To runish or not to runish - that is the question!

by Nancy Grossman-Samuel

Actually, there is no question. The answer is, of course, TO RUNISH!!

I did something recently that, blew me away. It was something I never thought I would do because, frankly, I never wanted to, but an e-mail from the American Heart Association changed all of that. They invited me to join them by racing at the OC Marathon. I would raise monies for a great cause (my father had an aneurysm  my uncle a stroke, and I have high blood pressure – so there are a lot of good reasons to support this worthy organization). I did a little fundraising, a lot of physical training and then I RUNNISHED the OC Marathon! Yahoo, wahoo, and holy mackerel! From virtual couch potato to marathoner – or more accurately half-marathoner – a full marathon still seems like a far off dream that frankly (gotta find another word), I really am not interested in doing though meeting all those marathoners is making me think – some day maybe…

Runishing is a word coined by Bethany – a Team in Training volunteer (the organization responsible for my next half-marathon to be undertaken at Disneyland in September) –  to describe… well actually RUNISH was the specific word, but any good verb will obviously need its various verb forms to stay grammatically correct …the act of both running and walking the same race. You know, “I don’t really run the whole race, I kind of runish it… I walk a little I run a little… I runish.”

So I just runished my first ½ marathon – the Orange County Marathon – on May 5^th.

It was brilliant. It was an amazing feat I never thought I would do as it is my sisters who are the athletes. I am a reader, writer, desk worker. I do walk, and at pretty decent clip. I have been walking approximately four miles, two or three times a week for years with a few additional walks in between and during certain times, even a swim. But 13.1 miles is a totally different animal.

I got through the blisters and fear of not being able to do it during my 9 and 10 mile training walks. By the time I got to the race, and completed 13.1 – I felt elated, ecstatic, joyful, playful, young at heart, and very much alive. All that and more, actually. I even left the two women I was runishing with behind when I saw the 12 mile marker, turned to them and said “I gotta go!” I do not quite know what came over me, but I was ready and needed to fulfill this inner child drive to do more and go faster and blaze my own new trail.

And I did mostly RUN the last mile except for a brief encounter with 86 year old, Dorothy Joy, who had on a bright yellow shirt whose back declared: “I am 86, walk with me!” I found out that this was not her first ½ marathon but somewhere around her 40^th, and that she did her very first one the day before her 75^th birthday! So let me see… using my math brain, if she has done 40 marathons in 11 years, that’s an average of just over 3 ½ half-marathons per year. At that rate, at 86 I should be on number 93 or 94. Heck, maybe I can get to my hundredth… but I really shouldn’t get so carried away. The big unknown in this is how my body will react. In my foolish youth I jumped out of airplanes 200 times, which means 200 landings, and my ankles and knees did take their fair share of beatings…

I crossed the finish line at the OC fairgrounds hearing a voice call out my name and city of residence, and then I wandered around a little chatting with a few friends, waited for my runish partners to complete, and then decided it was time to take a shower and leave. So I walked back to the hotel in my socks – my feet had been screaming “Hey, you, we really need to get out of these like NOW! Please. Let us free!!!” for a while, so I did, and my happier feet and eventually very dirty socks got to the hotel, took an ice bath, got dressed, and feeling awesome, drove to LA.

I volunteered in LA until nearly 8 that evening and I never got tired, or felt down or drained. My quads were a little angry with me, especially since I was walking stairs a lot that afternoon and evening, but they calmed down a few days later.

The part I am failing to grok (see Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein) is that 5 days later my body began an odd assortment of complaints that are keeping me from runnishing or even walking longer distances right now.

I want to start training for my next Team in Training experience, but I will not until I know that my body has fully recovered. My heal hurts, and my back is a little twingey. But alas, I do have some alternatives. I can’t runnish, but I can swim AND I can ride my bike – though I may need a little help for a bit getting it off the ceiling of my garage – a task that was easy last week.

So I have to wonder... is this is my body’s way of wanting me to prepare for my first triathlon? No date yet set, but I do have my triathlon partner!