Planning For My Funeral

The following was originally meant to be based on a true story……… but when you consider the fact that I am trying to recall events that happened six years ago, couple that with my major ADD when it comes to writing and staying on topic and the fact that my parents, my ex-girlfriends and my neurologist can all verify that memory is an area where I tend to struggle (although the syllable count and amount of profanity in their exact word selection varies greatly)  you can probably guess that, much like a teenager trying to throw a story together to tell his parents why he’s arrived home three hours passed curfew, sure there is a dash of truth to this story, but those moments are far outweighed by the over exaggeration of the unimportant and the haziness of vital details that would give this story any hope of being presented in a linear fashion. So, what you have here is failure to communicate. Some memories I just can’t reach. I can’t even remember what I wrote on here last week and that’s not the way I want it. Well, you get it. I don’t like it any more than you do.  Once all of that is factored in, you are left with something that goes a little like this……

My dad hung up the phone and declared “We’re all signed up!” So the training begins. I sat down on the couch after the exhausting five mile run. The morning sun sliced through the trees and into the house, enveloping the family room in a pinkish glow. My dad was quick to yell at me for sitting on the couch while I was still sweaty. Ugh! Some supernatural force lifted my body from its momentary leathery lavish vacation and allowed me to stand upright. Well, I was about as upright as a toddler on a rocking ship. I wouldn’t even be halfway done at five miles I thought with slightly more than a hint of depression.

After peeling me off the floor with the pitch fork that my father kept handy for when personal willpower just wasn’t cutting it, we sat down to plan out our death….I mean, our training schedule for the half marathon. All of the running experts (or as I like to call them, Kenyans) say that the best way to train is to run five or six days a week and take one or two days off, no more than two though. We also read that we would benefit greatly from planning a designated Long Run Day. In preparation for these days, you check the weather to see when it is expected to rain the hardest, and pencil your long run in for that day. This way, you get the personal satisfaction of saying you are going to do something admirable, but when it comes time to actually follow through with it, your health is at risk and you wouldn’t want to chance catching a cold.

So that was how it went. We would run Monday through Friday, do our long run of the week on Saturday and go to church on Sunday praying for some divine intervention and miraculous healing on our aching bodies so we could begin the process all over again twenty-four hours later.

We wrote down our mileage for the next three months in a daily calendar in order to give our relatives some advance warning to plan the time and place of our burial. I am the kind of person who works better with lists. I like the feeling of crossing items off as I complete them.  This gives me a feeling of accomplishment. Writing the mileage down in an organized schedule also made the task less daunting.  The fact that we still had three months before the race in October allowed us to slowly increase our mileage each week in order to reach our goal of thirteen miles. This also gave me ample time to do some private internet research on which serious, but non-deadly diseases that might get one out of running for an unnecessary amount of time were the easiest to fake.

Another aspect of our training that we had to monitor was our fluid intake, specifically water (I say that because there were several buddies of mine in college who certainly would have had a more memorable college experience, or any memory of college at all, had they monitored their fluid intake, but this is neither the time nor the place for discussions about poor beverage selection and my personal choice to hang out with these people simply to feel better about myself and will be left alone following the end of the parenthesis). Staying hydrated had several benefits including keeping my miniscule, half marathon runner muscles loose which would decrease the likelihood of incurring an episode of intense cramps. An experience which my father describes as “Oh geez. Yeah, that’s bad. Yup, we’re going to be here for a while.” Secondly, drinking a lot of water prevents the mouth from drying out while running which can cause the lips to crack and girlfriends to become unhappy about the rough, skeletal smooching they are forced to endure if the odorous anti- aphrodisiac permeating from ones clothing after a long run is not enough to keep bae at bay. Lastly, increasing the amount of fluids going into my body would give me the one excuse that had historically been successful in allowing me to procrastinate on homework, outdoor chores and would surely allow me to cut some of these agonizingly long runs down to a sane distance, the need to go to the bathroom more frequently. Not even the strictest, most hard-nosed and excessively English nanny would deny a child of the basic urinary right to go to the bathroom.

Aside from fluids, my food intake changed as well. I had to decrease the amount of fat in my diet and increase the amount of carbohydrates I was eating. This made the whole family unhappy. I was forced to forfeit ice cream and my mom was sentenced to several months of hard labor without the possibility of parole, because preparing spaghetti was an all-day operation. A writer who does little to no research for his writing once told me that carbohydrates are a main source of energy for our bodies. And lord knows I would need lots of energy if my non-stop nagging and agonizing war of attrition to complain until we were scratched from the race was to work.

Fortunately for me, the half marathon in Detroit came at the end of my school’s cross country season which meant that an already in place running schedule and nonexistent social life due to my choice in extracurricular activities and resulting place at the bottom of the schools’ social scale, left me lots of open time to run.

On Saturdays, my dad and I would head outside and stretch before we began our runs. We chose to run outside because running on treadmills for a long period of time can lead to insanity and a deadly dependence on daytime television.

I hated these runs for three reasons.  First off, my dad and I began each run promptly at eight in the morning. Now, I don’t know how familiar the majority of the earth’s population is with the 12,000 step program of the weekend waking of a teenager at eight in the morning, but if you would like to experience an emotional equivalent, go deep into the woods in the middle of January and find the nearest cave occupied by a mama bear and her cub. Repeatedly poke the furry, friendly-looking bundles of cuddliness with a stick or if you’re feeling idiotically adventurous, just poke them with your finger. However, I would personally advise you to do the poking with as long a branch as possible as cordial greetings will be completely bypassed and your first encounter with Not So Gentle Ben will largely involve you running for your life. See, the running is already starting to pay off!

Secondly, my dad and I did most of our running in the trails at Muldoon Park. Aside from runners, there are three other occupants that utilize these rugged runways. Horses, with diarrhea, whom by the odor, seem to feed on nothing but outdated taco meat. These horses have the impeccable timing of choosing only to relieve themselves on the crest of the most difficult hills that the trails have to offer. This is a time when my attention is focused on getting to the top of the hill whilst maintaining the breathing pattern equivalent to that of a teenage girl that just got backstage passes to a meet and greet with Adam Levine and my attention is not focused on the month old hay with mosquito seasoning scattered throughout the path.

The second beast which calls Muldoon Park home are dogs with Samson-like strength who specialize in breaking free of leashes. On the inattentive other end of these leashes are handlers who seem to have, at best, a 99% grasp on the English language up to their understanding of words such as “friendly” and phrases like “He won’t bite.” These statements seem to provide the false comfort of a high school parent that allows children to drink, but insists on taking the inebriated adolescents keys. My discomfort with the demonic Dalmatians stems from the fact that as the owner is speaking, saliva begins to ooze from the cuddly K-9’s mouth and the dogs malicious, mirage creating mind transforms me into a juicy piece of steak.

The third and without a doubt most annoying creature inhabiting  the deep, dark woods of Muldoon are mosquitoes who, much like Christian Grey, have a singular taste for human flesh. This annoying attribute is accompanied by a buzz which can reach a volume of about 999,999,999,999 decibels as they enter the ear, causing me to flail my arms around like idiotic air marshal.

As the weeks went on, my confidence rose as our mileage increased. I became determined to pour all of my energy and effort into this race. I will never forget the feeling of preparedness I had after my last long run with my dad one week before the race; I can do this. I will never forget the confidence I had as I stretched at the starting line; hey ladies, you doing anything after the race? I knew that enduring through all of the training, changes in my diet and aching in my muscles would pay off. Like any mother telling a lie to her child the pain was worth it. I knew that the sound of the starting gun meant that it was time to execute. This is it. What the thirty-seven other gunshots I heard at seemingly random points throughout the race as I ran through the city streets of Detroit were meant to be symbolic of, I have no idea. I will never forget that feeling of satisfaction as I made the final stride across the finish line, I always knew I could do this.