Running for Your Life: Run in the Rain

In summer, unless it’s a full-on electrical story – Crack! [insert bolt of lightning here] – I’ll run in the rain.

That’s one of the benefits of my current pace: Slower. Slower. Slower.

At that speed I can limit the risk of slipping and falling during a run. I see the puddles, the rivulets, the drain backups. Considering my pace is more shuffle than sprint, I can avoid most soakers.

They do come, though, the soakers. Wednesday (July 25) a downpour started only minutes after I’d left the house.

In no time, I’m drenched to the bone. Footfalls squish, drown out all but the fat droplets on broad leaves.

In past years, I’d run in the rain to the gym – and then run on the treadmill.

But my treadmill running days are over. I injure myself on those suckers. And there are too many people wearing ear buds, watching telly, interior-drained.

In short, “working out.”

A run in the rain cannot be reduced to a workout.

Rather, it’s a peel back to childhood, wet with wonder.

Next: Running for Your Life: “Gatsby” Gulch   

Running for Your Life: Newspaper Notes

Here’s a dirty little secret.

Folks (of a certain age) take newspapers for granted.

They walk down the street and see the “news” – staring back at them from corner delis.

They don’t wonder where it comes from. How this essential service magically appears every day. The best of them just gather whatever chump change they have in their pocket and pick up a copy – and read about the neighborhood, the country, the president, their passion.

Box scores for baseball fans, crossword puzzles for word nerds.

I remember the daily “Peanuts” column. “Doonesbury.” “Bloom County”  (sniff).

Features have come and gone. But the papers, the promise, remains.

And here, on Monday (July 23), the story breaks that the New York Daily News is cutting half of its already drastically reduced staff. Photographers, gone. Sports reporters and desk – slashed to the bone. 

Ooof, that hurts. As I’ve written here recently, I’ve got a stake or two in this opinion. In fact, if my print job is still there (such history sparks caution) in 2020, I will have worked in newspapers in each of the past six decades – 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, and 20s.

It seems to me that every other person I talk to these days is working on a “book.” What we need are people working on newspapers.

Do your-soul a favor and pick up a paper from your neighborhood newsstand. In fact, pick up two. Repeat. At this rate, they may not be there forever.

Next: Running for Your Life: “Gatsby” Gulch   

Running for Your Life: Bay Ridge Redux

Back at it, a half-marathon in October!

Time was, not so long ago, that I’d be deep into training.

Faster. Longer. Stronger.

Now, in my early-60s, I answer to a different call:

Slower. Slower. Slower.

But keep going. Never stop. Not once, in a race, or during a Prospect Park run.

Bay Ridge is a sweet half-marathon.

It starts on a river pier and goes out along the urban waterfront, under the very cool Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and out to the Bay Ridge/Dyker Heights border before turning back on itself, and ending at the start: the river pier.

This year I’ll be launching my Slower. Slower. Slower. self in the race crowd on Saturday morning, Oct. 6.

If you’re in Brooklyn that day, c’mon down to the waterfront. Better yet, lace up your running shoes and come along: 13.1 miles never seemed so short.

Next: Running for Your Life: Newspaper Notes

Running for Your Life: Houston, We Have a Problem

Houston, we have a problem.

America, the country from where its mission control in Houston, Texas, sent citizens to the moon and back has a problem all right.

It’s the superiority/exceptional belief that may have just come about due to the consequences of being the society that pulled off the achievements in the paragraph above.

Problem is, no matter what a particular group of Americans believes, it is, by definition, superior to what a second or a third of a fourth … group of Americans believes is exceptional.

So, yeah, Houston, New York, LA, Pittsburgh … we have a problem.

I got to thinking about this following a recent trip to my native land, Canada. I’m close to having lived longer in the USA than I have in Canada; now 31 years to 32 years. So I come to this argument with an arguably informed point of view.

As a lifelong newspaperman I pay attention to the press in both countries.

In Canada this past weekend (July 13-15), I read three papers: the Owen Sound Sun Times, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail (Toronto).

I was struck by a quality of clear-eyed curiosity and careful, thoughtful reporting, so much so that I had a devil of a time detecting an agenda.

Not superior, for sure. In fact, almost apologetic. As in, here are the facts, the objective intelligence gleaned from the questions asked about the following topics … A, B, C, D, … etc.

Ontario voters elected a populist, Trump-like premier in the past election, but the reports I read seemed respectful of the results to give the impression that those working to inform others were not adopting a superior attitude, looking to build consensus for a correct point of view.

Interesting, eh?

Next: Running for Your Life: Bay Ridge Redux

Running for Your Life: Shower Sponge

Like dreams, ideas, involuntary, inadvertent, come to you during a shower.

Trick is to remember them, and if your better angel intervenes, to write them down.

One was about being a child, discovering music.

We didn’t have much of intrinsic value in those days. But we did own a top of the line chesterfield, a Sklar, deep navy with woven flower design that simply sparkled a decade after purchase when my dad removed the cushions’ plastic coats.

And a Grundig stereo console.

They both must have set my parents back a pretty penny.

The first song I remember hearing from that stereo was “Please, release me, let me go …”

My inadvertent shower thought, 50 years on, the updated refrain would go something like this:

“Please, beneath me, let me glow … “

Feel free to fill out the rest of the stanza …

Next: Running for Your Life: Bay Ridge Redux