A "Bestest" Day Ever

How would you like to hear a 3200 word, step-by-step recounting of my run in the Dam to Dam 20k over the last two years?

I didn’t think so. But, that was exactly what I was about to inflict on everyone. That is, until I took a moment or two to be a little less self-absorbed. I guess I got a little caught up in my own accomplishment and didn’t really reflect much beyond that.

And that was a silly thing to do, because the day meant so much more. Somehow, I could sense it, but I never really understood why until almost a week later, when I struggled to write about it and came up with little more than a verbal replay of the days’ events, both this year and last. But—if I can beg your patience a little—I do have to backtrack a bit and compare last year to this year, in order to best make my point.

It all started, simply enough, with a desire to run better than the previous year’s dismal 2:18 performance in the Dam to Dam. I was pretty disappointed in that 2009 run, because I had set myself up with a goal of trying to finish in less than two hours; no grand performance by many runners' measurements, but it was my first time running a race that long and seemed appropriate given my training times and conditioning.

But when the race day arrived, I made every conceivable mistake any runner could possibly make. I also created a few I think I’d never seen in any book on running or training I’d ever read.

For starters, I worked the night before, closing the store and not leaving to go home until 11pm. That in itself was probably not too big an impairment, but like many people, I am not apt to immediately fall into a restful slumber the moment I walk in the door from work. Usually, I’m hyped. Add to that the anticipation of my first ever 20k experience and you would understand why I was still staring wide-eyed at my alarm clock at 2am, sure that I was going to sleep through my alarm.

I also skipped breakfast. I thought I didn’t want anything churning in my stomach for the next several hours and certainly didn’t want to have to interrupt my run to dash off to a port-a-potty, or worse, be far from one if the need suddenly overtook me.

It was not until I was on the bus ride to the dam, where I noticed everyone else eating power bars, that I realized that particular mistake. But, undaunted, I brushed that concern aside, and my pre-race jitters began to settle some as I talked with some of the other runners on the bus. The conversation and camaraderie relaxed me a little. I began to see myself, finally, as someone who belonged there, had done the work and had earned my chance, just as much as anyone else.

After waiting around a while and warming up at the dam, the pack began to form and I found a place near the end. I couldn’t help but worry, there in the middle of all of those strangers, if I had gotten in over my head, hadn’t trained well enough, or would suffer the fate I feared most, in which I would not be able to finish.

Soon we were started, and not far into the run something odd happened to unnerve me a little more. At about mile three, a woman a few feet in front of me darted off the road suddenly, pulled down her shorts, and squatted in the ditch. I wouldn’t speak for anyone else running that day, but a half-naked woman is distracting to me no matter where I encounter her. A half-naked woman in broad daylight, in an open ditch, only fifteen feet away from and in full view of about six thousand other runners passing by…well, that is enough to disturb my concentration and throw me off my game. I nearly ran over the person who was in front of me because of my suddenly inspired burst of speed. I apologized and wormed my way through the crowd to the other side of the road, feeling a tad bit embarrassed all the while.

And this was just within the first three miles of twelve total miles to run. For those unfamiliar with the Dam to Dam, the first three miles are fairly easy and mostly downhill, and it was actually the ease of this earliest part of the race route that set up my next major mistake. Feeling more confident at having tackled the first several miles, I skipped all the hydration stops over much of the course. I didn’t feel that taxed or thirsty, and the heat of the day had not really set in. Later in the run, when it did turn considerably warmer, I suffered badly for that rookie mistake.

It came on about mile ten, where the course turns into a series of small but sometimes gentle inclines as you pass the residential neighborhoods of north Des Moines. By that time the temps had climbed significantly higher than the upper sixties we had at the start. Not eating breakfast to give myself some reserves to draw from and not hydrating properly through most of the race began to take its toll on me. Somewhere in those hills I had to stop running and walk some for recovery.

But, after about a mile of walking I was back running again, at a reasonable pace, when I discovered yet one more mistake I could find to make. There, at mile 11.5, was a seemingly nice man standing alongside the route, under a shady tent, with glass upon glass filled with champagne.

“You’re almost there,” he said. “Have a glass of champagne to celebrate.”

So I did. And I never should have.

I’m pretty sure that glass of champagne greatly contributed to that delirium I felt the few minutes later when I crossed the finish line. My brain was throbbing, I felt very dizzy, and my body hurt from head to toe. I didn’t feel any relief from being finished; I felt more like I had survived something than I felt anything like a sense of accomplishment.

I stumbled my way from the finish line and to the tubs of iced-down sports drinks, asking people twice for directions to where they were. When I found them I grabbed two bottles, despite the protestations of the guy who was obviously the appointed Gatorade Tub Guardian, and then I promptly plopped down on the sidewalk in front of him to summarily down both bottles while under his seething gaze.

It took me a few minutes to recover enough to feel like I could stand again. When I did, I realized I was still pretty disoriented and not quite sure in which direction I should head to find my car. Downtown looked very different at that moment; my internal compass was still reeling, and I had arrived there that morning in the dark at five am. I walked around downtown for over an hour looking for my car, and when I finally found it I realized I had passed within a hundred feet of it at least twice before in my search.

That was my Dam to Dam 2009. It was bad. Still, like the golfer who shoots a triple digit round but gets a birdie on the 18th, I was determined to return and do better.

The memory of all that was still in my mind this last weekend as I stood under a dripping tree alongside Bill and Mary, waiting for the race to begin. Try as I did to prepare and train, I wasn’t sure I had trained any better. I was still struggling with the hills on my longer training runs, and at about a week out from the race, a pain developed in my lower leg. My calf felt as tight as a banjo string and the front of my shins hurt with each and every step.

The pain I thought I could run through, but the fear of having set myself up with an unreasonable goal and potential embarrassment was eating away at me. I had invited Bill and Mary up to run it with me, and they were both runners with far more experience and speed than I possessed. I had also announced several times to all my friends on Facebook that I was running to raise awareness for thyroid cancer, and my training runs had often been a part of my status updates. I’d even announced my goal time for this year, that same two-hour mark that I had declared, but missed by eighteen minutes, in the previous year. If I did not finish, or if I performed as I did the previous year and missed my announced goal, it would be an epic failure witnessed by far too many people.

But race day this year proved to be anything but a failure. In fact, it turned out to be one of those days where everything fell into place.

It was still raining when we started the race, and the rain gear we went looking for the night before was one of the best purchases I think I have ever made. It was my first good call. And the power bar I picked up on the way to Bill and Mary’s hotel turned out to be just the thing I needed to get me going that morning, probably my next best good call.

The race strategy I had taken the time to devise also made all the difference in the world. I took advantage of the beginning downhill miles to give myself some breathing room for the rest of the race, letting it carry me along at a quick, but relaxed, pace.

I was also overly cautious about staying hydrated, using every water stop (there is one nearly every mile) except for three.

I never looked up to the top of any hill I climbed to let myself get de-motivated by it, and I was able to push my way through all but one.

I ate my gel at about the halfway point, and at mile six I began walking a few seconds while drinking the Powerade or water, instead of drinking it on the run.

By mile four I felt like I was in a perfect rhythm. At about mile six I felt like I was experiencing that runner’s high. My friend Kim—a marathoner who helped renew my interest in running—was alongside the route at about mile eight, with a high five and a “good job” that made me feel even better. At the ninth mile any doubts I had about finishing were gone, and I glanced at my Garmin for the first time since the 10k mark. At that point, I knew I would make my goal time. When I was still a mile and a half out I felt like kicking up a notch, and so I did.  With a half mile to go, full of adrenaline, I went into a sprint.

Life was good.

I was ecstatic when I finished, according to my Garmin, at 1:48:03. I knew that even if it didn’t exactly match the chip time that would be official, it could not be twelve minutes different. Bill and Mary were also there at the finish line waiting for me, and instead of the previous pressure I felt from their possibly witnessing my potential failure, I was relieved and glad to see them there to share my perceived success.

And that made all the difference in the world. In fact, when I could take the time to properly reflect back on this year’s race and compare it to last year’s race, I began to see it as the biggest reason I was able to accomplish it in the time I did this year, and enjoy it as much as I did. This year I was with friends, instead of going it alone.

For far too long, running alone was my style. For too many years, I operated from the belief that no one in the world cared about me as much as I cared about myself. I also (mistakenly) thought that the accomplishments I achieved, the battles I won, and the rewards I earned were always richer when I did it myself and didn’t have to count on anyone else for my success. Looking back on all that now, I can see that it was me, defying my insecurities and trying to prove something to myself, as well as prove myself to everyone else. And I am still not sure who that everyone else was supposed to be.

I’m glad that nowadays, I see things a little differently, where I can either trudge through life as me against the world, or I can run it with friends alongside me. The latter is much more rewarding.

In closing, I don’t know if this piece justly expresses my gratitude to Bill and Mary and Kim for being there with me that day, or for all they have meant to me before and after that day. I’m not sure I can pen that.

But, maybe I can frame it this way: in a few weeks, I head home to spend a weekend with about five hundred people I haven’t seen in too long a time and still consider friends. Okay, maybe it will only be about two hundred or so.

But, I wouldn’t be disappointed if I ended up spending the weekend with only three.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Forward Momentum

I used to have this little thing I did at the beginning of the school year every year, where the girls and I would go to the basement and mark their height on a vertical support of the stairs. The girls enjoyed it. For them, it was exciting to see how much they had grown over the previous year, a signal of progress that satisfied their eagerness to grow up, to move forward, and to experience the things to which they looked forward. It was the reverse for me; I did it to freeze a moment in time that I knew was passing and needed to be captured. How many of us have done this?

I remembered this annual ritual just the other day as the girls and I were driving home from school. The girls have been abuzz about school these last few days, as they always are when the end is so near. They’ve been excited about the summer ahead, with trips and lazy days at the pool already planned, and—to a degree—they’ve also been excited about the next year of school that awaits them after the summer.

Megan was telling me about the classes she had chosen for next year, some of the options she had, and why she chose the classes she did. She listed trigonometry as one of her classes, and it struck me that she was getting into a class with which I would not be able to help her. I never took trig, or any higher level math classes, for that matter.

But, on the heels of that thought, I recognized that the choices she was offered the next year meant that she was getting into the tougher study years, and slowly the realization that Megan was going to be a freshman in high school next year kind of washed over me.

Megan is going to be freshman in high school next year. Even when I repeat it and understand its certainty and inevitability, it still takes some getting used to.

In trying to get my head wrapped around that realization, I began to recall some of my most treasured memories of Megan as she has grown up. I think, as a parent, I have tons of catalogued memories and experiences of my daughters as they grow, but some stand out more than others. What makes them more memorable to me, or significant to me, is probably the emotion I attach to them.

One of those memories is of one of the first times I took the girls camping at a lake not far from our home in Chatham, Illinois, when Megan would have been nine or ten and Kylee only five. The lake was close enough that we could wait out the weather until the last minute to see if it would cooperate, and Michelle was on a trip back to Des Moines to visit friends. The girls and I needed something to do, and the idea of a night around the campfire making smores and sleeping in tents seemed like just the thing.

We loaded up the gear and headed to the lake on a Saturday afternoon and managed to get one of the last spots left open at the campground. While I made camp, Megan and Kylee ran off to the playground nearby to keep themselves busy for the hour or so it took me to set up the tent and break out all of the food and supplies we’d brought along. It was still early in the evening when I finished and the girls had tired themselves on the merry-go-rounds and swings, so I suggested we go for a little hike on the trail that wound along the edge of the lake for a ways.

The remarkable moment of this trip was not anything that happened on that stroll or during the evening by the fire; it was something that happened on the way back from our little hike. The sun was just setting on the campground as we came back up from the lake and were making our way back through the campground, winding our way through the other campers in the grass. The girls were playful and excited, anxious to get back to camp and build a fire to make their smores and hot dogs. They were barefoot and running a little ahead of me, and as I watched them I could see the sun washing through their bouncing, long, blonde hair, already made lighter by the summer days.

They were pretty oblivious to everyone and everything else around them, and Megan never noticed, or paid any attention to, a small boy about her age that was approaching her on his way toward the lake on a bike, his fishing pole strapped across his handlebars. But the boy noticed her. I watched it—almost as if it were in slow motion—as the boy noticed Megan as he approached, then watched her intently (mouth gaping open) as he passed her, and then nearly broke his neck turning back to continue looking at her as he rode on.

An instant parental instinct arose in me. I wanted to make sure the boy saw me—her father—and that I was fully aware of his eyes and thoughts being so locked on my daughter. But, because he was so focused on Megan, he never saw me, nor did he see the tree into which he crashed his bike. I stopped to make sure he was okay, and after I was satisfied he was, chuckled a little as I walked away. Karma, I thought.

That was the first time I ever saw any boy ever take an interest in Megan, and it awakened me to the fact that Megan was (and I know this is the perspective of a proud and biased father) a stunningly beautiful little girl, and that she was becoming more so with each passing day.

I have only recently shared that memory with Megan. In the years since, because she has sensed my worries about her and boys (Because I was one!), Megan has always kept that part of her life fairly private from me. I’m sure it is nothing new between daughters and fathers, that privacy, and as much as I would like to know every detail so that I can protect her, I am held back by the instinctive feeling that if I pry too much by even being curious, I can drive her to even more secrecy. So, I trust, and I hope, while at the same time enjoy the thought of her experiencing all those magical feelings and thoughts that come at her age.

A couple of years ago I got a peek into that world of hers, as well as a signal from her that she was not ready for her father to see that side or her life. I was walking home from the visiting neighbors one afternoon, coming from the cul-de-sac up the hill and through the back yard of the neighbor that butted up to the back of our place. Megan and Kylee had stayed home, as I had just gone up to chat for a few minutes and was coming back soon to make dinner. On my way back, as I rounded the corner of our neighbor’s house I could see Megan in the back yard, talking with a boy whom I recognized from elsewhere in the neighborhood.

They both looked up in surprise to see me coming, and then each took off in different directions, Megan headed for the house in a full-out sprint and the boy headed towards parts unknown with Achilles-like speed. When I got to the house, I found Kylee sitting alone and watching television downstairs.

“Where’s your sister?” I asked.

“She ran upstairs and slammed her door shut,” Kylee answered.

I got busy making dinner and decided to leave well enough alone for the moment, but I thoroughly enjoyed the different shades of pink Megan turned when I asked her over dinner who the boy was. I got some mumbled answer, which I barely understood, but understood enough to know that I shouldn’t ask anything else. So I didn’t.

I have been sometimes perplexed by what it is a young girl (I’ve only had girls) decides is strictly private territory and what it is she wants to share. I am sure my inability to understand that is due in large part to my being a guy and from my being a guy my age. It has been a few years since I was a teen. But I have learned to respect Megan’s need for feeling she has a life and a world of her own, and that in turn only makes me appreciate more the times that she feels she can include me or show me a part of it.

Just a couple of years ago the girls and I went on a ski trip with several other families from the neighborhood, a trip that proved to be one of our most memorable experiences. There were four families along and we had a large rental together, so there was a great sense of community to the trip. It was also the first significant trip that the girls and I had taken as just the three of us and was part of that effort I was making of creating new memories together in our new lives.

None of us had ever skied before, so we all spent the first day or half-day in lessons. But, after that first day, I felt pretty comfortable on skis, and I could see that Megan felt even more comfortable. She had no issues with running ahead of me down the hill at speeds I couldn’t match and in terrain I was not yet confident enough to tackle. At one point, on our second day skiing, Megan ventured off with a neighbor who was a very good skier and made a run down a couple of black diamond hills. Of course, I never knew about it until after the fact.

On our third day there some of the group decided to take a day off from the slopes and either relax or spend time on other activities, but Megan and I had not had our fill of skiing. We wanted to ski every day we were there, and so we headed for the slopes while Kylee stayed behind to play with the other kids at the house.

On the lift to the top of the mountain, Megan could barely contain her excitement. She was trying to convince me to go down a black diamond with her and wanted to show me all the slopes that she and others had been down that I had likely not seen. She was too cute. And, after we unloaded from the lift and got into our bindings, Megan took off for the head of the trail before I was ready. When she realized I was not with her she stopped, and looked back for me, and waved her arms at me to hurry up and join her.

Seeing Megan waiting there for me at the head of the trail, beckoning me, produced a moment that has long stuck with me. Megan had gone off and discovered and learned something on her own, and now she wanted to share all that with me. She wanted to show me her world. The student wanted to become the teacher, or at the very least, display her pride in what it was she had learned in her independence from me.

There have been many moments similar to that since then, as Megan’s independence grows more important to her and her learning without me increases. But, that moment on the slope was the first time I recognized it, recognized her need for it, and recognized her need for me to appreciate and understand it. And as much as I worry about what she experiences and learns outside my reach or vision, I look forward to all the moments in the future when she will ask to show me her world and what is new about it again.

Last night Megan asked me to take her out for a driving lesson. Driving is a huge milestone for both a parent and a teen, with implications beyond the challenges of learning the skills of operating a car. With the ability to drive comes independence, and the ability to sometimes move outside of our protective reach. It also means that there are times and memories that are now in the past, and that there are experiences unexplored and unknown in the very near future, maybe a little sooner than we wish.

I’m sure that wasn’t what I was thinking about when I was nearly struck dumb with fear by her request. I was thinking more about the mental images I had of my car crumpled into a wrinkled piece of metal, and the sounds of ambulance sirens, and lawsuits, and the insurance rates I was about to face.

But, Megan did just fine driving. After a short while, I wasn’t even afraid. I was, however, very proud.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.