Running for Your Life: Off-Road With Thurb

You don’t have to have a redbone coonhound to train with. But it helps.

I’ve been running with Thurber (at right), who turns three in June, since he was little more than a pup. It’s not that Thurber has come to gather up his leash in his mouth and follow me around the house. He doesn’t show that type of enthusiasm. Rather, when he sees me in my running gear, and I say, “C’mon, Thurb! C’mon! Are you up for a run?” You know what? He always is.

Winter or spring, fall or summer. He’s ready to go. We’re a pretty good fit, Thurb and I. He pours on the after-burners in the beginning, and it is all I can do to keep him on leash. (If you’re imagining a sped-up version of the Cleese Walk as I struggle to stay with him, you’re not off the mark.) Off-road in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, where we run, except for the occasional manic lunge after an unsuspecting squirrel (which, at his best, he manages to chase to a tree, which the rodent scales, and Thurb runs to its base where he leaps a foot off the ground),  he will settle into a trot alongside me in a way that makes me think of the standardbred sulkies at the Hanover Raceway back home in Ontario.

He’s such a creature of habit that he knows our route, slows to make our turns, looks up to me as if to say something, but never anything critical – or even complimentary. Never does he look at me in a way that I think I may if the paw were on the other foot that says, “Is that the best you can do?”

If anything, his look is one of quiet assessment. As if to say that it is surprising enough that this beast following me can run as well as that on only two legs. Which during marathon training is a comfort, I can tell you.

Next: Running for Your Life: The Real “Frankenstein”   

Running for Your Life: A Tribute/4:06:09

After a certain age we don’t have babies. But if we take care of ourselves, we can run marathons.

Last year I ran Boston. The weather was in the mid-80s, unbearably hot on the city streets. But it was like a party and we runners were the lords and ladies, the rock stars, the heroes. The cheering and good feeling so infectious that despite the pain and punishing heat, so many of us scaled Heartbreak Hill without stopping and managed to cross the finish line in the triumphant spirit shown in the photo at right. Like having a baby, it was an achievement of a lifetime.

I confess to having been unaware of the day yesterday (April 15), the 117^th running of the Boston Marathon. I had not qualified for this event, so my attentions were elsewhere when I saw the first images, most especially the one that has been repeated again and again, showing the finish line where I was so deliriously happy a year ago, and the time on the race clock: 4:06:09. Only minutes later than when I ran across the line a year ago.

I weep for those who died, the suffering and the loved ones. There are no words. But hopefully many attempts at them, because to my mind words claim the sacred space that viral videos on smartphones defile.

Consider the phrase: 4:06:09. Meditate on it. We pause now to weep, to think on 4:06:09, and the lives that have been lost and changed. Lace up your sneakers and start with a walk. Soon, the training begins anew, with the promise of the finish line ahead.

Running for Your Life: Steamtown 2013

Without a slip this time, I’m in! Last month I lost a screwball race to Chicago Marathon registration, but yesterday (April Fools’) I registered successfully for the Steamtown Marathon that’s held every year in Scranton, Pennsylvania. This year the race is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 13.

I won’t be training in earnest until mid-June. And race goals? If ever I have a shot to top my personal best of 3:33:08 (Steamtown 2010), it will be in October.

It’s beautiful in the fall in northeastern Pennsylvania. And if you’ve ever considered training for a marathon, make it this one. We start in the hills and end in downtown “Electric City” Scranton. Come along with me. You won’t be sorry.

Next: Running for Your Life: Off-Road With Thurb

Running for Your Life: Full Nelson

These days I’m deep into THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM by Nelson Algren.

An eon ago characters like junkie-dealer Frankie Machine and his wife Sophie stirred the popular imagination, winning the National Book Award for Algren in 1950. Five years later an Otto Preminger movie starred Frank Sinatra (natch) in the title role; Frankie was nominated but failed to win the best actor Oscar. (It went to Ernest Borgnine for his role in “Marty.”)

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM is a standout of literary realism, a classic that mines the mean streets of Chicago through a Proust processor of observed delights and dangers. What Proust does in the Belle Epoque, Algren does for Division Street, Chicago, in the 1940s. How does the lace curtain move during the night in an apartment kept just this side of chaos by a superintendent named Jailer? Read it in Algren.

Take the Great Sandwich Battle in which unlike so much of modern fiction the mockery is bone-deep, not on the surface, so the effect registers on all the warriors: Vi, Stash and Sparrow sing like an opera rather than prance like a musical, in the latter’s case soon to be as forgotten as the outcome of table games or the content of get-through-the-night conversations, disposable as Poland Spring.

Next: Running for Your Life: Spring Goals

Running for Your Life: I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place

So much of good writing comes from careful listening. I was struck this week (March 18) by the fragment of a line in my daily reading of the London Review of Books … “As [the author] remarks in one of the few aesthetically pleasing sentences in the book . . .” Good writing is like good music; it demands an ear. I like to take time when I write sentences, especially when telling a story. A story well told is a gift that nourishes the soul.

Howard Norman, an author I admire, wrote an essay from the above line, “I hate to leave this beautiful place.” I read it a week ago and it has stayed with me. Outside of love and the rare friendship I find few things in life have the staying power of a story well told.

“I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place” is a personal essay that mines what matters to me these days. A search for wisdom and understanding through events long gone but not forgotten, a different sort of the faraway nearby. And like the memoir by Rebecca Solnit of that name (see previous post), I picked up an advance copy of Howard Norman’s memoir (of the same title, “I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place,”) this month at The Post. It, too, has arrived at a propitious time.

“IHTLTBP” is for old souls. Topics range from superstitious bush pilots, Eskimo rock’n’ rollers, John Lennon’s killing, a god-like radio announcer, a hint of murder, cannibalism and snow globes. In short, a wise folk tale for the modern age crafted by a writer with the ear of a poet.

As winter wanes here in New York, “IHTLTBP” has warmed my heart.

Next: Running for Your Life: Spring Goals