The Rats played a big part in Megan Jenkins' introduction to lesbian life. Mike Benjamin (and anonymous cheerleaders) had a lot to do with her joining Front Runners. And 20th century music has a lot to do with her life.
Jenkins, now FRNY Women's Vice President and the person who pins new fun runners with their first FRNY insignia, didn't join the club as soon as she landed in New York City in 2004. She trained by herself for the 2005 NYC Marathon and didn't find out about Front Runners until she started scouting through club listings after noticing all the club singlets on review in Central Park.
"I must've been such a pain in the ass," Jenkins says, recalling her early contact with the club. Right after sending in her first membership dues she e-mailed then-president Mike Benjamin and declared that she needed a club singlet for the 2007 Brooklyn half-marathon. The ever-obliging Mikey met Jenkins in Brooklyn before the race, collected her cash, and handed over the singlet.
"I didn't know a single person in the club," she remembers. "And all along the road people were cheering, 'Go, Front Runner!' They were cheering for me! Then a week or two afterwards I got a picture of myself in the mail from Ted, the club photographer! I thought, wow, this is incredible. This group is so together, and they're so nice!" Besides that, she notched a half-marathon PR (a since-bettered 1:46:43), partly because of the boost she got from Front Runner partisans along the course.
But Jenkins didn't bond with the club until she ran a Reach-the-Beach relay in the fall of 2007. "I don't know why I thought it would be a good idea to run a relay with 11 people I'd never met before," but she did, ending up in a van with club stalwarts Claudia Cummings, Audra Farrell, Debbie Li, Hilary Lorenz, and Loren Mooney. After that heady experience, she started coming to fun runs and social events and, before long, immersed herself in FRNY cross-currents with a vengeance.
Besides being FRNY Women's Vice President, Jenkins also attends every Tuesday night Brooklyn fun run with Peter Doebele and heads the club's Diversity Initiative, making sure FRNY is welcoming to all, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or athletic prowess. She cochairs the Development Committee with Dane Grams and helped craft a mission statement aimed at improving the financial stability and charitable giving of the club.
"Megan Jenkins is always the first to volunteer for a task or to take on a new challenge," says FRNY president Rob Lennon. "The determination and strides she has made in her own running and the dedication she has shown toward others is inspiring."
Jenkins is not only the official new-member greeter at fun runs, but also an avid unofficial greeter any time Front Runners gather. Sandi Rowe recalls her first social outing with the club, a "homo hoedown" she attended after her first two fun runs. Rowe got to the dance late, after the instructional hour, and found herself playing the wallflower.
"Then, out of nowhere, this curly-haired girl dragged me by the arm to the dance floor," Rowe remembers. "It was Megan. She could tell (who couldn't?) that I didn't know any of the steps. She guided me through the song, teaching me the steps and reminding me not to look at my feet. Because she took the time to reach out to a newbie, not only did I have a great time that night, but I made some great friends and have continued to come to as many social events as my calendar can hold."
Jenkins herself was a late-bloomer in the lesbian world. "I was mostly straight until I was 26," she says. "I remember when I was 15 telling people, 'I'm bisexual,' but in a way half believing it was just a phase and just a cool thing to be. I always had a crush on my best friend, but I thought, 'Oh, that's my best friend. Of course I love that girl.'"
This sideways approach to sexuality continued until Jenkins was working on a masters degree at the University of Iowa. While dating a guy, she decided to join a largely lesbian softball team, The Rats. The team had no rule that players must be same-sex oriented, "but it was sort of understood," Jenkins explains. So she figured the easiest approach would be to "pose" as a lesbian. Next thing she knew, the pose became the truth.
Although Jenkins puts stock in studies that say women have more fluid sexuality than men, she's pretty comfortable with the lesbian label. And when she came out to her parents, "I had to be very black-and-white about it. I couldn't say, 'I'm with this girl now, but who knows what the future will bring?' That would've been a disaster." As it turned out, the parental coming out wasn't that smooth anyway. She calls her current distance from her parents "correlated" with her sexual preference, but "I don't know if it's causal."
Though Jenkins has yet to win a Front Runner racing award (she freely admits she's gunning for one), she has won a club prize for her musical virtuosity. Playing three Bartok duets with I.J. Frame, she took second prize at the 2009 FRNY Variety Show. Bartok composed the duets for two violins, but Jenkins played her runs on the flute, making light of the difficulty inherent in executing a piece composed for strings on a wind instrument.
Jenkins' interest in classical music-particularly 20th century music-is not an avocation; it's her career. Her already-gaudy resume boasts a bachelor's degree in music theory and composition from the University of Delaware, a masters in musicology from the University of Iowa, and a masters in flute performance from Delaware. Now she's wrapping up a PhD in musicology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her compelling thesis is that-in numerous musical landmarks of the 20th century-variance from the norm in gender or sexual expression usually leads to a diagnosis of madness. She explores that idea in four pieces, Strauss's Salome, Schoenberg's Erwartung, Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins, and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress.
But Jenkins is hardly a full-time student. Besides the hours she spends pondering Strauss's precocious princess and helping run FRNY, she works full time as a development writer for the Lincoln Center Institute, the educational cornerstone of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
Jenkins' 14-mile bike commute between Brooklyn's Sunset Park and Lincoln Center has become part of her training. Her goal is to log two roundtrips a week while ramping up her road-running mileage, mixing in FRNY track workouts at 137th Street.
Why this arduous routine by someone who insists "you've got to believe me when I tell you I'm a social runner"? One reason is her goal of running this year's NYC Marathon in a Boston Marathon-qualifying time. Another is the discovery that running fast is both possible and intoxicating. This news dawned at last winter's Thursday Night at the Races, where Jenkins shocked herself by uncorking a 6:22 mile on the Armory's tight 200-meter track. "I always thought I was a 10-minute miler," she avers. "So the feeling of going that fast, it was exhilarating."
As 2008 wound down, Jenkins discovered herself locked in a contest for the 18-to-29-year-old FRNY age group award with-who else?- "Lightening" Lucia Muntean. "Of course, Lucia wins every race she runs, so I could never catch her, but I was trying really hard: 'I must go faster! I must finish second!' I was really pushing myself in the last three races of 2008." This race-pace training trimmed Jenkins' 4-mile time to 28:57 in December's Holiday 4-Miler. By March 22, 2009, she'd clipped another 50 seconds off her 4-mile PR and was running at a 7:01 pace. In the precipitous Coogan's 5K, she blasted out a 21:52.
"Her drive to be outstanding is contagious," says duet and race partner I.J. Frame. "When Dane Grams and I agreed to run the Prospect Park Cherry Tree Relay with Megan, she made it clear that we're in it to win it, and I started thinking the same thing! Though we didn't win, we had a pretty awesome 6:38/mile pace."
Audrey, Jenkins' partner, more than tolerates this running obsession, "she tolerates it very admirably." And she'd better, because Jenkins has to put up with Audrey's own passions, Krav Maga (an Israeli combat art) and mixed martial arts. "I saw her test for her orange belt in Krav Maga," Jenkins says. "I was a nervous wreck the whole time. So I guess we both understand that the other person is really obsessed with something."
Jenkins still has her sights fixed on that Front Runner age-group award, but it won't be easy. Muntean moved to San Diego, only to be replaced by alacritous newcomer Rachel (RayKay) Kleigman. Audra Farrell, Sandi Rowe, and Loren Mooney haunt the same age range. As if beating those dynamos weren't daunting enough, she's also pondering yet another challenge. Yes, that was Megan Jenkins in the pool getting pointers from Tritons Claudia Cummings and Les Jones. And if you add swimming to biking to marathon training, you have . . . a triathlon!
"Yeah," Jenkins admits. "I feel anxious about the act of signing up for my first triathlon, but every time I go to a swim session with Claudia and Les, I come away with a revelation about swimming and how it works: A light has come on!" Watch out, Tritons.
Despite these competitive aspirations, Jenkins maintains that what keeps her running, and training, and working for Front Runners is the same communal boost she felt in her first race in an FRNY singlet. "I get out there because the Front Runners are there to support me. That's the thing about Front Runners: They're never going to let you do worse than your best."
Random Data
Why do you always wear baby blue shorts?
I have three pairs I bought for $11 each. What a deal! Everyone thinks I wear the same shorts over and over again, but I don't.
Who's your favorite flautist?
Robert Dick. He's an avant garde flutist who lives in New York. I studied with him for a year when we were both in Iowa. He composes music and he's really pushing the sounds of the flute to the very boundaries. He's published a number of books, including his compositions, and he's a really charismatic performer.
Are you still studying Mandarin?
It's on a bit of a hiatus while I finish my dissertation. I think Mandarin is the new Arabic. When you look at the way the world is going, Mandarin will be a very useful language to have. And it's my girlfriend's second language.
If you were exiled from New York City, and you could pick any place in the world to live, where would you live?
I might be exiled! Don't joke about it. When I get my PhD, I might have to get a job outside the city. I think Tokyo would be really exciting, and there's always the possibility of Singapore. But I live in New York. Where else would I want to live?
