Man Eats Marathon

I’m back for more.

I’m back, everyone. I took some time off from training but not from running. But now, I’m back to training. This time, I’m training for the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon on May 6, 2012.

I know I still owe this blog and myself a recap of my Columbus Marathon experience from this past October, and I’ll get around to it. Even though it’s months since, it’s still very fresh in my mind, even raw in some places, and there are a lot of things I’m still digesting. There are a lot of things I want to express about the experience.

Just not today.

Today though I ran eight miles with my Team In Training group, in the cold and wet, through a good chunk of Cincinnati: namely Hyde Park, Oakley, and maybe even a sliver of East Walnut Hills. Not sure, I wasn’t keeping the map—I was just running in a peloton of four women that were killing me with their pace. They did all the directions-keeping. Not manly, I know. But I seem to have enough to worry about with the huffing and puffing and the watching where I’m going, that to let someone else “drive” is fine with me.

Which brings me to this admission: I am not fast. Just steady.

Still, we tracked right under a 10:00 per mile pace, which is right where I want to be at this time, as I think about my goal time for The Pig.

Yes, a goal.

The goal in Columbus was to just finish. And I did just that, in 4:48:12.

The goal for Cincinnati, with the hills and The Pig’s always unpredictable weather, is to finish under 4:30.

Today, I felt great. No pain, anywhere. Well, I think I had a twinge in my back at one point, but I honestly think I was making it up.

I love being out in the cold, but find I keep overdressing. I could have done easily without my jacket and the neck thingy.

I love being out running with other people that like to talk. Too much of my Columbus running, even during Team In Training group runs, was solitary. Now, I feel like I’m keeping up with other runners and it makes a huge difference. Plus, since The Pig is the hometown race, there are tons more folks in the group this year.

Anyway, it was a great outing and I’ll write more about what’s going on soon.

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I did it. I really did.

More to come.

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Yours truly, at the Columbus Marathon expo. Getting close!

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This looks like a winning card to me.

demeter42:

Marathon Bingo

For the next marathon I watch, I’m making myself some Marathon Bingo cards.  I need to do more research, though, because I know there’s more wacky stuff out there I didn’t happen to see this week.

I incidentally saw every single one of the things on this particular card.  Including a girl dressed as Thor, which counts as two squares as far as I’m concerned.

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I thought I’d create a reminder on my phone. You know, just in case I forget.

When is this taper ever gonna end?

Oh, right. Sunday. I forgot.

Reasons why.

(Garry Franklin, c. 1999, Albuquerque, New Mexico)

So, why am I running a marathon?

Well, let me start by saying my dad, Garry Franklin, died 11 years ago today.

He had Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and it ended his life after a five year battle.

I’d like to say that his fight was valiant and brave. But it wasn’t. 

He was in denial until almost the bitter end. And while he dutifully endured all the treatments as directed and all the chemotherapy that was prescribed for years, he was convinced that leukemia was something he’d likely die with, rather than of—because that’s how it was originally described to him.

It wasn’t until his physician, a brilliant doctor in Albuquerque, told him that without a bone marrow transplant the cancer would ultimately take his life. 

And so a match was found! His middle sister gave us hope that all would be well.

And yet, an 11th hour infection dashed all our hopes, and his transplant candidacy was revoked.

Within a month or so, he was gone.

- - - - 

(Garry in the classroom, c. 1983.)

He died on a Tuesday, just like this one. 

It was beautiful when I landed in Albuquerque that day, just after noon, after flying all morning from Kentucky.

I took a cab directly to the hospital, and dropped my bags in an adjacent empty room that the oncology floor staff were kind enough to let my family use as a sitting room and luggage staging area. 

I’ve often described his last day on this planet as, up until that time, the worst and best day of my life. The worst because of the obvious. And the best because of what was about to happen.

- - - -

(Yours truly and Garry, a first day on a new job for me, February, 1996, Albuquerque, New Mexico)

My dad was not what you would call an emotionally available person. He was a difficult man to know and a difficult man to relate to.

Know this: he was not the same person at home as he was at work or in the classroom. In the classroom, or in the museum, he was doing what he loved: teaching. And he was exceptionally good at it. A teacher of ability and gifts without equal. I know. I had him for three out of four years of high school science.

But at home he was different person. Distant. Aloof. Difficult to engage or to talk to.

He was just…different. 

And while I loved him. I did not appreciate him until much later in life.

When I was young, we would fight bitterly—always at odds, never seeing eye-to-eye. Two stubborn men both fighting for the attention of the same woman in the house, my mother.

I don’t think he and I really ever bonded until I graduated from college and got on my feet with my career. And we never really talked much until the last five years of his life—suddenly when time was at its most premium.

As his cancer treatment progressed, and our options went from good to bad to good to bad to really bad to great to awful, I feared more and more a world without him. 

- - - -

(Me and Garry, c. 1979, Peachtree City, Georgia)

When I finally got to his room, my mother cleared everyone out so that he and I could have some alone time. 

The cancer had wracked his body. The opportunistic infection that took advantage of his nonexistent immune response was giving him horrific coughing fits. 

It was horrible.

I sat to his left by the bed, my head bowed, his hand in mine, while he managed to sleep. Huge tears rolled down my cheeks and dripped onto the hospital floor.

I told him how much I just wanted him to love me—something I’d never heard from the man.

“Always,” he uttered, not as asleep as I had thought, gripping my hand tight.

I asked him if he was proud of me.

“Of course. Just keep doing what you’re doing. You get better every year.”

That he had managed to tell me that which he needed to tell me, and knew that I needed to hear, made his last day on Earth my best day.

I have clung to those words ever since: “Better every year.” 

- - - - 

(Garry and I, Christmas 1978, Lexington, Kentucky)

I imagine him with my children. I know he would have been so great with them. 

Small children were drawn to him, mostly because of his unusual appearance, but partly because he didn’t do anything to attract or provoke them. No constant calling or cajoling them to come. He would just wait patiently, and even the most timid of toddlers ended up making their way to them.

I like to imagine Phillip learning from him, watching a demonstration of something at his knee. Something awesome and amazing as learning to tie his shoes, which was the very first thing he ever taught me.

I often imagine Calvin sitting behind him on the motorcycle. His little arms hugging the big man’s leather jacket tightly as they race off into the high desert on yet another adventure.

But those things were never meant to be. 

The teacher is gone, and the leather jacket hangs in my closet now, dusty and practically untouched since I brought it home eleven years ago.

Each year that goes by brings the point in time closer of when there will be more years since he has been gone, than years in which I knew him. And I knew him for 22 years of my 38 so far. 

- - - -

But why am I running a marathon? And what does any of this have to do with anything?

Is it really to help people fight leukemia and lymphoma? Well, sure. I hate that other people have to go through this. I hate it. So, that’s a huge part of it. I truly believe in the cause. Finding Team In Training changed my life. But it’s an easy rallying call, and I’ve come to discover that my reasons for doing this run deeper.

So, then is it to pay tribute to the man? I dunno anymore. I think so. I want to believe that.

But honestly? I think the man would have had a problem with all this fuss.

And as it turns out, I haven’t been getting better every year like he told me. And I haven’t lived up to his expectations, no matter how much I fool myself into thinking I have.

Yes, I have a beautiful family. Plus I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of cool things. And now that I’ve been exercising and eating better, I have a new outlook on life.

But the past two or three years have been challenging to say the least. Things haven’t always been great. 

Mistakes have been made. I have gotten off the plan. Jumped the rails.

No. I’m running a marathon to be better. To be great. To live up to expectations that were set for me so long ago, and to begin setting some of my own.

I’m running a marathon to show myself that I know how to set a crazy goal and fight to achieve it.

I’m running a marathon to set an example for my children of living a healthy life.

I’m running a marathon to prove that no matter how much it hurts, no matter how exhausted I may feel, no matter how much my legs say that I can’t—that I can do this.

I really can.

Woman gives birth after running (and walking) marathon

(Photo credit: WGN/Chicago Tribune)

They should give her TWO finisher medals! 

From ChicagoTribune.com:

She ran and walked even as contractions started kicking in regularly toward the end of the race. But she managed to cross the finish line — and grab a bite to eat — before giving birth to baby girl June Sunday night.

Awesome!

Love it!

“Best of luck finishing a marathon that doesn’t involve episodes of Law & Order”

Via someecards

Chicago Marathon Runner Dies →

Well, this isn’t the kind of story you want to read one week before your first marathon, that’s for sure.