Kyrianne Jane Tuttle Willson

It's been the most surreal day. Everything I do is draped in this feeling of being an aunt and this little person really being in the world. I can't get over the idea that she is somehow totally Shea and Drew and at the same time, now finally something totally separate from them. How did they do that? I am okay with the genes and the organs and the ten fingers and toes- but how did they give her that little light: the will, the soul?

Born to be Barefoot

After reading Born to Run during the majority of my flight from Tucson in April, I did the smallest amount of research possible and then ordered barefoot running shoes online. They’re called vibram five-fingers and they look a bit like alien shoes-- I’ve thought about this quite a lot-- mostly because we’re not used to the fact that we actually have five toes. Seeing them all splayed out there encased in black nylon (or bright red, mossy green, even sunshine yellow) looks strange and sort of flips my stomach like I’m trying to politely avert my gaze from some abnormality. After all, since the advent of cushy heels and gel pods, what exactly are toes for? The annoyance of clipping nails, the weirdness of what gets jammed between them, the frustration and agony of smashing them against doorframes and table legs.

In fact, its been a long time since I’ve had something good to say about my feet in general. When I was a kid, I waited for shoeless summers with a similar intensity as Christmas morning. The first sign came when even grown ups abandoned puffy winter coats, then okay, yes, we can wear short sleeved shirts and finally! the shorts get unpacked from dusty boxes, and last, but certainly not least came the shoes: off with the shoes, bare feet all around! One summer I became so used to treading around without shoes that I walked six blocks to a babysitting job without even noticing there was nothing on my feet.
And yet, somewhere along the way, everything changed. There are many things that may have let to the hating of my feet, but if I had to pin in down to one experience, my guess would be the horror of skating in 3rd grade gym class.

Six weeks out of the year they heaved in great wheeled cubbies full of shoes to fit the wide spectrum of sizes necessary to house the wide spectrum of grade school feet. Think about it for a second: do you remember the third grader whose hands and feet were the size of Barbie shoes? The one who towered above you with dolphin heraches thundering down the stairs? The blessed middle-sized child no one remembers at all. And then they made a spectical of the whole thing by calling you up by size. Size 5 and under, you can retrieve your skates. Okay, now size 6 and 7. Anyone else? Oh yeah, size 7 and up. And three of us would stand in the sea of petite hands struggling to pull on and lace skates over small and normal feet. All seemed to halt as they turned to look up. There’s a size above 7? Really? How? And there we were, apologetically running to the last cubby by the wall, pulling out our clownish two-tone red and green skates (the only colors in that size) and ducking our faces (now the same color as our skates) down to begin the slow attempt at fastening these massive (do they have to be on wheels?!) bodies of canvas and laces to our snow-sled size feet.

Then on a camping trip with my dad I fell over a rogue tent stake and gashed the big toe on my left foot. The toe has healed, but the nail never did.

Then when I started running, they started to smell; am I to blame?!

Then in college when I started running more than sitting by the pool, I got a horrible ring around my ankle: the dreaded sock tan. I stopped wearing sandals. I hated the sight of my feet. And thus we have the present condition. I am flat footed. My feet are white as dolphins and twice the size. My toenail is cracked and discolored. Why, why, why and how could I ever learn to love my feet?

But then I read about barefoot running, and it took me about two paragraphs to be persuaded. Feet are surprising complex (housing as much as 25% of the bones in your body)not to mention architectually brilliant with toes and arches that all function in special ways giving us the ability to walk, run, balance, grip and jump. And yet we, particularly as ahtletes, have spent the last 30 years encasing them in increasingly complex imitations of an already complex, functional form. As Chris McDougall points out, no architect in her right mind would build supports beneath an archway if trying to maintain the integrity of the design. Even a child could deduce building with blocks (though probably without being able to articulate why) that the strengh of the arch comes when force is applied from above. So this is what I take from Chris’ conclusion: I have spent the last fifteen years (with increasing intensity as I have begun running more seriously) actually weakening my already almost non-existant arches. Ack!

Now that I have my vibrams, however, something of my childhood is coming back. I remember the freedom and sweetness of relying on my toes, of loving what my feet can do, how spry I feel, how able to balance and hop and go at a moment’s notice. Last weekend we went camping, and tide-pooling I found my greatest pleasure came not from the star-fish we uncovered the size of a house cat, but instead from the way my toes held and engaged the ground beneath me. Climbing, hopping, balancing, loving them all the (substantial) way from heal to grippy toe.

Collision

I know, I know... It's June. And its been almost- no, over- a month since I've last taken a minute to process my thoughts in this space. But as the weather outside is still so very frightful, I feel somehow justified in my wait. Yes, I have a lot on my mind, but a lot of it seems to be about large moments, and waiting. Waiting, but everything still manages to plunge forward at such an incredible pace that I can hardly catch my breath.

So we're waiting for sunny days, waiting for the baby (34 weeks along now I think?!), waiting for the endless list of wedding chores to be accomplished (and yeah, at times actively persuing this reality), waiting for vacation, waiting for packages to come in the mail (!!), and I've been waiting for something else too: waiting for it all to come together, to mesh in my mind: what's been happening, my witness to it all. Waiting for something that's unfolding so fast I can no longer hope for cohesion, but brace myself instead for collision. And hope that its manageable, resportable and just plain fine.

Shea said when she first told everyone she was pregnant, she was overwhelmed at her response to their questions. They couldn't stop asking about the sex and what they would name the baby; they wanted the props, the fill-in-the-blank baby. But all Shea thought was "Holy shit, this is a w-HAT now growing in my stomach?" I mean, its a baby in there. A real, live human (wo)man. A short little alien creature that she's somehow responsible for creating and maintaining and how can you even begin to puzzle this out let alone start thinking oh- the sex, oh- the name: yes, it'll be a boy and we'll call it Henry. Nobody thinks to bring up the real issue, you know, not that fact that its a boy or a girl but that its HUMAN.

This is almost exactly how I feel about getting married. Its not just that we're getting married in less than two months or that it'll be in IL and that I'm wearing white and he's wearing beige and we're eating a cake made by his grandmother. It's not that we'll be putting on rings, but what it is that they signify, which is unanimously unclear. Does it have to do with taking out the garbage, with moving across the country, with working at the grocery store day after day? Does it mean I have to go to church, have to agree, have to have an opinion?

Another reason I am slow to blog is the increasing attachment Pat has to his computer which greatly hinders my own access. And so, I bought Patrick an early wedding gift. And though it is actually mine and I sit typing these words upon it, it was Pat's sanity and happiness I had in mind when I bought this sweet little netbook and waited for it to arrive in the mail. It is the size of a large paperback novel, and just about as heavy. So hurrah! Independent blogging!

Lonely Roads, Mix CDs

a year or so ago, Pat made me a mix CD (inspired, in part I am sure, by my sister and brother in law who compile clever, incredibly romantic lists of songs to convey their feelings to each other). However, Pat's expressed his relationship not with me, but with God throughout his life. Typical. Anyway, as my own relationship both with faith and the faithful community has turned over afresh I have thought more than once about doing the same. Tonight I'm inspired by Joni Mitchel and her song All I Want, which I'm officially naming as the first song on the list.

It starts:

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, traveling, traveling
Looking for something, what can it be

Oh I hate you some, I hate you some, I love you some

Born to Run (and run and run)

In faith that it would turn out well, my roommate, Christy bought me a present for running the marathon. It was a book (of course), one we've discussed and I've been recommended more times than I can count on all my toes (more later). Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall. It is the unceremonious blow-by-blow of one journalist's personal struggle with running that lead him so far outside himself, he eventually woke up one day in the secluded canyons of Mexico and ran a 50-mile race through the mountains with a bare-footed man, a bunch of Indians, a super-star, a scraggly burnt out ex-kick-boxing champ, and a couple of crazy college kids who blew off their finals to tag along.

Last Friday afternoon I took a bus to the train station where I caught the next train to the airport, traveling first to LA and then to Tucson, AZ where I spent the weekend with friends from high school, one of whom got married Saturday. Sunday I spent nine and a half hours either sitting in the airport or flying after which I again took a train and then a bus back to my home. In every spare moment, I read. Upon arriving home again, Christy asked me, "How was it?!" I stared back at her blankly, bleary eyed from so much travel; trying to make meaning from her words was like waking up from a dream- a dream of dark, mysterious canyons, dusty trails, and beautiful, grippy bare feet...

"Kristin, how was your trip?" I blinked a few times, grinned and then asked, "Which one?"

I have read about running before, and it has been a wonderful thing. Often I find myself chucking aside my copy of Once a Runner or Ultra-Marathon Man to pull on my Asics and rocket down the street, my mind swimming with possibility or determination. But I've always felt something else, too-- a disconnect. The accounts I read or the runners with whom I happily share ideas, trails and advice always leave me feeling displaced. No, I don't run to think out complex issues. No, I can't run when I'm mad to blow off steam. I run best when I'm full of joy, when I feel lit up inside by potential or connectedness to the world-- and its impossible to say which comes first: the connection or the running. I suppose it isn't always the same.

I coached with Girls on the Run for two seasons, and it was a lot of fun. Still, often I found myself listening to lovely women (fellow coaches) sharing heart-breaking stories of low or budding self-esteem, how running helped them to form a positive body image, gain confidence in their ability, etc, etc... And yeah, I resonate with that, but only to a point. Of course I've had insecurities, and sure, a great many of them revolve around my body, and yes, hell yes have I hoped that my body would one day morph into a tiny, rock-hard version of what it is now on account of all the miles and pounding I've logged. But the truth is, it hasn't. And most of the time, I love it anyway, and I'm happy with the way that I look. But the point is, if I was running to love myself or to be loved, I would have quit a long time ago. To be fair, my confidence and self-esteem probably have improved tremendously since I first took to the roads with the team my sophomore year, but such a ethereal and intangible sort of theory just isn't enough to get me out there day after rainy, windy, chilly day. And I'm honestly just not that thoughtful all of the time- running for me is more basic than all that. It's more animal, less higher being.

And I've tried being great too, but that side of things never got too tempting, since I never excelled all that much. As I mentioned above I recently read Once a Runner, the fictional account of a tremendously successful college athlete who put in 160 mile weeks just to hit a sub 4:00 once in his life on a little black oval. And on one hand I totally got him- I knew the similar love and hate of a hard workout, the drive and impulse of a team, the fatigue of two-a-days, of recovering from a long run with a morning run, then an 8 mile workout in the same twelve hour period. But obviously I lost him whenever he won. And that sadness that continuously characterized the experience of the champions within that story; I found it so uncomfortable as I finished the book. 'What was the point of fulfilling their goals?' I found myself asking- and 'Why, why, why were they so sad when it came?'

And though on one hand, I felt irritated with his scathing perspective of the Lesser Runner or the exuberantly chatty-and-effusive Poet Runner (this might be personal), I pitied him also. The burden of excellence is huge. And yeah, maybe sad at times, because who really knows why it is chased, just that it seems that one must if one can, attempt to run one pure, perfect mile, especially if it is one of the fastest in the world.

Though obviously enjoyable and often inspiring, reading about running also forces me into a little soul-searching. I'm constantly wondering why I run. Not just races or even once a day after work, but why do I run to bus stops, to work every morning, to the top of hills in the rain or the dark- not just when I'm late, but all the time. It's part instinct, part just a feeling of hugeness in my chest, but its also just a desire to unlock, and to go. When Jenn, one of the college students in the story, describes her feelings about running I finally feel my heart leap. I couldn't put it better myself: "'I never discussed this with anyone because it sounds pretentious, but I started running ultras [races longer than 26.2] to become a better person,' Jenn told me. 'I thought if you could run one hundred miles, you'd be in this Zen state. You'd be the f---ing Buddha, bringing peace and a smile to the world. It didn't work in my case-- I"m the same old punk-ass as before-- but there's always that hope that it will turn you into the person you want to be, a better, more peaceful person.

'When I'm out on a long run,' she continued, 'the only thing in life that matters is finishing the run. For once, my brain isn't going blehblehbleh all the time. Everything quiets down, and the only thing going on is pure flow. It's just me and the movement and the motion. That's what I love-- just being a barbarian, running through the woods.'"

The super-star among them, winner and record-setter of many hundred mile races out there, made a special impression on me as well. In high school, he ran at the back of his pack. He just wasn't all that fast, and although something obviously changes for him later in life, something of these formative years seems to remain. By the time McDougall reflects on all this, he is not just a reporter, but a participant in the story, and is preparing to run the 50-mile final event. He knows Scott now not just as a subject, but as something of a teammate as well, and says, "What Coach Vigil sensed about character... Scott had been all his life. The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other, he understood, but to be with each other. Scott learned that before he had a choice, back when he was trailing Dusty and the boys through the Minnesota woods. He was no good and had no reason to believe he ever would be, but the joy he got from running was the joy of adding his power to the pack. Other runners try to disassociate from fatigue by blasting iPods or imagining the roar of the crowd in an Olympic Stadium, but Scott had a simpler method: it's easy to get outside yourself when you're thinking about somebody else."

When the race finally begins, McDougall, though last in the pack, feels far better than he expects. At the half-way point he is at just over three hours, far ahead of his projected pace. Thrilled by all the success at this point in the story, my heart is pounding for him to crash through his expectations and finish in 7 or 8 hours. But he didn't- though he did cross the finish line, it took him over twelve hours. The first guys had been waiting for him almost as long as it had taken them to run the entire course.

Woah, what a let-down I thought. Then Scott walks up to him, McDougall says just what I felt, but the super-star ultra champ just claps his back and says something like: yeah, but it takes a lot more courage to race 12 hours than 7.

And the affect of reading these words in the wake of my wildly exciting forty-five minute improvement, nearly-10 minute pace 4:25 marathon was huge. It was as if I was handed the ability to drag my first marathon up by the armpits and raise it into the air, shouting "This is a success!" It took courage. And I have to admit, though it felt damn good to finish that marathon having run the whole thing with gusto, it actually wasn't as hard as the first one. It is easier to accept what happened that day, and harder to remember the Rock and Roll. So which one is the true success?

Well, the next one, I hope! And I have my eyes on a 31.3 ultra next spring, which I plan to love, love, love every step of the way.

My pit crew

Whidbey Island- Part II

I keep catching the drift of sunny blooms, and remembering last summer: the food bank and the Mormons and the Rock and Roll Marathon.

It is not possible to carry this one around with me without remembering the despair of last July, the four slow weeks that followed the painful failure of that particular run. In the weeks leading up to the Whidbey, I did everything I could to suppress the memory: the hot, long miles, the impossible clamp around my throat, the frantic short breathing, the burning in my gut, the swimmy-buzzy panic in my head. And now that it has past, and the thrilled, relieved whirring has calmed, I can't stop thinking about that hot, mid-summer day.

In college when I ran my last cross country meet a similar feeling of despair ensued. In the crucial moment, I had given up on myself and in the following days could only dwell on the concept of not being able to gain that crucial moment back. Though we lofty thinker-beings oft feel able to rise above the primal notions of mere time and space, we live and die by them, too. And a swell mile isn't the same as a swell mile at the crucial moment. You can't get it back: it is a conditional gift of a single place and time, and you either deliver or you don't.

In the third mile of the Whidbey Island last Sunday, we ran through a Hawaiian-themed water station and they tossed leis around our necks as we ran past. I caught up to my running partner and we laughed about it and compared times. We were going quick- our third mile put us around a 9:10 average our excitement at this small achievement carried us a few happy miles. I wasn't familiar with this pace, certainly not at this distance, but as I told C., I felt great and why not go with a great thing while it lasts? (note this odd optimism. something very strange was happening.) We passed and were passed by a man several times with whom we exchanged several jokes as we powered up and over smallish hills. "Good luck" we called out each time, "Good job!"

At mile seven the real hills started and my stomach rumbled with hunger. I can't remember ever feeling hungry in the first marathon and I wasn't sure what to do. I pulled a honey-gel shot from my pocket and chewed it slowly, but my stomach still felt empty so I told myself the half was right around the corner, and truly felt that it was so. Again, this strange ability to not be overwhelmed with the distance. It must have been luck- or Imogen Heap who was now being piped into my thrumming brain.

At 2:03, we clocked in for the half marathon, our quickest half yet. (1:57 makes a perfect 9 minute mile pace) I knew that Mom, Christy, Pat, along with a few other close friends planned to meet us at the halfway point, but upon crossing the marker and seeing nobody around I seriously considered that I might have taken a wrong turn. Though I wanted to see them and had been looking forward to the friendly faces, I also desperately longed for the food. I knew that mom was armed with bananas and plumbs and nut-and-date bars and wanted to take as much as I could hold.

Nearly to mile 14, I saw them. My mother handed me two plums, a banana and half an energy bar, and I turned down a 1.5 mile path, what's known as a 'turn-around' so-called because at the end you simply turn around and trot back the way you came. On the way back, I spotted my running partner half a mile behind me, and met my friends and mother again on the other end, right around mile 16.