Running for Your Life: Going Outside, Baby !

Yes, Run for Your Life!

Post-physical therapy treatment, the parameters have shifted with a new resolve in strengthening (in keeping with my approach to stretching and a faith in muscle balance that will help in my continuing recovery).

And, I’m back outdoors. (Not in the blizzard [Jan. 22-24] but …) To date, I’ve not done any better than a three-mile jog that takes me thirty-five minutes. (Don’t do the math.)

A comedown from marathon training, I know. Call me a slow learner. It’s taken me more than a year to admit to myself that you can’t push a weakened body any more than you can push a late model car (Yes, 1993 Volvo 850!) without investing in repairs when needed.

Step by step. Soon, I hope, I’ll work my way up to once around Prospect Park and home, a four-mile run. I’ll be doing that. Count on it. But as a stronger, wiser athlete. Because, as the blog title indicates, I’ve no alternative. It’s been a great, long ride – now’s time to embrace a little slowness – in order to make it a longer ride !

Next: Running for Your Life: Winter Storm Jonas ??

Running for Your Life: David Bowie (1947-2016)

David Bowie (1947-2016)

"You've got your mother in a whirl

She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl

Hey babe, your hair's alright

Hey babe, let's go out tonight

You like me, and I like it all

We like dancing and we look divine

You love bands when they're playing hard

You want more and you want it fast

They put you down, they say I'm wrong

You tacky thing, you put them on ...

Hot tramp, I love you so!"

(From Rebel Rebel)

When it comes to rock 'n' roll expression, David Bowie didn't flinch. I can't think of Bowie and his "be wild child" mantra and not think of a pal who died too young. Doug Marshall (1955-1976). He adored Bowie and his music with the sweet clarity of a thousand glittering lights. 

Bowie, too, died too young. But what a Force he was !

Next: Running for Your Life: Going Outside, Baby !

Running for Your Life: December Shorts

No, I haven’t gone out in them yet. My December shorts. But it’s been close but no.

The main reason for that: I’m still struggling with a wonky knee. More on that later. Much later. As in, not in this post.

Has time sped up for everybody? Or is it just me? I literally cannot believe that today (Dec. 28) is, well, today, as in the fourth last day of 2015.

If you are looking for some holiday reading, here’s what I’ve liked in December: Shakespeare’s Dog by Leon Rooke, House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Beatlebone by Kevin Barry. I’m currently reading and, loving, the short detective novel Equal Danger by the Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia.

Didn’t score big on the movie front this month. Saw Brooklyn and Spotlight. They weren’t Birdman. Made me think that I’d like to make a movie called Owen Sound. In fact, all hometowns should be made into movies. It would beat Netflix.

We have a radio. My wife, M, wanted one for Christmas. The only gift she asked for. I had a shortwave radio sitting unused on a basement shelf since we moved to our home in 1992. I bought it for $400 in 1986 and used it during my years at the Windsor Star newspaper where I worked as the assistant night editor for most of that time. The shortwave dial was shot, but one day in early December I picked it up, thinking that the FM and AM dials may work perfectly fine. It was worth a try, anyway. I took the radio up into the kitchen and plugged it in, pulled the antenna out to its maximum length, and sure enough it worked like a charm. When M came up from her home office, she found her Christmas present – and has been inordinately pleased with it through the following days of December. It was the only gift she received, one she says she will never forget.

Next: Running for Your Life: Resolution Rumblings

Running for Your Life: On the Road Again

Call it a broken record. But I’m on the shelf again.

I had been hoping to be back on the road again (as per the title here). That is going to have to wait.

Hmm, running for your life. Well, in theory, yes. I have every intention of getting back on the road again.

Biking for Your Life? Or Elliptical for Your Life? Tennis for Your Life?

Nah, they don’t cut it.

I’m convincing myself – and my friends in physical therapy – that my latest setback –  running up to 29 minutes before my cranky left knee swelled with inflammation, then following that with a few days of rest, only to re-injure same by a slow jog home from the gym – is just that. A setback. What’s required, as M and K have so rightly pointed out, is for me to just f—king stay off the knee – i.e. NOT run on it – for at least a month.

Which is what I’m doing. With gritted teeth and a snarl.

Truth is, I’m not showing my best side on the shelf. That, too, I pledge to do something about.

Next: Running for Your Life: December Shorts

Running for Your Life: Diary Food

Some time ago I was working on the subway, with my diary on my lap as is my practice, and a stranger on the train asked, while I was pausing, a pen at my lips, deep in thought, “Pardon me, sir,” in a whisper that I would charitably describe as exaggerated respect. “But are you a writer?”

Hmm, one wonders what my gentle intruder was getting at. That as an aspiring “writer” herself, she was hoping to make a casual, if not significant, connection with a more established “writer” in New York City, a place chock-a-block with “writers,” as in someone whose work she might know. Or someone simply hitting on me. Or  curious. A low-tempo busybody …

The truth is when I write in my diary on the subway I’m generally miles away from thinking of myself as a writer. It is not at all comparable to the example of running in the park, say, and a stranger hails me as I slow for a drink, or take a walking break, and asks, “Pardon me, sir. Are you a runner?”

Some truths are regarded to be self-evident. When it comes to my diary food, though, I don’t necessarily think of myself as “a writer.” It is, like my running, just what I do. I have no living clue whether it will EVER be part of what would be considering “my writing.” Snatches of it will end up as grist for stories, or a novel that I’m working on. This blog. I’ve a “running” title for something that will include drawings and captions of riders blankly immersed in social media … http://bit.ly/1P3tp5p (Don’t miss the forgoing here … You’ll get where I’m going with that.)

True to the blog title, I like to think of my diary time as part of a healthy diet. Breakfast. Diary Food. Lunch. Five-Mile Run. Dinner.

So how did I respond to the woman on the subway?  I am writing, yes. And then I put my head down and went back to work.   

Next: Running for Your Life: On the Road Again