Frank Kalicky. 2017 Beach to Beacon 10k. Cape Elizabeth, Maine
This story placed 30th for feature article in the Writers Digest 74th Annual Writing Contest.
I began running at 36, and like going back to college or having children later in life, the depth of what it has done for me, physically and mentally, is phenomenal.
I grew up never getting dirty, sweating, or exerting myself enough to be injured. Now, my favorite times to run are late at night when it’s snowing (the quiet is palpable) or in the rain, when my sneakers come down hard in puddles and soak my legs, when I am all alone outside, absorbed in my thoughts and the physical strain of finding my limits.
I smell the changes of season -- decaying leaves in fall; early morning rain in summer hitting dry, hot pavement; woodstoves on winter evenings.
I lift my face to pelting rain as I run.
I have seen the sun rise and set; I have experienced the runner's high; and on one occasion heard my Godvoice. Running awakened all my senses; nothing has made me feel more alive.
Ironically, my taking up running had nothing to do with me.
Twenty years ago, at the age of 35, my husband lost every hair on his body within a 10-week period. He has alopecia. Prior, he didn't even have a receding hairline.
It was, at first, frightening as he visited doctors to determine if there was something medically wrong, and then, for him, traumatic as the realization set in that his hair may not come back. Doctors gave him no explanation other than it may be caused by stress.
My husband's response was to shut down. He stopped everything that was "him" until he became himself again, which he believed (hoped) he would.
He was always a runner.
If this was caused by stress, the worst thing he could do was stop running, but I saw early on that I couldn’t tell him anything. This was something he had to work through on his own; it was deeply personal.
So I took up running, with no intention of sticking with it, simply to entice him back to the sport that could save his life. Initially, I couldn’t run from one telephone pole to the next.
Within a few weeks, I could run a mile without cramps. Juggling a full-time job with two young sons, that thirty minutes alone was a luxury. Each time, I would run a little further before walking. I increased mileage gradually, but each day I would not let myself walk earlier than the time before.
I visited a friend who ran the Boston Marathon and asked how she could possibly run three to four hours. She said she meditated or prayed.
Of course she did. I was beginning to understand.
I ran as far as I could every other day and I LOVED it. It was as much about my head as my body. I asked my husband tips, how to swing my arms to assist not work counter, how to breathe. He told me. He was interested in teaching me. I sparked his interest and re-focused his thoughts away from his hair.
About six months in, I knew what I had to do. I’m not a racer (but then again, I wasn't even a runner). I told my husband I wanted to run the Beach to Beacon 10k (6.2 mile) road race, and I would feel so much better if he would run with me.
He mulled it over and said he would. Behind my smile, I was saying "YES" and pulling my fisted arm down from skyward. To run a race, he would have to train.
The first time I felt the "runner's high" and oozed excitement, my husband, with disbelief, asked me to describe it. In his lifetime of running, he had never experienced it. It has come to me only on a few occasions, occurring only when I push beyond my comfort zone. It must be a chemical thing, endorphines released from my brain, the feeling of clarity and outer-body sensation.
It was at one of these times I heard my Godvoice. A guest on the Oprah show years afterward spoke of her Godvoice, and I knew what she was talking about. I didn’t have a word for it; it is hard to describe the indescribable. It was a complete thought without words and it was not mine.
My voice said, in summary, "This is not it for you. The running is showing you what you’re capable of when you truly put your mind to something."
The thought was so alarming that I strained for it to continue, tell me more. It would not.
My husband and I ran the Beach to Beacon 10k in Cape Elizabeth, Maine in 1998. Throughout, he stayed just off my left shoulder. He ran at my pace, 9-minute miles, which undoubtedly killed him to watch lesser runners passing him. One passer-by said to him, "You make this look easy!" He was barely exerting, but he was smiling.
He simply supported me through the whole race.
As we headed up the final hill, he began barking orders at me, "Go for it! Pass that woman! GO!!!"
Startled, I gave it everything I had, and the girl who had never sweat crossed that finish line, at exactly my goal time, one year from not being able to run from one telephone pole to the next.
My husband cruised in behind me, smiling.
He was smiling because I had done it; I was smiling because he had done it.
The next year, and for fifteen years since, he’s run at his pace, several years with our older son who coached cross country at Scarborough Middle School last fall.
Cheering on the sidelines that first year he ran alone, I was brought to tears. My husband was coming back. This race was a turning point for my husband allowing him to move forward.
He now runs the race annually (and I occasionally run the neighborhood).
This past weekend was his 17th year running. It was the 20th anniversary of this fantastic race started by Joan Benoit Samuelson who won gold in the very first female Olympics marathon in 1984. The race draws elite runners from all over the globe, now over 6,000 participants every year.
In training, Frank sometimes takes nine mile runs through the hills of West Falmouth. I tell him no hair makes him faster. At 55, he still has almost no body fat. If he keeps it up, maybe he too will (finally) experience the runner's high if he pushes himself outside his comfort zone.
I can only wonder what his Godvoice might tell him.
#beachtobeacon