Now I’m back to full-press mom duty, which today meant a volunteer gig for field day at Henry’s school. I don’t get to volunteer as much as I’d like, but this is my second year at field day. The reason I pick field day is not because I loved it as a kid or because I want to evangelize for running races. I pick field day because I hated field day as a kid. I always asked my mom to schedule dentist (and later, orthodontist) appointments on field day, lest I become a casualty to the annual rite of my peers’ amassing of ribbons at my expense. In other words, I always lost, and in my day, you didn’t just lose—you were a loser. I always lost, but I can’t even say I was the slowest girl in class, which is at least a distinction, like a hereditary affliction you can’t be blamed for. No, I was always the second slowest, or on a good day, the third slowest. Until I was 21, I hated running and racing of any kind.

That meant I would be a victim on field day in the most Darwinian sense. I was not the fittest, and therefore, I would not survive to count my ribbons. Field day, as I knew it, was designed for the physically gifted, a people who, frankly, did not need help being celebrated in the social strata of elementary school. If there had been a day for competitive reading, I would have been able to sew a quilt from all my ribbons. Sadly, the school administration thought it better to create a formal mechanism for reinforcing our own categories of winners and losers.

So that’s why I volunteer at field day—not for the glory of athletic competition, but for the kids who wouldn’t have gotten any ribbons at my school. I can identify with those kids, even though I’ve become an athlete and achieved tough running goals. My own kid doesn’t thrive on running or racing. Actually, he doesn’t like running at all. He can happily bike 13 miles, but running holds no appeal for him, which is hard for me, even though I hated it, too, when I was 8. He’s more likely to gravitate toward shot put. Or competitive reading.

I tried to get him into running. We’ve done a few 1-mile races together, and we’ve been going back and forth on a 5k this weekend. I knew he didn’t want to do it, but he insisted he wanted to be with two boys he knows, athletic boys who love racing and probably collect ribbons with alacrity. I had visions of social disaster in this 5k scenario. So yesterday, I said, “The 5k is this weekend. Are you excited?”

Silence. Frozen face.

“It’s this weekend?” he asked.

“Yeah…. You know, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. I can really go either way about it.”

“But aren’t you running it?”

“Nah,” I said. “I’ll run it with you if you want to do it, but I don’t mind if you’d rather not.”

“Really? Aren’t the other boys doing it?” he asked.

“Yeah, but it’s their thing. It’s okay if running isn’t your thing. You have other things, like biking and reading. You read 16,000 pages when you were 7. You’re about to publish your first story in a magazine. I don’t know any other kids who could do that.”

Silence.

“Running isn’t special, Henry. Races aren’t that big a deal. Some people love running, some people don’t. The big deal is working hard at the thing that’s special to you.”

“I don’t think I want to do it,” he said.

“Good by me.”

And that’s why I volunteer at field day, where the gym teacher, Mrs. Frost, gave us one simple directive: “Don’t let them cry, and make them have fun.” Every station was geared towards teamwork, sport for the sake of enjoyment, not winners and losers. There were no ribbons. It’s important for kids to learn how to lose, but it’s not important that kids feel miserable in the process. Losing is one thing; they shouldn’t feel like losers. At field day, it was easy to pick out the athletes and the non-athletes, but it didn’t seem to matter. At least not in the scooter relays.

At one point, I walked over to a kid who was about to take his turn on the scooter, and he asked, “Do I have weird DNA?”

“You look pretty awesome to me,” I said. And off he scooted, happily. Running isn’t special. Scooters, however, rule.

Next week: stegosaurus?

My gentleman friend was dogsitting last night, and while we attempted—with futility—to mediate a Kitchen Debate between a golden retriever and my cat, an altogether different wild event was happening in the yard. During the pet peace accord meeting, my neighbor took pictures of the bear ambling around the perimeter of our adjoining yards. Henry was totally bummed he missed the bear, and frankly, I was a little bummed I didn’t see it in person, either. Call me Goldilocks, but if there’s going to be a bear around, I want to see it before it sees me.

Which is, in part, why I’m learning how to run fast again.

Last Friday, I took Henry to soccer practice and knew I had 58 minutes to get a run until my own little bear ambled off the field looking for food. When you’re a working athlete-mom living the working athlete-mom life, you go for quality and don’t mess around with junk miles. As a result, my first mile wasn’t my usual spacey joggy jog, and I realized I could max out on quality with a 58-minute tempo run. The tempo pace felt new, hard, and really, really good. Because of injury, I’ve been hovering at marathon pace on every run since September 2012, regardless of distance. I felt so amazing running tempo pace, even if it used to be marathon pace when I was in shape. I got my 7 miles done with time to spare and a desire to race that I haven’t had in 8 months. With my endorphin-infused, grandiose self-importance, I felt like I’d discovered a new, 2013 meaning of being a soccer mom.

Yesterday, I registered for the BAA 10k, knowing I won’t even come within a minute of my PR this year, but still revved up to race. If you’re going to race a race and not just run a race, you need to get on a track, something else I hadn’t done since September 2012. So last night, I decided I would have to get on the track early this morning to get in a workout of decent length before going to work. Usually, I run to the track for a warmup, then do my intervals, then run home.

But then there was a bear in my yard.

I woke up at 5:oh-something this morning to fog and mist. I immediately knew that a jog to the track in the quiet haze of morning with a nearby bear doing his bear things was not going to happen. I drove the 1.5 miles, which I know is ridiculous, but so be it. A bear didn’t eat me.

I ran 400s, starting at a pace that was fairly dispiriting. My legs groaned at me in the first few meters, wondering what the hell I was doing trying to get all anaerobic on their ass. I eeked out 12 of those laps, but it wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t fast. It was embarrassing and frustrating to run 12×400 slower and with more effort than I used to run 20×400. By the last lap, I’d again found my speed legs, but they were screaming with lactic acid and not putting in the splits of yesteryear. I know I have to start somewhere, but I sorta hoped the somewhere would be faster. Especially if there’s bear in them there woods.

Which is why, in part, I’m learning to run fast again. Not only do I need the agility to outrun falling fish, I now need the speed to outrun a bear and save face at a 10k–in that order. I’m still working on how exactly one outwit a stegosaurus, but that seems easier than brokering a peace deal between my cat and a golden retriever.

Then I came to my senses and felt bad for the fish, dead for nothing but a scavenger. The animal kingdom is a vicious place.

But that’s the opposite of the topic at hand, which is as the title says: every single beautiful thing.

Last Thursday, I realized that I hadn’t run a mile in 10 days, partly due to residual pain from the marathon in my left knee and partly due to my somber mood of lowering my runner’s flag to half mast. I wanted stillness; I didn’t even want a breeze to move my flag. By Thursday, I remembered the recurring thought I’d had in the first half of Boston, which was: every runner should intentionally run his or her slowest possible marathon, even just once. For the first many miles of Boston, that’s what I did, and it was beautiful, peaceful, mindful. I saw every face, touched every kid’s hand, sipping the miles slowly. At the half, my gentleman friend caught up with me, put his hand on my back and kissed my hand, then sped on to Newton. I just kept on, seeing every face, gently slapping every outstretched hand. Happiness.

Thursday, I wanted that feeling again after so many days at half mast. I took my phone and set out for the 40 minutes I had to run before Henry finished his tennis class. Because Spring has finally closed the door on winter, everything is lush with color–green, yellow, pink. Allergies be damned, it’s gorgeous out there. I carried my phone because my plan was to stop and take a picture of every single beautiful thing I saw in 40 minutes of running. After weeks of discourse on the ugliness that one or two humans can inflict, I saturated myself in the beauty of my little square of the world. The forsythia sprayed into the air like wild Muppet hair. The trees stood like actresses on a green carpet. The daffodils were more shy, but I found them.

On Friday, I didn’t want to let go of my new framework on things. I texted my gentleman friend to say that we needed to go to Idylwild ASAP so I could look at the produce. Idylwild is the kind of place it sounds like, a local market where grapefruit is stacked in a perfect pyramid next to displays of kumquats and pomegranates. Even the turnips look good there. We bought grapefruit, mango, pineapple, and the box of blackberries that’s missing in the photo down there.

And I haven’t even gotten to the wine and cheese section.

On Saturday, I found the pike, which was not going to be featured in my album of beautiful things, but I did also find myself in yoga class after far too long, and while I didn’t take any pictures there, it was 90 minutes of sweaty, stretchy, mindful, shanti-ful goodness. I sun-salutationed my triceps into three  days of soreness, but my core–in all senses–felt great. I left with sweat dripping from my braid knowing my toxins were hitting the pavement as I walked back to my car.

Sunday morning, I was totally in the beautiful things groove. As breakfast is my art form of choice, I was going to PR in beautiful things. We made a fruit salad with the produce bought at Idylwild, poured fresh orange juice that cost more than my copay, and sat down with the french press, the NY Times, and scones.

After breakfast, I headed back to the market and went a little overboard buying scallops for dinner because that’s what you do after you eat a breakfast like that. Later, I bought a bottle of Pimm’s because, c’mon, you can’t have a day like that without a Pimm’s Cup.

Before the Pimm’s Cup, however, we got in the car and went to the heart of urban beauty.

We sat on Boston Common under a blue sky brilliant as they come, and looked across the Public Garden to the city’s skyline. Kites flew, and people were everywhere, strolling, sunbathing, smiling. It was windy and chilly, but if you sat low on the grass, it felt warm under the sun even as the wind whipped the flags, which were, as it happens, all at full mast.

And that was my weekend–every single beautiful thing.

I spent the past week at the beach with Henry. When the event inevitably came up in conversation with some random guy, he asked how my run was, and without thinking, I said the thing I’ve said after other marathons, but I meant it literally for the first time:

“I survived.”

I need some distance before I try to cover any more of it; I am too close to run far. I don’t know if I’ll ever write a race report for this one. Maybe this is enough, the image of Henry running to me from the corner of Hereford and Boylston, shortly before the event that we saw from a block or so beyond the Finish. It cracks my core to see it.

No mother should ever have to lie to her frightened son: “I’m sure it wasn’t a bomb, love. I’m sure everything is fine.” But I similarly feel profoundly lucky to have had my child by my side, safe under a foil heat sheet in my arms, as more importantly, no mother should ever have to lose her child.

After yesterday, I am grateful, sad, relieved, and likewise filled with maternal warmth to have shared that marathon so closely with my son. My heart aches for those who were maimed or killed and for their families.

Following the blast, I hurried Henry away from the Finish area as sirens screamed down the streets we walked. I reassured him the entire way that everything was totally fine. After we found our people, before anyone really knew what happened, Henry and I took a picture, with confused and slightly forced smiles, which I think captures our marathon.

Peace and love.

Kristina

Which is what I did last weekend, at least the diva part.

Last weekend, my parents and I took Henry to Maine because I had a photo shoot for my new book (releasedJune4,availableforpreordernowonAmazon). Oh my God, I feel like a diva just writing that sentence. Before my appointment, we played in the rocks on the beach in York, where Henry found shells and I tried to keep my hair and face from certain aesthetic peril inflicted by the whipping wind. (Diva.) It was freezing, but we found fun.

Then we headed up to Portland Head Light to meet the incredibly talented and ebullient Kate Crabtree. While Henry climbed more rocks and played the part of Czar of the Lighthouse with his grandpa, Kate and I searched for spots out of the wind.

My photo shoot (diva) was so much wild fun, and I learned how to use “lady hands” and “pop a hip,” which sounds painful, but is actually a just a move Kate wanted so I could embody sassy coolness. I think I’m laughing in most of the pictures because she cracked me up. It was so windy and cold that Kate and I had to take a break midway through so I could thaw my frozen cheeks in her car.

Kate probably still has artist nightmares about my rebellious hair, which we had to fix before every shot, only to have it take flight again. I still have runner nightmares about climbing across rocks on the beach in my black wedge boots 9 days before the marathon, but the risk of breaking my ankle was totally worth it.

When I see the photos, I can say that she is the most unbelievably skillful photographer I’ve ever met. I look sassy and cool! It was a total blast, and I couldn’t be happier with the pictures. Check ‘em out on her blog.

Oh, and here’s another photo taken during taper week:

See you on the other side.

It’s a big, fat 26.2-mile training run, and despite the fact that my fitness seems to be in a long-term rest cycle, I’ve managed to shift my inner conflict about my run at Boston, and I’m looking forward to it.

The essence of my uncertainty about my fitness really stems from two photos.

In 2007, I started my first Boston Marathon and scarred my runner’s identity in a way that only others in the Marathon DNF Club can know. It was miserable, and I’ll probably always carry that DNF like an albatross through every marathon I start.

In 2008, I trained as conservatively as I possibly could, running 4 days/week and never exceeding a weekly max of 45 miles. When I toed the starting line, I was so happy to be unbroken that I savored the entire race, which was casual and untimed, as far as I was concerned. This is what I looked like at mile 16:

I was stupid with joy. It may be the last time I smiled that broadly during a race, definitely the only time I’ve smiled like a delirious fool at mile 16. I was running in front of Newton Wellesley hospital, where I’d ended up under an xray in 2007, and my parents, husband, and son were there to cheer for me. Clearly, I was totally blasé to actually see my people amid the throngs. My dad took that picture.

I ran a 4:01 and didn’t care at all that I missed the 4-hour mark by a minute.

Fast forward a few years, and this was my run in 2011 at Boston. My parents, husband, and son were there to cheer for me, again, and I was equally excited by the idea of seeing them on the course. This was me racing in 2011:

That’s as close to a smile as I would go in 2011. My dad took that photo, too. I was happy to be there, but I was racing, a different runner from the giddy girl of 2008. In the three years since ’08, I’d trained like a dog to qualify for Boston and become much more businesslike about the whole enterprise of running, my dumb pink socks aside.

I ran a 3:45 and was pissed as hell that I didn’t go sub-3:40.

And so now we are here, 2013, running a Boston for which I also qualified, yet trained in way more like I was in ’08, thanks to injury and other stuff that gets in the way of seriously dedicated training.

I feel like I have a racer’s mind and a recreational body–a 2011 brain inside 2008 flesh.

We sometimes refer to a person with a false sense of security, though I don’t think this is a problem I’ve ever had myself. The problem I usually face is a false sense of insecurity, and I know I’m not the only woman who battles this mindset.

In my mind, I’m  not fit enough for a strong Boston, despite my good-enough training, because I didn’t run 60 miles/week, never ran more than 4 days/week, and didn’t do a single mid-week run in the double digits. The thing is, I didn’t do any of those things in 2008 and it’s clear how amazing my race felt.

The reality is that I am in good shape for my long run at Boston, and my insecurity about it is falsely situated in the race-mind I’ve developed over years of hard training. This fallacy has been my revelation in the past few days, and it’s strengthened me. It’s true that knowing yourself better can transform more than just your perspective; it changes how you are in the world. Self-awareness matters far more than we usually give it credit for, in endurance sports and beyond.

Next Monday, I might not express the uninhibited joy I had in 2008, but because I know my runner’s mind more clearly, I will run far with a love of  the marathon and what my body can do.

Good luck to my runners who are headed to Boston: Kelly, Dan, and Kara. Knowing how hard you’ve trained, I cannot wait to see what you can do. Tear it up.

It might sound like sandbagging (and so be it), but I’m running Boston so that I can run Big Sur, which was sold out when I went to register. So I had to sign up for Boston to Big Sur in order to run the race I really wanted to run. That means I can’t get all racy racy at Boston, particularly because my weekly mileage has capped at 41, a  good 20 miles/week lower than my usual marathon training.

Because I’m a girl who’s always looking forward, always needing a goal, that also means I have to find a good goal for Boston or I will get racy racy and then crash like a trainwreck. It doesn’t help that my gentleman friend is going to pass me even though he’s starting 20 minutes behind me. I’ll be looking in my invisible rear view mirror until the inevitable zoom-by, likely to occur in a most demoralizing fashion at the start of the Newton hills.

‘Sall good. Because I have a new goal that’s right for the B2BS situation: run Boston as slowly as possible, without a positive split. The point is that I can’t run it super damn slow just because I have to walk the last 5 miles after running the first 21 stupidly fast.  The point is to run a reasonably slow race to save my legs, but cover Boston’s crazy inverted normal curve with a negative split. Good goal, non?

I have no ambitions for my finish time (at least that’s my story), but I want to run the first half at 9:00s, which is a pretty difficult goal on a downhill. I think that’s the only way I’ll have a shot at my negative split.

All this goal nonsense aside, I’m trying to orient the run toward the idea of an experience instead of a race. I’m trying to see it as my final training run for Big Sur, the main course in this whole absurd marathon binge. If this is all-you-can-eat running, I need Boston to be the cocktail, not the bread you fill up on.

Boston is a just a cocktail. Pin a BAA bib with a timing chip on a woman, put her in Hopkinton on Patriots Day, and that’s a very hard task to envision.

And that’s another reason why I’m choosing to think about the problem of the vision of my white pasty legs in the race photos. It’s such a simple little problem.

I am practicing my deep breathing, but the air is so cold, I sputter, find the couch, and go back to distractions like public radio, Popeapalooza, and the Modern Love column in the New York Times. I need Spring. The winterizing of my soul is getting old, and everything in life feels like two steps forward, one step back. Which I guess is better than one step forward, two steps back. That said, I don’t think that simple, humble forward progress is really asking all that much.

Obviously, the seasons are a good example, and they seem to set the stage for everything else that happens. Two weeks ago, I ran the slowest 22 miles of my life, which was horrendous and demoralizing, but it was winter, so I shrugged it off as a seasonally affected long run. That run was what it must feel like to run on legs suffering from a major depressive episode. But it was winter then.

Then we had a touch of Spring. I saw a crocus. My garden Buddha finally poked his head above the snow. Things were looking so good. It was a New Englandy sort of Spring, but it felt Springy nonetheless. One day, I wore a skirt without tights, the pores on my white, ashy legs taking big gulps of unconstricted air. Last weekend, I ran 20 miles at a pace that was a minute per mile faster than the 22-miler, on the Boston course, on an out-and-back through the Newton hills. It was St. Patrick’s Day. I wore green, the color of Spring to those of us who aren’t Irish (Irish Spring soap notwithstanding). Two steps forward. Happy, content, optimistic, even.

Yesterday, the sky dumped another too many inches of sleety, icy, nasty snow. And just like that: winter. Skin back under under fleece, and my spirit again hibernating beneath every defense mechanism I can find. Agonizing, slow 10k run on the mill yesterday, looking out a window onto snow banks higher than my child. Today, digging out and finding my soul back in protective mode to get me through Ides. One step back.

I have one more very long run planned for this weekend, 20-22 miles. I don’t know if it will be Winter or Spring, and that’s a weird, uncomfortable place to be. It’s like a bipolar disorder of climate. What’s a runner to do? Pack some Gu and run far far far–thinking of the good season, which will come again, as it always does.

Saturday morning, I putzed around way too long before going for my long run. My excuse is that my foot does better on a run if I’ve been walking around on it for a while. Also, I was lazy. A little past 11, my gentleman friend and I finally hit the road for 16-18 miles. We decided on two loops of 8+ miles so we could call it off midway through if either one of us had knee or foot pain. Matching injuries are much less romantic than they sound. It’s more like the dorkiness of wearing the same shirt than the swankiness of ordering the same martini.

Anyway, we limped off for mile 1.

“How’s your foot?”

“It’s ok.”

“How’s your knee?”

“It’s ok.”

I  know: hot, right?

The first mile was fast for me, but I held on and so did my foot and knee. We ran along the rural roads, noticing a conspicuous amount of discarded fruit along the way. Apple cores, orange peels, like Carmen Miranda had been running ahead of us. It was a mild kind of day, cloudy for the most part, and windless, which was a nice change of pace this winter. I’m mostly sick of the roads in my town, but running them with someone else lets you notice things you don’t usually see. “What’s your favorite giant statue in that yard?” is a question you wouldn’t ordinarily ask yourself, for example, when running by a property dotted with a prominent display of statuary.

“The Venetian boys in the gazebos, obviously.”

We ran by the library, which had a sign for a book sale. “Why would the library have a book sale?”

I never really thought the library book sale was odd before. “So they can buy new books? Circle of life and whatnot?”

After running down the mile-long hill from the town Common, we crossed the railroad tracks and passed the parking lot to the big town trail system . I saw a man getting out of his truck, obviously getting ready to run. Obvious because he had the expression that I have when I’m getting ready to run, the one that says, “I am compelled to do this. Whether or not I like it is irrelevant.”

I ran on with my gentleman friend. Less than five minutes later, the sound a of a different man’s voice startled me out of my fantasies about potato chips. “I don’t want to scare you guys. Just running up behind you.”

I thought he was probably trying to pass us, but instead, Mike joined us on the run. I’m always happy to have more conversation to distract me from my watch/foot/knee/brain, so I wouldn’t have let him pass us anyway. After we’d exchanged two sentences came the “I know who you are!”

Uh oh.

He’d read my blog. His wife knows I bought a foot scruncher for my plantar. He knows friends of mine. We’ve both run for Dana-Farber. He probably knows I peed my shorts at mile 5 in Chicago. We run in the same circle, kind of literally, since he runs the same roads I run all the time. It was fun to make a new friend, who I’m surprised I hadn’t met before. And for 20 minutes, I didn’t look at my watch.

The three of us ran together to mile 8 or so, when we diverged, pilgrims in technical fabrics pursuing different paths to 18 miles on the watch. My gentleman friend and I paused at the halfway point, deciding that we  both felt good enough for a second lap. We refilled my water bottle with Nuun we poured all over my right glove and headed for another round in the opposite direction.

At about mile 11, just before the mile-long climb to the town common, I gave permission to my gentleman friend to dust me. I futzed around with my earbuds and iPod, weaving around the shoulder, but got them in at the base of the hill when he took off. Beyoncé launched her “Single Ladies” anthem, which I thought was particularly cruel timing at this point in the game. Ring or no ring (on it), I really can’t put my hands up (hands up) while trying to climb a mountain. An uphill battle is hard enough without putting my hands in the air like I just don’t care.

I passed a house that reeked of pot but I made it to the top without stopping for a bong hit, amazingly enough.  After I’d passed the weed den and made it to the Common, I had to pull over to take a Gu because I couldn’t fumble with my water, mittens, and Gu at the same time, not to mention the iPod that was swinging around  my feet because it came unclipped when I took my Gu out. I hate these kinds of shenanigans when I’m just trying to run, dammit. This is the kind of thing I imagine when someone says, “I know who you are!” With my luck, he means, “You’re the freaky lady who was tangled in her iPod cord, smearing chocolate Gu all over her face in front of the police station.”

I got myself put back together and ran on, with less than 5 miles to go and a right hand frozen due to the Nuun spill. With 3 miles to go, I took off the glove and ran like a Michael Jackson tribute. This is usually the point in a long run where I start making bargains with myself. Usually the bargains have to do with lunch, dinner, and the placement of a margarita in my day. By the time I got to the last mile, I’d figured out where we were having lunch and what I would order because it was 1:30 and I could think of nothing but carbohydrates and salt. Also, we were going to have beef short ribs and potatoes for dinner.  By the close of the 18th mile, the question about when to have a margarita became a question about when  not to have a margarita.

I turned the last corner to get to my house, and my gentleman friend was cheering and jumping with his hands in the air, for me, not Beyoncé (I assume). 18 relatively painless miles done, 15 sec/mile faster than last week, plus a new friend, who knows who I am and seemed to like me anyway. I call that a long run success.