Endgame (A Coda), Part IV: Rushing Into Things

A quick note: "Endgame" has been re-posted from sequel blog Leg After Frame. It is divided into five parts, of which this is the fourth.

ENDGAME, PART IV: RUSHING INTO THINGS

I first heard about the glow-in-the-dark 5K through a post somebody made on the University of Virginia Class of 2017 Facebook page. I looked at it, thought it sounded fun and regretted that there was no chance I'd be in good enough shape by race day, October 18. I had roughly the same thought when I saw a poster for the 5K a few days later. Really, whenever I saw the poster. This looks fun. Too bad I won't be ready in time.

This was before I swam my 1650, my swimmer's mile.

I didn't swim the mile particularly quickly. Really, my pace could most favorably be described as "leisurely," a description which the fact that I wasn't out of breath at the end supports. It was sloppily swum for the most part—having anything coming close to qualifying as an acceptable stroke wasn't really a priority when I embarked on the journey. My flip turns were perhaps more messy than my stroke (when I swam the 1650 I was still taking 10 minutes out of every swim session to do nothing but practice flip turns, though a part of that custom was giving myself a break without admitting to the fact that I needed a break). I didn't know how long it actually took to swim the distance, though it was at least 45 minutes. My speed was inconsistent, though it definitely jumped after the 1200-or-so yard mark. But while it may have been messy and surrounded by uncertainties, the fact remains that I'd finished a 1650.

When I was headed to my 9:00 a.m. Media Studies discussion on October 2, I saw another poster for the glow-in-the-dark 5K. Instead of just writing the mid-October race day off as an impossibility, I had some brief second thoughts before continuing in my mad rush to the classroom. Yes, it was just a bit more than two weeks away and, true, I wasn't planning on even attempting the feat for another three months and, no, I hadn't started training, but…

Two classes later that morning, I was resting on the grass in front of the Chemistry building, staring at the sky, reveling in the completion of my Greek homework and unwinding before my 12:00 Chemistry lecture, alternately keeping my eyes open and pretending to sleep. It was a beautiful fall day and I thought about the weather and I thought about my classes and I probably thought about housing and food and how much time I'd have that afternoon for swimming and I thought about maybe trying to run a 5K considerably earlier than I'd thought I would run a 5K

Why shouldn't I try to run it? You know, aside from the fact that the last time I'd run over a mile was in eighth grade, aside from the fact that the farthest I'd ever tried to run up to that point was 1.5 miles, aside from the fact that just five months ago I had a large metal frame drilled into my leg and ten months ago both bones in my lower right leg surgically broken, aside from the fact that if I swam too hard there was a decent chance my leg would hurt, aside from the fact that October 18 was so, so soon, aside from the fact that my shoes weren't properly broken in and my feet hadn't fully recovered from the round of blisters they acquired with the start of the school year, aside from it all…

To make a not particularly long story shorter, I ignored all those issues, swept up in the grand image of calling my parents the day after the 5K and surprising them with the news that I had completed a full five kilometer race.

I signed up for the race that afternoon.

At this point I was in a difficult situation. A quick spat of online research told me that you really needed four, maybe eight weeks to train for a 5K (also, you needed to be willing to run). I had two weeks. Those two weeks contained two full days flying from Charlottesville to Minneapolis, as well as three days with my family for fall break, who were supposed to be kept in the dark about the whole 5K attempt so as to increase the surprise.

Badly running out of time, I headed to the gym to begin training. At the very least, the thought of training was somewhat on my mind. What I really did was decide to continue my normal swim routine while spending some time on running-esque machines in addition to the swimming.

On my first day of training, I swam, then threw on fifteen minutes with the elliptical. I was breathing hard and sweating much more than I was comfortable with and could barely keep moving by the ten-minute mark. The machine told me I'd gone the equivalent of a mile. I returned to my dorm, fairly dejected. The picture of my 5K readiness was even bleaker than I'd anticipated.

My first day of training wasn't exactly a success. The second was a fully fledged disaster.

On the second day, I decided to do my running work prior to swimming, figuring I may as well start with that classic gym staple: the treadmill. I was forgetting, of course, my complete and utter lack of experience with a treadmill, which resulted in a slight learning curve as I figured out which buttons to push to make the machine work, then clicked the settings up high enough to force myself to run.

Once I got the treadmill at running speed, there was another issue. Namely, there was nothing for me to do but fixate on just how hard the running was, how uncomfortable the impact my foot made with the ground every single step, how hard I needed to breathe, how slick my skin was becoming with sweat, how much I wanted a drink of water.

I ran for a few minutes, got off the treadmill, took a drink of water, got back on.

My return to the treadmill was even worse. I think it was maybe a minute of misery before I gave up, panting and wheezing and more dubious than ever of my decision to try the 5K. Clearly the earlier decision had been overly influenced by pleasant cool of the fall, the greenness of the grass and the blue of the sun which had surrounded me as I made my choice. In the grey clanging reality of the Aquatic and Fitness Center it seemed flat-out moronic.

I dragged myself to the indoor track. Maybe if I ran under my own power…

My experience on the track was better than my experience on the treadmill, I'll give it that. It certainly didn't qualify as fun, but the impact was less jarring and since there were more things to look at, I wasn't as fixated on the misery which is indoor running. But I was uncomfortably slow for somebody stationed in the "jog" lane and breathing hard. I made it around the track perhaps three times before slinking down to the pool, my 5K dream more or less in tatters.

The next day I started to reorganize myself, coming up with a new plan: take some time off (never mind that the race was now just two weeks away), then start in on running outside, going to actual places by running alongside actual streets.

That Sunday, after a Chemistry quiz and before a meeting with my Chemistry lab group, I decided to run a mile. I didn't have the time earlier in the day to go to the pool and I figured a mile shouldn't take that long. I'd plotted out the course beforehand using Google Maps, adjusting as needed to get in the needed distance. As it turned out, according to the visualizing powers of Google Maps, a mile wasn't actually all that far. My course wouldn't take me all the way to central grounds, where most of my classes are and would run entirely along ultra-familiar streets (and sidewalks).

I got into a pair of athletic shorts and left my dorm through the back door, as per the course I'd drawn up. The back door of my dorm empties out onto a hill which slants down towards the cafeteria. I backed up the hill a little bit to give myself a comfortable downhill start, pausing to watch a raccoon clamber up a slim little tree tree which somehow managed to stand upright while bearing the slightly spherical bulk of the creature. But as fascinating as this spectacle was and as adorable as raccoons are, I had a schedule to keep.

I took off.

The treadmill from a few days earlier had been torture and the indoor track had been little better. My last outdoor running experience (a mile and a half, more than four years previous) was mostly characterized by summer heat and a rapidly emerging shortness of breath. In other words, I wasn't exactly looking forward to my mile run. It was a test of my endurance (could I complete a mile?), but mostly it was a means to the end of the glow-in-the-dark 5K, by then less than two weeks away.

And…the experience was stunning. It wasn't stunning in that I died halfway through, collapsing into a pile of exhaustion outside the Chemistry building. It wasn't stunning in excruciation or difficulty or anything of the sort.

It was stunning in that it was actually remarkably pleasant. The air was cool and not too dry and felt surprisingly nice on my throat. The sidewalk felt more comfortable than the surface of the indoor track, though that could just be the fact that I was enjoying the spectacle of the University at night, all lit up. I passed by pedestrians, some of them people I knew. More than anything else, I was struck with the musicality of running, the rhythm inherent in my stride, in my progress. It was easy, it was doable, I was actually, surprisingly, enjoying myself.

I was one of those motivated people I saw running on the sidewalks every day.

It's an interesting transformation, from hopelessly out-of-shape (though mercifully never quite to the level of resembling a blob) to being able to run a mile and feel pretty good about the whole endeavor. A mile's not that long, I know, but ever since second grade it's occupied a sort of vaunted position in my mind (if you've had enough miserable experiences running the mile…). Over the course of the semester, as I stripped before stepping into the shower, I could see my stomach shrinking and muscles emerging on my arms. I was still nowhere near being fully athletic, but…progress.

Two days later, I ventured out on another run, 1.8 miles. The mile had been a test, an experiment to see what I could do. 1.8 miles was something completely different. If I finished that run, I'd set a new personal record, overtaking a mark which was by then more than four years old.

Like I had two days prior, I gave myself a downhill start. This time, my course had me venturing further into my school's campus and jogging some residential (as opposed to collegiate) streets, streets which were included in the 5K's course.

Again, there was a musicality in my stride and a pleasant coolness in the air. Again, I made it through the run without much trouble.

When I stopped, I caught my breath and reflected for a moment. Yes, I'd done it. Yes, I'd finally surpassed the mile and a half. I was making progress. After those first two miserable attempts at training, my confidence in my ability to run a 5K was restored.

That was, of course, the end of my training. A full two runs, neither a negligible distance but neither really approaching 3.1 miles, and I was done. I continued making other preparations for the race, namely telling lots of people outside my immediate family that I was running the race, which seemed like a good way to ensure that I gave completing the race my all in an attempt to live up to my words. But as far as running…

I have had better plans.

To be fair, I had more runs planned, three or four spread over the next week and a half which would have ranged from 2.1 to 3.0 miles. This was before I was overwhelmed at school by a paper which quickly grew out of control and was ensnared by issues with printers ranging from the death of my printer to my school computing account not being adequately set up to allow me to use school printers. Once I turned the paper in, it was time to fly to Minneapolis for break, and at home I never found the energy to actually get out and complete my runs.

Perhaps I didn't finish my training because I didn't think I could complete the planned three mile training runs. While I could picture myself making the phone call home, telling my mother (this motivating scene mostly revolved around my mother) I'd done it, I also couldn't quite believe that I could run a full three miles. 1.8 miles was one thing. 3.1 miles, something entirely else.

I flew back to Charlottesville from break with about three days to go before the race. At home, the only progress I'd made towards the 5K was telling my father that I planned to run it (and telling him not to tell my mother), giving myself yet more incentive to reach the finish line or collapse trying. Every time I thought about the race, scheduled for 8:00 p.m. that Friday, I was filled with nervousness. I can remember feeling physically a bit sick. I knew I'd never quite forgive myself if I didn't try, if I didn't make some attempt at putting a ribbon and bow on the whole frame experience, on showing myself how far I'd come after five months of having metal-transfixed legs. But, from hours (and days) (and weeks) (and years) (and a Taylor Spatial Frame) behind the starting line, five kilometers starts to look like an impossibly long distance.