Three weeks to the marathon, a German shepherd in the Atacama Desert, and preparing for awe

It’s three weeks to the NYC Marathon, my ninth time. The heavy lifting of this training block is nearly banked, and this is the part of the calendar where the work changes. Less building and more trusting.

I know this stretch all too well; the legs get restless and the mind gets loud, incessant. Did I do enough? What if the legs say NO MORE at mile 20? What if, what if… My brain is very good at “what ifs”; it has had years of practice.

Eight years ago, three weeks before the Atacama Desert, I wrote that when it came to my choices on the challenging ultra course ahead, my brain got 48% of the vote, my body got 51%, and the last 1% went to everything else: the weather, the race organizers, my new friends to be. I still like that math, but I’m not sure my brain has ever accepted its 48.

The Atacama, Chile, October 2018: my second 4 Deserts race with Racing the Planet. 155 miles, seven days, self-supported, meaning I carried everything I needed on my back. It is where I learned and coined the phrase “Pocket Time.” Here’s how I describe it in the book:

From Mental Laundry, Chapter 22 · Pockets of Time

Straight road ahead of you? Run it. Do not walk a road that can be run. Every minute you run on that flat stretch is a minute you are banking for later. You are pocketing time.

Checkpoint ahead? Do you really need to stop, take off your pack, and sit down? No. You fill the water bottle. You eat the bar standing up. You keep moving. …

… Reach into your pocket. The time is there. You banked it. … The hard section does not own you. You already paid for it before it arrived.

Push push push. Pocket pocket pocket.

My current NYC Marathon training is Pocket Time on a longer clock. Every early alarm, every rainy morning ladder in Central Park, every run I didn’t want to do but did anyway. All of it went into my pockets. They are full, and my job now is to believe it, trust in it.

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The Atacama taught me something else about the hard sections (hell, let’s call it what it is: brutal), and it’s the lesson I most need this month. It happened on Day 3 of the race.

From Mental Laundry, Chapter 18 · The Dog in the Valley of (Noone’s) Death

So there I was, slogging through the Valley of Death.

This is its actual name. … I had been chuckling to myself about this as I entered it, hoping it would not get naming reinforcement on my account.

Little did I know that foreshadowing had occurred. …

And then, in the distance: a sound.

A deep rumble. A bark. A big one.

Slog slog. Hmmm. I gave myself time to process. Am I hallucinating? Entirely possible. … The sound repeated. Growl. Mean. Not a hallucination.

I turned my head.

Far in the distance, requiring extreme strain of vision to make out through the heat shimmer, there appeared a giant German shepherd. Black and tan. Running with every bit of his considerable size, in a perfectly straight line, aimed at me. No ambiguity about the direction. No ambiguity about the intent. … The dog appeared large. The dog appeared mad. The dog appeared entirely determined to deliver all of that energy directly onto my person.

“Danger Will Robinson!” I muttered, reaching into 1960s science fiction for perspective.

My pace picked up. Crunch crunch becoming whoosh whoosh.

My brain, meanwhile, was running its own emergency protocol. I am going to face a dogfight in the middle of the desert. In the Valley of MY Death. Not a single soul within shouting distance in any direction. Just me and one pissed-off beast closing the gap between us with alarming efficiency.

The survival trivia started flooding in.

Alpha. Be big and mean, stand tall, stare him in the eye. Yeah. Right. I am five foot five in trail shoes and I have been running for three days.

Food. Do I have a steak in my rucksack. (The humor, at least, was still running.) I would have settled for kitty treats.

Weapon. I pulled out my trekking poles. Some type of potential advantage. Possibly.

Out of pure running habit, I looked down at my GPS watch.

My pulse, which during a normal ultra stage runs at around 130 beats per minute tops, had gone to a chest-imploding 205.

I looked back at the dog. He was almost upon me. His barks rattling the cages of my soul.

The heart rate pinged another 10 higher.

I was scared. … What do I do. OMG. WHAT DO I DO??

Spoiler: I survived. Help arrived out of the heat shimmer on a small motorcycle; the shepherd went home with his family, and I laughed so hard I had to slow down. That day, the valley got a new name: the Valley of Noone’s Death, certainly not mine. The full rescue, including a small sidekick dog with equally strong opinions, is in the book.

The most ferocious thing in the desert became the thing that lifted me for the rest of the day.

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Epictetus put it this way: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them.”

Mark Twain, or whoever actually said it, put it better: “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”

So, just stop it. Stop overthinking the bad stuff and creatively imagining what could go wrong.

This is my training now. Not more miles, a steadier mind. When something comes barreling at me on November 1, a cramp on the Queensboro, a wall at mile 20, rain sideways on First Avenue, I want to meet it braced for wonder and awe (and hopefully some humor) instead of disaster. The worst case gets a seat on the next rocket to outer space. The best case gets a seat on the curb with a marathon sign, complete with glitter, stickers and bright neon colors (stay tuned for my upcoming post in the series about NYC Marathon signs).

I am packing the usual for this year’s marathon: Tailwind, Body Glide, knuckle lights. And a sense of humor, because it weighs nothing, takes up no room, and I still most often forget to pack it. Nine marathons in, I still choose to approach each one with beginner’s mind, so there is awe, wonder, and a lot of fun.

Full pockets. Open eyes. Bring on the dog.

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This is the second in a short series from Mental Laundry: Notes from the Back of the Pack, following Two Notes at Once from the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. Next, in time for race week, the spectator posters and signs from my past NYC Marathons. Then Lapland and Patagonia. Follow along here, or on Camera Dark Notes, my Substack, so you don’t miss out.

♫ HAVE A LISTEN, because I always love to include a soundtrack: “Three and One,” NYJAZZ Initiative. Rob’s music (yes, my talented husband; I am a lucky girl) is written in 7/4, a time signature that keeps you counting, which is exactly what Pocket Time does.

And here’s a rabbit hole to the Mental Laundry website with more about the book. Thanks for being curious.

What is the dog barreling at you this week? Tell me in the comments.

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This essay first appeared on Camera Dark Notes at Substack.