The Long Run : A Memoir of Loss and Life in Motion

"An unlikely convert to distance running finds her way through grief and into the untold history of women and running. Thirty-year-old Catriona Menzies-Pike defined herself in many ways: voracious reader, pub crawler, feminist, backpacker, and, since her parents' deaths a decade earlier, orphan. "Runner" was nowhere near the list. Yet when she began training for a half marathon on a whim, she found herself an instant convert. Soon she realized that running, "a pace suited to the precarious labor of memory," was helping her to grieve the loss of her parents in ways that she had been, for ten messy years, running away from. As Catriona excavates her own past, she also grows curious about other women drawn to running. What she finds is a history of repression and denial--running was thought to endanger childbearing, and as late as 1967 the organizer of the Boston Marathon tried to drag a woman off the course, telling her to "get the hell out of my race"--But also of incredible courage and achievement. As she brings to life the stories of pioneering athletes and analyzes the figure of the woman runner in pop culture, literature, and myth, she comes to the heart of why she's running, and why any of us do."--;Making a Scene -- On the Treadmill -- Born to Run -- Running Like a Girl -- On the Road -- Telling tales -- Look at Her Go -- Rejoice, We Conquer! -- Plan B -- Over the Line -- A One-Sentence Success Story -- Hitting the Wall -- Conclusion : Stories We Tell. "A haunting chronicle of what endures when the world we know is swept away. On a day like any other, on a rafting trip down Utah's Green River, Stephane Gerson's eight-year-old son, Owen, drowned in a spot known as Disaster Falls. That same night, as darkness fell, Stephane huddled in a tent with his wife, Alison, and their older son, Julian, trying to understand what seemed inconceivable. 'It's just the three of us now, ' Alison said over the sounds of a light rain and, nearby, the rushing river. 'We cannot do it alone. We have to stick together.' Disaster Fallschronicles the aftermath of that day and their shared determination to stay true to Alison's resolution. At the heart of the book is Stephane's portrait of a marriage critically tested. Husband and wife grieve in radically different ways that threaten to isolate each of them in their post-Owen worlds. ('He feels so far, ' Stephane says, when Alison shows him a selfie Owen had taken. 'He feels so close, ' she says). With beautiful specificity, Stephane shows how they resist that isolation and reconfigure their marriage from within. As Stephane navigates his grief, the memoir expands to explore how society reacts to the death of a child. He depicts the 'good death' of his father, which enlarges Stephane's perspective on mortality. He excavates the history of the Green River--rife with hazards not mentioned in the rafting company's brochures. He explores how stories can both memorialize and obscure a person's life--and how they can rescue us. Disaster Falls is a powerful account of a life cleaved in two--raw, truthful, and unexpectedly consoling"-- Provided by publisher "An unlikely convert to distance running finds her way through grief and into the untold history of women and running. Thirty-year-old Catriona Menzies-Pike defined herself in many ways: voracious reader, pub crawler, feminist, backpacker, and, since her parents' deaths a decade earlier, orphan. "Runner" was nowhere near the list. Yet when she began training for a half marathon on a whim, she found herself an instant convert. Soon she realized that running, "a pace suited to the precarious labor of memory," was helping her to grieve the loss of her parents in ways that she had been, for ten messy years, running away from. As Catriona excavates her own past, she also grows curious about other women drawn to running. What she finds is a history of repression and denial--running was thought to endanger childbearing, and as late as 1967 the organizer of the Boston Marathon tried to drag a woman off the course, telling her to "get the hell out of my race"--But also of incredible courage and achievement. As she brings to life the stories of pioneering athletes and analyzes the figure of the woman runner in pop culture, literature, and myth, she comes to the heart of why she's running, and why any of us do."-- Provided by publisher "An unlikely convert to distance running finds her way through grief and into the untold history of women and running. Thirty-year-old Catriona Menzies-Pike defined herself in many ways: voracious reader, pub crawler, feminist, backpacker, and, since her parents' deaths a decade earlier, orphan. 'Runner' was nowhere near the list. Yet when she began training for a half marathon on a whim, she found herself an instant convert. Soon she realized that running,'"a pace suited to the precarious labor of memory,' was helping her to grieve the loss of her parents in ways that she had been, for ten messy years, running away from. As Catriona excavates her own past, she also grows curious about other women drawn to running. What she finds is a history of repression and denial -- running was thought to endanger childbearing, and as late as 1967 the organizer of the Boston Marathon tried to drag a woman off the course, telling her to 'get the hell out of my race' -- but also of incredible courage and achievement. As she brings to life the stories of pioneering athletes and analyzes the figure of the woman runner in pop culture, literature, and myth, she comes to the heart of why she's running, and why any of us do."-- WorldCat An unlikely marathoner finds her way through grief and into the untold history of women and running. Thirty-year-old Catriona Menzies-Pike defined herself in many ways: voracious reader, pub crawler, feminist, backpacker, and, since her parents' deaths a decade earlier, orphan. "Runner" was nowhere near the list. Yet when she began training for a half marathon on a whim, she found herself an instant convert. Soon she realized that running, "a pace suited to the precarious labor of memory," was helping her to grieve the loss of her parents in ways that she had been, for ten messy years, running away from. As Catriona excavates her own past, she also grows curious about other women drawn to running. What she finds is a history of repression and denial—running was thought to endanger childbearing, and as late as 1967 the organizer of the Boston Marathon tried to drag a woman off the course, telling her to "get the hell out of my race"—but also of incredible courage and achievement. As she brings to life the stories of pioneering athletes and analyzes the figure of the woman runner in pop culture, literature, and myth, she comes to the heart of why she's running, and why any of us do. An unlikely marathoner finds her way through grief and into the untold history of women and running. Thirty-year-old Catriona Menzies-Pike defined herself in many ways: voracious reader, pub crawler, feminist, backpacker, and, since her parents' deaths a decade earlier, orphan. "Runner" was nowhere near the list. Yet when she began training for a half marathon on a whim, she found herself an instant convert. Soon she realized that running, "a pace suited to the precarious labor of memory," was helping her to grieve the loss of her parents in ways that she had been, for ten messy years, running away from. As Catriona excavates her own past, she also grows curious about other women drawn to running. What she finds is a history of repression and denial running was thought to endanger childbearing, and as late as 1967 the organizer of the Boston Marathon tried to drag a woman off the course, telling her to "get the hell out of my race" but also of incredible courage and achievement. As she brings to life the stories of pioneering athletes and analyzes the figure of the woman runner in pop culture, literature, and myth, she comes to the heart of why she's running, and why any of us do." Introduction Making a Scene On the Treadmill Born to Run Running Like a Girl On the Road Telling tales Look at Her Go Rejoice, We Conquer! Plan B Over the Line A One-Sentence Success Story Hitting the Wall Conclusion: Stories We Tell Bibliography Acknowledgements. Henshū Nihon Seitai Gakkai Taikai Kikaku Iinkai. Cover Title. Meeting Held At Sapporo Convention Center, Japan In March 14-18, 2018. Text In Japanese And English. 編集日本生態学会大会企画委員会. "A piercing and luminescent catalogue of a father's grief, parsing the shapes and distances of profound loss into a way forward for a family in crisis"-- Provided by publisher