Snow Day

As I sit here with my son, enjoying a day off, I remember a snow day 25 years ago this week.


“Seymour, Stamford, Stratford, Trumbull…”   I snapped off the radio by my bed, as the announcer confirmed my most fervent wish: snow day!   I pulled the covers gleefully to my chin as I considered how to spend my free day.  I could finish Sweet Valley High #12 and start #13, or challenge Amy to a Go Fish card tournament.  I could cook my special version of macaroni and cheese for lunch, an activity unsanctioned by our mess-averse mother.  But she would be going to work, so what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Snow days held delicious possibilities for a fourteen year old.   

After a morning of watching The Sound of Music for the five hundredth time, I made lunch for Amy and me, carefully cutting the stick of butter in half, measuring the milk, and using one extra cheese packet from a different box.  We ladeled ourselves big ceramic bowls of the steaming orange concoction and walked down the hallway from the kitchen to the family room to eat in front of the television—a forbidden delight.  We settled into the brown velvet couch (chosen because of our mom’s dirt issues), and Amy went back to the kitchen to pour us tall glasses of Coke.   I flipped through all thirteen channels before deciding on As the World Turns.   I was fairly bored by soap operas, but fascinated by the actress’ makeup.  Their faces looked like palettes to me; I imagined the makeup artist coloring and shading, lining and glossing, brushing powders on smooth, shine-free skin.  The effect was dramatic.  It reminded me of the charcoal drawings we did in art class.  Amy came back with our sodas which we set down with a clank on the large tinted-glass coffee table, and we settled back with our perfect snow-day lunch, discussing our afternoon sledding plans.

As the world turned, our regularly scheduled program was interrupted by the exciting news of a rocket launch from the Kennedy Space Center.  The Space Shuttle Columbia was notable because there was a “civilian” on board the spacecraft—a teacher from North Carolina.  While I couldn’t relate to astronauts, a teacher was different.  I had a feeling that I wanted to be a teacher someday, and the prospect of one in space fascinated me.  Christa McAuliffe.  The name already felt legendary to me.  In the pictures, her eyes looked kind and I bet she was the kind of teacher who made school fun for her students.  Along with her were six other astronauts, who would accompany her into space, all donning bright orange spacesuits with the NASA logo emblazoned across the front.  I watched video footage from minutes earlier, as the Seven walked down the runway toward the Challenger, holding their helmets at their side.  They were all smiling, looking calm and composed.  I imagined that their unruffled demeanor belied a bubbling excitement underneath.   I leaned forward and put my lunch down on the coffee table to watch history unfold, live, as NASA launched the spacecraft for the world to see.  

“Tee minus 10,9,8,7,6…we have main engine start…4, 3, 2, 1, lift-off! Lift off of the 25^th space shuttle mission and it has cleared the tower.” I could hear the exhilaration in the announcer’s voice, as his voice rose on the second “lift off.”   I watched as the shuttle launched powerfully into the clear blue sky, a nimble dolphin leaping from the water, rotating slowly, at once heavy and graceful.    I remember feeling amazed at how this profoundly dense machine could move so delicately, so purposefully towards the heavens.   I was mesmerized.   I kept imagining how Christa the schoolteacher felt, looking out the shuttle window, watching the earth become smaller and smaller.  

Then, 73 seconds later, the graceful arc turned into a hellish dive.  The spectacular scene became horrific, as the beautiful flying machine exploded into debris, dust, and fire; a mass of cloud spewing two snaky plumes on either side.   I didn’t know what was happening.  I looked at Amy.  She looked to me for an explanation, her blue eyes wide with alarm and confusion.

“What happened?  Are the astronauts going to die?”

At the time, I imagined that they might not. The sophisticated spacecraft had to have an eject button in that could catapult the astronauts to safety.  I imagined that later that night, they would be found, tangled up in a parachute in the middle of the woods somewhere, hurt but alive.   That hope was quickly dashed by the newscasters.   The six astronauts and one “civilian” were dead, likely incinerated instantly in the extreme temperature of the explosion.  I didn’t know why they kept making that distinction between astronaut and civilian.   To me, seven people had just been killed.  Just 73 seconds earlier, seven families who had been looking upwards with pride and triumph were now looking at the sky in despair and anguish.  

I was supposed to be in school that cold day in January, watching a film about eastern aboriginal tribes.  Instead, I had a snow day, and I sat on my couch in my house with my little sister watching a soap opera that got interrupted by a tragedy.

Cold Turkey

The half marathon is one week away, a journey that I almost didn’t take because of my slightly irrational fear of frigid air.  

When I was a kid, I played soccer outside, huffing in the cold air until my mom took me to the doctor who diagnosed me with mild “cold-induced asthma.”   He prescribed a “puffer” which I was to use in case I had trouble breathing during my soccer games.  I probably used it twice during my entire childhood. But cold-induced anxiety was firmly implanted in my psyche.  As a result, my window of acceptable temperatures in which to be active outdoors ranged from about 62 to 72 degrees.  Obviously, this put a crimp in my running career ten months of the year.  

But this year on Columbus Day, in a last-ditch effort to fit back into my pre-pregnancy jeans, I decided to train for a half marathon. (I’m still not in those jeans, but that is the subject for another blog post.)  I signed up for a race in Miami in January, thinking only of the one 13.1 mile jaunt along the Florida coast, and not the dozens of runs in less-temperate Connecticut.  Ouch!  However, having made this commitment to myself (and announced it on Facebook), I would have to figure a way out of my cold conundrum.

The treadmill was not the answer.  If cold was my nemesis, the treadmill was its henchman: slightly less scary, yet  relentless and mindless.  Yes, there are times when the treadmill is unavoidable: heavy rains, early morning or late night runs.   Jeff thinks that running on a treadmill is easy because you can watch movies.  (Jeff has never, mind you, set foot on a treadmill).  But staring at a bobbling screen makes me dizzy.  No, if I was going to run this half-marathon, the bulk of my training would have to be outdoors.  

Before each run, I would click on the little yellow sun icon on my iPhone (eternal temperature: a glorious 73!)   At first, I would only run if that number was above 60 degrees.  I would literally sit around my house in my running clothes, waiting for the temperature to hit 60 before I hit the streets.  But over the weeks, the temperature would drop a few degrees and so would the bottom of my running range.  55 then 43 then 40.  At the end of each of these runs, I felt doubly accomplished: one, I had finished a run that was bringing me closer to a long-standing goal.  Two, I had finished the run without dying.  To the contrary, I usually felt pretty great.

In early December, I was scheduled for an 8-mile run.  The forecast called for a high of 40 degrees.  I always planned my long weekend runs for the point in the day that would be the warmest, usually between 1:00 and 3:00 pm.   However, my parents were flying in from Florida to spend Chanukah with us and I didn’t want to leave in the middle of the day.   At 8 am, my iPhone showed a mere 31 degrees.  One degree below freezing.  Now I was really being tested.  Eight miles of hamster-style torture versus a profound fear of wheezing myself into the ground.  I reasoned that I had never actually had an asthma attack since I started running, and that if I needed it, my inhaler would be safely zipped in the pocket of my wicking jacket.  I decided to brave the cold.   By the end of mile one, I was completely warmed up, both in body temperature and in morale.  I knew I would be okay.

I still have lots of fears: snakes, throwing up, not making enough food for a party I am hosting.  I haven’t come close to conquering any of them.  My fear of the cold, however, has thawed.  

The Long Run

It was Columbus Day when I made the decision to train for a half- marathon.

After dropping Emmet off at day care, I used my day off to go to the gym for one of my sporadic, half-hearted workouts, which were really more of an excuse to read People magazine.  I rationalized that if my body was exercising, my brain was allowed to slack off.   As I pedaled lethargically on an exercise bike, barely breaking a sweat, I realized my workouts needed a boost.  After Emmet was born, my life felt hectic as I adjusted to motherhood, returned to work, and moved to a new house and community.   Any semblance of an exercise routine became a casualty in my redefined life.

I had decided I would hire someone to help me jump start my workout regimen, so I approached the girl behind the desk at the gym.  I told her I needed a trainer who would kick my ass.

“Are you training for something particular,” she asked.

“Like what?”

“Like a marathon or a half-marathon or a triathalon or...” she continued.

“No, I just need someone to whip me back into shape,” I interrupted.  “I’m trying to lose my baby weight.”

“Oh, congratulations! How old is the baby?”

“Two,” I told her.

“Two months?  Oh, how sweet! I love little…”

“Two years,” I muttered.

“Oh,” she replied.

But her suggestion had planted a seed that I realized had been germinating for some time.   Two friends had recently announced their entries into half marathons, both self-proclaimed “non-runners,” who had simply decided to train and run.  Was it really that simple?

It’s not like I had never run before.   As a matter of course, I had been a member of the New York Road Runners Club when I lived in New York City, primarily running the 5K races, the most notable of which I threw up at the finish line.  But my running career was inhibited by a couple things: one, I would only run between the temperatures of 65 and 72 degrees.  A few childhood asthma attacks during cold-weather soccer games had scared me away from chilly outdoor activity.  Two, running bored me.  My MP3 player only held about twelve songs, so when the music ran out, so did my interest.

But both technology and my life had made marked progress in the intervening years and I wondered if it wasn’t time to give running another shot.

I went home and Googled “half-marathon training schedules,” just to get a sense of what this venture might entail.  Most of the “novice” training schedules suggested a 16-week training period, with reasonable 3-4 mile runs scheduled two or three times a week, culminating in a “long run” each weekend.  The long run made me nervous.   It started out innocently enough: three miles the first weekend, four the second weekend.   But with each passing week, a mile or so was added, up until the race day of 13.1 miles.   I honestly couldn’t imagine being able to do it.   It reminded me of how I felt before giving birth: while I knew that people did it all the time, I couldn’t fathom how I would actually do it.   But I decided to trust my body, yet again, and sign up for a race. The Miami half marathon was the most obvious choice, being about 17 weeks away, with a climate that met my atmospheric requirements.

The very next day, I began to run.  That first day I ran two miles, ten laps around the man made lake at the JCC.  Last week, barely 3 months later, I ran 11 miles: the distance between Greenwich, CT and the far side of White Plains, New York.  The butterflies I feel each weekend before beginning my new longest run ever is rectified by the pride I feel at the end of my runs, having smashed my own records.  My friend Matt, who has run 10+ marathons, says that by the time you actually get to the race, you’ve already arrived at the reward.  

I’m not there yet.  Right now, the finish line is still three weeks away, but I’m feeling good about how it looks in the long run.