Refreshing Street Encounter

I've interacted with a lot of strangers in New York with unpleasant results. Happily, I capped off September with a rather nice one.

On the way home from work today, I stopped by the library to drop off a few books that were nearing their due date. As I was leaving, I held the door open for an old lady wearing cheerful (if rather heavily applied) blush and a very pretty knitted hat that appeared to be handmade. She smiled and thanked me for holding the door and I complimented her on the had and asked if she'd made it. She laughed and thanked me, and said that it was indeed handmade but that her friend had made it. 

"I can't knit,: she laughed, "I can't do anything!" 

"Oh I'm sure you would figure it out!" I replied. "I knit, and if I can do it, anybody can." 

"Now what about crocheting?" she asked me. "Is this knitting or crocheting?" She bent her head down a bit so I could examine that hat more closely, and I told her that it looked like knitting to me. "Now," she said, "there's a girl at work says that she can't crochet because she's left-handed." 

"Yes I think that makes it harder because almost all of the instructions are for righties."

Her expression turned very serious then, but there was a twinkle in her eye. She put her hand on my arm, and said matter-of-factly, "Let me tell you, life is full of problems." Then she burst into giggles and so did I. I told her to have a good night, and she wished me the same, and we went our separate ways.

Training Update: The Back Hills

There's a saying among runners in the New York area that you haven't lived until you've died in the Back Hills. I put that theory to the test on Sunday, and though I'm paying for it today, it was certainly an enjoyable run.

The Back Hills is the northern part of Van Cortlandt Park. It's hilly and covered with trees, shrubs, and boulders. I shied away from it last week because I couldn't find a good trail map. This week, though, I decided to just go for it--that's what my GPS watch is for after all--and run around until I either made my goal mileage or got sick of it and decided to move on. The area is only about 1 square kilometer, but I put in more than five miles following the circuitous trails. At first, I stuck to the widest, most established trails. As I got more comfortable, I chose narrower and narrower trails, finding that the less established they were, the more adventurous they felt. Even though the area isn't very large and I explored it thoroughly, I still can't navigate reliably and will be just as lost next time as I was this time. Still, no matter which direction I choose to go, I'm bound to end up near the trailhead that leads back to the main part of Van Cortlandt every 15 or 20 minutes, so I'm not too worried about where I am. On Sunday, I enjoyed simply taking appealing-looking trails on whims and exploring them until they looped back on themselves.

Just like last week, I was smitten with the area yesterday. It didn't look or feel like fall, but it smelled like it. The path was well shaded and I was surrounded by green and dappled sunlight. Some of the trails were paved and some were not, but the asphalt on the paved parts was so cracked, mossy, and leaf-strewn that I still felt as though I was miles away from civilization. I passed another runner every few minutes (unless I was on a really narrow trail; I had those all to myself), but for the most part I got long periods of solitude. The runners I did pass were of a different caliber than the type that inhabit Central Park. They looked fitter and ran faster, and none of them wore headphones.

My route, captured by my GPS watch. The blue in the top left corner is the Hudson River. The skewed pear shape near the bottom is the track around the parade ground, and the twisting-turning squiggles above that is my route through the Back Hills. It's not visible in this image, but I went over many of those trails more than once. The line that goes straight up the right shows where I ran towards Tibbetts Park, then turned around and came back. I started and finished at the green arrow near the bottom, which is right next to the 238th Street subway stop. 

I loved my time in the Back Hills, but it was hilly enough that I had to leave eventually to make sure I had enough left to finish the 15 miles I was supposed to do that day. I did a few laps around the parade ground, where I enjoyed watching the soccer, baseball, and cricket games that livened up the large grassy space as I jogged by. There was another meet this week, too, but this one was for young kids instead of high school teams. I paused in my running to watch a group of what looked like first graders start a mile. A teenage girl was introduced to them as the "rabbit" and they children were instructed to try to catch her, and then the gun went off and they sprinted down the trail in hot pursuit.

I'm not sure how many more runs I'll get to do in the Back Hills before the marathon. A 15-mile long run is a fairly short one for me these days, but I'm scheduled to do 18 and then 20 on the next two weekends, and starting off with a series of steep hills may not be the best idea (though I'm going to have to at least poke my head in for a lap or two to admire the fall foliage as it starts to spread through the trees). I'm looking forward to trying the Back Hills in winter, though. I imagine they'll be even more deserted and will look lovely in the snow. I'll probably invest in some Yak Trax to strap onto my shoes for traction, and look forward to more exploring.

Volunteering with MASA

In my line of work, I don't really get to develop relationships with students. They come in for a day or two for assessment, and sometimes they come back for tutoring, but at most I see them only three or four times. With some kids, let me tell you, this is a blessing. But overall I miss working with students for extended periods and watching them learn, change, and grow. One of the reasons I became interested in volunteering with kids was to scratch that itch. Another is the simple fact that I believe people who have been as lucky as I have should give something back to their communities. Finding volunteer work, however, was easier said than done. I had a couple of false starts, but nothing really seemed to be falling together. Then I came across a website called Volunteer Match and signed up. Within five minutes, I found MASA and my search was over.

MASA stands for Mexican-American Student Alliance. The organization was formed a number of years ago by a Mexican-American man who was concerned that students of Mexican descent, while representing the fastest-growing ethnic population in New York City, had the lowest graduation rates of any demographic in the city. The reasons were pretty simple: for one, many students immigrated to the United States midway through their school careers. They didn't speak English when they arrived and after years of ESL they still lacked real proficiency. Many of them, sensing that school was taking them nowhere fast, dropped out to get the kind of jobs you don't need English to hold. Another reason is that although the immigrant parents of our students are extremely dedicated to their children and believe that education is of the utmost importance, many of them speak only very rudimentary English, and most have not completed schooling above the elementary school level. This makes it tough to help their kids with homework and even to monitor their kids' progress in the classrooms of English-speaking teachers. Enter MASA. 

In the early stages tutors were simply paired with students duration of the school year to do homework. But the program is expanding and improving all the time. MASA offers summer enrichment programs now, and ESL classes have been added for parents. Because the MASA staff has become disgusted with the test-centered curriculum that doesn't include much more than math and reading worksheets, they would also like to add enrichment component the second part of each evening that will allow the kids to explore science, work on writing, etc.; I'm told that enrichment will kick off next semester.

I wasn't totally sure what I'd be doing at MASA when I first discovered it, but I felt it had potential. After being interviewed by supervisor Jessica and attending an orientation session, I showed up for the first MASA session of the school year last week. We meet in the multi-purpose room of a Catholic school in the Bronx; I have just enough time to make it there from work by 6:00. Last week, I met my students for the first time. Or, at least one of my students. Originally, I have been assigned to work with Janet and Henry, both fourth graders, but the first week only Janet showed up. Apparently Henry's mother has somewhat hectic work schedule, and had contacted Jessica to let her know Henry would not be attending. Henry, I was told, struggles a great deal with reading, which is why Jessica matched him with me. Janet, however, doesn't struggle with much of anything, so Jessica gave her to me to balance Henry out. Sure enough, Janet powered through her homework with virtually no assistance and settled into a book afterward, both last week and this week. She looked up at one point to exclaim, "I love this book! It's so interesting!" and proceeded to tell me all about the plot. During a break, we chatted about how much she loves school and couldn't wait to get there for another day tomorrow. I could see that I wasn't going to sprout any gray hairs over Janet. Zailie, a quiet girl with long, straight, black hair, worked at our table without a tutor. I checked with Jessica to make sure Zailie didn't slip through the cracks and learned that this is her M.O. She read for a while, then wrote and wrote and wrote in a notebook. She seemed more shy than sullen.

Tuesday of this week, I noticed that Jessica had added another student to my roster, a girl named Cattella. But when I got to the table, two other tutorless girls were there, too, and so I ended up working with the four of them. Janet and Zailie were pretty self-sufficient, again, but Yancy and Cattella needed lots of help with math and reading. I hopped between them as best I could. Once everyone was done with their work, they all chose to fill the remaining time drawing. Yancy turned out to be a great artist, and drew a witch in a black dress with bright blue buttons up the front throwing a small black bomb with a pink skull drawn on the side of it. We chatted about holidays, and their eyes grew big when I said that I had grown up in California and so had never had an Easter egg hunt in a park. Cattella asked me where I lived and whether I liked my job, and Zailie asked me if I had known that her dad worked in Manhattan at a restaurant on 81st Street. I said I hadn't. I was pleased that we were all bonding, but then it was 8:00 and they all flitted away without a backward glance. 

I met Henry, who had come in late and been assigned to someone else for the day, and I have a feeling next week will be less peaceful. Henry is a husky kid with a penchant for drama, though he seems good-natured. I've learned two things about MASA so far: I really like it, and I never know what the following week will bring.

Spartan Photos

Photographers and automatic cameras were set up all over the course, and we were able to access the pictures (time-synced with our numbers and our digital wristbands to make them easier to find) a few days after the race. Here are some of my favorites:

We'll start with a low point: the sandbag carry. I was nearly done with the long slog when this attractive shot of me was taken, and it shows on my face.

Ed looks very intent and commando-like.

I do not.

This buffeting was Ed's reward for leaping over the fire pit. 

Finally making the leap (which, as you can see, is really not that dramatic after all). I'm happy that the photographer got Ed cheering for me, to the left.

Another shot of my big finale. Turns out, if you hem and haw long enough before jumping over the fire, you don't get hit by the guys with the padded sticks. They gave me high fives instead.

Two-County Twenty-Miler

Time for a trail run

On Friday night, I was dreading the 20-mile run I faced the next day. Twenty miles is certainly a long way, and part of me was a little apprehensive about doing the distance; runs like that always makes me tired and achy afterward, for good reason. However, my dread was mostly the result of covering the same ground yet again. The Hudson River pathway. Central Park. They're lovely spots, and I feel lucky to have them so close. But it's easy to get tired of something wonderful if you do it too often. I decided that the time had come to shake things up.

Eager as I was to run part of the marathon course, I scrapped the idea almost as soon as it occurred to me. The route goes along some busy thoroughfares in Queens and Brooklyn, and running 20 miles through busy intersections sounded worse than doing the park yet again. I can only dodge so many pedestrians before I fall into serious road rage, and stopping at that many red lights was bound to frustrate me so much I worried I wouldn't finish the run. So I turned to an old article I ripped out of an NYRR magazine couple of years ago. (Being a pack rat has its advantages.) The article had ideas for different runs around the city beyond the usual the usual Central Park loop, one in each borough. Unfortunately, a lot of them were very short. The recommended route in Brooklyn, for example, was a loop around Prospect Park, a mere 3 miles. Doing 6+ laps around the same park seemed to fly in the face of my desire to seek out new territory. The Bronx run, however, had potential.

The article suggested starting in a park called VanCortlandt, way up north. I ran in it several times last year for races and recalled liking it very much. The park up is mostly made up of athletic fields, but it's bordered by a miles and miles of woods with trails meandering between the trees. This seemed like an ideal area for my long run. Having narrowed down my region, a quick search on MapMyRun.com gave me a specific route that I planned to do twice to get in all the miles necessary.

I was more excited for my run on Saturday morning I have been for a long time, though my enthusiasm dampened somewhat during the hour-long ride by subway from Chelsea to the park. I didn't remember it being so far away. Nevertheless, it was nothing short of an enchanted run from the moment I got off the train. The day was clear, sunny, and cool. After slight navigational mishap I found my way to the parade ground where the first loop of my run would take place and was delighted to discover that it was playing host to a large invitational cross country meet. The runners' uniforms and the smell of the grass took me back to my high school days, when I enjoyed competing in events like this myself. That was a more innocent time, when we 14-year-olds did not worry about slathering on fake tanner... I chatted with a few girls about the course and wished them luck.

Then it was time for my own run, which turned away from the park and headed down a trail. In no time, the populated park was just a memory. I ran not on asphalt but on dirt (dirt!), dodging rocks and roots (roots!!). Trees arched above me to form a green tunnel that was blissfully peaceful. Well, mostly. I could hear some traffic noise from the nearby highway, but I tried to pretend it was a rushing river. After a few miles, the trail gave way to a small park called Tibbetts in Westchester County with a pretty lake at its center that ran into a small brook. I did a few laps around the park and spotted several black squirrels. Flocks of Canadian geese glided serenely across the lake's still surface, punctuated by an enormous white swan. There were more people here than had been on the trail, but they were few and far between, and many of them sat alone on benches or blankets reading or gazing at the water. Just when I thought things couldn't get any more idyllic, I ran across a small bridge and came face to face with a blue heron. (A blue heron!!!) After eyeing me serenely, it returned its eyes to the surface of the water where it searched, stock still, for fish. I admired it for about five minutes, feeling more peaceful and meditative than I think I've ever been in New York. 

Tibbetts Park

I felt energized throughout my run, and it was over before I knew it, a rarity for a distance day. Though the train ride is less than ideal, I consider the hassle of getting to Van Cortlandt and back totally worth it. Next time, I'll probably download a book onto the Kindle app on my phone--it fits nicely into the pocket of my water bottle--and bring it along to put the trip to good use. This week's agenda calls for a 15-miler, and I look forward to starting in the same area but heading into the network hilly trails nearby instead of going over same ground again. Training, stress relief, and a nature fix all in one - that's my kind of multitasking.

Legit Lit About North Korea

As with most of the books I enjoyed reading, I first heard about Adam Johnson's The Orphan Masters Son from an NPR book podcast. The reporter made it sound fascinating, and her praise was validated when the book later won the Pulitzer Prize. Having read Escape From Camp 14* a few months before, I was curious to read more about the mysterious, troubled other half of Korea. I was not disappointed.


A book set North Korea has great potential to be irredeemably depressing. So I was relieved that Johnson chose to write the novel as a dark satire. The humanitarian crisis in North Korea may seem an inappropriate topic for humor, but the situation is so desperately ironic that the book's tone seemed appropriate.  The hero in The Orphan Master's Son is Jun Do, a play on the generic, western "John Doe," which allows Jun Do to represent every North Korean. Jun Do is anything but ordinary however, if by circumstance more than because of any particular personal qualities, and during his extraordinary life he is thrust into nearly every unusual circumstance in which a North Korean man might find himself. After his beautiful mother is forcibly relocated to Pyongyang, he lives in an orphanage with other abandoned boys all named after North Korea's glorious martyrs under the care of his mourning, angry father. He performs manual labor of every description, works in the dreaded North Korean mines, is trained in special combat, learns English so as to tap and monitor enemy radio signals, works as a kidnapper of Japanese nationals, travels to the United States as a "diplomat," falls in with a famous actress, impersonates a high-ranking official, and escapes from a prison. To supplement Jun Do's diverse experiences, Johnson also adds the narrative of an interrogator to provide the perspective of an average Pyongyang citizen, and also throws in short chapters composed of propaganda blared at the citizens through loudspeakers installed in their homes. An no book about North Korea would be complete without the Dear Leader, who is a character in the book as well. 


A reviewer wrote that Jun Do is not sympathetic, but I disagree; in fact, I found every character but Kim Jung-Il to be sympathetic, though many of them do cruel things. The setting is developed so that it's clear that characters really have no choices. Johnson, a professor at Stanford, conducted extensive research on North Korea and even visited, though due to the secrecy of the regime much was necessarily left up to his imagination. (The Author's Note at the end of the book, in which Johnson describes his supervised excursions through Pyongyang, is fascinating.) Interestingly, I learned that the propaganda chapters, which I found to be the most ludicrous parts of the book, were also the most authentic. 

In addition to being fascinating, The Orphan Master's Son is an exquisitely written novel. I haven't read any of Johnson's other offerings, but if they're all this masterful I have a feeling I would be captivated by his account of a person crossing a street or brushing her teeth. The sheer force of his talent driving a book about illusive North Korea was enough to make this one of the best books I've read in a long time. 

I finished The Orphan Master's Son several months ago, and polished off another, related book last night. Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick has been on my list for a while, and I moved it to the top when my friend Virginia re-recommended it recently. (It's also a National Book Award finalist.) Demick's book is not fiction, but I recognized many of the themes and even the same irony from the pages of The Orphan Master's Son. Demick interviewed hundreds of defectors and visited North Korea several times in researching her book. The finished product centers around the lives of six people from all walks of life who left the country during the famine years in North Korea. One is a doctor, a formerly loyal citizen who began to become disillusioned during the famine when patient after patient in the pediatric ward died from basic infections they were too malnourished to fight off. A pair of former lovers, one the daughter of a miner from a family with "tainted blood" and the other a high-born, brilliant student at a prestigious Pyongyang University, fled separately; their twin accounts reminded me that North Koreans, despite their extreme circumstances, are nonetheless real people who laugh, gossip, and fall in love. Another account is that of a scrappy orphan boy who begs, steals, borrows, and smuggles long enough to survive his childhood, then manages to live through a few years in a labor camp before his release and subsequent escape across the border into China. The final two testimonies are from a mother-daughter pair, the elder a devout disciple of her monarch and the younger a skeptical critic who escapes North Korea and then pays her mother's passage, too. 

Although it necessarily delves into North Korean history and politics, Nothing to Envy is never dry or slow; in fact, it is one of the most gripping non-fiction books I've read. Demick weaves in enough fact to orient the reader and enough human interest material to keep it all relevant on a level that is deeply personal. I particularly appreciated her ability to make me relate to people whose experiences could not be more different from my own. To the developed world, the North Koreans' naive acceptance of ludicrous propaganda and adoration of a man who is clearly their worst enemy is, at best, a source of amusement. But Demick gently but unambiguously makes it clear that when one is surrounded by the same message for a lifetime with no evidence to the contrary, one will believe just about anything.   

I recommend both these books unhesitatingly, though it might be best to read them in the opposite order that I did. Starting with Nothing to Envy would lay a sound foundation of knowledge about the country and its politics, for one thing. It may also lead to a deeper appreciation of the fact that, unbelievable as it seems, many of the most outrageous parts of The Orphan Master's Son are almost certainly accurate.


*Escape From Camp 14, by Blaine Harden, tells the true story of Shin Dong-Hyuk and his escape from one of North Korea's labor camps, then from the country itself.  Shin is the only known person born inside the gulag system to have escaped. While aspects of his story seem unbelievable, Shin's account is consistent with the stories of other defectors, and Harden, to whom Shin told his account, is an expert on North Korea. It's worth reading, though I didn't like it as much as the two books discussed above. Though Shin's story alone was fascinating enough to make this book worth reading, I was more interested in what I learned about the psychology of people living in extreme conditions. It would seem that Shin's troubles would have ended once he reached South Korea and claimed asylum, but really he was only beginning his foray into a bewildering and alienating world. A person who has had to fight for his own survival for his whole life faces great obstacles, even when he is sheltered, well fed, and physically safe. I sensed that although he had escaped, Shin may never be completely free.   

A Memorable Spartan Race

 A friend from my Japan days, Shahzad, has developed a fondness for obstacle races. He lives in Canada, but signed up for one in New Jersey because it was a good excuse to come through New York and visit some of our mutual teaching friends. Races like this are always more fun to do with friends, and so I agreed to sign up with him and got Ed and my friend Brandon to come along for the ride, too. Accordingly, we piled into Shahzad's aunt's minivan on Sunday morning and drove a little over an hour to Vernon, New Jersey to compete in the Super Spartan.

A fellow spartan

The specifics of the course are not disclosed in advance to add to the element of adventure. We knew only that we'd be running somewhere between 8 and 9 miles, that there would be a lot of hills (the course, it turned out, was in a park that is a ski resort during the winter), and that obstacles would include water, mud, and fire. Typically, one has to climb over walls and crawl under wires through mud troughs as well. I did a solo mud run a few years ago, which was shorter and wasn't really that tough. I expected this one to be only a bit more challenging, and I was looking forward to taking on the course with a group instead of on my own.

Marathon training has been at the forefront of my mind lately, and so I opted not to reduce my mileage or intensity in the days leading up to the race. Sunday capped off an especially strenuous week for me; my workouts included a particularly grueling, long tempo run midweek and an 18-mile run on Saturday. So my legs were tired before I even arrived at the course on Sunday morning. We had about an hour to spare after we checked in for the race, so we wandered around the base area. We could see some of the obstacles, which included a rope climb above a pit of water and, just before the finish line, a pile of burning logs that competitors had to leap over before being buffeted by three men holding long poles with padded ends. Oh boy. Most of the race was up in the hills, concealed by thick trees, however.

Ed doing burpees

The Spartan brand feels very military in its attitude toward physical exertion. There were burpee, push-up, and chin-up competitions set up around the start area, and one station that challenged competitors to do press repetitions with a thick PVC pipe about half filled with water that was not so much heavy as it was difficulty to balance. Burly men with lots of tattoos walked around roaring and grunting, and there was a lot of vocal delight expressed at sweat, blood, and grit. I have always found such meat-head antics amusing, but many of our fellow spartans were pretty into it. Ed took on the burpee challenge and declared it harder than it seemed, as he had to touch his chest to the ground with each push-up before it would be counted.  

Before the race

Ed and I dressed in tight clothes that wouldn't be too cumbersome when wet or constrict our movements much. The less you wear, the less heavy it can be when it's caked in mud. I purchased knee pads to aid in crawling through the mud pits, which often contain gravel as well, but accidentally left them in our checked bag before the start. Oops. I also wore sunscreen on my face, but not the rest of me, figuring it would just wash off in the first water obstacle anyway. Today, most of Ed's body and my torso are a cheery pink, though my face looks pretty normal. When it was time to start, we crouched in a starting area with about a hundred other people and listened to an enthusiastic pep talk delivered by a guy with a microphone, who then tossed a smoke bomb onto a nearby hillside and launched us onto the course. We ran up as much of the hill as we could, then slowed to a walk along with nearly everyone else. It was much steeper than it looked, and very long. Already, my legs were not pleased with me. We climbed a lot, going at least a mile before coming to the first obstacle. It was pretty hot, and I was glad not to be wearing my knee pads. Other miles passed more quickly than that first steep one, though some were agonizingly slow. We often had to walk up or down steep hillsides that were too slippery with dust and gravel to run. There were long stretches of trail running, though, which I really enjoyed. My legs held out until just about the end of the race, when my left calf and right quad began to really ache. Luckily, though, I completed the race without injury or major muscle strain.

The obstacles were, predictably, tougher for me than the running was, even given the hilly terrain. There were some that I simply couldn't do. A regimen of distance running with a weight-lifting class every two weeks or so doesn't do much to build upper body strength, and my height was a major hindrance as well. We had to climb over 6-, 7-, and 8-foot wooden walls, and I needed boosting from my teammates for all of the straight ones. One wall was tilted so that we had to use foot- and hand-holds to climb up the overhang, and I was able to do that one without too much assistance. We also had to clamber up and over a high cargo net, which I did fairly easily, and there was a rather fun traverse made of skinny foot- and hand-holds nailed along the length of a wooden wall, the object being to go from one end to the other without falling off. I was unable, however, to complete the rope climb. We were supposed to climb up a slippery, wet rope and ring a bell at the top, and I was simply too exhausted to make it past the first few knots. I may have been able to do it near the beginning of the race, or perhaps if I hadn't preceded the race with a long run the day before, but as things stood there was no way I was getting to the top. Competitors who were unable to do an obstacle were supposed to do 30 burpees as a penalty, but a wrist injury prevented me from push-ups, so I did jumping jacks instead.

In addition to the climbing obstacles, we had to swim across a small pond, haul ourselves onto a floating dock, then swim to the other side, an exercise that filled everyone's shoes with gravel and grit. There were also weight-bearing obstacles, where we had to flip tractor tires end over end and lift heavy cement cylinders or drag them behind us with lengths of chain. We picked up weighted bags in one obstacle and hoisted them onto our shoulders to do a loop up a steep hill before setting them back down at the bottom and continuing on our way. All of this was tough, but I was able to do most of it and rather enjoyed the challenge. I failed miserably at the spear throw, however, an exercise in which we had to hurl spears at a figure made of hay bales. Ed and Shahzad missed too, and we all did burpees/jumping jacks to make up for it. Brandon, however, threw his spear like he'd grown up hunting gazelle, and delighted in counting our penalty exercises while he stood comfortably to the side.

After the race

Then, of course, was the mud. My previous mud run featured lengths of wire stretched over a mud pit that we
were to pretend were barbed wire, but this course had real barbed wire and it required a LONG stretch of crawling through puddles and trenches to get under it all. Due to my wrist, traditional crawling wasn't an option, so I started off on my knees, one hand, and one elbow, but eventually the gravel hurt to much to  keep that up. I rolled under some of the wires and scooted sideways under others. It seemed to last forever, and at the end we had to duck under a wooden wall by submerging ourselves in a deep puddle thick with mud. It was tough to spot my teammates after this, as everyone's skin, hair, and clothes had taken on the same color! Near the end of the course, there was a water slide made of tarps that dumped us into another puddle, this one much less muddy than the first. It washed off most of the mud, though not all, so we didn't look too filthy when we finished the course a little over a mile later. Still, my hair was infused with so much drying mud that it felt like a helmet, and when I took out my hair elastic at home hours later, my hair stayed in a ponytail until I thoroughly doused it with water and soap in the shower.

For me, the hardest part of the race was the fire jumping. I was a bit surprised at myself, but I hemmed and hawed for about five minutes before finally bringing myself to make the leap. It was not a high, nor a far jump, and all kinds of people approached it and leaped over it with ease, many of them quite overweight and much more bedraggled than I. Recognizing that the problem was mental and had nothing to do with the actual obstacle didn't seem to help. My three treacherous teammates, who had already crossed, stood beyond the finish line with medals around their necks, cajoling me to join them. The race officials and even the guys who were supposed to whack competitors with their padded poles joined in, too, and for a while I was the center of a great deal of unwanted attention. Finally, Ed came back and offered to jump it with me. Still, I wasn't able to bring myself to do it until I walked up to the pile of burning coals to get a good look at it. Once I convinced myself that it wasn't very wide, I took a few steps back and hopped over it ease, much to the cheers of the many onlookers who had gathered to watch at this point. It was rather embarrassing.

The showers

Having successfully completed the course in a little over three hours, we hit the "showers," a series of pressure hoses positioned over rubber mats. The water was freezing at first, and scrub as I might I couldn't get all the dirt off. A good deal of it remained in my clothes, even though I sprayed under the waistband of my shorts and the top of my sports bra. My "clean" clothes, waiting back in the car, didn't stay clean long, as I put them onto dirty skin. But I was able to get much of the dirt off, and it felt good to be dry and somewhat cleaner. We drank the beers that came along with our admission price and collected our t-shirts, then hit the road. When I got out of the car at the restaurant we chose for our post-race meal, my legs felt like they would hardly support me, and I hobbled more than walked across the parking lot. Back in the city about an hour later, however, the additional rest in the car and the meal seemed to have given me enough strength to stand in the shower for about 20 minutes, shampooing my hair over and over and scrubbing my skin. I went through a lot of Q-tips before they started coming back from my ears without coatings of mud on them, and this morning I blew my nose to discover mud all over the tissue. Eeeew. My fingernails, which I filed short before the race, still have a brownish tint, and my knees, elbows, and palms are scraped, but I  imagine all of that, along with the sore muscles all over my body, will fade before too long.

Ed was in much better shape than I at the end of the race, having gone for only a short jog the day before and being fitter in general. At about 11:30 that night, however, after tossing and turning for a while, he got out of bed and took some Advil. His shoulder, he said, was hurting a lot suddenly, and there was an enormous lump on it. It felt like a knotted muscle, but it was huge. He said his shoulder was stiff and he could hardly lift his arm straight out without excruciating pain. I massaged it for a while, which he said helped somewhat, but it continued to worsen and finally he got up and walked to a few urgent care centers in our neighborhood. None of them were open, however, and he said he'd just try to sleep until morning. We put together an ice pack, but after a few minutes it was clear that the ice wasn't helping and the pain was getting worse by the minute. I've never seen Ed be dramatic about pain and was somewhat alarmed, so I got dressed and told him we were going to the ER, at the very least to get painkillers and to make sure nothing was really wrong.

We got in a cab at about 2:30 A.M. and were soon in the same emergency room where I'd gone to collect him after his fall a few months ago. He was given a pain reliever and a shot of an anti-inflammatory, then x-rayed. As we had suspected, there was no damage to any of his bones, and the PA we spoke with deemed it a simple case of overuse and strain. The pre-race burpees probably didn't help, and although Ed is fit, his typical workout regimen does not include a lot of upper body exercise. At 4:00 in the morning, we took another cab home with Ed in a sling and bearing prescriptions for more painkillers, muscle relaxers, and strong anti-inflammatories. A heating pad and massage are supposed to help him recover as well. Ed's not one to take much medication under normal circumstances, but he has spent today in a happy drug-induced haze and says that his shoulder feels a lot better. He thinks the lump is smaller. I'm relieved that he feels more comfortable, and that I finished the race with nothing more than a few scrapes and some garden variety stiffness. It's best to have at least one able-bodied person around the apartment.

Despite my fatigue and Ed's injury, it was a really fun race, and I would absolutely consider doing one again, especially if I could get another team together. In the mean time, this spartan is going to take today off and do an easy run tomorrow to ease back into marathon training. And a glass of wine this evening wouldn't hurt either.

Notes From a Saturday Run in Central Park

Running in Central Park is always a treat. Although I've run in the park enough times to know the loop like the back of my hand, I never know just what I'm going to see along the way. Here are a few selected sights from my most recent run:

• Man wearing a Jersey Boys (a musical) T-shirt and black leggings singing theatrically to the music playing through his headphones while he walked around the loop
• Man dressed in traditional running gear praying theatrically to the sermon (I assume) playing through his headphones while he walked around the loop
• Countless tourists wobbling along on rental bikes, strolling under the trees, or riding in rickshaws or horse-drawn carriages while photographing themselves and everything around them and speaking a polyglot of languages
• Two boot camp-style fitness classes jumping around cones, laboriously elongating elastic bands, and doing sweaty push-ups
• Running group stretching before beginning their run
• Meditation group sitting cross-legged and very still
• Man with long beard sleeping on a boulder covered from the chest down with an American flag
• Yoga group enthusiastically performing sun salutations
• The Achilles running group, a team that pairs able-bodied athletes with handicapped runners, meeting up for the day's workout. They wear bright yellow t-shirts and are easy to spot. About four miles later, I passed by a guy walking the wrong direction around the loop with a camera. Spotting a blind Achilles runner jogging alongside his guide, the man (who, upon closer examination, was wearing a white version of the Achilles t-shirt) began cheering enthusiastically and took several pictures of the pair.

Rounding a bend near the northern part of the park, I came upon the strangest sight of the day. From a distance I saw two ambulances and my stomach turned. I expected that it was probably a grizzly bike accident - some competitive cyclists go too fast through the park during training rides, and pedestrians, runners, and inexperienced cyclists often weave into their paths at unexpected moments. As I drew closer, I saw two rental bikes standing upright. Nobody appeared to be lying on a stretcher or on the pavement, however, and there were no EMTs rushing around, so I relaxed a bit. A man in uniform was closely examining the front wheel of one of the bikes, turning it this way and that. I wondered whether the cyclist had hit a runner or pedestrian and if the guy was gathering evidence. (Perhaps I have seen one too many episodes of Law and Order.) Finally, I got close enough to see what was actually going on. A large gray squirrel, intact and very still, was wedged between the spokes of the wheel and the fork. The man was attempting to extricate the squirrel, while a tragic looking eleven-year-old girl wearing a helmet stood some distance away, watching solemnly. She seemed unhurt, which was rather amazing; I'm not sure I could come to a graceful stop if a squirrel threw itself between the spokes of my bike wheel. I was relieved that no cyclists or runners had been hurt, but I felt sorry for the girl. And the squirrel.

Although it wasn't a hot day, it was a very sticky one, and I eventually abandoned the park to run downtown to my gym and finish my prescribed daily mileage on the air conditioned track. My gym has much less potential for strange sights than the park, but next week I'll be back and will no doubt have more adventures on the six-mile loop that is always and never the same.