Graceful Bunny - September 13, 2004

I just got this Email.
"I'm afraid that the next time I see you, you will be running down the middle of North Halsted with a sex swing dragging behind you and lipstick smeared all over your face..."

This reminds me that I've been meaning to write an entry about my collegiate sport maladies. I got them in most interesting way.

I was a late walker. I could speak in full sentences and make observations about religion and politics before I could walk. When I finally got on my feet, I was a total klutz, and therefore a walking scab.

My mother considered putting me in ballet for two reasons: I had no coordination, and I could bait fishing hooks with ease. When I asked for a black storm trooper lunch box to take to kindergarten in contrast to my sister's pink Barbie one, she went straight to Ruth's School of Dance and enrolled my sister and I in ballet.

My sister not only reveled in the wearing of the pink tights, the tutus, the ribbons, but she actually excelled at the dance part. She still dances, and she teaches at a school in Tampa.

I, on the other hand, hated every infernal minute of it. I was terrible at all dance aside from tap, the stomping clacking white trash cousin of ballet.

In my teens I decided that I wanted to weight eighty pounds, and dance class wasn't going to meet my aerobic needs. The sports I excelled at, Golf and Softball (IRONY) were not school sports at my high school, so I took up distance running. I started with a half mile on a local track, and worked my way up to five-mile loops around town, which was almost its circumference.

When I come to a fork in the road, I like to choose which way to go, and then travel at warp speed to the end of the tine. By college, I was a runner possessed by the spirit of Steve Prefontaine. I was training six days a week, running intervals, lifting weights, and doing a thousand situps a day. On weekends I would do long runs of ten miles or more, all on half the recommended calories for a woman my size.

This was the recipe for a disaster. And since I'm more self-destructive than most women, for me this was the recipe for many disasters.

My collegiate sport maladies:
When I first started training, I had a few falls on the track during intervals. Nothing big. This is common when someone klutzy and chock full of slow-twitch muscle fiber attempts sprints. I never injured myself too much.

Then I decided that my coach wasn't giving me enough mileage. So one day I ventured out on an eight miler on a six-lane road that wasn't accustomed to seeing distance runners. Three miles out, I passed an Audi dealership. One of the salesmen was pulling out of the parking lot, and I dizzily trotted right in front of him. He hit me. I dove onto the hood of his Audi. He slammed on his brakes, I bounced off his windshield, and went flying into three lanes of oncoming traffic. My head hit the pavement and I passed out.

I woke up wrapped in a blanket and wearing one of those EMT neck braces. I couldn't feel anything on my left side, and two of my teeth were missing. They took me to Strong Memorial Hospital and sewed me up. A dentist fixed my teeth, which still hurt when I eat anything cold. My left side hurt because my left Illio-tibial band was in two.

I was benched for months after that, and it was fucking hell. One night I woke up from a nap and noticed that my left leg didn't hurt anymore. This so excited me that I put on my tights and went for a run around campus. It was very dark out.

I was so excited to be healed that I decided to do a pretty fast run. I was pounding down the left shoulder of a road with no sidewalk. A car was coming toward me and its lights were in my eyes blinding me like a nervous deer. I kept running anyway.

I felt a thud and my face hurt. I went backward and passed out again.

When I woke I was straddling a stop sign that was bent at a 45 degree angle. I was a little bruised, but I think I clearly won that battle. That stop sign will never again bully a runner.

My cross-country season was a dismal failure because of the Illio-tibial injury. When track came around in the spring I was lean and mean, and determined not to let inanimate objects ruin my training.

I had a few falls on the track again, but nothing serious. One afternoon, I was on an eight miler with the boys. The girls were too fat and slow to run with. We were about half way out on a trail that followed an abandoned set of railroad tracks, when I stopped to pee. The boys kept running.

I peed and had picked up my pace to catch up with them when I came upon the Genessee River. The trail ended there. You had to cross via the train bridge, which I did.

As I was running in between the tracks on the grate, one of the slabs came loose, and my foot got caught beneath it. I fell on my face, which hurt, but I was stunned so I couldn't think of anything but finishing the run.

I got up and kept running, which didn't feel very good. I was always dizzy so increased dizziness wasn't that alarming, but I didn't understand why I couldn't catch up with the boys. When I finally got back to the college and people started screaming "OH MY GOD S OMEBODY CALL AN AMBULANCE!" I understood.

My right knee was in shreds to the bone. Blood was pouring into my sock. My right shoe was red, and both my hands were mangled and purple.

The ambulance came and rushed me to Strong Memorial hospital, where the nurses greeted me with "You again?" because I had been brought in with alcohol poisoning not long before this incident.

They tried to stitch me up but couldn't. My knee was like ground beef. I had to use crutches and an immobilizer. My track season went down the shitter too.

By summer, I could run again. I was out on a ten miler when I came upon a mall. Again, I dizzily trotted out in front of a tan Bravada and went onto its hood. When I hit the ground on the other side, the driver looked at me (male, Hispanic, fat, brown eyes, blue shirt - in case you know him) and took off. A good Samaritan gave me a ride home because my right knee was ground beef again. I didn't bother going to the hospital because I knew they couldn't stitch me up and I hated that damn irrigation thingy they stuck into the hole in my leg the last time. I wrapped up the knee myself and put on my trusty immobilizer. I didn't run again until that fall.

One night during fall training, I took a turn and got lost. I ran into a neighborhood that was less than pleasant. I turned a corner on my way back out and ran through what can only be described as a Gang war. Imagine if you were watching the opening scene to "Gangs of New York" in real time, and a white chick jogged through in tights, a ponytail, and a faggoty orange reflector jacket. Well that white chick would be me.

My last few years of track and cross-country were dismal. My knees and left leg were always hurting. So I decided to run a marathon. Like any of my questionable life choices, I don't know why this seemed logical, but I did it anyway. In hind sight, I was retarded. I chose the Columbus Marathon, and trained through the winter of my senior year.

Marathon training sometimes requires runs of up to twenty miles. When the pavement freezes during the winter, it doubles the stress the body has to absorb during a run. Moon boots aren't cushy enough to handle this without total breakdown.

So I ran the marathon. Four hours twenty-five and a half minutes. Not bad considering I did the first half way too fast and puked all over the hood of an Audi in German town (KHARMA).

Sometime that summer I noticed that my shins hurt an awful lot. I felt like screaming any time my boyfriend squeezed them, no matter how lightly he did it.

That's because all those winter training runs broke my shins into little hairline breaks called stress fractures. I still have them. I can't run more than a mile without crying, and they won't ever fully heal.

In closing I would like to say that I have learned my lesson. I don't/can't run anymore, and when I work out, I stick to treadmills and elliptical machines.

I'll save my stories of treadmill falls and maladies for another day. I'm embarrassed enough for today.

Posted by at 8:33 PM

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