The author and Coach Anatolie celebrating her Boston-qualifying time, with sweet tea and salty bread, after the Moscow Peace Marathon.

Endnote

Individual race results, except for the top 10 male and female top finishers, are not posted on the official website [http://www.marafon.msk.ru]. Because of this, it was difficult for Boston Marathon officials to verify my qualifying race time on my application. Fortunately, the Moscow race organizer had sent me the recorded results by e-mail soon after the marathon date, which I forwarded as evidence and also asked the Moscow race organizer to verify them with an e-mail to the Boston organizer.

FOOTNOTES

‘In the September/October 2005 issue (Volume 9, Number 5) of M&B, James Bates, in his article titled “The Lifetime Running Profile,” inspired me to start keeping a running log. Since October 1, 2005, I have kept track of mileage on a daily basis, according to the method he described.

? Kathrine Switzer, “Fast Women: From Out of the Bushes to the Lead Pack:

A History.” Adidas presents Boston Marathon & Beyond 2006.

Sergiu Triboi

Is It All Really Meaningless? Or Just a Run Away From Depression?

REFACE

Excerpts from Ecclesiastes:

“Meaningless! … Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”

l applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief… .

I thought in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless. “Laughter,” I said, “is foolish. And what does pleasure accomplish?” ….

Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless. . . . The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both… .

Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both .. . Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return… .

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom. … The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong .. . time and chance happen to them all.

DARK SIDE

few months off to relax and recuperate, both physically and emotionally. That fall I began easing back into workouts. By year’s end, I had begun stepping up the intensity and consistency enough that I lost a few pounds. By mid-2005, that

healthy loss had continued to about 25 pounds. I improved my workouts in both speed and distance. Now mentally refreshed as well, I decided to try a fall race. I chose the Darkside Marathon in the Atlanta suburb of Peachtree City. (The race director tells me that the “Darkside” name for the sponsoring running club and the race comes from many of the members’ running in early morning, before sunrise.) I felt confident that I would do well and that I would run more of the distance than usual.

When I made those plans, I had no idea what else would slow me down much more than any physical concerns such as today’s blisters or anxiety about my ongoing cancer treatment.

On Sunday morning, November 6, 2005, some 20 participants gathered for the 50K while 21 of us walked to the separate start line for the marathon. The two events would begin simultaneously and run on the same asphalt loop (just under 5.18 miles) on atrail system throughout Peachtree City. Marathoners would complete five loops beyond the extra segment at the start; 50K participants would go six laps.

Overcast skies and moderate temperatures (60s?) supported my cautious optimism—cautious because I didn’t know what to expect with my new, new prosthetic leg. (I had trained for a couple of months on an earlier new prosthesis, only to have the socket begin cracking about 10 days before the race. Power outages from Hurricane Wilma prevented my prosthetist from dealing with this until four days before the marathon. I had no opportunity to try out the replacement socket and make adjustments, hence my uncertainty.) So I undertook the first loop just walking briskly, not even racewalking, to assess the fit. Before completing even one loop, already I felt some growing discomfort from friction at the distal end of my below-knee stump.

This sort of distal early warning I normally don’t feel until at least the late teen miles. Sometimes I don’t have it at all. Today it began with over 20 miles to go. My cautious optimism became more cautious and less optimistic.

Experience from 58 marathons and ultras told me this will become blisters bad enough to hinder my pace substantially and require at least a week to heal before I can walk without wincing. OK, I can live with it. (I generally do have a resilient, affirmative outlook; I tend to see, or at least look for, the positive in most things.)

I dropped my hopes of jogging more today. It would exacerbate the abrasion and provide no significant time benefit. I would have to settle for walking the entire course. OK, yeah, I can live with that, too.

Shortly into my second lap, probably a little before 9:00 a.m., I suddenly realized that since awakening at about 5:45, I hadn’t thought of Lana at all.

Lana (not her real name). A month before this race, she severed our relationship. We had shared only eight months, but I had given myself devotedly, no defenses, freely available, fully exposed. Her pulling out crushed me. Since that

break, this morning’s three-hour respite was probably the longest continuous period of consciousness I had had without feeling profound loss.

But now this caustic truth resurged into my awareness and began eating away my usual cheerfulness. Just as surely as I knew from experience that these blisters would spread and deepen across the end of my residual limb, so also I knew that at any moment, my amygdala would start spamming intense memories of Lana.

Iknew I wouldn’t be able to shake this. The emotional abrasion would debilitate me more than the physical. Today I’d take a walk on the very dark side.

Sure enough, my post-Lana malaise began to drain me, pain me, slow me down, and drag me out. I started wondering why I should bother going on. I made my 50&DC goal last year. I have nothing to prove here. I see no shame in a DNF.

PERSONAL PASSIONS PRESERVED

My relationship with Lana stirred up existential sound bites I hadn’t dealt with quite so deeply and deliberately for years. Never before had I been able to enjoy sharing these abstractions, with such resonance, in a relationship that blended passion, intimacy, hope, and fun. As I had come to grips with my cancer before meeting her, it reassured me greatly that we shared a very pragmatic perspective on mortality.

Now the silence, the void of that discussion, haunted me. Those views form much of the foundation of how I see myself and what I see as significant in life. It hurts to realize that I won’t likely find another woman who has that strong a grip on those issues.

Reality check: sharing those beliefs obviously didn’t carry enough weight to support the relationship. So as much as I enjoy contemplating them, how important can they be? As today’s fastest runners began passing me on the loop, I found myself fuming (whining?): I’m tired of the hurt, the grief, getting burned, tired of enduring the recovery. I’m fed up with both this race and relationships. Why keep trying?

Forget Nike: Just don’t do it. Just drop out. Just DNF.

The metaphor intensified to a much darker side. As my pain stirred up a concentrated mess of neurochemical toxins, right now I would mark myself DNF for life.

It took me decades of spiritual exertion to assimilate these broader, pricklier realities rooted in Ecclesiastes: finally everything in life serves as just a distraction before death. Work? Wisdom? Pleasure? Finishers’ medals? It’s all futile, empty, pointless. We have no grand destiny, no eternal purpose, no intrinsic meaning other than what we perceive and paint and ponder. We have no validation other than that which we achieve through action, no love beyond that which we make. And it still torments me to reflect on how that love—or at least the bright,

tantalizing hopes I had for it—can sprout, quickly bloom, decay, and die in just a few months. Right back to dust.

Some call this view darkness. I disagree, but truth matters more than metaphor. Whatever symbol or label you prefer, we still face only one common certainty. The implications of that fatalism mesh with my usual attitude—enjoy what you can while you can, do your best with what you have, and get to it here and now. Clearly some things we’ll enjoy more, others less. For me, just mark today’s race (and the last few agonizingly distressed weeks of my life) “much less.”

Any endorphin boost from today’s exertion will have to contend with the competing brain chemistry of depression and disappointment. The weight I’ve lost this year helps me, but the love I’ve lost renders me detached. Stumbling along the course, I mumble desperate profanities as I mentally replay scenes of exhilaration, laughter, and passion both fierce and tender, all crashing head-on into a misunderstanding and overreaction on both our parts. Stagnation and hopelessness followed, until finally, a month ago, Lana put it to death. Today I feel it decomposing. It’s taking me with it.

People have different tolerances for pain and suffering. Whatever your threshold, eventually you may endure the abrasions and injuries, literally or metaphorically, only so many times, or to a certain severity, before limping off the course, grimacing at the wounds and the blood, and snarling in despair: the hell with it.

There’s my dark side today.

This definitely is not my usual upbeat, resilient outlook.

BURNING LEAVES COULD BECOME BURNING ATLANTA

The race offered a few breaks from complete misery. During the third lap, I noticed an aroma I loved from childhood in south Alabama (and which I don’t get in south Florida)—autumn’s crisp smell of burning leaves. Considering the abundance of yellow, orange, and brown covering so many backyards of the expensive, expansive homes along this trail, it amazed me that anyone risked foliage on fire. Just two or three escapees could catch a light commuter breeze here in suburban Atlanta and easily re-create a Georgia tragedy from the Civil War.

But, oh, the richness of that olfactory memory.

T inhaled deeply—mm.

I felt vivid pleasure in this and other ephemeral, sensuous phenomena scattered along the course. At many points, I enjoyed the forest backdrop and the occasional splash of autumn color. I often heard birds’ assorted chirping and singing. I saw squirrels scampering to finish their pre-Christmas shopping.

Breezes coaxed aging leaves from their branches; I enjoyed watching them flutter down to the ground. Fatalism does have its simple, lovely, eloquent examples.

I stopped a few times throughout the morning to tinker with the prosthesis, trying different sock thicknesses, hoping to find a combination that would alleviate

some of the still-increasing irritation. I had limited but adequate success; by the time I returned to the lap station, the pain had increased, the abrasion had still spread, but at a discernibly slower rate. This left me feeling a little less anxious over proceeding into loop four.

I’m here now. May as well keep at it. Why not?

While I asked, “Why not?” I kept tripping over the edited version: why? I gained nothing uniquely substantial from this. Fitness? No. Just as easily, I could have stayed in Miami and walked back and forth along my street or the loop at Continental Park. So why?

I did see some justification: I’m gregarious enough that even (or especially) while racing with a broken heart, I do appreciate camaraderie. Participating with others who share a similar enjoyment of nature and fitness does bring some pleasure, however transient. Also, hey, I paid for the flight, the hotel, the rental car, so I may as well get my money’s worth.

Plus, assuming I eventually cross the finish line, I can say, “I did it.” But what difference does that make? I used to take a more genuine sense of accomplishment, in “I did it.” Fatigued and jaded, to this I now sneered contemptuously: and so what.

My cup of cynicism ran over again. Of grief’s five stages, lately I’ve been simmering in a grande special blend, heavy on the anger and depression, flavored with a squirt of denial and sprinkled with just the occasional traces of bargaining. This harsh, bitter brew prevented me from savoring whatever satisfaction I might otherwise have tasted in finishing.

This bleakness depleted the enthusiasm I’ve typically brought to distance events and to most aspects of my life. The decline and fall of the romance leached the joy out of my memories. I wish I could have felt what I know often ranged from good to hilarious to ecstatic. But right then, on that course, those images fell into the shadows.

All those we did and now we don’t. Her pulling away began ostensibly with one particular turn of events, though I maintain she never acknowledged the full context. It also involved sorting through which behaviors and values meshed or interfered with her agenda. Some did not fit into what she expressly acknowledged as her need to see herself as strong and independent, so much so that she wouldn’t risk the vulnerability in making the emotional sacrifices for genuine, long-term intimacy.

I genuinely admire personal strength and independence. Unfortunately, Lana cited that as a key part of her decision not to accommodate anyone new in any substantial way in her life and her home, long term.

Or, at least, not me.

She preferred her life as it was, she said. Other desires, other priorities. And she has every right to that decision. It’s her life—which would have been ours.

She did try. She had said that she never expected to find anyone she might feel about as she felt about me. She was willing to take the chance, so I do know she did try—diligently, caringly, openly—at least at first.

Now our shared experiences exist only as some enigmatic pattern of neurological etchings and fluid, subjective interpretations, shifting from moment to moment. The hope and enchantment I felt, and whatever she also enjoyed, now have no more place in real life than M. C. Escher’s fascinating, intricate, but impossible worlds.

WHAT DO WE LEARN OTHER THAN HOW TO LEARN?

It seems that no matter what I learn—or what I think I learn—I keep finding some key truths over and over. Each time I find them, they seem to have new contours and textures; each time they demand a new examination. The new faces of truth often require new attitudes, new affirmations, and the revision or disposal of some ideas with which I’ve grown comfortable. So I wonder whether I ever do really learn, but perhaps this shows the genuine learning, and conversely the fantasy that anyone has definitively learned that any given truth indicates only the failure to learn. Oh, forget it. On this, I’ just defer to T. S. Eliot in Little Gidding:

What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. . . .

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

With Lana, I felt certain: this one will work out. But didn’t I say the same thing in other relationships? Evidently I still don’t know the place. I’m disoriented. I can’t figure out where I am, how I got here, where to go next. This inky darkness certainly feels like an end, and I don’t want to begin again. I don’t want to explore any more.

I don’t see why I should. Trying to let go of her rips me open. This loss gnaws viciously into my muscles and bones, far more than any soreness or injury I’ve endured in and after any 42K-plus. Her rejection impales me on points I thought would serve to keep us united. I don’t dare approach the starting line again.

Yeah, I’ve been here before. On the roads and trails, it involves glycogen or muscle strains or blisters or, occasionally, wondering where the oxygen went. Correspondingly, I’ve come through a divorce and another longer-term intimate relationship. This path looks familiar.

Ido suppose I’ll get past this, eventually—not anytime soon.

BACK TO THE REALITY OF THE RACE

Jumping back to the racecourse: the loop guides me through the same terrain over and over. I doubt that T. S. Eliot imagined dodging golf carts driven by Peachtree City residents as they go about their own Sunday morning, to the lake, to a neighbor’s, to the shopping center, whatever. Most of them appear to enjoy their morning; evidently they do not worry about pointlessness. Of course, just to look at me, they probably wouldn’t notice the elaborate, fully matched set of emotional luggage I’m hauling, either.

So I wonder: what darkness do these other scantily clad, electrolyte fueled, Bengayed runners deal with? Other participants carry their own physical and emotional issues, tailored to fit them uniquely in assorted shapes and styles. Some face challenges, even anguish, much more protracted and excruciating than mine.

I know I’m not the only person hurting here, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me. My darkness prevails over several weeks now in the suffocating crush of loneliness as it continues tightening around me like an anaconda. I feel the constriction especially in contrast to how free, light, and warm everything else felt—for the first few months, before.

Ilump together every time I’ve said, “I don’t see how I can finish this marathon.” That pile of negativism and doubt didn’t come near how hopeless I felt, that day.