Running With It

Well Sam let cat out of the bag on her facebook status that we’ve been running lately, so we might as well update on you on what has been distracting us from the blog! Actually, we’ve been doing two fitness-related things – the first, the one hundred push up challenge was sort of a passing fancy on Sam’s part, then as per our usual pattern, we had to get completely get over-serious about it and dedicate ourselves in an obsessive fashion.

See, we should probably give you some background. We (pre-Atticus we, as in just Jon and Sam) have a certain tendency toward lunacy over-zealousness. In fact, we frequently look back on periods in our life which we call “the lunatic years.” Those years involved many late night trips to Kinkos to photocopy hundreds of copies of our revolution-fomenting materials, all night campaigns of flyer distribution, many many trips to army supply shops, creating our own Cop Watch program and listening to a police scanner to find out where the cops were and driving to crime scenes to monitor and photograph the police….you get the picture. In some ways, these early lunatic years were simply us cutting our teeth for later political organizing, but in other ways, we know it reflects a certain lunacy – you see, it isn’t just about what we did- we actually believed, deep down and with conviction, that we two were capable of starting a global revolution to overthrow the oppressive power system. We even became a little paranoid and when we were flying to Guatemala to learn Spanish (again, another example of perhaps a bit of overkill) we were more than a little nervous about being allowed in and out of the country- because OBVIOUSLY we were such a threat to the state that they would be watching our every move and just waiting for one little slip up…

So, this is the pattern. In those years we wholeheartedly dedicated ourselves and put a ridiculous amount of time into our revolutionary escapades. Later epochs of lunacy periods have been slightly less dramatic (although not necessarily…) but honestly, we’ve come to a point of enough self-reflection in our relationship that we know we tend to bring out the crazy in each other. Atticus has fit right into this – he’s as nuts as we are.

So, where is this going? Oh right- the latest manifestations. So, the hundred push up challenge is fairly straightforward- it is an online program that promises one hundred push ups in 6 weeks. Sam can’t even do one real push up, and when we started she couldn’t really do much of a knee one either, so she started with “wall-push ups,” which are mostly degrading and depressing. She does, in fairness, have the upper arm strength of a little baby. Having stuck with it however, she has now graduated to knee push ups. Jon is moving along nicely with the program and Atticus really enjoys time together too. Actually, he has improved significantly himself. We all pile into the only room in our apartment with a/c and take turns cheering each other on.

If we had better equipment this would be a perfect point in the story for us to show a montage of us all working hard at the push-ups. Indeed, it begs for a montage, but given our simple format, we’ll settle for a collage.

So, the point is that we are zealots- we can’t just kind of do anything. As the saying goes “If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing!” We approach everything with a certain enthusiasm that we think is part of our charm (right?).

Bangladesh has only exacerbated this craziness in that it has meant Jon and Sam spend close to 24 hours a day together on many days, and we have already established what kind of influences we can be on each other.

So we were only allowed to do our push ups every other day, since the program calls for a rest day between sessions. That left us with days of no fitness activity and somehow we ended up running. Actually, we aren’t even sure how it exactly started – Sam and Atticus were challenging each other over who could run in place longer and one thing led to another, and voila- we became runners.

Neither Jon nor Sam have ever really been into running. Jon’s whole family loves running, but he never really got into it, and Sam has, at times, even been actively opposed to running (It turns out though that she doesn’t mind the running so much- it is just the psychopathic suburban housewives that seem to be highly prevalent in the world of running that she can’t tolerate). We also aren’t really into the excessive consumer industry that surrounds most sports- and running is no exception. So, naturally, when we run, it is on our strange terms.
First, we can’t really run outside, because the spectacle of a white woman running around Bangladesh is not exactly a comfortable situation in which to exercise. We are constantly watched even when just walk to the store – the last thing we need is to start running. Second, it is like 90 degrees outside and humid as hell. Third, Sam would have to wear way too many layers of clothing- pants, long shirt, scarf, and she might actually die. So we decided we could run inside.

Our apartment is somewhat big, so we could set up a little loop in our place by moving some furniture around. There was precedent for this indoor track making ; when Jon and Sam were using pedometers and set a goal of 10,000 steps a day back in Boston- when we came up short at night we would walk laps around our apartment until we got to 10,000. Yeah, we know- we said – we’re lunatics.

We weren’t even necessarily planning on doing that much running, we just thought it was a fun way to get in a little cardio. The silliness of running around the apartment made it super fun for Atticus and we figured it was nice way to spend some active time together and set a good (albeit slightly strange) example for Atticus that fitness is important.

Since we were indoors, we decided to run barefoot, since Sam had been doing some reading about it and has a friend that does barefoot running (in uber-long distances) and swears it is the best thing ever. Plus, then we get to avoid the whole consumer aspect of the sport - perfect for us.

As usual, things escalated rapidly. First we were pretty casual about it- running about 10 minutes or so and just having some fun. We added a minute about every other time. Then, everyone in Jon’s family started getting geared up for the Race Against Suicide in memory of Julie, Jon’s sister. As you all know we lost Julie to suicide this past May and since she was an avid runner, it is a great way to honor her memory and raise some money for an issue we’ve become intimately more familiar with.

So, one night we were chatting about Team 8:08 for Julies phenomenal fundraising results (over $2500! You can add donations to anybody’s page here : http://www.firstgiving.com/process/teamarea/default.asp?did=21026&TeamId=111532&EventId=89328) and we were saying that maybe if we were in the US we’d have run it too. Then we decided that we should run a solidarity 5K here for the folks doing the real thing there.

It was only about 2 ½ weeks until the race day though and we were only running for about 10-12 minutes a time at that point, but we set out with yet another over-enthusiastic plan. First we had to measure our track to see how many laps exactly 5k would be.

Then we had to do math- CRAP! Mathematical calculations aren’t exactly a strong point for either of us, but with pencil, pad and calculator in hand, we sludged through a complex (for us at least) set of contabulations that determined that we needed to do approximately 279 laps to equal 5k. Great- well that’s too hard to keep track of so we decided to go by time- we ran a few laps and estimated our average pace. We worked out the amount of time it would take to run that many laps and decided that at the average pace we run, it would take us about 35 minutes to run 5k- maybe less, but there are a lot of turns and you can’t really get going that fast indoors.

Armed with the calculations, we just had to develop a schedule that takes us from 12 minutes to 35 in two weeks (not really that hard actually). Sticking with schedule isn’t really that hard because as we have made clear, we’re zealots.

So here are Jon and Atticus demonstrating our routine- this wasn’t actually a real run, but you get the picture. The joy on Atticus’ face is actually enough to keep us motivated!

So, on Sept 26 we will also run 5k in memory of Julie and in solidarity with those running in the Race Against Suicide. Of course, because we are lunatics, we’ll do it barefoot, running almost 300 laps around a track in our apartment in Dhaka Bangladesh, but then again - what else would you expect?!