Thanksgiving is about many things: First and foremost, for
thanks, then family and food. This year
for me, Thanksgiving was about running a 5k.
I’d signed Jason and myself up for the Salem Thanksgiving
Day Run’ocopia before I moved to Salem, before I had even packed. In the month before moving, I spent a lot of
my free time browsing the internet for activities and sites in Salem. I would crouch over my laptop, scrounging up
travel websites with articles on Salem, imagining my new life as an
Oregonian. I began a mental list of all
the places I wanted to go, restaurants I wanted to try, things I wanted to
do. The Salem Turkey Run came to my
attention and I thought, “Sure, I can train for a 5k in less than three weeks.”
I come from a family of runners. I remember, when I was younger, my dad would
go on morning runs before work. He
always says that physical activity is the best treatment for a depressed mind,
and as Fathers typically are, he is correct.
My mother ran track and cross country in high school (ironically in
Salem), her famous race being the 800 meter run. I remember being at the state high school
track meet in Idaho and looking at the record times for my school’s 3A
division. My mother’s 800 meter time was
faster than Idaho’s 3A record. It was in
this moment I realized, with awe, my mother’s talent, which she humbly hardly
mentions. My sister Sarah runs
frequently for no one but herself. She
runs typically between three and eight miles at least twice a week, sometimes with more
frequency and sometimes less, depending on the season, her body, and her
schedule. If she doesn't run, she starts
sleepwalking at night. When I was living
with her, she took a break from running for about a month. I remember hearing her walk around the
apartment in the wee hours of the night.
She’d walk into the dark kitchen and open the refrigerator , staring
inside, or take off her socks in the corner of the living room and leave them
there. In the morning she wouldn't
remember these things, and then she’d look with confusion at the balls of her socks
in the corner of the room opposite of where she slept, wondering how they had
gotten off her feet. My youngest sister
got a track scholarship for college, and while she focuses mostly on jumping,
her frequent running workouts mean that she is in top physical condition, lean
as chicken breast, and her running pace is quick and precise. She is a running force.
While I ran in high school myself, I am not the runner of the family, to say the least.
The first day I started “training,” I slowed from a jog to a
walk after less than ten minutes time; my lungs felt as if they were coated on
the inside with ice crystals that would break off and then refreeze to the
lining of my lungs with every breath in and out. It stung and I felt like my lungs were small
persimmon-sized rocks, hard and unexpansive in my chest. The entire rest of the day I had a
deep-throated and painful cough as though I had smoked a pack of cigarettes
instead of gone running. The next
training day felt better. Before I
started off into my jog into the November Boise air, I walked, taking purposeful
breaths in and out, trying to acclimate.
My next run was even better. I
worked up from ten minutes to fifteen, then twenty, then I unexpectedly ran over
twenty-five minutes before realizing that I had gone over that day’s running-time
goal.
On Thanksgiving day, the day of the race, I woke up at
4:30 am with a tummy ache; the richness of dinner the night before had disagreed
with me. I spent the next few hours on
the floor of our new apartment’s guest bathroom, sporadically heaving over the
toilet bowl, the bitter taste of stomach acid inside my mouth and nose. With the guest bathroom christened, I finally
went back to bed and slept for about forty-five minutes before the alarm went off.
“You don’t have to do the race,” my husband said, “we can
skip it.”
It was a tempting offer, although I know my body, and I knew
that it had already expelled whatever it needed to, and I would be fine for the
rest of the day. It was a tempting
offer, even if I hadn't been ill all morning.
The bed was so soft, the denseness of early morning still making me
sleepy—but I’d put so much work into preparing myself for the race. Surprisingly, I was looking forward to it.
And so we ran.
The race was as you’d expect it to be. Some runners were serious competitors; some
people were just out to have a good time with their family. There were moments when I desperately wanted
to stop and walk, but I didn't. Mostly
people passed me, but sometimes I would pass someone as I crept along the trail
in my slow pace. Up the hill on the course
there was a sign mid-way up: “This is the only hill, You can do it!” After I had completed about three-fourths of
the course, my left foot fell asleep. About 200 yards from the finish line, the
winner of the 10k race, who had to run the course twice, passed me. When I saw the finish line, I picked up my
speed, stretching to make it, to complete the race, looking forward to the reviving
feeling of sweat chill on the body once it cools down from constant motion. My time was 36 minutes 5 seconds (which is
slow, comparatively), but I was so proud of myself that I literally had to hold
back tears of excitement after finishing.
I ran the race for me. It wasn't about winning or trying to
fit into the Oregonian running-culture.
It was about a taking a short-term goal and making it my own and being
happy with my hard work and my results, even if I was passed during the race or
didn't come in with a competitive time
(things that would normally have me beating myself up). Somewhat romantically, I feel like the spirit
of the 5k Turkey-run came at the perfect time, when the change of moving to
another state can become either a story of success or failure. The race is a parallel event to the move to
Salem, and I feel like the success I feel from my completion of the race is an
omen for the success I can work towards here, not only as I search for jobs or
friends, but also mentally, as I choose to focus on the journey of the race,
rather than my “time” at the finish.
The rest of Thanksgiving?
I choreographed and cooked a Thanksgiving meal for the two of us and ate
all the calories I’d burned earlier in the day, happily.
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