Indianapolis Monumental Marathon 2014

In a previous post I described everything about our marathon weekend except the race. This is the post about all 26+ miles and 5+ hours.

Breakfast did not come with our hotel room, so the morning of the race we got up in the dark and ate the yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, zucchini bread, and bananas that I had brought with us. DH took a hot shower and then applied twice as much clothing as he planned to run in. Then we headed downstairs. Here you can see the lobby of our hotel, which was on the start line, full of runners. It is 15 minutes before the start of the race, and they are supposed to be in their corrals. "Hey," said Dear Husband, "they may be insane, but they're not stupid." Temperature at race time: 32 degree Fahrenheit.

Rod Burgundy agrees:
"I immediately regret this decision."

The sun came up while we milled around in the open, too-slow-to-be-seeded corral. Just before the gun sounded, I collected DH's extra layers, then walked along the sidewalk as he approached the starting line. After he took off, I went back to the hotel, deposited his things, picked up my purse, and went back out. I cheered the runners along their course--even surprising DH at the 2.5-mile mark as he rounded a corner--as I made my way across downtown Indianapolis to meet up with DH's parents, who had come to do the "drive and cheer" with me.

The three of us spent the morning driving a big, looping circle around the race course in central Indy. We stopped first at the 13.1-mile mark with a noisemaker, some balloons, and a personalized sign. Some of the other signs were pretty clever: "That seems like a lot of work for a free banana" or "I'm impressed with your stamina: call me!" One guy was offering "free high fives," and a kid had a sign that said "Press here for speed." Click here to see more Super Signs from the race.

In case you were wondering, I don't do marathons. Heck, I don't even run, unless it's on one of those special stair-climbing ellipticals. I have flat feet and bum knees and can only go 15-20 minutes on a treadmill or regular elliptical machine before my feet start burning with nerve pain. I had to give up Zumba and Pi-Yo because the repetitive movements made my knees hurt for days afterwards.

Instead, I cheer. For everybody. Some spectators wait quietly along the course until their runner comes along; I shout and clap for all of them: "Go, go, go! Looking good! That's it: one foot in the front of the other! You can do this--you ARE doing it! Nice form! Run, Forrest, run! So far, so great! I believe in flying unicorns!" That was for the couple in matching unicorn headbands, rainbow tails, and wings. And of course, "Whooooo!" I was hoarse by the time DH had finished the race. Maybe I should take up voice training?

DH accepts a high five from his mother at 13 miles.

Despite it being the day after Halloween there were few runners or spectators in costume. I wore my jester hat with the bells on the tips, carried a wooden noisemaker that is supposed to sound like "crickets," and generally made a noisy fool of myself. When we moved to the ¾ mark (18.5 miles) at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, some of the runners remembered our sign and my silly hat.

Raising the roof at 18.5 miles. A DJ was spinning
rap tunes on the other side of the circle drive in
front of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

DH was making good time, so we closed the circle by driving back to downtown Indianapolis, where we took advantage of $5 event parking at a garage one block from the finish line. ($5 ?!?! Only in Indianapolis. Even football parking in our small town costs $10.) We ate lunch brought from home in the warmth of the car before getting out to stand at the final turn of the race course. The wait was longer than we had anticipated because, as DH explained later, the last fourth of the course involved some serious and unexpected hills that were physically difficult and mentally demoralizing. He ended up having to walk a couple times. And yet, he found the strength in himself to run the last mile, finishing in 4 hours, 40 minutes, and 11 seconds--only 10 minutes behind his goal of 4.5 hours!

Rounding the last corner into the final straightaway
--and looking pretty darn good in stretch pants.

To Journey With You Wherever Life’s Adventures May Take Us

This weekend Dear Husband and I traveled to Indianapolis, Indiana, so he could run in his first marathon, the 7th annual Monumental Marathon. This post provides a quick overview; the next one contains his finishing time and the immortal line, "[marathon runners] are insane, but they're not stupid!"

Race weekend always begins with an expo of vendors. This is where we pick up his race packet and test his timer by waving his bib over a pad hooked up to a computer screen. We also look for a pair of running pants, since we couldn't find his swishy exercise pants, and the weather forecast calls for a wind chill around 20 degrees Fahrenheit. The first and biggest stand we check out offers moderately priced pants that are too big for him, or expensive pants in his size with "muscle-gripping technology" to support his joints and massage his muscles while running--to the tune of 100 bucks. We settle on a low-tech pair of men's black stretch pants for $20.

Then it is on to the pasta feed. Carb-loading the day before a race is a time-honored tradition that usually involves a buffet of pasta and breadsticks, with meat and veggies for those who want them. The organizers need a place to put all those people in downtown Indy on a Friday night, so they set up a big tent with heaters at the finish line. Unfortunately, the weather is not cooperating. It is cold and very windy, and in the photo you can see the tent sides flapping. At one point, the far end of the tent starts to lift up, despite the sandbags on the poles, and suddenly 1, 2, 3 tables overturn like dominoes. The workmen eating at the table behind us get up to hold the tent down, and I put the cap on the bottle of water DH and I are sharing and start making an exit plan. Sure enough, the operations manager shuts down the tent and the pasta feed midway through dinner. We can't believe we dropped $20 a plate (pre-paid) on luke-warm pasta, eaten in life-threatening conditions. Meanwhile, the loudspeakers are playing popular tunes like "Criss Cross"; they should have put on "Fly Me to the Moon."

After dinner, we go back to the hotel to warm up and watch a couple movies. I had packed "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," because it is Halloween after all, and "Happy Feet," because at least one of us needs to have a sense of humor about this whole running 26.2 miles thing. DH did waddle like a penguin after the race, but his feet were NOT happy.

In case you were wondering, this race is called the Monumental Marathon because it starts and finishes near the Soldiers and Sailors obelisk in Monument Circle at the heart of Indianapolis. Constructed 1887-1902, it commemorates the state's participation in various conflicts: that's Victory aka Miss Indiana with a sword, eagle, and "the torch of civilization" on top. Underneath is the Colonel Eli Lilly Civil War Museum. (Both are closed for renovations until further notice.) To the right you can see the day-glo-t-shirted tail of the Kids "Fun Run" 5K going by. The race course loops back to come at the monument from the east before heading north for 10 miles. It then turns southwest and zigzags to the Indianapolis Museum of Art before following the White River State Park trail back into downtown Indy. Although locals gave DH a surprised look when he mentioned afterwards that the hills had been tough, the course elevation map shows some serious hillage, particularly in the second half.

I'll satisfy your curiosity now by saying that Dear Husband completed his first marathon! And we are so proud of him. After he fueled up at the finish line (water, banana, and Steak N Shake chili), we trundled back to our hotel room so he could take a long, hot shower and a nap. Then we went out to dinner to at The Eagle's Nest, a rotating rooftop restaurant where we had celebrated our second wedding anniversary.

The restaurant takes 1 hour and 15 minutes to make one revolution. Some of Indianapolis is scenic to look at, like the Greco-Roman capitol building built in 1878 (see above). Some of the city is not scenic, like the roof of the convention center (built in 1972) and the factories with smokestacks in the background. We could also see Lucas Oil Stadium and the Eli Lilly headquarters. Did you know Lilly was the first company to produce injectable insulin on a large scale?

Dinner was okay: DH had the prime rib, with a big baked potato and (overcooked) asparagus. I ordered the seared lamb rib eye with mashed potatoes and ragout of peas, asparagus, and lamb demi. DH usually eats more slowly than I do, and sure enough this time I had cleared my plate well before he did. The lamb tasted good, but it was really more of a show piece than a dinner serving. (I didn't take a photograph of it because I was trying to spare you my food porn!) Still hungry, I immediately ordered a beet salad, which the server was kind enough to comp us. I wish he could have done something about the wine: $10 for what amounted to half a glass. Just over one revolution later, we skipped dessert and ambled slowly back to our hotel to watch an excellent South African film, Tsotsi.

Sunday morning we were up early again, ate the same cold breakfast, packed our bags, and checked out. The drive home was sunny and uneventful. It was a good marathon weekend. Stay tuned for DH's next 26.2 miler in April 2015!

Editor's note: The title of this blog is a line from our wedding vows.

Crepe-tastic

Ingredients

    * 1-1/4 cups milk

    * 1 cup all-purpose flour

    * 1 egg

    * 1 teaspoon cooking oil

    * 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

    * 1/4 teaspoon salt for savory crepes OR
    * 1 teaspoon vanilla + 1 teaspoon sugar for sweet crepes

 Directions

   1.   Mix up batter as smooth as possible. Flavor as desired. (I made ours plain.)

   2.   Heat a lightly greased small skillet over medium-high heat. Remove from heat. Pour 3 tablespoons of batter into center of skillet. Lift and tilt skillet to spread batter and coat bottom of pan. Return to heat. Cook for a few minutes until light brown. Turn with a spatula, and cook second side until light brown and bubbly.

   3.   Slide finished crepes onto a warm plate. For filled crepes, spoon filling into center; roll or fold crepe while still in the pan; slide carefully onto plate. (Or just make a stack, as illustrated above, with the top crepe folded in half to reveal the filling.) Repeat with remaining batter, greasing skillet and stirring batter if needed. Makes about 12 (8-inch) or 16 (6-inch) crepes.

I can't remember where I found this basic crepe recipe, but I pull it out once a year for variety. I like to make a filling with goat ricotta cheese from our local farmers market--this one is herb and sun-dried tomato flavored. I added canned corn the first night (pictured above). The second night we ate this I extended the filling with chopped fresh broccoli. There is enough batter left for one more meal, but I'm going to have to improvise a filling. Suggestions welcome!

I paired the crepes with a raw kale salad massaged with lemon juice and dressed with 50/50 olive oil-lemon juice with a touch of honey and a generous amount of "hot" chili powder from Turkey. There is also cherry tomatoes, green pepper, and a white radish.

What Medical School Looks Like VIII

217. Sometimes medical school:
          a. looks like yet another multiple-choice question.
          b. tastes like kettle corn
          c. tastes like hot apple cider.
          d. sounds like electronica music.
          e. all of the above.

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Hug o' Tug o' War

"I will not play tug o' war.
I'd rather play hug o' war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins."
~Shel Silverstein

Shel Silverstein was one of the preeminent poets of my childhood (along with Odgen Nach and Anonymous). This verse of his came to mind one night while lying in bed and thinking about my psychiatry patients: I want to hug so many of them. The outpatient encounters I have had so far were too brief to learn about many of the patients' hurts. In in-patient hospital medicine those hurts are usually physical. But in in-patient psychiatry, we spend enough time with them to learn about our patients' real wounds. If psychiatry has taught me anything, it is how cruel human beings can be to each other.

The standard psychiatric interview includes a history of the present illness, the patient's psychiatric history, and demographic information. That includes asking about any abuse or trauma the patient has suffered or is suffering. The stories of abuse and rape are horrific. So are the tales of woe about (near) homelessness, unemployment, lack of help caring for sick or disabled family members, missing disability checks, uninsurance (yes, still), toxic family dynamics, and lack of beds at substance-abuse treatment programs. It makes me want to hug my patients when they leave the ward, as if that could apply a thin layer of armor on them as they head back into unpromising situations without much of a social safety net.

Sometimes I want to hug them for joy, too. It is really gratifying to get a patient on a combination of medications that allows them to think clearly after months of agitation, racing thoughts, and frustration. One of them remarked to me, "Where have I been all this time?"

Of course, psychiatry is a particularly fraught field in medicine, unsure if it is more art or science. Do psychiatrists treat the mind or the brain? With the move toward more biochemical explanations of mental illnesses in the recent DSM-V, many of them feel that they can finally base their treatment plans on a materialistic pathophysiology that other doctors will respect. However, that further stigmatizes the disorders without neurotransmitter or genetic explanations as "all in your head." And not everything that is wrong with a patient can be treated with medication.

This tug-of-war between drugs and counseling is as old as psychiatry itself. Even after establishing psychoanalysis as an approach to mental illness, Sigmund Freud never entirely forgot his neuroscience roots. Tensions flared in the middle of the 20th century with the introduction of the first psychotropic drugs, which worked better than talk therapy for some conditions. "Better" at controlling patients and making them artificially compliant, retorted the likes of Thomas Szasz, who argued that without tests there could be few true mental illnesses. Patch Adams continues to advocate an extreme view of this line of thinking: out with the drugs that are overprescribed and just make Big Pharma rich, in with human connection and understanding. Forget haloperidol, hug your psychotic patient until he's calm.

I don't think I can cure any of my patients with an embrace if they ask for one. But it does seem like a positive human expression that cancels out just a little of their suffering. And who knows, maybe the endorphins it activates help their medication work better.

No Doctors Today, Thank You

~Ogden Nash

They tell me that euphoria is the feeling of feeling wonderful, well, today I feel euphorian,
Today I have the agility of a Greek god and the appetite of a Victorian.
Yes, today I may even go forth without my galoshes,
Today I am a swashbuckler, would anybody like me to buckle any swashes?
This is my euphorian day,
I will ring welkins and before anybody answers I will run away.
I will tame me a caribou
And bedeck it with marabou.
I will pen me my memoirs.
Ah youth, youth! What euphorian days them was!
I wasn't much of a hand for the boudoirs,
I was generally to be found where the food was.
Does anybody want any flotsam?
I've gotsam.
Does anybody want any jetsam?
I can getsam.
I can play chopsticks on the Wurlitzer,
I can speak Portuguese like a Berlitzer.
I can don or doff my shoes without tying or untying the laces because I am wearing moccasins,
And I practically know the difference between serums and antitoccasins.
Kind people, don't think me purse-proud, don't set me down as vainglorious,
I'm just a little euphorious.

p.s.--Beaucoup bonus points for anyone who can write a mental status exam on the speaker of this poem!

Pick a Peck of Perfect Apples

It's a flying monkey in an apple tree! The only thing that's missing is a reference to the pumpkin patch.

One of the nice things about living "in the middle of a cornfield" is that farms are really close. Out at Curtis Orchard, little kids can visit the animals at the petting zoo, big kids can reach the apples in the trees, and folks of all sizes and ages can enjoy the yummy foods and drinks they produce: apple doughnuts, apple butter, apple cider, pumpkin pie...

One theme at Curtis Orchard is all things farm and fall. The other is The Wizard of Oz. If you can't read the sign under the shelf, it reminds you of the Guardian of the Emerald City Gates' declaration: "Nobody gets in to see the wizard, NOT NOBODY NOT NO HOW."

We went through the store first, to get A. a pick-your-own bag for apples, and to get me and Dear Husband doughnuts so we wouldn't starve before lunch. Next we hiked down the row of empire apple trees to the far end, where there were still some apples on boughs within reach, and back. Then we hiked out to the pumpkin patch. A. chose a warty pumpkin, while I opted for a round smooth one. 

Back at the country store, we paid for our pumpkins and picked up several gallons of apple cider and a jar of apple butter. Everything was deposited in the trunk. Then it was back to the Flying Monkey Cafe for lunch. The line was so long we waited half an hour just to order. Thank goodness it was all pretty much ready to go. A. and I each got bratwursts with sauerkraut; DH wanted the pulled-pork sandwich. My meal came with two sides: a broccoli salad with bacon and craisins dripping in mayo dressing, and a large slice of pumpkin bar with cream-cheese frosting that I saved for later.

While we waited, we watched the apple doughnuts being made. Stand mixers prep the batter, which a worker pours into the doughnut maker, on the left. It swings back and forth, plopping rings of batter into the hot vegetable oil. These are carried along by a paddlewheel to be fried and then dried. On the right you can see two doughnuts ready to drop over into the collection funnel. They sell glazed and cinnamon-sugar versions. (Mine was fluffy and light but lacking on topping.) I wonder how many hundreds they must make every day?!

She's Got the Whole World in Her Hands

Today was World Communion Sunday in the United Methodist Church, when we celebrate how communion connects Christians through time and space. You may remember that last year, the creative worship committee RuacH outdid themselves in decorating the altar. That time I danced "Many the Gifts" with two other people.

This year, they decorated the altar with bread, grapes, and dolls from around the world: Thailand, Holland, Guatemala, Japan, Ukraine, and the United State. They asked me to "dance in" the globe during the introit at the start of the service. While the choir sang "Kum Ba Yah," I twirled and curtsied down the aisle, holding the globe by its astrolabe so that it spun with my momentum. Eventually I set it on the stand, gave it a spin, and danced my way out again.

In the middle above you can see my Czech Anna doll in a red skirt and black apron.

Left are parts of my costume. This morning I realized I hadn't given much thought to what to wear. However, earlier this year I inherited my paternal grandparents' Bohemian kroje (click for blog post). So I pulled them out, did a little mixing and matching, and asked friends on facebook to vote for their favorite. By popular consensus, I wrote the usual white leotard and long skirt, with a ribbon sash and a super fancy, beaded and buttoned red vest (back shown here). I also pinned the yellow ribbon over my ponytail.