Miles Run, Money Raised,& Running Cuisine

Crappy Thing They Don't Tell You About Running #10: No matter how clear you are that the chocolate-flavored Power Bar gel that you're about to suck out of a bottle-shaped packet will not taste like chocolate, when you see that dark brown color bubbling up, your tongue's thinking hotfudgehotfudgehotfudge--an unrealistic expectation that will cause face convulsions when the flavor hitting your assaulted taste buds is pretty much the anti-chocolate. Rest assured, once the initial revulsion passes, you'll realize this allegedly chocolate-flavored gel tastes exactly like the aftertaste black licorice leaves behind. And while this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's most certainly not a chocolate thing.

Training update: 18 miles today fueled by distinctly licorice-flavored gel, water from two Dunkin Donuts pit stops, and a small handful of very salty almonds. Eating almonds while running is be an odd choice, I'll admit it. But when I can successfully avoid inhaling almond bits as I struggle to chew and swallow while panting, the salt and protein do wonders to stave off the lightheadedness I suffered a few weeks back. Though I do end up feeling as if I owe an apology to everyone who's had to witness my open-mouthed chomping during their morning constitutionals.

Fundraising update: With four weeks before my marathon, the Run for Grub has raised a little more than 90 percent of the cost of four scholarships for first-time Grubbies. That means we have just $204.50 to go. If you've been planning on donating, do it now. I'd love to run my final training run (20 miles on July 9) knowing that the fundraising portion of this journey was done and all that was left was the little matter of me and 26.2 miles.

On Being Human

Yesterday was June 30. I intended to make much of the one-month-to-go milestone (my marathon's in Wakefield on July 30), but then I also intended to do my 5-mile short run at the end of a long work day. Instead, an urgent work project followed me home and swallowed up the end of my day.

And yet way, way too late I put on my running clothes and pulled my hair back into a tight ponytail fully intending to get my training in, dammit, before snapping safely back to my senses: Clearly, I needed to sleep more than I needed to not miss a second run. And just when I was starting to berate myself for missing a second run of my training season, a friend and fellow writer and runner sent me an email asking how the training was going:

"If there's one piece of advice that you won't hear too often, it's this: MILK IT! Eat that pint of ice cream, get a massage, let the dishes fill the sink, and yes, by all means, tell that cause-of-the-day-canvasser: 'I'm running a marathon for Grub, now fuck off.'"

But while I'm not ready to tell members of the unsuspecting public to fuck off, I'm positively a-tingle with the idea of unleashing an f-bomb (or thirty) on the harpy in my head that will not let this lousy missed run die already.

So harpy of mine, I tried to reason with you. Because really there's nothing earth shattering with a missed run here and there as long as I'm getting up on Friday mornings for my long run (I have and I will--18 miles tomorrow and why I'm not in bed right now is a riddle for another time). And though I'd say this seemed like a perfectly logical argument, my harpy just screeched all the louder (as harpies will), and I'm left with no other options. So here I am, pushing back my metaphorical sleeves, taking a deep breath, and telling my inner harpy exactly where she can shove that relentlessly shrill shriek of hers.

Now maybe I can finally get some sleep...

Catherine Elcik is running her first marathon to raise money for a scholarship fund for Grub Street, Inc, an independent writing center in Boston, MA. Sponsor the run (and quite frankly, her second wind) at www.firstgiving.com/runforgrub.

Grub Tale: Michelle Hoover

Michelle Hoover teaches writing at Boston University and Grub Street. She has published fiction in Confrontation, The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, and Best New American Voices, among others. She has been a Bread Loaf Writer's Conference scholar, the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a MacDowell fellow, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and in 2005 the winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. She was born in Ames, Iowa, the granddaughter of four longtime farming families. Her first novel—The Quickening—will be published on Tuesday, June 29.



RUN FOR GRUB: How did you learn about Grub Street?
MICHELLE HOOVER: About seven years ago I was teaching part time at Boston University and was lucky enough to befriend Daphne Kalotay there. She invited me to a few events, and since I was new in town, these became my primary social outlet. Every time I went to a party or reading, I saw some familiar faces and couldn't believe my luck at finding such a ready-made social circle of oddballs and booklovers just like myself.

RUN FOR GRUB: What has Grub Street meant to you?
MICHELLE HOOVER: It gave me a vital social network, but also the best teaching experiences I've ever had. I think I basically stalked Chris Castellani until one day he looked at me and said, 'we should try to use you.' Of course I've learned more from teaching Grubbies than I have at any other institution, more about fiction writing in general, about why people write it and its everlasting appeal, and about my own work as well. Now I'm also doing consulting projects for Grub and had a chance to lead a panel about the organization (and those like it) at AWP. The teaching, consulting, and networking opportunities Grub has offered me (as well as plain old friendship) are incredible and I'll always be grateful for them. Grub is even going so far to host a party after my Brookline Booksmith event July 6. Where else can an early writer get that kind of support? And there's not a personality in their office or among their teachers who I can't help but love.

RUN FOR GRUB: What was the best advice you ever received at a Grub Street event?
MICHELLE HOOVER: The most recent came from Chuck Palahniuk's address at Grub's Muse and Marketplace conference. He said he used writing as an excuse to go out. I'd never thought of writing that way. He would force himself to go to parties, readings, whatever, and he would write there, often stealing a line of dialogue or an interesting gesture. Of course, I don't think I'm the type to sit isolated in a corner and wax poetic during a big shindig, but he has the right idea. You have to be in the world to write about it, and if you're paying attention, if you always have your writer's cap on, you'll find plenty of true stuff to put on the page.


RUN FOR GRUB: As a novelist who runs, tell me: Is there some secret to keeping my brain on my book when I run or do I always have to wait for inspiration to bubble up whenever it damn well pleases?
MICHELLE HOOVER: I'm too much of a control freak to wait for much of anything. When I'm flat out in the middle of a book, I often decide on a certain problem or scene I want to work out and then keep it in mind as I run. Sometimes I get nothing, but I've surprised myself. Writers often underestimate the power of simply thinking. They believe they aren't working unless something shows up on the page. Of course, even while running, my head will veer toward the pain in my knee or people I have to call or why that chubby dude isn't wearing a shirt, but then snap, there's an answer to my scene. It's not always a good answer, but it keeps me going.

Editor's Note: Catch Michelle Hoover reading from her novel at the book launch at the Middlesex Lounge at 6:30 tonight, or visit her events page for other scheduled listings. The Quickening, her debut, is available on Tuesday, June 29th. If you loved "Plainsong," "The Quickening" will make your heart sing. Poets & Writers agrees—the current issue featured Hoover as a writer to watch, and there was much rejoicing in Grubdom...

What a Difference a Year Makes

Today's headlines remind me that yesterday was the one year anniversary of Michael Jackson's death, and I'm finding it absolutely inconceivable that I nearly let such a momentous anniversary pass me by. It's not that I was a big Michael Jackson fan--I hadn't bought any of his albums since I was a kid saving her allowance to buy Thriller on cassette. But Michael Jackson happened to die on the day I ran my first road race, the JP Morgan corporate challenge in Boston Common.

When I showed up to get my number on June 25, 2009, all the iPhone people were buzzing about how Jackson was in critical condition; a few minutes later news hit he was dead; and by the time I rounded the corner of the last turn of my first 3.5 mile race, the big spiralling-strings-and-horns opening of "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" was blaring from the radio DJ covering the race. All told, it took me almost 49 minutes to cover 3.5 miles.

Exactly one year later, I ran 17 miles in 193 minutes (3hours and 13 minutes). That's almost three minutes faster per mile over a distance that's 13.5 miles longer. That's a hell of a leap in one year. Next month I'll run a marathon. And next year? I'm thinking about doing all this again. Thinking about it. Will you think about joining me? And before you tell you that you're not a runner and couldn't possibly, consider that last year at this time I was you. Or my version of you. When someone joked that the next stop was a marathon, I told them I wasn't that kind of runner, that I couldn't possibly. And then I decided that maybe I'd try to be.

I'm not gonna lie to you. Training for a marathon has been no walk in the park, and I do realize that it's helped me immensely that I work a job with a non-traditional schedule and the fact that the sturdy stock that contributed to my personal gene cocktail seems to be paying off (my knees are fine, my back's golden, and the closest thing to injury I've experienced has been some slightly sore ankles and shins today after running 17 miles yesterday). In other words, I've been lucky.

I know there are quite a few very good reasons not to run a marathon. Maybe you've got small kids at home or you work a billion hours a week and can barely find time to write as it is. Or maybe you've got a medical challenge sidelining you. I understand that marathon's aren't for everybody. But if you're biggest reason for not running is because you couldn't possibly, I have one question:

What would it mean to you if you did?


Catherine Elcik is running her first marathon to raise money for a scholarship fund for Grub Street, Inc, an independent writing center in Boston, MA. Sponsor the run at www.firstgiving.com/runforgrub.

Unleashing Your Inner Churchill

For many good if absolutely avoidable reasons, my long run last Friday (see Your Turncoat Flesh) left me feeling like—and really this is the only word that will do here—dog shit:

• I almost passed out,
  
• I was so nauseous I could neither stretch nor drink,
  
• when I peeled it off my sports bra was so soaked I could literally ring it out, and
  
• I had to nap my way back to some semblance of my pre-run self.

I know all of this was my own damn fault for starting a 3-hour run at 10:17 on a hot day—a wake up call if ever there was one—so here I sit at 5:44, munching on a carb-infused breakfast in advance of today's 17-mile run. I'm gonna miss the 6 a.m. start time I was aiming for, but I'll still be back home before the time I set out last week. And while this whole fueling-at-dawn-to-beat-the-heat thing feels very responsible of me, the truth is for the first time in this crazy beautiful marathon journey of mine, I'm afraid.

They say (my husband, mostly, but I think a lot of famous head-shrinker-presidential-types said something like it, too) that the only way to slay fear is to run toward it. In my case, quite literally.

So I'll run. I absolutely will.

But though I know that true fearlessness is about staring down fear by channelling Churchill ("Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never..."), my inner idealist wishes that living fearlessly meant actually feeling no fear. And yet a more practical part of myself knows that if life without fear isn't a naive pipe dream, it's certainly an ideal reached only after years of unleashing your inner Churchill on fear after fear after fear.

In the few months I've been training for the Run for Grub (sponsor me at www.firstgiving.com), the runner in me has taught the writer in me so much about how putting one foot in front of the other translates to stringing words together on a page. The runner has also taught the writer about dodging the inner critic who says you can't, you shouldn't, and who are you to even try? And my inner runner has even taught my inner writer a thing or two about accountability.

But now it's time for the writer to school the runner. Because the writer knows a thing or two about hurdling past fear. Just this week, my inner writer got more stuck than she's ever been, so stuck she stared into the abyss and flirted with the idea of tossing the manuscript in. And so this morning, as I feed my breakfast to an unappreciative and knotted stomach, the writer steps up to talk the runner from the quitters' ledge and guide her to the starting line.

Forget the 17 miles looming ahead of you, she says. What matters are those first, slow steps.

And if there's one thing my inner writer knows intimately it's starting again when by all appearances quitting seems like the best (and maybe even the only) option.

Catherine Elcik is running her first marathon to raise money for a scholarship fund for Grub Street, Inc, an independent writing center in Boston, MA. Sponsor the run (and quite frankly, her second wind) at www.firstgiving.com/runforgrub.

Grub Tales: Jane Roper

Jane Roper is the author of Baby Squared, a narrative blog on Babble.com about her adventures and misadventures in parenting twins. She also writes fiction, nonfiction, and a whole lotta advertising and marketing copy. Her debut novel, Eden Lake, will be published in 2011 by Last Light Studio. Her memoir, Baby Squared, about the highs, lows and in-betweens of her first three years as a mother of twins will be published by St. Martin's Press in 2012.

RUN FOR GRUB: How did you learn about Grub Street?
JANE ROPER: The first time I became aware of Grub must have been in around 1998, when I saw a photocopied, handwritten flyer up on a bulletin board at a coffee shop in Somerville. At that point, though I was secretly yearning to try my hand at writing fiction, I was too chicken even to think about taking a writing workshop.

Over the next couple of years, I started to dip my toe into the writing waters. I got my hands on copies of Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones” and Brenda Euland’s “If you Want to Write,” and started schooling myself in some of the fundamentals. That is, I just started writing – free writing in notebooks – almost every day. I also read short fiction hungrily and made a few embarrassing early attempts at it.

Meanwhile, Grub’s presence had grown — they now had plastic newspaper box things around town with their schedules in them. In early 2000, I grabbed a schedule and registered for my first workshop. It was Fiction 1, with Chris Castellani – and it was the first Grub class he’d ever taught. I’ve always felt a special bond with Chris over that. I'm not sure he feels the same way, but he always nods politely when I say it.


RUN FOR GRUB: What has Grub Street meant to you?
JANE ROPER: So much. I credit Grub with giving me the confidence and inspiration I needed to go from a timidly aspiring writer to a passionately aspiring one to a sort-of-kind-of-professional one.

I’ve taken Grub classes, taught them, been part of the team that helped transition Grub from a for-profit into a non-profit (I came up with the name "The Muse and The Marketplace" – one of my proudest Grub achievements), and have made wonderful friendships–close and otherwise–through Grub. It is, quite simply, the heart of my writing community. Love it to death.


RUN FOR GRUB: You’ve been in workshops at Grub Street and Iowa. Discuss.
JANE ROPER: I got a lot out of my workshops at Iowa. The other students were talented and supportive, and I learned a great deal about craft. But the level of energy, passion and support from my Iowa profs didn't even come close to what I got from Chris Castellani or Steve Almond, the two Grub instructors I studied with.

Iowa also had a generally competitive vibe, which I didn’t like. Financial aid for the second year was determined on the basis of your writing during the first year, which is absolutely antithetical to experimenting, exploring and taking risks in your writing. And isn’t a workshop the ideal place to do that?

I love that the Grub community doesn’t go in for competitive, elitist b.s. The publishing world is vicious enough. There’s no need for writers to be anything but supportive of one another. When I came back to Boston after Iowa and started teaching Grub workshops, I really felt like I was coming back to my writing home.


RUN FOR GRUB: What’s tougher—writing or raising twins?
JANE ROPER: I'd have to say the latter. As difficult and soul-wrenching as writing can be, it almost never requires wiping butts, withstanding double tantrums or having to referee knock-down-drag-out fights over who gets to use the red marker first. At least, not in my experience. But every writer has his or her own methods.

Crap No One Tells You About Running: #9:

Despite how certain you were that the decision to sport sweat bands on the middle school playground turned that gangly kid into an unsalvageable geekazoid, somewhere around the eleventh time your eyeballs burn from the cocktail of sweat and SPF that beelines for the crack between your eyeballs and your contacts, you'll begin to fantasize about where you might get your own version of the international flag of geekdom.

And though some guilty part of you will know that your uncharitable thoughts about the aforementioned geekazoid make you a hypocrite for even thinking about where you might buy a sweat band, the part of you screaming sweet Jeebus, stop the BURNING will start to look for loopholes in the whole sweat-band-equals- geekazoid equation.

Unfortunately, you'll find none.

But through the kind of intense rationalization that only acute pain can inspire, you'll decide that if you embroider the head band with the Grub Street logo and the URL for the Run for Grub, that you're not letting your geek flag fly so much as rocking some seriously inspired marketing. Right?

Right??!!

Who knew running was gonna turn me into both a geekazoid and a hypocrite?

Catherine Elcik is running her first marathon to raise money for a scholarship fund for Grub Street, Inc, and independent writing center in Boston, MA. Sponsor the run at www.firstgiving.com/runforgrub.