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Ian Chillag
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
28
Running Experience:
Advanced
Why should we pick you to go to the North Pole?:
It was mile 1800, give or take a hundred, of the 3100 Mile Transcendence Race. I was running alongside a man named Abichal Watkins, asking him, essentially, what on earth he was doing running 5649 laps around a single block of Queens, NY. I was just a reporter, but it was still challenging, to run and keep a microphone in his face. I found myself doing this sideways, clumsy, crab-walk sort of a run.
Of course, Abichal was running 40 to 60 miles a day, so he wasn't moving too fast. Suddenly I realized that I could walk, easily, at the speed he was "running," and it would be much easier to do the recording I needed to do. But I didn't want to burst his bubble, by showing him that he wasn't moving any faster than a walk. I faked it, for two or three more laps.
The reason I bring this up? I think I've been training for years to run and write about the North Pole Marathon, without even realizing it. I'm a producer and reporter for public radio, and a runner. Whenever there's been a chance to cover running, or to jump into any story off the beaten path, I've taken it. I don't know if I tell stories for a living because it's an excuse to chase adventure, or if I seek adventures because it gives me something to write about. Either way, going someplace new and getting to know it is the thing that really gets me going, and the thing I do best.
"I think I've been training for years to run and write about the North Pole Marathon, without even realizing it." |
Offer some evidence that you can complete a marathon in harsh, sub-zero conditions at the North Pole:
My girlfriend might cite the minimal clothing I wear to run in the cold of Philadelphia as evidence. But she'd probably say it was evidence more of my stupidity than any ruggedness or toughness.
I've done twenty milers in temperatures well below freezing, but honestly I doubt that's at all comparable to what I'd encounter at the North Pole. That's exactly the thing that draws me to the race: it's not like anything I've ever done.
As my running buddies will tell you (often using foul language), I'm a runner who will always lead you up the hilliest route home. I relish challenges--faster, harder, steeper--and I'll gladly add colder and harsher to the list.
Tell us about your cold-weather race experience:
Last weekend I placed third in a race called the Chilly Cheeks 7 Miler, and the guy that finished behind me had some pretty impressive icicles hanging from his beard when he crossed the line.
For the most part, winter has been a time of slow training, logging mile after mile in the dark. But should I be selected to run the North Pole Marathon, I'll prepare for it as best I can here in Philadelphia. That means a lot of research, to learn from others with North Pole running experience. I'd also plan to do longer, slower training runs to prepare me to be on my feet for more time than I'm used to. And--not that this is any great sacrifice--I won't go near a treadmill.
Tell us about your marathon experience, including times, results, etc.:
When I was a kid, my marathon-junkie dad dragged the family to races all over the place. I figured he was crazy, and years later my suspicions were confirmed when he started dragging us to ultramarathons.
I started running marathons myself in 2003. Now I've run eleven, with a best of 2:46. I've run New York and Boston as a guide for Jambal Lkhagvajar, a blind Paralympian from Mongolia.
Clearly the marathon thing was genetic. I keep hoping the ultramarathon thing skips a generation, but who knows?
What do you expect your North Pole Marathon time to be?:
5:30
Can you write well? Explain:
As a writer, I like my own experience of learning about a subject to become part of the story. I've gone all over the place in search of stories, from the Homeless World Cup in Austria, to the first Mardi Gras after Hurricane Katrina, to the back roads of Mississippi to look into the murders of three civil rights workers.
The North Pole Marathon would be something entirely new to me, and I have to admit I'd be something of a stranger in a strange, freezing land. My blog would reflect that theme as I prepare for the race, encounter the new terrain, and meet the many characters taking on the challenge with me.
Tell us about your media experience:
I'm a producer for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and I moonlight as a reporter for other public radio shows and magazines. I've been heard on Marketplace, Weekend America, Only a Game, Studio 360, and others. My writing has appeared in Runner's World, A Public Space, the online running websites mensracing.com and fast-women.com, and more.
I'm also an experienced photographer. I studied at the Salt Center for Documentary Field Studies in Portland, Maine.
Websites:
"Running Without Eyes," Weekend America, November 2005.
"Gangs of New York," Runner's World, February 2007
"Running for the Money," Marketplace, November 2004
"Running While Female," WBUR/Public Radio Weekend, April 2004
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.thumbnail.JPG "Kissing the Hardrock")
Alex Goranin says:
Boy, there are a lot of applicants from Boulder, Colorado. But I'm not here to talk about them (or about all the Illini either), I'm here to type out a few unsolicited words on behalf of a jaunty, hardy, quietly intense writer slash reporter slash photographer slash-perhaps-most-of-all runner. He of the fluid gait, of the fluid pen/keyboard, lover of all terrain uneven and ankle-turning, possessor of barrels and barrels of derring do.
Let's you and I agree to call him "Ian." Terrific. And as we talk about Ian, let's you and I discuss running too - running generally, and of the North Pole kind. It'll be a short trip, speaking strictly temporally, but I hope it leaves a lasting and important impression, kind of like a certain running someone I know, whom we've agreed to call Ian.
Here's the thing about running: It can be lonely, especially 26.2 miles of it, not to mention the training and the miles and miles of little personal trials leading up to the race. And much of running is individualistic; no one is there to hold you in the cold, and the rain, and the ice, except maybe your ache and your pain and your inner fortitude and all those little curse words one half of you chants like a mantra to your other half to keep those legs turning, to keep that pace even and up.
And yet it's so beautiful, so very much so. You're connected to surroundings - to the smell of the grass, the feel of the wind cutting through your unzipped collar. You're connected to yourself - your core and utterly true self, unencumbered by the daily baggage of work and worries and chores. Remember that time you were moving so smoothly that it felt like you gliding through clouds?
You're connected to the little things - the important things. What do you and I remember about the races we've run? Sure, we remember the determination, the effort, the desire to push ourselves to the limit, and then keep pushing, keep pushing. But months, years, decades from now what stays with us are the little things. How that guy next to us in the starting corral of our first marathon kept jumping up and down, compelled to work out some of his nervous energy. How it felt at mile 22 to hear a chorus of cheers, and the resulting fingers of warmth rushing out from the spine, and how it made us pull our shoulder blades back, and focus on keeping a proud form and stride, at least for another mile or two.
Those little things, those experiences, are how we runners relate to one another. They are our shared history book. We have those little moments and they are distinctively ours. But we also relay those moments to others, and they understand. Especially other runners, they understand. And here's the truly miraculous part, when you think about it: They understand so well that it's as if they were in that moment with you. It's as if they were running with you stride-for-stride, right off your left shoulder.
That, I think, is what's most important about whomever you ultimately choose to head up to the cold North Pole -- he or she should be able to take every single one of us with them. To share with all of us the little things, so that we're right there, off the left shoulder. In snowshoes. Feeling the icicles dangle off our whiskers.
Can Ian do that? Absolutely. Like no one else can.
Look, you, I'm not even sure you're going to read this before you make your selection, or that you will give these comments any weight at all. But I hope you do, and I hope you read all the way to end, and I hope you understand that while it's hard to convey one's thoughts to a mysterious, unidentified reader and make them truly comprehend (witness this message), Ian can, plus he will race a great race, tell a great tale, and be the best running ambassador any of us could wish to have. He would, in short, be an Arctic Blizzard of Awesomeness, and we would all be luckier for it. So give him a chance to lace up those snowshoes, you.
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