Good of You to Come

the day holds 

so much promise
even in the early hours

I can feel the warmth on my legs 
as I travel the route
I have run all winter

a mother and father 
wander along the trail,
each with a stroller 
and a jubilant child

on the road
cars rush past
dogs leaning out happily

catching every scent 

young boys spread across the field
flinging a lacrosse ball back and forth,
back and forth

crossing a bridge,

I see a message spelled out

in brightly coloured letters

I know it’s very late

but will you be my prom date

at a nearby farm,

I stop to watch

as a newborn calf

staggers round his mother

his black tufts of fur

still wet from her tongue

in the afternoon,
sitting with the dogs

Stella and Fern sunbathing in the front garden

sprawled in the shade,
I can hear the chickens 
rooting through the wreckage 
of last year's garden,
rising in bursts of flight
when the cats come too close

hours later, lying awake 
my skin humming with heat
muscles twitching with fatigue,
I can see my neighbour's bonfire
flickering against the night sky

oh spring,

how long we have waited,
so good of you to come

Giving Chase

This fall, when preparing for the Steamtown marathon in Scranton, I confess I got a little caught up in a numbers game. Sure, I had been trying to go faster for years, and yes setting a new PB in Corning marathon last fall did inspire me, but it was not until running 3:11:55 on a cold, rainy and windy day in Boston that I started to believe I could break 3:10.  Then I saw on the Marathon Canada website that my Boston time was the second fastest in my age group for the year, and that the fastest time was 3:09:55, which is when I started envisioning (read: imagining in an obsessive fashion) running even five seconds faster than that time in order to move into first place.

The upside of having a goal is that it gives me a dot on the horizon to run towards; on the tough runs with Tanya, when I was sure I couldn’t hit the paces that Tim had given me (having once even emailed him to ask if he hadn’t perhaps given me Tanya’s pace times by mistake), I thought of that 3:09:50 goal, and it propelled me up the hills and along those windy stretches. The downside of having a goal is that with it come the possibility and the fear of failure. The mind is a mighty instrument, and it can propel one to great heights or great depths with equal speed; it can concoct visions of striding through the finish line victorious, but also of blowing up mid race and having to walk, watching the minutes tick away, and seeing the clock at the finish line confirm the passage of time. 

My training throughout the summer had been full of hill running in Cape Breton, and I was feeling confident until I ran a half marathon race in Wellesley, on a humid, windy day at the end of September, where I had a disastrous run, battling the wind, overheating, and coming in at 1:36, which translated into a much slower pace than I hoped to run the entire marathon in.  My good friend Kelly was only seconds behind me, and she went into damage control right away, reminding me of the conditions and of the miles I had already run that week.  My coach later suggested that a bad race was inevitable every few races, and that it was a good indicator that I needed to taper heavily (cut back my mileage) leading up to the marathon.

For the next few days, I pushed aside all negative thoughts about the half marathon, and then one morning, I started a speed workout and felt a tweak in my lower back that I thought would loosen as I warmed up. It did not.  I ran three repeats of a kilometer each, and with each repeat my left hip felt tighter and a little sorer.  And then the rain began in earnest, and I headed for home—seven kilometers away--in the rain, with my left foot almost flopping due to decreased range of motion.  I went into worst-case scenario mode with the ease of a seasoned veteran: I pictured myself mid race, limping desolately along the road, unable to run any further because of my hip.  Once I was home, I rushed to make physio and massage appointments, and I spent the next week stretching and fussing.  On my last physio appointment, days before the race, I was calmed by my physiotherapist, Brenda, a goddess of sorts, who said very sagely, you will be fine.  She had worked out the problems with my locked hip, and the inflammation had subsided. I can't tell you how many times I replayed her simple refrain over in my mind: you will be fine. 

Driving down to Scranton, I was excited and worried in equal measures. Yes, I believed I could go under 3:10, but how much under, and what if something went wrong?  Overhead, the skies were dark and brooding, muting the fall colours on the surrounding hills, but the closer I got to Scranton, the more excited I became.

On Sunday at five in the morning, I took the bus from downtown Scranton to the high school in Forest City and warmed up for the race, trying to stay settled and not get caught up in the antics or frenetic energy of others.  It was a perfect morning: crisp, cool, and sunny, with little wind.  When the gun went off, I surged with a big crowd down the first hill; the crowds forced me to begin slowly, but after that I began to make my way up through the mass of runners.  In the early kilometers I fretted about every little sensation in my hip, fearing it would mark my demise, and then after a while, I thought for goodness sake just run.  Stop worrying about time; stop looking at your watch; just enjoy the morning.  And I did. I looked at my watch only every few kilometers, and I was pleased to see that I was ahead of pace. I was careful on the long down hills, and once the route turned onto a rail trail that was newly paved, I enjoyed every step of the sunlit trail with the fall colours on either side of me.  I believe those were the prettiest miles I have ever raced. At the halfway mark, I was at 1:33:05, more than a minute faster than my goal split.  I said to the young man I was running with, whose goal was also sub 3:10, that I thought we should aim for 3:08 high instead.  Though he dropped back a little later in the race, I saw that he finished in 3:09, well under his goal.

The final 10 km can be tough, incredibly tough, but I was feeling strong, even when I had to face the last hills.  I was still passing people, and I moved up from 20^th woman to 17^th woman, before one woman battled back and passed me in the final kilometer.  She would no doubt have run much faster that day but for a clear injury. At the end we embraced each other, for her strong finish had inspired me, while she said I had motivated her saying, let's go now, when I went by. Small words to be sure, but sometimes they are enough.

It is hard to describe the feeling of crossing the finish line and seeing the clock at 3:08:25.  I knew I had surpassed my goal, but I didn't know by what margin.  It is a wonderful thing to be able to surprise yourself, especially at this age.  All too often I find myself painfully predictable in my behaviour: I can be irritable, uptight, impatient and judgemental. How lovely, then, to act in a way I had never dreamed possible. 

As many of you know, I learned I had beaten the existing record for women in Ontario 50—54, so I applied to have the record updated only to learn that my time did not count due to the fact that the Steamtown marathon course has too much downhill and is considered an “aided” run. At first I was a little downcast, but then I reminded myself that I didn’t even know about the record before I raced.  Ultimately I am glad, really, that they did not accept my time, because it has since been surpassed by a runner from Toronto, Anne Byrne, who at the age of 50 ran her first marathon in Philly in a time of 3:06.  Wow.  I have since looked at her times at shorter distances, and she is considerably faster than I am as are many, many women my age, which I remind Phyll of when she tells people I am the fastest woman in Canada. It’s not that I don’t appreciate her vote of confidence; it’s just that I have been surrounded by talented runners long enough to know where I stand in the grand scheme of running. 

I really appreciated the newspaper articles and my fifteen minutes of fame, and then the buzz died down and for a time I felt a little flat. Then I started running again and experienced the usual aches and pains, and I fussed that it meant my fast days were over, so I committed to stretching and some yoga every day. Each week, now, I am running a little more and trying to worry a little less. This might be my toughest goal yet; is it too much irony to try my hardest at not worrying?

Chickening In

I have chickened out of many things in my life, including skateboarding tricks with my friends back in eighth grade, black diamond runs at the Lake Louise ski hill, and even bungee jumping in Queenstown, NZ.

As I think back to those moments, I can almost feel the gnawing fear in my stomach and the paralysis that enveloped me as I stared at the skateboard ramp, the ski slope or the ravine I was to jump into with merely a bungee cord to protect me from death. Each time I chose not to try, I felt disappointed in myself but ultimately relieved that I was escaping potential injury or worse.

Now for the first time in my life I am chickening in, and, perhaps, even coining a new term. Chicken in: to give in to the relentless requests of a loved one and agree to have a chicken coop and thus chickens on your property.

Thus far, chickening in has not involved a great deal of effort on my part, but Phyll has been working diligently, because as she says, and I can't make this up, she is trying to make a nice home for our chickens.

 As the picture shows, she built a chicken coop from a kit (purchased from TSC should you be interested), and then built a larger run around it, using our old gazebo--Bern's genius plan--and covering it with, you guessed it, chicken wire. Thus the chickens have a small run where they are enclosed by two fences, and a larger run where they are still fully protected from the likes of coyotes and foxes.

Meet Stella and Fern who arrived on Thursday. I took this photo Friday when I checked their nesting boxes, hoping to see two eggs shining up at me. It turns out that fear can scare the poop out of a creature (or in the case of the Gingerbread Man from Shrek a jelly tot), but not so an egg.

Saturday morning, while Phyll slumbered, I ventured out again secretly hoping that I would be the one to discover the first eggs. Do you see how addictive chickening in is?  I protested their arrival for years, and now I am out there, observing their habits and hoping they will provide me with a small meal.

Picture this pastoral scene: Chebbi stood barking at the gate, wanting to know what these new creatures were, Willow wandered into the yard, crying from hunger after a night on the lam, and the chickens clucked in protest at the dog, the cat, and their whole new world.

I lifted the roof of their home to find they had laid no eggs, but they had managed to make a big mess by knocking over their water dish that Phyll had hanging by a wire. Even though their feet look quite rubbery, I didn't think they would appreciate a wet floor, so I cleaned it up while they clucked and cooed with their red combs flopping back and forth all the while. At one point they got quite bold; the first one walked down the little ramp, and the second came careening behind her, but they soon scrambled back inside.

Phyll has spent many hours since then trying to position their water container so they don't keep knocking it over. She has also been checking them every few minutes to see if they've ventured out of the coop where she has placed scraps for them to peck at. She claims one is bolder than the other and has ventured further. As the sun was setting last night, one of the girls did lean her head out to enjoy the last golden light of the day.

Phyll is very excited about this new addition to the family, and in fact while at school, ostensibly working but really just finishing this blog post, she sent a photo, with a Lindor chocolate juxtaposed for perspective on our wee egg. I can’t help but feel the twisted ends of the wrapper look like wings.  How perfect.

It may be a few weeks yet before we are whipping up quiches and soufflés, but I have to admit that, so far, chickening in feels much better than chickening out.

On A Lucky Day

During the dogs’ absence, I have witnessed an interesting phenomenon.  When the cats and I were first on our own, back at the beginning of the summer, they were tentative about moving upstairs to eat or to sleep or play their all-night games of Crazy Eights, because, let’s face it, with the arrival of Chebbi, it was a lot safer and quieter in the basement, where they still had an endless supply of food, several beds to choose from, without being pursued or tormented by a impossibly large creature with unmanageable hair and golden brown eyes.

After a few days, though, Willow began to venture upstairs.  The first day she could only manage a few bites of food before bolting, but gradually she grew bolder and not only did she eat an entire bowl of food, but she took to staying for the whole day, curled up in the vastness of the dog bed. 

Willow at sea.

Having never put the cameras in to track their actions, I can’t say for certain what the cats got up to in our absence, but let’s just say they had become pretty territorial by the time I got back and felt it was within their right to ask for two pieces of I.D. before letting me in. Xena seems to have left her own body weight worth of hair on the rugs, while Duke, when he sees fit to come home at all, sprawls wherever he chooses. Willow has taken to curling up with me when I read, though like the best of cats, her objective is to disrupt my reading by walking back and forth between my book and me.

I can’t help but feel the cats know that their halcyon days are growing to a close.  They have been lounging all over the house and out on the pool deck as if they want to take advantage of every final moment of dog-free existence. I swear they are tracking the dogs’ progress; I’m sure they made Duke look up New Brunswick on the map last night after they heard Phyll had made it to Edmunston.  They probably counted on their paws how many hours it would be before Chebbi and Griff rolled in.

I feel awful knowing that the moment Willow registers the dogs’ arrival, she will retreat downstairs, and I will see her only when I venture into the coolness of the basement. They are cats, they will be fine, Phyll tells me when I express my concerns.  Just get ready, she says as she drives towards home, for a big dog on the bed tonight. 

The reality is that sometimes it’s difficult to make everybody happy regardless of your best efforts. This truth became glaringly obvious to me yesterday when my friend Kelly and I offered to look after our friend Tanya’s twins, Easton and Emmett, for a few hours while she and her husband Ryan packed up their house to get ready to move. Tanya and Kelly live only a block apart, so Tanya wheeled the boys over to Kelly’s in their little wagon, and we took them from there to the nearby park. As Kelly pulled them, I walked alongside of the wagon, and watched as both boys stared at us intently. Facing each other as they rode along, they were content, but as we stopped the wagon and reached down to lift them out, they suddenly realized that we were not familiar, not familiar at all.  And they howled.  More precisely, Easton, as Kelly lifted him into her arms, began to bellow.  Not more than a second or two later, Emmett, now in my arms, chimed in.  Two distraught boys, crying in stereo, can create quite a cacophony. In that swell neighbourhood, I was worried someone might alert the authorities. Now Kelly has raised two sons and is no stranger to the world of a child’s tears, and I have plenty of memories of babysitting children who would suddenly “play strange” as the expression goes, so we both went into distraction mode. Kelly tried the swings and the big digger truck that some kind person had left at the playground, while I pointed out the movable blocks with pictures of animals on them, but to no avail.  We knew we were in difficulty when Kelly offered them each a biscuit and they shook their heads vehemently.  No, no, no. 

They were clearly stressed, and thinking back to my own moments of homesickness upon waking in my camp bunk and wishing desperately that I were home in my bed, I felt terrible for them.  Luckily, the solution for our charges was less drastic than building a raft and paddling home from camp. The moment we placed them back in the wagon and started to move, the crying stopped.  Perhaps the boys thought that as long as they were in motion they were potentially coming closer to mommy and daddy, but I imagine it was more simple than that.  The motion of the wagon was soothing, and the sights and sounds were distracting.  They were fascinated by a man mowing his lawn, and we considered going in search of mower after mower, but because it was one of the hottest days of the summer, shade was our first priority, and we simply walked the streets of the nearby neighbourhoods.  As they recovered from their crying jags, with the odd shudder from the after shock, they began to look around more, and as every good teacher does, I tried to point out things that might interest them. I started with leaves and then amped it up with maple keys.  And that was enough.  Who doesn’t love twirling a maple leaf in his hot little hand, or dragging a clump of maple leaf keys over his chubby legs? Being the mother she is, Kelly came well prepared with bottles of cold water, which they enjoyed picking up and putting down. Simple distractions; simple pleasures. 

Easton and Emmett in motion

We were all relatively happy, if somewhat weary, as we rolled the wagon into Tanya and Ryan’s backyard an hour or two later.  I am happy to report they did not burst into tears upon seeing Tanya and Ryan, though they were eager to crawl all over her as we sat in the shade in the backyard, Kelly and I with a nice cold cider, which I have to say we earned. I was happy to see them splashing in the pool, digging in the dirt, no worse off for the momentary trauma they had experienced.

We do what we can to keep the people (and animals) we care about happy and safe.  On a lucky day, a wagon in motion will suffice.