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?
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
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
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
Running for Your Life: Winter? What Winter?
It’s that time of year. You can tell by looking at the calendar, mid-December, and for people like me who run long distance during the cold weather months, I mark the official start of winter when public workers turn off the drinking fountains in Prospect Park.
This presumes that the temperature is falling. And in past years that, as memory serves, was the case. So much so that it seemed to make sense. That pipes could actually freeze, and theoretically cause damage to outdoor plumbing. It could be as long as late March before workers could reasonably be assured that the long, dark freezing nights were over. That the fountains could be restored to working order, meaning Thurber (our frisky redbone coonhound) and I would again be able to stop for our strategic lappings, always a smile-inducing moment every year.
Now, it seems, the water turnoff is purely symbolic. The past month the cold has barely sustained a freeze long enough to put frost on a pumpkin.
What are the extremes over the four-day weather forecast? High 51 and low 34.
Winter? What winter?
As a native of Ontario, I’m used to winter. I lived in a town where it wasn’t uncommon to have snow cover from mid-November to mid-March. Even in the worst weather, I wouldn’t stop running.
What I’m not used to, though, are hurricanes that sweep up the US northeast at the end of October. The change in New York weather has turned downright scary.
Odds are we will get a blizzard before we suffer another hurricane or a tornado. But, frankly, given the strange, warm, even humid days we’ve had since Sandy, I’m not holding my breath.
Next: Running for Your Life: Resolutions for 2013
This presumes that the temperature is falling. And in past years that, as memory serves, was the case. So much so that it seemed to make sense. That pipes could actually freeze, and theoretically cause damage to outdoor plumbing. It could be as long as late March before workers could reasonably be assured that the long, dark freezing nights were over. That the fountains could be restored to working order, meaning Thurber (our frisky redbone coonhound) and I would again be able to stop for our strategic lappings, always a smile-inducing moment every year.
Now, it seems, the water turnoff is purely symbolic. The past month the cold has barely sustained a freeze long enough to put frost on a pumpkin.
What are the extremes over the four-day weather forecast? High 51 and low 34.
Winter? What winter?
As a native of Ontario, I’m used to winter. I lived in a town where it wasn’t uncommon to have snow cover from mid-November to mid-March. Even in the worst weather, I wouldn’t stop running.
What I’m not used to, though, are hurricanes that sweep up the US northeast at the end of October. The change in New York weather has turned downright scary.
Odds are we will get a blizzard before we suffer another hurricane or a tornado. But, frankly, given the strange, warm, even humid days we’ve had since Sandy, I’m not holding my breath.
Next: Running for Your Life: Resolutions for 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)