Category Archives: Running

Katie and Linda’s Central European Adventure

Posted on by
2

vitkov viewThis blog is back from its travels and unstuck from its post-trip doldrums. It will return to its usual Brooklyn-focused posts soon enough (with a race report or two thrown in for good measure and, no doubt, some whining about marathon training). For now, I offer these highlights and observations from our mother-daughter trip to the Czech Republic and Slovakia. (Hat tip to Evan Rail at the New York Times and “Taste of Prague” bloggers Zuzi and Jan for never steering us wrong throughout our trip.)

Czech beer is good – and cheap. Guidebooks breathlessly proclaim that in the Czech Republic, beer is cheaper than water. That’s not entirely accurate. Despite warnings that nothing in the Czech Republic is free (including – gasp! – ketchup packets at fast food restaurants), we found that we could in fact ask for and receive complementary tap water in restaurants and cafes. (For our first few days, in thrall to the guidebook warnings, we demurred offers of water and left bread baskets untouched. We were idiots.)  Continue reading →

Race report – the Brooklyn Half (May 16, 2015)

Posted on by
1
The scene at the Stillwell Ave station after the race.

The scene at the Stillwell Ave station after the race.

Why was I getting up at 5 am to run a race that starts within easy jogging distance of my apartment?

Because when a race has more than 26,000 entrants – making it the largest half marathon in the U.S., according to the New York Road Runners – it’s not a neighborhood event. It’s a global production requiring precision, political finesse, and the occasional tactical compromise.

Like starting at 7 am on a Saturday, so that most of the runners clear the vicinity of Grand Army Plaza before most Brooklynites are up and about.

Like requiring runners to walk through metal detectors to enter their corrals. (So what if they beeped for everyone?)

Like closing the baggage trucks at 6:10 am, so that . . . well, I’m not sure why the baggage trucks closed so early. I only know that (a) they stretched a loooooooong way down Eastern Parkway and (b) many unhappy runners clutching NYRR-issue clear plastic bags were sprinting toward their assigned trucks at 6:09:59 am. Continue reading →

My new hat

Posted on by
2
scotland hat

Photo credit: Eric Brooks

This is a postscript to my report on the Scotland Run 10K a few weeks back. I was disappointed – nay, outraged! – to run my little heart out in Central Park and come away with nothing to show for it but the world’s ugliest cotton t-shirt, a bottle of genuine Scottish Highlands water, and a blister on my left foot. The cool hats distributed at the finish in past years were nowhere to be seen.

I whined about the lack of hats online, and I whined about the lack of hats in real life. This morning, one of my teammates in the Prospect Park Track Club (aka “the world’s finest running club”) showed up at our group run with a blue and white Scotland hat. For me.

He claimed it was too small for his head, but I hope he knows I know it was really because he’s just a generally nice guy.

The moral of the story: sometimes, if you whine enough, nice things will happen that you really don’t deserve . . . but only because there are other people in this world who choose to be nice.

I aspire to whine a little less, and be just a little nicer.

Race report: Scotland Run 10K (April 4, 2015)

Posted on by
1

Scotland 10K shirt

All through this last hard winter, and the one before that as well, I envied other New York City runners their royal blue and white “Scotland Run” hats. They were bright, they looked warm, and they generated friendly nods and waves from other runners rocking the same hat.

So I could claim that I signed up for the Scotland Run as my first race of 2015 because I wanted to honor my Scottish ancestors. Or because I needed to overcome my fear of 10Ks (more on that in a bit). Or because it fit my schedule.

All these things are true. But the main reason I signed up for the race was because I wanted one of those hats.

Imagine my consternation last week when I picked up my race number at New York Road Runners in their spiffy Upper East Side digs and received along with it a wee packet of Walker’s shortbread, a bottle of water from the Scottish Highlands, and a cotton T-shirt of truly spectacular ugliness.

Where was the hat?

A dismayed post to my running club’s Facebook page brought words of reassurance. “They give the hats out at the end,” I was told. Words of advice, too: “you may need to stand in line, and sometimes they run out, so you need to run fast.”

Fair enough. Hats that cool should be earned. Continue reading →

On non-reconstruction

Posted on by
38

swimsuit cropExactly seven years ago today, I had a unilateral mastectomy (they threw the lymph node dissection in as a bonus). I wasn’t supposed to have cancer. My cancer wasn’t supposed to be in a lymph node. And I certainly wasn’t supposed to have a mastectomy.

Things don’t always happen the way they’re supposed to.

Roughly a week before my scheduled lumpectomy, some suspicious MRI results meant my surgery had to be canceled to accommodate follow-up tests. (Can I mention here that you haven’t lived until you’ve had an MRI-guided breast biopsy? I was immobilized on a table, my breasts dangling through a hatch so that technicians with drills could access them from below. It was like being the car at Jiffy Lube.)  When it was all over, the surgical plan had changed to mastectomy.

I got the word about the new biopsy results and met with my surgeon on Wednesday, March 5.  Surgery was scheduled for Thursday, March 13. That didn’t leave much time to think about options. I was pretty sure I didn’t want reconstruction, and a hastily-scheduled consultation with a plastic surgeon two days before my surgery didn’t change that.  If anything, it solidified my negative feelings – a mixture of queasiness, fear, and horror. Continue reading →

Cancer nasties

Posted on by
3

Screenshot (3)

One of the first things I did after I was diagnosed with breast cancer was to join an on-line support group. I was diagnosed on January 15, 2008; my membership in the “community” at a certain major breast cancer website (which shall remain nameless here) dates from January 17.

I should say, first off and up front, that I found amazing support there during the period between my diagnosis and surgery, and all through my four months of chemo. I mean, really amazing. As in, collecting-my-mail-and-finding-a-surprise-package-of-post-surgical-camisoles-and-nightshirts amazing. I think I cried that day.

Up to then, my experience with on-line communities consisted mostly of a running site, letsrun.com, on which horny cross-country guys told one another how much they sucked, wily masters smacked them down, and spelling-and-grammar trolls prepared to pounce. It could be a very mean place. It was also, often, very funny. (Just thinking about certain threads – “Fanny pack in a 5K,” “Deer Kara Goucher” – still makes me giggle.)

So as much as I valued the kindness and support of this new community – and I honestly don’t know how I would have made it through treatment without it – I also chafed a bit at the constant, unremitting, niceness. Was I a horrible person for wanting just a little acidity to cut through all that sweetness?  A newly-diagnosed woman would write something hysterical, making no sense whatsoever (I remember one post in particular, full of “omg’s” and misspellings and referring to chemo, I kid you not, as “tata juice”), and all I could think was, “imagine what the guys at letsrun would do with that.” Surely, someone here would offer some tough love: “Sweetheart, you need to get a grip and grow up. And for fuck’s sake, don’t call it tata juice.” But no. The warm, comforting responses would pour in, welcoming her to “the sisterhood no one wants to be a part of” and telling her that she had come to the right place. Not one word about the tata juice.

And I would feel thoroughly ashamed of myself. Still, I couldn’t shake the sense that this, too, was a form of loss. Cancer had already taken my left breast, my axillary lymph nodes, my ovarian function and my sense of invulnerability. Did I also have to give up sarcasm and bitchiness? Was I fated to a lifetime of signing notes “xoxoxo” and “gentle hugs”? (Which I still do, by the way, so I guess that’s a “yes.”)

As they say: be careful what you wish for. Continue reading →

Running while white

Posted on by
1

IMG_5014Lately, I’ve been doing some thinking about white privilege and running.  I know the term “white privilege” makes many white people defensive. Coming from another white person, it’s heard as simultaneously self-righteous and self-flagellating. Coming from a person of color, it’s heard as an accusation. And it invariably sounds oh-so-politically correct.

But it shouldn’t. And I’d like to think that just maybe, thinking about white privilege in the context of running – a relatively un-fraught, low-stakes topic – might make it easier to recognize it elsewhere, where the stakes are higher. (I’m thinking about myself and other white people here; I don’t think most people of color have any trouble recognizing white privilege.)

Without further ado, here are five ways I experience white privilege as a runner.

1. I can run wherever I want without being questioned or hassled. I routinely run through places where I “don’t belong”: Chinatown, Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, low-income housing projects, industrial areas and so on. Not only do I engage in the suspicious behavior of running, I do it in all kinds of weather and at all times of day (including before dawn and after dark). I’ve been doing this for years now, and in all that time, I’ve never once been stopped by cops, security guards, neighborhood patrols or suspicious residents. I find that nothing short of astonishing: I mean, the way I look sometimes, I would stop me.

2. Most of the time, I’m blithely unaware of the police. I can afford to be blithely unaware because my life experiences (and those of my family members) don’t include being stopped while going about my business and questioned, frisked or worse. When I cross against the light (hey, I’m a runner, I’m impatient) right by a cop car, do you know what happens?

Nothing.

3. If I do notice the police, I assume they’re there to protect me. When I’m running in the park after dark, or in a deserted industrial area any time of day, and I see a police patrol, I feel safer. The thought that they might be looking at me as a “suspect” . . . in other words, that I might have something to fear . . . that thought never occurs to me. Literally, never.

4. Businesses cut me slack and treat me with respect. Like many runners, I have occasional bathroom emergencies far from home. When I appeal to use a “customers only” restroom, I’m usually successful. (And when I’m not, I’m shocked and outraged and walk away muttering about boycotts.) Sometimes, especially with larger establishments, I don’t even ask – I just brazen my way in, walking through a crowded restaurant or fancy hotel lobby with an air of entitlement.

5. I can count on seeing a lot of other people who look like me at races and running events. When I show up for a group run on a weekend morning, I know I won’t be the only white person there. When a black person shows up, they may or may not be the only black person there. Does that matter? Runners are runners, right? Well, sure – but I kind of think that if I were the only white runner in a black crowd, I’d be, at a minimum, aware of my race (just as I’m often made aware of my gender). The ability to remain unaware is a kind of privilege.

. . .

I don’t claim that my experience of “running while white” reflects that of all white runners. All of us are bundles of different identities, and I’m sure my running experiences are also shaped by the fact that I’m a woman, well into middle age, whose technical gear telegraphs her socioeconomic status as “not poor.” But I know in my gut that my experience of running would be different if all these other things were the same, and I had darker skin.

As I mentioned at the start, this isn’t about guilt. It’s not really about running, either. It’s about the need to talk about race frankly and non-defensively (and, may I add, to listen), as part of a broader effort to change things that need changing. I have some personal experience with how difficult these conversations can be (that’s a topic for another day) – but for heaven’s sake, we need to have them.

(A note: I had some technical difficulties putting this post up . . . by which I really mean that I accidentally clicked “publish” while still editing, and then had to figure out how to take it back. I have no idea what that means for people who follow this blog. If it resulted in confusing notifications, I apologize!)

A clumsy runner greets the new year

Posted on by
2

IMG_2407

My first running mishap of 2015 came early. Tuesday’s program called for a loop and a half of Prospect Park, cutting across Center Drive to run the bottom of the park twice. On my second half-loop, for variety’s sake, I went off-road and onto the wide dirt path that hugs the south shore of the lake. It was cold and windy, but the bitterest of the bitter cold hadn’t yet hit, and a light snow softened January’s sharp edges.

What a beautiful morning.

Until – whoosh. My foot skidded on a sheet of ice, my arms flailed (great as a comic effect, useless as a practical measure), and I went down hard.

Next came the sound of ice cracking as a runner-size hole opened and half-submerged me in a deep mud puddle – mud pond, really. I had two immediate (and equally useless) responses.

Useless response #1: yell “goddammitshitfuck” at the top of my lungs.

Useless response #2: attempt to use the unbroken ice around me as a support to lift myself out of the freezing water.

As anyone who ever watched a child-in-peril melodrama (winter edition) knows, #2 does not work. But sometimes you have to learn things for yourself, and I was surprised and outraged when my efforts led to the horrifying sound of more ice cracking, a wider hole, and a profound sense of futility.

The only way up and out was to plunge my hands under the water to find solid ground. I did that and struggled to my feet, soaked to the skin. There was no Lassie to the rescue. There was no Saint Bernard with a flask of warming brandy. There was only a bundled-up walker, who clucked sympathetically as she passed but did not stop, and two miles between me and home.

I resumed my run, because what else could I do?

It was quite impressive how quickly my gloves and jacket froze solid. Running through the deserted park in that state was tough; running through the populated streets of Park Slope was even tougher. Knots of people are always milling around New York Methodist Hospital, and though you have to work hard to attract attention here in the Big City, I did get a few sidelong glances as I passed them. When I finally made it to our building, I understood why. The face reflected in the entry way mirror was that of a doomed polar explorer: frosted eyebrows, full-face ice beard, desperate, haunted eyes.

A plush robe, a hot drink and a warm shower chased away the deep chill surprisingly quickly. The bruise on my left hip is more stubborn, and I’ve spent the past two days charting its progress. It’s 6 inches long and 3 inches at its widest (yes, I measured) and is shaped like Jamaica flipped upside down. At first, with its concentric rings of different colors, it looked a bit like a topographic map. Later, I saw in it a swatch of old-fashioned chintz: two billowing pink cabbage roses surrounded by soft-edged foliage in pastel shades of purple, blue and green. Now it’s mostly darkened to midnight violet.

Though Eric can’t look at it without grimacing, I find it endlessly fascinating and oddly beautiful.

Postscript – when I ran by the site of the incident yesterday morning (safely on-road this time), I saw that park maintenance vehicles had been over the spot with a vengeance, breaking the ice and churning up the (now frozen) mud. It was my bad luck to be out running during what was probably a short window of danger, when enough snow had fallen to hide the ice but park workers had not yet rolled through.

Blogging resolutions

Posted on by
5

This blog returns from its holiday hiatus with a handful of resolutions for the new year:

1. Get out there and explore.  In the coming year, I plan to take this blog to more Brooklyn neighborhoods in search of cheap, tasty eats (always a motivator!) and interesting stuff generally. Look for posts on Latino and Asian Sunset Park, Arab Bay Ridge, and the borough’s various West Indian communities. And that’s just for starters. I may even venture farther afield, to the wilds of Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx.

2. Bring other people into the blog. Blogging is great for introverted people like yours truly: you can write about whatever pops into your head from the comfort and privacy of your home. That’s also its great weakness. I mean, jeezus, no one is that interesting. So I’m going to work at introducing other people into posts, telling their stories and sharing their views. That means getting outside my comfort zone, which is good. (It also means showering and getting dressed before late afternoon, also good.)

3. Alternate long-form posts with shorter items. Some of my recent entries, like the account of my South Carolina trip, have been quite long. And while I draw a lot of personal satisfaction from those posts, and am proud of the thought and care that went into them, they are time-consuming to write and, I suspect, daunting to read. So I’m going to rein in my wanna-be magazine writer tendencies and mix the long stuff up with more photos and short observations.

4. Engage more with other bloggers. I’m very grateful to the other bloggers who’ve checked out Not another Brooklyn blog, “liked” posts, and left the occasional comment. I’m going to work hard to be a better citizen of the blogosphere in the coming year.

And finally, reluctantly . . .

5. Consider focusing this blog. When I started blogging a little over six months ago, I defiantly proclaimed my intention to ignore the well-meaning (and near-universal) advice to identify an audience and focus on it. I was going to write about whatever interested me, goddammit. And so I’ve written about running, about birdwatching, about surviving (and not surviving) breast cancer, about Brooklyn ephemera, about the haunted history of South Carolina, about food. It’s been fun, but it’s also been a mess. I don’t blame readers who were drawn in by running posts and then didn’t know what to make of cancer posts, and vice versa, for throwing up their hands and walking away. I understand now, in a way I didn’t six months ago, the costs of unfocused blogging . . . for sure, it makes realizing resolution #4 a hell of a lot more difficult. I’m going to maintain my idiosyncratic non-focus for the time being, but over the next six months, I’ll be thinking hard about what this blog wants to be when it grows up. Input from readers in that process is very welcome.

If you’re a blogger reading this, what are your blogging resolutions for 2015?

Now it can be shown . . .

Posted on by
1

sad nycm photo crop2A few weeks ago, I posted about my experience running the New York City marathon – including a meltdown in the final miles that reduced me to walking as my left calf spasmed and my left foot did various, hard-to-describe weird things.

I mentioned at the time that one of the small army of marathonfoto.com photographers along the course captured my bewilderment and despair. I also vowed that I was going to buy that picture.

Extortionate marathonfoto.com prices notwithstanding, I did. And here it is. I have a long and well-documented history of sorry race pictures, but this is by far the sorriest.

Kids, this is what happens when you go out too fast.