I got stuck on a phrase at MOMA’s “Exquisite Corpses: Drawings and Disfiguration.” It was used in a wall reference describing the rotund, planetary-like images of Hans Bellmer: “Accommodating and limitless docility.” Immediately I thought of the manatees milling around a warm water runoff spout at a Florida Power and Light Co. facilty that M, K and I liked to visit when we’d go south to stay with R & S, M’s parents. How drawn I was to the manatees. “Accommodating and limitless docility,” a state of mind where stress is as foreign as an iceberg in the Sahara. Rolling drifting looking but not seeing. Simply being sentient.
On Monday morning I’ll be looking to tap my inner manatee. I’ve trained in such a way that running – even for as long as three and a half hours – is the equivalent of rolling drifting looking but not seeing. Simply being sentient. Where there is no injury and no stress, there can be no pain. I have come to believe that I have done what I have set out to do and that is to be ready to run for hours. Not to race. But to be inside myself.
Running for Your Life: Down to the Wire
I just liked Lonesome George on Facebook. I would DEFINITELY follow him if he had a Twitter account.
The reason being, Lonesome George, the Galapagos tortoise, is about one hundred years old, but he doesn't look a day over forty. He just keeps motoring along. Imagine his tweets ... You can keep Lady Gaga, Alec Baldwin, Madonna, Justin Bieber, Jennifer Lawrence. Lonesome George ... Now THOSE would be some awesome tweets.
The reason being, Lonesome George, the Galapagos tortoise, is about one hundred years old, but he doesn't look a day over forty. He just keeps motoring along. Imagine his tweets ... You can keep Lady Gaga, Alec Baldwin, Madonna, Justin Bieber, Jennifer Lawrence. Lonesome George ... Now THOSE would be some awesome tweets.
Running for Your Life: Finally, It’s April
Running a good pace on Manhattan streets is no mindless trot. And it makes sense, doesn’t it, I mean it’s understandable that most pedestrians are inclined to be on the lookout for fellow walking folk on city sidewalks, not necessarily food-delivery bike guys, or up tempo runners like me. It makes for defensive running – and varies the step, which in the end might be what the doctor ordered for me, in terms of managing my consistent (but oh so much less than last year) foot pain.
Have you ever watched as a smartphone user power-walking along, not paying any attention to where they are going, collide full-force in the face with a lamp standard or signpost? I saw one guy literally staggered by the blow to the head. I swear the impact of the collision should’ve knocked him out. I asked if he was okay, and for a moment anyway, he turned away from his iPhone long enough to say, “These phones are going to be the death of me.”
Not that there is anything wrong with that. That is as long as he doesn’t take anyone else with him.
(Me, I remain a Luddite holdout. My "tablet" discovery is the iPad-sized Moleskine notebook with a spine so flexible and durable that it makes for the most efficient subway writing imaginable !!)
Have you ever watched as a smartphone user power-walking along, not paying any attention to where they are going, collide full-force in the face with a lamp standard or signpost? I saw one guy literally staggered by the blow to the head. I swear the impact of the collision should’ve knocked him out. I asked if he was okay, and for a moment anyway, he turned away from his iPhone long enough to say, “These phones are going to be the death of me.”
Not that there is anything wrong with that. That is as long as he doesn’t take anyone else with him.
(Me, I remain a Luddite holdout. My "tablet" discovery is the iPad-sized Moleskine notebook with a spine so flexible and durable that it makes for the most efficient subway writing imaginable !!)
Running for Your Life: Terry Fox and EJ Scott
Terry Fox is my hero. In Canada, where I’m from, he is a legend. A runner who, to raise money and awareness surrounding the cancer that was killing him, started to run across Canada.
I was a few years older than Terry when he began his trek in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on April 12, 1980, and he kept at it. He wasn’t setting any land speed records (unless you count the category of one-legged male runners because in that league he was peerless). He made it to Thunder Bay, Ontario, 3,340 miles from the starting line on Sept. 1, 1980. He died a month short of his 23rd birthday in 1981. His Marathon of Hope lives on though; the annual Terry Fox Run, first held in 1981, has grown to involve millions of participants in over sixty countries and is now the world’s largest one-day fundraiser for cancer research; over $500 million has been raised in his name.
I was a few years older than Terry when he began his trek in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on April 12, 1980, and he kept at it. He wasn’t setting any land speed records (unless you count the category of one-legged male runners because in that league he was peerless). He made it to Thunder Bay, Ontario, 3,340 miles from the starting line on Sept. 1, 1980. He died a month short of his 23rd birthday in 1981. His Marathon of Hope lives on though; the annual Terry Fox Run, first held in 1981, has grown to involve millions of participants in over sixty countries and is now the world’s largest one-day fundraiser for cancer research; over $500 million has been raised in his name.
Running for Your Life: Tales During the Taper
I know I had set up to write about Running to Harlem. Well, outside of reporting that I did it. (Not only did I run toward Harlem, as in the 125th Street entrance off the Henry Hudson Parkway, but I made it there!) And then turned around and ran back to our Brooklyn home, with only one stop to refill my water bottle at a rest area just south of the 79th Street Boat Basin, the only watering hole I could find that day along the Hudson River Park. (I was carrying a strap-affixed fist-size bottle that I'd bought earlier that day; I also wore a Velcro-compression strap on my left knee to keep my patella from wandering.) The conditions were perfect, thank goodness; cool and misty. A cyclist gave me an encouraging smile when I was striding north near the cruise ship berths in the 40s. And if it is the first and last time I run to Harlem, I will always have the slender beauty of the flowering fruit trees along the river that Friday afternoon (March 16), about ten blocks below my turnaround spot, where remarkably I had the place to myself.
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