Running for Your Life: Off the T’mill

I’m off the treadmill.

At least until my next race on Sat., Oct. 7, a half-marathon along The Narrows, the body of water that separates Staten Island from Long Island (Brooklyn) in Bay Ridge.

Why? Because the October event will be my first race in three years and three months. For most of that time I put in hundreds of miles on the treadmill, until about May this year. Meanwhile, injuries mounted: a blown knee, neuroma, Achilles tendon, face-plant.

With the important exception of the latter injury, all can be blamed, if not entirely at least partially, on the treadmill.

I’m remembering advice I received once from a personal trainer. The treadmill may seem the perfect training tool – to track speed, time, find the right pace. Doing interval training if your time is short – an eight-minute mile pace for twenty minutes, say, to get the best aerobic bang for your buck.

But, my PT pal warns, there is little heel-strike variation on a treadmill. It may seem the same as outdoor running, but it isn’t. Footfalls in a five-mile outdoor run are as wide-ranging as a Baskin-Robbins flavor chart. On the treadmill, you’ve got vanilla.

And that, believe it or not, can amount to a hellish pounding of the body. Especially, if you get into the habit of running on the machines more often than not.

Which is what I found myself doing as I looked to amp up miles for two consecutive races that I was forced to cancel due to injuries: the Brooklyn Marathon of 2015 and the Bay Ridge Half of 2016.

No more – treadmills or canceled races. So far, the non-treadmill-trained body is holding up … Time will tell if this resolution obtains the results I’m hoping for.

Next: Running for Your Life: Reading Taibbi 

Running for Your Life: Eclipse Clips

I was thisclose to publishing a personal essay on the recent US solar eclipse … as far as an intro and an ending, to wit:

When my wife, M, looked up from the chart in a newspaper showing a dark band across the length of the country, I knew.

We would be making tracks to the place that promised one of the longest periods of darkness in the middle of an American summer day. That would be 2 minutes and 39 seconds of pitch black in Columbia, Missouri.

“Our anniversary is Sunday,” I reminded her. We’d have to leave for the heartland on our 28^th anniversary of marriage.

“That’s perfect then, isn’t it? ’Cause you know what the writer Annie Dillard says?"

“No, what?”

“That comparing a partial eclipse to a total eclipse is akin to kissing a man versus marrying him.”

Every boomer knows the line by heart, the phrase from that famous song by Carly Simon:

“Then you flew your Lear jet up to Nova Scotia/to see the total eclipse of the sun.”

“So,” I said to M, “you did think that song was about you?”

+ + +

Imagine the scene across the country, millions upon millions standing shoulder to shoulder, staring skyward.

Which brings to mind what our rabbi told us on our wedding day twenty-eight years ago.

He quoted Antoine de Saint Exupery that “Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Why I’m Not ‘Treading’ These Days

Running for Your Life: Personal Items, a Study of Opposites

American Airlines onboard announcement, today (Aug. 22), Chicago to New York City:

“Please be sure to check the seat pocket in front of you for any personal items, such as a tablet or a mobile phone … ”

Wall script in the final gallery room of the Paul Gaugin “Artist as Alchemist” show (Aug. 21) at the Art Institute of Chicago, detailing the personal items left in his house upon his death in 1903:

“Sculpting tools, wood chisels, handsaws, planes, a drill and vises, tube paints and related paint products, rolled canvases, frames, three easels, a bundle of drawing paper, a sewing machine and a camera.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Why I’m Not ‘Treading’ These Days

Running for Your Life: Profiles in Kindness

In the offseason, hockey doesn’t make the headlines. But dig a little and you’ll find some stories. Just not the kind that show millionaire athletes behaving badly that seem to predominate during the offseason of other professional sports.

Take Nick Foligno, the captain of the Columbus Blue Jackets. Foligno is from Sudbury, the hub of the Ontario Northland. In about a month, he’ll be back at it, playing pre-season games in preparation for another long, exciting NHL hockey campaign.

Now, he’s captain of another team. Here’s the scoop (an excerpt from news coverage …)

In October 2013, [Foligno’s] daughter Milana was born with a rare congenital heart defect. After her condition was diagnosed at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, she received lifesaving surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital when she was just three weeks old. Three year later, as a way to honor Milana and recognize the tremendous work at both institutions, Nick and his wife, Janelle, donated $1 million to the two hospitals.

Since 2015, Foligno has served as honorary chair of the NEO Kids Foundation, a hub for specialized children's medical care in northeastern Ontario, the benefactor of the second annual Docs vs. NHL hockey game that happened last week.

About 700 folks came out in support of the cause in Sudbury, to see world-class players suit up with physicians from the city’s Health Science North. This year Foligno was joined by others on his Columbus team: Boone Jenner, Zach Werenski, Josh Anderson, Scott Harrington, and former Jacket and current New Jersey Devil, Dalton Prout.

Hockey players don’t make money on the scale that football, basketball and baseball players do. But they do make millions in an average career – and more often than not they donate time and some of that money to social causes, frequently involving the most innocent of human beings, sick kids.

No, they don’t make headlines. But, man, their display of selfless character as a group is enough to keep me digging during the offseason to find out more about their stories.

Be a fan of the game, but also of the individuals who play it. Profiles of courage are one thing; profiles of kindness, that’s something we can all emulate.

Next: Running for Your Life: Why I’m Not ‘Treading’ These Days

Running for Your Life: Total Eclipse America

M and I are going to go to see the total eclipse of the sun.

To a place I’ve never been to before: Columbia, Missouri, where the brainiacs are saying, under ideal conditions, folks in the city and region will fall into a pitch black at 1:20 p.m. that will last about 2 minutes, 40 seconds.  On Monday, Aug. 21.

Man, does this country need a colossal distraction, or what? That’s part of why we’re going. I may be mad to even suggest this, given how loud and vicious the socio-political discourse has been in my adopted land for months, and how hellacious it’s been since the events of Virginia last weekend (Aug. 11-13).

Recently, I saw the movie “Dunkirk” by director Christopher Nolan. I didn't love it but I admired it greatly.

What is germane to this argument is that the actions are divided in time segments, very eclipse-y, like the kids say: You got your boys on the beach (one week), old fella, shell-shocked sailor and boys on a civvy boat (one day), and Spitfire pilots en route to Dunkirk (one hour).

With the eclipse, folks will be carving out the time across the country, what will be your partial eclipse minutes, and the thoroughly awesome minutes for those in that narrow total solar eclipse band across the country, where the forecast calls for 40, count ’em 40, Woodstock-like events.

Here’s a crazy thought. “Dunkirk” is a three-time segment movie that recounts stirring narratives that helped to spur a nation to action, that literally brought people together to fight for what was seen to be the common good.

Wow! How’s about it, eclipse? You up for the job?

Next: Running for Your Life: Why I’m Not ‘Treading’ These Days

Running for Your Life: Picasso Meets Chillest Triathlon Ever

Eighty years after the unveiling of Picasso’s “Guernica,” Brooklyn hosts the chilliest triathlon ever.

“Guernica,” honored the bombing of the Basque town of the same name during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso saw in Guernica a theme. From “The Women of ‘Guernica’” by Anne Wagner, in the Aug. 17, London Review of Books:

“What did he mean [by a theme]? Not simply an idea or a topic, but a human universal to be expressed symbolically: death as skull, Picasso said, not a car crash. What he considered themes (I quote) were “birth, pregnancy, suffering, murder, the couple, death, rebellion, and, perhaps, the kiss.”

Flash forward to Brooklyn’s chilliest triathlon, eighty years after “Guernica.”

Wanderlust 108, as it’s called, takes place on Sept. 10th in Prospect Park, The Nethermead … Here at the highlights:

People Dancing Through the Entirety of a 5K Run: (Protip: Doing your best Beyonce impression usually helps)

Intense Feeling That Comes with Silent Meditation in a Crowd of Thousands

Emphasis on Fun and Mindfulness Over Competition (Keep time if you want, but the main focus here is togetherness and crossing the finish line . . . no matter how long it takes or how you get there.)

Twirling Through the Air on a Sling

 Meditative Walking, Which Is Indeed a Thing

“Guernica” vs. Chillest triathlon ever. Wonder lust meets Wanderlust.    

Next: Running for Your Life: Total Eclipse America

Running for Your Life: Boomtown Rats

There’s a trend line here that needs ’splaining.

Take the building of the Erie Canal. This book, “Heaven’s Ditch: God, Gold and Murder on the Erie Canal,” by Jack Kelly, goes to some length to show how corrupt politics are inextricably linked to boomtown economic gain. The American way, baby. Woof, the Masons history, the disappearance and presumed murder of William Morgan, author, of “Masonic Secrets Reveal,” will curl your hair.

Then there’s the silver and gold mining of the American West. How personal greed drives all machine inventions, ruins land in 24-hour, 7-day extraction mania, devastates ancient communities.

Unleash the entrepreneur, Mr. President, and you will guarantee your election, oh, and your re-election. America, after all, is the land of opportunity. So get digging, fella.

How’s about the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 … One President Benjamin Harrison sent in the army at a time when there was no perceived threat of a native uprising but “Republican control of the US Senate hung by a thread. A South Dakota seat was being contested in an upcoming election and its loss might tip the balance against the president’s agenda in Congress. Sending in the army would be popular with settlers because large numbers of soldiers meant profits for local merchants and military contractors. ” (From, “God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America,” by Louis S. Warren)

And the Dow marches ever higher in 2017, Amazon, Tesla, Facebook … CNBC is running a feature called “Made in America: The Manufacturing Revival” …

These are the stories, the presidential legacies, the dominant political-business-social trends that have shaped Warren’s Modern America … Chasing boomtowns is the American dream.

Next: Running for Your Life: “Chillest” Triathlon Eve

Running for Your Life: The Letter Campaign

So, I’m off to a slow start. No, this isn’t a political gesture. It’s personal.

Letters to friends. You know, written-down-on paper expressions of feelings and half-constructed beliefs that mark your time on Earth better than any other mode of activity. So much so that those letters received from a person on that particular path – that is, reaching out in an unselfish, giving way, being open and vulnerable and funny and doubt-ridden – are kept as intimate treasures.

I’ve got the bug. And the tool, or at least the most important one: the pen that writes for eternity. (See prior blogpost called On Writing – Letters, That Is.)

This weekend (Aug. 4-6) I’ll get the rest of the gear: colored paper (my pen leaves pencil-like impressions so the letter will be much easier to read if I write on bright orange stock, or maroon, if I can find it.) Maroon and gray (the pencil color) –  team colors of the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees – will make for a nice effect. Not my alma mater (I went to rival Carleton), but I did prefer the look of their sports uniforms.

And stamps. Some for my Canadian correspondents and some for my American ones. I’ve my eye on a pal in Paris, too. The guy I have in mind strikes me as someone who would like the idea of this.

I will not keep a copy of what I write, though. You’d think I would but no. I write not for posterity. To think that my letters will survive me. Rather, I’m charmed by the thought that these letters are my own personal Tibetan sand drawings. Once they leave my desk and go off in the post, they are gone. It will be enough to  feel the sense of them in the replies, the ones I hope to find in my mailbox. And those, I can assure you, I will keep.

One day, perhaps, I will visit one of my “lettermates” and we will bring with us our mutual cache of written treasures to a neutral meeting place and exchange the physical objects for a day. Maybe even agree to exchange our letters for a time. Say a month, or a year, and see how that feels.

Afterward, we will restore the letters to their rightful owner. As we continue to build more.

Next: Running for Your Life: “Chillest” Triathlon Ever

Running for Your Life: Dissecting Work

If you were to dissect writing, like a mechanic hobbyist breaks down a small engine and then rebuilds it, whose writing would you study in order to replicate it.

That’s easy. Anne Carson’s.

Consider the poem, “Clive Song,” in the current New Yorker (Aug. 7-14).

http://bit.ly/2w2SHwH

What rises from these pages is a curious, searching mind rooted in a classical Western knowledge that limns the lines but doesn't overwhelm them.

There is none of the preening showman, the author first. Rather Anne Carson is in service of the story, of the feeling, of the insight, who then backs away like the director whose signal act in the debut curtain is to lift up the scrim and let the gift of her inspired skill speak for itself.

On a related note, Karl Ove Knausgaard knows he is a pompous ass. Or at least at times he does in his pages – and that is enough. When the preening is done, the cloud cover that is the dark sins of the father he carries in his breast cannot be so far behind. My struggle, indeed.

Yes, doubt cripples. In more ways than our wee minds can ever know.

Next: Running for Your Life:  The Letter Campaign