Carrying Curtis

"Brunhilda." Melodie panted as we jogged past the 6 mile mark of our 16 mile run. It was her third attempt at the 16 miler.
Ever since qualifying for Boston in July even I can't deny I'm a pretty good runner, even a well informed, knowledgeable run coach. So I had no qualms about helping Melodie train for her first marathon. We found her a good plan. We moved sensibly through it. We got completely stuck at mile 16.

"Mile 16." I smiled remembering my first 16 miler. "It makes you a runner. And not just someone who runs, but that special breed of runner. A Distance Runner."

Melodie nodded.

"Capital D."

Nod.

"Pretty scary, huh?". I've been a runner now for a couple of years, doing what I've come to understand is a pretty common tightrope walk between seeing yourself as a runner, a die hard, a super hero blazing past all those couch dwellers, padded pants wearers (my cycling friends and I have an ongoing discussion over something I call, "pansy pants"), and other various and sundry painless-but-expensive-and-or-ineffective exercisers, and seeing yourself as a complete failure, a flop, a lunatic just for contemplating something this hard that you will clearly never, ever be successful at. Ever.

What Melodie and I were currently dealing with was something I've come to call my Runner's demon. The thing that sits on your shoulder for the first mile or so of any run.

It weighs 14 tons.

It has an annoying whiney voice that starts with, "I'm tired. My foot hurts. I have a head ache." And spends at least the first mile of any run, race, whatever giving me a whole litany of reasons I SHOULD not run. I should NEVER run. I should pack it in. Get my butt back on my couch with my sack of Cheetos and my beer and pizza and roll up my sleeves to lift nothing heavier than the remote control.

It's pretty ugly, too. It has a poorly groomed beard and it's a bit paunchy and balding and just has the LOOK of a guy who gets cheesed off at the waiter when his food doesn't have just the right balance of sage and dill.

Its name is Curtis.

In races Curtis shows up at whatever mile my adrenaline rush induced start begins to wear off and a bunch of emaciated, muscle mass free "runnery types" with their under armour and their $200 shoes and their "Boston Marathon 1995" T-shirts and their fancy compression socks start to pass me right and left.
They're REAL runners. Curtis tells me. YOU'RE just a fat girl on a fit-kick.

I *huff* just *puff* qualified for Boston. I tell Curtis.

You failed your PE fitness test every year from third grade onward.

It's *huff* different *puff* now. I'm an athlete. *huff* I'm a trainer. *Puff* I'm certified.

HA. Certifiable, anyway. You're no good. You're washed up. That was a short lived running career. Pack it in. Go home. Get some Cheetos on the way.

Last Sunday's race was the worst yet.

Just lay down here in the road. Curtis kept saying. All the real runners will jump over. No worries.

It was mile 9 of a half marathon. I'd already dropped back 3 pace groups and wasn't even sure I was going to finish ahead of my PR from a year ago. Curtis had lost the battle at Santa Rosa half marathon, Redding marathon, San Francisco Marathon and half a dozen other local races I'd won or at least placed in over the last year or so. And it turned out he was pretty angry. He was working at me with a vengeance.

As I passed under the overpass I looked up. That was when I knew Curtis was beat. Melodie, my sweet, beloved Melodie was there, clearly carrying her newly named runner demon, Brunhilda just as I always carried Curtis. And keeping up RIGHT there with her pace group. Right on target. Brunhilda and all. I sped up. I met her at the finish line. I way behind goal and Melodie right on target.

After the race Melodie and I talked a blue streak about all the ways in which Brunhilda and Curtis had tried to foil our respective races. I could see Curtis's trickery stretching out behind me like a great big ca 1987 stack of scruncis trying their best to pull me back. For decades Curtis had told me I was a fatso. When I was little even Curtis was there, telling me I couldn't dance. I had two left feet. I would never be good at running. Or volley ball. Or tennis. Or anything.

I could spend days, weeks, years probably figuring out where and how I'd managed to find Curtis. Maybe I was born with him. Or maybe the mean kids at school or my grandpa Pop who called me Alley Cat when he liked me and "Fat Cat" when he didn't. Which was most of the time. But it's not about where he came from, it's about how to tell him where to go.

Curtis is the same voice that tells me one little donut won't make a difference. The same voice that says I should stay home when it rains and that the other dancers at my favorite dance club think I have two left feet. Curtis tells me what I can't do and why and always wants to make sure that whatever I TRY to do I know it's against his better judgment.

Curtis is the voice of self doubt.

And what I have to do is remember that Curtis, in his annoying way, is looking out for me. Without Curtis I'd have tried to fly off the roof that time when I was 3 instead of off the top bunk. Without Curtis I'd have married a Bavarian Farm boy, had 7 kids and spent every day of my life waking at five to milk cows and make a fresh batch of Bavarian Blue.

Curtis has saved my life a hundred times. Even though he is a pest. And what's more, he doesn't seem to have a counterpart. I don't have, as I have a voice of self doubt, a voice of self faith.

That voice, the voice that argues with Curtis and tells me I CAN run 16 miles or finish a half marathon at 90 minutes or dance a mean Merengue even though I'm about as Latin as Cleopatra, that voice of self faith?

That voice has to be my own.