As I have mentioned in ye olde blog over the last few months, I have been training for a marathon to run with my friend and training partner Jason. The goal is to help Jason qualify for the Boston Marathon, which means we need to run the marathon in 3:20:59 or faster, which is fast but not impossible. Anyway, the marathon is next week (October 10th), so over the last few weeks I have been making my Saturday “long runs” shorter. I also wanted a good run with a known distance so I could work on the steady pace of 7:40/mile that Jason and I will need to run. To this end, I decided to enter the Akron Roadrunner Half-marathon (13.1 miles) which was last Saturday (the 25th).

I told Mer to sleep in last Saturday since there was no need for her to come and cheer me on in a training run. She needed the sleep, and I was please to let her get some rest. I drove down to Akron by myself, getting there about 5:30 am to avoid the rush of traffic. The race did not start until 7:00, so I had some time on my hands. I made frequent use of the restrooms, and sat on the curb to conserve energy. My friend and boss, Jim Gaul, was running the race as well, so I met up with him around 6:00. Jim had hooked up with three other friends of his, so we had a merry little group. We were all planning on running roughly 7:40/mile, which is a half-marathon time of 1:40 or so. It was a perfect day for running, with temperatures in the low 50’s and clear skies. We lined up in the starting chute with a lot of other people (there were 14,000 people running last Saturday). The race officials said a prayer and sang the national anthem, and we cheered on the wheelchair racers who started one minute ahead of the rest of us. Our race started with the Akron tradition of ringing a bell, and we walked and then trotted to the starting line (it took about 25 seconds for me to get to the starting line). Once I got to the line, I took off running and started weaving around lots of people. The start of the race is fast, with most of the first mile being down hill. I got to the first mile marker with a time of 7:44-7:48, and I got worried that I was going slow. I had hit a comfortable pace, and I kept at it and kept passing people. I had left Jim and his friends behind in the rush of the start, but I pushed on by myself. I got to mile two quicker than I thought, but I wrote that off to trying to make up time.

Anyway, I finally realized around mile six (out of thirteen) that I was running pretty fast. I did some quick math and realized I might have a shot at a personal record (a “PR” in running-lingo). I figured that since I had already run at a fast pace over some hilly parts of the course that my legs were going to be shot anyway, so I might as well try to keep my fast pace.

My legs started to hurt some around mile nine, but that is just as the race enters the University of Akron campus, which is a high point on the course, so the uphills were done for two miles so my legs could rest some, plus the crowds of people came back to cheer us on for over a mile along the course. The race ran down into the valley, and the half-marathon course split off from the marathon course at that point. We then had to climb a long hill that was a five-percent grade, and that made my legs burn, but I had done a fair amount of hill training this summer, so I held on to my pace. Just past the top of the long hill was the twelve-mile mark, so that was a boost to a tired body. I was able to keep the pace and finished well. I had a great run, and was pretty wiped out. I had finished in 1:33:07, or 7:07/mile, which was a personal record by over two minutes. I had failed to run a good training run, but I was pretty happy with my results. So, my results were:

1:33:07
7:07/mile
125th finisher out of 3,212 finishers (top 4%)
115th finisher out of 1,578 men (top 8%)
13th finisher out 262 men in my age group (35-39) (top 5%)

I got home and showered, and got dressed just as Mer was waking up. She was sad to have missed me having a good race, but I’m still happy she got a good sleep. I went back to bed for a couple of hours while Mer puttered online and did her exercise on the treadmill. We had a quick lunch, and then I took Mer up to Brecksville to the Towpath Trail. Brecksville is near the northern turn-around point of the Towpath Marathon, and it has some cool bridges to see and is a pretty walk, which I wanted to take Mer on.

We walked to a side trail, called the Carriage Trail, which is supposed to be a three-mile loop trail that I wanted to investigate. Shortly after we got on the trail, it warned the bridge on the trail was shut to foot traffic, and there was no way around. I scoffed at the idea and figured that someone had figured a way around, so we kept going. It was a fairly long walk up a hill, but then the trail leveled out. We walked about a mile into the woods, and came up on the bridge. The bridge was indeed shut up with a locked gate, and it was easy to see why since the supports were badly rusted. It was a very cool bridge, but there was no way across or down. We turned around and made our way back along the trail. We later read that the loop trail had three such bridges that were all shut down, so I was happy there was no way across.

It was a very pretty day for a walk, with lots of sun and temperatures around 60. We walked back to the car, and were treated to seeing a huge wedding party get off a bus for pictures. I think we counted twelve bridesmaids. Still, it was festive.

We got back in the car, and I drove back to downtown Akron. Along the way, we kept seeing people pulled over alongside the road. I finally got curious, so we stopped and asked. It turns out all these people we waiting for the once/day running of the Cuyahoga Scenic Railroad’s steam engine train. We decided to hang out to see that, and it was fun. It was surprising to see how many people turned out at every road to see the train go by.

Once in Akron, we went to the Barley House restaurant, and sat on the patio. That turned out to be pretty cool, so I had to run back to the car for my jacket for Meredith, and I took her long-sleeved over-shirt (which is my shirt anyway). We had a very good meal, but did not mind when it was over because it was warmer in the car.

I then took Mer dress shopping. I had asked Mer out to CVCA’s Homecoming dinner which was the following Saturday, and she wanted a new dress. I was excited because I had not gone shopping for Mer in three years because of the double-mortgage issue. I like shopping for dresses for Mer because I find her easy to shop for. I just imagine what she would look good in, and that seems to work. As an aside, to ask her out to Homecoming, I went into her 8th period English class with my guitar, and I sang for her two poems that I had set to music. The poems were “She Walks In Beauty” by Lord Byron and “Because She Would Ask Me Why I Loved Her” by Christopher Brennan. It worked well, and Mer said yes, so it was a great success.

Anyway, we had to try a couple of stores, but I found a fun and pretty blue dress that Mer liked at a Macy’s at Chapel Hill Mall. She bought it, and then she found a pair of cheap but nice shoes and a purse to match at a Payless, and then I bought us frosted chocolate chip cookies from a cookie place in the mall. We went home and ate them, and I was very pleased with a very good day.

This month (October), Mer is leading a field trip for all the 11th grade and her AP English classes to go up to Cleveland to see Great Lakes Theater’s production of Othello. Othello is the Shakespeare play of choice for all 11th grade English classes, and Mer likes to let her AP students in on any literary field trips that she organizes. Last year, we went to Great Lakes to see Twelfth Night, and the production was very good, but had a few moments of crude or sexual gestures in the production that were not mandated by the text. Since we are accountable to CVCA parents, Mer mentioned those issues from last year to the box office when she arranged for the trip to see Othello. The theater people assured her this production would be fine, and sent her two tickets to see a preview performance of the play so that Mer could make sure. That preview performance was last week on Friday (the 24th), and I got to go along.

We headed up early because there was a talk-back with the producer and the director, and Mer and I enjoy those things. The producer talked about how the company wanted to do Othello, but that it depended on finding an actor who could play Othello, and how that came about (short version – the producer saw an actor he admired in Arizona). The director talked about some of the challenges of directing Othello, and brought out two of her main ideas for the play. She made the decision that the villain of the play, Iago, was going to be motivated to be evil by his being passed up for a promotion by Othello. Iago gives at least five or six reasons during the play as to why he is so twisted, and being passed up is given as only one reason, which the director choose to emphasize. She also wanted to stress Othello’s being human, and fallible, and to make him a sympathetic character, even at the end of the play after he has murdered Desdemona because he thinks she was unfaithful to him. It was interesting to hear the director bring these out, because I could then watch for those themes in the play. I thought her vision for Othello being sympathetic was more obvious on stage and so worked better; the motivation for Iago did not seem to hold so well since Iago himself contradicts it at several points.

The director made the decision to set Othello in modern times, and for the most part this worked quite well. Othello and his troops wore modern-day military uniforms. Instead of swords, most of the men carried long knives. Desdemona’s father, an important senator, was guarded by sunglasses-wearing bodyguards with retractable batons. That forced the director to lose a wonderful set of lines of Othello’s, where he tells his men and the bodyguards to “Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust ’em.” Still, since the director wanted to make Othello more approachable as a man, the updating helped that very much.

The set of the play was simple but effective. There was a background that changed so you knew where the setting of the play was. In the middle of the stage was a frame of steel that took up most of the middle of the stage. The framework held up a second level that was used to add dimensions to the play, and became whatever was called for (a second floor, battlements, etc.). It also defined a space inside the frame that became Othello and Desdemona’s bedroom for the last part of the play.

The actors did very well, especially the big three roles – Othello, Desdemona, and Iago. Those three were excellent. Desdemona was encouraged by the director to always be hopeful, even at the end of the play. Sometimes I saw that and sometimes I did not, but her character was still convincing. Othello was warm and likable for half the play, until he gets turned by Iago, and then his anger was deeply disturbing, as it supposed to be. Iago was convincing, taking delight in his evil plans, and then risking much to carry them out, although I’m still not convinced that his being passed over for promotion would make him quite so vicious. (I’m of the opinion that Shakespeare did not worry too much about Iago’s backstory and just presented him as a very competent but evil man).

I thought the end of the play was particularly strong. Desdemona’s friend and the wife of Iago, Emilia, was finally played as a tortured woman. Mer wrote a long paper on how usually Emilia is presented as a good and loving and faithful friend to Desdemona, and they have a long scene together which most productions present as almost fun-loving “girl talk.” Mer’s point is that Emilia knows that much trouble has come from her finding an important handkerchief of Desdemona’s, and she gave that handkerchief to her husband, which unknown to her he uses for his own destructive purposes. Othello then later demands it (he has become convinced that his wife has given it to her lover), and Emilia sees Othello get enraged by the lack of the handkerchief, and yet she says nothing. She has several opportunities to say something to Desdemona, and never does. This production choose to have that doubt and guilt play out in an Emilia who has quick mood swings and is quick to tears in the final “girl talk” scene. It worked wonderfully and was much more compelling than other productions I have seen. Desdemona has a premonition that bad things are coming, and Emilia keeps trying to distract her from those feelings, all the while trying to keep her own emotions and thoughts under control.

The final bedroom scene was very effective. As Othello enters, the back wall of the stage moves with him, which makes the bedroom get even more claustrophobic. The entire play has been working to this point, and the director pulls the space in even more. The actors playing Othello and Desdemona both poured much emotion into the final scene, and it was as emotionally painful as it always has been in every production I have ever seen. I find Othello to be Shakespeare’s most desperate tragedy, and it may very well be because Othello is approachable and so human. Anyway, as an interesting text-based action that I had never seen before, Othello wraps his wife in her wedding sheets and puts her on the floor at the front of the stage. Desdemona had asked Emilia to wrap her in her sheets if she should die soon. When Emilia comes in and finds her friend dead, she raises the alarm, people rush in, and everything is exposed. Emilia is killed by her husband Iago, and Emilia falls down next to Desdemona, also at the front of the stage. This is unusual in that the text suggests strongly that they die on the bed and stay there, but this left the bed empty. Iago flees, and in an effective and unusual move, everyone chases him except Othello. He is left completely alone with the bodies of his wife and of Emilia. It was the most practical moment of the director’s vision to have us focus on Othello. All the people return with the captured Iago, and the play ends with Othello killing himself very suddenly with a pistol he had hidden in his shoe, the only firearm in the entire play. Othello falls back onto the bed (which is why it was empty), and he landed in the form of a cross, which I’m pretty sure was deliberate. While Othello is not a traditional Christ-figure in that he does not sacrifice himself for the main characters, who were already dead, he does kill himself to protect “the state” of Venice and to protect his own honor. What is odd for me is that the director cut the lines that suggest that Othello needed to protect the state from people like himself. My guess is that the director wanted Othello to be very human at the end and not to make mention of his exalted military history.

So, the play was excellent. I am glad I got to see it, although I told Mer I would not go see a preview and go to see the field trip production. I find Othello too emotionally engaging to see it twice in four weeks. This production also wrapped up my and Mer’s Summer o’ Shakespeare – this is the seventh and final production of Shakespeare that we have seen in the last three months.