Commusings: My Elliptical Marathon by Stephanie Himango

Dear Commune Community,

I’m back in New York, boxed up in a vertical C.A.F.O. for a week. This place is oppressive, imposing its endless right angles. If ever there was an example of man’s attempt to exert his will over nature, it is here on this paved island. I braved this city for 25 years until it finally granted me parole. Somehow, I still love it though. It’s Stockholm syndrome with a New World twist.

Now, it’s Phoebe’s turn, as she’s attending my alma mater. Our children will never listen to us and never fail to imitate us. I am here dutifully setting her up for her rite of passage. I carried a full-length mirror yesterday 20 blocks up Amsterdam Avenue. It was damn heavy. The day was dank and humid and sweat streamed down my cheeks.

As beleaguered Gotham denizens approached me on the sidewalk, I tilted the mirror toward them such that they could see themselves. Some looked, their faces opening up, smiling, laughing.

“You’re so beautiful,” I told them.

No, I’m not running a marathon on an elliptical like today’s essayist, but I am moving through the grief-thrill of my eldest flying the coop, lugging boxes and unruly mattresses up narrow stairwells. If I keep moving, maybe I can keep the emotions at bay.

In a couple of days, I’ll say goodbye, head to the airport and fly against the jetstream back to the hills and trees. I’ll leave my precious girl, the one I read to every night, to the bustling multi-ethnicity, rattling train cars and pluming diesel smoke of this phantasmagoria of humanity called New York.

I’ll have my cry then. Letting go is hard.

Prowling the Serengeti of IG @jeffkrasno..

In love, include me,
Jeff

• • •

My Elliptical Marathon by Stephanie Himango

Originally posted February 9, 2023
 

Stories of marathon runners, triathletes and endurance athletes of all kinds fascinate me. Add extreme mountain climbers to the list, too. I vanish into stories like Touching the Void or The Alpinist. I’m sucked right into the screen or page and I disappear. Weird, though, because I don’t aspire to scale frozen mountains in wicked conditions like the icons of the extremes. 

However, I’ve always wanted to do a marathon. 

(Insert needle scratch across vinyl transition to less exciting mind music). 

I was riding my elliptical machine one dark morning when an idea flashed through my mind.

I was doing what I could with an ankle injury on top of similarly precarious knees, but … why not challenge myself to a marathon on the elliptical? 

It’s not sexy, but who cares?

I decided I would do it. It would be a solitary event. It would lack the sweaty, salty energy of the collective, the mass of humanity moving as one, the cheers, the music, the water stations and the cool outfits. But it would still be a formidable goal for me. Silently self-motivated. Something to work toward. Who could I become in the process? How could a goal like this shape my future? 

I put podcasts in my ears and got to work: Ed Mylett, Rich Roll, Ologies, Mobituaries, Across the Dinerverse, Andrew Huberman, and, of course, Commune with Jeff Krasno. I put books in my ears: The Power of One More, The Wealthy Gardener, The Mountain is You, How The Word Is Passed, Braiding Sweetgrass.

I read in an article by the Mental Health Commission of Canada that “goal setting is an expression of hope, and fostering optimism for the long term may help you get through some current challenges.” 

I had no idea. 

I already had a lot to think about. My job of many years was ending, and as I looked out from the elliptical into the darkness of that pre-dawn morning, I was looking into the darkness of my imminent unknown professional future. My friend Alie taught me that her friend Cole taught her about anticipatory grief. That seemed like what I was feeling. The marathon would be my anticipatory grief therapy, I guess. It would be my off-ramp from this career and my on-ramp to my future self.

I found a marathon training schedule online and pretended the recommended running miles were meant for the elliptical. Week after week I logged more miles, and while it was easier on my body than running, moving in one place for so long, and yet not moving through space, was a peculiar kind of psychological challenge. 

I picked a Marathon Day date — February 4, 2023, the day after my work would end.

On Christmas Day of 2022, I did my longest ‘run’ on the elliptical — 18 miles. Talking to people who have run marathons, I was told that if you can do 18, you can do 26.2. 

On January 2, 2023, my resolve was shaken when our family’s hearts were shattered. We had a death in our family, and the loss was sudden and devastating. I knew I should keep training, but it all derailed me. My mileage and focus faltered, and my tight adherence to the training schedule broke. 

Did it even matter now? What’s the point?

After about a week of this thinking, I decided I needed to use my grief to continue. I was so close to my goal. I needed to get to the finish line. 

Really, I needed to get to the starting line. 

Grief can be paralyzing. With uncertainty around the timing of our loved one’s funeral, I knew if I was going to do the marathon, I’d need to move it up. (There are benefits to a marathon of one. The race day can change on a dime.)

Setting a goal that was out of my comfort zone gave me hope. It gave me structure. It reminded me I still had verve. And when I recommitted to it, the goal gave me safe harbor. The discipline brought a kind of freedom. 

On the morning of January 15, 2023, I went outside into the garage and started. If you know me, you know I love dates and markers and time stamps. As I got on the elliptical, it occurred to me that 30 years ago, on January 15, 1993, I waved goodbye to my family as I boarded a plane in ice cold Minnesota and flew to Hong Kong where I would live for the next six years. That was a flight into the unknown initiated by a Rotary Ambassadorial scholarship,  just as this was to be a ride into the unknown. Glennon Doyle’s voice floated through my mind: “We can do hard things.” We, because it’s always some kind of we. Not I. My family has been encouraging me on the road to this goal and every other goal I’ve ever held.

As I set out on my long garage ride, I put a story in my ears to match my reflective mood — a book called Girl In Translation by Jean Kwok. It describes another kind of journey into the unknown. About pain and grief and change and poverty and challenge and cultural differences and loss and determination and uncertainty and grit and friendship and triumph and overcoming and grace and the kindness of strangers.

I pushed play and let my body and the story take me away, step by step by step. Over the course of the next 26.2 miles, I traveled to Hong Kong and Brooklyn, through childhood and adolescence, through pain and grief and back again. I smiled and waved when Eric served as my one in-person cheering section, water re-filler and snack deliverer. 

I crossed my invisible finish line in 4 hours and 10 minutes. I stepped off. It was done. I could barely walk for the next two days. But I did it. We did it. I felt a sweeping sense of gratitude for the entire process.

Now what?

I don’t study grief. I’m not an expert on it. But I’ve learned there are stories inside of grief. Stories of love and longing, stories of celebration and appreciation, stories of guilt and regret. No one can ever tell me story isn’t powerful. 

Similarly, no one can tell me that goals aren’t powerful. The goals we set or do not set… they write our stories and shape our futures. Goals can help us through the toughest chapters.

When goals, grief, and gratitude collide, maybe we can transmute our pain into energy. We can lay a few more railroad tracks into our unknown futures. We can know that we are capable and strong.

 

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Stephanie Himango is a six-time Emmy Award-winning television writer and producer spanning the News & Documentary, Sports, and Daytime Creative Emmy communities. The author of two books: Get in the Ring: The Tale of Bruno the Boxer and Another Door Opens, she is currently earning her Wellness and Nutrition Coaching certifications to offer coaching along with her Wellness Writing Workshops and public speaking services. You can connect with her at stephaniehimango.com and @stephhimango on Instagram.