Beware of Entrance to a Quarrel.
July 13, 2007 – 5:29 pm |Lr- Lawrencium, K- Potassium, Ag- Silver, Na- Sodium I- I, I, I HATE Running. This sucks. NO! Again: Au– Gold, As- Arsenic or Ass, as in Running kicks my ass.
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Lawyers are always doing things we advise our clients not to do. “Read documents thoroughly,” I caution my clients. “Review everything,” I tell them. “Little words can pack big punch.” In my personal life, though, like every harried mother, I often sign documents hastily. If only I had taken a bit more time when I originally signed up for The Race. Then, perhaps, the little words may not have snuck up and pummeled me in the gut. As it turns out, the fine print on the registration form is, well, not exactly fine.
Apparently, The Race prohibits iPods.
Excuse me? What?! I repeated it again in disbelief, reading it out loud to exactly no one. “The Race PROHIBITS iPods.”
No music? No motivational musings from Eminem or Journey or Beyonce to help spur me along my ten mile path? Just Me? Alone? With Running?
Isn’t that just like you Running? I accused, in disgust, as the ramifications of the newly discovered rule began to sink in, to take away my only hope of distraction.
Since I started the program with my virtual trainer, Hal Higdon, I haven’t had to be alone with Running. The last time I tried this type of exercise, of course, was The Mile, in high school gym class. Back then, running while listening to a specially designed motivational music playlist, while probably technically feasible, would have been cumbersome and unusual.
This time around, my delight in music has helped facilitate my healthy new relationship with Running. I turn the music up, and then we can ignore each other. Listening distracts me from the burning sensation in my lungs and the pain in my legs, and singing along in my head stops me from starting the I-Hate-Running-This-Sure-Sucks mantra.
After I made the realization, the fear set in quickly. I don’t know if I can do this without music. I will not Own the Moment. I will Stop Believin’. I am not a Survivor; I am gon’ give up.
Nevertheless, in a sincere desire not to quit, in an effort to fulfill my commitment to finishing The Race, I decided to ease into the idea of training, at least some, in quiet solitude, without my music. I vowed to complete one of my training runs per week sans iPod.
This week, I made my first attempt. I took my run off the treadmill, and I hit the road (I’m up to two miles on the treadmill pretty consistently, but I have yet to really tackle either outdoor running, or speed.) Per The Race, I left the iPod at home.
At about mile marker .2, when the pain and burning started, I regressed. “I hate running,” I chanted inwardly to the rhythm of my pounding feet, “this sucks.” Resolved, though, I forced myself to stop the mantra. I took a breath, and I started brainstorming what I might do to distract myself:
How? How? How? I know! I should dig deeply into my mental files and think about all the things I have ever memorized. Great idea.
So I began. I took out a mental file marked “random memorization” and sifted through the contents.
I still remember every word of my wedding vows. How about those? We had assembled a verse I loved, still love, pieced together from different standard options. We memorized it, preferring recited vows over repeated vows. In an effort to guarantee our accuracy, however, we’d kept it brief. I replayed the vows in my head, but I still hadn’t made it to mile marker .3.
What else? I had long ago tried to purge any memory of my Bar Exam Review class, but I found a few mnemonic devices from Barbri still stuck in there: Open-Continuous-Exclusive-Actual-Notorious – the elements of adverse possession. Ick. There must be something more fun than that in here.
My high school English teacher required memorization of a lot of Shakespeare. I paged in and found the advice Polonius imparts on Laertes. Unfortunately, “those friends thou hast and their adoption tried …” just made me think about how Running is not my friend, because I Hate It. Accordingly, I should most definitely not grapple it to my soul with a hoop made of steel, or any other metal for that matter.
Ooh - What’s this? Aah. Funny. Back in ‘93 I’d known most of the words to the essential songwriting of non-committal musician boyfriend, but now the lyrics had faded, whittled down to a single tortured line. You don’t believe the words I say, he’d bellowed accusatorily - to me, or, perhaps, his several other disbelieving girlfriends, even when I say the words anyway. Smiling fondly in a mature appreciation of my long lost tortured years, I tossed that recollection to the side and moved on.
I blew the dust off the Gettysburg Address, originally memorized for a play in 7th grade, and I started a mental recitation of that. Unfortunately, thanks to Running’s interference, I kept accidentally merging it with the Lord’s Prayer. Four score and seven years ago our father- who art in heave… D’oh. Frustrated, I kept looking.
Finally, I found it. The Periodic Table of Elements. The beautiful, wonderful Periodic Table of Elements. I always loved the Periodic Table.
I loved the Periodic Table because it was science, only not. My talents in school, unsurprisingly, tended toward the verbal. I struggled with math and, even more, with science, but memorizing the elements and abbreviations of the periodic table put the work of science into letters and memory games. I was good at letters and memory games. These were things I could grasp. Learning the periodic table distracted me from the fact that I was in science class, learning science.
Indeed, it seems the Periodic Table of Elements did for science class what my iPod has done for Running. It turned something I didn’t like, with which I struggled, into something achievable and, momentarily, enjoyable. Eventually, memorizing the elements and their abbreviations wasn’t enough, and I had to learn and apply actual scientific principles. Still, after my science classes advanced beyond my comfort zone, I rarely achieved A’s, but I never failed either.
Lr- Lawrencium, K- Potassium, Ag- Silver, Na- Sodium I- I, I, I HATE Running. This sucks. NO! Again: Au– Gold, As- Arsenic or Ass, as in Running kicks my ass. Wait - where am I? Is that 2 miles?
Maybe, just maybe, there’s hope for this thing yet.
