Back in Saddle - Aerosmith

It is humbling to be a beginner again. 2 1/2 years after the marathon I begin to train now for another event. The Hood to Coast. I think I told you about it but here's a link. My team got in while 1600 teams were turned away. I take it as a sign that it's time. 12 of us, some strangers and some dear friends will come together and cross 200 miles over the coarse of 36 hours (hopefully). We start at the base of gorgeous Mt Hood and continue west through the state of Oregon to the water. We're already looking to score a beach house for our after party (which means probably ice baths and acupuncture) and a house full of 12 runners, 2 van drivers, partners and friends. Anything is worth this kind of gathering to me. I love this shit. I don't want it to always be weddings and funerals, especially since so many of my gays don't see weddings in their futures, regardless of what the Supreme Court says. They're just not into it, man. Let's come together because we ran across a goddamn STATE and over a mountain range. Let's gather because the squash is in season and the dinner table is warm. Let's get together because love is good and friends have wandered through ten years of life together or someone transitioned their career and is throwing a huge party. I am for gathering. I am for keeping in touch. I am for photographs and letters and connection. And I am for sweat, the salt stitching me and my teammates into a new relationship forever because we will do something beautiful and immense that we could not do alone. Come with us here. Or at least for my portion.

I am as slow as ever, again. I am not the woman who ran the marathon. A lot has happened and my body has aged and my life has shifted and my desires are different. The main part about finishing a marathon more than training even is that you have to WANT to. Well, I don't anymore. I did my 26.2 miles and so that was a nice check mark in the old Life Column. Now I will find new things to do. This is it. The Hood to Coast and I am through my first block of fear, lumbering around this beautiful town. I can go further than when I first began the marathon training and my mind is more aware of its own tricks and treachery. I took a familiar route and it was agonizingly slow, my limbs heavy and thick. But there my body was, exactly how it is today, willing to trot me around this beautiful city, by my beloved ballpark and up along the water. I had feared this return would leave me so sad, so disappointed in what I had become. But instead I felt grateful to still be moving in this body, just as it is, my triumphant return to the life of a sausage.