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Well, not yet, not yet

Man, no matter what I do I can't even break 3:30. Let alone qualify for Boston! Thanks to everyone who turned out to cheer: Natalie, Myron and Penny, my folks, Jody, Cam and Allie, Barb, Sally and Nina, Isaac, Tam, Kate, Myles and Emma. Here's how we did. More later. In the meantime, here's an essay I wrote about marathons for the National Post. 

The Screenwriting Course

I was sort of dreading the first class for this screenwriting course I'm taking this fall. My friend Ben Kaplan took it last year and he made it sound really great, and then a couple of weeks ago I read something online about the stagnating book business in New York and I got into this mood where I was thinking that maybe the entire reading public OF THE ENTIRE PLANET EARTH was me and like a handful of my more intellectual friends and the trouble with those Continuing Education courses that colleges offer is that they're really easy to Google and find and then, once you've filled out the form, actually pay for, so that 20 minutes later, once I recovered from my impulsive doomsday declaration for the entire state of the book industry, once I had swung back to my normal contrarian self who feels that I'll always write books and magazine articles even if everyone else on Earth would rather play Guitar Hero—Well, by that time I had put a couple of hundred bucks on my credit card and committed the following 12 Thursday evenings to this screenwriting course. 

The first one happened last night. I arrived in the class feeling a little frazzled. Typically in classroom situations I revert to my high school self and think malevolent thoughts about everybody else in the room. Except I found this really difficult to do in this particular course. Part of it was the instructor, this little Polish lady, Nika Rylski, who buzzes around our desks like a caffeinated honeybee. She not only really likes to talk about screenwriting and movies, she also really likes to teach. You can tell. She regards teaching like it's a form of performance. She's got lines you suspect have been used for years and yet her delivery is so good you laugh anyway. 

What really made it difficult for me to hate everybody else in the class, as, you know, I did back in high school, was that this wasn't some math course taught by a troglodyte with coffee breath, or French taught by an aspiring Lothario who liked to give the girls back massages. (Riverside Secondary School teaching staff circa 1990: You know who you are.) 

Naw, this was a screenwriting course. In fact the name of the course is something like, Write Your Own Screenplay. And bear in mind this is a Continuing Education course. It's full of people in their 20s, 30s, 40s. And better than that: The class is full of characters. Great characters! One of the guys came in when everyone else had already sat down, just striding into this cluster of desks arranged in an approximate circle. He was wearing a City of Toronto labourer's jumpsuit, complete with the reflective silver tape all over it. To start the class, Rylski went around the room and asked everyone to say something about themselves. And when it came time for his turn, this guy piped up in this wicked French African accent, he said, "I am a garbageman." He said it in this really dignified way, like he was saying, I'm a heart surgeon, or, I'm a biochemical engineer. No attitude or anything: Just, this is what I do, and I'm cool with it. And as the class went on it became apparent he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of French African cinema. How can you not love a guy like that?

The thing is, the class is full of such characters. There's a security guard who works on his screenplay as he mans his security desk. There's a manager of Canadian rock bands and a woman who owns a film transcription service and a landscaper and an insurance underwriter, and all of them you could tell were the sort of people who, when they saw a great movie, they couldn't wait to talk about it with someone, and if that someone happened to be the guy who worked on the other side of the waste disposal truck, well, then, so be it. This was a class of people who, by their entry into the class, were stepping toward the achievement of a dream. Of creating a screenplay. And how can you dislike someone who is working to achieve a dream? We ended up talking movies for three hours. The class flew by. It was great. 

As things wrapped up, Rylski gave us the first assignment, which is to think up a premise for a movie. She gave us a set of stringent criteria for the premise—hopefully you can read some of the details in the grainy photo that starts this blog entry. I'm toying with pitching something about the random collection of humanity who congregate in screenwriting classes. It'd be a feel-good flick about people uniting thanks to the power of cinema. Yeah, I think I'm going to like this class. 

What My Training Means To Me

This morning around 6:30 a.m. I laced up my sneakers for my last hard run before the Toronto Waterfront Marathon. On the slow jog to the track I thought about a question Natalie had asked me a couple of weeks ago. We were in bed, we were reading, and she asked, "What's it mean to you to qualify for Boston, anyway?" I put down my book. I thought about it. And I said, "Let me get back to you on that."

I've thought a lot about Natalie's question since she asked it. The notion that maybe I would try to run a marathon in under three hours and sixteen minutes, the qualifying time for Boston for my gender and age bracket, came to me shortly after I began running seriously again, in late April. I set the goal for two reasons. Earlier in 2008 I had fallen into this habit of going out too late and drinking too much. It was a symptom of having finished my book, I think, and eventually it started affecting my ability to be a father. Dude, let me tell you, it is difficult keeping up with a toddler on a Saturday morning when you're hungover. So in late April I decided it would be a good idea for me to quit drinking. And to fool myself into quitting drinking, I linked this whole teetotalling thing to qualifying for the Boston marathon. I wouldn't touch the stuff 'til I qualified, I said. 

The other reason is that my brother and sister both were running seriously this spring. My brother, the second-most-fit-person-I-know, had qualified for Boston a couple of years back but didn't run it because, he said, he wanted to wait until I qualified. And my sister has recently discovered she's a blazing fast long-distance runner, and it was looking like she'd be a cinch to qualify. I didn't want to be the only Shulgan sibling who didn't qualify for Boston this year. So that helped my motivation, too. 

It was going to be tough. My previous best marathon time is 3:32. To come in under 3:16 I would have to run my next race 16 minutes faster. In past training cycles I targeted four runs a week and maybe averaged a little under that. This time, I vowed, I would target five times a week, and actually toward the end of my training I was getting out six times a week. I'd always avoided speedwork before. This time, I did speedwork on Wednesdays and maybe another time on top of that—fartleks, at first, and then once I was fit enough, I started doing Yasso 800s. 

I flirted with burnout a couple of times, the most recent yielding this blog post. And then the final benchmarks approached. My brother and Jeremy Busch and I ran our final long run—32k—on Sept. 7, capping a week in which I ran a total distance of 100 kilometres. The penultimate round of Yassos happened the following Saturday. I started off with some slow times for the 800m repeats: 3:11, 3:14. And then my legs loosened up. The next four averaged 3:07 per 800 m. And then I got slow again: 3:13. Then 3:15. Bearing in mind my target marathon time is 3 hours and 16 minutes, my slowest Yasso 800 should be 3 minutes and 15 seconds. Going slower than that would be a huge psych-out. 

Natalie's question came to mind as I prepared to run my ninth of ten Yasso 800s. What did qualifying for the Boston mean to me? I thought about the guys I hang out with. Maybe a half-dozen of them are serious athletes. For example, my brother and a handful of the guys I lived with in university went out to Alberta earlier this year to run the Canadian Death Race, which requires running marathon distances up the Rocky Mountains. (They asked me to be part of the team, and I thought about going until I talked about it with Natalie, who pointed out that Penny's due date was the same day as the race, and in retrospect, it was lucky I didn't go because Penny actually was born as the race was happening. Whew.) So anyway: On their team were three private equity investors, one engineer and one cop (the cop is the fittest person I know). In other words, they have jobs and families. They're busy guys. Training is something they do on their off time. And despite that: They won. They came first in the men's division and second overall. (Find a PDF of the results here. Their team is called Fat, Old and Slow.)

I had always wondered whether I could run at the same level as my friends. If I went all-out during the sprint workouts. If I hit my mileage totals every week. If I trained as hard as I could. And leading up to this point, leading up to this moment in the Yassos, I had done it. I actually had quit drinking: Aside from a single glass of champagne on the night of my book launch, I haven't had a drop of alcohol since April 24. I've also dropped a tonne of weight. I am now 20 pounds lighter than I weighed then. Similar to the bit in Haruki Murakami's running memoir, I think about going to the butcher and buying 20 pounds of meat. That is a lot of meat. I mean, the Chris Shulgan who is typing these words at his laptop is 10% smaller than the old Chris Shulgan. That's a really weird notion.

So yeah, my ninth Yasso. I gave my hamstrings one final stretch. I resolved to leave everything I could on the track. I was about to run my fucking ass off. And I came in at 3:12. I was so encouraged by that result that for my last 800 I ran even harder. My final 800 turned out to be my best time of the day: 3:04. Averaging all 10 of my 800s together, my Yasso times predicted a marathon finish of 3 hours and 10 minutes—more than five minutes faster than my Boston qualifying time. Huh. Huh. Huh. Maybe I could actually do this.

This morning, during the first couple of laps of my final timed 10k, I thought about how hard I've trained, and I also thought about what it means to qualify for the Boston. I came in at 44:28. Breaking a 45-minute 10k feels pretty good. But what feels better is the knowledge that, in some way, I've already done what I set out to do. I don't think my body could have handled more mileage. I think I trained as hard as my body would allow. When it comes down to it, that's what qualifying for Boston means to me: Finally, this time, I've tried as hard as I could.

About that kid of mine

Myron and I the week before he started school, attending his first movie in a theatre: Wall-E. Photo by Julie Shulgan.

So last week my sister-in-law, Jody, and her business partner, Liz, opened a new montessori in downtown Toronto called Westside School. Myron started going last week—three hours every morning, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. It's my job to take him because the whole point of Myron going to montessori is to give Natalie some time with only one kid, so she can have some fun doing things for herself, like showering and eating meals. 

My sister-in-law warned me it might be traumatic at first, this business of leaving Myron at school. The first day went OK. Both his cousins also are at the montessori so he was happy to get a chance to play with them. And then the next day was a disaster. Oooh, it was bad. Tuesday morning, I led him into the little fenced play area where everyone gathers before school actually starts. I knelt down. I said, "OK, daddy's going to go now, mom'll be here before lunch to pick you up." 

Look, I know new parents have been writing about the trauma of the daycare drop-off for years but shit it's poison to leave your kid making noises like an 18th century amputation victim, mid-surgery. What he was producing wasn't a scream or even a wail. It was a keening. A lament. It was the sound of a two-year-old in deep and profound mourning. Driving home all I could think about was the glimpse of his crumpled face through the fence slats as he watched me abandon him. 

Natalie could tell something was wrong when I returned. Just at that moment the phone rang. It was my sister-in-law, Jody. "He's fine," she said. "He cried for maybe two minutes and now he's playing with the other kids." I was so relieved I, well, shoot, you know, I guess I teared up for a second. Natalie caught it. She hugged me. It didn't help. I went off to get some writing done with anxiety all through my abdomen. And the next day, the Wednesday, the routine was pretty much the same: Kid balls, dad feels terrible. "Do you want me to take him, tomorrow?" Natalie asked once I returned to the house, once she saw what a wreck I was. "Naw, it's fine, don't worry, I'll get over it," I said. Natalie taking him would obscure the whole point of this Myron-going-to-school thing. And if you're a kid under the impression that one of your parents is abandoning you, probably it's slightly less traumatic (for the kid) if it's the dad doing the abandoning. 

That night we had a family meeting about this school thing. Natalie and I prepared for it. "We just have to tell him why he's going to school," Natalie whispered to me while Myron was in the other room. "Why is that, exactly?" I whispered back. "Because he needs to be around other kids," she said. "We did it, it was good for us, it's good for him." Five minutes later I was sitting on the coffee table explaining to my two-year-old about the benefits of socialization. He seemed to get it. 

And then the next morning it was the same thing. Maybe worse. And again the next day. Getting to Saturday morning felt like an accomplishment. I gave him lots of hugs. We went to a birthday party and walked down to Clafouti for croissants and enjoyed extra-long sessions of track construction with his Thomas the Train set. 

Monday morning came too soon. My sister-in-law warned me that Monday's parting could be the worst of them, after all the familial togetherness over the weekend. But Myron was brave. I got him out of his car seat. There's a pocket at the bottom where he's supposed to put his soother when he leaves the car. He went to put the soother into the pocket, then paused. The soother was stopped in the air exactly halfway between car pocket and Myron's mouth. 

"Myron," I said. "We can do this. You can do this. You're a brave boy." 

He studied my face. He studied his soother. The soother went into the pocket. At the gate Myron gave me a hug. He hung on maybe a moment too long. Then I turned and speedwalked toward the car. Jody's post-leaving report was a little different, this time: This time, he didn't even cry.

Which brings us to this morning. Which went a little differently. It's been a continuum, pretty much, right? He was bad at first. He's been getting better. And yet this morning was like a whole other level. As I led him to the car for the morning trip to school, he said the names of his cousins: "Cameron. Allie." He knew where we were going! And: He was looking forward to it! Getting him out of the car seat was a breeze. He put the soother in the pocket, no problem. At the gate, Jody's business partner, Liz, met Myron with the usual handshake. I knelt down. I kissed the top of Myron's head. "Mom'll pick you up at lunch," I said. And he ran off. He didn't even say, "bye." He just went off with Allie to play on one of the spring teeter-totter toys the montessori school has in the playground. 

"Bye Myron," I called to his back. 

Dammit, I thought, as I trudged back to the car. I miss the tears. 

An Obituary For Beautiful Ideas

The novel Infinite Jest was one of the most frustrating and captivating things I have ever read. It didn't really have a narrative arc. Its character cast was ridiculously unwieldy. But the ideas it contained were so audacious, so blind to taboo, so fucking beautiful, that you kept reading the book just to happen on another one. Here are three of the ideas I found most memorable:

3. The Disfiguring Beauty — The main female character wore a veil to cover up her face. This was natural; her disfigurement traumatized her through her adolescence so that eventually she decided to just cover herself, to attempt to live a normal life. Eventually, the reader learns her disfigurement is an unconventional one: Her beauty crippled her ability to exist. Men became transfixed, women grew enraged, her stalkers were legion. So she covered herself up.

2. The Last Movie You'll Ever Watch -- Floating through the novel "Infinite Jest" is a videotape of the same name that is so captivating it causes people to become vegetables; they literally can't stop watching it. The joke of the book of the same name is that the book was similar to the movie; I knew that the book wasn't going anywhere, I knew such a riot of notions and characters would never be able to come together in the end, and yet, I ignored my misgivings because it was so captivating. And I suspect that was the punchline. 

1. Suicide By Microwave Oven -- This still goes down as the most horrible way to commit suicide I have ever come across. A character cuts a hole in the oven door, inserts his head through it, and microwaves his head at high power until he dies.

This morning, I heard the sad news that Infinite Jest author David Foster Wallace died over the weekend. He hung himself. He was 46 years old.