Back in the Saddle Again, then Right Back Out

Despite my concerns about my left knee in the days leading up to the marathon, it felt pretty good and has given me little trouble since (although I accidentally knelt on the remaining bump during yoga the other day and had to suppress a yelp). For about 10 days after the marathon, however, my right knee was pretty painful, so much so that I skipped the race I had scheduled two Sundays ago. This past Sunday, however, I decided to go to another race I'd signed up for a few weeks in advance. My knee hadn't hurt at all for the last couple of days, and it was only four miles. And Central Park is lovely in the spring. I was anxious to see how it would hold up, but we pretty confident that I'd take the race pretty easy and all would be well.

I made it through the first 1/3 of a mile with no problems. Then the honeymoon came to an abrupt end. Both knees actually twinged on and off throughout the race, but my right knee was far worse than my left. Every few minutes I'd get a stabbing pain that made me wince. I had to finish, though, because I had a Zipcar reserved for 9:30 and the fastest way to get there without missing my appointment time was to finish the race, grab my stuff, and head for the station... My knee was sore throughout the day, although it got steadily better and by the next day felt pretty normal again. Still, this is a sign that I'm not ready to get back into training mode again. I really want it to heal completely before I start putting strain on it again. The situation is frustrating because the weather is finally starting to sort of improve (by tiny increments) and I'd love to be out in it. But I figure that by taking time off now I'm ensuring that I can have an uninterrupted late spring and summer ahead.

New Roommates

As some of you may already be aware, Dave is moving out in just a few days. The place will feel awfully empty without him, but I hesitated to find someone new to live with. I wanted someone quiet and clean, who would not eat the last granola bar in the box without replacing it or smoke out the windows. Definitely no one who would stomp around and drive the downstairs neighbors crazy, leave fragrant shoes all over the living room, or neglect to close the refrigerator door completely. (By the way, I am not insinuating that Dave does all of these things. Just most of them.) Enter the new additions to my apartment:

Virgil, in the background, was camera shy.

After much careful thought, I decided to name them Dante and Virgil. I don't have a great history with goldfish (don't tell Dante and Virgil!) and so I imagine that, for a fish, living with me would be sort of like descending through at least a few of the layers of Hell. Virgil is a bit more battered looking than Dante (the lady at the pet store said it looked like he'd been bullied and so it was a good thing I was taking him), which makes sense because in the book, he was in Hell longer and served as Dante's guide. I hope that, together, they'll survive the ordeal of life under my care. So far, all systems are go; they're both active and look cheerful if it is possible for a goldfish to look cheerful. I brought home sushi the other day and was very careful to eat it where they couldn't see me.

Already, though, the responsibility of taking care of two living things is starting to weigh on me. I have visions of pouring them into an empty mayonnaise jar and boarding the subway with them to take them to a friend to feed if I go out of town for a while. Hm. Well, first they've got to survive that long...

Fueling my Addiction with Foer and Keret

This is a bad time to pick up a pricey addiction. I'm about to invest in some new furniture, and although I've had some interviews that went pretty well, I'm still waiting to hear back from several schools about whether or not I'm going to have a job (and its accompanying paycheck) in the fall. But the habit I started forming at the Franzen/Lahiri reading looks like it may be here to stay.

I've been wanting to go to a performance at Symphony Space for ages. I've heard things recorded there on NPR, most notably their Selected Shorts programs, and loved them. Also, the theater is very close to where I live and I walk by it all the time. I got lucky when, the other day, I finally remembered that I'd been meaning to check the schedule and found that there was a reading of Jonathan Safran Foer's work (and some other guy I'd never heard of) scheduled for the following week. I bought one of the few remaining tickets to the show, and last night after my final tutoring appointment I went over to the theater.

 

It seemed that most of the patrons at Symphony Space were on the older side. (By this I mean that I was about the only one there with pigment left in my hair that was actually my own.) I knew this observation was accurate when I looked at the list of ticket prices and saw that you can get $10 off your ticket price if you are under the age of 30.

Etgar Keret

 After an introduction by Isaiah Sheffer, and portly man with wild white hair and thick glasses who used to serve as the artistic director of Symphony Space - now, I believe, he does only Selected Shorts - Etgar Keret took the stage. I thought I'd never heard of him, but as it turns out, I had; Jane recommended a podcast to me in which authors who have had fiction published in The New Yorker select a piece of fiction from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. A story I'd listened to just recently was one of Keret's, and I was pleased to make the connection because I really enjoyed the story. He is Israeli, and was wonderfully articulate, although his thick accent might make you think otherwise if you don't listen carefully. He's got several short story collections out, and after introducing both stories ("Suddenly, a Knock at the Door" and "Lieland"), he stepped aside so that two different actors could each read one. One of the actors, Josh Radnor, is a huge fan of Keret's, and he took the time to fly out from filming the very funny sitcom How I Met Your Mother to read one of the stories. The readings were outstanding, and Keret was very charming.

Here comes the addiction part: After the Keret readings there was an intermission, and I realized that my autographed Franzen novel must feel pretty lonely on my shelf. So I paid full market price for a collection of Keret's stories and a copy of Everything is Illuminated, my favorite of Foer's novels. Had I planned ahead and gone through Amazon, I'd have gotten a better deal, but I didn't think about it until I was sitting in the theater. Whoops.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Foer, Sheffer said almost helplessly after the intermission, has won too many awards to list. His two novels are the one I bought and a newer one called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. He also wrote an investigative piece of non-fiction called Eating Animals, and because I'd heard an interview with him after its publication, his voice was familiar to me when he took the stage. He's a slightly built guy who looks much younger than he is and much, much younger than he sounds: There are authors out there who are more comfortable with a typewriter than they are with other people and who save their articulation for the page, but Foer is not one of them. He was wise, insightful, and far more humble than he had any business being. The first piece of his was a short story, a new one, called "The Thing Itself" read by Liev Schreiber, movie star, director, and Foer's close friend. It was outstanding. The second was the second chapter of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, titled "Why I'm Not Where You Are." Sheffer performed it, and it was beautiful and heartbreaking.

After the readings, both authors perched on high stools in front of microphones and talked. There was no mediator, no pre-fabricated questions, just a chat between two friends (they have known each other for years) who are wildly enthusiastic about each other's talent. I think this is the part that made the reading seem so superior to the Franzen/Lahiri reading. That conversation felt forced, but this one was fascinating.

Highlights:
-Foer said that Keret writes with "a singing ease," which I thought was a gorgeous phrase
-Keret said that he was inspired to write a short story after reading a recent piece Foer wrote. He said after 20 minutes at the computer he had pages of drivel and was reminded of the warnings that precede WWF matches: These acts are performed by professionals - do not try this at home.
-Foer talked about the impersonal way most people communicate and express themselves lately, citing Facebook as an example, a site that has a blue motif because its founder is colorblind. It was clear that "colorblind" was a metaphor, which lends a whole different layer of meaning to the observation.
-Both writers noted that major themes in the works that we heard, as well as in their work in general, is the struggle of the individual to make a connection with other people.
-Foer asked Keret about the seeming duplicitous nature of his work: His language and his storylines are deceptively simple, but the underlying themes are incredibly complex. It's very difficult to write that way, and so it was mildly infuriating to those of us who don't share Keret's incredible gift to watch him shrug and say that, for him, life is the hard part and writing is easy. Easy?? When Foer pressed him, Keret admitted that coming up with an idea was sometimes difficult, but the second he had one the story just sort of took off. He said that writing felt weightless for him.

After the discussion wrapped up, I joined a very long line of people to get my brand new books signed. Keret drew me a very nice picture, which I had to photograph and share (below). Foer, noticing that the book I'd purchased had a crease in the cover - something I saw the second I got back to my seat after it was too late to exchange it - rummaged around in a pile near the table and found a pristine copy for me, which he autographed and handed over.

Isn't this a riot? I peeked at the one Keret signed for the guy in front of me and it was a totally different picture. (For one thing, he did not get a heart-shaped smoke puff.)

"For Beth, with thanks." Aw.

I guess there are worse habits to have.

Yoga for Runners

Yoga is one of the few things I enjoy despite the fact that I'm terrible at it. I'm constantly embarrassed by women twice my age bending double with apparent ease while I strain to get my fingertips marginally close to my toes. I've never been flexible, even as a younger kid when I went to gymnastics, and I've stiffened up considerably since then. Distance runners are known for their inflexibility, and I don't stretch nearly as much as I should. So when an offer for a $10 yoga class designed specifically for runners appeared in a newsletter to which I subscribe, I signed up immediately.

The class was in Chelsea, at a studio called YoGanesh (a combination of "yoga" and "Yo, Ganesh," the Hindu elephant god) which was pretty much a narrow room and some cubbies for shoes and bags. Seven other people showed up. All of us were clearly athletic, but I knew the instant class started that I was among friends because six of them were just as inflexible as I was. It was great. The poses themselves weren't any different from other yoga classes I've taken, but it was incredible to be on the same level as everyone else in the room. No one had dreadlocks, and there was no talk about cleansing herbal teas, prayer flags, or meditation. Everyone was there just because they wanted to be in better shape for running, and it was very refreshing. Instead of listening to Tibetan flute music or ocean waves, we listened to U2 and African-sounding rap with a mellow beat. Our instructor encouraged us to stretch farther by saying things like, "Your goal is to get your chest on the floor," but it was clear she didn't mean it. There was no way that was ever going to happen for any of us and she knew it. I mean come on. We were runners.

There is none of this nonsense in Yoga for Runners.

I learned that the class is actually $5 for full-time students, and I am one according to my TC ID. I plan to go back, if not every Friday, most Fridays. Both my body and my ego felt better after that class than after almost any other yoga experience I've had.

Service with a Smile

Taken with my BlackBerry camera - sorry about the poor quality

I could say a lot of things about this fruit stand I saw last night on the Upper East Side, but I think I will let it speak for itself.

Demo Lesson

Yesterday I took the 2 train farther north than I've ever ridden it to teach a demo lesson at a charter school called Democracy Prep. The hiring process for Democracy Prep is, so far as I can tell, similar to that of other charter schools, meaning that there are a lot of hoops to jump through. After filing out an online application, which involved typing in my work history and answers to essay questions, and uploading my resume and cover letter, I got an email telling me that I'd passed the first screening step. I set up a phone interview via email, chatted for about 20 minutes with a representative from the school, then got another email inviting me to teach a demo lesson to a seventh grade English class.

I was not looking forward to the demo lesson, predicting that it would go badly, as I'm juggling a fair amount of unpleasantness at the moment and so didn't start planning it until the last minute. Also, having done a lot of reading about charter schools, I knew that they often had very rigid teaching procedures that the kids are accustomed to. I, of course, wasn't going to be bringing that to the table. Also, I didn't know the kids' names, nor anything about their reading levels or what they'd studied in the past and could be expected to know already. Plus, I was given only 30 (30!!) minutes to address the following aim: 

Scholars will be able to distinguish between facts and opinions within a text and determine whether they are being effectively used to support the main idea or argument or to relay and then disprove an alternate idea or argument.

This was a huge challenge because I had to come up with a text on my own for students about whom I knew nothing. I emailed the teacher. She wasn't sure which "cohort of scholars" I'd be teaching because they rotate a lot, so she didn't know whether I'd have the higher reading group (on grade level) or the lower reading group (way below grade level). She did, however, tell me that they'd already covered fact vs. opinion. Whew. At least I didn't have to start from the very beginning. I decided to find passages about books they'd read so we'd be on familiar ground, and she told me they'd read, among other things, The Outsiders and Nightjohn. Ok, bingo. I ended up going onto Amazon and augmenting book reviews submitted by readers; they always contain both facts and opinions that, depending on the quality of the writer, support their rating of the book in question.

Founder Seth Andrew

There are four or five different DP campuses in the city, and next year there will be six. The one I visited is not the one where I will teach if hired - they're considering me for the position of a high school writing teacher - so while I got a feel for the system in general, I didn't spend a lot of time deciding whether I could see myself at this particular school. DP has one wing of one floor of a building that contains several schools. Other hallways were raucous, but DP was orderly. I walked into a classroom full of uniformed students, all black with the exception of one Latina girl, to catch the last five minutes of a motivational/disciplinary speech by the founder of DP himself, a guy in his 30's wearing a suit and a yellow DP baseball cap over longish hair. He was cheerfully commending one student for having a "perfect day" after some previous rough spots, but he'd come down ferociously on anyone who whispered to a neighbor or was caught staring into space. The students would all flash thumbs-up signs at him whenever he asked a question they agreed with ("And that's what we want to see, right?") and to honor the student being praised, they extended their arms toward him and wiggled their fingers. I'd read about this sign language in charters before, but it was fascinating to watch it in action. It reminded me of watching a dog handler with a well-trained canine: the dog's eyes never leave the handler, and it immediately complies with a series of mysterious hand gestures, no matter how slight. The teacher, who was observing, corrected student behavior a few times during the speech with hand signals, and chairs were instantly pulled in and posture hastily corrected without a single word being exchanged. Interesting.

When it was my turn to teach, the classroom was generally quiet and the student's attentive. Over half were eager to volunteer answers, which is a far cry from my experience at Heritage, also a Harlem school, where the students couldn't have been less interested in what was going on. They were reasonably articulate and poised, and I'm sure I would have been more impressed if I'd seen them during an earlier period rather than the tail end of the very long school day. I learned quickly that a raised hand with crossed fingers does not mean that the student wants to answer or ask a question but that s/he wants to go to the bathroom - kind of cool system, really, because the teacher can either nod or shake his or her head and get on with the lesson without having to stop, listen to the request, then grant or deny permission.

I thought the lesson went ok, and during the debriefing session afterward I got much more positive feedback than constructive feedback, which was nice. One of the 3 (3!!) adults observing me said that it was obvious that I had great rapport with the kids right off the bat, which I was happy to hear because that's the kind of thing you can't fake. The two suggestions for improvement I received were aspects of teaching style that are really easy to fix, and even if I don't get the DP job, I can use them to improve my next demo lesson at another school. Now I just have to wait for their decision and, possibly, instructions about the next hoop to jump through.

I'm not sure that I'm head over heels in love with DP just yet, nor with any of the charters in the city. The school days tend to go from 7:15 until 5:00, and then there's after-school tutoring which is also run by teachers. It's a long, draining day, but since they target students who are behind, it's necessary to bring them up to speed. I think the teachers get a fair amount of time during the day to plan and grade (one school told me teachers instruct during only four of eight periods) so they don't have to do so much at home, but it's still a lot of hours. On the other hand, the pay is better, and both teachers and students are held to very high standards, which I like. Some charters, despite their lofty mission statements, end up flopping, although DP is one of the 20% that can demonstrate hugely positive results. The staff wants to be there, and they all have the students' best interest in mind or they wouldn't put up with the demands of the school. It would be nice not to feel that I was in the minority because I'm willing to work hard for the kids' benefit. There is a lot of professional development and support from mentor teachers, curriculum specialists, etc. And the families are grateful to be lucky enough to have gotten their kids into these schools (it's a lottery system and has nothing to do with student aptitude) so they tend to be very supportive and involved. Check out this video if you're interested in the DP system. (It's ridiculously motivational).

It'll be interesting to see what happens, and I'll certainly post updates as they come.

National Marathon

 Well I did it. Marathon #1 was mostly successful, and although I am still hobbling around three days after the fact, I definitely plan to do another one.

Despite being billed as one of the official race hotels, the Marriott I checked into in Washington, D.C. on Friday afternoon was a dismaying four miles away from the starting line. This made a bit more sense when I actually went to the starting line to pick up my number, t-shirt, and other assorted goodies. I saw that there really aren't any hotels near the armory/stadium where the race was going to begin. While it would have been convenient if I'd been closer to the course, the hotel, which was near DuPont Circle, turned out to be great for meet-ups with friends, so it wasn't all bad.

The expo where I picked up my number was pretty typical: vendors selling running-related items at allegedly marked down prices, free samples of yogurt and energy bars, and information about different races. They're always fun to walk through. I entered a drawing to win a trip to Africa to run a marathon around Mt. Kilimanjaro, which I don't think I won, as well as a drawing for a free entry into a long-distance relay race, which I hope I didn't win because I don't know eleven other people who like running enough to be on my team.

Dinner was supposed to be a carb-heavy plate of pasta, but, amazingly, this seemed to be a rarity in D.C. After several false tries in restaurants whose menus were devoid of carbohydrates, it was getting so late that I ended up with a plate of gnocchi instead - tasty, but probably not the best option. C'est la vie. As is my wont the night before a race, I slept badly and had marathon-related nightmares.

Despite my poor night's sleep, when my alarm went off at 5:00 the next morning, I was up and dressed in no time. I called the front desk to request a cab, and the guy told me to come down when I was ready. After swallowing some Advil for my knee, the last of my Powerade, and a packet of HammerGel, I headed down to the lobby with a packed bag to find chaos. The phone was ringing off the hook and no employees were in sight. The lobby was full of people, many in running gear, who looked bleary-eyed and disgruntled. I asked the lady next to me if she was waiting for a cab, and she said grouchily that she was waiting for the valet to bring her car up. Three people in her vicinity nodded, arms crossed. There were cabs going by outside, I discovered, but I ended up riding with a guy named Aaron whose girlfriend was running and had gone on ahead. I joined two other women, also strangers to both Aaron and to me, in the backseat, and Aaron kindly ferried us as close to the armory as he could get before traffic backed up so much that we decided to get out and walk. It was absolutely freezing - 27 degrees was the predicted morning temperature, and it sure felt like it - but luckily the bag check was indoors. I ended up with lots of time to spare, so I checked my bag, stretched, and got increasingly nervous. I'm used to pre-race jitters, but it's usually excitement; this time I was truly worried my knee wouldn't allow me to finish the race. At last, at 6:45 the final call to the starting line blared over the loudspeakers, so I joined the throng flowing out towards the corrals.

When the gun went off, my corral didn't even move. We finally crossed the starting line about nine minutes after the front-runners had gone, and by then I was more than happy to be moving because of the cold. My knee was sore, but within a mile or two I knew that it was going to allow me to finish, and my anxiety and bad mood dissipated accordingly. In fact, I felt great. My two-week, post-fall training hiatus had left my legs totally fresh and ready to go. I was wearing a cheap hoodie from Old Navy over my running clothes and a pair of huge cotton gloves that had come in my goody bag, and a few miles in I'd warmed up enough to ditch them both on the side of the road. (They were in good company; the Salvation Army must have made a killing from the castoffs that day.)

I kept looking at my watch and noting that I was going WAY too fast. I was pretty consistently doing 8:00 to 8:30 miles when I should have been staying between 9:00 and 9:10. But I felt great and decided to just go with it. I figured that if I got tired near the end, I'd have enough of a head start to make up for it and would still be able to break my goal of 4 hours. There were pacers in yellow t-shirts with red flags bearing times on them - the idea being that if you ran along with them you'd finish when they did and be able to make your goal time that way - and I caught up to the 4-hour guy around mile 8. (He'd started before I had.) I blew by him and kept going.

Just before mile 13, the half-marathoners, who had started at the same time we had, veered off to the right towards the finish line. (See the course map here.) About 2/3 of the bouncing crowd of runners disappeared, as did the cheering spectators, who were far more interested in watching the finishers. We marathoners continued on in grim silence. I'd been running for roughly an hour and 52 minutes, still well on track to come in before the four-hour mark. I decided it was time to break out the mix of songs I'd loaded onto my Shuffle for some extra motivation, so I dug it out of my pocket. Good thing too, because around mile 15 I began to realize how tired I was. I'd swallowed a packet of HammerGel at mile 8, and I finished the second one somewhere around mile 17. I hadn't stopped for water yet, but I stopped three times between mile 16 and the end.

Curiously, the knee I'd been worried about hardly hurt. My right knee, however, which had been twinging a bit here and there, was slowly becoming incredibly painful. Every quarter mile or so I'd get a sharp stab of pain, sometimes fleeting and sometimes continuous. By mile 18 it ached consistently.

It's funny how quickly one can forget how much something hurts. I remember that I was miserable for about the last 8 miles, and that I was really, really miserable between miles 21 and 24, but looking back it somehow doesn't seem so bad. I made the conscious decision to start crying twice, but quickly abandoned the idea when I realized that the lump in my throat made it hard to breathe. My muscles were tired, obviously, but my knee was the biggest problem. I kept thinking that my 24-miler hadn't been nearly this bad, but then I remembered that I'd done the whole training run at an easy pace, whereas I'd stupidly started out this morning's run like a bat out of hell. At mile 20, when the songs on my playlist seemed to drag on for ten minutes each, I pulled out my headphones and stowed the Shuffle back in my pocket. The 4-hour pacer came upon me at mile 22, and a mile later I abandoned the idea of breaking 4 hours and watched him pull away from me and slowly disappear.

Mile 23 was the worst. And then, very suddenly, there was just a mile to go and that fact buoyed me enough that I felt some of the pressure had been taken off my knee. I finished at 4:05:38, disappointed, but relieved that I didn't have to run anymore. The pain in my knee increased tenfold as soon as I let myself really feel it, and it was a while before I was able to muster the mental energy required to collect my bag and head for the Metro station. Thank goodness they all have escalators.

Post race, looking happier than I felt.

I was almost too tired to shower, but I knew I should eat something and so I dragged myself through the process of getting cleaned up and dressed. I couldn't bend my right knee at all if I was standing on it, and so I limped around DC until Sunday, then limped onto the bus and back into New York. Now, on Tuesday, my limp is almost gone, although my knee is still a bit sore. My muscles, while still a bit sore, feel surprisingly ok.

I'm already looking forward to my next one, although I've yet to determine which one that will be. Wherever and whenever it is, you can bet I'll be pacing myself a lot better.