I should have known better. It’s against my better judgment to train with the dog. As a puppy maybe. Or when I wasn’t in training. Perhaps that was what was working in the back of my mind when I set up this 19-week Boston Marathon training regimen, that sure enough I’d do something stupid, hard-run with Thurb in the cold, pouring rain without limbering up, tense in my body over the first quarter-mile, because during that part of the run all pretense of me being in charge of Thurber is cast off, as he howls and howls and charges off like a wild horse, me holding on to the leash for dear life, and on this day (Dec. 7), as I’m yanked along, big heavy strides, about a dozen of them, before I feel something like needles digging just below the surface, upper outside thigh of my left leg, where the hamstring attaches, first thinking what the hell else do I have in my pocket besides the Snoop Loop halter and retractable nylon leash, what could be causing this sharp pain, but then I think shit, it’s a muscle tear, hard to know just how serious, but something not good, and I’m thinking that if I stop now in the cold and wet and walk home it will only seize up and get worse, if only I’d warmed up before this wouldn’t be happening now, I’m only in a T-shirt and baggy shorts, freezing, the rain really coming down, and damn, Thurb isn’t easing up one bit, this might not be such a good idea, trying to slow him down so that the pain is just a dull throb, eventually though he does as he always does, levels off into a trot, stops the incessant howling so that I too can relax, feel looser, which helps, and, yeah, keep going, convincing myself that if I get home in time before I have to gather up my stuff and head off to the newsroom that I’ll find the heating pad and apply some HIGH heat before my sedentary day gets in full swing, and worst case, ties up the muscle so badly that I’ll be taking a week of rest days, heat and cold and light stretching before I’ll be able to get back to training for the marathon; maybe I’ll be looking at a 100-day marathon training regimen after all.
Running for Your Life: Mind Matters
So here’s the first week’s totals: Exactly thirty miles, the long run, 11 miles on Day 6, moderate hills and hard to moderate pace. No pain, although after Day 7, an ill-thought-out cross-training/treadmill with only hamstring strengthening and 6:30 per minute pace, with not enough time to stretch afterward; hamstring and groin muscle tightening to tension. A little scare. But Monday (Dec.5, Week Two, Day One), after a easy to moderate five-miler, there is no aftereffect, only tiniest of feelings in the butt-hamstring, even the forefoot feels fly. Note to self: Stretch! Stretch! Stretch! After cross-training, treadmill or running.
Running for Your Life: Your Immune System
So You Want to Live in Park Slope Dept.
A recent workday I’m rush-stepping along the Manhattan-bound subway platform at Union Street and Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, catching the R Train (normal arrival time 12:04 p.m.); it’s pulling in right on time, par for the course in the longtime upscaling neighborhood, where service managers attend to the product, not like the stories I hear from friends in Clinton Hill or Bed Stuy or Crown Heights; am on my way down the platform in order to get on at the back of the train when I’m met by an alarmed-looking fellow commuter moving rapidly along the platform in the opposite direction. I immediately see why. A rat the size of a loaf of ciabatta is scurrying toward me at about the place on the platform that I like to board the train. Discretion the better part of valor, I turn on my heel and follow behind the commuter, my eyebrows raised as I pass a young woman who turns and follows our as-yet silent parade, whatever was on our minds, gone, poof, like an unstuffed puff (cheese, that is, recipe from the latest “All About You” magazine that landed on my desk yesterday [Nov. 29]), scrubbed by the rat, who is still coming, not any faster, but now the train is stopping, the door’s opening, and I’m at the platform’s near-front, stepping into a car, as I watch over my shoulder to see if the rat does too, follow me into the crowded car, but she doesn’t, and the shrieks and screams and loud thumps of swung and missed briefcases and canes and backpacks and lethally brandished high heel shoes caused by the rat who had surely entered the train, for where else could she have gone, never comes.
A recent workday I’m rush-stepping along the Manhattan-bound subway platform at Union Street and Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, catching the R Train (normal arrival time 12:04 p.m.); it’s pulling in right on time, par for the course in the longtime upscaling neighborhood, where service managers attend to the product, not like the stories I hear from friends in Clinton Hill or Bed Stuy or Crown Heights; am on my way down the platform in order to get on at the back of the train when I’m met by an alarmed-looking fellow commuter moving rapidly along the platform in the opposite direction. I immediately see why. A rat the size of a loaf of ciabatta is scurrying toward me at about the place on the platform that I like to board the train. Discretion the better part of valor, I turn on my heel and follow behind the commuter, my eyebrows raised as I pass a young woman who turns and follows our as-yet silent parade, whatever was on our minds, gone, poof, like an unstuffed puff (cheese, that is, recipe from the latest “All About You” magazine that landed on my desk yesterday [Nov. 29]), scrubbed by the rat, who is still coming, not any faster, but now the train is stopping, the door’s opening, and I’m at the platform’s near-front, stepping into a car, as I watch over my shoulder to see if the rat does too, follow me into the crowded car, but she doesn’t, and the shrieks and screams and loud thumps of swung and missed briefcases and canes and backpacks and lethally brandished high heel shoes caused by the rat who had surely entered the train, for where else could she have gone, never comes.
Running for Your Life: After Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is here and gone. Is there any month that goes faster, than U.S. Thanksgiving to Christmas? Well, perhaps, not so much in my case because now the sidewalks and the intersections and the plazas in the vicinity of my near-Times Square office building are shoulder to shoulder with people, the majority of whom are out-of-towners, not in any kind of hurray to go anywhere, so each day from the first workday after Thanksgiving the odds of me getting to work precisely on time rise because now between subway exit to office desk lies a route with late-minute factor of three or four or five depending on the sedimentary – no, not sedentary, I’m thinking more like a river that fills with sediment so that it no longer flows – quality from subway to office chair. Keep pouring in the sediment and the river can slow to a stop.
Running for Your Life: Our Pack
At Milwaukee airport early on Packer GameDay, the Air Trans staff manning the gates is wearing the home green of his favorite player, No. 30, fullback John Kuhn. I’ve boneheaded my way to another travel mishap, somehow managing to mislay my driver’s license so I have no official photo ID to travel with on Sunday morning (Nov. 20), hours before Aaron Rodgers will again helm his Concussionites to victory, this time over the Tampa Bay Bucs, 35-26.
I’m here early, 6 a.m., and suspicious with not a single Pack bit of gear – not a T-shirt, or a toque, or a Cheesehead, or one of those colorful diorama pens showing a play-action pass along the line of scrimmage in shimmering liquid, say, or a tiny replica Super Bowl XLV trophy – anything to pull out and show the TSA supervisor that I’m no threat to land or liberty, but he’s so good natured on Packer GameDay, he waves me through without a second look after seeing my name on a Visa card and on an insurance coverage card that proves that at least someone in my economic unit is gainfully employed.
(Note to self: Travel by air to Milwaukee during off hours on Packer GameDay, when Rodgers is quarterbacking. There isn’t anybody who’s not going to be in a good mood.)
I’m here early, 6 a.m., and suspicious with not a single Pack bit of gear – not a T-shirt, or a toque, or a Cheesehead, or one of those colorful diorama pens showing a play-action pass along the line of scrimmage in shimmering liquid, say, or a tiny replica Super Bowl XLV trophy – anything to pull out and show the TSA supervisor that I’m no threat to land or liberty, but he’s so good natured on Packer GameDay, he waves me through without a second look after seeing my name on a Visa card and on an insurance coverage card that proves that at least someone in my economic unit is gainfully employed.
(Note to self: Travel by air to Milwaukee during off hours on Packer GameDay, when Rodgers is quarterbacking. There isn’t anybody who’s not going to be in a good mood.)
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