Injured?!?

What if I told you that in 18+ years of running, I'd never twisted my ankle badly enough to consider it an injury?

Today I did. That was sort of traumatizing, especially since the course today was in the trail system I regularly train on....like I run it 8 times a month or so. And it wasn't on part of the trail that I would have expected to roll an ankle (flat! No roots, no mud, no nothing!). At first I thought I'd broken it because I heard a loud pop sound. My next thought was "Oh, no, I'm not gonna be THAT person that the life squad has to hike in 2 miles for and then carry back out!"

I've never had a "did not finish," and even though twisting it happened 2 miles into a 10-mile run, I still haven't. I ran another 8 miles post-"oh crap" moment. At first I couldn't bear weight on it at all. After about 5 steps I started to gingerly walk on it, and 200 yards after that I was doing a hobble shuffle. About 1/4 mile later I was going strong....not as fast as I'd planned, but still respectable.

I finished around an hour and 40 minutes, the 7th woman to finish the race and well into the top half of the overall finishers.

I've spent the afternoon sleeping with a bag of ice in an ACE bandage strapped around my ankle. And I'm actually taking medicine! At times like these I'm really glad that I don't medicate myself often (in fact almost never - I usually prefer to "mind over matter" it), because now that I truly need it the ibuprofen is working very effectively. The ankle feels stiff but not too bad and only hurts (and even then only slightly) when I go down stairs.

My main concern is how the potential disruption in training (I'm not going to run until Wednesday at the very earliest, though I think I'll still walk) will affect my 50K. Of course, my only major running injury happens less than a month before I'm planning to run the longest run I've ever done.

I guess that's life! I'm just glad it wasn't worse.

Michal

I've been working on this post for a while - it's been stewing in my head as a post ever since we hiked Mt. Mitchell, but I've been fascinated by the story for longer than that. Michal is one of my favorite scriptural women, and I'm pretty sure no matter how long I work on this I won't do her justice, so I'm going to go ahead and do the best I can.

I love Michal because she's strong - stands up to her very powerful father to protect the man she loves, and attempts to correct what she sees as pride in her husband. I mourn for her loneliness. Her husband's spitefulness toward her makes me feel sad. It has always struck me as profoundly unfair, and this unfairness is exacerbated in the LDS church's take on her. I always say I'd like to take a poll and see how many people know the name of David's first wife; my guess is that it would be anything from 5-10%. She deserves better, because she's just plain cool.

The story

In my words, it basically goes like this (my mission companions used to call this kind of rambling summary the Hermana Schaffner translation of the scriptures - this part of the story is in the end of 1 Samuel and beginning of 2 Samuel):

David is in the midst of all the court drama with Saul and Jonathan. Saul knows that the Lord wants David to be the king, but he's just not quite ready to give up the power and repeatedly tries to kill David. In the midst of this, Saul gives his daughter Michal (who loves David) to David as a wife, probably in hopes of pacifying the volatile situation. It doesn't really work, at least for Saul's benefit (go figure). At different points Jonathan and Michal both save David's life while he stays within Saul's kingdom, but he still eventually has to hide in exile. While exiled he takes various other wives (not very nice of him!), and Saul re-gifts Michal to another man (also not very nice of him! We only learn about it later - imagine, real-time updates of David's sexual escapades, but only information about Michal's when she becomes relevant to David again); that had to have been fun for her. Once Saul and Jonathan are killed (NOT by David), David insists that he'll only consider peace after his enemies bring Michal back to him, which they do even though it means removing her from her second husband - he wept over her, we don't have a scriptural record of how she felt about it (again, go figure).

Up to this point, it seems almost like an epic love story, right? Young lovers, united in the midst of conflict, forced to separate by more powerful influences, managed to reunite after said powerful folks are eliminated and they don't even have to bloody their hands! It's all so romantic!

Except it's not. After some time together after their reunion (we don't know how long, it's only a few chapters in 2 Samuel, though - from chapter 3 to chapter 6), Michal has the nerve to correct David for vanity and irreverence, and David gets all moody and offended and refuses to speak to/sleep with Michal ever again. How's that for a letdown from a great love story?!?


My thoughts

I really wish that the whole epic love story thing had continued - I'd be a lot less disillusioned, and Michal certainly deserves a happy ending as far as I'm concerned.

Several things about the story of Michal and how we present it in the LDS church really frustrate me.

First: the injustice of the men in the story using Michal as some sort of pawn creates obvious problems. She really rises above the situation, though. David loves her enough to kill 100 Philistines and then cut off their foreskins and give them to Saul (apparently that was Michal's brideprice?). After she marries David, she stands up for him and saves him. When her father gifts her to another man (maybe to spite David? Maybe as a political alliance?) she treats him well enough that when she leaves him to return to David, he weeps and follows after her - David's messenger has to make him go home. Even though she makes the best of it, no one deserves to be treated as moveable property. It makes me hope that she was happy in spite of it.

Second: we focus SO MUCH on the whole Jonathan/David thing and almost ignore Michal. There's a WHOLE LESSON on their friendship, and only a few side references to Michal. She's almost a footnote to the lessons and the story. And yes, it was a special thing, and Jonathan was a pretty amazing man (how many princes do you know who would be willing to say "Wow, I'm the son of the birthright and heir to the throne. I have all the political and military support. But Samuel anointed you, and God wants you to be the king, so I'll save you from my slightly deranged father."). In some ways I think he's a better man than David. Michal saved David's life, too. She got a better deal that Jonathan in the end, at least in terms of social status (moving from princess to queen isn't an awful deal, especially compared to being killed for being an heir to the throne). But David doesn't treat her nearly as well as he treated Jonathan. Scripturally there's more volume devoted to Jonathan, but I think we can safely credit that to the time of writing. Wouldn't it be nice if we could overcome that textual imbalance and focus on Michal's contributions, too?

Third: The only lengthy treatment of Michal in the LDS church curriculum basically says that when she scolds David in the situation in 2 Samuel 6:12-23, she's angry because of an affront to her dignity and therefore completely out of line. The way the manual presents it is almost paradoxical - they head the section "Our reverence for the Lord should influence our behavior in sacred settings." Based on the section heading, I would expect something along the lines of "David was carried away in his joy and, though he did offer sacrifice and bless the people, acted in a way that was not reverent or appropriate for the setting." Instead, they say that Michal is upset with David "for setting aside his royal robes and dancing with joy before the Lord. Evidently she felt this behavior was beneath the dignity of his position as king." What does that have to do with reverence or sabbath/worship behavior??

If I may, I would like to offer a different textual analysis of that bit of scripture.

Earlier verses say that David wore an ephod for the occasion of bringing the ark of the covenant back to Jerusalem. He performed sacrifices and blessed the people, all quite appropriate. He also danced and leaped. Now, I wasn't there, so I don't know if David was wearing only an ephod or not. But if he was, he was certainly not covered in a way that would allow for modesty while dancing and leaping. When Michal criticizes David, she doesn't say anything about his behavior being unbecoming of a king, or that he wasn't dressed royally. She simply refers to David as the king, and mentions his uncovering himself in front of women as a sign of vanity. She's upset by his pride, and maybe even (because, come on, she's only human) a little angry at his engagement with the other women.

I don't think that's out of line. The whole despising him in her heart? Maybe not the best reaction, but certainly not totally sinful. I've had moments of despising Ben because of some bad behavior or another....once we both repent, we mend the despising. Sort of how marriage is supposed to work.

And the manual doesn't even mention David's reaction in verse 22. He basically says "Oh, those handmaids that I showed off for? You don't like them? Well, at least they'll honor me! I'll go even further than I did today!" (Okay, that's a more true example of "Hermana Schaffner translation" - excuse my liberties in modernization....you'll find the threat there in the verse, though) He all but says he's going to go sleep with the handmaids, especially in light of verse 23 where it says that Michal did not have any children from that point forward.

So here's my different interpretation. Michal's reaction to David might not have been ideal, but in David's reaction to her criticism we see the beginning of his prideful downfall. Only five chapters later we read of him beginning to shirk his military duties as king, the Bathsheba incident, and his arrangement for the death of Uriah. These incidents work in tandem - I personally don't believe that any one of these sins is THE SINGLE problem for David. I think it's the general "I can do what I want because I'm the king" attitude that they demonstrate. In his reaction to Michal, we see the beginnings of that defiance.

Michal is one of my heroines. I hope that someday I can stick to my guns the way she did. And I hope I get to meet her.

It's a record!

Yesterday more students came to my office hours in ONE DAY than I think have come in my whole university teaching career this far. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, because I'm pretty sure I've seen more than seven students in the last seven years.

But yesterday I had one student meet with me about a recommendation, two students come in for make-up oral exams, one student for a written exam, two students who were concerned about grades and wanted to go over exams, and one who just dropped by to whine that he's not going to graduate if he doesn't pass my class (to which I responded - well, have you done any of the homework? Yeah, didn't think so).

Honestly, I think that somehow the fates knew that for ONCE IN MY LIFE I was ditching out early because we had a Relief Society activity at my house.

*sigh*

5K

Yeah, that's not a typo.

Me, doing a 5K? You may well ask. Short distances are really not my thing these days....I'm pretty sure I haven't run a 5K in over 10 years.

But, the running club that I'm a member of for the trail series I'm doing (the 8-miler in January, the 14-miler in February, the 10-miler and 13-miler in March, and the 50K in April....beyond that we'll see) had a 5K yesterday, and my old cross country coach was the race director.

I wanted to see him, so I decided to jaunt on over. My cousin came with me and ran (her first 5K! YAY!) with me. It was SO nice to say hi - he got a funny look on his face when I waved at him, trying to place me, then literally jumped and grinned. He's a great guy, works wonders with kids who don't have a lot of confidence in their running abilities (ie me as a teenager). He's in his sixties and still outruns most of his kids. Amazing.

The course was a fun little jaunt, it seemed SO SHORT after what I've been doing the last couple of years. I was trying to push hard because the distance wouldn't be taxing, but let's just say that I am NOT FAST any more. I still only ran about a 7:30-per-mile pace. I finished in 22:35, more than three minutes slower than my best high school time. Nothing to be ashamed of by any means, but not fast.

So I'm a little bit torn....do I ramp up the speed work and hills so I can run a 19 minute 5K again (or maybe even improve on my 17-year-old self?), or just keep at this long distance stuff?

I'm really liking trails, and the longer distance the better. So for now I think I'll keep building endurance slowly.

Mt. Mitchell

We hiked that last weekend! It was the longest backpacking trip I've ever taken. We left Ohio on Thursday, got to see Seth and Alta and AJ for dinner (who knew that a random tiny rural town in North Carolina had great Mexican food) that night, it was great to see them. We started hiking Friday morning, came down Sunday midday.



I used my vibrams again for most of the trip, I really liked them. One of the fun things about this hike lower down was all the tiny runoff streams. There was pretty heavy rain Thursday night, so I don't know if they're always running. But they were pretty, and made for fun mini-waterfalls at a couple of spots. Higher up, though, it was just wet muddy muck, with some ice intermingled.



This was the "We're almost there but I'm totally done" moment. Ben wasn't as willing as I was to wear that on his sleeve, but I'm pretty sure he felt like I look in this picture. I learned about a new trail classification: "Most Difficult" and/or "Strenuous." And they weren't kidding. There wasn't a lot of roller-hill kind of trail. It was either fairly level switchback or really steep trail (the steepest thing we hiked was a little .4 mile connector spur called Tom's Gap - the condition of the sign leading to it should have tipped us off, but that's another story!). Came around a bend after some serious inclines, saw this one, and just wanted to sit down. But we kept going! When we stopped for lunch the wind was strong and cold enough that I switched into boots, but I wasn't happy about it. My feet were warmer but much less comfortable, and I felt less adept and able to balance. I REALLY like barefoot shoes, and needing to switch made the last mile and a half of that day less comfortable than it might have been. But I really didn't want my toes to freeze off!



THE TOP! There's actually a parking lot at the top of the mountain....you don't have to hike up to get to see the view. BUT, we like to do that (maybe for the same reason I like running up hills? Dunno.). So we left the car down below at Black Mountain campground and walked up. The view was really pretty, we made the summit just during golden hour. The mountains were very blue with a few little fog/cloud patches, and the light was a really soft golden orange. We didn't stick around long because it was WINDY (we've both got like four layers on in that picture, and I think we still look cold), plus we needed to find a place to camp for the night.



The next day we took a meandering way around to pass the ranger station again, see Camp Alice, and hike some trail that was different than what we hit on Friday. We ended up doing a loop with another "Most Difficult" designation, but we saw a waterfall along the way that we took off our packs and bouldered around for a minute. That helped. This picture is at the top of Mt. Craig, the next neighboring peak (another high point in the NC mountains). I'm not a huge fan of bandanas, but when I'm gonna be out for multiple days they're a necessity for me....I HATE having oily hair hanging in my face. I was really glad to have remembered this one.



Coming down from Mt. Craig we spent Saturday afternoon on the cold side of the mountain. There were TONS of ice formations along the edge of the trail. These huge icicles are the most common thing we saw, but there was also a wide flat rock face with an ice sheet over the whole thing, and bubbles and water flowing underneath it. That was something I'd never seen before, I thought it was spectacular! We hiked down to this point on the horse trail from the Low Gap trail by going across a little spur called Tom's Gap. The condition of the sign, like I said before, should have let us know that something was up. It was broken in half but still on its post, with painted letters so faded that we could only tell what they said because we already knew it. We turned down it and started into a really steep descent - which at first was nice because we'd been going up so much. After a while, though, it started to get wearing. There were no switchbacks, it just followed a stream bed straight down the mountain. The blazes were few and far between, but we were okay.

We found a GREAT little sheltered campsite further down the mountain from there in the national forest part of the mountain. It was warm and (for the first time in a day and a half) not windy!



After we hiked down Sunday we took one last little very short side jaunt to this waterfall (only about a fourth of it is in the picture). It was a great way to finish out the trip, even though it meant hitting the bottom of the mountain and walking AWAY from where the car was! Actually making the turn was hard, since I think we were both pretty beat (I'm not sure how many miles we hiked, I know it was at least 12). But we could hear the waterfall, which was good motivation.

I'm glad that this isn't something that Ben restricts to him and scouting, or something that he does with guy friends. I love being outside (which he has always known), and I've really enjoyed learning the things he knows about backpacking. I appreciate him spending the time to accumulate all the things we need for a trip like this - he spent every birthday and Christmas for YEARS asking for things a bit at a time, since it was never something in our budget. We finally gifted packs to each other as the last step. It was totally worth it. I wish it that this kind of trip and the knowledge you need to do it was something that was emphasized for me when I was younger, but there weren't opportunities for girls in YW like there were for the boys in scouts. I could follow a map, yes, but had no idea how to hang a bear bag (for example). Better late than never, though! Since I get to be the camp director now (hee hee, hooray!), I'm going to remedy that for my girls.

Anyway. We had a wonderful trip, it was a nice way to spend part of spring break. Now I'm looking for little packs (not frame packs, just day packs) so we can do a two-nighter with the kids. How adventurous is that?!?!

Trudging

As I was running the last of my four miles today, I scared some deer up out of the meadow next to the trail.

They bounded off so effortlessly (or at least it looked effortless), their backs arching beautifully into the jump. They hardly made a sound when they landed, and they crossed as much distance in one leap as I did in 15 strides.

I thought to myself "Now THAT is running. I, on the other hand, am trudging."

And I felt like that's my life (lately mostly at church)....I watch other people spring off and on through their endeavors like it's the easiest thing, and finish it beautifully. I still finish, but not nearly so gracefully, naturally, or painlessly.

Ah well. Maybe trudging works for me.

Okay, I did it

I registered for a 50K. April 28th is the day.

I'm gonna do it! Like for real.

I don't know if I'm more scared or excited.

Time to up the miles again....10-mile weekend runs will not cut it for this.

Oh dearie dear

I'm happy in my work, with my kids, with Ben....we've been doing good and fun things as a family and as a couple (we're going backpacking again next week, I'm SO excited), the house is great, and I'm working on another chapter draft for the dissertation (hooray for progress!). My life, by all accounts, should be really good!

So why is it that the more I read and research to try to come to terms with the things about the church that hurt me, the more I find that's discouraging and drives me further into a state of conviction that women in the church will always be put on a pedestal in an amor cortés kind of way without being actually appreciated for their worth as individuals, as human beings?

Before you go and say "stop reading anti-Mormon websites!" I assure you, I haven't been. I've been reading blogs maintained by active LDS members in all their misguided misogyny, books published by the church, and General Conference talks, along with my personal scripture study.

Yeah. It's that good. I can't help but feel manipulated by the Father I'm praying to so that I can find reasons to stay. Maybe I need to do more or my non-praying (since President Hinckley said it's not okay to ACTUALLY pray to her) running self-talk to Heavenly Mother? Anyway. I'm not angry, I don't want to LEAVE the church. It's just feeling more and more like staying is driving the depression that I'm running miles upon miles to undo.

In the course of the last week I've had three (main) experiences (there have been other small ones) that have driven this more painfully home.

First: if I didn't actually fulfill my callings I might be better off. I wasn't able to attend the leadership training a few weeks ago, and I finally guilted myself into reading it, since my calling was one of the ones that merited attendance. I found Boyd K. Packer's statements about how men value their wives because their wives get them into heaven and bear their children. Oh, and that the cause of MOST worth to women is when they're wives and mothers. Even though I'm both those things, I feel like the work I do at becoming Christ-like, imperfect though it may be, is the most important thing I'm doing. I'm glad that I have my kids, and they help in that journey toward godliness....but they're not all of it. Or even the most important part of it (dare I say it?!?! WHERE does the fear that I feel when I type that come from?!?!).

Second: in reading the "Women of Faith" book that my very wonderful and thoughtful mother-in-law gifted to me, my polygamy issues have been exacerbated. She gave me the book because many of the women in it died with strong testimonies of polygamy as a "true principle." She thought it would help me with my issues....and it IS an incredibly interesting book. The problem is that many of them were married off VERY young (and lest we think that it was normal at the time, back then there was a strong social taboo against marrying girls pre-menarche [at least there was some reason in the world!] and the age of onset for that then was older than what it is now....average marriage ages varied from 17-23 depending on what part of the country you were in), and then in their diaries they talk of feeling neglected and unloved, but ultimately coming to realize that "love isn't a sentiment that has any place in polygamy". My only reaction to that is, WHAT ON EARTH (yeah, that's not what I'm saying in my head)? How is the desire to be loved and valued in your marriage something that you need to overcome to be humble?

Third: in searching Conference talks to find more information on the officially-tolerated roles for women in the church, I found this gem by Richard G. Scott. Please, oh please, you men, teach women that they have value! Without you they'll just be "blind sheep" that wear immodest clothes! Punish them by not marrying them! (I'm sure that they'll be totally brought to heel by that threat, since a woman's value, as stated by dear Brother Packer, lies in their marriageability) Tell them that when they dress immodestly, it's THEIR FAULT that you get aroused!

Geesh.

These three experiences culminated in the point where Ben came home to find me curled up on our bed sobbing, in running clothes waiting to escape into the woods the moment he could take the kids, while the kids blissfully amused themselves building a train. This is not the first time that I was happy that they keep themselves busy and don't notice what I'm up to. I asked "What is WRONG with me? I don't know what's the matter with me!" And as I said it, I realized that I DO know what's wrong. I feel wrong because I can not accept that the attitudes toward women manifest in those three pieces of reading come from God. But to answer my recommend questions truthfully and "right" I have to accept that when prophets speak, they speak for God.

That creates some pretty dense dissonance to wade through.

I'm doing my best. We'll see what happens.