My pal Mickey Siporin (1941-2005), from a cartoon entitled Millennial Meanderings ... What is the muse that fueled the work of this incredible artist and enlightened reformer and devoted friend and father ... "I'm much too young to be this old . . ." The new work that flew off his pen in the spaces of the periods of the ellipsis, beyond and to infinity.
It is hard to believe that Mickey is gone ten years. What would he have made of our abuse of drones, the Kardashians, Edward Snowden and . . . Bernie Sanders !!!! I swear he wouldn't have been surprised at all with the first three on this list. The fourth? He'd be going door to door, riding the Bernie Bus and doing a daily cartoon.
He is missed.
Next: Running for Your Life: Firefly Season
Running for Your Life: Yes, Cross Train!
When you get to be my age, pretty much everything counts as
cross training. Say, taking the garbage out, going for a walk with the dog,
wrestling with the top of a pickle jar . . .
Seriously, though, it’s been a long time since I’ve been
able to just run out the door. Now that I’m in the pre-training period for my
fall marathon, I’m beginning an every other day training regimen. That means on those off days I dedicate at
least twenty minutes of stretching and massaging sore and strained leg muscles
on a roller and twenty minutes of working with machines, mostly core and leg,
with some upper body. Nightly pushups (which I've been doing for the past five years).
And I feel it the next day. On the treadmill, where I’m slowly
starting to ramp up the miles and the incline, and on the long, outdoor runs,
the hour-plusses. You need to cross train to build strength and endurance, to ease your mind into thinking that yes, God dammit, you can do this, if done in a way that's smart, that embraces slowness as a contributing principle (see recent post), you can keep pace, you can reach that next plateau.
Next: Running for Your Life: Firefly Season
Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday
How about this famous quote from Mickey Mantle, who died too young (63) and famously
(and wisely) said something that rings true for so many today:
“If I knew I was going to live so long, I would have taken
better care of myself.”
Of course, that’s for those folks who consider themselves getting
on in age. Not liberals, though. As Paul Rudnick rightly (and hilariously) tells
us in this week’s (June 1) New Yorker: “All liberals are young. Just ask one.” http://nyr.kr/1epL35X
Next: Running for Your Life: Yes, Cross Train!
Running for Your Life: Summer Pace
The heat is on – and with it a strategy to begin to put in
some serious miles, with the Brooklyn Marathon in November, the carrot on the
string.
With age, one slows down. In my case, after a hamstring
injury in 2011, true to the warning of a doctor treating me at that time, I’ve
never been able to get back to sustaining an 8:30 pace over 20-plus miles.
So, I slow down. Marathons at 4 hours-plus seem more likely
than in the 3:35 hours -to-3:50 hours range of just a few years ago. Although
for Brooklyn, I’m hoping I can get under 3:55. That’ll get me back to Boston.
Such a pace is just right for summer. Slower, that is. And
not just on runs. But morning dog walks. Backyard chores. Dining outdoors.
Fresh fruit for breakfast. French bread, toasted with jam and a touch of agave.
Am thinking about what I’ve written about on his blog, the
Discovery of Slowness. I mean, what’s the rush, anyway?
Next: Running for
Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday
Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday
If Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Workers
Movement, were still alive she would make for the perfect running mate of Sen.
Bernie Sanders, the longest serving independent politician in Congress.
Here’s what blessed Dorothy believed, according to friend
and author Robert Coles:
“For Dorothy Day, anarchism meant increased responsibility
of one person to another, of the individual to the community along with a much
lessened sense of obligation to or dependence on the “distant and centralized
state.”
Next: Running for Your Life: Summer Pace
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)