Okay, friends, now that you have a little motivation, some proper shoes, and possibly a Fitbit, it’s time for the training plan.  Drill Sergeant Joe emailed me a spreadsheet, detailing how often, how far, and in what length of time I should walk every week.  Feel free to follow it with me, whether you’ll be in San Antonio in December to watch me face plant in front of the “lag wagon” half way through or are supporting from afar.  (You read that right – “lag wagon.”  Remember when I joked there would be an official who could scrape me off the asphalt, pour me into a golf cart, and convey me back to my car that unfolds into a movie theater playing a Rocky marathon”?  Turns out that’s half true!)  Happy walking, team.

Training Schedule PDF

By Rachel Morgan

It’s 10 steps from my office to the closest bathroom; 99 steps to the furthest bathroom. Roughly 3,341 steps from my front door to my office, and most frequently 35 from my kitchen to washing machine. Yes, I have a Fitbit.

In the mid 1980s my cousins and I paraded across the kitchen floor, wearing our grandparents’ pedometer, a machine roughly the size and design of a post office timestamp. A loud click poorly documented every other step or so. Fast forward some twenty years and I’m outside my classroom with a yardstick measuring a colleague’s footsteps. Her average gait is 25 inches compared to my 22.5. We’re both wearing bulky pedometers that eat the same batteries as hearing-aides. But 4,217 steps later we can see most of the San Fernando Valley nestled under a hazy marine layer. Below Fryman Canyon our jobs as high school English teachers, cell phones, and cars wait while we talk about our families, what we’re reading, our childhood— anything we don’t have to fact check.

Given my historical love affair with pedometers, it’s easy to believe I was an early adapter of the Fitbit. Not so. Across a glass of wine my sister-in-law introduced me to the Fitbit and its ability to track sleep patterns. Instantly my stomach churned at the truth of that graph. I’d had two children about two years apart, and my son has medical needs which require several nighttime wakings for treatment. Why would I want to know what I know?

Why would I want to know what I know? Now that I’ve had a Fitbit (not the kind that tracks sleep) for a few months I think the answer is more simple: I knew what I knew, so what do I do about it? Reports about longevity being linked to standing, not sitting: treadmill desks, and 10,000 steps or 4 miles per day permeate the news. No surprise there. We should move more than not.

My great-grandfather was a salesman for an orchard. In the fall he’d walk the some 90 mile loop from Blackwater to Jonesville to Abington, Virginia to collect orders for fruit trees from families along the way.

In the early spring he’d make the same journey, this time with a horse and cart, to deliver the saplings. Sometimes he’d sleep in a barn and sometimes the guest bedroom, other times under a tulip poplar.

He’d make the journey several times each season. He said the best part of his journey was talking with the people along the way and walking mountain trails.

He died on Christmas day in 1964, and he never learned to drive a car.

Let me be clear, I’m not romanticizing the past. It was really, really hard. My great-grandfather never got to see the ocean. He only walked in three states: Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. He’d probably laugh at the notion of counting steps.

Nor was the past simpler. Consider the tomato. You could watch the weather as winter passes, plant seeds, water, weed (repeat), stake, harvest, and preserve tomatoes or you can go to the store, buy a can of tomatoes and use a can opener. Something is gained; something is lost. One tool does not replace, but half-heartedly replicates another. Stay with me, dear reader: the Fitbit is a canned tomato disguised as a garden. This little device that’s sticking its tongue out at me is at once ease, information, motivation, and reflection.

It’s not lost on me that an introspective tool like the Fitbit cudgels me to select the parking space furthest away from an entrance or take my children to the local park instead of stream a TV show after dinner. I know how many steps it is to the furthest bathroom and for that reason I’m equally as likely to text a friend to see if she wants to go on a walk. For me the Fitbit is about mindfulness and accountability. A fancy pedometer and dongle connect me to information and friends, but I’m also disconnected as I walk around the neighborhood and look at my neighbors’ gardens.

The future perfect tense allows us to imagine something that will continue up until a particular event or time in the future, after which a task will be completed. For example, by the end of most days, it’s likely that I will have walked to school or work, taken the stairs, or talked with a friend while walking. At the start of his 90 mile journey, my great-grandfather knew he’d be home on the fourth night unless he stayed an extra night to help a family with planting or swap a story from the other side of the ridge. The assured ability to look ahead and know something will have happened is worth every step, whether it’s counted or not.

Rachel Morgan is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She teaches at the University of Northern Iowa and is the Assistant Poetry Editor for the North American Review. Her work recently appears or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Fence, Denver Quarterly, Barely South, Mid-American Review, DIAGRAM, Volt, and Hunger Mountain. She lives in Iowa with her husband, son, and daughter.

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As an undergraduate in college, I worked as a shoe salesperson for the now-defunct Mervyns department store.  The soothing strains of Faith No More on Musak played as we straightened neon hiking boots and striped ballet flats and assorted white high tops on plexiglass rounders.  There was a strange power in disappearing into the dimly-lit stock room with a display shoe, leaving the customer waiting in socked feet in the wash of fluorescent lights.  In the stock room, ladders ascended to the largest sizes, boxed near the skylights.  To stand at the top was to stand in your own light beam like a deity.  If you came to Mervyn’s for athletic shoes of any kind and asked me for advice, you probably left with whatever I thought coordinated best with the pants you were wearing.  What I’m telling you is, I once sold shoes for a living and I know nothing about shoes.

I do know this – if you want to get your Facebook friends talking, ask them what running shoe they prefer.  This is how I found out that running shoes are serious business.  And for good reason.  When I first started walking for exercise, I wore the low-end sneakers Joe had picked up for me from a sporting goods chain when my feet swelled on chemo and I needed something in a pinch that I could walk around campus in the next morning.  I’d told Joe to get any black shoe he could find, men’s or women’s.  I didn’t care what they were.  I just wanted them to be something I could shove my feet into that didn’t clash too much with my mostly-in-the-gray-spectrum work clothes.  When I wore them everyday on long walks through my neighborhood, though, my feet started to ache, the sort of contorting-in-a-vice ache that wakes you in the middle of the night.  Because I certainly know nothing about shoes, I asked around.

Several people told me how much they loved their New Balance shoes.  In the end, New Balance shoes didn’t work out for me, but the salespeople in the New Balance stores do offer to analyze your gait (this means you walk on a treadmill while a salesperson takes video of your feet in motion and not the elaborate “testing the Six Million Dollar Man” kind of thing I’d hoped it meant), determine your arch type, and assess the way you distribute your weight in order to match you up with the right shoe.  The other plus: they allowed me to exchange my shoes and then return them altogether when it was clear after several walks that they weren’t exactly the right shoe after all.  Other shoes people told me they loved: Saucony, Brooks, Sketchers, Asics Gel, Salomon, Alta Zero-Drop, and Newtons.  So, basically all the shoes.

Then Reno Romero, a self-proclaimed running-shoe addict, had this helpful advice on the matter:

“Ok, the first thing I’d do is hit some sports stores and talk to the people. If there’s a runner-specific store hanging around, then by all means talk to them. I’ll skip all the different types of shoes, etc, and just tell you this: All those running companies (NB, Asics, Brooks, etc) make great shoes. What makes them better is the one that works for you. How do you know? Try them on. Try tons of them on. Have fun. Mix it up. Look for comfort and function and try NOT to go for aesthetics. Find a happy medium. Lucky for us runners running shoes are mostly ugly. Oh, and plan on spending around $100 on shoes. I top off around $120. Shoes are your main tool. Don’t go cheap. When it comes to running shoes you get what you pay for. Also remember running shoes make for great all-around shoes. Good for the knees, good at the bookstore, good at the office.”

So I found a local store in San Antonio, Solers Sports, that offers all of the analysis and a variety of brands to try on.

I ended up with a pair of Mizuno Wave Enigma 2 that the salesperson had picked out in part because the shape, he said, seemed a natural fit for my “long, narrow feet.”

“I like how you didn’t say ‘big,’” I told him.

“You learn a few things when you work in shoes long enough,” he said.

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Saturday morning, with my cell phone slipping in my sweaty hand, the weight of it yanking the tangled cord of the ear buds, I stop on a street corner to GPS my location.  I’m in my own neighborhood.  It’s the sort with aging oaks and pecan trees angling over mansions with the occasional 1950s ranch house where the 1950s ranch houses haven’t been torn down to accommodate more mansions.  Guess which kind of house I live in?  So I wander around the neighborhood in the ambitious ensemble of running shorts plus coordinating tank top, gawking at the grand structures past the giant agave and iron gates, taking more than one wrong turn along the way.

By the time I find my street again, I’m sure I’ve walked over five miles.  I’ve also stepped right into the path of a bird-shit bomb and slipped in a mud puddle in the home stretch.  After I slide my grimy shoes off by the back door, I fumble with the key in the lock and schlep over the threshold to announce to Joe and Hannah on the sofa, “I just accidentally walked five miles!  I almost passed out!”

Joe wants to know the route.  When I tell him, he says it’s not five miles.  But I insist.  “I’m gonna look it up!” I say and drag the back of my hand over my temple.  “Ugh, I’m sweating just like daddy,” I mumble to Hannah.

I mean after he goes on his runs.  I’ve lost track of the number of marathons he’s completed.  It’s his thing.  And now we’ve decided it can be my thing too, only I’m the kind of runner who walks.  The night before, Joe and I sat at my mom’s kitchen table with my parents and sisters and announced we were going to walk a half-marathon together in December.  The San Antonio Rock and Roll Marathon, to be exact.  It seemed like a great idea after a margarita.

“How far is that?” my mom wanted to know.

I looked at Joe.

He intentionally has not told me how far a half-marathon is, mile-wise.  I could Google it, but I’m afraid to.

“It’s about a three-and-a-half hour walk,” he said.

And that’s probably a white lie, isn’t it.  Don’t tell me.

At any rate, I know a half marathon is a lot further than five miles, and five miles just strong-armed me into child’s pose on my bedroom floor where I stretch one hand to map my route on my iPad playing MC Yogi and discover it was only three miles.  If there was a marathon for maintaining child’s pose, I’d win.

* * *

Sometime in the middle of the night, I push at Joe’s shoulder and say, “Hey.  I don’t think I can walk for three-and-half hours.”

“Yes you can,” he says.

“But what if I can’t?  Can I just … stop walking the half-marathon?”

I imagine a marathon official scraping me off the asphalt, pouring me into a golf cart, and conveying me back to my car that unfolds into a movie theater playing a Rocky marathon.

Joe is silent for a few minutes too long, and then he answers, “You can walk for three-and-a-half hours.  We have until December to train.”

If I haven’t mentioned it before, Joe is a retired Army drill sergeant, so he has it all figured out, how he can transform me into someone who can complete a half-marathon walk without buckling face down in a grassy ravine – with increasingly longer walking routes and little white lies about the distance.

“Besides,” he says, “we’ll all be there with you as a distraction.”

The “we” depends on how many people would like to join me in the half-marathon in December and wear matching shirts.  Joe has promised we’d wear matching shirts.  I’m thinking about what could be on the matching shirts while trying to shift into a more comfortable position in my bed.  At the same time we decide walking a half-marathon would be a great way to jumpstart a healthier lifestyle, every joint in my body has apparently decided to age seventy years, which I’ve read may be a long-term side-effect of the kind of chemo I’d been on.  In the morning, I unhinge myself into a few sun salutations and walk four miles on purpose.

* * *

By the time my friend Andrea comes to see me for the weekend, I’ve discovered liquid glucosamine with chondroiton at Whole Foods, which I throw back like a shot twice a day.  That, yoga, and being active seems to help.  When Andrea sets her bag down, she says, “I brought my shoes in case we want to go walking.”  So I take Andrea along my four-mile route through the estates where we sneak pictures of landscaping and fencing designs we like and a World Cup flag hanging from a balcony.  The pictures don’t turn out that great, but here’s Andrea looking awesome:

Along the walk, I tell Andrea about the half-marathon idea, which is still like announcing that Joe and I are going to establish a unicorn ranch on Saturn’s outermost ring.  I tell her that I’ve been blogging about it but not publishing any of it.

“Because then you’ll be committed,” she says.

“Yep.”

And then it won’t be a unicorn ranch.  It’ll be real.  I realize something, though, when we cross the street to my home – it is infinitely easier to walk a few miles with dear friends.  It hardly seems like we’ve walked that far at all.  So if walking a few miles is easier, surely walking whatever miles a half-marathon equals will be easier as well.

I tell Andrea my idea of restarting the blog count and focusing on training to walk a half-marathon, inviting guest bloggers to share wisdom and exercises and recipes and so on.  I talk myself into doing it, actually doing it, committing.  After I wave Andrea off later in the day, I think, Well … maybe not.  School will be starting soon and I’ll be too busy and …. Then Joe sends me the confirmation email that we’ve officially registered.  So here we go, team.  Day one!

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