Running for Your Life: A Very Special Marathon

Next stop, Nova Scotia.

K and I are set on running the Nova Scotia Marathon along the southern sea coast of that marvelous province on Sunday, July 27, my mom’s and K’s gramma’s eighty-second birthday. O boy! Is that an exciting proposition!

The 100-day mark measured out to include a recovery week into the first week of August begins Monday (April 28).

For K it will be her first 26.2 miler, although she has been running for many months now on a regular basis, often with her lovable blue pit Stella at her side. It fun to think of running with Thurb and K running with Stella. Soon, we will be all in the same ZIP code, but that, as they say, is another story.

So soon the stories from weeks of training will be documented here. Do yourself a favor and run, or jog, or walk along with us as we make our way to Barrington, Canada’s Lobster Capital, Nova Scotia in July. I am so psyched to say that K is a chip off the old block, while I’m feeling chips in the old knees.

It will be interesting to see how it all comes out. But I couldn’t be more proud and happy to have her very special company for this race. Are we thinking Boston this time? Hardly. Just joy. Pure and simple joy of running for your life, 26.2 miles of it, along the seashore of my native land with K.

Next: Running for Your Life: Track Work! 

Running for Your Life: So You Want to Live in Park Slope Dept.

“You keep an open mind long enough, your brain will fall out.”

–        Kirk Nicewonger

Paid poster at R Train, Manhattan-bound station:

Sizable image of a mixed race boy (think African American/Jewish) with mop of black curly hair, million dollar smile, one pointed tooth, eyeglasses with tiny hearts on frame corners, writing with a pen before open books and papers in blurry foreground:

Words: Where can you learn Mandarin in kindergarten, study Logic in 7^th grade and Economics in 8^th Grade?

Next: Running for Your Life: Track Work!

Running for Your Life: Reverse Age That Body

I’ve written a lot in this space about turning back the clock. You’d think in the years that I’ve been running for my life there has been some slowing down. And, yes, I suppose that’s true. I’m unlikely to test that Steamtown 2010 time of 3:33:08 ever again. But when it comes to reverse aging that hardly matters. Performance is not measured in time alone.

Two days after April Fool’s Day I woke early from persistent jet lag. (M and I returned March 31 from a two-week trip to Hong Kong and Thailand, more on that at another time.) For about a week after arriving home, I found sleep difficult. Two, three hours of hard sleep and then I’m up, wide awake at 2 a.m., 3 a.m.

I manage four hours of deep rest, but at 6 a.m., it was all over. Soon I was out with T, did errands of various sorts, fixed myself a little breakfast, and then, exhausted, went back to bed at 9:40 a.m. I went out like a light but was up again at 10:20 a.m. Why? Because my body is attuned to run at that hour. Even dead tired, barely able to life my leg up and out of the covers and over the side of the bed, I wasn’t going to miss my run.

I did it, a modest 4.5 miles, and I felt writing in the subway afterward like a young man. Hardly slower, hardly weaker. In fact, if as my mother and father, who are a healthy 82 and 84, respectively, were once fond of saying, You’re only as young as you feel, this running for your life deal hasn’t failed me when it comes to living that saying out loud.

Next: Running for Your Life: Track Work!