What Do The Aliens Think?
Just as we finished the first mile of the Brooklyn Half Marathon today, my Aunt Peggy turned to me, and said, “I always think of what you said about the aliens whenever I do one of these things.”
She was referring to a monologue I made during our last race, a 5K, which is the only other athletic event I’ve participated in besides ping pong tournaments in my adult life.
“If there are aliens in space right now, watching us,” I had said on that blessedly short run. “They must think this kind of shit is really fucking weird.”
I think I had just seen the movie “Another Earth,” and I was fantasizing a lot about being watched constantly, all of the time, by people who were fascinated by me. That’s not a new thing. The only new thing about that thought was the aliens.
“It’s like, we’re just running from one spot to another, for no reason,” I continued. “We’re expending all of this energy not for food, not for war, not to protect ourselves, but rather just to make up for our sedentary lives in an office. People didn’t run 100 years ago unless it was away from a murderer or a rapist. They were too busy like plowing fields, and doing things Marx loved. I wonder when people first started jogging. It’s so weird.”
“Can we slow down, I’m going to throw up,” she said. Soon after, we finished the race, and I had a complete meltdown. Caleb wasn’t at the finish line with open arms, as he had sworn he would be. Rather, he was at Dunkin’ Donuts with my sister Blara, trying to figure out what kind of Coolata to order. “I didn’t realize it would be over so quickly!” he said as I wailed and stormed around Prospect Park, my aunt, my sister, and Caleb following me.
“These are childhood feelings,” I screamed. “This is something that my parents would have done to me.”
Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when my aunt asked me to do another race with her, this time a half marathon. I guess she wanted to talk more about the aliens.
She asked me right after I returned from my trip to India, which gave me roughly six weeks to prepare. Then I got hospitalized with a lung infection. And then, from violently coughing due to the lung infection, I broke my rib.
Which means that the first time that I ran since April 8 was this past Wednesday.
Now, I’m actually in pretty good shape. You may not believe me, but in high school, I was the captain of the Varsity track team for three years. This was due to the fact that I qualified for the state championship in 400m hurdles my freshman year, jumped 15 feet during a freak long jump incident that I never managed to replicate again, and was also basically the only girl on the team.
In college, I stopped running for a year. I promptly gained 15 pounds, and the basketball team began to refer to me as “the ass.” To lose weight, I began to run small distances again, which I hated. “I will never run a marathon,” I remember telling an ex-boyfriend. “I would rather have to marry you.”
Then, I graduated, and moved on to the real world. Running became an early morning routine, something that I did to clear my head, and make caloric room for all of the alcohol I was consuming in the evenings.
Most people who run know that at first, it’s absolutely awful. Every fucking time you decide to go for a run, you have to coax yourself into leaving the house for at least an hour before. You struggle through short distances. You dread having to do it every day.
Slowly, it becomes something of a meditative ritual. Now, when I run, it seems less like exercise, and more like a break from my day. I run when I want to do something that makes me feel good. I actually don’t run that much when I have a boyfriend, because we get busy doing other things. Wink.
So although not training for a half marathon, for me, was probably not a good idea, I was still very capable of running one. Or so I hoped this morning, when I woke up at 5:15am.
Caleb, on his toes after the last meltdown, got up with me. He left to go walk Franke while I got dressed. “The entire neighborhood is filled with people wearing those little number tags, and going to the marathon!” he said when he returned.
“That’s because rich white people love jogging,” I told him. “And our neighborhood is full of them.”
Now, I just did a little research on the history of jogging, which apparently was used, in the 16th century, to describe people who made short, jagged movements. It wasn’t used to describe the activity associated with it today until the 1960s, when it changed from being an activity used to train boxers and world class athletes, to what it is today—a method of losing weight and alleviating depression in a population consumed with self image.
Because, like, seriously, if the people running today in the marathon were doing things like taking care of their families, or working in a factory, they wouldn’t have energy to jog. And if they were rich enough that they didn’t have to work, then they’d be like riding horses all day, and walking in the fields, and feeling excellent about themselves. I’m sounding kind of insane, but not more insane than running in spiral loops as fast as you can until you can no longer feel your legs while police officers give you high fives…and then running even more.
Which is what I was thinking about as we ran in loops up and around and down and underneath and all over Prospect Park, with 20,000 other people. And then, the fucking endorphins started kicking in.
“Oh my god, this is amazing,” my aunt yelled sometime around mile 7, as we emerged from Prospect Park, and made our way down the ramp that led to Ocean Parkway. “I’m getting the chills!”
I looked at the path before me. At the people running down it. At their rainbow colored cute little jogging outfits. And I, too, began to feel pretty joyous. “Whoop!” I screamed, throwing back my head, and holding my hands in the air.
A few miles later, and my body, completely unprepared to run more than 6 miles, began to give out. My aunt, 50 years old and gorgeous, kept on getting higher, however, until she was running around, chatting to everyone around us like she was on ecstasy.
“That mile was a minute faster than the last one!” she proclaimed to me at mile 9. “Wow!”
“Yay!” I said weakly.
“This is the most amazing I’ve ever felt!” she screamed.
At which point I began to think of running less as a pointless activity, and more as a healthy vice. Out of boredom, some people drink a lot. Some people do drugs. And some people run long distances, which makes their bodies skinny, their minds sharp, and their knees give out from underneath them.
“Can you still talk?” She asked. “Don’t worry if you can’t.”
“I might not want to talk for a little while,” I murmured. Because although I was having no trouble breathing, I could feel the tiredness setting into my legs. It felt heavy, but it also felt kind of pleasurable, like something that I wanted to concentrate on.
By mile 11, my aunt had fallen silent, as had everyone around us. The mood got dark. It wasn’t scary, or depressing. It was more in-human. Like we were just moving forward out of pure power of mind. Kind of like how I imagine prisoners felt at Auschwitz.
As the last mile approached, I heard someone moaning lowly underneath their breath, and realized it was me.
During the last 400 meters, as we approached the boardwalk on Coney Island, with the Cyclone looming on the horizon, so much adrenaline flooded through my system that I began sprinting towards the finish line. My head thrown back. Howling. My aunt and I crossed the line locked in an embrace. I started crying. “That was incredible,” I said, as we giggled helplessly.
Upon slowing down, my numb legs turned jiggly. “Wow,” I said. “This is going to hurt like a motherfucker later.”
Caleb, who had promised on his life that he would be at the finish line, was no where to be found. He himself had to jog 2 miles from the parking spot he found in the middle of a housing project in Brighton Beach, to be in on time for our finish. In the mass of humanity on the boardwalk, neither of our phones got service. High on endorphins, I could not have given a shit.
It took us more than an hour to find him. When we finally did, I ran into three people I haven’t seen in years. I ate an apple. I mourned the endorphins leaving my body. While going through the stages of grief, I had screamed at my Aunt Peggy for suggesting that we go check out the beach.
Still, she loves me, as does Caleb, as do I, both of them. Because running makes you feel good, even if it’s just from a parking spot. It was an amazing experience for all three of us.
