I haven’t read “Born to Run,” the most popular running book ever written if you can judge by best-seller numbers, two years old but still in the Top 35, but you’d have to seriously question the impact it has had because despite the outsized role running as recreation plays among the book-reading public there are only a modest number of born-to-run enthusiasts who purchase those glove-like shoes, and more incredibly, run in them, a tiny majority of true believers in the message of “Born to Run” author Christopher McDougall, an advocate of one-hundred mile races and one-hundred-twenty-mile training weeks, with nothing else below the ankle than what God provided, a glorious invention, the foot, so you would think that a running-mad place like 2011 Park Slope, Brooklyn, I would see more than the occasional finger-foot runner, and maybe now I will as I push out in the finally snow-clear roads, the most telling weeks of Boston training regimen, Week Three of Seven, because the final one before April 18 doesn’t count, it is a tapering one, but my guess is I won’t, so what conclusion can we come to, that readers are buying this book as an inspiration for young althetes, encouragement for middle-aged shirkers, or vicarious pleasure for the elderly, with perhaps a single marathon once run, or a college history of track, because it can’t be just runners who are buying; in 2009, only 467,000 runners completed a US marathon, and if Pittsburgh 2010 is any guide, just 4,058 out of 7,620, or 53 percent, finished the whole grueling route, 26.2 miles.
*
Sunday’s Times Book Review http://nyti.ms/gMh3kA (March 6) essay on why authors abandon books struck a nerve, the notion that authors don’t just move from one book to the next to the next in a seamless path, but rather can and will find themselves mired in a dark, near-paralyzed place unable to let go. Novelist Michael Chabon, for one, courageously exposed the lonely howl of the thing to readers of McSweeney’s. Each time, each book is different. So, it’s true of running, of training. Nothing is assured. Only a fool would take it for granted, and as I train for my third marathon in a year, I’m on a new path, some days waking and not wanting to go out to run, but I do. As a writer, I also get down to my desk every day. Even when the work isn’t going well. I run and I write, but it is anything but seamless as a non-writer or non-runner might think. Often, I’m stepping out the door, or tapping the keys of my typewriter, from a dark, near-paralyzed place.
*
Consider “Forrest Gump.” When I started running in small town Ontario in the 1970s, cat calls were common: “Hey, running man, get those knees up;” “Run a mile for me;” “C’mon, quit dogging it.” In Brownstone Brooklyn these past twenty-plus years the remarks have been few, one from a crazy man who called me out for being “a fag,” and a second about fifteen years ago, a cry, “Run, Forrest, Run!”
After an overlong day Sunday (March 6), M and I turned on cable and “Forrest Gump” was on, the opening scenes when as a boy who seems more sensitive than slow, Forrest finds love, provides sweet shelter to Jenny, a victim of sexual abuse, overlaid with a survivor’s instinct that keeps Forrest one step ahead of the bullies, the seminal scene, what marks Forrest’s story as myth not real, launching the script to uber-narrative, why it is the movie that continues to get ratings, weekly on mainstream cable and here it is now seventeen years since M and I and our friends Michael and Amy saw it at the movies, one of those shows that I remember where it was I saw it and with whom, a picture that won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and there was, in part, the American myth line, Forrest Gump as bumpkin god, a nonpartisan movie, imagine that, one in which what breaks the chains for our hero, as he’s threatened by boy-bullies bearing down on him on their bicycles, as he stumbles away on his polio braces only to be touched with a lifelong blessing, the braces fall away, and his miracle running muscles take hold as Forrest flees to the sound of his true love, giving him wings, or at least in this case, running feet like no other before him, crying, “Run, Forrest, Run!”
If not for the sarcastic smile of the man who yelled, “Run, Forrest Run!”, I could almost believe his remarks were in earnest. I’m not surprised, looking at Tom Hanks in the movie, just how I’d like to think I look like him. Ramrod straight, not tilting too far forward when sprinting, conscious about being aligned so that the impact the foot strikes are evenly distributed throughout my body. In the old days, in the 70s, the cat calls would get to me, I’d feel a little foolish about what I was doing. But not “Run, Forrest, Run.” When I heard that, I smiled and ran on as hard as I could.
*
It’s early in Week Three (Tuesday, March 8), but Week Two was a big success. Six days of consecutive running: 37.5 miles, and with the snow cover gone, I’m comfortable going faster on the short runs (3.5- 5 miles), and 8-min. mile pace on the longer ones. Hamstring pull? Knock on wood, the ham seems to be holding up. This week, tomorrow (Wednesday), I’m off to Green-Wood Cemetery to visit the Quaker Parrots, the Jackie Gleason Bus Depot, and in Windsor Terrace behind Farrell’s Bar, my field of dreams, Our Lady’s Field, then on to Prospect Park, a full loop. My first big run tomorrow, not since the Central Park Half, 1:47, shooting for 1:30 .¤.¤. Hoping for the best.
Next: Running for Your Life: What’s Hidden
0 comments:
Post a Comment