Running Away

A friend recently asked how I stay motivated to run five times a week. I’m not the best person to ask, because it’s just something that I do. It’s part of my daily infrastructure and as normal and necessary as coffee to me.

Scroll back to elementary school and ParticipACTION, an endeavour funded by the Canadian government to promote healthy living and exercise. In 1972, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau nationalized Sport Participation Canada (the company that coined ParticipACTION) in an early attempt to conquer mounting health care costs with fresh air and jogging initiatives.

For the under ten set, ParticipACTION day was ironically as popular as the legendary primary school Hot Dog Day. There was an opportunity to wear a matching cotton sweat suit (joy!), eat a chocolate bar for energy pre-race (bliss!) AND win badges which moms would later sew on to jean jackets for continued bragging rights.

I think this is when I started running with commitment. All for a chocolate bar breakfast and a gold badge. Times were simpler then. Or were they? Now I run for a cold beer and a hot shower, so, the reward scale has merely been modified.

The ParticipACTION race route was five  laps around the  school yard (pockmarked in groundhog holes) in whatever shoes you had on, or perhaps, your “gym shoes” that were at-the-ready in the cloak room. They weren’t Nike or anything with a modicum of arch support. I think I ran in blue Kangaroos with the ever-handy zippered pocket on the side of the shoe or Bullits with the laces undone. Then I could run in heavy sweatpants and my power outfit Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt until the cows came home. And, they did—directly behind our pastoral school yard in sleepy Mt. Pleasant. Recess generally smelled like cow shit, to varying degrees, but we were solid country kids, and my grandfather raised pigs. Any good country person knows that cow shit is favoured over pig shit.

Nothing says "congratulations on your run," more than a burger.

Early ParticipACTION badges inspired me to sign up for the cross-country running team circa grade 5, the humble start of my illustrious career. The best part of this team was that it involved several afternoons away from school to attend races in Brant County. They were usually at a hilly golf course or boggy conservation area; generally in drizzly, frosty, I-can-see-my-breath fall days. I loved the time off the dull school routine of learning and appreciated the rewards that came via my dad for competing. He was our biggest cheerleader—if we placed first or ninety-first, our stamina and Torti endurance was always acknowledged with the likes of Kentucky Fried Chicken one-piece dinners, Dairy Queen dipped cones, chocolate-dipped donuts, greasy fries and/or the like.

I developed a golden retriever mentality early on. Will perform for treats.

My Matthew McConaughey look

I’ve never been too serious about running, only seriously committed. There have been many 5 and 10K races. More than half a dozen half-marathons, but no Boston ambitions. I prefer the recreational, hobbyist, sustainable version.

Running is so embedded in my life that I can tell you exactly when I took more than two consecutive days off of my regime. In 2002, the Galapagos Islands (due to being on a 40 foot boat for nine days). In 2011, Egypt (due to heart attack qualifying desert heat, political unrest, soldiers with guns, soldiers in tanks, Smart car-sized potholes and maniac drivers).

I knew I was a chronic runner when I was running with a stitched up groin, not even 12 hours after having a lymph node removed. I confirmed my chronic situation again when I was running with my head turned fully behind me being chased by imaginary awful things before sunrise on a stretch of beach in Panama (just so I could squeeze in one last run before our flight). Did I mention the armed commandos on the rooftops that I passed by with held breath and lightning speed?

I’ve been chomped on by several dogs, nearly collided with a deer being flushed out by hunters, been chased by a sheep and threatened by a runaway pig eating fallen apples in a ditch. I’ve had colossal YouTube sensation wipe-outs and was actually running so fast that when I belly-flopped on the sidewalk last January I gave myself a concussion. It took me a year before I could kneel on my right knee after the Great Highly Public Flip & Spill on Spadina in front of Le Gourmand cafe. I’ve skinned my poor knees more than 100 blindfolded five-year-olds.

Equipment check by Mikai

I’ve run with an army of flip-flopped children shouting “America! America!” in the Obama election fever days in Kenya. I’ve dodged unpredictable vervet monkeys and baboons in Uganda and only gave up a daily run due to potential lion or waterbuffalo attack (I can be rational, at times) in Murchison Falls National Park. When I was in the Congo, Chantal, the co-director of the chimp sanctuary I volunteered at, bought me a membership at the Lubumbashi Golf Course so I could run safely. Better yet, she would wait for me to finish, offering a wave as I rounded the course and let me sit, sweat and have a 10 a.m. 750ml Simba beer or two. Those were the glory days.

Banff runs with my sis always seem to be snow-bound. It doesn't matter if it's December or May. But this is May.

I’ve run in sleet that felt like daggers, rain that saturated me to my bones, high winds wicked enough to blow my shirt nearly over my head. I’ve run under such mental stress that I didn’t realize my iPod wasn’t even ‘on’ for the entire 5k route until I was doing my cool down walk and removing my silent headphones.

I’m not one to check the forecast for exact temperatures and wind chill “feels like” reports. I just go. The ParticipACTION in me is embedded deep in my marrow. If I need an ounce of inspiration I think no further than Terry Fox and I almost want to smack myself for being two-legged and lazy.

I pass several people in Koreatown with canes, walkers, humped over with osteoporosis, limping, shifting uncomfortable weight, saddled with sadness and unsurmountable pain—and I am reminded.

I run because I can. Because I want to. Because there’s a clarity to it that lends to a symbiosis of mind and body. There’s a palpable sense of having “survived” elements. Oppressive, soupy July days in Toronto. The bone-cracking cold of Banff runs with my sister. Soggy west coast runs with an even soggier dog. Wind that pushes with annoying force, making leaves and urban debris take flight into already tearing eyes. Yes, this is good! It makes you feel alive and semi-invincible!

I sometimes listen to music, I often don’t. I can run with equal speed to Florence & The Machine or some sobby Jann Arden track.

How?

It’s half an hour out of my day. Twenty-five minutes, really. Six songs and all I have to do is cruise along. It’s balancing and essential. It means I can guzzle beer, eat cashews and heap on the guacamole with slight abandon. It means I don’t have to give up mighty carbs for a protein-enriched life.

What keeps you chugging along? Or, better yet, what’s stopping you?

Cups of Coffee and Cupping

My friend Heidi perfectly pegged me last week when she remarked: “Jules, you are as brave and experimental in your medical treatments as you are in your food choices.”

She was referring to my recent visit to the OK Oriental Health and Beauty Centre where I subjected my broken self to the Traditional Chinese Medicine treatment of ‘cupping.’ In that instant, I would have paid anyone $10,000 to make me feel good again.

Two days before that visit I took a colossal wipe-out while running. I mean, I belly-flopped onto the sidewalk and somehow created a giant goose egg on my shin. I saw stars, and really, knocked myself silly. But, I picked myself up, wiped the slush off my spandex and the tears from my cheeks and carried on. My pride hurt more than anything.

That afternoon I was meeting a friend for coffee at Rooster, a groovy latte joint with a stellar view of Riverdale and the Toronto skyline in all its tall and twinkly glory. I was happy for the distraction. Michelle and I drank lattes. We gabbed, laughed, gossiped. We wanted to gab longer and bought another coffee—this time a bold roast. I felt like I had conch shells held up to both my ears, but was enjoying Michelle’s company. I figured I was just hungry and buzzed on coffee beans. After we parted ways and I began walking home, the nausea hit me like a slap in the face. I blamed it on the coffee. It was after 5 and I’d only had a bagel, a banana and a ginger cookie (that, just to qualify, was as big as a frisbee).

I felt sleepy, but I blamed that on going to bed at 3:30 a.m. But when I went to bed before midnight that night, surely something was wrong with me. That was the first indicator. I ping-ponged back and forth between chills and sweats. I thought I had wet the bed a few times because I was sweating like a bear on a unicycle in front of a sell-out circus crowd.

When all else fails, I know sleep is the cure-all. But I couldn’t sleep. This also flicked on a high alert switch. I routinely sleep like the dead and I couldn’t find one comfortable position because my head had become a jackhammer. My brain took off at breakneck speeds imagining all the horrible hypochondriac-type things that were wrong with me. I did the meningitis test on myself, being well-versed in this after my meningitis scare in Africa. I ruled out the African Tick Fever that I was diagnosed with at that time for obvious reasons, but the meningitis/tick fever symptoms were remarkably similar.

Did I coincidentally pick up H1N1 when I fell? Or worse, the super virus H1N3? I started cursing all the coughing, sneezing clients I had massaged that week. My goose-egged shin throbbed, but that was the least of my worries. What was the expiry date on those free-range eggs I had scrambled the night before? Wait. Maybe it was the kielbasa I picked at while waiting for those eggs to scramble. Did I have salmonella?

I had no drugs to take—a 5 a.m. rummage came up with three Malarone (anti-malaria pills), six oregano oil capsules (that totally give you pizza breath in the morning), and mystery anti-histamine pills that could be good for 12 or 24 hours, daytime or nighttime. It would be a gamble.

I called work the morning after the belly flop, citing my growing list of symptoms and declaring that I might die at the workplace if I had to massage that day. I genuinely had a seized up body from my You Tube viral-video-worthy wipe-out, but, there was something else too. I felt like barfing. I joked that I had morning sickness. They wondered if it would be gone for my afternoon shift? No.

I skulked to and fro from my bed to my favourite supine position in front of the gas fireplace. I had the flames and fan on level six. I had no desire for coffee. Or anything for that matter. At 4:30 I managed a bowl of oatmeal and felt extremely geriatric and dramatic as I rested between mouthfuls.

And to make a long blog short, when I forced myself to work the following day I had our clinic athletic therapist give my shin a once-over. I complained of all the other issues I had and Mara asked, “Did you ever consider that you might have a concussion from the fall?”

Hell no. I was thinking meningitis, unknown pregnancy, H1N3, tainted salami, a recurrence of the E. Coli infection I had just weeks before—not a concussion.

Mara insisted on no running, no booze and definitely no sex. Life as I knew it came to a screeching halt, much like the screeching halt I came to on the pavement with my body. “Remember Liam Neeson’s wife? Natasha Richardson? She died of a slow bleed on her brain when she fell on the ski hill.”

The slow bleed thought didn’t help my psychological mindset. I failed Mara’s balance test miserably and was a bit slow on my naming of the months of the year, backwards. I asked her not to question me about who the prime minister was, because I didn’t even know that answer before I fell.

My chiropractor upgraded me to a whiplash and a lumbar hyperextension injury. That’s when you know you’re a fast runner, when you actually give yourself whiplash coming to a complete stop.

In my quest to feel some normalcy in my life without whiskey, running or sex, I found solace in the OK Oriental Health and Beauty Centre. I drag myself to the centre when I’m feeling weary, forlorn or slightly jaded by the physical sacrifice of a career in massage therapy. I always feel as though a miracle has unfolded at some point during the shiatsu or reflexology treatment. I never know what to expect and I’ve had everything from a suprise breast massage, a baby oil hair massage which left me with a bird’s nest on top of my head, to being straddled, to having my ass cupped.

They play Chinese covers of North American love songs by Richard Marx and  Simon & Garfunkel. They insist that I take pocketfuls of mystery flavour hard candies that even some hard candy sucking grandmother would refuse after one try. The walls are a light cotton candy pink and it’s as warm as Florida inside. It’s my Chinese bliss.

Tim, a shiatsu master, insisted that I try cupping, once he established that I hadn’t “lifted heavy goods” and that I had instead, “fallen on hard stone.” He shook a finger at me for not wearing “two pants” (long johns) because I had “cold wind inside my shoulder” and “water on my spine.”

Neither of these things sounded good, but surely cupping would make them better. The ancient practice involves using glass cups of different sizes to create an acupressure application. Some practitioners use flames and alcohol, Tim used a device that manually induced a suction to create an air-tight seal between the cup and the skin on my back. The suction pulls the skin into the cup, resulting in a very brilliant, very instant, eggplant purple welt. But in turn, it also draws stagnant blood and lymph into the cup, to help improve qi flow. And my qi was killing me.

I had several cups on my back at once, and felt like I was in a pain threshold contest. The suctioning of your skin into these cups feels like a husky older cousin pinning you down and pinching the life out of you. As more cups get added, the tighter your skin feels on your back. Like you can’t take a deep breath—there’s just no room for your rib cage to expand.

After four minutes, the cups came off one by one. Tim smoothed his hand over each welted and screaming area, which felt like a severe case of rug burn. I had heartbeats in 12 different spots on my back.

Would I do it again?

Yes, I would, and I did.

Would I tape a hot dog bun soaked in milk to my ass because someone said it would lure a tapeworm out? Yep, did that in ‘96. Would I lick a 9-volt battery because someone said it would electrocute intestinal parasites? Yep, did that. Would I drink a Slovakian tea that tasted like subway handrails and leather furniture polish? Sure. Would I cover an insect bite with Vaseline and duct tape and wait five hours before the mango worm suffocated and then squeeze it out? Of course.

Anything to make my qi feel better when I can’t use my usual vices.

Wouldn’t you?

Chinese cover of “I’ll Be Right Here Waiting For You”– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozwbvEu3Qkk

Running Halfway

I didn’t eat pasta last night as every good runner should. We had a beer can chicken on the barbie, Beringer white zinfandel and double chocolate biscotti. I had intended on doing things properly this year, like the pasta thing, logging more than 5km a day in training and being sure to hydrate myself all week in preparation for the half-marathon. I’m a camel at the best of times, walking around in a mostly-dehydrated state. Eight glasses of water a day could very well put me over the edge. Ironically, I had signed up for the Abbotsford Run For Water.

Before last year’s half-marathon I had a jalapeno sausage with sauerkraut and two beers. In 1999, I ran a 20:57 5km race in Toronto after drinking at least eight pints (alternative carb-loading, just not in the traditional tortellini-form) the previous night and was given a bronze medal for it. Ten years later I don’t think I could pull off such a strong performance (of drinking eight pints and/or running a 5k that fast).

I’ve run halfway eight or nine times. My debut was at the “Boston to Brantford” half marathon in Ontario where my then girlfriend and I did it on a whim. We showed up in our best sweatpants and running shoes that we had recently cut grass in. I watched in horror as experienced runners in flashy wind suits and matching spandex with team logos threaded their Asics and New Balance shoes with new shoelaces before the start. The sinewy men rubbed their nipples with Vaseline and a few took off in the opposite direction to run/sprint a 3kmwarm-up. Two snotty spandex-clad women looked Kate and I up and down and asked what our splits and PB’s were. I had no idea what they were talking about and confessed that I had only run 5km races before–fun runs at that. Kate said she had her cast removed just a month ago after a fibula fracture. The women laughed like hyenas and warned us that we probably wouldn’t make it and swished off to stretch and pose like peacocks.

Imagine our delight when we ran like gazelles past the beet red-faced spandex girls who were clearly sucking wind at the fifth kilometer. Even better was the moment when I could gloat that we finished in a respectable first-time finish of 1:58. But I had to wait until they pulled their sorry asses across the finish line at 2:20. So much for their impressive splits and PB’s—the magic was in shabby sweatpants and old shoelaces!

I ran the next half-marathon without Kate (who opted for the 10 km route instead), and figured I’d probably be coming in around the two-hour mark again. My cheerleader dad never missed a Brantford race, and loved the opportunity to holler from the sidelines. When I sailed down Brant avenue at 1:37, I called out to my father who was leisurely walking along the sidewalk towards the finish with a Tim Horton’s tea and muffin.

“Flo!” (Dad’s nickname)

He was startled to see me so early. As I kept pace, he joined me, as he always did, his tea slopping out of the lid and burning his hand, bran muffin shaking noisily up and down in the paper bag. Winded and covered in milky tea, he insisted that I kick it to the end, he couldn’t keep up with his breakfast in hand, and I did. I could hear his voice to the finish, urging me to “Pour it on!”

During those Brantford marathon years I had two other dedicated roadie fans—my dad’s sister Buffer(another nickname, short story is I couldn’t pronounce Cathy as a kid, it came out Buffer), and my grandmother. My Aunt Buffer drove the pace car, a baby blue Celebrity Classic, with Nan hanging out the passenger window pumping her fist. The two of them followed me along the entire 21km route, waving and honking like I was a celebrity. Indeed I felt like it.

My grandmother enjoyed verbally attacking my fellow competitors and between vicious expletives she dabbed her eyes with Kleenex. She was always so proud, and her voice would wobble with emotion by the end, “C’mon, Horse!” (*Horse–another nickname, intended to be flattering).

This year, running up the heart-attack-inducing Huntingdon hill (which seems to sit at a precarious 90 degree angle), I thought of Nan and felt an instant heaviness in my heart and stride. She died in November, but I’m sure she found someone in Heaven today to drive her around the 21km with me, cheering as she always had. Today I had Wanda as my pace car and designated paparazzi, and it was like Nan was with me all the same.

When my quads turned to liquid cement at the 10km mark, I started channeling Ray Zahab who ran 6,920km in 111 days (November 2006-February 2007) across the Sahara desert. Zahab and his teammates, Kevin Lin (from Taipei, Taiwan) and Charlie Engle (US), battled injury, dysentery, testosterone, blisters as big as pancakes, severe dehydration, blinding sandstorms and an unforgiving African sun.

On Friday night Wanda and I went to see the documentary Running The Sahara, narrated and produced by Matt Damon. The film chronicles the dynamic journey Zahab and his teammates made from Senegal on the west coast of Africa, to the Red Sea in Egypt. Zahab, who attended the Abbotsford screening engaged the audience in a conversation as captivating as a fireworks display. He talked about the intensity, intimacy and mental endurance of running with two guys across a desert. And how many running shoes does one need for a Sahara desert crossing? Twenty-four. And 10 litres of Gatorade a day. Remarkably, Ray Zahab only discovered running in 2004. After visiting Africa he became empowered to focus his future adventures and ultra-running challenges to support the water crisis.

As the founder of Impossible2Possible, Zahab has committed to inspiring young minds into social and environmental action. Linking world-class adventures to classrooms around the world, he has created a forum of possibility and change.

After trotting across the Sahara in 2007, Zahab became the first person to trek to the South Pole on foot, a measly 1,130 km. On January 7th, 2009, Ray clocked in (with two Canadian teammates) at 33 days, 23 hours and 55 minutes. Blogging en route, his adventure garnered the global attention of thousands of school children who had the opportunity to interact via the Internet and SAT phones with Zahab.

Before that he knocked off the 77 km West Coast Trail in 16 hours, a feat which takes the above-average hiker seven days of stubborn slogging. Surely I could run 21 km across Abbotsford when the Sahara team was checking off the equivalent of two full marathons in a day.

I talked myself out of a Gatorade-induced stitch in my side, and focused on Pink’s lyrics blaring on my  iPod when chills began to rush through my body and I felt on the verge of a heat stroke. I begged my hamstring not to curl up and for my multi-grain bagel to stay in my stomach. I reminded myself of greater, more hellish accomplishments of others. Hell, Kevin Lin crossed the Atacama Desert in Chile (241 km) in 7 days. He had already run across the Gobi in 2003, and in 2006 took bronze in a 250km super marathon crossing of the South Pole.

And here I was fretting about completing a half-marathon on a bright, sunny day with all-you-can-eat Panago pizza at the finish, and a team of massage therapists ready to rub me? Where was the challenge? At 18 km, I reassured myself that I could always be hooked up to an i.v. at the finish if need be. There were ambulances if I collapsed. As Ray Zahab so eloquently said, “running is 90% mental. And another 10% mental.” I could sit down all day long after I crossed the finish line.

Terry Fox Memorial at Mile 0, Victoria, BC

As I ran, 100% mentally, and felt potentially disastrous twinges in my left hamstring, metatarsal bones jamming in my right foot, and a dodgy lumbar spine wanting to give out, my thoughts moved from the sands of the Sahara to Terry Fox. In 1980, Terry Fox ran 42 km a day from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Thunder Bay, Ontario with a prosthetic leg. After 5, 373km, his Marathon of Hope came to a physical end as Fox’s bone cancer had metastasized to his lungs. He died on June 28th, 1981 at age 22. His legacy is far-reaching, extending from Mount Terry Fox in the Selwyn range of the Rockies near Valemont, BC, to Mount Terry Fox Provincial Park, CCGS Terry Fox (a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker), eponymous streets, highways, libraries and schools. Named “Canadian of the Decade for the ‘80s,” Fox is responsible for the fiery spirit behind the world’s largest one day fundraiser for cancer research, the Terry Fox Run. A celebration of his courage and ferocious determination, the run is held in September each year in support of his vision, to find a cure for cancer.

And this is when the run took an unexpected turn. As the sun cooked my body, and I imagined the road’s surface being a suitable temperature for frying eggs, I thought of water. I could drink clean water at the next re-fuel station, as much as I wanted. I could stick my head under the tap when I got home and drink until my esophagus overflowed. In Africa, 80% of the population doesn’t have this basic luxury, and this was the whole point being slammed home by participating in the Abbotsford Run For Water. It wasn’t about me winning a race (dream big, right?) or beating a personal best (oh, I was about 11 minutes off that mark!). It wasn’t about running at all. The run was designed as a platform to build awareness for a critical situation that haunts anyone who has been to Africa. There are children who have to walk the distance I ran today to gather ‘drinking’ water from questionable, murky sources.

Today, 100% of the funds raised from the Run For Water (over $81,000 donated this year) will support the construction of wells in Choro, Ethiopia in conjunction with the HOPE International Development Agency.

Even though I was running along blueberry fields with snow-capped Mt. Baker and the Coast mountain range in view, I was in Africa. I was back in Entebbe, Uganda on the brick-red dirt roads. And suddenly my muscles found renewed purpose, remembering the basic and monumental cause I was supporting. Clean water for Africa.

http://www.runforwater.ca/

 http://www.hope-international.com/index.php

http://www.runningthesahara.com/

http://www.impossible2possible.com/

http://www.4deserts.com/

http://www.ryanswell.ca/