Running a mile without pain, the puppeteer behind the curtain, and the power of small accomplishments

For the first time in 7 years, with a closed right middle cerebral artery and a still mildly paralyzed left leg,  I ran a mile without pain. It was painfully slow (12.17 sec). It was intensely conscious (don't swing right arm/ actively swing left, propel forward with left side only). It was brutally short, only 1 mile. But I did it!

After giving up the idea of the 1/2 marathon (which seemed reasonable and inevitable), I wanted to see if I could find a creative solution to the "can't run" problem. . The idea of not being able to do something doesn't sit well with me. I decided to start very small. If I could figure out how to run one mile I could build on that slowly.

If there is anything I learned from stroke recovery it's the power of small achievements. Once you make any headway at all - a wiggled tow, a pinky finger table tap - you have the whole thing - it's just a matter of time. So now I try to  find a smaller goal and build on it. One mile without pain was a small goal.  But it didn't really seem possible to me. I knew I'd have to manually pull the puppet strings, which is exhausting. For most, life is largely automatic. You walk without thinking about it, type unconsciously, eat without deciding how to hold your hand, etc.  For me, recovery has been finding ways to fake what should be automatic (or not fake, but make deliberate, which is what I mean by pulling puppet strings). It's more wizzard of OZ behind he curtains and less Dorthy skipping down the road.

So, I sat behind the curtain and gave myself the cues. I wanted to speed up and really let my legs swing wide, but I couldn't lose control, I just know that's how I hurt my hip. I could feel a few of the things that were hurting me.
1. overswinging my right arm and holding the left stiff like a board.
2. taking huge strides with the right and trying to be faster (when I do anything physical  unconsciously the default is to compensate with the right side).
3. Running on my toes

I could just feel these things creating the searing pain at the top of my illiac crest on the right side.

So, I started painfully slow..

Don't swing your right arm. Only swing your left. Strike the ground mid-sole and roll. swing your left arm. keep a steady pace even if you hate how slow it is.Etc..

You get the picture. I just can't believe it worked. I'
m shocked. I had no pain. I didn't have to stop, but I chose to stop at 1 mile so I could access my results in a small dose. I want to try it again, but I'm going to wait a couple days. I'm pretty  sore on the left side and still a little tender in my right hip. But I'm not limping, or in pain, so I'll take it.

Running post-stroke.

 Ok, so, my best friend is turning 40 this fall and she wanted to do a half marathon.

I ran 2 marathons in my 20s, Honolulu Diamond-head, and San Diego Rock-n-Roll. Both were hell, and despite training my balls off I never broke 5 hours.I am just a slow runner.  But I did finish, twice, even though it took some vomiting and a few other unfortunate accidents,  to make it across the finish line. That was then. My boyfriend at the time said I was exhibiting first child behavior, and that no sane person would run 26.2 miles just to prove they could. He had a good point. After the 2nd marathon, when I still hit a hard WALL  of doom at mile 22 and I started feeling horrible knee pain (at 25 yrs old), I decided: Ok, enough. You only get one body, you have to make it last. So I choose to focus on yoga, which made me feel good.  The rest is history.

So, jump ahead a good 13 yrs and now I'm a youngish and  mostly recovered stroke survivor with left side paralysis. Somehow despite this, because running is something I did before, and because I love sharing experiences with my girlfriends, I decided to give the Healdsburg 1/2 marathon a go. It's only half, afterall, right? I've never had a better run in my life than the primo half marathon in 1999. 13.1 miles is still reasonable. I'd never do a full marathon again, I'm not that crazy!

Unfortunately,what I wasn't remembering is that  I'm lucky to walk.I had to give up heels which was tragic for me. I fell down 7 flights of stairs in 5 years, I still have gait issues. I don't always realize this, but a quick glance at the shoes I wore everyday in Italy this summer (just a month ago) tells the story...

This is the left one. The outside edge is totally torn up. This is from disinhibition, which makes your body curl up into a fetal like position as a default after paralysis (new born babies also have this). Practically speaking, this means my toes curl (and not in a good way) on my left foot, which causes me to supinate, BIG TIME. Here is the evidence.      

My left shoe is a mess.

Compared to the right one it's really clear what's happening.

So when my gait is clearly this off-balance,  it's no wonder that when I try to run, it's a disaster! My efforts to train for this half marathon, which have been sort sad in their moderation,  have left me with so much pain in my right hip it's become hard to walk. I only worked up to 4 miles, and didn't even manage that.

Ugh...but the one thing I really can't stand is feeling like the stroke means I can't do something. I have moved mountains to get around the many  "can't" scenarios in my world.

For now I decided to walk. I can still spend the weekend in the wine country, I can still train for something, It's just something a bit more reasonable. Walking is something I'm pretty good at (when I'm not training to run).

SMELL: The first condition of understanding a foreign country.

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling. My olfactory report is that India smells lighter than it did last time, the urine overtones are still there, and the deep earthy smokey fire smell is there, but the overall impression is that it's sweeter and maybe more floral. Maybe last time the smell was affected by my 4-months of dissentary coupled w/ regular nausea? My most negative assessment of the smell of India in 2009-10 was at one point poo-pee-sweaty masala balls-fire. The smell of India is such a part of the experience of being here. I've always obsessed about it. Meimei converted me to picking up more urine than poo. She was right. On the bus the men smell like sandalwood and it's intoxicating. I love the smell of sandalwood on men---it's quinticentially masculine to me. Today in yoga practice I suddenly realized something smelled funny--and yet it smelled like me in India last time (like layers upone layers of my own sweat). I looked around, smelled my clothes which smelled lovely thanks to Virginia's laundry skills so it wasn't that. Then I thought it could be the guy next to me which happens to be Oloff. And then I put my face down and I realized it was my yoga matt!!! Gross! I'm going to wash it this weekend. Right now it's airing out on the balcony. Meanwhile my heat rashes are returning (making me look just lovely in sundresses). Winter is officially over!

4 seconds of enlightenment

Yesterday I decided I wanted to get a French press so that I could make coffee before practice. Kajsa has inspired me after bringing her little french press to Pete's beach shack everyday. I walked to the main road in Candolim  in the heat of the afternoon as I have done countless times before and did my shopping at Lawande, the tiny shop where I spend all of my money. I bought maybe 4 things and then left (small french press, soymilk, coffee, sugar).

When I got to the road was a mess- but the road is always a mess, this isn't news. As I walked out into the street I prepared to make my bold Italy-style move  - It's the "I'm-walking-whether-you-like-it-or- not-while I- stare-you-down-and-dare-you-to-kill-me. I went out strong, all bluster and fake confidence, and then saw a scooter and a blue truck speed up like they were trying to pass each other and play chicken, horns blaring ("horn, ok, please"). So for the first time ever,  I chickened out and hesitated one beat before I turned around to go back and wait  where I came from for a  better time to cross. 


As I turned my back to traffic and changed direction I heard a horrible loud cracking sound. THWACK. It was awful, like the sound of screeching tires and crunching metal combined with the deep sonic thud of an earthquake. My only thought was "Oh no, I caused an accident, something terrible has happened to someone." 

I was aware of the fact that I couldn't turn around to look because I was flying. Wait...what? Yeah, I was levitating ever so lightly off the ground, flying.As I soared up I was so struck by the gorgeous colors of the buildings I was flying by. I have never seen anything more beautiful. Terracotta tones like in Rome, and the sunlight was hitting them in such a beautiful way. The nature of light is different in India. Someday I'll find a way to explain it, but it's warmer, more yellows, or reds maybe. The result is everything is more vibrant, sharper. Here's a shot of the light in Rome in early winter which reminds me of the quality of light in India. Of course, I have no photos of my accident.

(kind of like Rome in winter,but the light was warmer, sharper with more glow)

So here I am...flying. The colors, the light, it's beautiful. I'm spinning and my perspective magically instantly shifts to 360 degrees around me. I'm moving exquisitely through space, slowly too.It's like time s l o w  e d d o w n. Or maybe it's more accurate to say it stopped. I was operating outside of time.  

I can see everything, every detail carved into every nook and cranny of the walls I'm flying by. The walls aren't smooth, they are textured. No idea why I'm flying.  Thoughts like that don't matter at all right now. The only thing that  matters is how this moment is just so unfathomably beautiful.I also have the sensation of being held so gently, so lightly, like an angel was steering my flight across the road. 

I felt the opposite of fear, I felt loved in complete utter safety surrounding me on all sides.

And then I heard it with my ears, It was an ugly guttural thud. I heard it before I felt it,and suddenly I felt it and I realized all at once, it was me, I was hit in the back and now I was hitting the ground. It felt like my whole chest caving in at once. All the air went out woooomph. And I heard myself make a horrible sound. It was a guttural, slow, awful "huuuuuuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaaahhh" as the wind was knocked out of me. If I walked by and heard someone make that sound I would think their soul had just painfully left their body. I was still making the sound way past the point when I decided to stop it at all costs. It wasn't in my control. With the unconscious sound came a piercing pain in my lower back, like my spinal cord was sliced in half. I hit the ground bumm first, and then thanks to ample padding in that area, I  then I bounced  up and on the second impact the back of my head rickashayed and smacked down on the pavement pretty hard twice. One, two. thwak, thwak.

And then it was over. The four seconds of enlightenment, that is.     

My mind came rushing back online. Ugh. It's me, I was hit, I flew and I  came back down. The joy and the beauty of those few moments quickly evaporated as I came to reality and realized what happened.

But if this is what it would feel like to die, sign me up. Those few moments were more beautiful than any others in my life, and my life has had so many beautiful moments. The following days have been so strange,  because I'm hurt, walking is hard, everything is hard, but I'm haunted and seduced by the beauty of those moments. I keep reliving the moment of impact w/ the scooter and the the seconds of road flying that followed. I think those few second were the only moments of peace I've ever known in my lifetime. My "mind" hadn't caught up to make a story about my experience yet so I was just IN the actual moment and it was beautiful. Weird and creepy I know, but really magical and quiet beautiful. It was sort of otherworldly to be flying and spinning around. It's so weird to be alive. Honestly it was an amazing experience, it's the pain that follows after that sucks.

What's going on with me and my karma around injury? 

The perfect Masala Chai

If you've ever been on a train in India, you'll remember the Chai wallah chanting, "Chai, Chai, Chai...!"

Recipe: Masala Chai 
Serves 4 or so

Ingredients:
3 cups water
1 tbs. ginger (grated or chopped)
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black peppercorns
4-6 whole cloves
6 cardamom pods
1-2 cinnamon stick, broken into pieces
2 cup whole milk
2-4 tbsp. jaggery sugar, to taste
2 tbsp. loose black tea, I like yellow label lipton



How:

Start with water heating on medium flame in a pan. Mash up cloves, cardomon pods, black pepper, and cinnamon sticks and add them with a mortar and pestle and grind them down, but don't stress yourself out. Dump the contents into the hot water. Take a thumb sized piece of ginger and add it to the water (* you can chop it roughly if you want to feel virtuous. OR just grate it) Simmer the water for 20 mins until it turns light brown then add black tea ( I prefer yellow label lipton, but any black tea will do). Continue to simmer on low for a minute or more while the tea steeps, and then add whole milk to taste (at least equal parts whole milk to water). Gently bring it back to a boil for that signature boiled milk flavor and thin film on top like you get in India. Lastly, add jaggery, or sugar to taste (for Indian style add a lot). You must strain the mixture before serving with a fine mesh strainer to remove the spices and tea leaves.

Hot Season Varriation:

 In the hot season, my yoga teacher swaps out cloves (which builds heat) for star anise (which cools), and it's totally delicious with soy milk instead of dairy milk, much lighter and vegan friendly.

Serve on a lovely tropical roof with love...

Where am I?

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage." -Gilbert Murray
October 5-7th

Feeling both free and courageous right now. After such a crazy journey, I may have been happy with anywhere I landed. But I do feel especially happy to have found myself here and with a couple days to settle in before the yoga start on Monday morning at 5:30 a.m. (ack! How will I ever get used to waking up that early?)

Where am I? 

Goa is interesting. Having lived in Europe, one of the first things I notice apart from the smell is the European architecture and cultural clues everywhere. It seems to be a matriarchal culture. I don't have much to base that on yet, but I feel it, I recognize a place where, like Italy,  the Mom is the center of the universe. There aren't many men around. Or maybe I should say, I only see young men out and about. Teenage boys worshiped by their mothers, but not many grown men. 

Goa was a Portuguese Colony until it became an independent state and part of India in 1961.  That's not really that long ago. Here are some visuals to back this up and a little glimpse of my new home. 

My building. The arches remind me of my old SF marina apt. I have 2 balconies and a roof terrace which rocks! Note the portuguese colonial feel.

Living Room in all it's glory. This is the cozy couch my guests can sleep on (j/k).

Tiny, tiny kitchen. But plenty of room to make tea, which is all I really need. Plus I found peanut butter and powdered soup. I'm really tearing shit up with my new elec. kettle.

I think this stray is applying for Penny's position. It guarded my door all night. Very quiet and sweet.

Bedroom. Real simple, but I like it. I'm just so happy to sleep stretched out right now. By the way, not to get too personal but my apt is $10 a night, cheaper per month and I'm a 1 min. walk from the ocean. (sorry, I'm bragging)


Ok, that's it for now. I'm so happy to be here. But, honestly,  I am worried about practice without the props I brought to modify the things I can't do. Oh well..India must want me to know I can live without them...? Thanks for listening. I find myself facebooking a lot to feel connected to friends and family and  the world outside this tiny little beach paradise. 

Porous with travel fever - India calling me on my shit (already?)

"I'm porous with travel fever but still so glad to be on my own". - Joni Mitchel --Hejera

India is calling me on my shit! I am an over-packer and I guess India is going to show me I don't need all that stuff. I still don't have my bags and I wonder if I ever will????Here's how the 60 + hour journey to India went: 

Notes from the road... 

• 9/30/09 Flew to NYC, both bags were overweight but not as expensive as I feared. 
• 9/30/09 Leaving penny was like ripping my guts out. All is well though, on the road. As Pattabhi Jois would say, "Why fearing? All is coming!" 
• 10/1/09  Flight to Mumbai was cancelled waited in world's longest line to reschedule. Off to rough start! 
• 10/1/09 Lost both overweight bags already, they didn't make it to the counter in time for my new flight. Had to make tough call and take new flight anyway.
• 10/1/09 On kuwait air now headed for Mumbai again from JFK... 
•  10/2/09 OMG 60 hours in and it continues... Sat in plane on runway for four hours waiting for weather to clear. They finally just let us off. No idea if /when I'll ever make it to goa. Running out of steam, becoming narcoleptic. Gave away only clothes I had when they made me check my carry on bag. Down to no bags and iPhone is out of batery (me too). 
•  10/2/09 3 full days later, I arrive. Thank god penny wasn't with me. So this is india. It has been tremendously dysfunctional and frustrating but you know I met so many kind faces along the way, people who tried to help me and take care of me.. India may not work very well but the people are wonderful.
•  10/3/09 Slept flat on a bed for a few hours. A little jet lagged and hungry but doing fine 

10/4/09 My apt in goa, it's not much but I'm really comfortable here so far. Kind of reminds me of Europe in little ways--light switches, tiny kitchen,fans. Check out my super cozy couch :-)

10/05/09 I need a penny mule. I don't think I can live w/o her. Cried 3 times today about her. Pathetic. Landlord said I could have a dog no problem. Ouch. 

I mean, come on, isn't she cute???