THIS IS ABOUT AND BY JILL GEER, THE USATF’S BUBBLY, SLIGHTLY NUTTY, “BLONDE BOMBSHELL” MEDIA QUEEN WHO IS KNOWN TO EVERY ATHLETE WHO HAS REPRESENTED THE USA SINCE AT LEAST ATLANTA. GREAT LADY, PREPARING TO RUN IN HER FIRST MARATHON. GOOD LUCK JILL 
“Off The Record”
A Blog by Jill M. Geer
At the Crossroads
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
I’m not exactly the Robert Johnson of first-time marathoners, but after nine months of training, I realize that I am at a crossroads. What is less clear is where any of the roads may take me.
After years of slovenliness and half-hearted running, I formed a Facebook-generated alliance earlier this year with two of my former teammates from the University of Arkansas to run the Bank of America Chicago Marathon.
Since almost the dawn of my running life, I said I never could or would run a marathon. History showed that more than a couple of weeks of 50-mile weeks resulted in breakdowns. I had battled my IT bands for 22 years, and the longest I had ever run was 14 miles … a run that resulted in an IT band implosion so complete and intense that it created a new black hole.
But then I said, if 240-pound, middle-age guys can run a marathon, what the heck is my excuse?
So I embarked.
Everything was peachy keen until early August. I like to think I may have single-handedly turned the economy around by all the stimulus I provided in my endless purchases of Nike clothes and shoes. (Does anybody need an empty orange shoebox? If so, drop me an email.) And by following the Hanson’s training program, I had miraculously avoided IT band issues, patella tendinitis and all my other favorite overuse injuries.
No sooner had I made that observation about my relative good health than the fates punished me.
In the first week of August, the outside of my right calf had a hissy fit. (Not coincidentally, this happened right after a 50-mile week.) It turned out to be my soleus, and I got in under control in a couple of days. I even had a lovely 15-miler five days later. Too bad I then had to do no physical activity at all for two weeks as I limped around Berlin during the World Championships. Ever walk around in lederhosen while nursing a plate of schnitzel, currywurst and a calf injury? It’s not as easy as it sounds.
No sooner had I begun to resign myself to a marathon-free fall than I managed to get back into it, only to be cut down a few weeks later by a strained gastroc … you know, the OTHER calf muscle.
Pain, schmain, I said. So I ran 18 miles. By myself. On a treadmill. With every single step causing pain in both legs – right calf, right ankle, left quad, right plantar fascia.
When I say “pain”, I’m not talking about the “somebody is trying to extort money from me for having sex with subordinates” kind of pain. I’m talking more about the “somebody is attacking me with a baseball bat while their co-conspirator applies thumbscrews and blasts Yoko Ono’s greatest hits” kind of pain.
So I’ve muddled around since then. And I woke up Monday, six days out from the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, with an illness that makes me feel like I’ve haven’t slept for days as glacial sheets of post-nasal junk flows down the back of my throat.
Other than that, I am ready to go!
Since my first injury in early August, I’ve had more time than ever to ask myself, “why the hell are you still trying to do this?” It wasn’t just to rededicate myself to a sport I had neglected, or to focus on myself for a few months in a way that few working mothers can, although those definitely were reasons.
It really has become a test to see how much I can endure; how much I can put my mind over matter; how much I can make the best of a less-than ideal situation. I shouldn’t be trying to do this, which is exactly why I am doing it.
All I know is that during the last two months, whenever I have thought about crossing the finish line, I have to fight back tears. I remember when I first announced to my family, in 1986, that I was going to quit the tennis team and go out for my high school cross-country team. I remember my dad’s well-meaning (and factually accurate response): “Jilly, you’re not a distance runner!”
I remember when I told my parents in 1986 that I was going out for a 3-mile training run, and they (basketball and tennis people) expressed concern about whether I should be running that far.
I remember when my dad nearly cried when he shot a roll of film at the 1987 Wisconsin state high school cross country meet, only to realize he either had the lens cap on or didn’t have film in the camera as he snapped photos of me crossing the line first.
He was my biggest fan.
I remember in 2005, how my dad could only watch as his body failed him. How months of hoping and praying and focusing and keeping a positive outlook could not force his body to overcome something beyond his control.
Running through an injury or four can be hard, but living through a malignant infiltrating glioma in your brain is usually just about impossible, as my dad and Ted Kennedy both discovered.
So as I took painful step after painful step during that pivotal 18-mile run, the gym’s TVs playing live coverage of Kennedy’s funeral, that’s what I thought about. When I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to run a mile that day, much less 18, I put my mind in charge. I took one step at a time, searched for my happy place, did some dime-store meditation and remembered that this was something I could overcome. It wasn’t, after all, brain cancer. I felt that if I got through that run, I could not run at all for the next three weeks and still be OK for Chicago.
Can I summon that kind of focus again? This time, it will be for 26 miles, not 18. And since that 18, I’ve gotten more injured, less aerobically fit, and more fat. Thanks to the physical toll of that that treadmill run, I missed another full week of training. And now I’m sick.
All I can do is try. Hopefully I will feel better come Sunday. I know I will start the race with my friends, Pauline and Joell, and I will hold on for as long as I can. I will take it one step at a time. I know that my husband and son will be there and will support me, regardless of the outcome.
The “race” will be slow. Very slow. I have no doubt that, even if I am well, my body will start to breakdown in a most unpleasant way. Even if I were fully fit and 10 pounds lighter, that breakdown would happen, though in perhaps a less Armageddon-like manner.
But I’ve decided that it will take a fairly catastrophic injury, or an illness so overwhelming that I cannot move, to keep me from finishing. Feeling crappy won’t do it. A chronic injury that is hurting a whole lot but isn’t an actual broken bone or torn muscle won’t do it. Getting tackled by a deranged Irish priest might, but that guy is probably still sitting in an Athenian jail.
I am not prepared to sell my soul to the devil to be able to finish this journey, but I am prepared to put every bit of it into my effort.
I might fail. But I can’t fail to try.