the lure of the cold and blue

Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.  ~Loren Eiseley

I was threading water in the middle of Janao Bay and I was getting disoriented. The swim out wasn’t all that difficult but the swim back, against the current, was zapping me of whatever energy I had left.

I was getting tired trying to find those white buoys. I had already managed to swim about a km out towards the raft. Everyone I was with in the swim pack had disappeared. It was just me and the deep blue-green sea. And although I believe I am a strong swimmer (the other alternative being that I’m just crazy and I want to torture myself), it was very disconcerting to find myself alone and unable to see beyond those waves that seemed to be getting stronger by the minute. Where the hell was everyone else? And how could I have gotten myself so lost?

Fact 1: Next to running and running marathons, I love swimming in the open water best… And on some days, I suspect that it’s the other way around…

Fact 2: If I wasn’t already set on running across that bridge on the other side of the Pacific and, of course, saying hello to the piano guy then I would be doing this instead–-The 3rd OLANGO CHALLENGE. It’s an open water swim event (1.5K, 3K, 5K) that starts out from Lapu-Lapu City.

Fact 3: This swim is scheduled on the 24th of April this year.  Ack!  I will be in Monterey, by then getting ready to run in the THE BIG SUR MARATHON with a friend on the 25th. Yey!

I did two open water swims last year.   The first one was a 2K swim in Anilao. Huge waves greeted us and lots of colorful fishes accompanied us during the swim. It kept the terror at bay. A good thing too because this was the first time I had ever done this.   The second time was for a 3K swim off Hamilo Coast. The waves were much more manageable this time around. There was no sign of the colorful fishes this time. It was just deep and dark waters out there but both swims left me hankering for more.

Swimming in open water is always a thrill for me. There is a certain calm that I get only when I am swimming. It is an absolute fantastic blue silence minus the static and the white noise that is almost always there when I am going about my regular day. It comes only after I’ve pushed myself past a certain limit. It comes swiftly and gracefully and then it hangs over me for the briefest and most fragile and pleasurable of moments. It is an amazing feeling. And it is the promise of that moment that sometimes will keep me pushing beyond points where my body would normally cave in to the stress of the elements.

“Pray!” I hear a voice in my head. It sounds very much like my Piano teacher. And then I realize it is my Piano teacher, Sr. Xaveria!  Having moved on to the great beyond, she hangs around in my head more often now. So many years ago, she taught me that before I do anything, before I start anything…Pray, she would tell me. Pray to the Holy Spirit for guidance. Pray before you start. Pray before you panic. Trust and then let God be God.

So I start praying an old prayer of protection: The light of God surrounds me, the power of God protects me, the love of God enfolds me, the presence of God watches over me… And wherever I am, God is.

I repeat this prayer over and over as my hands drag through the water in long sweeping movements. It’s a relentless and persistent push and pull. My body twists and glides through the water. I look down and from the corner of my eye, a school of fish darts by and then they bank and they swim right under me.  Brilliant light filters through and light fractals float on the surface of the water me. I forget about my ongoing battle with the waves. I relax enough so that I feel at once both light and graceful. Swimming, if you really think about it, is the closest thing we can get to flying. We have full control of our bodies as we spin and tumble and float under water. Where else can we do that? Certainly not on land!

Something suddenly floats up to within my line of vision.

“Oh what bold aqua blue trunks you have!” I tell the man when he pops out of the water.

“There you are!” He replies though we have never seen each other before.

He grins and points towards the shore. Stop looking for the small white buoys he tells me. They are too small to see in these choppy waters. Just keep swimming towards shore, that’s our ticket home!

Come on, he shouts out over the churning waves. I watch him as he disappears under the water only to reappear a few meters down. Come on, he repeats, his voice more urgent. It cuts through my stupor. I stop threading water. I stop hesitating and I dive headlong under the waves after him. Once again it’s a relentless push and pull…  And once again my hand rakes in fluid grace and joy as seawater skims through my fingers.

The 1st Speedo International Swim Masters Series Philippines 2K swim 6.21.09 47:43  (AG) / Hamilo 3.5.8 3K swim 11.21.09 1:27:21 (3 OA)

For more info on THE OLANGO CHALLENGE or to register, go to this SITE.

http://olangochallenge.wordpress.com/

a habit of kissing frogs…

And sticking to promises made…

I wasn’t tempting fate this time. I was merely going along with the plans. I was, in a manner or speaking, kissing my frog.

The thing about the HK marathon was that I never meant for it to be my marathon. It wasn’t even on my list of must-do marathons. Mighty M had run it a couple of times and her stories were always so-so and ho-hum about it.  A few guys I knew were running this as their first marathon though so I decided to tag along. I signed up for it months and months ago because the schedule of the marathon worked with my plan. It was exactly three weeks before the Los Angeles Marathon. I thought I had it all figured out.

But life always has a sneaky way of getting your attention…

Every time I head out towards a special marathon run in my calendar, I try to schedule another marathon race about 2-3 weeks ahead of it.  I treat the first marathon as a training run. The next one I treat as serious fun.  The LA marathon on the 21st of March was marked as the 1st serious fun marathon in my calendar. Hong Kong marathon was supposed to be the peak of my training runs for LA. I am off schedule now. The injury I got in Corregidor… where I managed a fantastic trip and roll stunt to the bottom of the hill and sprained my ankle and fractured my little toe kept me off training much longer than planned. Compound that with the work trips to Europe in the middle of winter and you end up with a lot of lost training days…  It made running the Hong Kong marathon a far bigger challenge than I initially thought it would be.

Fate had handed me a frog. Now what was I supposed to do with it?

Why, kiss it, of course!  And hope it turns into a prince… It’s either that or into a royal pain in the a**! And since we are talking marathons here then I guess it’s only fair to expect a combination of both…

I can’t help it. I’m the girl who grew up on an extra serving of Disney and fairy tales.  A happy childhood like that certainly ruins you! You begin to see interesting possibilities… even with frogs! But in this case, the Hong Kong Marathon, my frog of a marathon, sure did not disappoint.

I knew going into Hong Kong that I had, at best, half-baked marathon legs. But no complaints here! It was a fantastic route and I relished every kilometer of that marathon road even the annoyingly painful ones.

Three bridges, two long tunnels (one cuts through a mountain, the other goes under the bay) and all this linked by a highway that at certain portions is slightly tipped sideways…

It’s a new route, a friend tells me. Not that it matters much as I don’t even know what the old route is like. I pore through the map. I try to make sense of the elevation chart in the runner’s guide. Whatever it’s supposed to tell me, I get absolutely nothing.

Time to shift to plan B.

My cousin arrives with her husband. After a delicious and satisfying lunch in one of the restaurants in Harbour City, I show them the map.  By this time we are standing at the promenade near the Ocean Ferry Terminal in Kowloon. Directly in front of us is Hong Kong Island. He points to a black structure in the far distance.  There, he says, is where the tunnel ends.  Then he points all the way to the left. And there, over there, do you see the cluster of trees? That would be where Victoria Park is.

Well… We’ve got the last six kilometers covered. It looks pretty flat…(surprise! surprise! this was actually the hard part with the tough inclines!) Where’s the rest?

I show him the three bridges and the highway on the map.

That heads out towards the Airport, he replies.  And that one, and he says this as his hand traces out the outline of the Stonecutter’s Bridge, I’ve lived here for 20 years. I’ve never driven past that bridge, ever. I didn’t even realize it was there…

So much for my recon mission…

I am the worst person to ask to review a race. Half the time I am not even in it. Or rather, my head isn’t fully in it. I am somewhere else altogether believing in a magic that makes young girls kiss ugly frogs. It’s a belief borne out of an obstinate will (to my mother’s consternation) and a desire to simply keep moving forward. It’s what keeps me on that road laughing and running even through the inevitable pain.

There are only two real truths I can tell you about a run. Whether I liked it or I didn’t.  If I liked it then that means I ran it well whatever difficulty, confusion or chaos ensued in the process. And if I didn’t like it? Well, all you have to do is find the paramedic with the black eye and then ask him why…

I know this much about running marathons. The races I run with heart are the only ones I remember. And hence, Subic International Marathon is still on top of my list of most memorable runs. It was a debacle of a marathon by all accounts. It was also my slowest and most painful marathon to date. But more than any other race that marathon taught me enough about myself so that I came out of it a feeling a lot tougher inside and out.  No other race comes close. Not San Francisco where I posted my fastest sub 4-hour marathon time or the 70.3 ironman in Cam Sur where I bested my demon on the bike.

Like I said, it’s a habit of kissing frogs…

This is how I always run my marathons. I run them first and foremost in my head. That’s why I run two within weeks of each other. The first one is really all about wrapping my head around the distance. It’s a method that will not work for everyone. But it works best for me. That’s why at times I barely even register what is really happening outside… Except that with every step I know that I am getting closer and closer to the finish line.

Mist and fog (and smog) swirl in the air. It’s an interesting view as we approach the first of three bridges in the route. Container vessels are stacked up in neat rows at the port below. Cranes and huge industrial machines are reaching up to the sky with their giant robotic arms.  I do not have the luxury of marveling at the view but I try to take in as much as I can.  I look out towards the sea, I look up towards the cloud-covered sky, I look at the faces of the other runners around me and I fix my eye on the road ahead trying to figure out how best to ride the inclines and dips up ahead.

I check on my ankle from time to time. Every time there is a dip I try it out. It’s behaving beautifully. Well, it’s a bit painful but I was expecting that.

And all this time I’m pushing up, up and up that incline.

It’s a long way to go to the finish line. I have all this road ahead of me. Two more bridges are waiting, two more tunnels and a few steep flyovers thrown into the mix… It’s going to be an interesting ride.

And what’s the plan? Grin, run it, bear it and embrace the horizon… in other words, play the game and simply keep going!

For good or bad or eternal ruin, I am programmed to believe in happy endings and happy ever after… And I have yet to be proven wrong.

Hong Kong Marathon: February 28, 2010 4:20:00 Done! Next, please!

the flurries

The weather report said expect the flurries… hmmm, I wondered. What exactly are the flurries?

HappyHappyJoyJoy was quick to send a reply:

* A small swirling mass of something moved by sudden gusts of wind: like a flurry of snow? This flurry felt more like a bombardment of snowflakes aimed directly at my eyelashes. It was charming in the beginning and quite fun.  But soon enough I found my shoulders aching from being all hunched up in an effort to keep the cold out.

Everyone says it’s the coldest winter they’ve had in years. I couldn’t agree more. My tropical bones can definitely feel the chill creeping in and staying in. I checked the weather before I packed for this trip to Germany. I saw the negative temperatures. I knew then that the running shoes were just going to be dead weight in my suitcase. But I brought it anyway.

It’s definitely the time of the flurries…

• A number of things arriving or happening during the same period: like a flurry of activities, planned and unplanned? If only everything went according to schedule (and it rarely ever does in my world) the first real marathon for me this year would have happened on the 7th of this month. I was registered to run the full in Condura. Registered and still wanting to do it even after the full marathon runners had taken off.   I watched from the sidelines as the group was sent off with fireworks and well wishes. But I stayed well enough away from the starting corral until they called for the 21 kilometer runners. It was time to be smart about my training. And I don’t do smart very well. There’s always that extra effort required to keep myself from crashing and burning when I find myself clinging adamantly to a notion saner persons would immediately eschew. That notion that I could still run a full marathon at goal pace even after an ankle injury had sidelined me for weeks? Well, that’s just crazy. That I could finish a marathon at a much much slower walk/crawl pace? Well, that’s still possible. Difficult, but possible! But to what end?

I have been confined to short easy runs in the evenings, 12-15 kilometer runs just to get the marathon legs back into shape. There were other things begging for attention. Work needed to take center stage for a while. At the same time, the ankle kept misbehaving.  I needed to coax it back into form. Condura Run was the test. My longest run yet. I did end up running 37 kilometers that day. But I knew that pushing for a 42 would be a stretch. So what it finally came down to was a 21Km race plus another 16kms after the race.  It was just 5 kilometers short of running the full distance. But to run the entire full would have meant far more junk miles than I could already ill afford.

Condura’s run was a way to establish a base  so I could focus on marathon training at the speed required to make it to Boston. That’s still the plan and until I see that timer that does not go beyond 3:45:59 at the marathon finish line then it remains The Goal amidst a flurry of other running dreams.

A day after the Condura run I was on a plane and winter was waiting…

I guess the flurries do have their uses. I do smart much better when under time pressure. It helps me to prioritize and focus.

• A sudden short period of commotion or excitement: like a flurry of running feet? Two halfs scheduled this month and then my first full marathon at the end of the month in Hong Kong. It is not The Marathon in my books. But it will be an honest effort at running the full distance again. A training marathon because the honest-to-goodness marathon race is now waiting under March’s wings…

I breathe hot air softly on my cupped hands and hot mist forms around it. From the safety of a doorway, I watch white flakes of ice spiral and swirl before they lay a carpet of white on the ground. It’s beautiful, actually. A seeming mad dance is happening outside. People with head bent, shoulders squared are relentlessly making their way to their destinations. Some shuffle, some dash and a few just plod on. I know its time to get back outside and surround myself with the flurry of snow and ice but I still take a few extra minutes in the quiet warmth before I finally fix my cap, take a deep breath and head out the door.

I’ve got no more time to waste. It’s definitely time to get back on the road.

Condura Half Marathon: February 7, 2010 1:55:23

and then what happens?

Once upon a time, as all good stories often begin, in a land so very near home, a girl found this written on a page… 

Why Do You Run?

Because you’re wondering if your grandchildren will too.  Because its raining.  Because you can, and others can’t.  Because its faster than walking.  Because that shaky-leg-thing is all about nervous energy.  Because you can’t fly.  Because you can fly.  Because your personal best is just that, yours.  Because the pain of a blister is nothing compared to the pain of stopping.  Because you like the resistance the wind gives you.  Because you like the resistance you give the wind.

Just Because.

And the girl started dreaming of running across a distant land with soaring skyscrapers and bridges and five fantastic boroughs… waiting…waiting..waiting… twiddling her thumbs and keeping her fingers crossed. Waiting for the day she could send in her application (again!) and waiting for the day she would make it through the lottery results. (Let’s hope the magic works this time around! And if it doesn’t well… there is that magical 3rd try rule where that nasty mean computer can no longer spit my name out!)

In the meantime, a few other marathons beckon in other cities, one of which is  where stars have been known to walk on land.  Time to get seriously running…

How long will it take me to get back to that marathon start line? Faster than it will take me to get grandchildren, I suppose…

Hans Christian Andersen once wrote: Every man’s life is a fairy tale written by God’s fingers. And as fairy tales go… There will be a beginning, there will be an end and a whole lot of living, dreaming, some running and, inescapably, magic in-between.

I don’t really want it any other way.

And so the story begins…

of dogdays and dark knights

Dog Days: • a period of inactivity or sluggishness

Of all the gifts I’ve ever received from my mother, a map of the constellations is one of those I treasure most. Black connect-the-dots patterns printed on stiff parchment, yellowed with age, tattered and torn around the edges. It mapped out the stars outside our home. It was my mother’s map before it was mine.

Over there, that’s Orion, See the three stars in a row? That would be his belt (Orion, the hunter and apparently a fashionista to boot!) His arms, his club… My mother says as her hand traces out the pattern in the sky. And there! Not too far away, Canis Major, the great dog. He trails Orion. The brightest star in that constellation, in the night sky, do you see it? That’s Sirius.

Sirius, the Dog Star! This universe does know how to make a point. Dogdays. I am  right smack in the middle of my dogdays! Who or what better company can I expect on my night runs than this star that for the ancient Greeks signaled the hottest and therefore most unproductive days of the year? Why did it take me this long to figure it out? And how do I even begin to get out of it?

The left foot continues to misbehave. Both my pace and cadence are still off. It is getting to be tedious. It’s a funk that for weeks I’ve been trying to run, walk and now crawl my way out of! My mileage continues to seesaw between the imaginary and the pathetic.

Slow, sluggish and unproductive. That would be the first few weeks of the year… And the last few weeks of the last few months of the year that was. But still no real complaints here. Not yet…

Though I’ve always loved breakfast, I’ve realized that I’ve never truly been a morning fan. I always did think mornings came way too early in the day. So I’ve pushed most of my runs to the evenings, reserving the dawn for what they are best for in my book… bed and sleep and the occasional bagel and coffee while watching a new sun rise. And, once or twice a week, a swim in an ice blue pool.

Dark nights… Night runs with just the stars for company. It’s been a series of those. And, once again, you sneaky universe, you! One letter off and a whole world of difference to me! Dark Knights, not dark nights! If you are listening, please get that straight! The former not the latter is the one in my wish list.

The answer is as simple as it is as difficult to do. Do the work.

So, it’s back to the old schedule before this multi-sport craziness hi-jacked my mornings. Some are meant to tri… and then there is me. Done tri- trying for now and back to a simpler, more straightforward love: running.

Never did like it complicated.