Marathon Woman: Rachel Toor’s “Personal Record”

By Jenny Shank, 10-06-08

Personal Record: A Love Affair with Running
By Rachel Toor
University of Nebraska Press, 164 pages, $24.95

Rachel Toor, who earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana and currently lives in Spokane, came late to the sport of running.  She writes that she was “a bookish egghead who ran only to catch a bus,” never competing in high school or college meets or even casual jogs, and didn’t lace up her sneakers until encouraged to do so by a boyfriend when she was “on the edge of thirty.” But then she took to the sport with the fervor of a convert, hiring a coach, joining running groups, and participating in marathons, ultramarathons, and a sport called “Ride and Tie,” in which two runners and a horse complete a course of between 30 and 40 miles.

In her new essay collection, Personal Record, Toor immerses the reader in the world of long-distance running, examining her bruised, muscular body, the contents of her closet, her pantry jammed with energy gels and protein bars, and her love life in the process of explaining what running means to her and describing the experiences the sport has given her.

Haruki Murakami’s new memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, makes for an interesting comparison with Toor’s book.  The two writers share a few qualities in common—they both took up running at about the same age, both participate in marathons (one a year for Murakami), and both find a sustenance and order in running that makes the practice a defining part of their lives. 

The similarities end there, however.  Murakami enjoys solitary runs, while Toor prefers camaraderie, participating in mostly male running groups wherever she moves, coaching a high school cross country team at one point, and chatting up other runners during competitions.  Murakami has been married to a non-running woman since he was in his twenties, while Toor is divorced and a serial dater, attracted to one “skinny runner guy” after another.  ("When I see the cadaverous guys striding out before the gun goes off,” she writes, “my heart begins to race.")

Murakami admits he doesn’t have much of a competitive streak when he runs, and has never won a race, while Toor is fiercely competitive, as the array of her medals featured on the book jacket illustrate.  “I’ve done more than forty marathons and ultras and have won a handful of small boutiquey races in mountainous, out-of-the-way places,” including one in Bozeman, she writes.  Murakami keeps the running and writing parts of his life separate for the most part, and running, though crucial, seems to be of secondary importance to his art.  In Toor’s case, her running and writing life mingle, and many of the chapters of this book previously appeared in running magazines including “Running Times” and “Marathon & Beyond.”

Personal Record answers a question I’ve often asked when I’ve been out on a modest jog and come across the Boulder ultramarathoning crew on a trail: How does anyone have the time to do that sort of thing?  In Toor’s case, it appears that running has assumed the central position in her life and she fills everything else in around the edges. 

Toor found direction and purpose through her sport, something that she makes especially clear in her chapter “Becoming a Marathoner.” She happened to be in New York City the weekend of the first marathon there after September 11, 2001.  She hadn’t registered, but planned to duck into the race for twenty miles, though as she repeatedly states, “I do not approve of bandits.” She decided to pick a runner to help along to the finish, and found a woman at mile 20 to coach.  “I encouraged her as we ran, gave little pointers (try not to clench your fists, drink more water), but generally I did what I do best: babble.” She led the woman nearly to the finish, and when she returned home to Durham, found a thank you message from her on her answering machine.

Toor goes on to describe how she helped a friend run through the last part of Western State, a 100-mile race in California, and became a pacer for the Clif Bar Pace Team, “a pack of two dozen people…who carry wooden dowels with balloons tied to them…and lead groups at marathons.” In this way she copes with the inevitable slowing down that comes with aging and helps others achieve their time goals. 

As helpful as Toor is to fellow runners, you wouldn’t necessarily want her running an ultramarathon with your husband.  In two chapters, “The Fast Young Man,” and “On the Road,” she describes brief, unconsummated love affairs she’s had with married men she raced with.  Apart from one kiss, Toor doesn’t cross the physical line with either of the men, but these flings demonstrate how everything for her—love, life, work, and relationships—is intertwined with running. 

Personal Record is a detailed, entertaining read that will appeal to Toor’s fellow marathoners and does a good job of conveying the intense subculture of long-distance running to those of us who trot at a more modest pace as we wonder about the lives of those skinny people in high-tech gear who pass us on the trails.

Rachel Toor will discuss her book in Missoula at Shakespeare and Company on October 14 at 7:30 p.m.