My State of Mind The Day Before the Race?

Excitofied!

Rocky Balboa's Got Nuthin' on Ralph

Everything I read about what I'm supposed to be doing in this last week of training says I should be taking it easy by watching uplifting movies like Rocky and Chariots of Fire and Prefontaine. Which would be well and good except that I heard Steve Prefontaine died in a taken-too-soon car crash. And even though his death was completely unrelated to running, dead marathoners are not really the vibe I'm looking for two days before my race.

The vibe I do want? A little more magical realistic. A little more breathlessly rooting that the fantastically ridiculous longshot will pull through. A little more outting me as the complete sap I am when it comes to competition movies (this dates back to the time in my latchkey phase when my sister and I wore out the videotape we'd used to steal The Karate Kid from Cinemax).

So when I read that Saint Ralph was about a fifties-era freshman who fixates on the idea that winning the Boston Marathon was just the miracle he needed to rouse his mother from her coma, I was all over that shit.

You remember that stereotype of the frat boy who gets drunk at a party, starts hanging off his friends, and screams "I love you, man?" Yeah. So that was totally me from the moment the gun goes off at the marathon and Ralph gets busy run, run, running. Because the thing was, you see, that the people at home were listening on their transistor radios.

I mean, like, all of them.

And yes, I know that no sports movie is complete without the required quick cuts to all the motley fans listening in cars, in classrooms, and in any weird place the director decides will fly, really. But in this particular movie, those supporters were Grub Street.

Grub Street's been called a lot of things by all the people who have done Q&As and essays for the Grub Tales section of this blog, but so far no one's mentioned how the community at Grub buoys its writers with all the energy of a fan-support montage in a competition movie. The only difference is that where love for Ralph was total Hollywood fabrication, Grub love is real.

The amount of well-wishing I've received this week has been totally humbling. And I'm downright gobsmacked at the number of people who are planning to show up in Wakefield on Friday night to support me. Though given my weepy reaction to Saint Ralph, I need to renew my warning about the likelihood of tears: I may well turn into a blubbering shell of myself after crossing the finish line.

You know.

Assuming I've got any water left in me at all after sweating for five to six hours.

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.

Grub Tales: Lisa Borders

Lisa Borders’ first novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, was chosen by Pat Conroy as the winner of River City Publishing’s Fred Bonnie Award for Best First Novel and was published in 2002. Cloud Cuckoo Land also received fiction honors in the 2003 Massachusetts Book Awards. Her second novel, The Fifty-First State, is represented by Svetlana Katz at Janklow & Nesbit. Lisa has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and her short stories have appeared in Kalliope, Washington Square, Black Warrior Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Newport Review and other journals. Her essay "Enchanted Night" was published in Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes (Simon & Schuster, 2007). She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Somerville Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook and the Blue Mountain Center. This fall she will be a fellow at the Millay Colony. More information on Lisa and her work is available at www.lisaborders.com.

RUN FOR GRUB: What has Grub Street meant to you?
Lisa Borders: When I say that Grub Street is my home, I don’t mean it as a metaphor. My Oxford American Dictionary gives one of the meanings for “home” as “a place where something flourishes.” I can’t think of a better way to describe my relationship to Grub Street, and I can’t think of any other place that fits, for me, that particular definition of “home.”

RUN FOR GRUB: What's your most magical Grub Street memory?

Lisa Borders: The one that stands out in my mind is from a Novel in Progress class I taught a few years ago. On one of the last nights we were meeting, four people read revisions of scenes we’d already workshopped. From one student to the next, the revised versions were quantum leaps better than the previous versions. It truly felt magical when the fourth student began reading, and his scene was as amazingly transformed as the others. “I have chills!” someone called out when that last student had finished reading. “My work here is done – you’re all amazing!” I said. The entire class was so jazzed we ended up talking for an hour past the time the class ended. It’s such a gift for a teacher to see incredible progress like that within the time frame of a ten-week course. In keeping with the magic of that class, I happen to know that several of those writers are still meeting as a group.

RUN FOR GRUB: Grub Street almost closed in 2001, but--thank goodness--it reinvented itself as a nonprofit instead. What would you have lost if Grub had withered away eight years ago?
Lisa Borders: Before I made the decision to chuck more sensible professions and become a fiction writer, I’d always felt like I didn’t quite fit anywhere. I went to my graduate creative writing program hoping I’d find that home of other writers, that place where people got me – “a place where something flourishes” – but didn’t find it there, either. I’d almost given up on ever finding that elusive home when I stumbled upon Grub Street. This amazing institution has nurtured me both as a writer and as a teacher of writing. Many of my closest friends are people I met through Grub. Almost everything good that has happened to me in the past eight years is linked, directly or indirectly, to Grub Street. The thought of a life without Grub sounds postapocalyptic to me – bleak and lonely.

RUN FOR GRUB: Can you believe we’ve known each other almost nine years?
Lisa Borders: Actually, I feel like I’ve known you longer! You’re in that category in my mind with the friends who go way, way back.

RUN FOR GRUB: I was in one of your first classes, which means you were the first face of Grub for me. This isn’t so much a question, but a thank you for seeing a spark of something in me, nurturing it without extinguishing it, and being loyal for all these many years.
Lisa Borders: I’ve remained loyal because I can’t wait for your amazing novel, Misfit Kings, to be a runaway bestseller – after which I plan to walk around boasting that you were once my student! All kidding aside, it’s been amazing to see both your writing and our friendship develop over the past decade. The appreciation for the support and loyalty goes both ways.

RUN FOR GRUB: RUNaway bestseller! Ha! Kidding aside, right back at ya. And to any novelists in Grubdom, know this: working on a novel on your own is like running on a treadmill; working on your book while enrolled in one of Lisa’s novel-in-progress classes is like running on a pristine beach with your favorite tunes and just the right amount of seabreeze to refresh you.

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.

Celebrity Death Match: Simon verses Elvis

Glancing at my marathon playlist (See The Playlist I Literally Sweated Over), most people can't help but notice that tracks from Paul Simon and Elvis Presley dominate—songs from Elvis, Paul Simon, and Simon & Garfunkel account for 17 of the 98 songs on the playlist, and that total creeps to 20 if you include the three tracks from Harper Simon as Paul Simon tracks which I do. I'm all for letting kids of superstars make their own way in this world, but Harper's voice sounds like such a Paul Simon clone I had to check the liner notes to make sure it wasn't Paul Simon singing.

That means that a little more than 20 percent of the music that will carry me along on race day belongs to one of these two men. Who, then, is the King of the playlist? Who is my Mr. Marathon? Paul Simon gets the advantage in number of tracks, but Elvis is the King of Rock. This was a question that would need further investigation. This was a question that would need a death match!

Round # 1—Volume
Elvis' nine songs pale next to the 11 songs I'm attributing to Paul. Unfair because Paul Simon didn't write any of Harper Simon's songs you say? Elvis didn't write any of the music that made him rich, either (not even the few early hits that were credited to him).

Point goes to Paul Simon.

Round # 2—Longevity of My Obsession
I've been a Paul Simon freak since 1992, and though I liked Elvis fine when he came on the radio, I didn't start obsessing until 2001.

Point goes to Paul Simon.

Round # 3—Muse-like Qualities of the Music
I'll fight anyone who tells me that there's a more poetic songwriter than Paul Simon alive today (and I question the existence of your musical soul if you can listen to the live version of "The Cool, Cool River" without getting goosebumps at the end when he repeats the line: "sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears"), but it was an Elvis song that planted the seeds of the novel I'm revising. Sorry, Paul.

Point goes to Elvis.

Round # 4—Gateway
Whose music is a bigger gateway: Paul Simon introducing the world to African tribal music and the rhythms of South African drumming or Elvis blowing through what until that point had been largely segregated musical styles and introducing the world to rock 'n roll so definitively that even though historians will quibble about what was truly the first rock record, few will mount a real contest to Elvis's King of Rock title? Man. Those VH1 pundits make spinning definitive statements from subjective sociology look sooo easy. I don't want to take the clear point-awarded-to-both cop out, but I will defer to the Boss on this. Bruce Springsteen never got escorted from Paul Simon's door, but he did hop the fence at Graceland and get intercepted as he made a break for Elvis's front door.

Because the Boss is, well, the boss, point goes to Elvis.

Round # 5—First-name fame
Paul Simon tried so hard to get the world to call him Al, and while most people know who Paul Simon is (though a depressingly large percentage of my students do NOT know this name), if my husband said he listened to Paul yesterday, I'd tell him it's always good to listen to his boss. If my husband told me he was listening to Elvis, however, I'd ask him who he was and what has he done with the man I married (not such a fan, that one).

Point goes to Elvis.

Round # 6—Sex Appeal
OK, I guess technically Elvis is the shoe in here. The problem is I was born in 1975 which means I basically only know Elvis in retrospective photos. Yes, teenage Elvis exuded sex on stage, and sure Elvis could wear him some black leather pants, but I've also seen him in photos from the seventies where he was sporting a floppy terrycloth fisherman's cap, about 50 extra pounds, and a goofy George-W-esque expression on his face. And Paul Simon? Um.

A grudging point to Elvis, I guess. Because he was sexy at least once in his life.

Round #7—Songwriting
No surprise here. Paul Simon wrote the vast majority of the music he recorded and Elvis, though a master of the arrangement, did not. Given that I'm a writer running to help writers, it should come as no shock that Paul Simon will get the nod here.

3 points to Paul Simon. Just because.

Results
So there you have it:

Paul Simon: 5 points
Elvis Presley: 4 points.

I think it's fair to say that we've proven in a totally non-biased evaluation that Paul Simon has earned the title of Mr. Marathon.

Grub Tales: Ron MacLean

Ron MacLean is author of the story collection Why the Long Face? (2008) and the novel Blue Winnetka Skies (2004). His fiction has appeared in GQ, Greensboro Review, Fiction International, Night Train, Other Voices and other quarterlies. He is a recipient of the Frederick Exley Award for Short Fiction and a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee. He holds a Doctor of Arts from the University at Albany, SUNY, and has been a proud part of team Grub since 2004.

RUN FOR GRUB: What has Grub Street meant to you?
RON MacLEAN: A writing home; a place to teach at a high level with students who are serious about the craft and colleagues (and students) who challenge and inspire me; a community of friends; an organization I care deeply about giving back to.

RUN FOR GRUB: Can you define your Grub community?
RON MacLEAN: I’ve always looked at Grub Street as – and tried to help make it – a home for writers in the Boston area. So I define my Grub community in light of that. Whoever defines themselves as a writer in the Boston area. Whoever comes to visit is a guest in that home. It’s one of the things I love about Grub as a destination: if you’re there, whether as a student, an instructor, a party-goer, a guest at the Muse, whatever – you’re part of the community. It’s a big, open free-floating network, in the best sense of that word.

RUN FOR GRUB: Grub Street almost closed in 2001, but--thank goodness--it reinvented itself as a nonprofit instead. What would you have lost if Grub had withered away eight years ago?
RON MacLEAN: Half my friends. Most of my moral support. My favorite place to teach. My clubhouse. And one of the few institutions that helps me believe anything is possible.

RUN FOR GRUB: Have you ever complained at a bookstore because the manager wasn’t stocking enough books by Grub Street writers on the shelves?
RON MacLEAN: YES! How did you know?

RUN FOR GRUB: So a little bird tells me you hate running but stand behind marathon crazy. Any shot you’ll consider running with me if I do this again next year?
RON MacLEAN: No, no, and absolutely no. If, however, you want to do a century bike ride, we can talk.

RUN FOR GRUB: I'm sensing some, um, resistance on your part around the whole running thing, though I have to say the idea of a century bike ride has me cocking my head like an intrigued puppy. Especially given that I haven't had so much as a nibble in response to my request for company should I decide to repeat the marathon next year. Alas, Peddle for Prose doesn't have quite the same ring to it as Run for Grub does...

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.

Race Details for Run for Grub Groupies

This week, Run for Grub officially hit its fundraising goal and raised enough money to cover the cost of workshops for four writers who want to try a Grub Street class for the first time (or four current Grub Street students who want to try a class in a genre that's new to them). In a digital-age version of pinch me, I keep calling up www.firstgiving.com/runforgrub just so I can blink at the full thermometer up top.

Yup, I think. We're still at 100 percent!

But as much as I lost my mind when I reached the goal (a certain Grub Street board member whose donation happened to put me over the edge can attest that our Facebook chat devolved to digital squealing on my part at the exact moment I knew it was true), I'm currently gobsmacked by the number of people who are planning to cheer me on come race day. Even after I remind them that my target finishing time is somewhere between 5 and 6 hours, they grin. Some of them are gonna be there to see me off; others will show up at the end of their night to see me finish. And a few swear that if I can run for that length of time watching me run is the least they can do.

I'm honored that so many people want to share in the last leg of this crazy pavement pounding journey of mine, but I have to warn you that I'm pretty much guaranteed to be in tears when (when!) I finish (though it's too early to say whether those tears will be of joy, of pain, or some combination therein). So as long as you can resist the temptation to bellow "there's no crying in marathon running!" at me after I cross the finish line, I'm happy to have you on the sidelines cheering me on.

Here are the details:

Race: 24 Hour Around the Lake

Start time: 7 p.m., Friday, July 30

Duration: Last year's female marathon winner did the race in 3:05:27. Clearly she's not nearly as pokey a little puppy as I am. I'm not sure how long it's going to take me given that I slow and slow and slow with every mile. My best guess is that I'll take between 5.5 and 6 hours to finish. Because that's the goal, here. Finishing.

Location: The race course goes around (and around and around and around and around and around and around and around) Lake Quannapowitt* in Wakefield, MA. This is good news for spectators because it means that you can stay right where you are and let me pass (and pass and pass and pass and pass and pass and pass and pass) you by. The race** starts and finishes at:

Lake Lord Wakefield Hotel
595 North Avenue
Wakefield, MA 01880

How's the spectator thing gonna work exactly: Honestly, I don't know. I know. Someone I babysat for when I was younger is planning on making posters, a runner friend is threatening to run beside me during the last lap (despite my honest expectation that an old lady with a walker will be able to keep pace with me during my last lap), and my husband's planning on turning my race into a drinking game.

Yup, you heard me right.

The Lord Wakefield Hotel has a lounge attached. And given that the race starts and stops at the Lord Wakefield and that cheerleading duties (namely positive chatter and the hand off of a fresh water bottle) will only last at most a minute every roughly 35-40 minutes, Mike is threatening to drink between laps effectively turning my marathon into a drinking game that I endorse as long as he a) doesn't miss me passing by in a given lap and b) understands that I'm the only one of us who has a fair claim on needing to be held up at the end of the night.

If you're thinking about going, comment on the blog or send me an email so I can keep watch. I'll make sure Mike wears something that helps him stick out. Perhaps I'll give him a Grub T-shirt or something....

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.

* Is it just be or does this photo make the lake look awfully big to be run around 8 times, she said in a fit of pre-race uneasiness...

** I'm not digging the whole calling-it-a-race thing. I think it sets up unrealistic expectations. Basically I'm going out for a (very, very) long jog, and some other uber-fit yahoos are gonna be racing by me.

The Playlist I (literally) Sweated Over

For the last twelve weeks, the Run for Grub blog has focused on all things marathon. I've groused about the slog, documented every skinned knee, and asked (and asked and asked) for donations. But though I may have led you to believe this blog was an all-access behind-the-scenes-pass to my marathon training, I've been sitting on one humdinger of a lie of omission. In addition to being one part personal physical challenge and one part fundraiser for Grub Street, my marathon has also been a freakishly effective vehicle for some serious musical obsessiveness.

It started when I noticed that certain songs—say "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves, for one—had the power to make me grin even while I was running. Grinning while running? But running's supposed to be the epitome of Puritan angst and suffering, isn't it? Or is serious suffering simply incompatible with giggling at the panting wolf thing Duran Duran's got going on during "Hungry Like the Wolf"?

And so begin my quest to create a playlist of every song that had the power to make me forget I was running. In a blind musical mania, I gathered up more than 9 hours of music and proceeded to systematically winnow that list to 5.5 hours (my guess for how long this marathon thing's gonna take me). I was ruthless. During my training runs, if I reached to fast forward through a song twice, it was gone. A bit harsh? Maybe. But as I said, I was obsessed. For the vast majority of my runs to date, I chose songs to audition, ran with my ears wide open, and then made my cuts when I got home. When I wasn't sure about a song, I dumped it into a test playlist until there was enough music to support a run, and then I gave it a do-or-die audition.

And in that way I reduced my list to 100 titles I absolutely loved, or so I thought. During my 20-mile run on Friday, I turned on two songs I thought were totally safe, so the finally list clocks in at 98 songs. I know I cut some great songs, and I know that there are at least a few songs on here that will get the universal what-was-she-thinking response, but I don't care. The way I see it, the equation is simple:

MY MARATHON = MY PLAYLIST!!!!

But in case you like what you see and want to snap up any of these songs, where possible, I've linked song titles to the Amazon mp3 store where you can download them. And watch out next week when I'll have some musical- themed posts up while Run for Grub is taking a much needed pre-marathon vacation.

So without further ado, my marathon playlist, alphabetically by artist (and if you do decide to buy something, let me know in the comment field so I know I gathered all those links for the greater good):


ABBA
Waterloo

ARCTIC MONKEYS
Dancing Shoes

THE BEATLES
The Ballad Of John And Yoko—No mp3 available except for a tribute version, so I'm embedding the real deal from YouTube:


BEYONCE
Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)

RYAN BINGHAM
The Weary Kind

JEFF BRIDGES
Somebody Else
Fallin' & Flyin'

JOHNNY CASH
All Over Again
I Walk The Line
Ring of Fire

NICK DRAKE
Time Has Told Me

DURAN DURAN
Hungry Like The Wolf

THE EELS
Hey Man (Now You're Really Living)
Losing Streak
P.S. You Rock My World

EMINEM
Lose Yourself

FASTBALL
Fire Escape

FOO FIGHTERS
Gimme Stitches
Learn To Fly

THE FRATELLIS
Chelsea Dagger

FRIGHTENED RABBIT
Head Rolls Off
Old Old Fashioned

GREEN DAY
She's A Rebel—This song is one of, like two, that's only available on the album—thank you, Green Day—so I'm embedding the real deal from YouTube:



BILL HALEY AND HIS COMETS
(We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock

IRON & WINE
The Devil Never Sleeps

WANDA JACKSON
Hard Headed Woman

WAYLON JENNINGS
Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way

JET
Are You Gonna Be My Girl
Look What You've Done

JIMMY EAT WORLD
A Praise Chorus
The Middle

BILLY JOEL
It's Still Rock And Roll To Me
Summer, Highland Falls
You May Be Right

JUNE RICH
Sweetthang—Saddest news ever—this band has called it quits. So here's a video of them doing this song live:




KATRINA & THE WAVES
Walking On Sunshine

KEANE
Bend And Break

THE KENNEDYS
Life Is Large




THE KILLERS
I Can't Stay

THE KNACK
My Sharona

LADY GAGA
Bad Romance

LADY SOVEREIGN
Love Me Or Hate Me

BORIS McCUTCHEON
Acequia
Standin' So Still

THE MEAT PUPPETS
Shine

GEORGE MICHAEL
Faith

MIKA
Love Today

ALASTAIR MOOCK
Let It Go
Unwanted Guest

ALEXI MURDOCH
All My Days

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
Welcome To The Black Parade

OUTKAST
Hey Ya!

PEARL JAM
Just Breathe - Apparently Eddie doesn't care to play the Amazon game for the Backspacer album, so whatever. Here's a YouTube version:



IGGY POP
Lust For Life

ELVIS PRESLEY
Burning Love
For The Heart
Got A Lot O' Livin' To Do!
I Gotta Know
A Little Less Conversation
Mystery Train
Shake, Rattle and Roll
Suspicious Minds-LIVE VERSION
Washed My Hands in Muddy Water

PUNCH BROTHERS
Rye Whiskey

QUEEN
Seven Seas Of Rhye

R.E.M.
I'm Gonna DJ
Living Well Is The Best Revenge

THE RAMONES
Beat On The Brat
Blitzkrieg Bop
I Wanna Be Sedated

JOSH RITTER
Snow Is Gone

BOB SEGER--Because Bob Seger is apparently a bigger luddite than I am, not a single one of his songs is available on Amazon for mp3 download, so I'm linking to the tribute bands I could find:
C'est La Vie
In Your Time
Old Time Rock & Roll

HARPER SIMON
Cactus Flower Rag
Tennessee
Wishes And Stars

PAUL SIMON
American Tune
Gone At Last
Hurricane Eye
Late In The Evening
Me And Julio Down By The School Yard
The Obvious Child

SIMON & GARFUNKEL
Keep The Customer Satisfied
Baby Driver

THE STROKES
Someday
Last Nite
Reptilia

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS
No One Knows My Plan
Destination Moon
The End Of The Tour
Don't Let's Start

THREE DOG NIGHT
Joy To The World

TRAVIS
Flowers In The Windows

VIOLENT FEMMES
Blister in the Sun

ANDREW W. K.
Ready To Die

THE WHITE STRIPES
My Doorbell

DAR WILLIAMS
Mercy Of The Fallen

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.