Running for Your Life: Nova Scotia Marathon

K and I did it! My daughter ran every step of the half and I “cruised” (ran-walked) the full in what was bar none the most memorable marathon of my life. Just when I thought “the marathon” stirs the predictable along comes the pristine, no frills, no chip-time run of a lifetime, the 44^th annual Nova Scotia Marathon.

Photos to come in this space. Now, though, it is time for this: love and admiration for my road darling daughter that I shout from the Brooklyn rooftops. She (the young woman on the right side panel of this blog) who greeted with a proud, joyous smile when I needed it most back at the 17-mile mark during the Pittsburgh Marathon in May 2010. A runner. Just like her pops.

To be with her at the start, with only two hundred and change runners in tiny Barrington, Nova Scotia, at 8 a.m. July 27, among us, and then hailing me at the finish line at Barrington Passage at the finish line on that hot sunny day more than four hours later, cheering me in our identical subway-chair orange marathon Ts, is a memory that will always stay with me. K was no bystander this day, four years after that rainy day in Pittsburgh, but the effect on me was just the same, pushing me to finish on the run, the hardest and happiest that I can remember.

What, I ask, is better than that? Outside of celebrating a certain 25^th wedding anniversary next month, it beats me. It sure as hell beats me.

Next: Running for Your Life: Light in August

Running for Your Life: Days Before the Race

Nova Scotia here we come!

It’s hard to imagine but race day is just about upon us. K and I. On Thursday morning (July 24) we’re heading out, from Red Hook and Park Slope to Nova Scotia. And on Sunday, the Nova Scotia Marathon along the southern coast!

Neither of us has been to the province, home to the Bluenose http://bit.ly/WDigSI and Sidney Crosby http://bit.ly/1tAVaH9. For me, it is particularly gratifying to be on home soil running my eighth marathon. Back in the distant early and mid-'80s, I ran the National Capital Marathon in Ottawa and a border one – Windsor-Detroit. But this is my first one in the Maritimes.

While I’d like to think I will again qualify for Boston (which, at my age requires a minimum best time of 3:40), my goal isn’t so precise. Rather, only that I enjoy each and every moment with my daughter, and on the course, stay within myself, feel the succor of those miles and hours of training, the days of stretching and weight training, the benefit of the bread (thanks C and K!) and pasta and cakes and cookies I’ve been chowing down in these final days before the gun goes off in tiny Barrington, Nova Scotia, the Lobster Capital of Canada.

If you think of it, send a prayer or a thought balloon for K and me this weekend. It’s going to be a blast !

Next: Running for Your Life: Light in August

Running for Your Life: Treadmill Time

There was a time not so long ago when I avoided the treadmill like a cold-fingered dentist. What was up with that? Running like a hamster in a cage when I could be outside. Especially on brilliant June days like the ones we’ve been blessed with this year.

Now – and it’s funny that word, isn’t it? Now carries with it such weight. Imputed is the idea of change, before and after. We like to think of our early self as being available to us. But no. It’s an illusion. We have only impressions of what we believed, or were feeling; some of us, of course, are pretty damn certain they would recognize, maybe even embrace, that early self if by some trick or fantasy they were to encounter her, on the subway, say, or in line at the bank.

Me, I’m wary of the trusting and prideful.  Truth is, I’ve only got a fleeting sense of the now. And I consider myself a thoughtful person.

After all that – Now, following decades of running, I’m not the guy who started, just out the door, in shoes with worn soles, an ill-fitting cap, ratty T. Now, I’m in runner shorts, a tank top in summer months, a cap that soaks up sweat at the brim, compression calf socks to ward off shin splints, patella stabilizing Velcro pads below my knees, lightweight runner socks, newish Brooks neutral-strike running shoes, which inside contain custom-made orthotics for recurrent left foot pain during extra-long runs, each item of gear like sacral garments that I put on slowly, like a priest does as he begins the day, putting on the layers, moving through the rhythms that hold the meaning that comes from a devotion to time-tested repetition.

It’s why sometimes it’s not the outdoors I need but the treadmill. It never used to be the case, but now it is. I’ll need to put in, say, six miles, and even if it’s beautiful and not stinking hot and humid out as it has been this last week or so (July 10 through 16), I head to the treadmill, ramp it up to, say, an 8:40-per-mile pace, about twenty seconds per mile faster than I intend to run a week Sunday (July 27) at the Nova Scotia Marathon, and run. I don’t listen to music, let the strings of earbuds dangle at my side. I run with that fleeting sense of now, the past, and yes, the future.

Next: Running for Your Life: Days Before the Race!