Running for Your Life: Rambling Runs in Key West

Key West is a state of mind. A place to bring work and books, that then sit on wicker furniture, untouched. Best to set minimal goals. Like referring to the foliage as fronds, not leaves. Or considering the wisdom of an afternoon rest under a palm tree with ripe-looking coconuts thirty feet above you.

Running in Key West is especially satisfying. For me, who normally trains in flat land-challenged Park Slope, Brooklyn, it’s a dream, either along the sidewalks facing Higgs and Smathers beaches, or up and out on Flagler Avenue, where on a recent visit I saw a spoonbill rooting for grubs, and admired, in the parking lot of Key West High School, a massive conch sculpture made of welded metal that was then painted, one part, lustrous pink, revealing inner space that literally cries out to be pressed to the ear.

Listen to the sea.

Off Flagler, just north of Fifth Avenue, a local told me to take Seventh Avenue and run along the salt marsh park road. The entrance is at Government Road and Flagler. Down this road only the most adventurous tourist comes. The company and sights instead: cove-hugging cormorants, turkey buzzards, egrets, dog walkers, an Air Cubana twin-prop relic that an aviation enthusiast may just be rehabbing, a sad-looking paint ball field, and perhaps most surprising, sign storage for Fantasy Fest (Don’t ask.)

Last year, M and I were in Key West and I wrote this post:

Back from Key West, the Conch Republic, where the captains who run the sunset sails thrill their predominantly Boomer clientele with the knee-slapper, “Welcome to North Cuba!”, upon return in the darkness because for most of us land lubbers it’s more than a little disorienting out there, for an hour out of the sandbank and mangrove low-water keys, the Gulf Stream visible the night we see the sun sink into the horizon and the captain blows the conch so that his face glows purple in contrast to the blood-orange of the sunset, all aboard the AppleBone, as poet Billy Collins dubbed it, because it was a literary cruise, not like the Disney one, a floating theme park that moors near our oceanfront balcony, ESPN Sports Center on a giant screen topside blaring into the otherwise romantic night; shallow draught Caribbean port bruisers these beasts; how they get into the slips, water deep as elderly knickers is anybody’s guess, and a frightening thought that the town fathers have been considering allowing 10,000-passenger monsters into port (although the Italian cruise disaster may put an end to that . . .), which if that doesn’t kill whatever charm north-to-central Duval Street has left then I’m a monkey’s uncle, not to mention the dubious safety of the cruiseships themselves, don’t begin to think that the capsizing of the Costa Concordia is an anomaly, the physics of these boats leaving no margin for error, turn away if you see the chalkboard math on the probability of it happening again, and especially in a place like Key West, where admittedly you do have to ask the question, “How many people can drown in two feet of water?”

I didn’t see Gene Hackman when I was in Key West. Or hear about the car accident he was in. But we did see Ricky Williams and marine life:

• Ricky “The Green Mile” Williams is lifting M in the air, her left foot is eighteen inches off the ground, legs helicoptering. Ricky, now playing with the Joe Tenuto Chicago-style blues band. Drummer we heard has been in bands since he was six, but no longer practices between gigs. Ricky does. Ricky, the blind keyboardist, never stops playing .¤.¤.

• With M, watching the minnows and barracuda, pinhead pursuers and slowly, as if the late scene entrance of the graybeard theater veteran, a ray swims with a nonchalance we’ve been waiting for. We stay for a beat then hop abroard our $40-per-week bikes and leave the water’s edge, Martello Tower Museum, just east of the Key West International Airport.

Next: Running for Your Life: The Next Big Run!

Running for Your Life: Why So Smug?

Maybe it’s just me, but this season every human image I see – in subway advertising, in New York Post lifestyle coverage, in glossy magazines – shows a smug expression.

Now that everyone with a phone is a photographer, then both sides, photog and subject, come to expect the smug caricature of their otherwise more complete selves.

I don’t see anything sinister in this, although perhaps a younger-me would. Rather, when we live in an age where each of us in the media-defining elite can easily aspire to be a leader in the constantly dividing and narrowing court of public opinion, smugness is not only our default expression but one that will only deepen and crystallize as this endlessly self-reflecting culture rolls on.

In this vein, beware the power and seduction of zomboid devotees of Ayn Rand and “Atlas Shrugged” (check out “Ayn Rand Nation” by Gary Weiss http://amzn.to/UQuYYB), the mirror image of New York City-style smugness, who in contrast to the complacent lamestream media have a truly sinister plan to dominate the mush we’ve wrought as social and political culture.

Running for Your Life: Rambling Runs in Key West

Running for Your Life: Weekend Cold Weather Running Tips

Current temperature in Brooklyn: 44 degrees F, five-day forecast highs: 47-55 degrees

Current temperature in Edmonton: 3 degrees F, five-day forecast highs: 5-29 degrees

Best airline-ticket price between NYC and Edmonton for Friday, Jan. 11 to Monday, Jan. 14 on Priceline (mid-afternoon Jan. 10): $721.

Pony up the money and fly to Edmonton, where it’s mid-January-appropriate below freezing and in tights and a good pair of gloves run outside on the streets and bridges. (Use Vaseline on your unprotected face and don’t forget your toque).

As for Brooklyn: Put on the same gear you do in April and go outside and run.

Next: Running for Your Life: Why So Smug?

Running for Your Life: A Brooklyn Holiday

I must confess to more than a little envy of my Canadian family and friends, the beneficiaries of snowy weather in the past weeks, enough to lay cover for a White Christmas that I’ve been able to enjoy in photos that fall like so many snowflakes in my Facebook feed.

This season Mary and I had the pleasure of an extended visit from our daughter, Kate. While we didn’t dash through the snow on a one-horse open sleigh, we were joined by a reindeer (Thurber, in his asymmetrical antlers, photo to come). Not for long, of course. Thurber soon got his jaws around the antlers and that was that. We’ll need to buy a backup pair for Christmas 2013. Or just a pair to put on him during the year to remind him who's boss.

We had our fun, the three of us. On Christmas Eve we discovered a new movie tradition: “How to Train Your Dragon,” starring Hiccup and Night Fury (Thurber’s new nickname), and Christmas Day joined millions of Americans – quite unlike us to do such a thing, but hey it was “Les Miserables” – at the movies. Later, we supped with our people, the Jews of New York, at first waiting for a table at a Chinese food place before settling on Thai.

This past Saturday, we went to the Milwaukee suburbs to celebrate a life: Rosalie Morris, my wife Mary’s mom who passed away 18 days before her 100th birthday. Ro, as she was known by family and close friends, was always a loving supporter of me, her Irish-Canadian son-in-law who she came to call Larry O’Cohen. Family and friends gathered for a delicious lunch catered by Larry’s Market of Brown Deer Village (visit for a nosh and a conversation when you’re in the vicinity http://bit.ly/7qVMso) and told stories, both old and new, of Rosalie, whose husband Sol died seven years ago at 102. With genes like those, Mary will be around for a very long time … Which is certainly epic news for me!

Wishing everyone the best of everything in 2013!

Next: Running for Your Life: Cold Weather Running Tips

Running for Your Life: Resolutions for 2013

When it comes to running, 2012 was all about the Boston Marathon. With temperatures in the mid- to high 80s F, I wasn’t about to keep up my pattern of improving upon my marathon times. In fact, I finished Boston at just over four hours, my slowest recorded time since I finished my first one in the early 1980s.

So, despite my age (57), I remain convinced that I can improve upon my personal best, which I managed on 10-10-10: 3:33:08 in the Steamtown Marathon in Scranton, Pa. I’ve yet to decide where I will run a marathon next year, but I will do one in 2013. I did both Pittsburgh and Steamtown in 2010, so perhaps I’ll get it together to run one of those. Or the nascent Brooklyn Marathon, which had its 3rd annual running last month. In any event, I resolve to run faster than 3:33:08 this year.

If I were to offer advice to others, who would like to get into a regular running regimen in 2013, I’d say take it slow. Oh, and don’t just see any doctor, if you are on the old side and looking to get medical clearance to begin a running program. (Some folks just stop when their GP, who oftentimes is inclined to treat running as a pastime for certain age individuals as akin to tobacco smoking or a bottle-of-wine-per-night drinking habit, tells them to quit.) Make an appointment with a sports medicine doctor and tell her that you want to run. It could be that your knees or back or ankles, one or both of which caused you to stop running in the first place, are not so damaged or worn down that they can’t be repaired through muscle-strengthening or stretching. I’ve become a big believer in cross-training, in building up body strength while I work on running harder, longer and faster. So far, so good. And there is nothing about my case that is all that special. I’m more a found athlete than a born one. And man, do I love the benefits of a running life, which I have expounded here on this blog for the past two and a half years.

As for my other resolutions, I’ve a few days to meditate on them. (With hopes the apocalypse threat will pass without incident …)

Happy pre-New Year, everybody. To your health, and the best of all things in 2013 and beyond.

Next: Running for Your Life: A Brooklyn Holiday