A Thousand Times No

Another morning, another 5K event.  Today it involved rising in the wee small hours so that I could catch a train out of the city, where friends picked me up and we headed out to Bucks County Community College.

The weather was less than ideal, only slightly above freezing with a very thin drizzle flicking down from the overcast skies.  Snow could still be seen on the ground in the soil beds that ringed the trees.  I kept debating whether or not to wear a rain jacket, and finally went out with one thrown over another two layers of clothing.

Just before the start of the run, I glanced down at my watch while preparing to search for a restroom.  Surprise!  I had no time for a pit stop before the starting gun.  “You’ll be fine,” I told myself, recalling the countless number of times that Nature had started calling, only to hang up before I finished exercising and got around to answering.

Well, dear readers, you know where this is, uh…going.  I was miserable.  Within the first half mile, my glasses were soaked from the not-quite-rain, and I peeled them off to throw them into my pocket.  Running half-blind without glasses seemed preferable to running even more blindly with them.

But the greater problem was yet to come.  The course was an out-and-back loop involving mostly a long downhill on the way out, with a long ascent on the way back.  Hill descents tend to make my liver unhappy.  I started to develop a side stitch at the halfway point, and it only worsened as I continued.

“Just keep going,” I told myself.  Ooops, wrong mantra.  Not only was Nature calling, but with every footstrike, my body was getting closer to picking up the phone.  Finally, I eased myself to a stop.  Today was just not going to be my day.  The better part of valor was going to be in walking.

Concerned about my sudden disappearance, one of my friends headed back onto the course from the finish gate to find me and accompany me back.  As we strolled up the final hill, he said, “Do you want to go out with flair for the camera?”  I vigorously shook my head before my bladder could pipe up again.  Surprisingly, there were still people coming in as I left the course.

The 5K run was followed by a “health fair,” which was an odd amalgam of chiropractors, energy drink vendors, and jewelry booths.  As with most organized runs, awards were given out for the top three finishers in each age group category.  I was not surprised to hear the name of the fastest and youngest finisher among my group of friends being announced onstage.

But then, in quick succession, I heard my name, and another friend’s, and then another.  Each and every one of us took home an engraved plaque.  We quickly realized that as some of the oldest runners in a small field that had been deeply thinned out by the inclement weather, we were winners just for crossing the finish line.

The more exciting running news came later in the day, when we rolled into REI and discovered that both running shoes and my favorite magic insoles were on sale.  This means that after today, I’ll be hanging up my running shoes very soon — so that I can break in a brand-new pair.

Thus my liver continues its journey of joy and wonder.

Several years ago, I started leafing through Craigslist ads on a regular basis in hopes of picking up a nice secondhand road bike.  After several months, the most wonderful ride rolled into my life.

An Italian job (Olmo lugged steel frame; Deda stem and handlebars; Campagnolo gear gruppo, wheelset, and brakes; San Marco saddle), it had been custom assembled for its sole previous owner, but it had spent nearly all its life indoors hitched up to a trainer.  A glorious, candy-apple red, it was a perfect fit for me.

Within my first six months riding the bike, I was involved in a major crash: a dimwit riding several yards ahead of me on another bike thought it would be a good idea to make a U-turn across the passing lane without once looking over his shoulder or signaling.  He pulled directly in front of me and didn’t stop.  Moving at over 20 miles per hour, I shouted at the top of my lungs and T-boned him so hard that I literally flew over him, tearing a knee ligament as I came unclipped from my bike.

After several months of physical therapy, my knee would return to normal.  The bike, however, was not so lucky.  The fork was cracked, and the frame was rendered unusable when the headtube was stretched into an oval from the force of the impact.

The first thing I did was to try to find an exact replacement for the frameset.  Since the bicycle was already several years old, I could only pick up a frameset from the latest model year.  The most obvious difference: the frameset was silver, not red, and covered with a set of tacky, overly insistent decals.  It looked like a titanium wannabe, not the product of cool Continental craftsmanship that it actually was.

When I had my bike reassembled using the new frameset, a more serious problem emerged: the new fork was cut significantly shorter than its predecessor, dropping my handlebars down by more an inch and throwing a significant portion of my weight forward onto my hands.  My bike was no longer a good fit; riding for extended distances became tantamount to performing yoga.

I rode a great deal anyway, but I never felt the same way about the reformulated silver bike as I did about the original sweetheart red model — my heart didn’t skip with pride and expectation when I looked at it, or when I tossed my leg over its top tube.  In fact, I tried not to spend too much time looking at it closely: its aesthetic shortcomings acted as a permanent reminder, like a scar, from the crash.

I’ve already known for a while that next year I’m going to need to ride as I never have before.  Since I’ll be putting in more mileage and longer hours in the saddle, I really wanted to be excited about my choice of bicycle again. Not riding enough is simply not going to be an option.

I didn’t need, or want, a brand-new road bike.  After having my hide saved by the shock absorption of an all-steel frame, I was more determined than ever to avoid hopping on the carbon-fiber bandwagon.  My bike was very good, and it was tantalizingly close to being truly great.

Which is why I spent much of the day Friday inside a custom bicycle framemaking shop picking out a new fork looking at paint swatch samples to breathe new life into the current frame.  There were several beautiful blues, some lively greens and yellows, and numerous flirty pinks and reds, but nothing electrifying.

After a couple of hours of dragging paint chips out into the sunlight to see how they appeared in natural light, I was on the verge of giving up. That’s when we started to search for a missing paint chip in a giant color wheel, and I saw the answer:  Perfect Purple.

It was the energy of every snowy Vikings home game that I ever sat through at Met Stadium as a kid, every Prince song I ever danced to or sang along with growing up, all spun into a deep hue with a sparkling finish.  It was love at first sight, and the last word in color.

So starting next year, you’ll know how to spot me:  I’ll be The One With The Deep Purple Bike…and the giddy, deeply enamored grin.

This afternoon I was rushing to catch a train at 30th Street Station, dashing hurriedly along the south side of the building.  A man who was sitting outdoors on a window ledge called to me as I passed on the sidewalk.

“Excuse me, Miss!”  I looked squarely at him without saying anything, and when he caught sight of my face, he was taken aback.

“My goodness!  I ain’t never seen a thick Chinese girl before!  You are a big girl.  You are thick!”

I had to laugh.  He was so busy coughing up a backsided compliment that he never got around to panhandling me.

Pie magic at work, to be sure.

This year’s Thanksgiving dinner, in a nutshell: Eight people, six pies.

I’m still recovering, and I didn’t even cook.

This morning, I took part in my first-ever 5K event, finishing without once breaking into a walk.  No cramps, no aches, no pains, no worries. After two-and-a-half months of preparation, I now have five thousand reasons to be thankful.

All this, before I even tuck into any turkey. Happy Gobble-gobble, one and all!

Relieved over completing a long-term project at work just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday, and looking for a way to kick off the weekend, I spent much of the day indulging in various guilty pleasures.

Since we were both permitted to leave work early this afternoon, one of my friends and I sat down to a hearty late lunch, during which I tore through a hefty burrito that was nearly as big as my own head.  Then we stopped by a specialty store devoted to running gear, where I acted in my capacity (on behalf of the United States Department of the Treasury) as a pusher an agent of economic stimulus; she walked out with a new jacket, new socks, and a new shirt.

All this was before we had even sunk our teeth into the biggest prize of the day, a weekday matinee screening of a smash-hit movie that has been aimed squarely at a teenage target audience.  Yes, we immersed ourselves in “Twilight,” and emerged into the night-dark streets discussing the relative merits of boyfriends who are destined to suck for all eternity.  At which point, I promptly walked into a drugstore and walked out with a couple of canisters of chocolate tucked under my arm.

When I arrived home, I fixed myself a giant bowl of pasta under the flimsy pretense of carb-loading for tomorrow’s 5K event.  Which leads directly (do not pass “Go,” do not collect $200) to the greatest indulgence of all: slumber, unperturbed.

Remember what I said about racking up gear every time I take up a new activity?  Well, this week I’m going to be running in not one, but two 5K events.  On Thursday, I’ll be heading down to the Small Wonder (Delaware) to take part in the PNC Bank 5K for MS, and on Sunday I’ll be up in Bucks County running in the PhillyFit 5K.  Since I began training shortly after Labor Day, this means I have been a one-woman wave of economic stimulus:

• One pair of new specialty insoles (for which my ankles are most grateful)
• A new headband (to keep from being blinded by my own sweat)
• A new pair of earbuds (to stop fumbling with junk in my ears)
• Three pair of cushioned socks (sole food)
• A new pair of light outdoor gloves (very handy)
• A new sports watch (it was about time)
• A new running jacket (baby, it’s cold outside)
• Three new wicking shirts (uh…)

It’s rumored that Tim Geithner is going to pick up the phone at any moment and ask me to run a marathon.  Which would be more long-range planning than the Treasury Department has engaged in since I got off the couch.

I came home from work today intent on noshing on some hummus I had bought yesterday evening during a quick grocery run, but when I opened up my refrigerator, the hummus was nowhere in sight.

Had I forgotten to take it out of the bag? [Double-checks.] No.

Had I left it on a countertop? [Looks around kitchen.]  No.

Did I overlook some refrigerator shelf? [Opens and closes fridge. Repeatedly.]  No.

Had I put it in a cabinet? [Riffles though shelving.]  No.

Did I just imagine that I had bought it?  [Checks receipt.]  No.

Then where else could it possibly be? [Scratches head.]

In the freezer.  Of course.

(Somebody around here is under a bit of mental duress again…)

The pandas have struck again.  After a 20-year-old Chinese student climbed over a zoo fence in Guilin, China in a misguided attempt to give a panda bear a hug, the panda in question bit the student in the arms and legs.

This follows an incident at the Beijing Zoo last year, when a trespassing 15-year-old jumped into a panda enclosure, only to have the panda respond by “ripping chunks out of [the teenager’s] legs.”  Yow.

A word to the wise:  stick with hugging Hello Kitty.  She’s not endangered — and since she has no mouth, neither are you.

The last time I went out for a jog, I noticed something unusual as I passed underneath one of the bridges that span the Schuylkill River.  An enormous, body-length, lone icicle was suspended from the underside of the bridge.  It hung several yards to the side of the paved pathway I where I was huffing and puffing along, but viewing it made me uneasy nonetheless.

There’s been much ink spilled about how the recent global credit freeze has caused financial institutions to stop lending to each other.  During the past week I’ve witnessed some chilling trickle-down effects firsthand, dangling like that vicious icicle overhead.

I recently learned that not one, but two of my extended circle of colleagues are being — what is the phrase du jour? — “involuntarily separated” from the place where I work due to institutional belt-tightening.  While waves of layoffs have long been de rigueur in the private sector, I work in a milieu (higher education) where even individual layoffs are exceedingly rare.  That’s part of why people work there in the first place.

At the very moment when the job market is being flooded with hundreds of thousands of people who have just been downsized, hiring freezes are going into effect left and right.  This is the all-too-human analog to the standstill in credit circles; people’s livelihoods and lives are being put on ice.