The Evolution of a Marathon Man

It is an ordinary day in August when we hear the ad on the radio. We pull away from McDonald’s Drive-Thru with our Big Macs and fries. Their singular aroma inspires Ruben, my husband, on the subject of weight loss.

He tells me again how he weighed only 155 pounds on the day we were married. As usual, he is about to conclude that the 20 pounds he has gained since are somehow a direct result of that day. But, suddenly, a voice speaks to him. It is a voice on KNX News Radio, so we believe it is good. It says, “Your chance to train for the L.A. Marathon . . . .”

AUG. 12--MILES: Ruben rises at 6 a.m. and heads for Santa Monica. More than 500 other non-athletes show up to join the KNX-Orthopaedic Hospital-City of Los Angeles Marathon Training Program.

Like Ruben, they are, for the most part, pale, paunchy and over-stressed. Most have never even considered running a marathon.

Ruben passes the fitness screening. His heart rate is 72. His blood pressure 120/76. Not bad.

We talk about what a good plan this is for losing weight; we do not talk about running a marathon. Ruben will just drop a few pounds and that will be that.

Ruben spends the afternoon teaching our 7-year-old, Rachel, how to take her pulse. For some reason, this simple task has come to require a calculator.

AUG. 26--4 MILES: The L.A. Leggers (as they are called) are up to four miles. Every Saturday morning they meet to walk, jog, or run in various combinations--whatever it takes--for distances increasing weekly. Daily they must train (on their honor) for at least 30 minutes.

Ruben has taken to wearing only white (reflects the sun), and worries aloud about his knees and balding head. I give him a white hat I bought at the zoo. It has a line of grinning penguins tottering around it and says WADDLEHAT on the front above the bill. Ruben is unappreciative but wears it anyway.

At dinner, he stands several times to demonstrate the “right” way to stretch and tells the children the story of the first marathoner, Pheidippides, who just happened to die after his famous 26-mile run to Sparta about 5 BC.

“Don’t worry,” I tell Rachel and 2-year-old Sara, “Daddy’ll never run that far.”

SEPT. 16--6 MILES: Each Saturday’s training run is followed by a pep talk presented by physicians, marathoners, or other authorities on health or sports. This week’s topic: footwear.

Ruben relates to me his acute biomechanical needs. I am unfamiliar with the term but, from the way Ruben hobbles around the kitchen by way of demonstration, I surmise it has something to do with the way he walks.

I am sympathetic. His over-pronation will have to be addressed if he expects to lose weight evenly, right? We pack the children into the car and head for a store specializing in running shoes.

After Sara has tried on every shoe in the store, Ruben buys a pair of Avia’s. They are firm at the midsole, torsionally rigid and well cushioned. They have a stable heel counter--whatever that is--and are board lasted--whatever that means. In short, they are one fabulous pair of running shoes, said to do everything but actually run for you. Nominal cost: $80. Ruben’s assessment, “They feel funny.”

On the way home, I am certain I have misunderstood when Ruben says that after three or four hundred miles he will have to toss them. Surely it will take him years to run that far.

SEPT. 30--8 MILES: The Leggers pass out T-shirts and hats. Ruben is relieved he will not have to wear my WADDLEHAT any longer. He now runs 45 minutes almost every evening after work. Sara watches from the window. “Where’s Daddy going?” she asks daily, and, daily, I tell her he’s going running. Each time she looks up at me blankly and again asks, “But where’s he going ?”

Ruben is not losing weight, but he doesn’t seem to care. He contemplates the mysteries of fluid replacement and carbo loading. I discover Power Bar wrappers and Gatorade bottles under the seat of the car. He buys a pair of fluorescent, lime-green running shorts.

OCT. 14--10 MILES: Now that runs are growing longer, Ruben decides he must own a water pack. This is a smooth, plastic cylinder, flawless in design, that allows you to squirt water into your mouth. It fits snugly in a customized nylon receptacle weighing no more than a few ounces and snaps around one’s waist with a nifty plastic buckle. Cost: $25.

Ruben uses it once. Then, the children get hold of it. They find squirting water into their faces and onto the living room floor totally diverting. The water pack promptly mutates into a crumpled, filthy, chewed-up piece of unbiodegradable garbage.

NOV. 4--12 MILES: We decide to spend a relaxing weekend in Palm Springs, but Ruben is determined to get in his long Saturday run. He decides he needs some hill practice and chooses Route 74, a steep, winding grade leading from the desert to the mountain town of Idyllwild.

Ruben has never in his life run 12 miles. I wonder what he needs hill practice for anyway, but agree to drop him off at the bottom and drive up looking for him in about two hours.

Rachel, Sara and I eat breakfast then start slowly up the hill. Even though it is before 10 a.m. the heat is notable. I set the odometer at 0. By the time it reaches 11.7, we can see Ruben ahead, a shimmering specter among the waves of heat rising from the pavement. We pass him, and I pull over.

Incredibly, Ruben says he feels great. He appears hardly winded. We are all so pleased and excited, we decide to drive the rest of the way to Idyllwild and spend the day there. We chatter amiably as the car climbs. No one even notices that its temperature gauge is climbing, too. After all, the air conditioning is working, and we are busy toasting with Gatorade.

At the top of the hill, though, I notice the car losing power. I press on the gas pedal but nothing happens. In fact, we are slowing down. In heat of about 100 degrees, without a splinter of shade in sight, the car comes to a dead halt.

After the cost of towing, three additional days of accommodations, and repair of a blown head gasket, we are out almost $2,000. I tell Ruben his running is costing us far more than nutri-system and Jenny Craig combined. He guesses to make it worthwhile now, he will just have to run the marathon. I fail to see the logic in this, but have to agree.

NOV. 18--14 MILES: The children and I begin bicycling alongside Ruben during his now hourlong daily runs. We caution him against excessive pronation by day and unsupervised Haagen-Dazs loading at night. I myself become obsessed with calculating the mileage of every errand I do, then combine trips to create novel running itineraries.

For two days after running his 14 miles, Ruben’s stomach is so upset he actually loses two pounds. His nipples bleed from the friction caused by his T-shirt rubbing against his chest; his inner thighs are raw, and his toenails are turning black.

I am beginning to have doubts about this running business and now regard KNX as highly suspect, even when it comes to weather. March 4 seems very far away.

Oh, well, as my brother--the one my mother refers to as a “mental case”--always says, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

DEC. 2--16 MILES: We give Ruben a lightweight Walkman for his birthday. He goes to the library and checks out a couple of Books on Tape: “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind,” by Shunryu Suzuki, and “Tough Guys Don’t Dance,” by Norman Mailer.

I begin having a recurring dream. Ruben is changing Sara’s diaper. He looks a lot like Clark Kent, and I am not entirely confident in Clark’s ability to handle the job. Somewhere in the distance a shot goes off. Ruben leaps into the air, rips off his glasses and races down the street.

Half-naked, Sara hurries to the window. “Where’s he going?” she asks. We watch as Ruben enters a phone booth on the corner and, seconds later, emerges clad in his Leggers T-shirt and hat, his lime-green shorts, super-duper shoes and high-tech canteen. Oh, and a pair of tights. I wake up.

I’m glad he chooses to listen to the book on Zen first, although for the next few days normal conversation is difficult. “I went and I returned. It was nothing special,” he tells me after work. “Walking in the gentle rain, our robes are soaked through,” he counsels a bewildered Sara in the tub, “but on the lotus leaves not a drop remains.” At a parent/teacher conference regarding Rachel’s progress (or lack of it) in school, he nods his head knowingly, “Bad is good; good is bad.”

DEC. 10--18 MILES: As part of the training regime, the Leggers sign up for the San Diego Marathon. They are expected to run only 18 miles--not the full 26--just to get a sense of what it’s like to run in a race. We arrive the night before. Like a bad omen, the first thing we see are trucks unloading hundreds of portable toilets.

The next day, we see Ruben off at the starting line then jump in the car. We manage to locate him four times on the route. I honk the horn and wave while Rachel screams encouragement out the window. This is either genuinely inspiring to Ruben or excruciatingly embarrassing.

We are waiting at mile 18 when he arrives. His left knee is killing him but he is beaming. We watch as a few dozen other Leggers arrive. Almost all are over 40 and, clearly, not in the best of shape. They are limping and their faces are worn. But, each and every one is smiling. Wow.

Ruben waits in line to receive his half-marathon medal. Rachel calls him “champ” and asks if she can take his medal to school for share.

DEC. 30--20 MILES: Ruben is now listening to the Mailer tape while he runs. He swears to me that he only chose this tape because there are so few Books on Tape at the library. He tells me the part about the guy finding the grisly disembodied head of either his wife or his mistress in a sewer.

I say, “Never name your son Norman.”

The same night, after he thinks I have fallen asleep, he sneaks out his Walkman and, in the dark, listens eagerly to the rest of the tape in bed.

JAN. 13--22 MILES: Rachel refuses to bike with us any longer. “This is boring,” she says. We are all sick. We have this winter’s viruses, influenzas, and related bronchial assaults concurrently. Ruben tries to maintain his running schedule but is hacking like a dog.

Naturally, on the Saturday he must run 22 miles, it pours for the first time in a year. I watch him dress in the dark. “Surely they won’t make you run in this, will they?”

But they do, and he does. He is limping badly when he comes home and says he had to walk the last two miles. His knees are becoming a serious concern. “I have to lose weight,” he croaks, pressing an ice bag against his leg. “You have to help me.” I tell him it will mean my having to hide all the crackers and cookies in the house to prevent him from eating them after I’m asleep. “Anything,” he says.

We decide to just pick a book off the shelf and do whatever it says. Food combining is what it says.

We spend a fortune on exotic off-season fruit. We no longer pervert the taste buds with garlic and onions. We avoid mixing proteins and starches, proteins and proteins, starches and starches, vegetables and fruit. Ruben reads me all the parts in the book about the putrefied sludge lining the walls of our intestines and the toxic matter amassing in quantities unimaginable throughout our bodies. He shows me again and again a picture of the authors on the book’s cover: a smiling, bright-eyed young couple, radiating good health and vigor. And, what amazing teeth.

JAN. 27--24 MILES: Only two more long runs and three weeks’ maintenance before the L.A. Marathon. The training program is set up in such a way that the Leggers will actually run a full 26 miles three weeks before the race. This either convinces them that they are, in fact, capable of doing so, or worries them to death so they don’t have to.

Ruben is terrified of injuring his feet or legs before the big day. He accidentally bangs an ankle against one of the sprinklers in the back yard and loses two nights’ sleep before finally accepting that it is not broken, sprained, torn, pulled or otherwise damaged. I overhear him in the shower repeating as if in a trance, “I am being drawn like a magnet to the finish line. . . .”

This time he has to walk the last four miles. He claims this is a result of our buying a house less than six months ago. It seems if you have recently moved, bought a house, changed jobs, started or ended a relationship, had a child, or tested yourself mentally or emotionally in any way whatsoever, your marathon time will be affected.

Time? I can’t believe my ears. Now he’s talking about time ?

FEB. 10--26 MILES: “I can’t do it,” Ruben says. He has noticed what appear to be large, hairy knolls just above his kneecaps. “What are those things?” he asks anxiously over and over. “I can’t even see my feet.” This is untrue, of course, but I try to soothe him by behaving as if I were some sort of specialist, poking and prodding each bulbous mass, asking, “Does this hurt? How about that?” and so forth. Rachel and Sara insist on helping, but their moaning and groaning in horror only makes things worse.

Recalling the adage, “When you don’t know what you’re talking about, speak loud and fast,” I holler suddenly, “Muscles!” A communal sigh of relief. Ruben nods. Rachel and Sara nod. Even I nod.

Still, when I hear the car pull out of the driveway this morning--the day on which the Leggers will attempt to run, walk, jog, crawl the distance--I can’t help wondering.

What are those things?

FEB. 24--26 MILES: I can hardly believe it, but they really must be muscles because Ruben made it. He ran 26 miles last week without a hitch.

This morning, he dresses carefully. He swabs his inner thighs with Vaseline. They are no longer raw. He sticks Band-Aid sheer spots on each of his nipples. They no longer bleed. He carefully clips his toenails with a toenail clipper (that’s the key). They are no longer black. He double-ties his shoes--the third pair.

“Take it easy,” I say. “Only a week to go.” He nods and walks out the door straightening his hat, zipping his jacket with panache. His head is erect, his shoulders back. He hasn’t really lost any weight to speak of, but, as he said the other day buttoning his pants, “My composition has definitely changed.”

Definitely.

I think maybe I’ll try a marathon myself next year.