Coping Mechanisms

I cried at 2pm on Monday.  

Nothing weighs down the feathers of your everyday problems like immobility.  Flooded email inboxes and fussy clients and capricious internet speeds are all fun and games until it’s 7pm and you can’t go for a run.  Now, all of the sudden, the world--with all of its wars and diseases and natural disasters--shrinks up like a raisin as your mind loses its capacity to fret about anything other than itself and its slipping white-knuckle clutch on sanity. 

This is Science™: jogging serves to shake accumulated head sand down to a subconscious corner of the cranial cavity-- a sort of dusting off of the neurological pathways, if you will--creating cerebral cleanliness for creative, big-picture and other-centered thoughts.  When this ritual is absent, the brain sits stagnant in a puddle of its own grime, secreting and reabsorbing the same exhausted stimuli in its immediate surroundings.

Phone beeps--Text message from Ali--I'm hungry--No food--Need groceries--No time--Write rent check--Go to the post office--Go to the laundromat--Beep--Email--Pasta for dinner?--Carbs--Evil--Call mom--Call lady from craigslist--Buy batteries on Amazon--What else?--Birthday present--Need a card--Still hungry--Need groceries--Laundry is done--Text Ali back--Make online shopping list--Make grocery shopping list-- -- --

No forward motion is achieved, only a dizzying carousel of mind frenzy. There is only one way to shut if off: Run.

Thus a random lack of cartilage under my left knee cap has the fascinating secondary side effect of Monday afternoon mental breakdowns.  While I was scuffling around down there at rock bottom after exactly four alligator tears had been hastily wiped from my chin, I decided to make a Plan of Action (making Plans of Action is my second favorite stress-coping mechanism, after running):  

1.  Hire a professional to poke my leg and tell me things about it (desperate times call for desperate measures).

2.  Take out my pent-up bodily rage on machines designed for people who like to work out but hate to run, i.e. cardio machines at the gym (again, desperate times...).

I didn’t want to do either of those things. I have traditionally found both of those things to be frivolous activities of the spoiled and unimaginative bourgeoisie. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from running, it’s that when something sucks, just do it faster to get it over with.  So I surfed Yelp for physical therapists in San Francisco, bookmarking all the ones with reviews that referred to the practitioner as “the man”--as in, “I went to Dr. Rob when I hurt my back, he’s the man!”   Then I called around to find out which gyms offer free one-day trials. Surprisingly, Equinox (the celebrity fitness club) will allow anyone to experience their “temple of well-being” for a day.  I told the account manager on the phone that yes, I was interested in learning more about membership and that I would be there for a consultation in 15 minutes.  


I put on my nicest pair of spandex, grabbed my backpack, grabbed my bike and headed out the door. It was a singing bird kind of blue-sky-sunny-California day. I rode one block down the street, turned around, went back inside, changed into my shorts, hopped on my bike and started riding in the opposite direction of Equinox, up a hill.  Feel the burn.  I just couldn't bring myself to spend such a glorious day working out inside.  
This is Math™: Outside > The gym.  Every time.

Even a “temple of well-being” with its entourage of sexy personal trainers and yoga ball stands and coconut water refrigerators and stone massages (at least this is what I am imagining such a gym to be like) will never induce the same endorphin rush as days like Monday.  There are just some things that, no matter how cutting-edge or premium high quality they may be, gym memberships just can’t buy. For example: the incline up Presidio Drive that’s so steep you can barely keep your front wheel grounded, or the head wind gusts off the Bay, or the sun setting behind the fog over the Golden Gate.  The real thing, not a poster.  

For further example:

1. Instagrapportunity.  

Unless you’re a tool, you can’t send anyone a Snapchat pic of the elliptical machine you’re working out on.  First of all, the mirror in front of the machine would inevitably cause you to catch the reflection of yourself taking the photo which--as everyone knows--is a cardinal violation of the Instagrules. In the great outdoors, on the other hand, even random trees by the sidewalk are shareworthy.  This kind of exercise is not a chore or some masochistic ritual to make me skinny!  This is an adventure!  Who doesn’t want to text their mom these photos?

2.  Superiority complex.  

While there is always someone at the gym less fit than you, being surrounded by people who are exercising never generates the same self-righteous high as working out near civilians.  When you power up a 31% grade hill like some sort of mountain animal while the people sit at outdoor cafe tables munching on thin crust pizzas, it doesn’t even matter if they are paying attention to you or not.  You imagine that they are.  With your eyes laser fixed at the exact midway point between your handlebars as you thrust down each pedal, you can see in your periphery that they are watching, indeed staring, drop-jawed, mushrooms sliding off drooping pizza slices that haven’t made it to their mouths yet as they gape in awe at your herculean strength.

3. The gratifying post-shower.  

So you got a little sweaty during Pilates - there was probably enough anti-bacterial wipe residue on the mat you were rolling on to make your pores excrete lemon zest.  You wash up in the locker room anyway because you may as well at least save on your utility bill if you’re going to pay $80/month to work out.  But when the streets are your gym, the shower is your nirvana.  You emerge reborn.  The gear-shaped oil ring on your calf, the dirt clinging to the salt rim along your hairline, the soot under your nails and the layer of city grit on the back of your neck and the pits of your knees all swirl together in a satisfying brownish whirlpool just before being slurped down the drain, returning to the bowels of the beast from whence they came.

4. Athletic solidarity

Unless you are my teammate or training partner, I do not want to watch you exercising while I am exercising.  This is because you either A) seem to be in phenomenal shape and I will be forced to think that you are not intelligent in order to compensate for the fact that you are stronger and/or faster than me or B) look ridiculous wearing those spandex and doing those silly lunge jumps and I will mentally mock you and then have a moment of panic where I wonder if that is what I look like to you.  This perversion of true competitiveness is caused by fluorescent lighting and wall-to-wall mirrors.  In the natural world, when I pass you on the trail or on the street doing your thing, I will nod sincerely.  Consider this a virtual high five.  Way to go!  Way to put yourself out there to achieve that physical goal!  No matter how far you’ve got to go, you’re on the right path.  Go get ‘em, I salute you.  

Every day this week I’ve woken up thinking, “Maybe I’ll go to the gym today.”  Maybe I’ll go tomorrow.  Probably not.

A long a** jog down memory lane

The resounding question ringing with the cellphone alarm in my ears was Why?  Why am I awake at 3:00 A.M.?  Why are we rushing to pack up our sleeping bags after two hours of sleep?  Why did we sign up to spend 24 hours running along 216 miles of central Oregon highway?  Why would anyone pay money for a weekend of sitting in a sweaty van, eating caffeine gels and granola bars and advil by the handful and yet still feeling fatigued and hungry and bloated?

In my dazed rage and confusion, I swore to myself that I would not be participating in this nonsense next year.  Or ever again.  The nightmares of last year’s relay must have been suppressed somehow or contorted with endorphin-swirled memories of the after party.  But in that moment I summoned the scarce mental energy I had available to imprint a future note-to-self in my brain: This is hell.

I was running the Cascade Lakes Relay with a group of my former college track teammates.  School and family reunions are little shovels that unearth older versions of ourselves that we forget exist under the pile of day-to-day minutiae.  These days, I put on makeup to go to work, skinny jeans to hang out with my cool friends, a furrowed brow when reviewing the wine list on the menu -- a stylish facade over my sweats and t-shirt personality.  But when I’m around the people who knew me when I was 18, I melt a little.  I regress a little, back to the me they knew.  

Sitting around a table with nine of my college friends, I am like Bruce Willis in that horrible time travel movie when he is confronted with his younger self and you don’t know which one is the bad guy.  In my case, I can’t tell if it’s worse to be the sort of person whose all-time favorite restaurant is the Olive Garden or to be someone that judges the sort of person whose all-time favorite restaurant is the Olive Garden. Did I used to be a loser or have I become a snob?

For a former hippie turning into a hipster, it’s difficult to distinguish between maturing and selling out.

I ran the last leg of the race, just over six miles through a winding single track trail along the Deschutes River.  The combination of sleep deprivation, scenic beauty and actual light of the sun at the end of the virtual tunnel of the finish line was enough to induce a religious experience.  My teammates gathered behind me to sprint the last 200 meters down the homestretch and all the farts and bad jokes and politically incorrect comments of the past two days were forgotten and I loved them all like family.  

They are my family.  They, like my blood family, have made their mark on me whether I like it or not.  Regardless of the new bandwagons I jump on or the various ways I “grow up,” I’ll still owe a corner of myself to them.  The corner that likes poptarts more than fancy waffles and listens to pop music and doesn’t need alcohol to have a good time--just sunshine and board games.

Who am I kidding?  I am definitely doing this again next year.