The number one thing I have the tendency to accumulate are books. They have taken over my house, and while easy to box, are expensive to ship, especially when I have to get them all the way back to the US, just to send them back to the continent to the DRC. (DRC is not known for it’s stellar postal services and my new boss said the import taxes are so expensive I might as well fly to Kinshasa to drop them off before heading to America for my summer vacation).
I limited myself to carrying one book here to Africa (The Alchemist, purchased especially for 2 months of backpacking, which I hated) but two boxes preceded my arrival. As the only American school on the continent with diplomatic pouch privileges for school supplies, I was able to ship all of my teacher resource books and picture books to the Lesotho embassy in DC, where they would be loaded on a South African bound plane, and delivered to the US embassy here in Maseru.
Since I had a couple friends in DC, I figured I might as well haul them myself in a suitcase for hand delivery. I spent my last hours at Harvard performing with the Pan-African Dance and Music Ensemble in a tent worth more than the house I lived in for a fundraiser for the Fogg Museum renovations. After a rapid change out of my fake kente cloth costume, I sprint-hobbled to get the T to South Station. From there, I rode the Chinatown bus overnight, with a suitcase filled with books, and as packing material, a collection of blinding silk scarves inherited from my Grandma Ethel and my great aunt Maisie.
After breakfast with my friend Vivian, we mapquested the address of the Lesotho embassy, only to find it smack in the middle of a river. As luck would have it, my future boss was online and when I told him of my predicament. he refrained from calling me an idiot and explained there actually is no Lesotho embassy, and the address is merely the diplomatic pouch section of the Dulles airport, where no mere civilian may enter. So the United States Postal Service took care of things, and I was left to a weekend in DC with a feather-light suitcase filled with the leftover scarves.
I coerced my friend Sam into accompanying me to a performance of by an all-blind all-male African American tap dancing troupe before I got on the bus back home to Jersey. When we arrived at the address of the theatre, I found that I was nearly the tallest person in line, second only to Sam. We were behind a very long line of children. Sam said, “What did you say the name of this dance group is?” “The Wild Zappers.” “Uh huh. And what did you say the theatre is called again?” “The Discovery Theatre.” “Right. Did it ever occur to you that this is a children’s theater for children’s performers?” He insisted we stay, and I insisted he would look like a pedophile. So we visited several of the free museums in the area (this is really the only thing I like about DC), where security measures required that I open my suitcase at each metal detector and empty the contents. Now, remember, the contents included silk scarves and nothing but silk scarves, so I ended up looking like an undercover midget clown as I pulled scarf after scarf after scarf from my suitcase, breaking into a sweat, and rambling on about books and packing and diplomatic pouches.
Anyway, the two boxes of books made it to Lesotho before I did, and they served me well during my two years here. Unfortunately, the diplomatic pouch only works one way for packages and it was going to be tricky to get all these books to DRC for my next job. But book-lovers share a certain solidarity, and when a newly arrived American owner of 3,000 books (arriving in trickles as I type from her family’s last post in Addis Ababa) heard about my plight, she offered her husband’s generosity and spine to haul this particular collection back to the US and ship them to my parents.
So that’s one pile taken care of. By like I said, I accumulate books. Some were sent in care packages or brought by visitors, but I bought a lot as well. Used bookstores anywhere get me excited. But used bookstores in South Africa, in light of the dearth of books in Lesotho get me particularly excited. When I run out of used books to read, I take them to the monthly book swap and trade. I first went with Ron, my former neighbor/colleague. The book swap used to be held right behind the school, so we worked late, ate pizza across the street and got drenched in a downpour on the five-minute walk to the swap. I was freezing and miserable by the time we got there, and said, “Ron, I can’t stay if I can’t at least take my pants off.” He looked at me dubiously. I told him not to worry, that my top was actually meant as a dress and once I had removed half my clothing I felt a lot better though still soaked. Ron and I had pooled our books and agreed to share the traded-for set. So while we dripped puddles underfoot, we prowled around the table, consulted each other, made piles and finally agreed on the new titles, while the other attendees sipped wine and chatted and looked at us like we were totally nuts. Apparently the book swap is a sort of social affair but don’t try to explain that to two book-starved teachers who love to read.
I became a regular attendee of the book swap, but Ron and I did not repeat the strategy because 1. we have absolute opposite tastes in books and 2. it is really laid back and no one keeps track of how much your leaving behind and how much you are taken. It’s rather karmic really. They just assume all the books will eventually come back to the swap (little do they know, when I find one I love, and keep it and unload a poorly chosen bookstore purchase instead). So these days, I choose my books, eat some soup and discuss the pros and cons of kindles and Stephanie Meyers books (I can’t bring myself to become familiar with either) with the other readers.
When another neighbor had to leave Lesotho urgently and for good, she left all her books to me. She said, “You can trade them at the book swap. Who knows, you might even like them.” I tried to read some of them. I really did. But with titles like Cherry Cheesecake Murder and Apocaliptick, multiple books by Janet Evanovich, and bafflingly, Crime and Punishment. I just couldn’t get past the first few pages. And, call me a snob, but I was really embarrassed to bring them to the swap in case anyone thought that I would actually choose to own such things. So I would bring one book at a time, hidden between John Irving novels and Bill Bryson travel diaries. It took me half a year, but I’ve traded them all. Some people were surprised to see me still accumulating books at the April swap when I had less than two months in Lesotho. Little to they know, I’m not going to miss the May one. I’ll only have three weeks to go by then, but I need something for the plane ride.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
How To Grieve For a Baby
The title of this post is rather misleading. I don't know how to grieve for a baby. Especially the banana-eating baby on the left, who happened to have suffered enormously. Babies don’t have to die of measles. Even in Africa. Even orphans. Even if they have HIV**. But that’s not what I’m writing about. Like I said, I don’t know how to grieve for a baby. But I made some rules regarding writing about it.
1. 20/20 hindsight is banned.
2. Also banned: the words “senseless” and “tragic” (even if they apply).
3. Also banned: the phrases “better place,” “for the best,” and “at least.”
So maybe this isn’t about grieving for a baby at all. Maybe it’s just about a baby.
Tsepong arrived at the orphanage almost exactly a year ago. This was before the babies started arriving at an alarming rate, at a time when each new arrival was an event, and when the smaller numbers, although not necessary to know and love them, at least made it easier. His mother had died. He and his older sister and brother were brought by two other female relatives, along with a garbage bag full of clothes for the three of them. The arrival of the new children was made all the more memorable by Tsepong’s spectacular diarrhea that day which managed to all but destroy his brother’s clothing, his crib and the carpet. So I bonded with him that first day over a sudsy bucket bath and a pair of clean pajamas. (This episode did not prove to be a habit with him, although he was remarkably, frighteningly, skinny).
In my mind he is dressed in white short-sleeved onesies, so these particular memories must have taken place in the dead of summer, because even in springtime their care-givers dress them like they are about to enter the tundra. I would sit him on the blue mat, with his legs splayed, his hands between his feet, and lie down on my stomach facing him. Unlike some of the others, he didn’t mind toppling over. He used to fall asleep in my arms in the late afternoon.
I was away for the month of July, trying my hand at organic farming and related arts and sciences. When I returned, he was walking. And no longer skinny. He was approaching a spherical state, really. Any time I entered the nursery at the orphanage, though far below my eye level, I always knew that the first little body attached to my leg like a barnacle was his. Even better, the moment I knelt down or scooped him up, the side of his warm head would connect to my collarbone, like a moth to a flame, a paperclip to a magnet. He made me think I had the best collarbone in the world. A magic collarbone. And with his soft hair tickling that bone of mine that still has the imprint of his skull, he would put his cool, moist smile to my neck, and greet me with the laugh that lived in his throat.
**I do not know what his HIV status was.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The Rest of Cape Town
Unlike any other fellow Maseru expat I am aware of, I don’t love Cape Town. I was told by my former boss that Cape Town is good for when you need to get to Europe (I believe his euphemism for ‘civilization’) but can’t get to Europe. He warned me not to go to soon after my arrival in Maseru, or I would be unimpressed. I went for the first time about 10 months after my arrival on the continent, and then again exactly a year later. I still wasn’t impressed. It has mountains and ocean and winelands plus all the typical urban “stuff,” museums, restaurants and the like. It just seems to lack something for me, the vibrancy and quirks and gritty charm that make me fall in love with a city.
So when a friend told me the night I should have been tucked into my own bed, but due to a problem with my plane ticket, I ended up imprisoned in a luxurious hotel with an ocean view courtesy of South African Airways, that there were worse things to be than stuck in Cape Town, I didn’t exactly see his point. Also, gorgeous as the hotel and surrounding beach was, I was not actually in Cape Town, but truly stranded miles outside the city on some forgotten corner of the Atlantic. I truly tried to make the best of it, savoring the meal courtesy of my SAA voucher, reading Memoirs of a Geisha in the hot yellow sand, and dancing in the surf early the next morning, but really, I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.
Early the next morning, while waiting to check in to my rescheduled flight, I saw the employee who I fought with the day before. And it was just my luck that out of the dozen or more ticket counters, I was sent to hers. She didn’t look pleased to see me either, but while the day before, her claws were out, today, with genuine sympathy (possibly tinged with fear) she said, “I am so sorry that I have to give you bad news again, but your flight has been cancelled.” I was speechless. I have never missed a flight or had a flight cancelled in my life, and in pre-volcanic ash times, my sense of perspective was not what it might have been. After waiting an hour at ticket sales, I was told that they could send me on a different route, but it wouldn’t get me to Bloemfontein until nighttime, which meant that I still wouldn’t get home until the following day, and would probably miss work, for really no good reason.
Shamelessly playing up the part of the tiny, white, foreign girl, I told her that I couldn’t be traveling after dark, especially at bus stations and borders, that I don’t know a soul in Bloemfontein and any other number of points that would cause the woman behind the counter to envision tales of my slain body in the papers the next day. She said there was nothing she could do. My misery was genuine, though far from unique, as I was in a crowd of stranded, crying faces. Fortunately though, I was the youngest-or at least I appeared to be-and this got me home. Assuming I was a minor, and a troublesome one at that, more than a few people conspired to get me the last seat on another airline into Bloemfontein (and more importantly for them, out of their airport). And I made it back to Maseru in time for the birthday party of a student that I had promised to attend.
My last time in Cape Town, I did all the touristy things (museums, wine, penguins, Nelson Mandela’s prison cell) with the exception of going to the top of Table Mountain. It’s a mountain. It looks like a table. Lesotho has tons of mountains. Some uncannily breast-like. I have some sort of ridiculous opposition to the idea of going up Table Mountain. So considering I have done all the touristy things I think are worth doing, I looked for some less obvious things to occupy my time. I sought out little farmer’s markets, gazed up at the crackly screen of the planetarium observatory, meandered the bays and had a Thai massage that sent post-marathon lactic acid fleeing my body in terror.
And shopped. Now I am not a shopper, with the exception of farmer’s markets and bookstores. And I did a little at both of those. Actually a lot. The school librarian sent me to Cape Town with 2,000 ZAR (enough for about 30 books) to buy new titles for the Early Childhood section of the library. So I bought fresh breads and shiny-paged glue-smelling picture books and was happy.
I also had a shoe-shopping task ahead of me. The week after I got back was the school’s annual dinner/dance. Last year, I wore a dress fashioned out of a second-hand mumu that looked decent, if slightly like the upholstery on my late grandmother’s couch. I decided to go more formal this year with a not-previously-owned red dress from a flea market. Unfortunately, the shoes I bought last year got danced to shreds and at the kiddie racks in Maseru my only options for a replacement were magenta and leopard-print. (And even someone whose two nicest dresses come from a mumu and flea market knows that magenta and red don’t match). I figured in between buying organic tomatoes and South African fairytales I would stumble across a pair of plain, flat, black, size 3 shoes. Ha! 1st problem: Size 3 (or 5 US) is an endangered species in this South Africa. 2nd problem: Stilettos are not. I thought I found a pair I could live with (and more importantly dance in). “Do you have something similar without the heel though?” I asked the saleswoman. She looked at me with obvious disgust and said, “That’s not a heel, that’s a wedge.”
And this point, I quit shoe-shopping, and figured buying a new dress would be easier. I pulled a plain black dress (goes with magenta right?) from the rack of a neighboring store and the saleswoman asked if I wanted the matching panties. Apparently, I cannot tell the difference between a dress and pajamas. At this point, I quit shopping altogether, knowing that after 10 minutes of dancing I would ditch my shoes anyway and that my bare feet match anything.
I devoted the rest of my time in Cape Town to taking trains up and down the coast. Riding public transportation for the first time(s) is a humbling experience anywhere. In Cape Town I found this particularly true. I stayed with a friend who lived only two blocks from a train station. His proximity to the station was about the only thing that prevented me from quitting train travel altogether. To make taking trains in and around Cape Town any more difficult would take a concerted effort on the part of several evil geniuses. Perhaps I have been spoiled by the Metro Transit Authority of New York City, but the Cape Town train system had none of the features that make the subway bearable: a voice announcing the stations over a loudspeaker, lights inside the train cars indicating the station approaching or at the very least, a list of stations in the order in which they appear posted inside the train. Each station has only two signs bearing its name, at either ends of the platform. You usually miss the first because you whiz by before the train begins to slow down. You usually don’t see the second one until you pass it while the train is pulling out of the station. The windows are so low, that to actually see the signs, you have to crouch down and tilt your head at a ridiculous angle, usually only to find that the window is too corroded to see out of anyway. And if by some miraculous stroke of luck (or by repeatedly harassing the seasoned train traveler next you, are we there yet? Are we there yet?), you know where you are in enough time to depart appropriately, you will stand like an idiot waiting for the doors to open before someone tells you they are manual. And I mean really manual. My shoulder cracked audibly while struggling to free myself of the amused train car until an old man thrust his shopping bag full of frozen chop meat at me and yanked it open himself. But the ordeal is not quite over. Cape Town train riders have not yet seemed to grasp the concept of letting passengers disembark before they crowd onto the train. When attempting to exit, I found it best not to look anyone trying to board the train in the eye, just protect your vital organs and step into the crowd like it’s a mosh pit.
And since I seem to be telling my tales of Cape Town in reverse order, I should end with a little about the ultra-marathon from five feet up, mid-back of the pack. I arrived in Cape Town the evening before the race and ran into sometimes running partner Chris on the street. He has been swilling coke all day, and spastically tells me our race bags didn’t come with pins to attach our numbers to our shirts (they actually did, but his brain was so saturated with caffeine he didn’t have the patience to get to the bottom of his bag). Another runner had collected my bag for me and I hadn’t gotten it from him yet, so I took Chris’s word and we set out in search for safety pins, while he stopped periodically for more coke, or carbs in any form. After purchasing pins, we next searched for an Italian restaurant for further carbo-loading, but had to settle for Thai. It was here (or rather later that night) I learned that all noodles are not created equal, and I will never again replace spaghetti with tomato sauce for pad Thai. Chris said, “I’ll have the 980 calorie please,” and I saw that all nutrition facts were on the menu. I quickly changed my order from my original choice which I now saw was only 207 calories to a more substantial option, wondering when will I ever again change my order because it doesn’t have enough calories? Actually, when will I ever again eat in a restaurant that prints calories on the menu?
Whether from nerves or the queasy feeling of an MSG overdose, I slept two hours at most that night and was greeted in the morning by Chris’s near constant refrain, “We must be mad.” A friend drove us to the start, and we actually hit traffic at 5 in the morning, all cars full of people sipping powerade and chewing bananas. The traffic slowed to a halt and we got out of the car to walk the rest of the way. We all got separated in the massive crowd, although I did run into some other Maseru folk on line for the port-a-potties of all places. As a fine rain started, I lined myself up toward the back.
Two Oceans Marathon is a misnomer. Contrary to popular belief, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet not at Cape Town but at Cape Aguilas, several hours drive from Cape Town, although some will argue that Indian Ocean currents travel up past Cape Town. But one ocean was plenty beautiful for me. One of my favorite moments of the race was rounding a corner and noticing the ocean for the first time a split second before Chris and getting to point it out to him (having the height advantage of more than a foot, he gets to see most everything first, including a whale as we ran along Kalk Bay).
I didn’t have any particular goal in mind since this was practice for the Comrades next month. I got a chance to see what the pacing is like, how much food and drink I need to consume en route and what sorts of stress and pain my body will feel. My knee hurt at the beginning, but the pain subsided fairly quickly until about the 45th kilometer. I was pretty sure I could feel it swelling at that point and it looked pretty wrecked at the end. I could see the front was puffy. I was physically incapable of turning my body to see the back but a companion confirmed it was a dead ringer for the front. Luckily, it healed remarkably quickly and an orthopedist finally diagnosed it as IT Band Friction Syndrome with some secondary issues from altering my stride. These South African doctors are used to crazy runners that want to do Comrades on their broken bodies and they are pretty good about doing what they can to help people be able to stay in the race. In addition to stretching and training advice, I’ve got these ibuprofen patches now. It’s like crack for my knee and I feel great.
Also, as someone who has never really been injured before, or has had any real medical issue, (or has attempted ultra-marathoning before) I have never thought so much about my body as I do now. And lately I’ve been attempting to figure out how to best train my body to be prepared for Comrades while preserving my knee. So while walking the beaches, sniffing melons, trying on shoes, riding trains and browsing for books, in Cape Town, I was also attempting to learn the art of balance. By pure coincidence, I found when I returned to Maseru, that in my suitcase were an equal number of boxes of tofu and bars of really good chocolate (both of which you cannot get here)…of course if you check my kitchen now, two weeks later, you will find much more of one in the refrigerator than the other in the cupboard :)
So when a friend told me the night I should have been tucked into my own bed, but due to a problem with my plane ticket, I ended up imprisoned in a luxurious hotel with an ocean view courtesy of South African Airways, that there were worse things to be than stuck in Cape Town, I didn’t exactly see his point. Also, gorgeous as the hotel and surrounding beach was, I was not actually in Cape Town, but truly stranded miles outside the city on some forgotten corner of the Atlantic. I truly tried to make the best of it, savoring the meal courtesy of my SAA voucher, reading Memoirs of a Geisha in the hot yellow sand, and dancing in the surf early the next morning, but really, I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.
Early the next morning, while waiting to check in to my rescheduled flight, I saw the employee who I fought with the day before. And it was just my luck that out of the dozen or more ticket counters, I was sent to hers. She didn’t look pleased to see me either, but while the day before, her claws were out, today, with genuine sympathy (possibly tinged with fear) she said, “I am so sorry that I have to give you bad news again, but your flight has been cancelled.” I was speechless. I have never missed a flight or had a flight cancelled in my life, and in pre-volcanic ash times, my sense of perspective was not what it might have been. After waiting an hour at ticket sales, I was told that they could send me on a different route, but it wouldn’t get me to Bloemfontein until nighttime, which meant that I still wouldn’t get home until the following day, and would probably miss work, for really no good reason.
Shamelessly playing up the part of the tiny, white, foreign girl, I told her that I couldn’t be traveling after dark, especially at bus stations and borders, that I don’t know a soul in Bloemfontein and any other number of points that would cause the woman behind the counter to envision tales of my slain body in the papers the next day. She said there was nothing she could do. My misery was genuine, though far from unique, as I was in a crowd of stranded, crying faces. Fortunately though, I was the youngest-or at least I appeared to be-and this got me home. Assuming I was a minor, and a troublesome one at that, more than a few people conspired to get me the last seat on another airline into Bloemfontein (and more importantly for them, out of their airport). And I made it back to Maseru in time for the birthday party of a student that I had promised to attend.
My last time in Cape Town, I did all the touristy things (museums, wine, penguins, Nelson Mandela’s prison cell) with the exception of going to the top of Table Mountain. It’s a mountain. It looks like a table. Lesotho has tons of mountains. Some uncannily breast-like. I have some sort of ridiculous opposition to the idea of going up Table Mountain. So considering I have done all the touristy things I think are worth doing, I looked for some less obvious things to occupy my time. I sought out little farmer’s markets, gazed up at the crackly screen of the planetarium observatory, meandered the bays and had a Thai massage that sent post-marathon lactic acid fleeing my body in terror.
And shopped. Now I am not a shopper, with the exception of farmer’s markets and bookstores. And I did a little at both of those. Actually a lot. The school librarian sent me to Cape Town with 2,000 ZAR (enough for about 30 books) to buy new titles for the Early Childhood section of the library. So I bought fresh breads and shiny-paged glue-smelling picture books and was happy.
I also had a shoe-shopping task ahead of me. The week after I got back was the school’s annual dinner/dance. Last year, I wore a dress fashioned out of a second-hand mumu that looked decent, if slightly like the upholstery on my late grandmother’s couch. I decided to go more formal this year with a not-previously-owned red dress from a flea market. Unfortunately, the shoes I bought last year got danced to shreds and at the kiddie racks in Maseru my only options for a replacement were magenta and leopard-print. (And even someone whose two nicest dresses come from a mumu and flea market knows that magenta and red don’t match). I figured in between buying organic tomatoes and South African fairytales I would stumble across a pair of plain, flat, black, size 3 shoes. Ha! 1st problem: Size 3 (or 5 US) is an endangered species in this South Africa. 2nd problem: Stilettos are not. I thought I found a pair I could live with (and more importantly dance in). “Do you have something similar without the heel though?” I asked the saleswoman. She looked at me with obvious disgust and said, “That’s not a heel, that’s a wedge.”
And this point, I quit shoe-shopping, and figured buying a new dress would be easier. I pulled a plain black dress (goes with magenta right?) from the rack of a neighboring store and the saleswoman asked if I wanted the matching panties. Apparently, I cannot tell the difference between a dress and pajamas. At this point, I quit shopping altogether, knowing that after 10 minutes of dancing I would ditch my shoes anyway and that my bare feet match anything.
I devoted the rest of my time in Cape Town to taking trains up and down the coast. Riding public transportation for the first time(s) is a humbling experience anywhere. In Cape Town I found this particularly true. I stayed with a friend who lived only two blocks from a train station. His proximity to the station was about the only thing that prevented me from quitting train travel altogether. To make taking trains in and around Cape Town any more difficult would take a concerted effort on the part of several evil geniuses. Perhaps I have been spoiled by the Metro Transit Authority of New York City, but the Cape Town train system had none of the features that make the subway bearable: a voice announcing the stations over a loudspeaker, lights inside the train cars indicating the station approaching or at the very least, a list of stations in the order in which they appear posted inside the train. Each station has only two signs bearing its name, at either ends of the platform. You usually miss the first because you whiz by before the train begins to slow down. You usually don’t see the second one until you pass it while the train is pulling out of the station. The windows are so low, that to actually see the signs, you have to crouch down and tilt your head at a ridiculous angle, usually only to find that the window is too corroded to see out of anyway. And if by some miraculous stroke of luck (or by repeatedly harassing the seasoned train traveler next you, are we there yet? Are we there yet?), you know where you are in enough time to depart appropriately, you will stand like an idiot waiting for the doors to open before someone tells you they are manual. And I mean really manual. My shoulder cracked audibly while struggling to free myself of the amused train car until an old man thrust his shopping bag full of frozen chop meat at me and yanked it open himself. But the ordeal is not quite over. Cape Town train riders have not yet seemed to grasp the concept of letting passengers disembark before they crowd onto the train. When attempting to exit, I found it best not to look anyone trying to board the train in the eye, just protect your vital organs and step into the crowd like it’s a mosh pit.
And since I seem to be telling my tales of Cape Town in reverse order, I should end with a little about the ultra-marathon from five feet up, mid-back of the pack. I arrived in Cape Town the evening before the race and ran into sometimes running partner Chris on the street. He has been swilling coke all day, and spastically tells me our race bags didn’t come with pins to attach our numbers to our shirts (they actually did, but his brain was so saturated with caffeine he didn’t have the patience to get to the bottom of his bag). Another runner had collected my bag for me and I hadn’t gotten it from him yet, so I took Chris’s word and we set out in search for safety pins, while he stopped periodically for more coke, or carbs in any form. After purchasing pins, we next searched for an Italian restaurant for further carbo-loading, but had to settle for Thai. It was here (or rather later that night) I learned that all noodles are not created equal, and I will never again replace spaghetti with tomato sauce for pad Thai. Chris said, “I’ll have the 980 calorie please,” and I saw that all nutrition facts were on the menu. I quickly changed my order from my original choice which I now saw was only 207 calories to a more substantial option, wondering when will I ever again change my order because it doesn’t have enough calories? Actually, when will I ever again eat in a restaurant that prints calories on the menu?
Whether from nerves or the queasy feeling of an MSG overdose, I slept two hours at most that night and was greeted in the morning by Chris’s near constant refrain, “We must be mad.” A friend drove us to the start, and we actually hit traffic at 5 in the morning, all cars full of people sipping powerade and chewing bananas. The traffic slowed to a halt and we got out of the car to walk the rest of the way. We all got separated in the massive crowd, although I did run into some other Maseru folk on line for the port-a-potties of all places. As a fine rain started, I lined myself up toward the back.
Two Oceans Marathon is a misnomer. Contrary to popular belief, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet not at Cape Town but at Cape Aguilas, several hours drive from Cape Town, although some will argue that Indian Ocean currents travel up past Cape Town. But one ocean was plenty beautiful for me. One of my favorite moments of the race was rounding a corner and noticing the ocean for the first time a split second before Chris and getting to point it out to him (having the height advantage of more than a foot, he gets to see most everything first, including a whale as we ran along Kalk Bay).
I didn’t have any particular goal in mind since this was practice for the Comrades next month. I got a chance to see what the pacing is like, how much food and drink I need to consume en route and what sorts of stress and pain my body will feel. My knee hurt at the beginning, but the pain subsided fairly quickly until about the 45th kilometer. I was pretty sure I could feel it swelling at that point and it looked pretty wrecked at the end. I could see the front was puffy. I was physically incapable of turning my body to see the back but a companion confirmed it was a dead ringer for the front. Luckily, it healed remarkably quickly and an orthopedist finally diagnosed it as IT Band Friction Syndrome with some secondary issues from altering my stride. These South African doctors are used to crazy runners that want to do Comrades on their broken bodies and they are pretty good about doing what they can to help people be able to stay in the race. In addition to stretching and training advice, I’ve got these ibuprofen patches now. It’s like crack for my knee and I feel great.
Also, as someone who has never really been injured before, or has had any real medical issue, (or has attempted ultra-marathoning before) I have never thought so much about my body as I do now. And lately I’ve been attempting to figure out how to best train my body to be prepared for Comrades while preserving my knee. So while walking the beaches, sniffing melons, trying on shoes, riding trains and browsing for books, in Cape Town, I was also attempting to learn the art of balance. By pure coincidence, I found when I returned to Maseru, that in my suitcase were an equal number of boxes of tofu and bars of really good chocolate (both of which you cannot get here)…of course if you check my kitchen now, two weeks later, you will find much more of one in the refrigerator than the other in the cupboard :)
Thursday, April 15, 2010
5 Runners That I Know
Two weeks ago, the night before my first ultra marathon, I received an email from a friend. It was sent to two others as well; the four of us ran on the same high school cross-country team.
Kate, training for her first marathon said: "I am on a low mileage week (long run: only 14!), yet still was able to achieve a goal that I've been aiming for my entire running career...I bet the Attackerman [that's me] can guess, when I say that it is the most hardcore thing a runner can do...I puked during a run...It really is something I've equated with ultra-awesome athletes since my WHS track days. And here is the story... Now, maybe yesterday I had ice cream for dinner with a dessert of peeps. So maybe I wasn't properly fueled. And I certainly knew it from the beginning of the run, when not even a half-mile into it I slowed down because I had that feeling in my stomach. I thought that I knew how to push the line appropriately without tanking or ralphing. But as Josh and I are .75 miles from the end of the run, going not-fast but uphill, I stopped, said "I've just got to puke", then puked. Gu and gatorade. A few times. Then started running again! It was f***ing phenomenal...I ran until I puked, and then I ran some more.
Only another runner would understand how impressed I was. I don’t neccessarily advocate running to the point of vomiting, and despite what a few graphic remarks about my knee in recent posts suggest, I am not a masochist. Yet, all the runners I know appreciate the way putting one foot in front of the other again and again and again makes one discover and challenge the limits and possibilities of their own bodies.
Fellow former Blue Devil, Kathleen replied "Lately, when I run I start to get teary eyed as I imagine racing again, running as fast as I possibly can. I'm not ready to race yet, but I have been running an hour about 3x a week. My new orthodics make me a superhuman! My orthodics have addressed my 'one leg shorter than the other' problem and I feel so straight whenever I wear them. It's amazing."
Hearing about their running, particularly the night before my first ultra marathon was enormously inspiring. Angela, a medical student at Columbia University, has yet to surface from her hospital rotations to tell us what she’s up to. But hearing from the others reminded me of watching her race one day. It was the end of the season, but the first time she was able to compete that year. She was worried about the race, but when the gun went off, in the biggest display of courage and love I have ever witnessed, she did what everyone else did. She ran. It took her 30 minutes to complete 2 miles. She was the last to finish, but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind who the real winner was that day. She was 16 years old at the time, and she had cancer.
Running makes people do truly remarkable things. After a year of lonely running in Maseru, I’ve been lucky to find a few amazing running partners. I met one of them on the way to the Soweto Marathon. He was running the 10k (which I believe would have been the longest he ever ran) and he gave me a ride up to the race. In the first conversation we ever had, he informed me he would never run a marathon, and stopped short of telling me he thinks I’m insane for 1) doing it and 2) liking it, though he made these feelings clear later. It took a few months, but I eventually coerced him into running with me. He contemplated running the Two Oceans half-marathon until he found out that unlike the ultra marathon, the half marathon did not actually reach the ocean. His solution? Less than 6 months after the Soweto 10k, he ran the 56k Two Oceans ultra marathon. (Technically he remained true to his word and has still never run a marathon).
To train for the Soweto Marathon, I used to do long runs going across the border. While doing some post run grocery shopping in Ladybrand, the nearest South African town, an English man approached me and asked me if I had run all the way there. I confirmed this, and he asked if I’m mad. Shortly after this meeting, he joined the ranks of the insane, and we started training for Comrades together. Chris had run his first and only marathon 20 years before at the age of 21. A former paratrooper at well over 6 feet tall, I have never had such harassment-free running as I do with Chris. It's like running with a body guard. We would meet at 5:30 am and while I gasped for air, he would chat away sharing army nutrition tips (baby food is easily digested energy during grueling exercise), aphorisms (“no one can take this away from you”) and hard core-ness (“If we can’t find a hotel near the race, I’ll sleep outside next to my car"). On his birthday, he told me that he makes the same mistakes at 41 that he did at 21. Being closer to the latter than the former, I didn’t know if I should find this a comforting thought or a terrifying one. Chris became my Two Oceans hero on the starting line. Rather, it was a little before the starting line, as we were lined up so far back from the starting line, we couldn't even see it. 30 seconds after the gun went off we could still sense absolutely no forward movement from the runners ahead. Chris, towering over the rest of us, peered down the street and said he couldn’t believe how many of us there were, it looked like minute or so until we could begin moving- not running, necessarily, but sort of drifting forward. I craned my neck wistfully, but couldn’t see beyond the hairy shoulders of the runner right in front of me. So Chris lifted me up above the crowd to the cheers of the other runners around us, and I saw through the fine rain and the 6 am darkness, for as far as my eyes could see, thousands of pinpricks of runners surging forward like a wave.
2 minutes and 35 seconds after the gun went off, I finally reached the starting line. And thus began my first ultra marathon, which I ran with gratitude and respect to one runner who ran until she vomited and then ran some more, one runner who flies in her orthotics, one runner who raced in between chemo treatments and jogs today cancer-free on the streets of New York City, one runner who ran 56 kilometers to see the ocean and one runner who showed me 7,000 others who ran my first ultra with me.
Kate, training for her first marathon said: "I am on a low mileage week (long run: only 14!), yet still was able to achieve a goal that I've been aiming for my entire running career...I bet the Attackerman [that's me] can guess, when I say that it is the most hardcore thing a runner can do...I puked during a run...It really is something I've equated with ultra-awesome athletes since my WHS track days. And here is the story... Now, maybe yesterday I had ice cream for dinner with a dessert of peeps. So maybe I wasn't properly fueled. And I certainly knew it from the beginning of the run, when not even a half-mile into it I slowed down because I had that feeling in my stomach. I thought that I knew how to push the line appropriately without tanking or ralphing. But as Josh and I are .75 miles from the end of the run, going not-fast but uphill, I stopped, said "I've just got to puke", then puked. Gu and gatorade. A few times. Then started running again! It was f***ing phenomenal...I ran until I puked, and then I ran some more.
Only another runner would understand how impressed I was. I don’t neccessarily advocate running to the point of vomiting, and despite what a few graphic remarks about my knee in recent posts suggest, I am not a masochist. Yet, all the runners I know appreciate the way putting one foot in front of the other again and again and again makes one discover and challenge the limits and possibilities of their own bodies.
Fellow former Blue Devil, Kathleen replied "Lately, when I run I start to get teary eyed as I imagine racing again, running as fast as I possibly can. I'm not ready to race yet, but I have been running an hour about 3x a week. My new orthodics make me a superhuman! My orthodics have addressed my 'one leg shorter than the other' problem and I feel so straight whenever I wear them. It's amazing."
Hearing about their running, particularly the night before my first ultra marathon was enormously inspiring. Angela, a medical student at Columbia University, has yet to surface from her hospital rotations to tell us what she’s up to. But hearing from the others reminded me of watching her race one day. It was the end of the season, but the first time she was able to compete that year. She was worried about the race, but when the gun went off, in the biggest display of courage and love I have ever witnessed, she did what everyone else did. She ran. It took her 30 minutes to complete 2 miles. She was the last to finish, but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind who the real winner was that day. She was 16 years old at the time, and she had cancer.
Running makes people do truly remarkable things. After a year of lonely running in Maseru, I’ve been lucky to find a few amazing running partners. I met one of them on the way to the Soweto Marathon. He was running the 10k (which I believe would have been the longest he ever ran) and he gave me a ride up to the race. In the first conversation we ever had, he informed me he would never run a marathon, and stopped short of telling me he thinks I’m insane for 1) doing it and 2) liking it, though he made these feelings clear later. It took a few months, but I eventually coerced him into running with me. He contemplated running the Two Oceans half-marathon until he found out that unlike the ultra marathon, the half marathon did not actually reach the ocean. His solution? Less than 6 months after the Soweto 10k, he ran the 56k Two Oceans ultra marathon. (Technically he remained true to his word and has still never run a marathon).
To train for the Soweto Marathon, I used to do long runs going across the border. While doing some post run grocery shopping in Ladybrand, the nearest South African town, an English man approached me and asked me if I had run all the way there. I confirmed this, and he asked if I’m mad. Shortly after this meeting, he joined the ranks of the insane, and we started training for Comrades together. Chris had run his first and only marathon 20 years before at the age of 21. A former paratrooper at well over 6 feet tall, I have never had such harassment-free running as I do with Chris. It's like running with a body guard. We would meet at 5:30 am and while I gasped for air, he would chat away sharing army nutrition tips (baby food is easily digested energy during grueling exercise), aphorisms (“no one can take this away from you”) and hard core-ness (“If we can’t find a hotel near the race, I’ll sleep outside next to my car"). On his birthday, he told me that he makes the same mistakes at 41 that he did at 21. Being closer to the latter than the former, I didn’t know if I should find this a comforting thought or a terrifying one. Chris became my Two Oceans hero on the starting line. Rather, it was a little before the starting line, as we were lined up so far back from the starting line, we couldn't even see it. 30 seconds after the gun went off we could still sense absolutely no forward movement from the runners ahead. Chris, towering over the rest of us, peered down the street and said he couldn’t believe how many of us there were, it looked like minute or so until we could begin moving- not running, necessarily, but sort of drifting forward. I craned my neck wistfully, but couldn’t see beyond the hairy shoulders of the runner right in front of me. So Chris lifted me up above the crowd to the cheers of the other runners around us, and I saw through the fine rain and the 6 am darkness, for as far as my eyes could see, thousands of pinpricks of runners surging forward like a wave.
2 minutes and 35 seconds after the gun went off, I finally reached the starting line. And thus began my first ultra marathon, which I ran with gratitude and respect to one runner who ran until she vomited and then ran some more, one runner who flies in her orthotics, one runner who raced in between chemo treatments and jogs today cancer-free on the streets of New York City, one runner who ran 56 kilometers to see the ocean and one runner who showed me 7,000 others who ran my first ultra with me.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
The Postal Service and the Prehistoric
It's been awhile since I've updated you on the intra classroom affairs.
Back when I was in the US, I had my assistant teach a Post Office project. It was something easy to do in my absence, and its field trip conclusion coincided with Valentine's Day, so all the children could mail their very own valentines. Aside from the post office books and valentine-making instructions I left behind, I am not quite sure what went on those nearly two weeks I was away. I did get to come back just in time for the field trip though. The best part of this was putting the valentines in envelopes. A few children were familiar with the process, but most showed a mixture of shock and disgust at my suggestion, not to mention demonstration. A few cried when I said, "your turn." Some, enjoying the flavor of the gluey flap, practically ate their envelopes and we had to give them new ones.
When we arrived at the post office, the assistant-teacher went inside to find the man she had made the arrangements with. 10, 15, 20 minutes went by. My students were sitting outside the post office window in a neat but noisy row on the corner of a busy street. We started a sing-a-long and attracted much attention from passers-by. When the neat but noisy row swelled into an impatient riot though, I rushed inside to see what was taking so long. Our tour guide, it seemed, was in South Africa. He would be back "soon." I wheedled a receptionist to find us someone else to do the tour, but she wouldn't even let the children come inside. "Please," I said, "They are only three. They cannot wait much longer and the street outside is very busy." "You shouldn't be in such a rush," she told me. The assistant teacher spat something back in Sesotho. I asked her to translate and she said, "The children are climbing up the walls." I turned and sure enough, they were climbing up the railings, pressing the chubby faces against the glass that muffled their screams.
Another 10 minutes went by an the receptionist finally let us in. The children, stir crazy, set about dismantling the post office in the few more minutes it took for our postal worker to arrive and begin the tour. The tour was dry to say the least, and I had to play translator (I certainly don't do baby talk to preschoolers, but his language and explanations were not digestible to three year olds). Then we made a 21 pint-size-person line (much to the fury of the customers that came in shortly after), and each child bought his or her own stamp and dropped their card in the appropriate box. While in line, the children began licking the outsides of their envelopes (possibly they were getting hungry by then) and I had to briefly confiscate a few to save them from disintegration. "Wait for your stamps! You can lick your stamps!" A few of them, crazed by the impending taste of postal glue, sucked their stamps like candy and I had to scrape one off the back of Tlotliso's tongue with my fingernail. We thanked our very late tour guide with a deafening performance of postal/Valentine's Day songs, and surprisingly, the customers and employees looked a little wistful as we waved goodbye and made a noisy exit.
This week concludes a six week study of dinosaurs. I prefer projects that involve field trips, but their are no museums with fossils nearby and the dinosaur footprints you can find in the rocks here all involved strenuous hiking. Then again, after 4 field trips in 5 weeks, I needed a break from the stress and exhaustion that comes from organizing these adventures and subsequently taking 21 small children out into the world. So we got a little creative. With a tape measure we figured out how long various dinsaurs would stretch across our campus. We also made a life-size model of T Rex jaws and teeth on the floor and discovered, yeah, we could be easily swallowed. We played paleontologist and pieced together together cut up paper dinosaur skeletons and we simulated dinosaur battles (T Rex goes to bite Triceratops. Stick him with your horns, Triceratops! Stick him with your horns!) I very much stressed that dinosaurs have disappeared and cannot come back, and to the silent disapproval of the missionaries and staunchly Christian, that dinosaurs lived BEFORE people. Overall, I was very proud of the concepts they were able to grasp, and of their new dino-vocabulary (fossil, extinct, fierce, prehistoric). Instead of a field trip to conclude the study, we made The Preschool Dinosaur Book. This involved massive photocopying on my part, and you know me and appliances, a field trip probably would have been easier.
This afternoon I leave for Cape Town for my first ultra marathon (56 k, about 35 miles) in preparation for the big one (Comrades on May 30, 89k/56miles). As you probably know from reading recent posts, my knee is pretty angry at all these long distances as of late, and I can't seem to get more than 15 or 20 k in without a protest. So after another frustrating week of rest, I'm hoping for a fairly painless and non-swelling Saturday. Yesterday, in a typical short person move, I fell off of a shelf in the PE storage room. I landed squarely on my tailbone, with the plastic, wheeled trunk full of PE equipment I was trying to put away, landing squarely on my other knee. At least now I have two busted knees so if nothing else, I will limp evenly.
Back when I was in the US, I had my assistant teach a Post Office project. It was something easy to do in my absence, and its field trip conclusion coincided with Valentine's Day, so all the children could mail their very own valentines. Aside from the post office books and valentine-making instructions I left behind, I am not quite sure what went on those nearly two weeks I was away. I did get to come back just in time for the field trip though. The best part of this was putting the valentines in envelopes. A few children were familiar with the process, but most showed a mixture of shock and disgust at my suggestion, not to mention demonstration. A few cried when I said, "your turn." Some, enjoying the flavor of the gluey flap, practically ate their envelopes and we had to give them new ones.
When we arrived at the post office, the assistant-teacher went inside to find the man she had made the arrangements with. 10, 15, 20 minutes went by. My students were sitting outside the post office window in a neat but noisy row on the corner of a busy street. We started a sing-a-long and attracted much attention from passers-by. When the neat but noisy row swelled into an impatient riot though, I rushed inside to see what was taking so long. Our tour guide, it seemed, was in South Africa. He would be back "soon." I wheedled a receptionist to find us someone else to do the tour, but she wouldn't even let the children come inside. "Please," I said, "They are only three. They cannot wait much longer and the street outside is very busy." "You shouldn't be in such a rush," she told me. The assistant teacher spat something back in Sesotho. I asked her to translate and she said, "The children are climbing up the walls." I turned and sure enough, they were climbing up the railings, pressing the chubby faces against the glass that muffled their screams.
Another 10 minutes went by an the receptionist finally let us in. The children, stir crazy, set about dismantling the post office in the few more minutes it took for our postal worker to arrive and begin the tour. The tour was dry to say the least, and I had to play translator (I certainly don't do baby talk to preschoolers, but his language and explanations were not digestible to three year olds). Then we made a 21 pint-size-person line (much to the fury of the customers that came in shortly after), and each child bought his or her own stamp and dropped their card in the appropriate box. While in line, the children began licking the outsides of their envelopes (possibly they were getting hungry by then) and I had to briefly confiscate a few to save them from disintegration. "Wait for your stamps! You can lick your stamps!" A few of them, crazed by the impending taste of postal glue, sucked their stamps like candy and I had to scrape one off the back of Tlotliso's tongue with my fingernail. We thanked our very late tour guide with a deafening performance of postal/Valentine's Day songs, and surprisingly, the customers and employees looked a little wistful as we waved goodbye and made a noisy exit.
This week concludes a six week study of dinosaurs. I prefer projects that involve field trips, but their are no museums with fossils nearby and the dinosaur footprints you can find in the rocks here all involved strenuous hiking. Then again, after 4 field trips in 5 weeks, I needed a break from the stress and exhaustion that comes from organizing these adventures and subsequently taking 21 small children out into the world. So we got a little creative. With a tape measure we figured out how long various dinsaurs would stretch across our campus. We also made a life-size model of T Rex jaws and teeth on the floor and discovered, yeah, we could be easily swallowed. We played paleontologist and pieced together together cut up paper dinosaur skeletons and we simulated dinosaur battles (T Rex goes to bite Triceratops. Stick him with your horns, Triceratops! Stick him with your horns!) I very much stressed that dinosaurs have disappeared and cannot come back, and to the silent disapproval of the missionaries and staunchly Christian, that dinosaurs lived BEFORE people. Overall, I was very proud of the concepts they were able to grasp, and of their new dino-vocabulary (fossil, extinct, fierce, prehistoric). Instead of a field trip to conclude the study, we made The Preschool Dinosaur Book. This involved massive photocopying on my part, and you know me and appliances, a field trip probably would have been easier.
This afternoon I leave for Cape Town for my first ultra marathon (56 k, about 35 miles) in preparation for the big one (Comrades on May 30, 89k/56miles). As you probably know from reading recent posts, my knee is pretty angry at all these long distances as of late, and I can't seem to get more than 15 or 20 k in without a protest. So after another frustrating week of rest, I'm hoping for a fairly painless and non-swelling Saturday. Yesterday, in a typical short person move, I fell off of a shelf in the PE storage room. I landed squarely on my tailbone, with the plastic, wheeled trunk full of PE equipment I was trying to put away, landing squarely on my other knee. At least now I have two busted knees so if nothing else, I will limp evenly.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
How it Went
When I got on the starting line on Saturday at 6 am for a 73-kilometer day, I hadn’t run in three days. And the last time I ran, I made it one kilometer before the snapping in the back of my knee kicked up and I had to hobble home feeling pathetic. After three cranky days of popping anti-inflammatories, icing to the point of freezer burn and smearing horse meds on my flank or leg or whatever, I didn’t have particularly high hopes that I would finish the marathon, let alone spring back for the half-marathon and 10 k later that day. On the 4+ hour drive to Lake Umuzi in Mphulanga province, Mike repeatedly turned around with a gleam in his eye saying, “Are ya ready for the challenge? Are ya?” I said, “I don’t know if I can even run one kilometer.” Mike was also injured (plantar fasciitis and Achilles something or other), but at least he could run in a straight line. The pain I could deal with, it was the snapping that was immobilizing.
Mike used to live in the town where the race was held. He took me to meet his runner friends and bragged to them that I was running my first Comrades in May. One of them said something snide sounding in Afrikaans and Mike replied in English, “only just.” I surmised the man had asked if I qualified and I felt very indignant by the exchange. Later I found out he asked a somewhat less insulting, “Is she old enough?” It’s a problem I have in this country- appearing to Southern African eyes to be about ten years younger than I am, coming off as something like a more believable Doogie Houser with a better theme song.
I dubiously went through all the pre-race rituals, pasta the night before, bananas in the morning, special socks, plus all that horse-and-advil-voodoo on my knee. I fell asleep early but if I shifted in the middle of the night, a sharp pain jolted me awake. I was nervous in the morning, not knowing how far I’d be able to make it . . . and not particularly wanting today to be the first day that rather than finishing a race on foot, getting hauled back in a medical vehicle. Mike gave me some pain pills to carry with me and take mid-race. I thought he was nuts, but it must be a South African thing, because another man offered me some mid-race.
Luckily, the course was flat. Well, maybe it wasn’t, but it’s the flattest thing I’ve run in Southern Africa. South Africans don’t believe in designing flat courses. In America, a fast, flat course is supposed to be a draw for runners. In South Africa, the hillier the better, and the courses loop and snake to make sure you climb and descend as many meters as possible at the steepest gradient the natural geography will allow.
For the first 10 k, the pain was distracting, but it was the longest I had been able to run without stopping in a week. Then it subsided into a dull nauseating ache in my knee and, for some reason, now my foot. By 30 k, the rest of my body caught up, so no particular pain seemed significant. At that point in a marathon you just hurt, no matter how slow you go, and I was going slow, trying to pace myself for the two races later that day. For part of the race I ran by a man who boasted he had a fractured bone in his foot. He said he was just going to run through it because it was too close to Comrades (the 89 k race I’m running in May) to rest and it was going to be his 20th. He bounded ahead on his broken metatarcel and I didn’t see him again. Lunatics, these South African runners.
I finished the marathon, and amazingly, I felt decent enough to continue with the next two races later that day. I stopped at the Medi-Clinic (South African hospital) tent where a nice lady iced and arnica-d me and then called over a medical professional of unspecified position to “do nice, special things for your knee.” She poked, prodded and contorted me, called it an inflamed meniscus, and warned that if I wanted to do Comrades, I’m better off calling it a day, resting a week and then resuming training. She also pointed out that my knee was swollen. Very. Front and back. Then she called over someone else- a physical therapist who is also a runner. The physical therapist thought it was IT band friction syndrome, but agreed with her predecessor on everything else. Then they taught me how to tape my knee and told me a type of brace I can get (or where to cut a hole in my current and apparently useless one). She apologized profusely for convincing me to drop out of the 3-in-1 challenge but assured me with a week of rest and a week of easy(er) runs, I should be able to run the 2 Oceans Marathon (at 56k, my first ultra) in three weeks, and the Comrades.
I met up with Mike who ran 3:11 on his injured foot. He nodded when I told him the verdicts and prophecies of the Medi-Clinic tent, but I could tell he was thinking, “lame.” And he gave some half-hearted, “Yeah, you run anymore today, then you’ll have to take a month to recover,” but I could tell he was thinking, “wimp.” Mike limped his half marathon in 2 hours. Just by the times, you could tell he was in pain- 3:11 marathon, 2 hour half marathon- you do the math. But he stayed on for the 10k because it was his fifth year doing the race and he would get his permanent number this year. I think that is another South African running phenomenon- if you run a particular race for a certain number of years, any time you do that race from then on, you get the same number to wear on your shirt and no one else can ever have that number.
I spent the remainder of the day feeling pathetic and lazy for only running a marathon. And only in South Africa, can one feel pathetic and lazy for “only” running a marathon. The lunacy is definitely contagious.
Mike used to live in the town where the race was held. He took me to meet his runner friends and bragged to them that I was running my first Comrades in May. One of them said something snide sounding in Afrikaans and Mike replied in English, “only just.” I surmised the man had asked if I qualified and I felt very indignant by the exchange. Later I found out he asked a somewhat less insulting, “Is she old enough?” It’s a problem I have in this country- appearing to Southern African eyes to be about ten years younger than I am, coming off as something like a more believable Doogie Houser with a better theme song.
I dubiously went through all the pre-race rituals, pasta the night before, bananas in the morning, special socks, plus all that horse-and-advil-voodoo on my knee. I fell asleep early but if I shifted in the middle of the night, a sharp pain jolted me awake. I was nervous in the morning, not knowing how far I’d be able to make it . . . and not particularly wanting today to be the first day that rather than finishing a race on foot, getting hauled back in a medical vehicle. Mike gave me some pain pills to carry with me and take mid-race. I thought he was nuts, but it must be a South African thing, because another man offered me some mid-race.
Luckily, the course was flat. Well, maybe it wasn’t, but it’s the flattest thing I’ve run in Southern Africa. South Africans don’t believe in designing flat courses. In America, a fast, flat course is supposed to be a draw for runners. In South Africa, the hillier the better, and the courses loop and snake to make sure you climb and descend as many meters as possible at the steepest gradient the natural geography will allow.
For the first 10 k, the pain was distracting, but it was the longest I had been able to run without stopping in a week. Then it subsided into a dull nauseating ache in my knee and, for some reason, now my foot. By 30 k, the rest of my body caught up, so no particular pain seemed significant. At that point in a marathon you just hurt, no matter how slow you go, and I was going slow, trying to pace myself for the two races later that day. For part of the race I ran by a man who boasted he had a fractured bone in his foot. He said he was just going to run through it because it was too close to Comrades (the 89 k race I’m running in May) to rest and it was going to be his 20th. He bounded ahead on his broken metatarcel and I didn’t see him again. Lunatics, these South African runners.
I finished the marathon, and amazingly, I felt decent enough to continue with the next two races later that day. I stopped at the Medi-Clinic (South African hospital) tent where a nice lady iced and arnica-d me and then called over a medical professional of unspecified position to “do nice, special things for your knee.” She poked, prodded and contorted me, called it an inflamed meniscus, and warned that if I wanted to do Comrades, I’m better off calling it a day, resting a week and then resuming training. She also pointed out that my knee was swollen. Very. Front and back. Then she called over someone else- a physical therapist who is also a runner. The physical therapist thought it was IT band friction syndrome, but agreed with her predecessor on everything else. Then they taught me how to tape my knee and told me a type of brace I can get (or where to cut a hole in my current and apparently useless one). She apologized profusely for convincing me to drop out of the 3-in-1 challenge but assured me with a week of rest and a week of easy(er) runs, I should be able to run the 2 Oceans Marathon (at 56k, my first ultra) in three weeks, and the Comrades.
I met up with Mike who ran 3:11 on his injured foot. He nodded when I told him the verdicts and prophecies of the Medi-Clinic tent, but I could tell he was thinking, “lame.” And he gave some half-hearted, “Yeah, you run anymore today, then you’ll have to take a month to recover,” but I could tell he was thinking, “wimp.” Mike limped his half marathon in 2 hours. Just by the times, you could tell he was in pain- 3:11 marathon, 2 hour half marathon- you do the math. But he stayed on for the 10k because it was his fifth year doing the race and he would get his permanent number this year. I think that is another South African running phenomenon- if you run a particular race for a certain number of years, any time you do that race from then on, you get the same number to wear on your shirt and no one else can ever have that number.
I spent the remainder of the day feeling pathetic and lazy for only running a marathon. And only in South Africa, can one feel pathetic and lazy for “only” running a marathon. The lunacy is definitely contagious.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The Boss of Me (And How He Got the Job)
This May, I will be hopefully completing my second ultra marathon. This particular race, at 89 K of hilly roads, is dubbed, "the ultimate human race." When a friend of mine who ran it last year heard I was thinknig about signing up, he put me in touch with a South African man who lives near by who has completed it about 20 times.
His name is Mike and I do whatever he tells me. If he's run it 20 times, he must know a thing or two in addition to being obviously crazy.
He also convinced me to join him for a race in South Africa known as the Kosmos 3-in-1. The idea is to run a marathon in the morning, a half marathon at 1 pm and a 10 k in the evening, totaling 73 K (16 less than the Comrades). Plus it gives your body an idea of what it feels like to be vertical and in motion all day.
I signed up, and a week before the big day, something funky at the back of my knee started snapping like a rubberband. Yesterday was my fourth day in a row of giving up midway on a run and hobbling home. Yesterday, I shut the blinds, threw my skirt on the couch, squeezed into a knee support, donned my new sneakers and ran around my livingroom. I convinced myself I was healed, ate a chocolate bar and called it a night.
Then at 5:10 this morning, the rubberband started snapping one kilometer down the road. Have I ever mentioned that running may be the only thing that keeps me sane in the kingdom in the sky? It is.
The 3-in-one is three days away, so I emailed Mike in a panic saying I don't think I can run. His reply: "It is probably an over use injury as you body is adjusting to higher milage. I am also currently injured and Lisa got some "Ice Man" a healing gel used in Horses. I have applied this week with remarkable results." Within an hour, I had the horse meds delivered to my work with "We'll pick up for the race Friday morning. How is pasta for dinner that night?"
I should be outside doing PE with a group of 3-6 year olds but I'm supposed to rest for a couple days. So I'm sitting barefoot at my computer, an ice pack tied to me with a scrap of Mozambican fabric, smelling like a medicated horse.
**Note, if you have any knee-related expertise and advice, please share, but my cranky brain cannot handle a lecture right now.
His name is Mike and I do whatever he tells me. If he's run it 20 times, he must know a thing or two in addition to being obviously crazy.
He also convinced me to join him for a race in South Africa known as the Kosmos 3-in-1. The idea is to run a marathon in the morning, a half marathon at 1 pm and a 10 k in the evening, totaling 73 K (16 less than the Comrades). Plus it gives your body an idea of what it feels like to be vertical and in motion all day.
I signed up, and a week before the big day, something funky at the back of my knee started snapping like a rubberband. Yesterday was my fourth day in a row of giving up midway on a run and hobbling home. Yesterday, I shut the blinds, threw my skirt on the couch, squeezed into a knee support, donned my new sneakers and ran around my livingroom. I convinced myself I was healed, ate a chocolate bar and called it a night.
Then at 5:10 this morning, the rubberband started snapping one kilometer down the road. Have I ever mentioned that running may be the only thing that keeps me sane in the kingdom in the sky? It is.
The 3-in-one is three days away, so I emailed Mike in a panic saying I don't think I can run. His reply: "It is probably an over use injury as you body is adjusting to higher milage. I am also currently injured and Lisa got some "Ice Man" a healing gel used in Horses. I have applied this week with remarkable results." Within an hour, I had the horse meds delivered to my work with "We'll pick up for the race Friday morning. How is pasta for dinner that night?"
I should be outside doing PE with a group of 3-6 year olds but I'm supposed to rest for a couple days. So I'm sitting barefoot at my computer, an ice pack tied to me with a scrap of Mozambican fabric, smelling like a medicated horse.
**Note, if you have any knee-related expertise and advice, please share, but my cranky brain cannot handle a lecture right now.
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