Chapter 22: Long Running

Tuesday, April 5, 2005

I woke at 5:30 feeling surprisingly rested. I'd thought I might be too tired to run after so much sex and so little sleep, but I felt fine. I quickly changed, wrote a "Gone Running" note on a sticky, stuck it on the outside of my bedroom door, and headed out.

I did some warm-ups because my soccer coach makes a big issue about them, then started the course I had planned. Roughly a mile, I guessed, in a loop that ended back at home. It had some small inclines to test myself on, and I could run it the other way around for some variety. The first loop I used mostly as a warm up. The sling quickly became a nuisance so I tried jogging with my arm out of it, which worked much better.

When I was warmed up, I stopped facing a level stretch of the street, got into position for a sprint start, and then took off as fast as I could.

I didn't have a stopwatch or an accurate measure of distance, but I was hopefully expecting a substantial change, so eyeballing it should be good enough.

Both my eyeballs agreed that my sprint had been nothing special. I thought I'd run well, but not exceptionally so. There were bound to be plenty of guys at school who could've beaten me.

I tried sprints under a variety of conditions: uphill, downhill, and flat. Short, medium and long sprint distances. My impressions were the same: I was good, but certainly not great.

I was quite disappointed that there hadn't been any dramatic improvement. I hadn't expected the same sort of improvement that I seemed capable of in lovemaking, compared with what I vaguely understood was sexually normal for guys, based mostly on TV sitcom jokes. My sexual ability was because of go-softs and there wasn't any equivalent ability for running. Go-soft was the conscious control of a normally subconsciously controlled body part, and running didn't offer anything like that.

Oh well, if sprinting wasn't on the cards, I'd try some long-distance running, even though there were no subconsciously controlled body parts in that either. I had to do something to kill the time until breakfast, so it might as well be running the loop. Maybe something more useful would occur to me while I was out here.

I got into a rhythm and just jogged around the loop without pushing it or difficulty. After a couple of loops that were no strain at all, I thought that I should increase my speed. After another loop that didn't fatigue me, I increased it again.

There were a couple of small uphill sections during which I started feeling a little tired, but that feeling disappeared shortly after cresting the hills. Otherwise I felt no tiredness, so I sped up again.

The uphill fatigue got worse and took longer to fade away after the hill. I'd been trying to maintain a fixed speed, but I began suspecting I might do better if I maintained a fixed effort by slowing on the uphill sections. I increased my basic pace yet again, trying to maintain that exact effort on the hills.

I completed another loop with no sign of tiredness, so I sped up again. I was now going quite a lot faster than I'd expected to be able to maintain for several miles, and I seemed to be maintaining it just fine.

Another jogger came in from a side street to join me. I was interested that he had to speed up to match me. We jogged along, talking ("I haven't seen you out here before", "No, it's my first time"; that sort of thing). I noticed that he was panting while he was talking, and that I was not. I didn't know how far he'd already come, but surely I'd come far enough by now that I should be breathing harder.

Soon he said, "Too fast for me," and slowed up to let me pull away.

#2: <This is getting interesting.>

After another three loops, including another speed increase, I started experiencing difficulty maintaining my pace. I forced myself to maintain it, but I got increasingly tired so I dropped down to a slow jog to recover. When I no longer felt any fatigue, I sped back up to a pace that felt just under the previous attempt. I started feeling a bit of fatigue, so I dropped back half a notch, and that felt comfortable. I ran several loops at that level of effort, and didn't seem to get tired, but if I sped up just a little, I could feel the fatigue start to accumulate.

I dropped back to the fastest, non-fatiguing pace, and I kept running loops. I kept waiting for my body to run out of endurance but it didn't happen. It seemed that I could run at this effort level forever. For the distance I was covering, I was running FAST. Not super-fast; maybe 60 to 65% of my sprinting speed. I had the impression that my sprinting speed wasn't anything special, but maintaining 60% of it for a long time was starting to look very special indeed. I realized this was how I felt during sex (2 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours; no problem!). I couldn't see how the two exercises could be related, but I seemed to have abnormal endurance at both of them.

Another runner joined me. A very fit looking guy who seemed determined to stay with me.

He recognized it when we started repeating my loop, and he gasped, "You running this circuit?"

"Yeah."

"How many?"

"I don't know, I don't count. I'm just running for fun."

"How many already?"

"I'm not sure."

"Guess."

"Maybe fifteen or twenty, I don't know."

"Today?"

"Yes."

"This pace?"

"Yeah, mostly."

"{Groan}." He dropped back after that.

I ran until I was my normal wakeup time, finishing with a warming-down jog and walk back home. I let myself in and walked down the hall to the shower. I didn't feel strained at all, which made it a very interesting morning. It looked like "finding my limits" had to be treated more seriously than before, especially because I had no idea why I should be able to run without an apparent distance limit.

When the girls arrived for breakfast, Mom told me, "When I got home yesterday, Carol told me off for being hard on you yesterday morning. She said you were 'a wonderful human being who definitely wasn't mistreating Julia'. It's not often Carol feels strongly enough about something to tell me off. She told me about your staying to reassure her rather than going to Julia's. I'm very pleased that reassuring Carol was that important to you."

"What I did was nothing much, just a little reassurance like you said. What Carol did was FAR better! She put a considerable amount of thought into convincing me about something important to me. It was entirely for my benefit; not hers. I was VERY impressed by her intelligence and caring. And she also volunteered to tell you off too, for which she deserves great praise, haha. I've always thought Carol was a lovely person, but yesterday she jumped way up in my opinion and blew me away with how nice she is."

I'd been looking at Mom while I was talking, but I looked at Carol now. She was bright red and looking down, but I could see that she was smiling. Then I remembered that she had self-esteem problems because of the asshole that'd rejected her, so I stood up from my only-just-started breakfast - which is not the sort of sacrifice I make lightly - and walked around to the other side of the table where Carol sits. I put my one and a half useful arms around her, as best I could while she was sitting, and said, "Thank you very much for being such an incredible sister and wonderful person. I am very lucky to have your friendship."

Carol burst into tears. Happy tears though. I'm learning: a few days ago tears from a female would've made me a helpless wreck, but now I can even categorize them! She leaped to her feet and ran crying to her room. It looked otherwise, but I thought I'd done good.

Mom asked me, "That was a bit over the top, wasn't it?"

"No it wasn't. I never realized how much Carol cared for me until yesterday. She tried very hard and very well to help me. She was fantastic. I couldn't ask for a better sister." I realized I might have insulted Donna, and gave her a quick look, but she seemed very happy so I left it alone.

Mom said, "Well Carol spent yesterday afternoon telling me how nice you are, and you spend this morning telling me how nice she is. I must say it is great to see you two get on so well these days."

"The pleasure is mine."

Mom continued, "The other thing Carol couldn't stop talking about was having a sleepover with Julia."

"Yes, Julia's very happy for Carol to visit and even suggested the sleepover, which I thought was pretty cool of her. It won't be for a few days though because Julia's very sore and will probably miss a day or two of..." About this time I realized that my mouth had just created a BIG problem for me.

The temperature of the room plummeted as Mom's face turned to gray stone, glaring RIGHT at me, "She's sore AGAIN! She's going to miss school! And after I warned you last time. I can't believe that a son of mine..."

Mom was getting REALLY upset, so I had to act or God knows what sort of punishment she might inflict on me! "MOM! STOP! You have to STOP. It's not like it sounds. Call Vanessa or Prof. Call them now! They're okay with it, they REALLY are."

Not wanting to wait, I reached for the handset, but Mom GRABBED it from my hand and dialed Julia's number herself. I was surprised she knew it, but now wasn't the time to ask about that. Mom was madder than I think I've ever seen before. She was SERIOUSLY pissed!

"Hello Vanessa, my son just told me that he beat up your daughter AGAIN last night and I've called to ... Sorry, what was that? ... It may well have been Julia's fault but that doesn't excuse him from ... What do you mean he had no choice? ... Prof wants to talk with me, well okay..."

During the rest of the conversation Mom was mostly silent, just an occasional "Okay" or the like.

Dad was looking at me with his eyebrows raised. I was curious too, about: (a) whether I would live, and (b) would resuming eating my breakfast inflame Mom.

After a couple of minutes, Mom said, "Okay, bye."

Mom turned to Dad and I, saying, "Prof said, there wasn't time to explain properly, but they know exactly what happened, exactly why, and they would've been disappointed in Mark if he'd done any different. As it is they're very proud of him. Then he said that if we didn't want Mark anymore, he'd be over in a flash to adopt him, although that'd mean he could no longer marry Julia which would disappoint Julia and Vanessa something fierce. Then he told me to 'Listen to my son because he knew what he was doing.' If I didn't know that family I'd think they were all insane. How can they allow their daughter to get so badly treated that she's going to miss school?"

Mom had intended it as a rhetorical question, but I knew the answer would work well so I replied, "If I had refused to do something she had every right to insist I do, then I would've been robbing her of the learning necessary to make better decisions in the future."

Mom hadn't tracked that, "Huh?"

"Her body, her choice, her consequences, her right. The Williamses are very big on personal responsibility. This was Julia's responsibility. She got a lesson by her own choice, and she'll learn."

"Well I don't know what to think. If anyone did that to one of my girls, I'd kill them."

"In that case you don't understand what I did. The Williamses don't want to kill me do they?"

"You hurt Julia, badly."

"No I didn't, Mom. Julia hurt Julia. It's all about personal responsibility. Prof told me in the car on the way back here that he'll make sure Julia apologizes to me for hurting me."

"SHE has to apologize to YOU?"

"Yes, she has to take responsibility for hurting me."

"How did she hurt you?"

"By making me help her hurt herself."

Mom gave herself a shake. "Okay, I don't understand this. To my mind you hurt her, but the Williamses and you seem confident that what happened was okay."

"It wasn't 'okay'; it was right. Talk with Prof, he's good at explaining things like this."

Mom gave up. "I think I'll go check on Carol."

After she left, and I was safely back in my seat eating my breakfast, Dad observed, "It's not often I see your mother out of her depth."

"That's how you learn to swim."

Dad looked at me quite strangely, and before he could say anything, I thought a lightening of the mood was in order, "Dad, I've gone from never having a girlfriend to going out with a beautiful 16-year old girl who worships the ground I walk on. I've been out of my depth continuously since Friday night. I am now VERY familiar with 'sink or swim'."

Dad chuckled and all was well.

Donna spoke up, "Can I ask about something normal?"

#3: <It'd make a nice change.>

Dad, "Sure, pumpkin."

"Mark, you had a sign on your door saying you'd gone running. When you go again can I come with you please?"

"That'd be great. What sort of running do you want to do?"

"How do you mean?"

"Like sprints, long distance, hills, cross-country, or what?"

"I just like running. I'd like to go running with you because we don't goof around so much anymore."

"We don't?"

"No, you goof around with Julia all the time now."

"In that case I'm making a mistake. I'll find time to goof off with you. And we can definitely go running together. When do you want to go?"

"Whenever you do."

"Let's go tomorrow morning then?"

Donna smiled happily.

"I'm pretty fast though, you might have trouble keeping up."

Donna laughingly told me, "Now you're being silly. No one can beat me at running." She's not too far wrong. She wins running races; in her age group of course, as she's only twelve. And my memories of the times we've run anywhere ("Race you to the store!") are always of her getting the first ice cream. This could be interesting.

"Okay, see you at 5:30 tomorrow morning."

"{Gulp}, 5:30?"

"Let's make it 6 then?"

"No, we'll do it at your time."

"I don't have 'a time'. I've only been out running once, just this morning. We can go any time. The idea is to have fun and 5:30 is obviously not fun for you, so we'll make it 6. No problem; we're just goofing off together."

"You've only been running once and you think you can run faster than me. You ARE silly." I took that as confirmation of 6am. I had a feeling I wasn't going to be the one feeling silly at 7am.

Mom and Carol had returned near the end of Donna and my conversation. As Carol was sitting down I said, "How are you, beautiful, okay now?"

Carol looked at Mom and said, "See?"

I looked at Mom to explain the puzzle that was a girl's thoughts.

Mom explained, "Carol likes the way you are so nice to her, and I see you are. It is very nice to see."

"It's very easy to be nice to Carol, she is..." Mom held her hand up.

"If you start complimenting Carol again, she's going to burst into tears again and miss her breakfast. The car must be nearly here as it is."

I thought it probably was a good idea to lighten the mood, so, "In the last week or so, I've noticed that girls do a lot of bursting. I'm going to have to start carrying around some handkerchiefs just like Prof said. And tomorrow morning Donna is going to burst a gut trying to keep up with me."

"Am not, you goof."

"Will too, goofball."

The car arrived a couple of minutes later, and there was the usual mini-chaos. Donna was first out the door as always, and into the front seat of the car. I think she prefers front seats because they arrive at the destinations a second or two before the back ones.

I followed Donna out but Carol was delayed by Mom giving her some snack bars as she'd missed most of her breakfast.

I threw my bag into the car. Without thought it just seemed right to wait and hold the car door open for Carol, as a gentleman should. She smiled at me as she entered and sat, saying, "To what do I owe this honor?"

I was closing the door, so held my answer until I had gotten in the other side. "Because I have realized, especially after yesterday, that I have not been appreciating you enough."

"You appreciate me all the time."

"Not enough."

For a second I thought she might have another burst, but she held it back. She did reach over and put her hand on top of the back of mine. I turned mine over, and we held hands all the way to school. It was nice.

Several times on the way to school Donna turned around to talk with us. She saw our hands and seemed perfectly fine about it.

Julia was not at school.

I went to the office and got her class schedule for the next two days. In the classes I shared with her, I made sure I made good notes; much fuller than I normally do these days as my memory seems quite a lot better than it used to be.

For the other classes, I made sure I was in them when they started, announced I was Julia Williams' boyfriend - which still gave me a buzz to say - that she was off school today, and asked for someone to makes notes and collect material for me to pass on to her. The school had created a large mailbox for me by the office, for the next year's teachers to use as I hardly ever went to their classes. I asked whoever had volunteered to take notes for Julia to drop the notes in my mailbox. These announcements meant I was late to my classes, but my teachers cut me a LOT of slack these days. This was the first time I'd used my status in the school for other than my direct academic benefit, and I enjoyed doing so for Julia.

At lunchtime I borrowed a classmate's cellphone to call Julia. She apologized to me for ruining the evening. We had a little "No you didn't"; "Yes I did" argument about that (you know how they go).

Julia also said that she'd been doing lots of thinking - "I might as well think, I can't move" - and that she had lots to talk with me about. She was happy and we were fine.