  Not sure.  I'm not there yet.  But in the meantime, I'm happy to watch it burn.

Gorsuch and SCOTUS

I typed this out on Facebook this morning, but wanted to present and preserve it in another medium that is more easily accessible after the fact.  Last night, a second candidate was nominated to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court of the United States created when Justice Antonin Scalia died.  Here are my thoughts on that nomination.

I feel so very, very torn about this. On the one hand, Gorsuch is qualified for the position. He is, in terms of his view on legal interpretation, a good choice as a successor to Scalia. Given some of the other nominations that have come from the fledgling Presidential administration, this is a surprisingly good one. Do I agree with Gorsuch on his interpretations of things? Not all of them. Not by a long shot. But is he qualified? Yes. Without a doubt, he is qualified. Would he do a good job? I haven't looked into him too much, but what I've seen has shown me that yes, I think he would work well as a Justice. Do I want him to be appointed? There's the sticky part. It should have been Garland going through this process. Scalia's vacancy should be well on its way to filled by now. Instead, vicious obstructionist party tactics kept it open, despite a lawful nomination by a duly elected sitting president. So do I want him nominated? No. No, I don't. But it's for petty reasons. I can't have what I really want (Garland), so I'm inclined to deny the option that has been presented.

But where does that lead us? Can we then only fill a SCOTUS vacancy when there are enough similarly-affiliated folks to shove through a confirmation along party lines? Do we explicitly politicize the Court? There was always a political aspect to the process of nominating and approving a Justice, but not like this. Not a complete denial to even speak with the nominee. But what good does it do to respond to stupidity and disruption with more stupidity and disruption? Where will it end?

Do I like Gorsuch as a nominee? No. Will I like the types of decisions and interpretations he will make? Likely not. So what should we do?

Grill the ever-loving crap out of him during the confirmation. Make him give as many commitments as you can wring from a lawyer that he will follow and uphold the rule of law. I haven't seen anything that says he won't, but make him promise to do it. Then make him promise again. Make him do it publicly and repeatedly and then hold his feet to that damn fire for the rest of his life (or until he retires).

If he's confirmed, I'm going to deal with him as a Justice the same way I dealt with Scalia - viscerally disagreeing with the foundations and conclusions of a lot of his work, but nevertheless in awe of the artistry he uses to get from A to B. But I don't know that I'll ever get over what could have been, and what I see as the theft of a proper nomination in the name of violent partisanship.

McKenna Rayne

On June 4th, just 11 days ago, I got news that I had been matched to a beautiful little girl named McKenna Rayne. I was to be her Runner through I Run 4, dedicating my runs and workouts to McKenna, who would never be able to run on her own. Nine days after I was matched with her, McKenna passed away.

When she was born, her parents were told that she might not live to see her first birthday, but McKenna was a fighter and her parents fought with her every step of the way. McKenna was 14 months old when she died. She would have been 15 months old this coming Saturday, June 18th. McKenna knew nothing but love during her life, and I don't know many people who can say that.

Recently, I spoke with McKenna's mom, and offered to continue to be McKenna's Runner. I only got to be her Runner for 9 days while she was alive, but being McKenna's runner is not a commitment that ends with her last breath. Tonight, I went on my first run in McKenna's memory.

If you know me, you know that I'm not a very religious person. Spiritual, yes. Religious, no. But I swear on everything I have ever believed that tonight I had an angel with me on my run. Maybe that feeling on my run tonight was a trick of my mind. Maybe it was a buildup of lactic acid, or the stress of running fast enough to break into the anaerobic stage of a workout. Yeah. Maybe. I think it was McKenna. I was tired, but my feet got faster. The leaves weren't moving, but I swear there was a breeze behind me. I never got to meet McKenna in real life, but I think I met her in spirit tonight.

It's fitting that, upon getting her angel wings, McKenna would visit her Runner during a run. Not because I'm particularly important, and not because we had a bond that was more special than the bond she had with anyone else who loved her. It's because McKenna knew nothing but love, and so she had and has nothing but love to give. As soon as she got wings, once she had a strength of body that she was denied in this life, the first thing she did with it was to come and give me strength, to help me during my run.

I ran 3.5 miles for you, McKenna. But really I ran them with you. You were there, and I am so honored that you visited with me. I'm sorry I didn't have the chance to know you better when you were here, but my miles will continue to be dedicated to your memory.

We say that everyone's life has a purpose, and sometimes it might be hard to see how a person as small and young as you could have a chance to fulfill their purpose. But you did everything you ever wanted to do in this life, McKenna. You brought love to this world, love and light. And all of us, even in our deepest sadness at your passing, are brighter and more filled with love for having known you.

We miss you, McKenna Rayne, and we will love you always.

I Only Cried A Little

This morning, I volunteered at a 10K race here in Columbus.  My job was to set up and work at an aid station, which is a pretty simple thing.

If you've never run a race before, an aid station is a spot where some tables get set up and covered in disposable cups filled with water.  People stand around in front of the tables and hand out water to the folks in the race.  On a basic level, the job is that of a very stationary waiter.

Today started out in a disappointing way.  When I showed up, the tables, water, and other supplies weren't even delivered yet.  The person officially in charge of the aid station hadn't been given any additional information beyond what the rest of us volunteers had.  We weren't even sure if we were in the right place until the guys in charge of the race showed up 20-30 minutes late to drop off our aid station supplies.

Not a great start to an experience, particularly when you're someone who likes to have things organized and running efficiently.  You know, like a crazy type A lawyer nutjob sort of person.  Like me.

But we get everything set up and eventually the folks in the race start coming through.  The first few people are going so fast I couldn't tell you what they looked like.  Five minute miles will get you through an aid station in less than 5 seconds.  I sure can't run that fast, but the folks I saw putting out that kind of speed were there and gone in a flash.

As the pace of the racer got slower, their smiles seem to get bigger.  They just had more of an opportunity to interact with us, and everyone at my aid station was going above and beyond to make sure the runners got a great morale boost going into the last mile of the race.  We were cheering.  We were dancing.  We were hollering so loud one guy said he could hear us from at least half a mile away.  More than one person told me we were the best aid station in the whole race.  I want to say, "Of course we are!  This is MRTT and we know how to do happy running!!" Instead, I tell him we're just doing our job, and that he should take a cup of water from me because mine are the best.

The last group of people I saw come through was a family, and in particular I noticed a young woman walking with the group.  Her gait was awkward, and her head was turned partly to the side, as though she were continually interested in something just to the left of the race course.  I noted it, but didn't in any way alter my normal routine of hollering encouragement from about a quarter of a mile away, and dancing and cheering the group through the aid station.  Oh, right, and giving them water.

When they were mostly through the aid station, a woman in the group who was maybe in her late thirties or early forties slipped back to thank me and a couple of other folks for what we had done.  As she was talking, she gestured to the young woman.  The one who was maybe in her early teens.  The one who I had pegged as probably somewhere in high school, most likely her first or second year.

"Thank you so much.  You don't know how much it means to her.  She's a brain cancer survivor and this was her Wish."

It was me and two other moms that heard those words.  None of us could talk well enough after that to say anything.

I only cried a little.