It’s getting harder to do. The truth is, I’m glad I was born when I was. At a time when a TV was not yet in every home, when I played outside as a child, skated when winter was winter on a rink my dad made for us. When the very idea of Facebook, say, would’ve seemed like a nightmare, which if you give it any kind of thought, it is.
“Go Your Own Way,” the Fleetwood Mac anthem from 1976 http://bit.ly/aJhxQE isn’t a path social media would like us to take. The line drawn from TV to Facebook status is so straight and without imagination that it paralyzes me to think about it too long.
Media is the organizing principle, not class as Marx had it. The dilemma: How to know yourself when media channels and distorts the way it does.
What does this mean in terms of exercise? Just about everything. Run, walk, swim, jog, cycle. Or non-exercise: read, think, laugh, talk, listen. Bring yourself to the moment. Leave mocking and mediation to the clones. As K, aka Gramma makes clear: get real. Bring it back to where it matters.
Next: Running for Your Life: New Meal
Running for Your Life: Sunday Blessing in the Rain
He didn’t get up and visit like he normally does. Usually, it’s like clockwork, 8:30 in the morning and he pokes his nose into our bedroom. I know because oftentimes I am waking up just as he arrives. It’s not any noise that he makes. Think the ticking of a clock; he arrives and I wake up.
But today (May 19) he doesn’t come to our door. It’s 9:30, 10, 10:15 before I go downstairs, and see him, still sacked out on his parlor bed. Maybe it’s the day, I think, dreary and pissing rain. He hasn’t spat-howled to the thump of the Sunday Times on the front door. Soon, though, he is up, has his breakfast and is ready for his walk.
At three, he’s a different dog than he was at two. Subdued, less likely to lunge at kids on scooters or men wearing stacked headgear. Which is a good and bad thing. Perhaps, I think if I let myself, he’s lost a spirit-step or two, and that’s what I’m thinking when – both of us soaked – a fellow stops us, gloomy Gusses we are, and beams a smile, saying, “Izzat a redbone?”
I say, yes, and the man with the trussed-up headgear approaches Thurber – and that can be bad – but not this fella. T’s tail flies into whirlybird and he immediately takes to the man’s extended hand.
“I had a redbone,” he says.
“They’re not ideal for the city,” he says, admonishing.
“I know,” I say.
“You have to run them.”
“I do,” I say proudly, as the three of us walk toward the dog run. The rain has picked up. I’m glad I have an umbrella, but the man and the dog don’t seem to be phased by the sudden drenching.
“I can see that,” he says. “He looks great.”
“Thank you,” I say, smiling for the first time all day. He walks ahead of us, but then stops and looks back, grinning ear to ear.
“My dog lived to be sixteen, but he ran and swam to the very end. I live in Red Hook by the water, and he ran the beach and just loved to swim. Out on his own into the harbor.”
“Thurber loves to swim. He really takes to it.”
“They do.”
“You’ve made my day, thanks.”
We exchange waves and he goes on.
The dog run is empty when Thurber rushes to a blue object, a squeaky toy that someone has left behind. For a long time we play fetch with the toy in the pouring rain – just like he did when he was a pup.
Next: Running for Your Life: Going Your Own Way
But today (May 19) he doesn’t come to our door. It’s 9:30, 10, 10:15 before I go downstairs, and see him, still sacked out on his parlor bed. Maybe it’s the day, I think, dreary and pissing rain. He hasn’t spat-howled to the thump of the Sunday Times on the front door. Soon, though, he is up, has his breakfast and is ready for his walk.
At three, he’s a different dog than he was at two. Subdued, less likely to lunge at kids on scooters or men wearing stacked headgear. Which is a good and bad thing. Perhaps, I think if I let myself, he’s lost a spirit-step or two, and that’s what I’m thinking when – both of us soaked – a fellow stops us, gloomy Gusses we are, and beams a smile, saying, “Izzat a redbone?”
I say, yes, and the man with the trussed-up headgear approaches Thurber – and that can be bad – but not this fella. T’s tail flies into whirlybird and he immediately takes to the man’s extended hand.
“I had a redbone,” he says.
“They’re not ideal for the city,” he says, admonishing.
“I know,” I say.
“You have to run them.”
“I do,” I say proudly, as the three of us walk toward the dog run. The rain has picked up. I’m glad I have an umbrella, but the man and the dog don’t seem to be phased by the sudden drenching.
“I can see that,” he says. “He looks great.”
“Thank you,” I say, smiling for the first time all day. He walks ahead of us, but then stops and looks back, grinning ear to ear.
“My dog lived to be sixteen, but he ran and swam to the very end. I live in Red Hook by the water, and he ran the beach and just loved to swim. Out on his own into the harbor.”
“Thurber loves to swim. He really takes to it.”
“They do.”
“You’ve made my day, thanks.”
We exchange waves and he goes on.
The dog run is empty when Thurber rushes to a blue object, a squeaky toy that someone has left behind. For a long time we play fetch with the toy in the pouring rain – just like he did when he was a pup.
Next: Running for Your Life: Going Your Own Way
Running for Your Life: Food for Thought
Way back in November 2011 I wrote the blogpost below. As summer approaches and unhealthy food choices multiply with the mosquitoes (sorry, that's my dad peeping out there -- one of his favorite lines during, say, a century-intense whiteout blizzard: "I like it, son. No mosquitoes, no flies") I thought it was worth a replate, as they say in the newspaper business:
Most of my running life I’ve been bad. Or at least inattentive. If nothing else over the past near two years since I’ve taken up the idea that I’m a marathoner, I’ve come to see that what I’d long felt was a reward for being a runner was that I didn’t have to watch what I ate. You name it: hamburgers, pizza, second helpings of birthday cake, Girl Guide (in Canada, Girl Scouts in America) cookies by the handful, trans fat-loaded potato chips, Cokes, french fries. I’m one of those runners who has trouble keeping pounds on, let alone gaining weight. So for thirty-plus years that’s what I did.
Most of my running life I’ve been bad. Or at least inattentive. If nothing else over the past near two years since I’ve taken up the idea that I’m a marathoner, I’ve come to see that what I’d long felt was a reward for being a runner was that I didn’t have to watch what I ate. You name it: hamburgers, pizza, second helpings of birthday cake, Girl Guide (in Canada, Girl Scouts in America) cookies by the handful, trans fat-loaded potato chips, Cokes, french fries. I’m one of those runners who has trouble keeping pounds on, let alone gaining weight. So for thirty-plus years that’s what I did.
Running for Your Life: New Plans!
New plans ! New plans ! New plans !
K is here for Mom Day-M B’day doubleheader and this week (May 12-18) she asked if I would like to train for and then run the Midnight Sun Marathon in Baffin Island, the Arctic Circle, say, in July 2014. You kidding me? Of course, I said, I’m all in, the idea of going to my place of childhood dreams (the far north … http://amzn.to/NmujdH) with my daughter K for a week in July left me giddy with delight.
Then, I came upon this bit of news on the Web:
“Event no longer held due to the closing of the mine.”
Which brought us to our second thought (after its $4,000-plus per-person replacement, the Northwest Passage Marathon, was rejected as too damn expensive), the Utah Valley Marathon next June !
So instead of aiming for Boston 2014, it looks like I will delay my Steamtown qualification (God willing) to Boston 2015, with the view that there will be only one race (with K!) in ’14 (a favorite number, Davey Keon’s number and M’s birthdate) and that will be in the Valley (cascading waterfalls, Provo River and Utah Lake, it says on the website)!
Next: Food For Thought
K is here for Mom Day-M B’day doubleheader and this week (May 12-18) she asked if I would like to train for and then run the Midnight Sun Marathon in Baffin Island, the Arctic Circle, say, in July 2014. You kidding me? Of course, I said, I’m all in, the idea of going to my place of childhood dreams (the far north … http://amzn.to/NmujdH) with my daughter K for a week in July left me giddy with delight.
Then, I came upon this bit of news on the Web:
“Event no longer held due to the closing of the mine.”
Which brought us to our second thought (after its $4,000-plus per-person replacement, the Northwest Passage Marathon, was rejected as too damn expensive), the Utah Valley Marathon next June !
So instead of aiming for Boston 2014, it looks like I will delay my Steamtown qualification (God willing) to Boston 2015, with the view that there will be only one race (with K!) in ’14 (a favorite number, Davey Keon’s number and M’s birthdate) and that will be in the Valley (cascading waterfalls, Provo River and Utah Lake, it says on the website)!
Next: Food For Thought
Running for Your Life: Cross Train, No Pain
This might be a little premature to say. Imagine me as I write this, pausing and knocking on wood. . . . There. Done.
I’ve been running pain-free since I finished the Boston Marathon in 2012. As most running blogs go, I’ve done my share of writing about pain. About how it came about and what I did to try to deal with it (shin splits and forefoot pain, in my case, and in February-March 2011, a massive hamstring tear that kept me away from running for some time). Now, though, I’m compelled to share what I think could be of help to others who, true to this blog’s theme, would like to run for their life.
To recap, in October I’ll be running my seventh marathon and the first since Boston last year. It will be my second running of the Steamtown Marathon in Scranton, Pa., and while I begin my training regimen in mid-June. At 58, I will be shooting for – realistically I’ve come to think – a personal record. While I’ve never really thought that I’d be capable of qualifying for the New York City Marathon, I believe that it’s not out of the question. To do so, I would need to run 3:14 or better. Currently my PR is 3:33:08. But in that race I was suffering foot pain for about half of those 26 miles. I have yet to establish a relatively pain-free marathon mark. Maybe it’s not possible. But, considering my current running and exercise routine, it’s worth a try.
Before my hamstring injury I’d never done much in the way of cross training. Now, it’s as important to me as the run itself. In these non-training months before Steamtown, I run every other day and train on the second day, taking Sundays off. I’m not crazy about it, but on a cross-training day, I set aside forty minutes in the morning. I run a short distance to the gym and then do a series of leg- and core-related stretches and strength sets for about thirty minutes, and the balance I work with weights (again, because of the hamstring injury, I focus on leg muscle-focused weight sets).
As for the foot pain and shin splints, I haven’t run without prescription athletic shoe insoles since Boston, or without my snazzy calf compression sleeves (not exactly, but since wearing them I’ve not had even a hint of shin splint pain). I also use a patellar tendon support for my right knee. (I’ve never experienced any significant knee pain but I did at one time feel a mild strain in my right knee, so I use the little Velcro support strip which gives me as much mental comfort as physical.)
All of this is to say I believe you can get to a place where you are running for your life if you listen to your body – and when you’re ready – to run for fitness and then for speed, strength and distance.
Next: Food For Thought
I’ve been running pain-free since I finished the Boston Marathon in 2012. As most running blogs go, I’ve done my share of writing about pain. About how it came about and what I did to try to deal with it (shin splits and forefoot pain, in my case, and in February-March 2011, a massive hamstring tear that kept me away from running for some time). Now, though, I’m compelled to share what I think could be of help to others who, true to this blog’s theme, would like to run for their life.
To recap, in October I’ll be running my seventh marathon and the first since Boston last year. It will be my second running of the Steamtown Marathon in Scranton, Pa., and while I begin my training regimen in mid-June. At 58, I will be shooting for – realistically I’ve come to think – a personal record. While I’ve never really thought that I’d be capable of qualifying for the New York City Marathon, I believe that it’s not out of the question. To do so, I would need to run 3:14 or better. Currently my PR is 3:33:08. But in that race I was suffering foot pain for about half of those 26 miles. I have yet to establish a relatively pain-free marathon mark. Maybe it’s not possible. But, considering my current running and exercise routine, it’s worth a try.
Before my hamstring injury I’d never done much in the way of cross training. Now, it’s as important to me as the run itself. In these non-training months before Steamtown, I run every other day and train on the second day, taking Sundays off. I’m not crazy about it, but on a cross-training day, I set aside forty minutes in the morning. I run a short distance to the gym and then do a series of leg- and core-related stretches and strength sets for about thirty minutes, and the balance I work with weights (again, because of the hamstring injury, I focus on leg muscle-focused weight sets).
As for the foot pain and shin splints, I haven’t run without prescription athletic shoe insoles since Boston, or without my snazzy calf compression sleeves (not exactly, but since wearing them I’ve not had even a hint of shin splint pain). I also use a patellar tendon support for my right knee. (I’ve never experienced any significant knee pain but I did at one time feel a mild strain in my right knee, so I use the little Velcro support strip which gives me as much mental comfort as physical.)
All of this is to say I believe you can get to a place where you are running for your life if you listen to your body – and when you’re ready – to run for fitness and then for speed, strength and distance.
Next: Food For Thought
Running for Your Life: The Real “Frankenstein”
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
I found myself, while reading Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” for the first time (I finished the novel this week) meditating on the above line from Victor Frankenstein. To this human mind, that’s the line that best describes the novel’s theme.
I found myself, while reading Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” for the first time (I finished the novel this week) meditating on the above line from Victor Frankenstein. To this human mind, that’s the line that best describes the novel’s theme.
For reasons that I’d always found a little baffling, when it comes to the monsters we know as children – Frankenstein, Dracula, the Werewolf – I’ve always been drawn to Frankenstein. Now, after reading Shelley’s slim but powerful volume, I get it.
“Frankenstein” is as relevant now, it seems to me, as when it captured the public imagination after publication in 1818. (The one I read – at right, the Signet Classic paperback version, 1965 – is a reprint of the 1831 republication, which was heavily revised by Shelley [when she was in her early thirties)]. Next, I’m going to read the first one – before the revision. The one that came to her in a dream.
“This one was working,” Gertrude Stein said of Picasso. Maybe that’s what makes a classic.
What is birth but change? My daughter, K, is coming home next Thursday. I will go and pick her up at the airport. When I see her I will think of what it felt like to read those first tortured yet graceful thoughts of the demon (in the novel, Frankenstein is the creator, his creation never ranked above “demon” or “beast” as a third-person reference). As children, we don’t have the luxury (the torment?) of sharing our deepest feelings with our creator. Instead, we must settle for a poor second, our parents, a poet’s task.
One of the chief tragedies in “Frankenstein” is the change the demon implied mortally threatened the humans he encountered during his brief time on earth. If they could have seen him, as he was inside, his life would have changed for the better, one that did not take him off to the ends of the earth (the far north, which is another story …).
Like an acolyte before a teacher, I’m drawn to the demon, to his capacity to feel and value the idea of being the best a man can be. “This one was working,” I’ll say to K when I see her.
Next: Cross Train, No Pain
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