Blacksburg
Richard reminded me that I have been absent from this blog for two weeks already. It has been a while – I had lost count of the time. Strange times, these have been.
My last post was an account of a dehydration episode. I had an incubated virus infection and the doctor had warned me that it could still develop into a full blown infection, and it did so. Two weeks ago, on a Thursday (5th of April), I woke up feeling miserable, with a terrible headache. Soon I started feeling chills and weakness. I had a temperature and my pressure was falling fast. My brother took me to the Emergency Room, where I was examined and medicated. In the following days, the virus infection evolved. I developed diarrhea and lost about 6 pounds. I had one week to recover for the State Powerlifting Championship, qualifying for the Brazilian Champs. I couldn’t write, couldn’t work, couldn’t eat and couldn’t train. My head was bursting with pain and all I could do was lay in my bed and moan. For days, I tried to convince myself that performance was made of actual strength – made of good training and feeding – and mental strength, and that the latter counted more. I knew, however, that I had lost a lot of power.
I did win the open and master State Championship, and certificates for the best movements. I won my place at the State team. The marks, nevertheless, were mediocre – the worst in months. I had lost so much weight and water that my Bench Shirt felt like a T-shirt. Or a pajamas. Totally useless.
That was the Championship where I really felt like a winner: at each movement, I thought I wouldn’t make it, but I did. I went to the bathroom eight times before the first squat. I got to the third deadlift and celebrated. With my classification, I helped my team win the team trophy. I am really proud of what I did.
I am a woman and I am small, so I lifted first thing Saturday. Sunday was basically eating and helping day. It always feels so good to be among our friends – we are a very close community, Brazilian powerlifters. Leaving Guaíra, that small town in the country, was depressing. We arrived in São Paulo at 4AM, tired and worn.
Monday, when I opened my e-mail, I saw it before I read the newspapers. Friends sending links of the horrors in Blacksburg. Most of them knew I had done my post-doc at Virginia Tech and had friends there. Some knew how important it had been in my career. It was from Blacksburg that I became the first Latin American social scientist to be nominated as a director of an International society in my field.
Still somewhat stoned from exhaustion and sleep deprivation, I looked at the pictures in the digital version of all the newspapers. There it was: Lane Hall, the building where I studied and worked. My office window. Right beside the site of the biggest mass murder in American modern history.
It still doesn’t feel quite real. I remember that bucolic rural environment, the silent and calm days when I walked my daughter to the school bus and went back to run between fields and pastures. The small bat I touched in one of these tracks, the wildlife and the PPL Therapeutics transgenic cows lazily grazing around. Hyper high technology and wild Nature in the Appalachians.
My friends and I met at weekends to bake a duck and drink home-made beer. In the Summer, Blacksburg smelled of fermented prunes and apples.
I was happy there. I lived in a place called Foxridge Apartments. There was a weight-room near my apartment. It was an old and basic Nautilus multi-station. That is where I learned the basics of weight training. Alone. I bought two books about “strength training for women”. For some reason, I thought there were significant differences I should know about. Somewhere in this computer I should be able to find the drawings I did to remind me of the order the exercises should be executed. There was also a weight-room at the women’s locker room, at the University Gym. I could never figure out why it was there (at the locker room). I saw it when I changed to swim – in the Winter, I swam and in the Summer, I ran.
I moved to Blacksburg in 1996 with a seven year old daughter, alone, leaving an ex-husband and a life with pre-established plans. Blacksburg was the beginning of the unplanned, unknown and dangerous paths I would track for a decade. And also my earliest thoughts into what became my salvation: strength training, bodybuilding and powerlifting.
Today I am not an academic anymore: my work is basically related to physical activity and nutrition. My daughter is a College student herself. She studies here, in São Paulo. Everyday, we have breakfast and she goes to school. I feel safe, feeling that she is comfortably sitting at her desk, having calculus or atmospheric science classes. As all the parents of the dead kids in Blacksburg probably felt.
Today, my heart is with them.
November 23, 2009 at 6:13 pm
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