Before I left to attend this meditation retreat, I mentioned that I had read many accounts of others who had also attended Goenka-sponsered Vipassana courses. Most of the reports were positive, some not so much. At the time I was really looking forward to being locked up for ten days with myself, and I pretty much rolled my eyes at the small percentage of accounts I read where people had come back traumatised or convinced they’d been unwittingly sucked into a cult. People on the internet are dramatic and crazy sometimes, you know? I never for a second predicted that I would jump on the “it might be a cult” bandwagon. After all, I’ve been practicing Vipassana for a year and expected that this retreat would be more of the same that I had already been doing, albeit on a more intense scale.

That was not what happened at all. This retreat was like no other meditation I had ever done. I think it’s possible (though I wouldn’t like to declare firmly either way) that perhaps Goenka is using legitimate Vipassana practice as a veil to conceal something entirely different that goes on at some of his retreats. So I decided to leave my retreat early, for my own emotional well-being, and I took a few days afterward to collect my thoughts and write them down. The result is the document below, which I’ve compiled into a handy PDF so you can download it and read it when you get a chance, or skip it if you’re not interested.

I would like to stress that I don’t believe my experience is at all a universal one, and if you are booked in or are planning on attending a Goenka retreat, I urge you not to cancel. Go, do the retreat and write up your own report when you get back. It will likely be wildly different from mine because no two experiences in this world can possibly be the same. You should never base your own spiritual path on anyone else’s, because we are all different and all perceive things differently. As my grandmother used to say, don’t let anyone else drive your bus. The majority of people who attend Goenka retreats come out refreshed and renewed. You’ll never know until you try.

So anyway, if you’ve got some time to kill, download the PDF and have a read. It’s a longish essay (22 pages), but with any luck you’ll find it entertaining (i.e. there are photos— I know where your buttons are). The layout is rough, even by my amateur standards, but hopefully the content doesn’t suffer as a result. Think of it as my personal “I nearly got sucked into a cult” scrapbook. Construction paper, glitter pens, and glue. One to show the grandkids.

I’m glad I got a chance to write this up now, because it served a double purpose: as a kind of closure for me, and as practice for the extreme amounts of writing I’ll be doing next month as part of NaNoWriMo (NaNoers: friend me and we’ll suffer together!). People have suggested that I use this essay itself as part of my novel, but alas, NaNoWriMo novels have to be fiction.

Please feel free to ask any questions or make comments; I think the goal of these things should always be to expand one’s knowledge and insight, and discussion is of course a big part of that.

The document itself is safe for work, though there are occasional swear words and a couple of analogies that you might not want your kids reading. But it’s not any worse than anything they’ll hear on prime-time TV tonight, and they might learn something.

I hope someone gets something out of my having written this, and I hope it doesn’t turn people off from Vipassana or meditation in general, both of which are legitimate, ancient practices with significant benefits to those who follow them. I still sit daily, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. But as with any spiritual path, sometimes things branch off and some followers wander from the main road. That’s probably not a bad thing.

retreat.pdf

[871kb, control-click (right-click on a PC if anyone still uses those) and choose the appropriate "download" or "save" option— you guys are smart, you know how your browser works]

I’ll cut to the chase: I’m going away for a couple of weeks. It’s not a holiday, as such— it’s a Vipassana retreat up near Istanbul. I’m leaving tonight, (i.e. Wednesday night, the 10th), and I’ll be back on the 24th.

Those of you who are familiar with Vipassana retreats don’t need to read any further… if you’re not familiar with Vipassana but don’t care all that much, suffice it to say I’ll be engaging in some hardcore silent insight meditation for ten days, with some travel time on either side. That’s about it.

The semi-long version of the story is that about a year ago I started dabbling in Vipassana via the online teachings of Gil Fronsdal [wiki]. I had wanted to try meditation for a long time but didn’t really know where to start, so like most of my peer group I turned to the internet for help. I stumbled upon Zencast, and it pretty much snowballed from there. I’ve never had any formal training, just my little bits of practicing at home and whatever I’ve read online.

Vipassana is an ancient form of meditation that focuses on insight and seeing things how they really are, without changing or judging them. It’s a practice that dates more than two millennia back to the Buddha himself, whose teachings have been passed down through generations all the way to a handful of Vipassana masters who still teach today. I like the idea of being an objective observer of things I should normally feel very subjective about (for example my breath and the state of my body), so I found the concepts of Vipassana very attractive. It has to be said, though, I’m not the most diligent meditator— consistency is key with these things, and I’ve hardly been sitting every day. I started to think maybe a meditation group or a teacher might be the next step.

Then a month or so ago I made the observation that not only had I never seen a Turkish Buddhist, I’d never even met any Turkish people who meditated (meditation being a secular practice in itself open to those of any religion or no religion). I started looking online for Turkish meditation groups, and since Vipassana is a particular interest of mine, I narrowed my search to see where in the world Vipassana retreats or sittings are held. At first it didn’t look like there was much going on in this part of the world, but then I found the web site of S.N. Goenka, a Vipassana master whose ten-day intensive retreat courses are held, quote, “all over the world.” Yeah, sure. All over the world except for Turkey, I thought. But lo and behold, when I looked at the list of course locations, there was a name and a contact address for Turkey along with a note stating that the next retreat would be held in October 2007. I fired off an e-mail asking for more information and waited a couple of days for a response.

Meanwhile, diligent researcher that I am, I started digging around for blogs and forums where I could read the opinions of those who had already taken a ten-day Goenka Vipassana course. I soon discovered that there is a huge amount of controversy surrounding this method of Vipassana and indeed Vipassana in general— I won’t bore you with the details, because you know how to Google stuff if you’re curious, but in a nutshell there appear to be a lot of people who fiercely defend this method as a tool for exorcising one’s personal demons, and a lot of other people who say it ruined their lives. One thing all seem to agree on, however, is that the retreat changed them forever.

So of course then I was even more curious, and by the time the organisers of the retreat wrote me back I’d pretty much already decided I wanted to go. I filled out my application and it was accepted the same day. I leave on a bus tonight to travel across the country (which reminds me, Turkish bus travel is something else I wanted to talk about— perhaps when I return from this trip, yeah?), arrive at the site tomorrow afternoon, and then I’ll be locked up with my fellow students for ten days, waking before dawn and meditating for ten hours everyday, eating only before noon and not communicating with anyone in any form (not even eye contact or hand gestures). It’s bound to be quite an experience.

Part of the strict code of conduct for the retreat states that we’re not allowed to have journals or writing materials, which means I’m just going to have to remember everything and write it down later. Since I’ve once again signed up for NaNoWriMo this year (what is it with me and controversial methods?), I figure that at the very least this retreat will be a good opportunity to dig up some internal conflict, create an empty female protagonist, and on the first of November I can just shove all the demons into her and turn her loose in novelworld.

In any case, I’ll be back here two weeks from today— I’ve not got any guest writers or anything lined up, so the blog is going on retreat, also. You’ll have to live without the bazaar for a couple of weeks, but when I come back I’ll have lots of stories and photos, and after that I’ve got lots of changes planned. We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of melissamaples.com, and I want to take it into the second year revitalised and fresh. I hope you’ll join me.

I wish you all a great couple of weeks, and I’ll see you when I get back.

I’ve got to pull myself together. First there was the dropping-the-iron-on-my-foot incident a couple of weeks ago, which put me out of commission for quite a few days, and then I went to Cyprus and came back with the mother of all head-and-chest colds, which had me bed-ridden for nearly a week. Meanwhile I watch all the conditioning I’ve built up start slipping away as I lie in bed and eat comfort food and gain weight. It’s depressing, to put it mildly. Tomorrow is the 31-week mark and I feel like I’m starting over from the beginning. Even as I’m typing this I’m having to stop every few minutes to have a coughing fit. Last night I got so light-headed I had to sit down halfway on my journey between the living room and the bedroom. I feel weak, and I feel pathetic. Factor in the sluggishness and self-pity brought on by the hot weather, and what we have here is a pretty sad disaster. Boo-hoo, poor me. I’m the only person in the world who’s ever been sick.

So this week I have to try to piece things back together. I need to eat right and drink the right things. I’m a singer and voice teacher; I know how to repair a throat problem. I need to take it easy on the exercise for a few more days, but I do need at least to start exercising again. If I see dust gathering on my running shoes it’ll be enough to send me to the crazy house, I know it. So I need to start doing something or this whole thing really will come to a screeching halt.

It’s a mixed blessing that Emirhan’s doing so well with his own training. On the one hand, it’s frightening and sometimes frustrating that he’s pulling away from me so quickly. He’s a natural athlete— being a bodybuilder, training comes easily to him, and his runs, even the long ones, are fairly effortless. Where I come home panting and exhausted after thirty minutes, he returns victorious and energetic after an hour. He’s going from strength to strength, and it worries me that I’m not doing the same. Aside from my own fears, I don’t want to drag him down with my negativity.

On the other hand, I couldn’t ask for a more supportive and inspirational partner. He’s forever telling me how great I’m doing (even when I’m not) and he’s more than happy to run with me if I want the company and encouragement, or stay away if I feel suffocated by his presence (I’m quite the pro-active introvert). Being no stranger to physical training, he knows exactly what to say and when to say it, and his natural enthusiasm is infectious. He says we’re a team and that the job of team members is to support each other. I’m so lucky to have someone around me who is competing in the same event as I am and can understand what I’m going through. He keeps reminding me that this obscene summer heat won’t last forever, and the cooler weather should be hitting just as I’m getting back up to my best standard again. At that point my training should run a bit more smoothly. That’s exactly what I needed to hear.

One thing I really need to happen is for Öger (the company sponsoring the marathon) to open the marathon registration. The web site promises that registration and full marathon information will be available from the middle of July. But of course this is Turkey and we run on Turkish time; “middle of July” means anytime between now and the new year. It’s now nearly August and there’s no sign of any changes on the site. I’ve heard from scores of runners that actually signing up and paying the registration money makes a big difference in the feeling of committment— this is no longer just a vague thing that’s approaching; once you’ve registered it’s a real event with a real date and real place at the starting line with your name on it. I want to feel locked in to that committment. I want to know that this is something I’ve promised myself to with more than just words.

I know that a couple of weeks of derailment isn’t the end of the world, but it’s easy to let illness spiral into self-pity, especially when two or three things hit in quick succession. So now with a new training week starting tomorrow, I’m going to spend this evening appealing to my friends, my fellow runners, and my readers— I need your encouragement. I need to hear that you, too, got knocked down for a week or two and managed to get back up and get everything back in order. I want to hear that your cousin ran a marathon after having recovered from brain cancer and that I need to shut the hell up and get on with it. I’m going to pull myself out of this regardless, that’s just how I am, but if I can have an external boost… even better.

Now I’m going to spend a few minutes making a training plan for the week and getting my running clothes ready for tomorrow morning. Even if I’m only well enough to manage a walk when I wake up, that’s okay, at least it’s something. For once I’m going to earn all those wonderful things Emirhan says about what a capable athlete I am. I’m not going to let myself or the team down. Being ill is okay, it’s not my fault, but now that I’m recovering I’m not going to let this setback or my self-pity stop me from getting the job done. This time next week I’ll report back with ferocious triumph the likes of which you’ve never seen.

Fin.

Earlier this month I announced I was going to run a marathon next March, and then after having spent the following week or so floundering around buying things and trying to get my head around the enormity of the task, I realised I had no focus except the vague cloud of “marathon,” and as we all know if you focus on nothing, you’re sure to hit it (see also: several past marathon attempts, all with no clear plan and all ending in failure). So this past weekend I decided to get organised in order to gain confidence about the huge mountain of work ahead of me.

I always feel better when I get things written down— usually the situation is not as dire as I think it is once I see it all laid out in front of me. So in hopes of quelling my rumbling anxiety, on Saturday I started to make a training calendar (I used good ol’ iCal, since I wasn’t using my iCal for anything else). I started out by taking a notebook (a real one, you know, paper and all that) and writing down everything that I would work into a training schedule if the world were perfect and I had endless resources. I decided I wanted to do running (obviously), some other cardio activity (swimming seems obvious), some core stability training on the Swiss ball, yoga, and something involving meditation or some other kind of mental concentration discipline. As it turned out, when I mapped all these things out, they didn’t take up as much of a day as I expected. I can get them all done before lunch time and relax in the afternoon. I also made a space on my calendar to keep track of my weight and my daily food intake; if I’m going to launch myself around Antalya for 26 miles, I need to do myself the favour of getting the rest of this extra weight off. The exercise will help, certainly, but I need to stop shoveling goodies in my mouth like it’s Christmas.

The race is on a Sunday, so I designated Saturday as my full rest day, and when the time comes that long runs are a possibility, Sunday will be the day for those. There will also be a break from running on Wednesdays, which is when I’ll fit in the swimming or whatever I decide on. Swiss ball work and yoga (I subscribe to Yoga Today, which is free and unbelievably great) will happen every day of the week, as will meditation. Everything starts at low levels and builds gradually over time. When I added it up on Saturday, I learned that there were 260 days between then and the race. I was panicked about that before, but now that I have a written plan it appears to be plenty of time.

So I went out for my first “real” training run yesterday morning (Sunday, day 259 if you will). I set a goal for the week: by Friday, the last training run of the week, I want to be running 15 minutes non-stop. I’m not a beginning runner, but I am quite a bit out of practice, so I thought this was a reasonable goal.

Three minutes into my Sunday run I didn’t think my goal was so reasonable anymore. I started my run at 7:00 in the morning, and as soon as I hit the road I realised I’d started much too late. Already the heat and the sun were almost more than I could take, and I was feeling like a big fat radiator bouncing up and down the street. I finished the session without dying, but only just, and to be honest I walked most of it. Still, there’s only one first day of training, and it can only get better from there. I went home and did the rest of my training work and felt at least somewhat accomplished, but during the run I was really unhappy, and I didn’t feel much better about it afterwards.

Last night I thought a lot about how I could improve my approach. As a habit I listen to a lot of Gil Fronsdal’s teachings via Zencast. You don’t have to be a Buddhist (I’m not) to get into Vipassana meditation and the practical daily applications Zencast offers, and I recommend this podcast to anyone who wants to shake up their brain and explore something new. Gil talks a lot about “hanging out” with feelings as a coping device (a technique which is often used by mental health professionals to treat phobias). He uses the example of boredom and restlessness during meditation, and he advises that the best way to hang out with that is to label it in your head (”boredom,” “restlessness,”) and if you just keep hanging out and acknowledging those feelings by labeling them and accepting them rather than judging or acting on them, eventually the bell rings (to signify the end of the meditation period), and then you’re free to go and it turns out it didn’t kill you to sit there after all. I wondered if I could apply this technique to my unhappiness and frustration with running.

I knew that one thing I was going to have to do, aside from getting up earlier, was get rid of my timer. As I mentioned before, I already ditched my heart rate monitor months ago because it was making me obsessed with numbers instead of running. But on Sunday I noticed my watch was doing the same thing— I couldn’t stop myself from looking at it every three seconds to see if it was time to quit yet. That’s no fun, and it keeps my brain from being open to things like awareness of the feelings in my body and perhaps, god forbid, enjoying the scenery. But of course I still need a way to time my runs, so I came up with an idea: I made an iTunes playlist approximately 15 minutes long (this week I’m enjoying songs from the new Chemical Brothers album), and popped it onto the iPod Shuffle. I added a track of silence at the end to make sure I would know when to stop running. So now all I have to do is start the iPod when I start my run, and simply run until everything goes quiet. No watch to obsess over, and great music to run to. I decided to give it a try this morning and combine it with the “hanging out” and labeling techniques.

I went out at 4:50 this morning (day 258). The weather was much, much more tolerable. I walked for a minute or so, and then fired up the iPod as I started to run. Within a couple of minutes I was really unhappy and desperately wanted to slow to a walk again. I labeled those feelings in my head. “Unhappy.” “Tired.” “Want to quit.” “Fed up.” “Hate running.” “Unhappy.”

I know you all know the phenomenon by which repeating a word over and over causes the word to start mutating in your head, until it sounds alien and eventually loses all meaning. Well, today I discovered the same thing happens with labeling feelings. You really get into your labels, and the very act of labeling causes those labeled feelings to distort and then dissipate. So after a few minutes, “unhappy” and “tired” became “blank” and “I’m not sure what this one is. Neutral, I guess.” I labeled those feelings and hung out with them, too. Then some outside stuff I was experiencing started creeping into my labeling: “mountain.” “Brick wall.” “White cat.” “Chemical Brothers.” I felt myself smiling. “Smiling.” The fact that I was busy labeling things meant that I had no room in my head to tell myself all those stories about how I could just quit and go back to bed, or about how I’m too out of shape to run a marathon, or about how it’s ridiculous to put myself through this when I’m clearly not cut out for it. We all know the stories we make up in our heads, every excuse in the book about why we shouldn’t succeed at doing something difficult.

In fact, I was so busy labeling things that when the music came to a sudden halt I nearly tripped and fell over my own feet .

And that was it. On the second day of training I ran 15 minutes non-stop, accidentally. I wasn’t supposed to do that until Friday. And at the end of the run I was settled and happy and completely devoid of all the negative thoughts I’ve usually filled myself with by that point. My experiment worked. I’m going to try it again tomorrow.

I think I’ve really hit on something here— as I was walking home I thought to myself that if it weren’t for my current poor state of physical fitness, I might have continued to run like that for several hours, just noticing things and labeling them and not judging or criticising or feeling sorry for myself. Later in the day when I really didn’t want to do my yoga class, I labeled my way through that, as well, and honestly I think I connected with the poses today in a way I never have before. I’ve never paid this much attention in my life.

So I’m feeling good about this training stuff.

Incidentally, the new shoes are working out well so far— they’re a lot less like new shoes than most new shoes are. I do have a strange blister in the arch of my right foot, but I’m pretty sure that’s due to my flip-flops and not the runners. I’ll tape the blister for a couple of days and see what happens.

257 days to go. “Confident.”

The main point of our shopping trip yesterday was that I needed new running shoes. My Asics are not all that old, but there were a few issues. One, they’re men’s shoes (I have wide feet, and many times men’s shoes fit me better), and so I always thought they were ugly, even uglier than running shoes usually are… there must be some law that says running shoes can’t be sexy, because every running shoe in history has been ugly. Two, Emirhan’s always had his eye on my Asics— he wears them about as often as I do, and since his feet are bigger than mine, the shoes are now loose and slip a lot. His excuse when borrowing my shoes was that he was planning on buying me a new pair anyway, so yesterday I finally gave him my Asics for good and held him to his promise of getting me some new runners.

I never thought in a million years I’d own a pair of running shoes by Adidas. Even Asics was a bit pop-culturey for me; normally I go for Brooks or New Balance or something geeky like that. But yesterday when I saw these A3 GigaRides in the Adidas store, I couldn’t believe how cool they looked. I told myself that silver running shoes this sweet could not possibly be suitable for actual training. Everyone knows that quality running shoes are required to be ugly. But I decided to try the A3s on and see what they felt like.

I was shocked— they felt great. They’re a better fit than the Asics and they offer more support. They were comfortable and performed well in my (albeit weak) test run through the store. They were ridiculously expensive, but that’s just a fact of life with running shoes, and Emirhan’s opinion was that if I liked them so much and they were going to help me get through my training, then they kind of pay for themselves in usefulness. So we bought them. I’m giggling with Product Love. I can’t wait to start training in earnest.

And speaking of training… I had a long talk with an old friend of mine, a guy who has known me since I was a teenager and is familiar with how I work best and where my strong and weak points are. Coincidentally, he is also an Iron Man triathlete and accomplished distance runner, so he knows a thing or two about running as well. I contacted him because I had done a lot of research on the internet about marathon training and preparation and had discovered that marathons and pregnancy have a lot in common— everyone on the internet has a different opinion about the best way to proceed, they’re all willing to fight like pit bulls about it, and in the end I just end up thinking that none of these people are me, none of them can possibly know the unique requirements of my specific person, and perhaps I’m better off making my own decisions, regardless how ill-advised. After all, that’s how I ended up in Turkey, and Europe before that— by going against what everyone thought was right for me and sticking to my gut instincts. In fact, that’s how I’ve made most of the major decisions of my life. I don’t think I’ve ever chosen the popular option. So I asked my friend what his take on the training issue was.

To my surprise, he agreed with me. He said I should spend less time listening to the advice of others and more time trusting what my body tells me. I’m not new to running, so it’s not like I need someone to hold my hand through every little step of training. He said that if more runners would spend less time making up arbitrary blanket “rules” of training and more time focusing on their individual needs (which by definition will never match anyone else’s on the planet), there would be a lot more people capable of finishing super events like the Iron Man. Problem is, people try to make middle-of-the-road guidelines that fit everyone, and the result is exactly that: middle-of-the-road. Mediocre all around. No one standing out in any way.

So that decided it for me. I’m going to do what I always do with everything: take what I’ve learned from various sources and combine bits of this and pieces of that and make my own special regime. It may not suit anyone else, but it’s going to suit me. It will incorporate all the running I need and all the rest I require. It will also include supplementary training like yoga and meditation (I’m a big believer that endurance starts from a the metaphysical rather than the physical). It will be tightly organised around a modified diet and lifestyle. When March rolls around, I am going to be a marathoning machine from top to bottom, focused and prepared. I may not be the fastest runner on the race day, but that’s okay. I’m there to win in a different way.

So there you have it. I’ve got all the gear I need, and I have a plan— now I just need to get to work.

I’m going to bed early tonight and setting the alarm for the crack of dawn. My new shoes need breaking in.

Running and I have one of those love-hate relationships that makes you roll your eyes. We argue a lot. We break up. We get back together. It’s good for a while. Then I cheat. Then we break up again. Two weeks later, he calls me wanting to forgive and forget. We get back together. This is how it’s been for years.

It started back when I was a kid. I was quite an athletic child, always top of my class in gymnastics and accomplished in several styles of dance. When we had those standardised fitness tests in school, I always came out at the head of the chin-ups and sit-ups charts. I was also a very strong swimmer and played softball for a couple of seasons when I was nine or ten.

But running was a different story. We used to have to run the mile in phys ed, and for some reason I could never do it. I’d get about a quarter of the way and be in such agony that I had to lie down, on the track if necessary. My legs felt fine; it was my lungs that were screaming for me to stop. My P.E. teachers always said that it was because I was out of shape, but I didn’t see how that could be possible— I was an active child who was exercising everyday. To this day I wonder if I had some kind of asthma or other condition that kept me from completing the mile like everyone else. Even the little weaklings in my class could run the mile, but I just lay on the ground gasping for breath, my lungs on fire.

It annoyed me that I couldn’t do it, so running became this Thing with me. I looked for ways around the breathing issue. The obvious choice was to not run such a long way. I have strong legs, and I quickly discovered that I could sprint well over short distances. In high school I became quite good at the 50 and 100 yard races. I could even pull off a 400 if I had to, but that was my limit. Any more than that and I couldn’t handle the breathing.

As I phased into adulthood and left structured exercise classes behind, I started to wonder if I could train myself to run further. Over the years I’ve struggled with this— I’ve managed a couple of 5ks in my time, but nothing longer than that. My breathing problems settled down a bit as I got older, though I still struggle to some extent. When I was in my early 20s, I started to get this idea in my head that I wanted to run a marathon, to prove to Running that it was I who was the boss of him and not the other way around. I made plan after plan to run various marathons. In every case, I’d let my training get to the point where I could run about 5k, and then I’d plateau and eventually give up.

So now I’m 34, still running semi-regularly for fitness, still not breaking the 5k barrier. I had kind of decided that maybe I was just a 5k runner and there wasn’t any horizon past that.

Then, back in March of this year I discovered that we have a marathon right here in Antalya. Right here in my face where I can’t ignore it. Because I’m a location blogger, it made sense to cover the event. I got a press pass from the organisers, and Emirhan and I rode the press bus all the way around the course during the race. This was the first time I’d ever seen a marathon in real life, and I was both inspired and frightened by what I saw. Those who finished did so in great agony, and some of the unlucky ones were picked up on the course by ambulances. It made me wonder why people put themselves through it. It also made me wonder if I should take up marathon training again.

After the race Emirhan and I had a talk. He’s a bodybuilder and athlete himself, and seeing the marathon up close really made him want to do it. I shared with him the story of my lifelong battle to run. We sort of shrugged and said, “maybe next year,” but at that time we had some tentative plans to do some traveling abroad and we didn’t think we’d be here in March 2008. In any case, we made a vague promise that if those travel plans fell through, then we’d definitely do the Antalya marathon instead.

Well, this week we learned that we won’t be abroad after all. We’ll be right here in Antalya in March of next year. So I guess that means we’re officially training for the marathon now.

I’m terrified. I’m going to take some convincing. I’m not worried about Emirhan— he’s unbelievably fit and could probably run the marathon tomorrow. But I don’t want him to have to worry about me. I want to be prepared enough so that he can concentrate on his own race (which will be over much sooner than mine) and I can concentrate on what I’m doing.

This means I have to start training now. Summer is coming, and with it the 50-degree heat that Antalya is famous for (that’s 122, folks). Can I train in those conditions? Maybe, if I train at five in the morning. Am I going to encounter lung issues again? I won’t know until I start running longer distances. Maybe I’ll have to see a doctor about that. I’ll definitely have to get some new running shoes. Some good socks. Maybe a couple of cute outfits to motivate me. And I’m going to have to keep a serious eye on what I’m eating.

Having said that, I don’t want to get so obsessed with all those things that the fun gets sucked out of running. I actually enjoy running now, and if something stops being enjoyable then I just won’t do it, end of story. I already gave up my heart rate monitor because it was turning me into a numbers freak instead of a runner. So I have to strike a balance. I know that for me, my internet support network is important. I have lots of online friends who know lots of stuff about running, and I’ll be calling on them when times are tough. I’ll probably also join whatever social networks I run across. I’ll find ways to keep this fun.

I still don’t quite believe I’m up for this, but maybe that’s just because I’m tired today and even doing the laundry seems like a lot of effort. Everyone I’ve asked so far thinks I’m definitely capable of running the full distance, so that’s a good sign. I have very supportive friends. Now I just need to find it in me to live up to my half of the bargain. Watch this space. But until further notice, you should consider this an official declaration of my intention to run 26.2 miles here in Antalya on the 2nd of March next year. It makes me nervous just to say that. Yikes.

I mentioned a couple of days ago about my annoyance with fad diets… it still amazes me that even in this age of information, reasonably intelligent adults will go on fad diet after fad diet, lose weight and then immediately gain it all back again plus an extra twenty pounds, and still latch onto whatever the next fad diet is as if this one is going to be the one. As my doctor once told me, “if any diet worked, there would only be that one diet, and it would be called The Diet, and everyone in the world would be on it and there wouldn’t be any fat people.” Well said. I’m constantly baffled at the awful things people will do to their organs and systems (ketosis, anyone? my stepmother got ill from that) because they think a fad diet will solve all their problems.

The above picture is me, believe it or not, back in December 2003, just before I moved to Turkey. I was 240 pounds (109 kilograms) in that photo. I came to Turkey in May of 2004, and by the one-year anniversary of the above photo (i.e. in December 2004), I was down to 160 pounds (you can see a current photo of me on the about page).

So how did I do it? Well, I promise you I wouldn’t have kept the weight off this long if I’d lost it on a fad diet. No, it was moving to Turkey that did it, the entire lifestyle change. Especially when I first moved here, I had some friends who ran a restaurant up the road from me, and I ate there all the time because I don’t cook. I didn’t know how to ask for things in Turkish (still don’t to a great extent), and so I just had to eat whatever they brought me, which was the same thing they were all eating— lean meat or fish, rice, and salad. I didn’t know how to ask for sauce or mayonnaise. I didn’t know how to ask for seconds. So I didn’t have any of those things. I also didn’t have my car (I sold it when I moved to Turkey), so I walked everywhere. Everywhere.

I also didn’t have my scale, so at first I didn’t notice what was happening, but eventually it became clear that my big-girl clothes were falling off of me. So I bought some smaller stuff. And then two months later I had to buy smaller clothes again. And again. And now, three years later, I can’t remember what it was like to drive everywhere, to drive to a restaurant and order a giant meal with gravy all over everything. I still walk most everywhere, and I still eat the standard lean-and-healthy Turkish fare.

When I tell people how fat I used to be, at first they’re surprised, but then they say, “oh yes, of course you were fat, you’re American.” But that is their mistaken stereotype— I was never fat when I lived in the United States. I didn’t get fat until I moved to England in 1998. Gravy and creamy sauces are very popular in England, as are fried potatoes (or some other kind of potato) with every restaurant meal. I’m a fan of all of those things, and if you offer them to me, I’m going to eat them (or at least, I would have at that time). Another unfair stereotype is that English food is bland and tasteless— I can assure you that’s not the case. England has some of the most amazing restaurants in the world. I should know, I ate at most of them. It took me six years to gain all that weight, and not a pound of it was gained on U.S. soil.

So I guess what I’m saying is that although it may seem like an extreme solution to sell your car and move to a Mediterranean country where you don’t speak the language in order to train yourself to change your lifestyle and eating habits, it is one way to do it, and though for me it was an accidental side effect, I’m so thankful to Turkey and Turkish cuisine for helping me pull myself together and realise what a toll Western overeating and laziness had taken on my body. I do still enjoy my treats, but I walk them off, and I now understand the importance of moderation and balance in my meals. For me, this is a change for life.

With only a couple of weeks left until the new year, it’s time to start thinking about plans and targets for 2007. The word “resolutions” doesn’t work for me, and my guess is it doesn’t for you, either— think back over your new year’s resolutions from years past and be honest about your failure-to-success ratio of projects you started on the first day of the year. Yeah, that’s what I thought. Me too.

But ever since I was a kid I’ve always been a list-maker and goal-setter, and many times people ask me how I manage to get such a high percentage of my to-dos done. The key for me was changing the way I set my goals. Writing out a magic list of ways in which you’re suddenly going to start being the perfect you on the first of January is ridiculous. As a life coach friend of mine once said regarding the passion to succeed, “if you don’t want something badly enough that you’re desperate to start down the road to it today, right this second, then you probably don’t want it badly enough to ever complete it, period. You’re sure as hell not going to magically shoot out of a cannon on January first and straight over the finish line, if the state of your life isn’t disturbing enough to you right now to start doing something about it immediately. You’ll get an initial burst of energy from the cannon, sure, but it won’t carry you far enough, and eventually you’ll land with a thud. Better to have a system in place by which you can make small, consistent steps at any time of year and gradually chip away at those goals.”

So about ten years ago I switched from the Big December Resolution-Setting Extravaganza to a more reasonable system of writing goals down exactly when they formed in my head (be that in December or May or whenever), and measuring my commitment to them by my ability to tiptoe towards those targets in small, measured increments. At first I used to go through my list once a month and tidy it up— remove goals that were no longer relevant, cross completed goals off the list, and reorganise the remaining items by priority. But I still missed the hope and excitement of sitting down in December. There’s just something about the turn of the year that makes one want to have a fresh start. So I did what I always do and took all the parts I liked from each system and combined them into a custom plan that works for me. Nowadays I do light list management on a month to month basis, just reorganising obvious things and adding items as necessary, and I save my big list overhaul for December. I enjoy doing things that way, and for the past decade or so it seems to have worked for me. I certainly get a lot of comments about how much I get done.

You, of course, might not find my system works for you, and the good news about that is that now it’s easy to create your own custom way of working on your goals, thanks to the internet. Back in the day, it used to be that your options for practical goal list management were few and simple: pen and paper was the most likely choice. And the good thing about that system was that you could tape your goal list to the wall for easy, constant reference. Of course, you can still do that, there’s nothing wrong with it, but these days there’s no need to bother yourself with it if you’d rather hang out on the web (and let’s face it, you would— after all, you’re spending your free time reading this right now).

There are a few online options open to the serious goal setter, but far and away the best service I’ve found is the Robot Co-op’s flagship site, 43 Things (this is not to be confused with Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders, which, although a fantastic personal development site in its own right, deserves separate consideration and is not associated with 43 Things except in that the names are similar, which I’m told is just coincidence). I’ve had a 43 Things account for quite some time, they’ve been around a long while, but I just never got around to really digging through the site and discovering everything that it has to offer. But since it’s that time of year, yesterday I decided to have a look and see if I could improve on my current goal list management system (which for the past few years has been a spreadsheet I keep privately on my local drive).

I’ll admit it, I got sucked in hard. I must have spent twelve hours there yesterday excitedly getting myself settled in and organised and motivated. The great thing about 43 Things (aside from the fact that it’s my favourite price: free) is that what initially appears to be the entire site, the part where you set life goals and define ambitions, is only the very tiniest tip of an iceberg that extends up and down and all around your core list of targets, supporting you from every direction. In addition to the community aspects of the actual 43 Things site (e.g. the ability to cheer other people on, give advice on goals you’ve already achieved, or seek help if you’re having trouble moving forward on a goal), there are also four additional web sites, all related to 43 Things, which don’t require separate registration and which you can use freely to supplement your 43 Things experience. Here’s an overview:

• 43 Things: Set goals, show off achievements, get help with your obstacles, help others over theirs, cheer each other on, and get ideas for new things to try.
• 43 Places: Same basic idea as 43 Things, but all about places you want to visit and places you’ve already been— anything from countries and cities to attractions and restaurants.
• 43 People: Half social networking and half role model setting… this is the part of the system I’m still getting to grips with.
• Lists of Bests Here you can make lists of anything you want, and work through your own lists or the lists of others. For instance, one of my goals on 43 Things is to “read 50 books in 2007,” and so I’m going to make a list of 50 books on Lists of Bests and keep track of my progress there.
• All Consuming: A great companion to Lists of Bests, All Consuming details the list items you’ve consumed, and makes it easy for you to share your experiences with others and get suggestions for new items to consume. Consumption categories include anything and everything from books to CDs to films to food and any other custom category you care to invent.

You see now how I spent so much time on this yesterday. It’s a labyrinth. But once you get the hang of how everything seamlessly works together, it becomes fun and I think in the long run it’s going to help me become a lot more productive even than I already am. The one thing that was really missing from my previous spreadsheet system was the aspect of accountability and support— if I failed or gave up, no one knew, and no one was there to console or encourage. With 43 Things, it’s possible that items in danger of sliding downhill can be salvaged, because there’s the help (and let’s face it, pressure) of all those who have already accomplished the same goal and are willing to show you how they got past the obstacles.

So give this to yourself as a holiday gift— sign up here, and get excited not only about 2007, but about the rest of your life.

NOTE: neither the following post nor anything else on this web site should be construed as medical advice. I am only conveying my own experiences. As always in this life, you alone are responsible for the outcome of your own actions. If you want to listen to your doctor, listen to your doctor. If you don’t, don’t. Your decision has nothing to do with me and I am not responsible for anything that happens to you.

Back when I was a kid, maybe ten or so, I remember seeing a segment on one of those daytime TV shows, about how doctors are fallible people with fragile personalities like the rest of us. The point of the story was that many doctors feel pressured, both by their own egos and by patients who expect them to be magic answer factories, to come up with an instant diagnosis and a solution for every ailment. The result can be that patients are misdiagnosed and receive inappropriate treatment. The host of the TV show suggested that patients should use their brains when they’re seeking medical advice, and voice their suspicions if a doctor’s diagnosis doesn’t sit right with them.

As a ten-year-old girl this information floored me. A doctor can be wrong? I have to worry about this? At this early point it hadn’t yet occurred to me to question adults, never mind adults with authority. But that TV show stuck with me, and as I got older I fine-tuned my radar to the point where the very first hint of malarkey from a doctor would prompt me to bring him back down to earth in a most abrupt way (doctors hate me, but I am the queen of avoiding unnecessary treatment). In recent years the internet has made this even easier, by allowing a smart person to seek out information and have a good idea of what’s going on before ever setting foot in a doctor’s office. Again, I’m sure doctors hate this— there must be zillions of idiots every day who flock to emergency rooms convinced they’re dying of stomach cancer, only to learn that the mexican food they had last night simply didn’t agree with them. But for those who are level-headed and savvy of web nonsense, the internet can be a great source of knowledge.

Case in point: six months ago I slipped on a marble floor and put my hand out to break my fall. I landed on my thumb, which was violently yanked back under my wrist. Suspecting nothing worse than a sprain, I left the hand alone and avoided using it as much as possible. After two weeks, the soreness had not subsided, so I made an appointment at the hospital, who referred me to their head of orthopedics. I was x-rayed and examined, and within half an hour I was told that I’d torn my ulnar collateral ligament. I was then advised that the ligament would never repair itself, and I should immobilise the joint for two weeks and prepare for surgery, which would involve taking a piece of ligament from another joint and screwing it onto the relevant bones. Yikes.

Even as I sat in the doctor’s office with my hand throbbing, I was thinking this diagnosis couldn’t be right. I’m not sure where my doubts came from, because Turkey has an excellent health care system with state-of-the-art facilities and highly trained professionals, but I just couldn’t picture myself having surgery for this. I did, however, welcome the idea of immobilisation, and so I bought the recommended thumb support and started using that immediately. The doctor warned me not to be fooled by any apparent improvement that using the brace might indicate. I took his warning with a grain of salt and went home with a reminder card for my follow-up appointment.

When I got home with my brace I started trawling the internet for any information I could find about my diagnosis. As always with any topic, I found a spectrum of opinions ranging from one end of crazy (”leave the ligament alone and The Lord will heal it if it is His desire”) to the other (”forget it, it’s ruined, just cut the whole hand off and throw it away”), and everything in between. But what really spoke to me were the hundreds of people I found who had the same injury I had, and who, like me, didn’t think that surgery was the answer. Some of them had tried alternative therapies, others had relied on gels and creams, all with varying degrees of success. Very few reported complete recovery without surgery. Some had developed painful arthritis in the joint. It was all very scary to read.

But I firmly believe that regardless of general truths and blanket tenets, each person is a different case to be considered separately, and I knew that just because surgery was the right choice for many people, it didn’t necessarily mean it was the right choice for me. So I pressed on with my stubbornness. I researched alternative therapies. I also read up about doctors who are pressured by hospital administrators to recommend surgery automatically for certain listed conditions because surgery provides greater income for the hospital— someone has to pay for all those facilities and fancy machines, after all.

My greatest source of information, however, came from the mouths of people I actually spoke to in the flesh. Basically I asked every person I encountered whether they had any experience with torn ligaments. A surprising percentage had, and almost all of those rolled their eyes and gave me the knowing nod when I said that my doctor had recommended surgery. Surgery had been recommended to them, as well, and many of them had also declined. Perhaps they’d gone with physical therapy or with another treatment, but in just about every case the ligaments healed eventually despite what the doctor had said about surgery being necessary. Or, in a few cases, the person had caved under the doctor’s pressure and the surgery had actually rendered the joint more problematic than it had been in the first place.

I tore up the card for my follow-up appointment and made the decision to wait it out. I didn’t have a specific plan as such, but in general I thought I’d continue to wear my brace for six months and see how that went (I’d read about many people for whom simple immobilisation was the magic answer), and if that didn’t work then I’d cross the next bridge.

I don’t remember the exact date of the first time I forgot to put on my brace. I guess I’d been wearing it pretty faithfully for a couple of months, and then one day I got out of the shower and just forgot to put it on, which indicates to me that things were already healing— usually within a few minutes of removing the brace the pain and weakness would remind me to put it back on. I only wore it sporadically after that, until eventually it got lost somewhere (it’s probably under the sofa now). There were a few days here and there where things felt a bit delicate, but I was advised by a skier friend of mine (who has torn many ligaments in her career) that the road to recovery is never linear and I shouldn’t worry unless things seemed to be getting steadily worse.

Fast-forward to last night, sitting with my hands out in front of me, staring at them, wiggling the thumbs around and for a brief second trying to remember if it was the left one or the right one that was injured. I pointed out to my boyfriend that the range of motion is pretty much the same in both thumbs now. I gave him a demonstration wiggle, to which he responded with a warning to be careful and not overdo it. It’s so tempting to test the limits of the joint when you can’t quite believe it’s better.

And to think, if I had just blindly accepted what the doctor told me, I’d have screws in my thumb now, and scars, and possible nerve damage, and at least a year of physical therapy ahead of me. And I’d be several thousand dollars lighter in the pocket. It remains to be seen, of course, whether I develop arthritis in my thumb, but I think there comes a point where you have to weigh the maybes against the other maybes and make your choices. Those who have surgery often develop arthritis anyway, so even if it does happen in later years, it will impossible to say what exactly was the cause.

I’m not recommending that you should go out and tell your doctor where to stick his advice. There’s a reason medical schools exist, and in general doctors are competent professionals who know what they’re talking about. But one thing they don’t know, and indeed can’t know, is what it feels like to be you, and how your body feels from the inside. Learn to recognise red flags and trust your suspicions in a well-informed manner. Each of us is an intelligent, intuitive individual, and in this age of the ridiculously obvious safety advisory (warning: hot coffee is hot), it’s empowering to look out for yourself as well, because no one is better equipped to do so than you.

I’ll keep you updated on the thumb.

If you’re looking to shake your life up or hit the reset button, here’s as good a place to start as any: Hack Yourself, an essay on self-reinvention by writer Michael Montoure. I first saw this piece several years ago, and though I’m usually unmoved by the great majority of nonsense written under the heading of “self-help literature,” I found that Monture’s essay voiced, in a concise way, a lot of things we all know but still need to be reminded of from time to time. Well worth the five minutes it takes to read it. But be careful, if you’re like me you might find yourself suddenly packing up and moving to another continent because you’ve decided that’s who you are now.

And to that, I say go for it.