Messy bun: highly questionable. If that thing flops out while I’m running I swear I will feel like I just filled my diaper. It’s a very bad feeling. So we will be using several hair-tie options, one on top of the other. Unlike with condoms, this works and is a good idea. If we have to go with a ponytail or a braid, fine, whatever, but they whack my neck which makes me feel less like the wind and more like a flogged horse. Even worse that I am also the flogger. (When is this not true?)
Hat: CANNOT DECIDE. Holds hair in place and is sturdier than sunglasses, but makes me look even older than I am? Sort of fusty, like I should be in Fred Rogers’ “jogging” track suit avec turtleneck? Also leaves bad forehead mark after 13.1 miles. Truly, no one cares, I understand, and yet.
Eyes: a) any make-up will run with the sweat and SPF, so I hope you enjoy the race, Plain Jane; b) KEEP THEM ON YOUR OWN MAT, MANRING. Trying to run anyone else’s race is a profoundly uncomfortable and stupid activity, which I have already spent more than enough of my life doing. So, whenever someone passes me, I’ll be curbing the urge to accelerate. I will, instead, offer them a snack as they blow by* (“victory to others,” or something, says the Buddhist self-help book on my bedside table. I read it for five minutes every night, manage to weasel out a slight flicker of understanding, and then forget everything I read by the next night. It’s very Zen in this way, my tired brain, like those water paintings that disappear.)
*see #4
Headphones: bone-conduction style, settled in front of ear-hole (that is technical term), so I will be able to hear traffic, the throngs of people cheering me on, and other runners’ replies when I offer them nutrition gels, which I can’t seem to stop myself from doing, even when they are not seeking help. Hey, you OK? Need a gel? I got extras. (Pats pocket on chest, winks creepily, trots away feeling really awesome about kindness, despite confusion / annoyance on subject’s face.) Also regarding headphones: see “deeply conflicted playlist,” which includes Beyonce, an undisclosed country song, a couple angry TSwift tunes, and a track from Last of the Mohicans, in addition to the Edgy Nordic Nonsense requisite for people who, when not racing, wear glasses in the same genus as David Rose’s.
This one’s from my daughter’s underpainting—everything in our house has colorful underpaintings like this one now, from grocery lists to living room walls, so I’ve come to incorporate her abstract shapes into my thoughts, tea-leaf-reader style, as I parse my own over-writings. Here, I like to think an only slightly misaligned third eye is guiding me from behind and above my right shoulder.
Weird antenna nipple for my squishy water bladder (bright pink). I’ll be wearing only one of these since my son bit the center out of the other one. I try not to feel weird about the antenna nipple but it’s weird. (Observe the look on my “face” in this sketch. It may have to do with the antenna nipple. See also: real nipples: something people don’t tell you about running long distances is that things chafe. Lots of things chafe. They very chafe. There is a product called “Squirrel’s Nut Butter” which may be all you need to know to complete your understanding of this subject.)
Underarm: another chafing area. Know how many times my arm rubs against my ribs and shirt and hydration vest during 13.1 miles? Let me look it up on one of my over-priced, under-used running tracker apps, hang on. OK, it’s roughly 24,000 times. Sometimes after a race I walk around with my arms slightly lifted for a few days, like a newly minted butterfly.
Abs. Oh, the abs. Thank you, non-runners, for your kindly concern for my knees. They are fine. The thing is the abs, and the pelvis, and the glutes. Anything that does the work of holding me together. (Can you imagine trying to keep 5’7” of swinging limbs and bouncing parts, basically a human yard-sale, pulled together over 13.1 miles? It’s like reeling in 24,000 deep water fish—the big-ass, strong ones with sharp teeth and dire expressions—without a winch. Or working to suck in hurtling planets as they go by, the ones that are trying to fling themselves out of the solar system and be demoted and written out of the science books. No, my knees do not require your well-wishes. But the real team-player muscles— now those can use some love.
Draw-string: will it hold? Will it irrevocably crease my tender mouse-pouch skin? It seemed a kinder option than the crenellation of an elastic waist-band, or the COMPLETE USELESSNESS of yoga pants in the face of actual gravity and an actual female body, but we’ve had to adopt a wait-and-see mentality, as with so many situations these days. See also: hoping to avoid woodland pit-stops, for both the reasons you’d imagine, like potential onlookers and poison ivy, and several others, including spiky caterpillars, accidentally peeing in your expensive shoes (see #13), and not really being able to get your underwear back up because it’s gotten too sweaty and is sticking to your legs (see #11).
Inseam: this one’s a doozie. Go long and it bunches up in the center and you look like a kid trying not to admit they have to pee; go short and your thighs may start a thousand fires. No, 24,000 fires. (I do not believe in the concept of wishing for a “thigh gap”; my thighs have always been well acquainted, and around here we have real upper-leg solidarity, none of this “every thigh for herself” business, which I can’t help but believe might leave one feeling rather lonely.) I have opted here for medium length, plus Squirrel’s Nut Butter. Results TBA, but the augury of my daughter’s underpainting suggests I may have chosen amiss.
Wedgie-picking hand. Hot tip, to avoid becoming the community half-marathon version of Rafa Nadal: wear underwear that’s so large it falls off when you put it on. Then it has neither the will nor ability to ride up. The shorts, goddess willing, will hold them in place.
Calf: my sin of pride. Before you judge, know that when I began running in my thirties, I had the opposite of calves (claves, maybe?) Therefore, I allow myself the indulgence of pride, hot and slithering, every time my lower-leg meat-hunks touch in the tub. Well done, friends, I say to them aloud, and go extra heavy on the Epsom-pour.
Very fancy expensive shoes: these soles, friends, are filled with nitrogen instead of oxygen, or some such thing, I am told by the running store dude. Placebo? Maybe. But the thing we forget about the placebo effect is that IT WORKS. That’s why it’s called an effect. Obviously, I shall run like the wind.
*Note also the underpainting’s prediction of smoke rising from my shoe. That smoke is, I feel, a product of the fires of excellence. After all, every tea-leaf reader comes to the cup in possession of both her own limitations and the gonads to try and find a way around a few of them.
Before I go carb-load, I’ll say one more thing about running, racing, being part of a community, trying to make sense of yourself, and being realistic while working to manage some form of access to wonderment and hope:
Hey, need a gel? I got extras. (Pats chest pocket, winks creepily, runs on.)
I hope you frame this art and text!
Caroline, I am laughing and admiring so hard. Brilliant, hilarious, honest. Talk about self aware! Brave all the way. Good luck good luck and thank you!