slowing down and filling up

marathon training and italian dinners

Much like every other young girl in the Midwest, I played soccer on my elementary school’s team. Every fall weekend in first and second grade, I donned my Springmyer Elementary School Dragons jersey, the maroon and gold bringing out the natural flush in my cheeks, and headed out to the soccer fields to run. I say “to run” and not “to play soccer,” because the assistant coach of my team, when explaining the position I was assigned, simply told me my job was to run up and down the side of the field. I was given strict guidance to go nowhere near the ball, so I didn’t. This confused my mom, and she often asked why I wasn’t a more aggressive player; I’m playing my position, was my constant refrain. This became an issue if the ball were to come toward the side of the field, my running area, as it was wont to do during a game. Anxiety pulsed through my veins when this happened, unsure if I should go after it or continue the simple choreography I’d been perfecting at each practice. S, the tallest and best player on the team, made sure to tell me, in so many words, I was not to lose the game for the team. Which is to say, I was to make myself sparse, to disappear.

Although I was technically on the soccer team, I didn’t consider myself a part of the group at all. Soccer practice was an obligation to a team that claimed no ownership over me. I felt not unlike a vampire, needing an invitation to the team I was already on, but never being asked in, so I engaged in a singularly solitary act. I wasn’t learning how to play a sport, but how to run, so I got quite fast. When field day came around, I outran S, to finish first in the 50-yard dash, thus awarded a special running certificate. S scoffed and glared at me as I accepted my award. I’d done my best to stay out of her way, and by doing so, I’d gotten in her way.

This pattern of using physical activity in an attempt to disappear that started as a child would not end once I stopped playing soccer. In third grade, I started dancing, an art form that requires the Sisyphean task of simultaneously taking up less and more space. I spent hours staring at my body in mirrored studios, seeing the way the teachers treated the dancers whose legs were longer, whose arms were more lithe, and whose baby fat had vanished to reveal structure and angles to their bodies. A mirror, I learned, is less a much a reflection of what’s really there and more our deepest insecurities projected back at us. It’s no wonder it’s made of a fragile material and that breaking is universally considered a bad omen.

In the summer of 2020, I found running again, a sport that had, for me, long exemplified the aloneness Covid forced us into. A mask covering my face, I ran for miles all over Brooklyn and Manhattan, trying to rid myself of the anxiety the pandemic had made a part of my very being. It was a part of me that, no matter how far I ran, I couldn’t purge. I ran because I was attracted to its almost punishing nature. During a time when we were all forced to cease activity, I wanted proof I had accomplished something, and it ended up coming in the form of foot blisters and burning thighs. I began to train for a half marathon that was canceled due to the pandemic only a few weeks before it was slated to happen. I’d committed to this long distance because I didn’t want to slow down as we were expected to do at that time. I was deeply afraid of slow, so I ran quick. So quick in fact, that my body couldn’t keep up with the long distances half marathon training requires, resulting in a foot injury.

Three years later, Evan’s death and the months that followed led to another ceasing of activity. I saw everything around me begin to disappear. My apartment, a home two people had built, didn’t feel appropriate for just one person to occupy. My social life mostly existed in the form of FaceTime calls to my best friend across the country. I didn’t have structure in my day to day outside of the copious amounts of coffee I drank each morning to fill my body with some kind of warmth. I was being told, in no uncertain terms, that my former life was no more, but here I was, trying to exist in it. So I decided to run. Two months before the LA Charity Half Marathon, I committed to a team, and a few days later, I laced up my shoes and set out to run 9 miles. I didn’t have a choice to ramp up slowly; I needed to escape my reality before I realized what I was doing. When I got home from that first long run, I turned into a puddle of emotion for the rest of the day. I didn’t have a ton of energy reserve as it’d been used up from months of grief. I hadn’t fed myself the way I should have. Coming back to an empty home after biting off more than I could chew felt like a new chapter. I was doing a Big Hard Thing and I was doing it alone.

That first long run taught me much about running, which taught me much about myself. I not only didn’t want to slow down (in life or on my run), but I didn’t know how. I’d been keeping my head down for so many months because looking around and taking it all in had become overwhelming. I’d thought of running in a similar way; we train to get faster and become better. Slowing down would mean going back and that wasn’t an option for me. I’d been treating life the same way since Evan got sick. I needed to get work done faster in order to spend time with Evan. We needed to experience everything we wanted before it was too late. Then Evan died and I felt like someone had pulled the gravity lever. I needed to get two feet on the ground and once I did, I needed to run as fast as I could toward a destination I couldn’t even see. During the course of my training, the fog started to lift ever so slightly. Each Sunday, I would wake up and fuel for a long run, then head out to the Hollywood Reservoir to run the loop. 8 miles. 9 miles. 10 miles. 12 miles. Each week I was shocked at what slowing down allowed my body to do. I’d talked for years about running 13.1 miles and had made a promise to Evan to make it happen. Stopping wasn’t an option and the only way I could keep going was to slow down.

There’s a tradition in running where the night before a long race, runners carbo-load on pasta to have a store of energy for the next day. Admittedly, I’ve historically not eaten a lot of Italian food. It’s not that I don’t find it delicious, but its decadent nature has never been comfortable for me. There’s a dissatisfaction I feel sitting in front of a big bowl of pasta; the texture and ease with which it can be eaten (as opposed to, the crunch of a leafy green, for example) is challenging for my still-disordered brain. I’d downed the kool-aid of the training, so I wanted to fully commit to the pre-race Italian dinner. The night before the race, I went to Little Dom’s in Echo Park with my mom and one of my best friends who came down from San Francisco.

Little Dom’s is on the corner of Hillhurst and Avocado in Los Feliz and happened to be the first restaurant Evan worked at in LA. It’s is one of those restaurants where you can’t just stroll in on a Saturday night without a reservation and expect to wait less than an hour for a table. Its mahogany banquettes, dark wood, limited space, and indulgent Italian menu makes diners feel like they’re far away from the uber health conscious city of Los Angeles. We ordered the way one should the night before running a race: several courses and lots of carbs. As we ate Bub and Grandma’s bread with salted butter (if you’re not an Angelino, get hip to this bread) and strozzapreti with mushroom bolognese, I had never been so grateful to be sitting at a table covered in pasta. The last time I’d eaten there was with Evan and this time, I was eating there because of Evan. It was because of him I was running the race. It was him that brought us all together that day and allowed us to slow down and savor the food and each other.

There are instructions for how to order on the menu at an Italian restaurant menu, not unlike any process that’s not meant to pass quickly. Antipasti, the first course, are small bites. Primi comes next; it’s heavier than the first course and typically does not contain meat, but may contain more luxurious ingredients. Next is Secondi, the meat, fish, or vegetable main dish, and most expensive area of the menu. Lastly, Dolci, which are desserts. The menu slowly builds, ending with the satisfaction of something sweet, much like my marathon training. I hardly think the people who began the tradition of a pasta dinner the night before a marathon thought much further than the science behind what your body might need, but it’s a metaphor that I can’t unsee.

It’s no wonder to me this tradition is one runners have kept alive. Italian is a cuisine that, not unlike marathon training, begs you to slow down and be in the company of others. The rich flavors of an Italian dish washed down with a bittersweet cocktail demands you to be in the moment. It’s a cuisine that often requires the company of others simply because the portions require help to finish. In recent years, Italy has become less of a destination with staple dishes and more of an aesthetic. It’s a country that nearly every food show has visited. It was the set of White Lotus season 2. It’s where the wealthy go to summer (those wealthy enough that “to summer” is a verb). Ian MacAllen, author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became America, notes that people are drawn to “collecting” experiences, and an Italian product such as amaro, with its hundreds of variations, “really lends itself to that.”

Waking up the morning after eating at Little Dom’s, I felt prepared. I knew my body was capable of what was ahead and I was eager to get started. Though in the grand scheme of running, 13.1 isn’t too terribly long of a distance, it was about more than the mileage for me. It was the culmination of months of processing. It was a promise I made to Evan, which is to say is was a promise I made to myself because he is an inescapable part of my being. It had started as an attempt to disappear and ended with me finding so much more than I anticipated. I ran through Echo Park, where Evan and I got engaged, then Silver Lake, where I spent endless weekends, then Los Feliz, my first home away from Cincinnati. Potholes that could puncture my tires did little but remind me of the sordid love affair I have with this city as I ran over them on foot. I was reminded of the people that make up Los Angeles as they came out in droves to cheer on the runners, in all their earnest wanting to be a part of something. I was one of them. I too was a part of something that day.

Less than a week later, I found myself sitting at a booth at Donna’s in Echo Park, with a plate of chicken parmesan, chicken marsala, a whipped ricotta and citrus salad, and the best plate of spaghetti I’d ever eaten on the table in front of me. I was having Italian food for dinner for the second time in only five days, when I previously hadn’t eaten it in many months. I was far from a soccer field in Cincinnati, but the running away that started then brought me to this table. It taught me to live fully in my body. It taught me that, try as I might to disappear, no amount of running would allow it. Experiences, like flavors, are much more enjoyable when we slow down and take it all in.