Why Zola Budd

Here's how women change my life. . .usually unexpectedly. I don't go out searching for it, well sometimes I do, but rarely do I meet with success that way. Mostly I open up to change and then some woman glances into my life, like Zola. My body sprang into adulthood in high school like an exploding mousse (not moose, though it sometimes felt like that too). It didn't open up like a beautiful blossom. No, I was a tiny hungry bony kid as a freshman and by graduation I had grown 8 inches and packed on 30 pounds. I felt huge and clumsy. I really was the girl with the great personality. Or more accurately, that's what guys said to console me when they admitted they liked my best friend and not me, and they were too chicken to tell me the truth: I was big and scary, more Sasquatch than Cinderella. So I developed a sharp and cutting tongue in high school to keep people at bay while I was busy growing. Like some sort of plant that has giant spines as a seedling to keep rabbits from eating it until its bark toughens. My new big body seemed to lump around, felt awkward in girly clothes. I had been a skinny little Tom-boy and the transition to womanhood happened just when social awkwardness hurt the most: high school.

The one perk to all this expansion was that my new body was strong. I had stopped being a vegetarian and all the beef went straight to muscle, especially in my legs. In high school I got into long distance cycling (another blog post for that later) and then I discovered running as a freshman in college. Zola Budd was like an old me running and I loved that. She was tiny, had a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face. And she ran barefoot. I had gone barefoot for a year or so (vegetarian, barefoot, only wore red, rings on my fingers and toes, scarves hanging from my belt-loops, patches on my pants, me at 12). So I was fascinated that a girl like me (or that I could see resemblance in) could be so great at something. But there she was on TV, running her heart out. Then she supposedly tripped Mary Decker during the 1984 Olympics in the 3000 meter finals. I immediately sided with Zola. Mary Decker's picture had been on my refrigerator so long it was curling at the edges (for yet another blog post), but what I saw on August 11, 1984 was spoiled privilege berating a scared misunderstood me. Decker's picture came down. When I think of Zola, I mostly see those bare feet, her tiny body flying past her bigger, more trained opponents, and the bewildered look in her eyes after the collision with Decker. Of course she lost the battle of public opinion and whiny Mary won. That's how it is with us Zolas.

Girl Power Heroines

When I decided to start a blog, I thought I should commit to a year of weekly blogs on women who have been my heroes. 52 weeks 52 heroines, that kind of thing. But then I waffled and wanted to be unfettered by a topic and posted my first blog post ever, and then I skimmed the HuffingtonPost book on blogging and felt inferior and unfocused, so here's the happy medium: I'm committing to heroines until I feel hemmed in and then we'll see.

Here's a list of women who have been inspirational to me at different times in my life. If anyone reads this and wants to comment on my list or their own. . .awesome

Rachel Carson, Zola Budd. . .okay, I'm feeling tied down already. Press on. . .When I first got into running, all my heroes were runners, like Zola the bare-footed South American, who in 1984 at 17 years old (I was an ancient 23 then) broke the woman's world record in the 5000 meter. And then there was Grete Waitz and Joan Benoit, wonder women of the marathon. This was in the late 70s early 80s, and I was starting college. I moved away from my hometown of Berkeley, which in and of itself is odd, since Berkeley is such a college town and the Bay Area is a major destination spot for people starting life anew. And I was intensely attached to my life in Berkeley, my high school boyfriend, my tiny circle of friends. I moved away because my best friend wanted to. I moved away, a whooping 90 miles, and planned on taking everything with me--the dumb boyfriend, my best friend (not dumb), my plants, my fish, coffee grinder (hand cranked). I was just going to school, not changing. Why change, I was pretty awesome (translate: I was an introverted egghead nerd bitch that desperately wanted to be loved forever and ever by my disloyal self-centered boyfriend).

Have you ever been to Davis, California? Well, in 1979 it was a tiny farm town. Consider by comparison, Berkeley in the sixty, where when someone said there were pigs on campus, they meant police officers. Well, in 1979 Davis, pigs were pigs, pens and pens of giant experimental pigs on campus. My first tour of the campus led me past these pens, by a cow operation, the vets standing on the table, arms in her belly up to their elbows, blood everywhere. I was raised vegetarian and had only been eating cow for a few years. Then there was the narcoleptic pony who was starving to death because he fell asleep every time he got excited and food excited him. Davis was the perfect fit for an ex-veggie hippy girl from Berkeley majoring in pure math.

The absolute lack of anything to do in Davis made it a personal fitness haven. Everyone ran, biked, roller skated, jazzercized to Jane Fonda tapes. In no time, I was decked in leg-warmers, a terry-cloth head-band, and taking up running. I even tried to learn Jazz Dance, but that was because my room-mate liked dance. I am not good at telling my body complicated dance moves. I'm built for repetitive movements, running, cycling, skating--any exercise that requires my mind to grasp a very short sequence of instructions and then my body to perform them over and over and over. That's heaven for me. Hence the running heroes. No Isadora Duncan for me. Give me a Zola.