If you look at my race photos, this is what you see:

And this:

This is about as close as I get to a smile when I race:

and I think I’m only semi-smiley because you probably take in more oxygen with your mouth in that position.

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As much as I’d love my own personal cheerleader to accompany me on every single run (or hell, wherever I go), for the most part, coaches and run-of-the-mill athletes don’t get together all that often. I email my coach almost every day, to the extent that he might think I’m stalking him, which isn’t altogether untrue– just not icky and psychotic. In any event, he doesn’t seem skeeved out by me because Jack very generously offered to meet me for a track workout yesterday morning, since I’ve been doing speed work alone on my treadmill for a month. As entertaining as Ellen Degeneres is for company on these runs, she doesn’t usually respond when I yell out, “What was that split?!”

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2009 is so, well… 2009. And I intend to leave it there. Three major flops, and I want nothing more from the Year of the Earth Ox. 2010 is the Year of the Tiger, which seems auspicious for any runner, especially those with a fondness for Rocky. But I’m a Snake–self-centered, competitive, opinionated, and stubborn, according to the Chinese Zodiac site, which curiously cut out all references to Snakes also being irresistably hot. Nevertheless, these charming personality traits no doubt convey I’m a total catch constantly turning away men.

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I may have been a year shy of being a fetus when my coach won the Boston Marathon, but Jack Fultz gets me. He coaches with references to Goethe on commitment and Csikzentmihalyi on flow theory. As if that wasn’t enough, the man has placed a chocolate-chip cookie in the hand of Mr. Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen. I love cookies. I love Bruce. I love Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi. Which is why Jack and I totally agree that I am giving up racing from here on out.

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