An Uneventful Day

“Today was a normal day.”

Let me explain: I woke up, pulled on my running shorts, and stumbled out the door, just like any other day. I waved to every security guard along my running route, returning the occasional “good morning’s” one by one as I clipped along the riverside. I finished the run and stretched, no surprises, no mishaps. I went to work, and I took the subway. I always take the subway. But this time, just like lots of other times, it was completely and conventionally uneventful. As predicted, the third stop on the route – the only one that opens from the right side, instead of the left like all the others – made the foreigners and newcomers stick out like sore thumbs as they stumbled around, nearly missing their stop. I was one of them a couple months ago, but now the other regulars smirk with me, not at me, as we judge the newcomers. A few minutes later, I nodded and smiled at the guards at MoCA as I strolled into work, barely remembering the first two weeks they spent trying to keep me out (thinking I was a tourist). I went to work, came home, and finished out the un-calamitous day.

Maybe this isn’t what I’m supposed to be blogging about. But these things are what makes the city feel a little more like “home”. It creeps up on you when you spend some time fully acclimated to a city. And now that I’ve gotten here, I’m ready to go back. The days are dwindling down in Shanghaiville; it’s reached that point in the summer where the days finally start flickering by, and the U.S. and Yale and Trumbull and my room all finally re-work their way to the top of “places I want to be”.

Peregrine, one of my favorite people, came to visit last weekend. She took last year off to study and work in China and London and so we caught up on our past years and shared our ridiculous stories. She, Della, and I visited Shanghai two years ago before our first China summer program, so we spent some time re-enacting that trip and being floored by (for once, not how much China has changed, but rather) how much we’d changed. Our language alone made Shanghai a different place, and our newly-gained comfort with the culture made wandering through the city a more comfortable experience than NYC could offer, and a much more introspective one. I guess that’s what you get for a college education.

At MoCA, we’re switching to the last exhibition I’ll see: the Contemporary Art of Indonesia. I was dumbfounded yesterday when the artists put me in charge of installing a couple of their art installations, and found myself atop a ladder putting my basic carpentry skills to work. Most of all, I was surprised how much control the artists were willing to give up in the installation of their art. I had creative power in deciding how exactly to space banners, pin cloth up, etc., and it made me think that art is slightly more collaborative than even the artists themselves realize. And also during work last week, my coworkers took me to buy books that I have since busied myself with. I bought Chinese classics translated from ancient Chinese into modern Chinese (so I can read it). Maybe I’ll read these instead of taking Chinese classes this year.


I hit 121 last week. I’m no longer afraid of mileage.

The Palidrome Mileage Program

This is the summer of palindromes. My mileage sheet (per week) for the last nine weeks reads: 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, 99, 111. It started as a cutesy way to get to where I wanted to be by July, and turned into a mileage program to see if my body could handle high mileage. Ever since I read the running cult book “Once A Runner” my freshman year, I’ve wondered if my body could hold up over 120 miles/week, and this might be the best chance I have at finding out. While it might look like I’m finished at 111, the last step in my Palindrome Mileage Program is 121. If I don’t make it there this week (or even if I do), I’ve got all of August.

What’s it like running the highest mileage of my life in Shanghai? It’s learning to be OK with being gross and disgusting as you hop by thousands of pedestrians every run; it’s like trying to go crazy, running as far as you ever have and consciously deciding “I could go further”; it’s spending your day waiting in between runs; it’s like eating so you can run, making your own food to make sure you’re getting enough protein/calcium, whatever; it’s like this: a curious popping sound started coming from my knee whenever I went too fast without fully warming up and instead of being alarmed, my first thought was that I would be able to better regulate my warm-up this way.

There are several not-so-incredible things about what I’m doing: I’m training in a city with no hills, at sea level, and deciding my own pace day-to-day (though sticking close to a range my coach wants us running at). All this makes hitting high mileage easier and slightly less meaningful. Most serious athletes do their heavy training at high altitude with a team.

There are several incredible things about what I’m doing: I’m putting down lifetime-high mileage from the center of one of the largest, most populated cities in the world, entirely on pavement and without ice baths (to keep my legs from getting injured) during monsoon season in shanghai (heavy pollution + rain = acid rain!). And outside of a monthly e-mail from my coach to the entire team, there’s no one patting my back or cheering me on, though I do get some phenomenal support from the occasional Chinese man on street corners. All this, with a full-time 9-6 job.

Speaking of acid rain I just remembered and looked up an E-mail I sent in 2008 to then-Captain Jake Gallagher:

“I've been in Beijing for a few weeks, but now I'm spending some time backpacking around China.  I just got into Shanghai from Qingdao... Between you and me, I'm afraid that with the blinding smog and all-encompassing pavement in Beijing something in my body is going to give up.  I'm safe from lung cancer for another week and a half until I return to Beijing, but I still only get about 100 meters of soft surface running a week. Then there’s the acid-rain-ensuing monsoon season. The fiya has got to blaze somehow, eh?”

It’s now Tsunami season again in Shanghai and I’m plugging along all the same. I’m still unclear whether the fact that I hold the same attitude as in 2008 makes me extremely proud of my perseverance or scared of my ignorance and stupidity. Either way, this might be the only chance I have to do this sort of training, and I’m taking life up on the offer.

Fear

Traffic in China is all about fear. If you show fear, you get run over. If you don't, you can somehow plow through rush hour traffic untouched. Its like the taxi drivers and businessmen on bikes and clunky busmoblies can smell fear, and expect you to get out the way as soon as they pick up on it. I've resorted to making eye contact, pointing at drivers, and wearing sunglasses all good ways to make cars stop. The only way to run in the city is fearless, else you'll never get anywhere. Maybe the same applies to racing.