The Funny Thing

I DNF'ed Clam Beach. The funny thing is, I am not all that broken up about it, whereas at some points in my life I would've considered this a portent of doom. Turns out I was like the Little Engine That Couldn't. Seriously, literally: Could. Not. I proceeded to call my husband, go home and sleep for about 30 of the next 36 hours, awaking to acknowledge a stuffy nose and all-over body aches. And no, I did not call my doctor for antibiotics, because it was likely a virus, and besides antibiotics are best avoided unless ABSOLUTELY necessary.

As an aside, 10 reasons not to take antibiotics unless ABSOLUTELY necessary:
1) diarrhea, sometimes fatal Clostridium difficile-related diarrhea
2) breeding of resistant organisms that will take over the planet earth and laugh as we all die
3) yeast infections:they dig it when we kill all our normal flora
4) nausea, vomiting
5) side effects which may include: complete depletion of your bone marrow, a life threatening, skin-sloughing rash, anaphylaxis which will likely kill you unless you have epinephrine in your back pocket,  random achilles tendon rupture (runners, beware of fluoroquinolones!), liver failure, pancreatitis, seizures, renal failure…….
6) did I mention diarrhea?
7) itchy rash, all over
8) money that could be spent on something that might actually help you feel better, like a really good dose of chicken noodle soup (yes, scientifically proven)
9) your doctor is really tired of trying to explain why it won't help, and might harm you
10) antibiotics are AWESOME when necessary, so shouldn't we respect them and save them so we can use them and avoid the next Bubonic Plague scenario?

I felt guilty (back to the race I did not finish) about the friend I let go off on his own. The funny thing about running is although it is a fairly lonely sport in some ways, it is also one of community. This particular race, celebrating its 50th year, is a good example. And when you run at the side of someone you care about and enjoy, there is a bond that forms that is pretty cool. And when that someone also pushes you to be better than you would be otherwise, it is golden.

I still feel pretty cruddy today, but I went to work. The funny thing about being a doctor, is you pretty much have to be dead to take a sick day. Are you aware that your very own doctor has probably been puking their guts out prior to taking care of you because they cannot imagine taking the day off? After all, there is not really anyone to take their place. I am certain they cleaned their hands thoroughly prior to seeing you though, so you can rest easy.

I am here to tell you that although life is serious business, and running is IMPORTANT, there are some funny things about both life and running.
1) Have you ever stopped to consider just how hard it must be for the editor's of Runner's World magazine to come up with a bunch of new articles about running, which, let's be honest here, basically involves walking really fast and is done by millions upon millions of people daily without ever needing to consult a magazine article?
2) Despite #1, I do enjoy my running magazines.
3) Hundreds to thousands of racers at any given event using porta-potties. Funny.
4) Skorts.
5) Running blogs. Ha.
6) We think we know what life is about. Sometimes we get PhD's in knowing stuff. Then we die and worms eat us. Funny.
7) One of my well-educated and dear friends once ran a marathon listening to Eddie Murphy singing "Boogie in your Butt" over and over again, a multitude of times, on her iPod.
8) People think antibiotics might be the answer to EVERYTHING.
9) Diarrhea is not at all funny. Unless you are 8 years old.
10) I still think I could break 3 hours in the marathon. In your dreams, sucker!

LOL

Soul-Searching

Running in the rain last Sunday for 16.6 miles was just plain fun. The last 3-4 miles kind of hurt, especially my lateral right foot. My shoes were all squishy and wet and the course was inclined so I felt like I was running with ataxia or on one of those courses they use in car racing. I might have tweaked a tendon or worse. But probably nothing ice and tincture of time cannot cure.

Since then, I have been resting. Partly to be sensible (doctor's tendon, heal thyself). Partly because work is kicking my butt. I cannot blame weather: it is unseasonably warm here. I cannot blame lack of motivation. I mean I love running. But I have been undisciplined in my lack of a routine. Rock Creek Runner had a good post today about how to plan and be efficient. Common sense stuff. Being a midwesterner by birth, this should be my strong suit, but I now live in California, which, while known for many things, has never been known for its common sense.

One of my favorite runs comes up soon. And I am once again faced with not being at my best and hesitating to do it because if I don't break an hour, WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT? This run celebrates its 50th year this year. And the t-shirts are reportedly way cool. So, I should probably do it even if I am as slow as molasses on a Triscuit on a sunny day in August in Alabama.

I am getting better with the whole humility thing.
Humble about parenting? check
Humble about my hair falling out again? check
Humble about doctoring? check
Humble about how a 6:30 mile use to come easy and now it just seems unattainable? getting there.

Sometimes too much humility can make you want to crawl under your covers and hide.

I think midlife does present a sort of crisis. For women, you have reached an age where you have to accept that college students call you "Ma'am" and your wrinkles are permanent. People should not be judged by their looks, but women are, every single day, in every situation. Also, midlife points out to you that less years lay ahead than behind. It is called "midlife" but it is probably pretty far past the halfway point. Also, you realize you have already messed up your kids and cannot have any do-overs. Unless they have grandkids, in which case, send them over to eat cookies for breakfast and take long rambling walks in the woods and to dig in the sand at the beach and watch stupid TV shows and listen to Beethoven. All of which I actually did with my own kids, except maybe cookies for breakfast, but somehow grandparents just do stuff with more flair.

I said to my husband the other day, regarding the midlife crisis issue: "I wish I could just buy a corvette and be done with it."

Alas, for me it probably is going to have to involve months to years of soul-searching, a lot of long runs and a completely new wardrobe. A corvette is just too easy.

But if I did do the corvette, it would be a 1957, red and white.

Can you soul-search in a '57 corvette?

Deaths

"The only good race pace is suicide pace, and today looks like a good day to die."-Steve Prefontaine

Death: you can't talk about it. You can't prevent it. You can't predict it. You actually cannot play chess against it. It is final. Or maybe not. It is ugly or beautiful or devastating or a relief or something in between and far less glamorous.

I have seen people die. People I love. People I know. People I care for. I have no particular fear of death, just the sadness of leaving my loved ones. I don't think it is all that special, as everyone does it. It is a drag. It is mundane. It is shocking. It is brutal.

But I digress, as what I mean to write about is the place you reach into when you do something really hard and not very comfortable. Death is a good example of this. But life offers plenty of chances to perfect the skill. You might try parenting to audition for the part of ultimate heartbreak. You might try playing music or writing a book or painting a painting to experience the baring of the soul, not unlike a tarring and feathering with scattered applause. Running? I see it as the basic built-in skill of humans that is both second nature and hard as hell. It is one thing to trot along and, over days, tire out the prey. It is another thing to inch up your splits, until you can find the personal record (PR). That takes:
A. Guts
B. A large ego
C. Just the right pair of running shoes
D. All of the above

I used to be faster than I am now. I might be able, still, to run faster than I ever did before. Age is a factor, yes, but I am not that old yet, and I have an excellent masseuse. The biggest barrier is psychological. For instance, my job kept me from feeling I could afford a run for all the weekdays of last week. I kept picturing leeches, sucking me dry. It reminded me of a summer day long ago, when I played all day long in some swampy area of Wisconsin and my mother lovingly pulled multiple leeches off of me. She was a no nonsense nurse, and though I complained bitterly about the disgusting task she took on, she did it, and did not flinch or complain. Which brings me back to the whole parenting thing. You will do anything for your kids. But they just see the world through their glasses tinted with "why is my Mom not a beauty Queen with a ton of money and who thinks my use of alcohol and drugs and tobacco is just so spiffy?"

Hold on, I once again digress.

Death is relevant here. You can spend your life putting off your dreams. Well, good luck with that one. You can spend your life playing chess with death. But death could not give a rip about a good end game. He has one job and that is to ferry you to the next destination. You can spend your life hating, or complaining, or seeking approval and fame and money and the next high.

Van Dyke Parks put it well. When people ask him where he is from or where he grew up or where he has lived, he says, it does to matter. Who you are is:
"The books you have read, the art you have seen, and the culture which has impacted your personality."

Read a book. Listen to music. View some art. Know your community. And do not underestimate the power of the death. Is today a good day to die?

Just Hold On

I see the world through doctor-colored glasses. Tragedy rules the day, and then I go home and run with my dog. As a medical student I once watched several surgical removals of acoustic neuromas. For a long while after that, this was my number one concern for anyone who presented with ringing in the ears. It was also around this time that I palpated my children's abdomens for Wilms' tumors while they took their baths. But this post is not about cancerous growths. And it has been a very long time since I have been allowed to palpate my children's tummies, or saw the world through acoustic neuroma glasses. That is one freaking long surgery, by the way.

I see the world through doctor-colored glasses. You may see the drunk on the corner and just make a wide berth, but I see his shrunken liver, gasping for its very last breath. And those kids on the plaza, smoking weed and in dire need of a bath are not just incredibly annoying, they are likely getting more than they bargained for in their weed. Plus the other drugs that they do on purpose. Like ecstasy, which is mostly methamphetamine these days. All those rotted teeth and pock-marked faces on Broadway, they are the site of civil war. People against their own best interest. People who are seduced by escape only to find themselves in the worst kind of jail they could ever imagine. It starts with getting high, it ends with just trying to not withdraw.

I see the world through doctor-colored glasses. I know the track marks that hide under those hoodies and the deep abscesses that have made my medical students turn green with their nausea of their not-yet-jaded humanity. My nausea center has been dulled. Ah, yes, another limb lost, another putrid smelling muscle with infection to the bone. Heroin must be pretty sweet to suffer the nightmarish pus balls that cling onto your heart valves, where your very life-blood pumps by and flows into your arteries and veins and sends satellites of death to every inch of your body, brain to toes. Can you blame those bacteria? They too need to live, and drug addicts are just so nice to provide a cozy and welcoming home.

I see the world through doctor-colored glasses. When I run, I know the power of my heart and my muscles and the clarity of my mind and the way the endorphins make me feel. Maybe without running, I would look elsewhere for those endorphins. Maybe in a bottle or a needle or a joint or some powdery shit I would sniff right up my tender nose without shame. Or maybe I would have shame, but not enough to keep me from stealing things from people I love just to get more of that feeling. If I had shame I would hide it in my complaints about how the world is so hard and it has caused me so much pain that my only choice is to hurt myself. Anyone I hurt around me? Well, in times of war, there has to be collateral damage.

I see the world through doctor-colored glasses. I have seen people saw off parts of their bodies while under the veil of drug psychosis. Good parts, like legs and penises. I have watched people smoke cigarettes through their tracheostomy. I have treated people for burns induced by smoking next to their oxygen tank. I have had people swear at me for denying them more cigarettes, more drugs, more alcohol, as if I took an oath to pull a pin out of a grenade and hand it to my patient just because they think it would be a good idea to cradle a grenade in their precious hands and watch themselves explode.

I see the world through doctor-colored glasses. Which means sometimes that I lose hope. It means, also, that sometimes I see miracles and sit back amazed once again at the machine called human being. It means that I studied hard to put people right even when they insist on fucking themselves right back up.

My doctor-colored glasses hold no super powers, as it turns out. I mean, I can diagnose your acoustic neuroma for sure. And I am as about as nerdy as they come. But it has not saved me from the deepest sadness I have ever known. One of these days, I may need to call one of my dear colleagues to treat my very own child, almost a man actually now, who has decided to walk down the favorite path of destruction of this ironically gorgeous, generous, life-affirming town of ours.

Doctors like to say: prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Some days, all I can do is breathe, and that barely, for the paralysis of grief that possesses me.
Some days, I just reach for what is good in my life, and hold on.
I just hold on.

Solstice. Or: The End of the World as We Know It.

I feel fine.

Even though the earth is sooooooo far away from the sun. It does this every year and it means tomorrow my sunlight quota will be just a tad larger.

I am a little tired of rain. I am thankful for it too, and feel guilty to be tired of it. It is just that my running shoes are so very wet. And my dog gets so muddy. And it is hard sometimes to even get out the door. For a run, or for anything. I could easily lay abed all day long, sipping coffee, reading, listening to the rain on my roof. It turns out work is kind of important though. To me, and my family.

If my husband's book sells enough, maybe I can follow my dream of doing medicine for those with the greatest need, without depending on pay. Also, I could probably lay in bed more, play more piano, run more and cook a decent meal every single night.

Today, I ran with oldest daughter and it was eerie. She thought it was kind of like running on clouds. I felt like I was looking at the edge of the earth. Like the earth had an end that you could dive off of and just fall into an infinite abyss.

Marsh, Dec 21, 2014

What would it feel like to face the end of the world?

Would it be like one of your children in danger, on a path of self-destruction?

Would it be like a mountain lion staring you down on a path, when you least expect it?

Would it be like falling asleep?

Marsh, Dec 21, 2014

It is a good thing we have markets. In the old days, I imagine the whole winter solstice thing was pretty grim. Will we starve? Probably. Let's have some kind of celebration and try to ward off that whole depressing prospect. 

Mother Nature is the bomb. Isn't she?

Marsh, Dec 21, 2014

The smell of pine tree in one's home reminds you that things live, even in the winter. Of course, in California this is sort of a given. There is not the deep freeze to make you feel like you were never actually warm for one day in your entire life. In California, the winter months actually might be the most alive of all. Rain brings green and it quenches a thirsty state of denial. I like to avoid puddles when I first start my runs, but once I realize the futility, I just plough through those guys, mud splatters be damned. A hot bath after such exercise is one of my favorite things.

Marsh, Dec 21, 2014

I will miss Stephen Colbert's Report. I will miss the current AHS XC Team. I will miss being a year younger. Goodbye to the potential of 2014. Impermanence. Blah blah blah.

Still, it rains. The children grow and the old people forget. The country takes two steps forward, five back and then scratches its proverbial head and laces up its sneakers for another go-round. Every year that passes, a sub-3 marathon becomes less probable. Still, it rains, and I run and tomorrow will be a longer day and a shorter night. 

It is not bad. And I feel fine.

Gratitude

For the

sound the ocean makes, and the way the sky and the dog is reflected in the wet sand after the waves break, making a downward dog doppelgänger who also enjoys chasing large flocks of shore birds.

imperfectly good health that grants me a daily run, if I make the time.

fact that even when life is too much, the chickens still require release from their shelter not long after sun-up.

three teenagers who are flying from my nest, one by one.

piano that once was the Leithold's. They owned the music store in my home town. It was middle aged when I was a teenager, and now I am middle aged and my piano is old and wise enough to play Brahms.

22 years plus with my best friend, who knows the words to every important song, and knows word-crafting like Ollivander knows wands.

memory of my parents.

one certain redwood on trail 10 that is my touchstone.

friends, silver and gold. Which totally makes sense if you ever spent a summer at Camp Ehawee.

fact that I do not have to spend every day worrying about Ebola, malaria, my next glass of clean water and what the heck that huge insect is crawling up the wall by my bed.

work I do, which is interesting, pretty useful, and gives back to me more spiritual mojo than you can shake a stick at.

endorphins. If everyone on earth just ran a lot, we would not have any drug addicts. We might, however, run out of deodorant and spandex.

smell of my dog's feet. Seriously, it is like cinnamon and nutmeg and pine needles. I know this because he often shoves them directly into my face when I am trying to sleep.

ability to live on the coast. Despite my midwestern beginnings, I seem to need the ocean really close by.

fact that it is now seasonally correct to listen to The Messiah. Over and over. Till your family starts making jokes about how much we like sheep (see below).

smell of the top of my children's heads.

quotes of William Osler.

books, music, movies, art, food, drink, travel I will experience, with no end in sight. Unless my plane crashes. In which case, I told you so! You know who you are, all those who quote me facts about the safety of air travel every second of the day.

metro card.

terrifying and beautiful and awful and inane nature of being human.

exhilarating feeling of knowing you are going to totally kick ass in this race (Go Tigers!).

heck of it.

If Music

"If music be the food of love, play on."-Twelfth Night, Shakespeare

I am a musician. More a musician than a runner. More a musician than a doctor. More a musician than a person soon to get a root canal.

I left music professionally to be a doctor and I wish I could be a professional runner, but the sub 5 minute mile eludes me, so, here I am. But music, it never stops feeding my soul. I play it, I listen to it. And I listen to it while I run.

I am thinking about bringing my headphones and music to listen to during my root canal. There is some vague science to support this. What is an optimal root canal play list? Please, let me know your thoughts on this.

Running playlists, they are very personal, I think. I recall the days of carrying a walkman while running. Now why they did not name this the "runman" I do not know. And why it has to be a man, not a person or a woman or an ambulator not otherwise specified, well, this is mysterious to me. What I can say is they were cumbersome and often skipped if you ran over a bump. The fact that I can turn on my playlist on my iPhone and just run for miles and miles without a glitch is a gosh darn miracle!

My running playlists vary. Some days I truly do not want any music at all. Or books, because the other thing I enjoy is audible.com which is the iPhone version of books on tape. This is nice for a 3 hour long run. Advertisements show Ryan Hall listening to the Odyssey on his long runs, but let's face it: Ryan Hall is so fast that the Odyssey would still be in the introduction and he would already be showering and eating his pancakes.

I do not listen to music when running with my dog, Miles. I like to be in tune to what he is needing and to talk to him along the way. Like, "Hey buddy! Almost home!" or "Boy, you sure showed those seagulls", or "C'Mon Miles, this hill is nothing. We OWN this hill. You are king of the hill, my friend."

Usually, he just looks at me quizzically. He is not disturbed by hills. And he does enjoy torturing the beach birds. Sometimes he does fall behind, usually at the end of a long run. But if a cute labrador retriever comes running by, he suddenly is Mr. Speed and Strength. I know when he is F.O.S. but I never call him on it. I love him so.

Before track meets as a high school kid, I liked this song. When I hear this song, I still automatically recall the smell of Icy-Hot. And that feeling of anticipation before a 1600 meter run on a track, where there was nowhere to hide.

I have running playlists dating back a few years now, to when such a thing was first possible for me, device-wise. I have been strongly influenced by my friend Martha and my daughter Vera. And her friends, on the road during the Portland to Coast high school challenge. Each of them would request a song to hear blasting as we drove by them, maybe at 2am, maybe in the middle of a hot, sunny day. I have been influenced by a musical education, alas a degree in music as it turns out. I have been influenced by my brother and my husband and my checking out what the great runners of today listen to. I turns out I am often shocked by the language in the songs the great runners of today listen to, but they are usually in their 20's and I am…..not.

Sometimes the music takes away the pain. It is an interesting thing, as a scientist of the physiological being, to consider that there is power in something so benign as music. Maybe the greatest marathoners could've broken 2 hours by now if they could've run with music.

Run. Play music. Listen to music. This is my ideal job description. Is anyone hiring? Hellllooooo out there?????

Here's a great one. A helluva great one.