On running

Today I ran one of the most beautiful courses I've ever done with my friend Shirlee. The half marathon started at the Santa Cruz waterfront, wound along West Cliff, wandered out beyond Natural Bridges State Beach and looped Wilder Ranch. That loop was by far the best part of the 13-mile run. I've had the pleasure of running along many beautiful beaches - Santa Barbara, Malaga, Tenerife, Hawaii - but today the waves were crashing so high that as we followed the coastline, our feet clipping the bluffs, we were dusted in ocean spray. The bluffs followed an ess curve and with every bend you could make out a long line of runners dotting the opposite cliff. Sometimes I think this is how humans should move - all of us chugging along at our own pace, in twos, threes, and fours, occasionally breaking the line just to feel that momentary thrill of leading the pack.

Sometimes I feel the best about my body when I'm running.

There is something that happens when I am racing, usually around mile 10. I find someone ten yards ahead and decide it's time to beat them. As soon as I get on their heels it's time to pick the next person. And so on. Today I noticed new magic. All I had to do was name the color of their jersey, and before I knew it I'd catch them. Purple. Blue. Pink. Red. It felt like writing. Name a feeling and you feel it. Describe an action and there you are, ten steps forward, ten times faster. Running falls somewhere between careful calculation and a complete freedom to be - it is a measurable escape, a feeling I crave often.

Mile 12 is intolerably long and today I found myself chanting a little mantra. This is something I can do. This is something I can do. When I was first running with my dad, I'd remember the trains from Shining Time Station and the way they'd chug, I think I can I think I can. At some point I dropped the think.

How wonderful things can be when you don't have to think, when muscle memory is good enough. I love it when I'm running and I forget for a moment that actions have consequences - that on nights like these, after long runs, I must set alarms to test my blood sugar in the middle of the night, or that, everywhere I go, I'm zippered up with all kinds of sugar. I think I can? No, this is something I can do. And did -- with my boyfriend's mom Shirlee, who has run six of these babies before. Talk about badass. And at the finish line, there they were - Ryan, my parents, his dad, our dog Taj, the ocean itself. All limbs still functioning, all organs intact.

I have a few friends who run the full 26.2-mile marathons and my respect for them (and their knees!) deepens with each race. I don't know if I'll ever run that far in one go, but I think, maybe, someday I can.

Go Team!

This is in tribute to Mr. Alpers, who was the world's best runner assistant today at the San Jose Rock N' Roll Half Marathon. He was our chauffeur, our baggage-check boy, our acquirer of GU and our cheerleader. Our bearded cheerleader. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself how it is that I find myself in these situations: jogging in place with Shirlee (his mom, my running partner today) at 8 am in the morning in a sea of runners, weaving my way through a city still waking up on a foggy Sunday morning. We were surrounded by people in Team in Training jerseys, or in homemade t-shirts with the names of their loved ones written on in puffy paint. I had forgotten my favorite "Diabetes Sucks" cap, but was wearing a belt with pump, GU, continuous blood glucose monitor and blood sugar monitor.

We kept a good pace until about mile 7, at which point I decided to increase my pace. Ryan was waiting at mile 10, which (incidentally) was located right in front of the high school where he works. I kept looking from one side of the street to the other, wondering how on earth I'd see him in this moving, sweaty mob, but when I did finally spot him, he insisted on running alongside me, chattering away, passing me water and GU, his big bicycle bag thumping against his back.

And then we passed the cheerleaders from his high school, all decked out in their school colors, some with ribbons, some with braces, all of them chanting. They slapped high fives and I heard him yell, "That's my girlfriend!" And I felt lucky.

The last two miles were a lot harder than I thought they'd be, especially when I started noticing the number of runners who had stopped, or were seeking medical attention on the side of the road. Ryan later said that, while biking from the 10 mile mark to the finish line, he saw a runner "bonk"; that is, he saw the guy begin to fall backward, until another runner caught him as he fell and helped him to the ground. "I saw a runner go off the course in an ambulance, and it wasn't you or my mom, so I thought the day was a success."

And, all in all, it was. I'm so glad I finally did it, and I'm incredibly grateful for the support not just of Ryan, his family, and my own unstoppable Team HJ, but of all the friends and family members who have donated to JDRF, offered emotional support and overall made it possible for me to do something I at times doubted I could do.

Until next time...

Rocking, Rolling, Running, & Curing

This weekend I plan to run my first ever half-marathon. I've been training for the past ten weeks with a running group here in Davis. Grad school started this week, as did my new job, and somehow this race has crept up on me. I will be running on the same day as the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes, which is no small coincidence. In these last few days before the event, I can't help thinking what a tremendous symbol this has all become.

Running has always been my catharsis, my time to zone out and turn off my brain, to challenge my body while nobody else is looking. There's no way to be "good" at running; the most successful runners I've met are the ones with a keen understanding of how to push themselves, and when it is appropriate to. I'm still working on that second part.

When I run in a group, I sense gears shifting in my body, and suddenly there is something to prove. The person just in front of me becomes the person I most desperately want to beat, and once I beat them, there is always someone else. I run with a little fanny pack with my blood sugar monitor, insulin pump, and three or four packs of GU. The part of the run I relish the most happens after we're all done, after the other runners have stopped to chat or refill their water bottles, when I sit down and whip out my glucose monitor to test my sugar. I take great pride -- probably (definitely) more pride than I truly deserve -- in watching the recognition register on someone else's face that, holy shit, she beat me, AND she's diabetic?

Hell yeah.

I might be feeling differently on Sunday afternoon, after 13.1 miles in this late summer heat. But no matter what, I can't wait for that feeling of satisfaction that I will have done something I've never done before, and done it on a day when my team and I are committed to finding a cure.