A Reflection on Running in Oakland

Today me and 3,000 of my closest neighbours decided to get out of bed and go for a jog. We were all running in Oakland's first ever half-marathon (the full marathon was taking place simultaneously). We see each other all the time on the streets of Oakland and Berkeley; we run in opposite directions and awkwardly nod. Sometimes we pass each other only to meet up again at the next light. We know that there are many of us out there, but for some reason it still comes as a surprise to see 3,000 people congregate for reasons that have nothing to do with observing a sporting event, a music concert, or opposing health care. Instead, like a group of masochists not ashamed to openly flaunt our passion for pain, we met at the corners of 11th and Broadway to run a 21k loop through the streets of Oakland.

Oakland is a city for which I've long felt a strong kinship. When I was a kid I tried to differ from my Toronto Blue-Jay supporting friends by rooting for the Oakland A's and their young skinny slugger, Mark Mcgwire. Only when the Blue Jays started putting together World Series teams did I finally submit and give my allegiance to one of our two national teams. Second, to anyone who knows my hometown of Saint John, New Brunswick, you'll see the immediate parallels. Like Saint John, Oakland is a port city steeped in British Neoclassical architecture. Unlike its ostentatious neighbour San Francisco across the bay, Oakland's horizon is not peppered with skyscrapers, which gives the city a more modest and humble feel. Some parts of Oakland are covered in brick, whereas many residential areas have a distinct 1970s feel, as if the crack boom of the 70s and 80s also brought with it a moratorium on construction. This is also where Saint John and Oakland differ: while Saint John's South and North ends have their share of notorious streets, nothing in the Maritimes compares to crime ridden East Oakland, birthplace of the Hells Angels and home to one of the highest murder rates in the United States. Whereas Saint John's urban poverty is not magnified by the wealth of the highest earners, Oakland's is. From just about anywhere in the city you can look East and see the coveted Oakland Hills where a half-million dollars is likely to only get you a one bedroom condo. For us Canadians this contrast is uniquely American (unless your familiar with Vancouver's lower East Side), and for the well traveled Oakland's disparity reminds one of any major city anywhere in the so-called developing world.

You need not go far to see both sides of Oakland's success and demise: on most weekends I start my run in Berkeley and head down College avenue before connecting with Broadway, which takes you straight down Oakland's gentrified city center. When I'm feeling strong I'll run all the way to 7th street, the city's port, and then turn around and head back to Berkeley on San Pablo. On Boardway you find high-end car dealerships. On San Pablo you see windows boarded up, garbage scattered, and surprisingly at 8am on a Saturday, a lone crack dealer covering what must be for a him a graveyard shift. Young latinos wait anxiously on street corners hoping that a contractor will need paperless hands for a job. Sometimes when I run in the afternoon I find they've been waiting all day. After about 5k (3 miles) I'm back in Berkeley and San Pablo takes on a more bohemian feel with its endless coffee shops, gourmet breakfast restaurants, and antique dealers. I keep going another 8k (5 miles) until I reach El Cerrito, where San Pablo becomes sketchy again. At this point I start heading East on my final lap before reaching home.

Although I was aware Oakland was planning on hosting a marathon, I completely forgot until the week before the race when I saw it featured on the cover of a community magazine. I ran (fittingly) home and registered online, thinking that this race, with one week to prepare, was the perfect catalyst to get me back on track. You see, back in October I ran my first full marathon in my home town of Saint John, New Brunswick. While being cheered on by my parents, wife, and Aunt Susan, I ran alongside familiar faces through streets I had once known well but whose names have started to slip from my memory as I come closer to my tenth anniversary away from the city of my birth. Growing up in a small town means that, once you get your license at sixteen, the most common form of amusement is driving the city and its outskirts, moving from fast food place to coffee shops to empty parking lots and occasionally slipping into house parties or bonfires along the way. Having never run 42k before, I wasn't really sure what to expect from either my mind or my body, which more often than not tend to disagree and not speak to each other when forced to work together to achieve something out of the ordinary. I set the external goal of completing the race in less than four hours and the internal goal of finishing in less than 3:30 minutes. If Google has taught me anything, it is that you should always aim low and shoot high for external-facing goals, and aim high and do your best for personal goals. About halfway through the race I found two kind individuals who kept a decent pace and I ran with them for the majority of the track. Two of the three of us started to pull away during the last 10k when a combination of an uphill climb, gusting winds and ever tiring bodies forced our conversation further and further to the backs of our minds. Somewhere around the Saint John Regional Hospital someone shouted, "you're in the top 10 ten!" which took me completely by surprise and breathed new life into my legs. I picked up my pace and headed for the finish line, coming in at 3:26. Although I didn't immediately see my family Michelle appeared from nowhere followed by my parents and my Aunt Susan. We'd been laughing and joking throughout the race when they'd meet me every 10k or so to cheer me on and I'd try to repay them with a handstand or by running off the course to sneak a kiss from Michelle before carrying on. When we met at the finish line, however, we all burst into tears: the day started normally enough, but the accomplishment became something more serious when it was over.

Finishing a marathon is never as commendable an accomplishment as the training that makes it possible. I started running regularly at Oxford with my good friend and uber-athlete Carlos Dominguez, a published fiction author, a PhD in Development Studies, and an ambitious cyclist who is never more at peace with himself than when he's in some backwater territory forcing his bike up an incline he would otherwise have no business ever coming across. Then, when Michelle and I moved to Ecuador, I would regularly run around the Parque Carolina in Quito until I finally decided to participate in a half marathon from the city's bullfighting plaza to the official marker of the middle of the earth. I was inspired by Libo, a 50 something guard at the private school where I taught who began running in his mid forties and never looked back. Despite his humble means Libo had inspired the school and enough former students to find the support to be able to run marathons in Argentina and the United States. He encouraged me to try the 'middle of the earth half marathon,' which I did and I finished in about two hours and twenty minutes, compared to his less than 90 minute finish. When Michelle and I again moved, this time to to the United States, I set the goal for running a complete marathon, and I could think of no better place to do so than my home town. Now getting back to my original point: preparing for a marathon requires months and months of running 5-6 days a week without exception. I think one of the reasons running attracted me so much was because it forced me to be disciplined. The greatest critique I have of myself is the gap I sometimes have between my ambitions and my willingness to fulfill those ambitions. I have a lot of things I do 'well enough' only because I had the will to learn but never the will to follow through and master them. Running, however, allowed me to push myself to the limits of my own discipline.

Discipline allowed me to finish the marathon in Saint John, but it completely deserted me after that and only recently started poking its head around my place in the past two months. After Saint John I experienced something I later learned to be Runner's lethargy. I told myself I'd take a week off to recover, and then that week became a month, then two months, then I'd think about starting again after our Christmas vacation, and then... Throughout the past four months I'd occasionally go out for a run around the neighbourhood on a Saturday but I'd always end up feeling a strain due to my pride taking precedence over my pain, which in turn caused me to over-exert myself. Then in February I went to see my Doctor after a routine checkup and he had some bad news: my bad cholesterol was abnormally high for someone my age, and my heartbeat was much faster than it should be. 'You've got a genetic pre-disposition towards an unhealthy heart,' he told me. 'If you do anything, keep running, as it's the only thing keeping your heart from beating dangerously fast.'

There is nothing like a scare from your doctor to knock the lazy out of you, and that's exactly what his message did. I started running two nights a week when Michelle would have class, and then again at least once on the weekend. Recently a friend and I started driving to work at 6am which allowed me to run every morning before my workday started. Slowly I became myself again: I felt strong throughout the entire day, I didn't feel sleepy until after 10pm at night, I had more patience, my moods were regulated, and I began paying attention to the food I ate. I was up to running 15k on my long runs, which was still a far cry from the 32k I was reaching in training for my marathon, but I knew I was on the way. When I saw the Oakland marathon on that community paper, I figured this would be an excellent occasion to push myself to the next level. Marathons have a tendency to bring the best out in runners: the competition, the supporters, the entire city coming to a stop so that you can own the streets, all of these things are enough to push someone beyond what they're usually comfortable with.

The day before race day I spent much of my time hiding from the sun, attempting to conserve energy, carb-loading and hydrating. When I woke up on race day I took Fiona for a quick walk and then jumped in my car to catch the rapid-transit train to Oakland for the race. As soon as I got there my internal goal of just completing the half marathon found its own competition from another goal I'd set for myself. After completing the full marathon in less than 3:30, I told myself that someday I'd beat three hours. While standing at the starting line I began to calculate what speed I'd need to maintain to complete a full marathon in three hours and I realized that I'd have to keep a 7 minute mile, which is a about an extra minute more than what I am used to. I found a group of people standing around a sign that said 'seven minute mile,' and before I could contemplate whether or not this was a good idea the race began and we were on our way.

The secret to completing any race is listening to your body and knowing how hard you can push yourself. I once learned the hard way that not listening to your body can have consequences: one afternoon it was about 90 degrees outside and I was desperate to get my miles in for the day. I headed outside determined to man-out the heat, and when I reached the Oakland Children's Hospital I began to feel as if darkness was slowly overtaking my vision and the outer world looked more and more like a keyhole I was struggling to look through. I immediately stopped, remarked to myself on the good fortune of passing out in front of a hospital, and took a few minutes to breathe. I walked the next half mile to the nearest gas station, guzzled down a Gatorade, and continued on my way. Brushing aside these memories I decided to keep pace with the people I'd seen standing near me, even though I'd lost most of them during the race's initial shuffle.

After two miles I settled into a steady stride close to individuals who appeared to be keeping a pretty good pace. A gentleman with the body of an avatar was in front of me, which I felt appropriate, and behind me were two fifty something women with a combined total body-fat of about less than one one-hundredth of a percent. The two women were chatting to each other as if they just happened to be out for a walk, decided to keep pace with those around them, and had yet to come to the realization that they were running a half marathon (one of the rules of long distance running is that a comfortable pace is one you should be able to chat at. I knew that but I'd never tried it before, and was surprised to see these woman handle the seven minute mile with such ease).

In most races there are two types of people: those who are out to prove something, and those who will be happy just to finish. When you run with the later they're generally happy to have company to keep pace. When you run with the former they tend to be suspicious of anyone running at the same speed. For some the raw nature of the competition means that they're only comfortable when no-one is close to them. Others fear that if they find a comfortable pace running with someone that they may unwittingly slow themselves down and thus threaten their desired goal. Although for a few miles I was able to keep between the Avatar and the extreme sports version of The View, disaster quickly struck: the avatar stopped running and began to favour his right leg. He pulled off to stretch and I never saw him again. At the same time I could no longer hear the chatter of the ladies from The View over my music, which meant I was once again on my own.

No matter: I'd made myself a playlist of songs that would keep me energized throughout the race. I had to stop myself from singing and wasting air from time to time. Normally when I run I listen to audiobooks or podcasts, but today I figured I'd need the extra boost. The only time this strategy posed a problem was when I was running alongside a group of animated Greco-roman sculptures and Cake's "Shut the F%#k up!" shuffled its way onto my playlist. If you know the song, you know exactly way I'd want to hear it when pushing myself to run long distance (incidentally, "the distance," is another Cake song on my playlist). Lost in the moment, I started singing outloud, "Shut the F%#k up, heyyyyyyyy hooooooo, learn to buck up!" For those running along side me they wouldn't likely have been surprised to find crazy people swearing at no-one on the streets of Oakland. What may have surprised them was the fact that a crazy person singing and swearing at no-one was running along side them, intent on keeping pace. Ohh well: I guess that's what happens when you hold a marathon in Oakland.

The slightly confused shirtless runners moved ahead and I decided to slip into pilot mode: runners, like pilots, have to constantly check their instruments to make sure everything is keeping steady. I have a checklist that runs from my feet to my head: first, am I jumping or am I pushing? Running, as someone once pointed out to me, isn't about pushing with your legs, it's about springing from stride to stride. As such, I try to ensure that I'm picking my feet up behind me to propel myself forward. I push from my hips and lean into the ground so as to let gravity pull me forward rather than require me to push my weight through space. Next, are my calves tight? They shouldn't be. Can I hoist a grape between my but cheeks? No? good. You need to make sure you but isn't wasting energy by tightening up as if you were streaking through a maximum security prison. Next, am I leaning forward? Are my arms moving? Is my next straight? Is my head up? When I run I go through this check every mile or so. Forcing my legs to kick back rather than push forward is probably the toughest, as it requires a lot of concentration and regulation. I hope to someday get to a point where I just do this naturally and I don't have to think about it.

By mile 4 (marathons, for my Canadian friends, are 26.2 miles (meaning half marathons are 13.1 miles) I started to feel the effects of the sun bearing down on me. The marathon started at 7 but the half-marathon only started at nine, which meant that we would probably get exposed to early morning sun beams I'd rather avoid. I can take the rain, and the fog, and the cold, but I absolutely hate the sun when I am running. I look to my right and realize that there is an escape: there is shade on the side of the road, but the side of the road is slightly slanted downwards for drainage. If I run there too long I could risk hurting my knee (people think it's romantic to run on a beech barefoot, but if there is one sure-fire way to pick up a running injury it's by running on un-even surfaces). I decide to hold out against the sun and motor on. I'd also make sure to hydrate whenever possible: unlike races past where I've sometimes ran by re-fueling stations for fear of slowing down, I promised myself this time that I would accept anything and everything that was offered to me (in non-pipe form, of course), in order to ensure maximum hydration and conserve my energy for the finish line.

By mile 6 my body and mind began to enter into conflict: my mind was telling me to keep moving forward, whereas my body was saying "hold on a minute, you're not used to this pace. You risk not finishing if you don't listen to me. Look, you're mind doesn't know what the F#&K it's talking about. You really need to listen to me and settle into a more natural pace." As often happens in these situations, my mind, fueled by my pride, won the argument, and a few miles later my body seemed to pick up some extra steam and pushed me forward before another problem set in: I had to pee. This happens to me every time I run a race, although never when I train for a race. Although I used a porta-potty just before the race began I now had another instrument to check. I might find a bathroom along the way, but that might also put my goal into jeopardy.

In my experiences all races are relative: the last mile of a race, be it a 15k, half-marathon, or full marathon, is the worst mile of your life. So to is crossing the half-way point at which time you tell yourself, "you only need to do exactly what you've done so far and you should be fine." I checked my watch and saw that I was on the 45 minute mark exactly, which meant that I had to hold this pace and not let off if I wanted to achieve my goal. Again my body was suggesting that this wasn't possible, so I decided to use a trick I call the Happy Phil, named after it's founder, my good friend Phil Ouellette. Phil, if you ever met him, has an incredible ability to charm anyone. He somehow makes any and everybody feel immediately at ease. As a director in the New Brunswick Provincial government, he's told me stories of giving high fives to deputy ministers in meetings. If I tried to give a high five to anyone in a formal setting only awkwardness would follow. But when Phil does it, for some reason, even the most stone-faced individuals can't help but come out of their shells and chuckle at the novelty of it all. As such, the way I would give myself the psychological and physical boost I would need would be to give high fives to strangers standing along the route and cheering us on. My first victim was an Oakland police officer who was simultaneously directing traffic and cheering the racers on, thus sending mixed signals to both which, as far as I know, did not result in tragedy. As I approached him we made eye contact and my left hand immediately went in the air. "High Five!" I shouted with my best Kazak accent. "Woo Yeah!" he shouted back as the spectators giggled.

The Happy Phil worked: as soon as our high five was complete I had an immediate boost of energy and my pace picked up substantially. My next target was an elderly Chinese lady who was clapping to a beat no-one but she could hear. She gave me a slow, deliberate high five as if she had to consider the mechanics of moving her arm in such a motion before again standing to cheer me on even more. I gave two more high fives in a row before I realized that I was giving myself too much energy and needed to slow down and breathe. I came around a corner and saw a group of Oakland Raiders fans in full get-up and face paint yelling slogans to the runners as if we were 4 and 1 on the goal line. I got a fist bump from one and a 'yeah baby!' from another, before a group of non-costumed fans standing farther down the road all stuck out their hands wanting a piece of the happy Phil. I continued this way until the final three miles: every time I felt myself slowing down I would lock eyes with an unsuspecting spectator (can you be both?), go high and then re-fuel. Although I didn't see any other runners follow suit, many did find the strength to let out a "Woo!" and a "let's go!". At some point it occurred to me, if rock stars use the energy of the crowd to heighten their performance, why shouldn't runners?

At mile ten my pilot's warnings told me that systems were starting to malfunction. I felt like a Cessna enthusiast behind the controls of a Boeing 747 and I needed to land the plane to save everyone's life: this shouldn't be an issue, a few months ago I ran at least a half-marathon EVERY WEEKEND in preparation for Marathon by the Sea in Saint John. Aside from the need to pee, the larger problem here was our old enemy doubt: if the devil makes people do things, doubt makes people not do things, and it does so by whispering sour nothings into our ears that remind us of all the reasons why we should just give up and call it a a day. "Matthew, for the love of Monkey, this is nothing! This is a half-marathon! What the hell are you whining about? Get on with it!". That's what I tried to tell myself, but my body wouldn't listen. I then caught sight of the greco-roman sculptures who are easily offended by cussing: they'd slowed down, and now was my time to pick it up. I may have the beginnings of a pot belly, and my nipples may point more outward than inward when I take off my shirt (too much description?) but I am sure as hell fast enough to run three miles (5k) at a decent pace. I ran past a bathroom and decided that if any of my systems have to fail I can afford to pee myself without it causing long term damage to my body (although the emotional scar would take a long time in healing).

I picked it up a notch for mile eleven and twelve and then planned my sprint through mile thirteen. I could visualize it: I would get to mile thirteen, see the finish line, and then start pumping like an Alaskan farmboy caught in the shed with one of Sarah Palin's daughters. I got close to mile thirteen, shouted some words of encouragement to the other runners (some of whom were completing the full marathon, as the two races combined for the last few miles), and skipped third and went right into fifth. I kept that pace for about a minute or so, and then I slid back to forth, and then into fifth, and then struggled to keep it above sentence. The guys who I had been encouraging on were now passing me with ease. I allowed myself to put my head down as they trotted by.

Finally, with about half a mile to go, the finish line finally came into sight and I began to sprint. Both sides of the finish line were crowded with people: If I stopped to give high fives I'd probably lose 15 minutes and never meet my mark. I pushed harder and harder, much to the joy of the onlookers and the chagrin of other runners who probably felt like I was just being a jackass for the sake of it. I was sprinting though because I became aware of another reality: when the clock came into view it said 1:29, and I had to put everything into it if I was going to meet my goal. When I finally crossed the finish line the clock stood at 1:31, one measly minute off of my goal.

Before I'd come to a complete stop someone handed me a medal, someone else took a picture, and someone else handed me what appeared to be a large sheet of tin wrap. I asked what it was for and the kid looked at me as if to say, "you really don't know?". "It's to keep you warm" he said, before turning his attention to the smarter runners who were apparently right behind me. I immediately found a bathroom and then got in the line for a massage. An ironically named woman called "Stormy" was assigned the task of bringing tranquility to my over-exerted legs. When we were finished I felt slightly worse than when we started, although my comfort throughout the rest of the day was a testament to Stromy's skilled hands.

Because Michelle was in El Salvador I was resigned to celebrating my victory alone, but to a certain extent that's the way it should be: 59 people crossed the finish line before me, and the winner beat me by twenty minutes. At the same time others were completing the full marathon, and somewhere out there people are training for 50 mile and 100 mile ultra marathons through crazy terrains and unforgiving topography. I held a pace for 90 minutes that others can hold for 12 hours. Many of the people who finished before me were older, some even twice my age. Whenever you participate in a sport as vast and widely practiced as running your accomplishments are only significant when you look at them subjectively.If a statistician were to look at running accomplishments she'd see something far removed from a normal distribution: on the one hand you have the vast majority of people who prefer to avoid running farther than the living room the bathroom. On the other side of the spectrum you have individuals who have pushed the human body to its limits, surprising themselves and the scientists/doctors who make understanding the human body their primary focus. For those of us in the middle we take pride in doing something we've never done before, and that's exactly why I do it. In the lead up to the Marathon by the Sea I would run a distance longer than anything I had ever run before in my life, and usually I managed to do so before 9am. Humans love to surprise and be surprised by going beyond normal expectations. Many look to travel or extreme sports to get that sensation, yet others work towards it day in and day out on the sometimes decrepit, sometimes affluent streets of Oakland, the rose Gardens of Oxford, at 10,000 feet in the middle of the earth, and on the foggy streets of Saint John, New Brunswick. Of course the physical and mental health benefits are obvious, but for me what is less obvious is that running allows me to close the gap between being a person of words and being a person of action; in other words, I blur the distinction between the person I want to be and the person I am. When we live in a capitalist society where our value is measured by how much money we can make for other people, I think it's important that we find ways to challenge ourselves to go beyond our comfort zones.

To conclude, the Olympian Runner PattiSue Plumer said it best when she said,
"Racing [running] teaches us to challenge ourselves. It teaches us to push beyond where we thought we could go. It helps us to find out what we are made of. This is what we do. This is what it's all about."


You can find my results here:
http://results.active.com/pages/searchform.jsp?posted_p=t&sort=p_place_division&rsID=90450&firstName=Matthew&lastName=Carpenter-Arevalo&queryType=arbitrary&page=1&numPerPage=25#hot_links

You can find pictures from the race here:
http://www.marathonfoto.com/index.cfm?RaceOID=23942010W1&LastName=CARPENTER-AREVALO&BibNumber=4403&Mailing=24162
For a really good book on running, try reading: Born to Run: by Christopher McDougall.