Running for Your Life: Running to West 70th Street Pier

It’s done. Not to Harlem, but three hours from brownstone Brooklyn to the modern pier jutting into the Hudson River at West 70th Street and back to brownstone Brooklyn, which according to the Googly amounts to a mile short of twenty miles, but given that the pedestrian route isn’t as direct as the driving one (through Battery Tunnel and up the West Side Highway vs. inner city Brooklyn, cross the Brooklyn Bridge and lower Manhattan to Battery Park City and the Hudson River park north), I’m thinking that I met my goal, running at least twenty miles without stopping a month or so before the running of the Steamtown Marathon in Scranton, Pa.

It went as planned on Friday, Sept. 13, hours before sundown when fasting starts over the Yom Kippur holy day, and while there is nothing automatic about running for twenty miles (or reasonable about deciding to do such an injury-susceptible exercise on Friday the 13th!) it went well, my “dogs” holding up, and the rest, plenty of water on the route, from brownstone Brooklyn to the Brooklyn Bridge to the Hudson River Park, just enough electrolyte chews to keep my strength (and pace) up. This week marks my second to last training week of sizable runs, perhaps a ten-miler on Wednesday (Sept. 25), before I begin tapering (not bond-buying but slowing to jogging, from ten milers to threes and twos), the last week in September.

Onward to the goal, a marathon, my lucky No. 7, in Scranton on Sunday, Oct. 13!

Next: Running for Your Life: All the Rest is Literature

Running for Your Life: Fall Mood

Wishing it were as it were – meaning fall in September. Cold mornings and brilliant blue skies. Sept. 11 mornings. Not here, twelve years later. No coincidence that I had chosen to run the longest since the Boston Marathon 2012 (not the terrorist-bomb marathon, the one before). But instead, with the humidity in the scary zone, the heat clearing 90 degrees, I treadmill-ran for an hour in A/C indoors. In New York City this late summer and early fall the new normal is sleep shirt-drenching humidity, breezes that belie cooling off, rather just move sweat droplets along the skin not dry them, stay the natural relief that we who were born during early fall crave in our favorite season, the one before the strong cold sets in, teeth-grinding with the thought, sweetness to pair with fiber, winter when men and women are tested, what doesn’t kill you, instead the body hovers in limbo, the humid horror of Sandy, the new normal, as I say, that was Halloween 2012, not fall, no, anything but, if weather is a color make it gray-purple, if a substance, mud, in part because mud cannot be numbered, not like apples, say, or buildings; mud defies the consciousness shaped like pages in a book, think the horror movie Blob http://bit.ly/UNvgQE mud covers and smothers, throws you off and under, waiting as I do now, and every year, for the real fall to come.

(Here’s hoping that Friday afternoon, before the holiday sundown of Kol Nidre, the Jewish new year, when the stifling humidity is supposed to break, I will finally be able to get in my long run, 20+ miles to brownstone Brooklyn to Harlem. Waiting…)

Next: Running for Your Life: Running to Harlem

Running for Your Life: Chi Plea

Maybe it’s my stronger core, smoother foot strike, overall body strength, but I learned on Aug. 30 that I can still run, continue to train, while waiting for my orthotics to be refurbished. Thank God for that – and for Eddie, who runs the coolest shop in the Rockefeller Center concourse, old school cobbler who I trust will make those pain-relieving lifts as good as new on Wednesday (Sept. 4), a week before I’ll be taking on that pesky long run (Sept. 11th, of course, and my route will take me right past Ground Zero . . .) with the idea of getting in three hours, running or walking, whatever it takes to put in the long one, 20 miles to 22 miles. From Brooklyn brownstone to Harlem. While I had hoped to do it at the end of the August, Sept. 11 will mark 32 days before Steamtown. Pretty much exactly where I want to be, in my training schedule, with tapering beginning two weeks later, around Sept. 25 . . .

In the meantime, I’ve been able to keep up running without the orthotics. In the past few days, I’ve managed, 1.8 miles (Aug. 30), 7.6 miles (twice) Saturday and Labor Day, and today (Sept. 3), 3.8 miles. And I’m sitting, now, with the slightest of left forefoot pain.

All of this is to say, that I’ve passed through the down moment that I wrote about here in my last post. In fact, here’s a diary entry from Bellport, LI, after that 7.6 miler on Saturday (Aug. 31):

"Run was great! Thinking core all the way, lift up and separate, in part, I think, what had hurt me was the hardness of my body, how I wasn’t thinking chi, and here I’ve done so much work on the core, as strong as I’ve ever been, if that’s possible. Instead, by not feeling light on my feet, a string puppet held aloft by two fingers, I do not “go away” in my mind and spirit; too much hard, not enough soft, how soft works to prepare the body, also the mind and spirit, if you don’t go away, then what, pray tell, is the point?”

Next: Running for Your Life: Fall Mood

Running for Your Life: Managing Pain

Each couple of weeks or so Steamtown Marathon scribe Jim Cummings writes an email update to those running the Oct. 13 race. These witty dispatches – the event is less than seven weeks away – draw attention to such details as the date upon which entry fees will not be refunded, usually because the would-be racer has suffered from injury or been deficient in training. Once past that date, it’s good luck to you.

Truth is any runner can enter a marathon (except Boston). The trick is to enter and finish four hours or under. In other words, to push your inner athlete, to manage pain (because no matter what you do as a non-elite athlete there is going to be pain.)

For beginners, those who are making the leap from recreational running, the occasional half-marathon, fun runs, etc., stepping up to marathon training, is no easy task. And because of that, one-and-done bucket list runners who’ve completed a marathon and then retired makes good sense. There comes a time when pro athletes decide to hang up the cleats or skates. Training to compete in a tough sport at a better than average level is a punishing proposition. The proof is in the pain, almost despite the train.

Thankfully, after 10 weeks of training – that means both stretching and strengthening, rest days, pretty much alternate week long runs – I’m hoping that it’s enough. That’s because I’m actually going to have to delay my long run. I tried on Wednesday (Aug. 28), during an especially humid day, to get it in and managed closer to 15 miles – and significant forefoot pain that well . . .

Okay, it’s now a day after that run (Aug. 29), and it wasn’t great, my dogs, both of them, started with that old pain that I’ve written about here too much by half, so much so that I actually went to a podiatrist who took one look at my orthotics and said, please, they are worn to the hard shells, refurbish them, you’ve been running with little real support, the lift you need, no wonder you’re in pain. I can’t imagine it, really (that was in her eyes); it’s been a helluva morning, sitting at the Dunkin’ drinking sweet coffee and glazed donuts and earlier – on an endless commute to get to the doctor’s did a most unscientific study of the subway car I’m riding in and an average of sixty percent of people around me (I’ve zero energy to read; as I said it’s been a horrid morning) are either wired or are staring dully, screens in their hands.

It’s a down moment. Training will yield a few like this. But I’m on the road. The lifts are in the capable hands of Eddie’s Shoe Repair at Rockefeller Center – they’ll be back to me the morning of Rosh Hashanah (Sept. 4.), Eddie has assured me, which means my long run (20+ miles) won’t happen until the following week. About a month before Steamtown . . .

Next: Running for Your Life: There Oughta Be a Law

Running for Your Life: Why Race?

It’s not an easy answer, this one. It’s been posed before in this space.

Truth is, for twenty-three years – 1987 to 2010 – I didn’t race. In fact, aside from the occasional tennis game in the’90s and early oughts and a memorable broomball match at Mohonk Mountain Lodge in New Paltz, NY, (our team won 2-0 and I scored both goals!) I didn’t do much in the way of competitive sports.

Instead I ran. But in the manner of Confucius, who famously said, “The superior man has nothing to compete for.” That the spirit of competition itself fouls the purity of sport.

Last week (Aug. 19-23) my mother sent a card to M and me celebrating our 24th wedding anniversary. Inside, she’d stowed a small trove of daily newspaper clippings she’d kept for me – some for as long as fifty years.

One, I couldn’t believe. In a one-column headline, set in 18- to 20-point type were my names in lower case style: Larry O’Connor. The second and third lines told readers that I’d scored a hat trick in an ice hockey game. As I recall I was probably about sixteen years old.

I had totally forgotten that at one time I had been a young competitive athlete. My mom, God bless her, didn’t forget. (Word to the wise: No one loves you quite like a mother.)

Is it about approval then? So strong is that need for parental approval. Run, sure, but race and take a chance that what you will accomplish will again fill that breast of pride, create another clipping, one that your mother will snip out and hold for you, stir the blood like nothing on Earth.

You could call it pride. Or you could call it a mother’s love.

Of course, I’d feel her love if I were to return to simply running – not racing – for my life. But frankly I’ve come to like the idea of the clipping. And if God is good, it won’t be my last.

Next: Running for Your Life: Managing Pain