I knew that I had officially fallen in love with Brian when, approximately an hour into our meeting on Monday, he looked me straight in the eye and said to me, “You need to cut out this healthy shit.”
I’m sure I laughed in some sort of adorable way, especially because I know that he loves vegetables almost entirely as much as I do. But I knew what he meant. Butter is the spice of life and there is no two ways about it.
I considered bringing home a t-shirt that said “I ran the Boston Marathon and all I got was a farmer’s tan sunburn, chafed inner thighs, quads that make me walk like a 90 year old arthritic man, and two missing toenails.”
But I ended up keeping all my toenails. So it just didn’t seem right.
Plus that’s a pretty reductionist take on 26.2 miles, which somehow managed to feel like a lifetime. And also like five minutes.
But let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Or where we left off?
Justin and I in Athlete’s Village. Shivering. Freezing. Drinking coffee like it was our job. (And it was. Anything to ensure that you won’t have food jostling around in your stomach at mile 22.) Two port-a-potty trips (TMI? These are the realities of marathoning. Such is life.) and two hours later, he headed over to line up as he was in the first wave (jet-setter that he is) and I set about finding my cousin Meghan who had just arrived. Another port-a-potty trip and about an hour of calm-inducing gossip (seriously, there is nothing I love more than gossip) and we were off!
The first 13 miles were a blur. I felt good, I was speeding along way faster than my projected goal I had Glee blasting in my ear (well, first I had Goljan’s pathology, which was a sad attempt to study while I ran. Then I decided that Goljan was a sadistic ass for trying to talk to me about granulomas and tuberculosis while I was in the middle of a perfectly lovely morning. And he had to go.)
My one complaint is that it was hot. Really hot. Like oh-my-god-I-feel-like-I’m-either-going-to-melt-on-this-pavement-or-vomit hot. Neither of which happened. But you get my drift. Temperature-wise it probably wasn’t that bad but the sun was directly in front of us. Which made for one very lovely sunburn, let me tell you.
The Wellesley scream tunnel was around the half marathon point. Picture a wall full of girls, all carrying a sign that says “Kiss me, I’m insert descriptor here“. Kiss me, I’m Canadian. Kiss me, I have a red thong on. Kiss me, I like beer. You name it, there was a sign for it.
And that, my friends, was the last time I remember feeling really good. Around mile 14/15 my quads started to cramp up. At first it was just an ache near the lateral edges of both my knees. I was expecting to see my mom and family around 16.8 so I just told myself to keep going until then because I knew that seeing them would give me the energy to keep on keeping on.
But then. I didn’t see them. And that’s when things started to get really rough. Each step was a mental battle. I walked the hills. I stretched frequently. I reverted back to running for four minutes and walking for one minute, which used to be my old run/walk strategy (as opposed to what I had been doing which was running a mile then walking a minute).
It was hard.
I’m not really sure what I was thinking through all of this. Because you don’t really think. You can’t think. You just go. Wait for each mile marker to come. Try to listen to the people around you screaming the name that you’ve duct taped to your chest. Smile at all the “GO TEAM”‘s you get, since you’re wearing your Team in Training shirt.
But then once you round that corner onto Boylston. A corner that you’ve rounded so many times before. A corner that is rife with memories from when you lived in Boston and you were so utterly happy and had all of the best friends a girl could ask for living just a few doors down the hall. Once you see that finish line. It’s all worth it.
Final time – 4:33:42. A little less than an hour slower than my first marathon. But given the state of my legs these past few months. Pretty rock star.
A lot of things happened on the way to Boston.
My mom told my brother to slow down approximately 32.6 times. And on that six tenths of a time, he darted his head around and threatened to make her eat “ethnic food” for dinner if she didn’t keep the backseat driving to herself. She shut up after that.
And I laughed nervously.
Because I knew (secretly) that I was going to make her eat “ethnic food” for dinner that night. We had a date with six fantastic bloggers at my most favorite Afghani restaurant in all of Boston, you see. And I wasn’t about to miss it for the world. Besides, she’s the mother of a food blogger and she has to get used to it one of these days. Tough love is how I roll.
I think we were all a little worried yesterday when I turned the flame on the stovetop to high and plopped an eggplant on top of it.
And then grilled it.
On my stove.
In my defense, it was sunny with blue skies outside. Definite grilling weather.
I was cooking with the seasons.
This week has been non-ideal.
I’ve sat. A lot.
I own 300+ index cards. With really weird words on them.
“Homogentistic acid.”
“Sphingomyelinase.”
“Fibrillin.”
And this is only day five of studying. Out of about 50. Let’s not do the math and find out how many index cards I’ll have by then. They’ll outnumber my cookbooks. And then I’ll really be in a sad state.
However, if you were ever thinking of investing in anything. I have insider info. Index cards are the new Microsoft. Really. They’re gonna be big.
Just, you know. Don’t forget the little people on your way up. Specifically the ones who are buried in index cards with no money to eat because they have spent it all at Staples. Ahem.
My mother called me two days ago to try to convince me that being a vegetarian would send me into early menopause.
“But I saw it on the news!” she exclaimed, as if that made it the gospel truth. As if some holy and all-knowing being had come down and whispered it in her ear. You know, the all-knowing being otherwise known as the Good Day New York Fox Five news crew.
Right. I changed the subject.
A few minutes later. “But Joanne, why don’t you just eat chicken?” Because to her, chicken isn’t meat. Chicken is oxygen, vegetable, mineral. The be-all and end-all of everything one should eat over the course of the day. The pinnacle of all that is good in this world. So obviously, as a vegetarian (or more accurately, pescatarian) I should eat it.
(As an aside, this recent vegetarianism/pescatarianism change of mine may or may not be permanent. I make no promises and refuse to hold myself to anything. But so long as I don’t crave meat, I’m not going to eat it. Deal?)
Well, I have news for her. If I ever crave a meat again…I highly doubt chicken will be it.
Welcome to Eats Well With Others, where we take a vegetable-and-cupcake laden approach to life (always with a bit of laughter on the side)!
