Running with a Police Escort

by Jill Grunenwald

  Then there are cities like Houston. Cities that don’t suffer from the inclement weather of the Midwest, but have a different weather problem.

  To give some background, my mom grew up in the northern half of the United States and her parents relocated to Houston during the oil boom when my grandfather, an employee of Shell Oil, was transferred there. She was college-aged and never really lived there except on breaks and considers Ohio home, as does my dad. When it came time to meet her parents, he traveled to Houston one summer. That was the first and the last time my dad went to Texas during that time of year because it was just too damn hot. The doors from the airport open and the humidity hits you like a wall.

  Many Houston races are held in the winter. Or well, they hold races during that season of snow that the rest of us call winter and they call slightly less hot.

  I looked through the list of races that my uncle had sent me. All of them were held in February or March and after doing a bit of preliminary research on each one (i.e. Googling their website), I decided on the ConocoPhillips Rodeo Run. I mean, if I’m going to travel all the way to Texas to run a race, I might as well make the most of it.

  Go big or go home, amirite?

  Now came the hard part.

  The ConocoPhillips Rodeo Run offered two distances: a competitive 10K and a noncompetitive (also known as a fun run) 5K. I had started running back in February. It was now November, which means I’d been running less than a year at the time.

  By now I had completed five 5Ks. I was comfortable with the distance, but I also knew I had to be careful to not get too comfortable with it. Like the Rock ‘N’ Roll Half Marathon, this might be an opportunity to challenge myself to bigger and better things.

  I told my uncle we should do the 10K.

  In the moment, I was totally confident with that decision. But soon after, facing the prospect of traveling just over six miles via my not-so-speedy feet, I was feeling very overwhelmed and very unprepared. I knew that before I did anything else, I needed to find an appropriate training plan.

  All of my previous races up to this point had been 5Ks and none of them had been completed with any sort of formal training plan in place. Oh sure, I used the Couch to 5K program as a guide, but I didn’t really set out with an end goal. My first 5K at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo just sort of happened and after that it was more of a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of thing: I knew I’d be able to finish the second 5K because I’d already finished one. And after finishing two, I knew I’d be able to finish the third because I’d already done two. I was pretty much running on sheer faith in my previous abilities more than anything else. Maybe not the smartest way to go about it, but sometimes it’s just a matter of what it takes to get across that finish line on race day.

  With this, I knew I needed some guidance in place to steer me in the right direction. A 10K was double my longest racing distance thus far and while at first I may have thought that because I could run a 5K I could easily run a 10K, now that I had to, y’know, think about actually running said 10K my confidence was a little less secure. Now that my bravado had worn off and I was left not entirely convinced this was something I’d be able to do, I knew I definitely required a plan to get me to where I needed to go.

  Not knowing where else to start, I began looking around online for a 10K training plan and was daunted by the sheer number available. More than that, each one was unique in its own way and full of a dictionary’s worth of phrases that were so unfamiliar it was as if I was reading a foreign language: Fartlek. Tempo run. Hill repeats. Granted, the last one was easy enough to figure out on my own, but the rest I had absolutely no idea. Then there were the speed workouts that looked like a complicated math equation worthy of Mensa. Things like 12 to 16 x 400m with a 200m jog.

  What did that even mean? Was it even English? Furthermore, what on earth had I gotten myself into? I mean, I just wanted to run.

  After what felt like weeks of random web searches I stumbled across a six-week 10K Beginner Training Plan on the website of the Boston Athletic Association.

  The B.A.A. has been around since the late nineteenth century and is in charge of the esteemed Boston Marathon, the world’s oldest and most competitive annual marathon. When I say oldest, I emphasize the old part: the Boston Athletic Association itself has been around since 1887 and its pinnacle racing event premiered in 1897. The Boston Marathon is so well-regarded by those in the know, it doesn’t even need the “marathon” in the title. If ever in a conversation with a fellow runner, just say Boston and they’ll understand.

  So, what I’m basically saying, is that Boston is like the Madonna of the racing world. Or the Cher. Or the Adele. Or, well, you get the idea.

  If I was going to trust anyone to get me across the finish line of my very first 10K, this seemed like the racing organization to go with.

  In preparing for all of my previous races, I’d usually just run a couple of times the week leading up to race day and then just show up to the starting line and run. Fitting runs in around my work schedule didn’t pose much of a problem, but now I had to make sure I carved out time to run and stay on top of my training.

  Like most beginner or novice training plans, the one offered by the Boston Athletic Association had one goal in mind: to get the runner across the finish line of their very first 10K in one piece. That might sound kind of silly and simplistic, but when conquering a new distance, the mere act of finishing is a worthy and lofty goal and should be treated with as much respect and reverence as the time goals more advanced runners set.

  This particular plan—one of several beginner 10K plans available on the B.A.A. website—was time-based, not distance-based. So instead of being directed to run two or three miles, I was directed to run 15 to 25 minutes, with the duration of each run increasing week to week.

  At a glance, this is a fantastic way to design a running program since it’s focused on increasing a runner’s endurance. By slowly and methodically increasing the length of time a runner is running, the plan is able to naturally build up running stamina. Being a long-distance runner is one of those situations where tenacity tends to win out over speed because at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter how fast a runner is if they don’t have the strength to maintain that pace for a long period of time.

  The problem, of course, is that these time-based training programs are designed with a certain type of runner in mind. For me, in 25 minutes I can maybe get two miles in if I’m having a good day. Like a really good day. Like the kind of good day that a pop singer can make millions off of thanks to that one catchy summer song that waxes poetic about said really good day.

  The B.A.A. beginner training plan capped out with a 50- to 60-minute run. With my speed, that translated to roughly four miles.

  So essentially, for me, the flaw with time-based training programs is that I have absolutely no idea how much I “should” be running in the weeks leading up to the race. With a distance-based plan I know that my long run this week is three miles and in a couple of weeks it will be five miles. As a slow runner, I just know that 60 minutes is not enough time to cover what feels like should be a significant amount of ground a week before race day.

  6.2 miles didn’t seem like a tremendously far distance until I had to run it.

  It’s funny, really, how running has altered my perception of certain distances. 6.2 miles in a car feels like nothing and the first time I had a commute that was roughly the same distance as a half marathon I was thrilled, because it was the shortest drive to work I’d had in years. On the flip side of that, though, there was a period in my life when my twenty-mile commute felt like it was the longest route ever and I couldn’t imagine running that amount of terrain let alone tacking on an additional six-plus miles and running a full marathon.

  With a training plan selected and in place, I now had to actually start training for my race. There was just one little, tiny detail I had sort of conveniently forgotten when I decided to run a 10K in February:
training in the winter. In Cleveland.

  When I first started running a year prior, I utilized the treadmill because I didn’t really have any other options. But I was only running two or three times a week for a maximum of maybe 30 minutes at a time. Given the weather outside, this was really my only choice, although it wouldn’t have been my first choice because the Treadmill is a loathsome creature.

  Most people who hate the treadmill probably feel that way from some inherent, instinctual sense of self-preservation that tells them they should stay far, far away from that unnatural monster. I, however, come to my aversion the hard way. I have come face to face with the beast on the battlefield. I have stared down into its black belly and have seen its dark soul and have the scars to prove it.

  Shortly after graduating college with my BFA in Creative Writing, I moved back home (because, hi, I have a BFA in Creative Writing) and was once again living with my parents. I had a job. Well, I had two of them, which meant I was working six days a week. Evenings and weekends were my time to decompress and chill, which usually resulted in me binge-watching Grey’s Anatomy and Lost. (Keep in mind, that this was before Netflix and to do said binge-watching, I had to get in my car and drive to the video store, and woe was me if someone else was binge-watching the same show and got to the video store for the next sequence of DVDs before I did.)

  My mother, ever watchful, realized I was getting myself into a cycle where I would spend my days sitting in an office in front of a computer and then come home and spend my evenings sitting in my bedroom in front of a television screen. We had a gym down the street that my dad had been a member of for years, and my sister and I had occasionally gone there as children to swim laps in the pool or pretend we knew what we were doing with a racquetball.

  Because they didn’t want me to spend all of my free time draped across furniture in a nearly catatonic state, my mom encouraged me to get a membership to the very same gym and even sweetened the pot by offering to pay for it for me.

  Well, hell. I mean, I didn’t really have an excuse at this point to say no, now did I?

  The gym was by far the nicest facility I’d ever seen, though I really only had my outdated college recreation center for comparison. There was a pool, racquetball courts, saunas, an indoor walking/running track, and fancy locker rooms. When I checked in they gave me a towel and it was just so damn fancy.

  There were also machines. Lots of machines. On the far side of the building was the cardio equipment which was comprised of various machines like ellipticals, stair climbers, and, yes, treadmills. Lots of treadmills. A whole long row of them in fact, right up against the half wall that divided the sunken equipment room from the indoor track. Being someone who enjoyed walking, that’s what I would do on the treadmills. Sometimes I’d use the indoor track, but mostly I’d only hop on the treadmill since that’s where the televisions were.

  Being that this was a good almost fifteen years ago, I didn’t have a fancy iPhone or iPod that held an entire lifetime of music (including, naturally, my beloved Barbra Streisand). No, I had a Discman, which allowed me to only listen to one CD at a time, meaning that I had to go to the gym prepared.

  The thing about Discmans is that they are big and bulky. They are made to fit CDs, which, while not big and bulky per se, are obviously not as slim and sleek as a simple MP3 file. Well, okay, so CDs are slim but they are also wide and the Discman needed to be even wider. These days when I go running I can just pop my iPhone into my armband or tuck it into a pocket in my jacket or easily prop it on the elliptical dashboard.

  Not so easy with the Discman, which I’d have to sort of awkwardly put into the cup holder on the treadmill and hope I didn’t accidentally tug at it while fiddling around with my headphones and cause it to fall.

  Which, of course, means that one day I was fiddling around with my headphones and pulled the Discman from the precarious safety of its cubby and it tumbled down onto the treadmill’s moving belt.

  Instinctively, I reached down to pick it up. Because that’s what you do when a relatively expensive personal electronic goes falling towards the floor: you reach for it.

  Most of the time, I advise people to trust their instincts. If your gut tells you to do something, you should probably do it. The asterisk to that advice is that if you are on a fully operational and currently running treadmill and your musical device falls, you should probably just let it fall. At the very most, you should turn the treadmill off before attempting to retrieve it. At the very least, move your feet to the stable sides of the belt while deciding your next course of action.

  I did none of these things.

  Nope, all I did was reach down for the Discman while still walking on the treadmill. This caused my balance to shift on the moving belt and while it wasn’t moving very fast, it was still moving. In turn, I then lost all of my balance and slid down the length of the treadmill to the very end and onto the floor, the belt still moving.

  At many other gyms, this would probably be nothing more than a silly little story where I stood up, shook myself off, laughed at my stupidity, and got back on.

  If that were the case, though, I probably wouldn’t be writing about it.

  See, this row of treadmills was situated in front of a wall that divided the equipment from the indoor track. The gap between said treadmill and the wall was just wide enough for a person to walk up onto the treadmill. A gap that I was now stuck in between.

  So there I was, pinned between the wall and the running treadmill, my arm up against the moving belt, which, again, wasn’t moving very fast, but was still moving and now moving against the exposed flesh of my arm.

  Three miles per hour when you’re walking doesn’t feel very fast. Three miles per hour translated to a friction burn feels like Usain Bolt in the middle of a 100m sprint with my arm as the course.

  Years ago, I read Stephen King’s short story collection Everything’s Eventual, which opens with the story “Autopsy Room Four.” In it, the protagonist Howard wakes up from an unconscious state only to find himself on a table in the morgue. The doctors think he is dead and Howard, paralyzed but fully aware of what is happening, is struggling to communicate with them before they start the autopsy proceedings but is unable to get through.

  As much as I utterly adore Stephen King’s writing, there are few things worse in life than the terror of feeling like a character in one of his stories.

  In the fetal position on the floor in the far back of the equipment area, tucked behind all of the machines, I was pretty much out of sight of everyone. But I could see them and my eyes followed them, willing one of them to look in my direction. Terrifying doesn’t begin to describe it. I thought I called for help. I distinctly remember calling for help. But it may have all been in my head, like the internal screaming of a paralyzed patient living in the nightmares and dreamscapes of the master of horror, because when I was finally spotted and one of the employees came running over to rescue me, the first thing he asked was why I didn’t yell for help.

  Panic makes time crawl and it’s entirely possible I was only there for a minute or two, and not the five or ten it felt like, but it was long enough for the treadmill belt to rub my arm raw. It was pink and red and throbbing for months, then orange and brown and scabbing for months.

  I spent the entire summer in long sleeves.

  Some people say they hate the treadmill because it’s boring and the runners don’t go anywhere and there’s no change in scenery and they can’t run as fast indoors as they can outdoors. Granted, I’ve said all those things, too, but my fierce loathing goes much deeper than that. Because when I say I hate the treadmill or when I say that I’ve had bad experiences with that particular exercise machine, that’s the kind of evil shit I’m talking about.

  Unfortunately it’s also a necessary evil. Especially for runners living in a temperate climate like that of, say, Northeast Ohio. My training started in late January, the ground outside my apartment covered in snow and ice. Running in snow is
no joke and running on ice is even worse. It’s not even just running: when I was in sixth grade I broke my left wrist after just walking on ice. (Okay, well, I wasn’t walking so much as pretending to be an Olympic figure skater, only I wasn’t wearing ice skates since I don’t know how to skate. I was just wearing my boots on the frozen pond of one of those ritzy McMansions on the north side of town and I was twirling around and fell and slammed my wrist down on the ice and thus, a broken bone.)

  But I might as well have been walking and if I managed to break a bone just doing that, there’s no way I was going to risk another broken bone by trying to run on ice.

  I had six weeks between now and my 10K. If I was going to train for this bad boy and train successfully, I was going to have to suck it up and meet my old foe yet again. With hard work, dedication, a training plan, and an arm sleeve for my fancy iPod, I was going to tackle this beast and I was going to win.

  6

  Everything’s Bigger in Texas

  Six weeks prior, I started following my first official training plan. There were early morning runs and late night workouts and sacrificed sleep. I had done my fair share of cross-training and strength training and, of course, running, all on that stupid, stupid dreadmill. Now, a month and a half later, I had finally arrived:

  Race weekend.

  The ConocoPhillips Rodeo Run 10K wasn’t just going to be my very first 10K, this was also my first destination race. Which meant I had to travel to get to the race location. By airplane. Which meant packing. Which meant copious lists of what to take to make sure I had absolutely everything, and then packing and repacking multiple times just to make sure yet again that, no, I did not forget my shoes and, yes, they are packed in my carry-on because while I can handle my luggage being lost, I couldn’t handle my shoes going missing into the airplane ether so they were coming directly on board with me.