How Not to Run a Marathon

(originally published June 15, 2015. My original blog, on Wordpress, was hacked in early 2016. All of the original posts, through January 2016, have been re-posted here on Blogger.)

St. Petersburg promises to be an amazing marathon. I won’t be going.

I had planned to go. I had planned that I would run my third marathon of five in this picturesque “Venice of the North.” I had anticipated strolling through the stunning Hermitage Museum and Peter the Great’s Summer Palace. I envisioned staying up to experience the “white nights,” that narrow window around the end of June when the sun never sets on this far northern city.

But I won’t be doing any of that. June 28^th will come and go, and 4,000 runners will make their way through 26.2 miles of St. Petersburg streets – without me.

Sometimes, to quote the over-quoted John Lennon, life happens while we are busy making other plans. My plan had been to run the St. Petersburg Marathon. Life happened differently. Sometimes, life is like that.

St. Petersburg - where I won't be running a marathon

When I first decided to run five marathons this year as I turn 50, I did two things. First, I questioned my sanity. Determining that I was no less sane than before I set this crazy goal, I proceeded to step number two, which was to research the marathons that are out there, and decide which ones I might want to run.

It turns out there are a zillion marathons out there. Marathon running has increased exponentially in popularity, and every city of any size – and even some of no particular size – hosts a marathon. I developed a few criteria for picking my marathons:

• They must be either an easy drive or an easy and inexpensive flight from my home in Israel. This means running Israeli and European marathons (there may be one American exception to this – more in a future post).

• They must not be on the Jewish Sabbath. Since Shabbat is a day of rest for me, this means finding marathons on days others than Saturday. Fortunately, there are many non-Saturday marathons – mostly on Sundays.

• Each marathon should be in a place I actually want to visit. So the Manchester, England marathon is out (nothing against Manchester, although the one time I was there, all of those bleak scenes from Charles Dickens novels came to mind). The marathon in Siberia is out. The marathon in northern Finland is out. 

The marathons should ideally be evenly spaced throughout the year. This has turned out to be a challenge – at least in Europe. Most European marathons, due to weather considerations, are held either in the fall or the spring. Very few take place in the summer (except, for example, the one in northern Finland). This has necessitated grouping my marathons together in the fall and spring, creating a greater challenge for myself to run multiple marathons within a short time frame.

Until now, my plan has gone according to plan. I ran marathon number one in Jerusalem in mid-March. Marathon number two was in Geneva in early May. And then I planned to run St. Petersburg less than two months later.

I hesitated, however, to register for the St. Petersburg Marathon. According to Kayak, Expedia, Travelocity and a host of other sites, this was not the inexpensive flight I had expected. Probably because the ‘white nights” are peak tourist season, the price was almost double the usual rate. But the people at Kayak (or rather, the algorithms at Kayak) assured me that there was a 70% chance of the cost going down if I waited.

Meanwhile, although the St. Petersburg Marathon registration would close after 4,000 runners signed up, by this point only about 400 had registered. So, waiting to see whether the seers at Kayak were correct seemed the prudent course to take.

That was in mid-May. Then, on May 21, after a long illness, my Dad passed away (see previous post). His death hit me hard. I traveled to the U.S. for the funeral, and was out of commission for over a week.

Toward the end of May, I checked in again. The prices had not come down, and now Kayak was backtracking, claiming trends were too erratic to predict which way the prices would go. But far worse, over at the St. Petersburg Marathon web site, three words flashed ominously from the home page:

REGISTRATION IS CLOSED

I gazed at the screen, wondering just how 3,600 runners could have signed up in a bit over a week for a marathon that was still a month away.  It all seemed a bit unbelievable, so much so that for the next few days, I would check back to see if there had been some mistake and they had re-opened the registration. No matter how often I visited the site, however, the words

REGISTRATION IS CLOSED

would stubbornly appear. Meanwhile, over at Kayak, the price had gone way up and they were urging me to buy a ticket immediately before it went even higher.

I guess the Hermitage will have to wait. But I still need to run marathon number three. So I researched what other marathon I might run in the late spring. All that came up for Europe were a few marathons that either were on Saturday, or were in middle-of-nowhere places I was less than enthusiastic about visiting and wasn’t even sure how I would get there if I wanted to (northern Finland, for example).

This leaves me no option but to run marathon number three in the fall. I’m not yet sure which one – but several look like fun (a word I use sparingly when referring to a marathon).

That hadn’t been my plan. But sometimes, we have no choice but to change our plans. Sometimes, whatever our goal, the path is blocked, and we need to find another race to run. The key is to stay focused on our ultimate destination, no matter which route we must take to get there.

I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason. Not running the St. Petersburg Marathon has its advantages. While I won’t see the Hermitage, I’ll get to see great sights in another nice city – still to be determined. I had decided I would run five marathons within a year. Had I run St. Petersburg, I would have run the first three marathons in three months. While I believe in thinking big, there’s no reason to overdo it. By not running a marathon now, I can devote my mental energy to reflecting on my Dad, as I wish to do, rather than reflecting on making travel arrangements and beating my last marathon time.

Missing one marathon is pretty trivial in the scheme of things. For many people, far bigger plans of far greater consequence have been derailed. When I think of the people at the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled, for whom I’m raising funds as I run these marathons, I realize every one of them has had to find a different race to run. Whether missing a limb or confined to a wheelchair or some other physical disability, each of them has had to confront a “Registration is Closed” sign barring their path to physical wholeness. Every one of them has had to take a sharp detour they didn’t ask for and didn’t expect.

What is truly amazing is how many of them have found a different race and made it their own, traversing it with a persistence, dignity and drive that most people without physical limitations would be hard pressed to match.

Surely they offer inspiration for the rest of us the next time our own path is blocked.

_________________________

I am running these five marathons for the amazing children and adults at the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled. We have set a goal of $5,000. Every donation of any amount makes a difference. Click here if you want to help us get to the finish line!

Reflections on My Dad

(originally published June 7, 2015. My original blog, on Wordpress, was hacked in early 2016. All of the original posts, through January 2016, have been re-posted here on Blogger.)

The art of living well and dying well are one.

Epicurus

I haven’t written anything for a few weeks. My heart hasn’t been in the writing, or much else.

My Dad died two weeks ago.

So today I’m not going to write, as I usually do, about running marathons or pushing past limitations or conquering adversity. I’m going to write about my Dad. Yet – this is very much about pushing past limitations and conquering adversity – for my Dad lived those traits.

To attempt to capture the essence of a soul that walked this earth for 84 years is a fool’s errand. Certain things can never be reduced to mere words. Instead, I offer this stream of consciousness in the hope that, in some small way, I can give a glimmer of insight into the man my Dad was, and what the life he lived can teach all of us.

This was the fourth time cancer came to him uninvited. He overcame his first cancer while barely into adulthood, serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. His second and third cancers likewise proved to be no match for his determination to live. His fourth cancer – pancreatic cancer – may have ultimately prevailed, but not without being beaten and bruised and taken to the mat many times. Hardly anyone survives pancreatic cancer. Most people last three to six months. My Dad survived for over 2 ½ years.

He did so much more than survive, though. In his illness, he taught everyone he met what it means to live – to truly live. To affirm life. To hold oneself with dignity even in the most trying times. To choose not to complain or even express discomfort – not ever – and instead use his condition to inspire others.

This past fall, the oncologist solemnly told my Dad that the cancer was spreading rapidly, that the chemotherapy had not helped, that there was nothing more he could do. He advised my Dad to go home and make the best of whatever time he had left. He told my Mom that my wife and the kids and I should fly in immediately to see him. When my Mom suggested we might visit in a couple of weeks to accommodate school schedules, he warned, “I wouldn’t wait that long.”

A few days later, we were at his side for what we presumed would be our last visit. Only – it wasn’t. By the time we left, he seemed stronger, more upbeat, and not in any frame of mind to leave this world anytime soon. His 84^th birthday would be in late January, and even though it was only September, and the doctor was sure he had only weeks left, he was determined to turn 84. He simply decided – it made no difference to him what the doctor or anyone else said.

That’s how my Dad approached all of life – on his own terms.

The months rolled by, and I was soon making plans to fly in again for his 84^th birthday celebration. As family gathered around him nearly half a year after the oncologist had made his grim prognosis, he sat up straight, joy on his face, looking like someone ten years younger who hadn’t been battling a horrible disease.

When I said to my Dad, “Happy Birthday. How does it feel to be 84?” he replied simply, “Now let’s see if I make it to 85.”

Despite his optimism, I thought that surely this would be my last visit. It wasn’t.

As winter faded into spring, my wife and the kids and I prepared to visit him for Passover. Never had we imagined he would be with us by April. By this point, he had lost so much weight. But he hadn’t lost his smile. He slept much of the day, but when a well-wisher would call, he immediately perked up and sounded so robust that more than a few questioned the gravity of his condition.

Alas, when our visit ended in April, it was to be for the last time. On May 20, the nurse from the home hospice program called to let me know that his condition had worsened, that he was now bedridden, and that the end was likely a few weeks away. Less than twenty-four hours later it was my Mom calling to tell me that my Dad had passed away, going on to the next world peacefully in his sleep. Through tears, my Mom said that all along, she had been asking God only that my Dad not die suffering, and that God had answered her prayers.

More than any other relationship we have, our relationship with our parents is characterized by permanence. They have been there literally from the beginning. We have never known a time they have not been part of our lives. And until the day they die, it seems like they will always be there.

When a parent passes away, our entire reality changes. For the first time in my life, my Dad is not there, and nothing is the same.

The mourning process in the Jewish tradition is focused, in part, on helping the mourner confront his new reality squarely, working through his grief in as healthy a manner as possible. Confronting that reality can be hard to take, but it must be done.

I know, of course, that my father is no longer with us. Yet, it doesn’t seem possible. Defying all the odds, he had hung in there for a very long time. Part of me had wanted to believe that he would keep hanging in there, indefinitely.

My new reality sinks in a bit more as we enter the cemetery. I gaze at the cemetery street names on the way to the grave site – King David Street, Ruth Street, Naomi Street – the very same street names to be found in the town where I live in Israel. Only – those streets are teeming with life, with the laughter of children. These streets have no place for laughter.

Reality penetrates a bit more at the grave site, as I stare at the plain pine coffin draped with an American flag, to be presented before burial to my Mom by friends from the Jewish War Veterans group in recognition of my Dad’s service. I tear my jacket in a place close to the heart, and pray the ancient Hebrew words – Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, the True Judge – continuing a long tradition that began thousands of years ago when Jacob rent his garments upon being told that his son, Joseph had died. I watch as the coffin is lowered into the earth, and join with the other mourners in pouring the first few shovelfuls of dirt onto the grave.

Each of these acts takes me closer to confronting my new reality. But nothing pulls me into that reality as much as coming back to my Mom’s house and seeing my Dad’s chair.

The rust brown leather recliner where my Dad had spent much of the past few years, where he held forth with the many visitors who came to see him, where he read and watched TV, and offered his opinions about the world, where he had had his last conversations with me.

The chair now sits silent. It still fills its corner of the room, but is empty just the same.

Part of me fully expects my Dad to come back and sit again in that chair. As if he just went out to get the morning paper, and will return soon to read it, again offering his opinions on world events, and enthusiastically conversing with me as he always has.

Part of me desperately wants to believe. But I know there will only be silence where my Dad’s voice had been. I know his chair will always be empty.

I stare at that chair, replacing my Dad’s presence with memories. They come flooding back to me from every direction. The kind of father he was – how he was determined to be a different parent to my brother and me than his parents had been to him. The kind of husband he was. The kind of friend he was. The kind of person he was.

Memories of how, whatever life sent his way, my Dad would embrace life without any inhibitions. I think back on when I was 11 or 12, and my Dad spent a week with my Boy Scout troop in upstate New York as the newly deputized Assistant Scoutmaster. Just one day into the trip, the Scoutmaster was summoned back to work to deal with an unexpected crisis, leaving my Dad suddenly alone, in charge of 15 boys, in the middle of the woods. It didn’t faze my Dad in the least. With no experience to draw from, he just continued on, not dropping a beat, and managed those boys all by himself. I think about how much of life he approached like that – giving life all he had to give and not letting anything stand in the way.

Memories of how my Dad would not accept the word “can’t.” When a doctor had the temerity to suggest that my brother had eye-hand coordination issues that would prevent him from riding a bike, my Dad immediately marched out to the bike store and then took my brother to the park, where he learned to ride a bike perfectly.

Memories of my father as the eternal student. When I began piano lessons at age 12, my Dad was already in his mid-forties. He looked on, lamenting that he had never been given the opportunity to take music lessons as a child. But he didn’t lament for long, Soon, he was taking piano lessons, for the very first time, and wondering why many other people his age weren’t doing the same thing. He couldn’t conceive of starting piano lessons in his mid-forties as being unusual – for my Dad, if you wanted to learn something, then you would just go out and learn it. Simple as that. My Dad continued playing piano, even in illness, until just a few weeks before he passed away.

In his late fifties, shortly after he had retired, my Dad stumbled upon an ad in the paper to become a guide at Museum Village, a local re-creation of life in the 19^th century. In short order, he read everything he could get his hands on, becoming an expert on the material he presented. At 6 foot 4, he would get down on his knees to speak to children, so he could be on their level . He remained at Museum Village for 23 years, even into his illness. Over the years, he would receive many letters of gratitude and regularly get stopped in his travels by people who recognized him from their museum visits.

In his seventies, my Dad started learning in a Talmud class – also for the first time. The rabbi was amazed by his seriousness of purpose, telling me, “Most people his age just don’t do that.” My Dad – of course, he did that.

During my last visit with my Dad in April – even though he was failing – beside his chair sat a stack of books – even then, he was learning Hebrew, studying history, philosophy, and poetry.

Now, I walk over to the empty chair. The last book he had been reading sits beside it – a biography of Walt Whitman. I turn to the page with his bookmark, the very place he stopped reading before he died. There, I find one of Whitman’s poems, which begins:

                         Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries,

                         For that which was lacking among you all, yet needed
                         most, I bring.

That was my Dad – the eternal student who kept knocking on doors until they opened, and enriched everyone else in the process.

I also hear many memories not my own – from the large crowd who came to the funeral, and the steady stream of visitors who come to the house for many days following. They tell me that what resonated with them from my remarks at the funeral was when I said that, even in illness, he left visitors feeling better at the end of their visit than when they first came. People tell me that whenever they would ask my Dad how he was doing, he wouldn’t talk about himself, but would ask about them, their children, their lives. One woman relates to me, “Whenever I would visit your father, I always would leave with a smile on my face.”

I learn just how many lives he touched. “Your father never met a stranger,” one neighbor tells me. I am, frankly, surprised by how many people talk about him so fondly and genuinely miss him. Not only neighbors and co-workers and long-time friends – when we visit the local supermarket, a cashier with tears in her eyes embraces my mother, saying how much she enjoyed knowing him and how much she will miss him. The same thing happens at the local print shop where my mother goes to have a second set of acknowledgement cards printed, necessitated by the overwhelming number of condolence cards and house visits. It is the same story at the bank and the pharmacy. It seems like there isn’t a person in town who wasn’t touched by my Dad’s presence.

I confess to feeling weepy when I think about my Dad, and I expect it will be that way for some time to come. He’s gone and I am living a different reality.

But he’s not really gone. The chair may be empty, but I feel his presence still. I see the kind of person he was, the people he touched, the honesty and integrity he brought to everything he did, the dignity he maintained throughout his illness, the example he set, the inspiration he provided.

And the inspiration he still provides. Exactly one month from my Dad’s passing will be Father’s Day. This Father’s Day, I won’t be sending a tie or a corny greeting card – I’ll be reflecting. I’ll be thinking about how so much of who I am and what I’ve done is wrapped up in him. How, as I move into this new reality, the life he lived is forever there to guide me.

The chair may be empty. But I am blessed.

_________________________

My father's obituary appears here.

Of Marathons and Millionaires

(originally published May 18, 2015. My original blog, on Wordpress, was hacked in early 2016. All of the original posts, through January 2016, have been re-posted here on Blogger.)

The inspiration to stretch beyond our limits can come from just about anywhere. My own inspiration to run five marathons in one year developed from reading numerous stories of people who accomplished goals that had appeared all but impossible – the former couch potatoes who now run marathons; the man who ran 50 (yes, 50!) marathons in one year; the stutterer who became a world-class speaker; the down-on-their-luck people who evolved into multi-millionaires; and in general, all the people who have accomplished the very thing that their friends and relatives told them they couldn’t do. And of course – my biggest inspiration – the amazing people at The Israel Sport Center for theDisabled.

Running a marathon presents obvious physical challenges. But ultimately, it is an exercise in mental toughness and spiritual resilience. All those months of training are merely the by-product of the mental resolution to accomplish the goal in the first place, the ability to envision oneself with an entirely different level of potential, and the perseverance to stay true to one's convictions whenever the going gets tough (which is often).

My new article on spiritual lessons learned from the marathon was just published on Aish.com this week. You can read it here. In a nutshell, I discussed the power of the concept of transcendence in the Jewish tradition, how it opens up new and previously unimaginable possibilities, and how we can accomplish amazing feats in relatively short amounts of time if only we allow ourselves to embrace a larger vision and then put in the work with that vision in mind.

The person with barely a dollar to his name who went on to create a fabulously successful business had to, at one point or another, make a decision to live his life differently, believe he was capable enough, and perhaps most important, find the inspiration to move forward. The same is true of the couch-potato-turned-marathon runner, the stutterer-turned-public-speaker, and anyone else who has transformed themselves enough to accomplish something big.

That inspiration ultimately must come from within. But knowing that others have already paved the way can give us the initial confidence we need to get on the path ourselves.

Inspiring others to go beyond what they had thought was possible is one of my goals in running these five marathons. My first goal, of course, is to actually run the marathons, thus going beyond what I had thought was possible for me. My second goal is that my running will have a meaning and an impact beyond my personal goal-setting  – that’s why I’m using the marathons to raise $5,000 for the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled. And my third goal is to serve as an example that will inspire others to set and accomplish new goals beyond what they otherwise might have done.

So far, I’ve run two of the five marathons, and am on my way to a third in St. Petersburg, Russia, in about six weeks. Thanks to many generous individuals, we are over 25% of the way toward our $5,000 goal for the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled (if you wish to help get us over the top, you can donate here. Thank you!).

And just recently, three people, in rapid succession, have told me that my 5-marathon run has inspired them to set sail on bigger goals. First, a friend from my high school years wrote me that I had inspired her to return to an athletic activity she loves “and make the year I turn 50 a new beginning.” Then, a fellow musician from my days playing in the Air Force Band wrote me to say that she’d “like to do something like you’re doing” and is seriously considering running half-marathons to raise money for a good cause. Finally, a good friend here in Israel told me that my running had inspired him to start running again, and that despite not having run in 20 years along with a problematic knee, he is now training for the Jerusalem Night Run to be held next month.

My hope is that by the time I’ve run five marathons, I will have inspired many more people to start working on new and bigger goals. Those goals need not be athletic. For me, running the marathons is only the vehicle for stretching myself from the inside. The same inspiration, drive, perseverance, and settings one’s sites on something larger could be applied to any goal.

As I’ve progressed through these marathons, I’ve started to wonder – could I apply the same energy  and focus to make a million dollars? I haven’t tried it, but probably. I’ve started to wonder if maybe I should. Why limit the inner skills I am acquiring only to running marathons? Maybe I could finally become decent at speaking Hebrew after years of coming up with reasons why I don’t. Maybe I could write another book and find a way for it to become a bestseller. Maybe I could find a way to do all those things in life I’ve always wanted to do but always seemed to lack either the necessary time or money, or both.

So what about you? What goals are simmering underneath the surface that you don’t fully believe you could accomplish? All it may take is to find someone who can serve as your inspiration and then – just begin.

_________________________

I am running these five marathons for the amazing children and adults at the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled. We have set a goal of $5,000. Every donation of any amount makes a difference. Click here if you want to help us get to the finish line!

Why the Number 50 is Your Key to Greatness

published (in May 2015) my article "50 Days to Greatness." It's my take on the power of the number 50, especially from a Jewish perspective. Hint: It's all about the ability to transform ourselves beyond what we ever believed possible.

You can read "50 Days to Greatness" here.

Running in the Rain

(originally published May 10, 2015. My original blog, on Wordpress, was hacked in early 2016. All of the original posts, through January 2016, have been re-posted here on Blogger.)


Sometimes – in running and in life – obstacles show up for which we are wholly unprepared. Occasionally, we don’t expect any obstacles (big mistake), yet they dare to show up anyway. Other times, the obstacles we encounter bear no resemblance to the obstacles we anticipated.

So it was in Geneva. The good news is that I finished – my second marathon of five this year – and I managed to shave almost ten minutes off my best marathon time. But I can’t say it was easy. A marathon never is.

Geneva is a pretty European city, set next to a beautiful lake within shouting distance of the Alps. Its marathon had several things going for it – a very inexpensive flight to get there, the opportunity to explore a new city, and a mostly-flat course with breathtaking scenery.

The course’s flatness especially appealed to me. I ran my last marathon (first of five) in Jerusalem. As the psalmist wrote thousands of years ago, “Jerusalem, hills enfold it.” In truth, hills do not merely enfold Jerusalem. They permeate virtually every inch of the city. Which makes Jerusalem one of the world’s more challenging marathon courses. Hills are everywhere, down to the very finish line.

I live near Jerusalem, and hills permeate every inch of my town as well, which makes for challenging training runs. I wondered what it would be like to run for a long stretch without actually having to struggle up a hill or carefully watch my knees on the way down.

At first, in contrast to Jerusalem, the Geneva Marathon seemed almost easy. At first.

As expected, I encountered few hills, and none particularly steep. For the first 25 kilometers (15.5 miles), I sailed through, not experiencing any of the stiffness I sometimes get in my knees or soreness I always get in my thighs when navigating hills. I began to dream. What if I kept running at this speed? Maybe I could cut a full hour off my regular marathon time. Maybe I could enter a whole different league as a runner. Maybe I could recover from this marathon in a couple of days rather than the week it took me after Jerusalem. Maybe . . . .

Yeah, maybe. Then it started to rain.

Jerusalem had been sunny. Not too sunny, though, and cool – perfect marathon running weather. Geneva, on the other hand, had seen rain for days before the marathon. However, by marathon morning, the drizzle had begun to taper, leave the over 2,000 runners with overcast skies and temperatures in the mid-60s – also perfect marathon weather.

Just as I was entertaining my visions of running grandeur, the skies opened up. Not a little. A lot.

I kept running (what choice did I have?), hoping the remaining 10 ½ miles or so wouldn’t be like this. I became upbeat again when the rain let up after about 15 minutes. But that was when the problems, the unforeseen obstacles, really began.

The Geneva Marathon is a misnomer. This race really should be called “The Backroads of Geneva Marathon.” Only the last seven kilometers (4.3 miles) of the race are in Geneva. The course starts in Chêne-Bourg, a quaint suburb of Geneva, and then winds its way through a series of charming Swiss villages, farmland, and actual cow paths. Those cow paths were to be my downfall.

As I moved from road to cow path, the surface transitioned from pavement to dirt. That is, it would have been dirt, except that the dirt had soaked in the rain of the past few days and the downpour of the last fifteen minutes. So instead, it was mud. Sloshy, sticky, mud.

Suddenly, running up and down those hills in nice Jerusalem weather didn’t seem so bad. My until-now easy steps became labored. Although I still wasn’t feeling the usual aches in my thighs from the hills, before long, all the muscles in my ankles started to hurt as they never had before – apparently a side effect of all the sloshing and slipping and sliding in the mud.

Eventually, the cow paths were behind me and I headed toward the lake and the big finish in Geneva. Less than eight miles to go, I told myself. But it was too late. The cow paths had done their work. I hobbled on, every step more of an effort than the last, the finish line now agonizingly far away.

That was when I started an internal dialogue, trying to play mind games with myself that would get me to the finish line. Every long distance runner does this when needed, some more than others.

“It’s time to go to Plan B,” I told myself. Sadly, that did little good since I had no Plan B.

“Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional,” I repeated a few times, hoping this well-worn cliché of the running world would keep me going.  That wasn’t too effective either as it was hard to shake that suffering feeling, no matter how often I told myself otherwise.

Approaching the Finish Line

Finally, I resolved just to keep going. No matter what. Sometimes I would tell myself I was going to run from one lamp post to the next. And when I got there, then to the next lamp post. And then the next. Sometimes, the traffic light in the distance became my goal.

Whenever I started to falter and entertained thoughts of bailing out, I told myself that I had committed to run five marathons, that part of my experiment was to do - not merely to try to do - what I had previously thought was beyond me, that I was running for the children at the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled who surely had much greater challenges than I did at the moment, and that I had told a lot of people I was doing this and I really didn't want to write a blog post about how I didn't finish the Geneva Marathon (when all else fails, appeal to your own sense of vanity). So on I went, to whatever was the next landmark in front of me.

Finally, Geneva came into view, and crossing the finish line began to feel like a possibility. Then the actual finish line came into view, and I found some renewed strength - from where I do not know - and poured it on for the last couple of minutes (well, whatever was left at that point to pour on).

I had begun the Geneva Marathon thinking I would have none of the obstacles I had in Jerusalem. I was right. I just didn’t anticipate that I would have different obstacles that turned out to be at least as challenging.

In running and in life – whatever the challenges, the main thing is to keep going. Head for the next landmark. Take the next step. Whatever you do, don’t stop. And little by little, that finish line will come into view.

_________________________

I am running these five marathons for the amazing children and adults at the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled. We have set a goal of $5,000. Every donation of any amount makes a difference. Click here if you want to help us get to the finish line!

Of Marathons and Sprained Ankles

(originally published April 19, 2015. My original blog, on Wordpress, was hacked in early 2016. All of the original posts, through January 2016, have been re-posted here on Blogger.)


Just two weeks to the Geneva Marathon. It may sound strange – particularly if you're not a runner – but I’m looking forward to it. If nothing else, it should be a bit less grueling than the Jerusalem Marathon I ran last month.

Jerusalem is one of the hillier and more challenging marathons in the world. Just when you can't bear the thought of facing another steep incline, you turn the corner to be greeted by yet another steep incline.  Geneva, in contrast, is mostly flat. In Geneva, you view the mountains from a distance. In Jerusalem, you run on them.

Geneva also should be easier simply because running a marathon tends to go more smoothly when you're not nursing a sprained ankle. A month before Jerusalem, I was out for what should have been an easy training run when I managed to step in the exact spot where the sidewalk ended and the street began a few inches below. My ankle buckled, and in an instant, I was no longer upright, instead sprawled rather unglamorously on the sidewalk. When I became vertical again and tried to resume my run, I quickly discovered that I could no longer run. I could only limp. I tried to stay calm as "I'm never going to be able to run the Jerusalem Marathon now" flashed across my mind.

Worse still, I was 3.5 miles away from my car and didn’t even have money with me for a bus. So I spent the next hour hobbling back, becoming ever-more painfully aware of how out of reach the marathon had become.

Packet Pickup for the Jerusalem Marathon

When I finally arrived home, I Googled how to heal a sprained ankle as quickly as possible. The various predictions of required healing time ranged from encouraging to daunting. I followed all of the advice. Still, after a few days of icing, elevating and wrapping the ankle, I didn’t look like I was in any shape to run around the block, much less a marathon.

And yet - I had deliberately intended to celebrate my turning 50 by doing something that I would have considered impossible when I was 30. I had already told several friends and relatives about my ambitious goal of running five marathons in my 50th year and using the marathons to raise funds for the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled. The last thing I wanted to do was to tell them: Never mind. I'll get back to you about this sometime when I'm feeling better - hopefully before I'm 51.

The wheels started turning, grasping for a solution. If my ultimate goal is to transcend what I had previously believed to be my limits, and inspire others to think about transcending theirs, then could I use this new obstacle to achieve this ultimate goal, and somehow find a way to run the marathon even in the face of a sprained ankle?

While I didn’t want to do something stupid that would cause further injury, neither did I want to give up at the first bump in the road (literally!).

So again I turned to Google to see if anyone else had run a marathon with a sprained ankle. First, I came to the site of the “Twisted Ankle Marathon,” the actual name of a marathon run on a rugged dirt trail in a state park in Georgia. In my condition, I somehow wasn't inspired to consider running something called "Twisted Ankle" as one of my five marathons.

Further down the list of search results, I discovered that a sprained ankle isn't affected too much by the motions the foot makes while running. I came across chat lists where people told of successfully negotiating a marathon despite spraining their ankle weeks before. One person actually inquired about running a marathon a mere ten days after his injury when his ankle still looked like a balloon with five days to go until his marathon.

In my book, that would be entering the territory called “doing something stupid.”  But maybe, with a month on my side, I could find a way. My first step was to delay starting this blog. I had planned to launch my first post a few weeks before the Jerusalem Marathon. But I had no interest in writing another post a few weeks later about how I didn’t actually run Jerusalem because my ankle didn’t heal in time. Every so often, procrastination is the wisest course.

In the days leading up to Jerusalem, several people asked me what my goal was. By that, they meant within what time frame did I want to complete the marathon. “My goal,” I told them, pointing to my ankle, “is to cross the finish line.”

By marathon day, although my ankle wasn't fully healed, it seemed in good enough shape to make the attempt. Except that I had missed so much training over the past month that my muscles were no longer in ideal marathon condition. I had managed to get through a 16 mile run a week or so before - which is a nice distance, but still 10 miles short of a marathon.

I settled on a strategy of running the 16 miles that I knew I could run, and then taking everything after that one step at a time to see how far I could go. As the miles racked up, various muscles started complaining. But my ankle felt fine. More muscles joined the conversation. Some went from complaining to screaming. As I approached the 22-mile mark, pretty much every muscle in my lower body was in revolt. Still, my ankle felt fine. By around mile 24, with just over 2 miles to the finish line, I really was taking it just one agonizing step at a time. And then I felt it. My ankle started to hurt. I began to worry that after coming this far, my ankle would derail me after all.

Then I realized that it was my left ankle that hurt. My right ankle – the one I had sprained – still felt fine. And it did all the way to the finish line.

Go figure.

Sometimes, obstacles can be warning signs. But more often, we mistakenly let obstacles stop us when we should be seeing them simply as disguised opportunities to accomplish what we didn't think we could.

And with that, I'm off to do another training run for Geneva. And believe me, this time, I'm going to watch the bumps in the sidewalk very carefully.

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I am running these five marathons for the amazing children and adults at the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled. We have set a goal of $5,000. Every donation of any amount makes a difference. Click here if you want to help us get to the finish line!