Running for Your Life: Hubris Handicap

When it comes to being pigheaded, runners training for a marathon win the prize.

How else to explain the way we balance pain (garden variety or thin edge of horror-type) and the base fitness level necessary to run 26.2 miles at one time and not fall apart at Mile 16, or hit the wall at Mile 20.

From that first marathon when I was twenty-seven in 1983, training with my pal JM from Brockville, and running too with my childhood friend GD, we often mentioned that we had to get the miles in the bank. No excuses.

So I sit on the subway writing this (Oct. 27) with not just a sore heel – as described in this space last week – but with a diagnosis of mild cases of both Achilles tendonitis and plantar fascia. My right foot doesn’t hurt flat as they are on the floor of the subway. But when I get up and walk around, go up subway stairs. Oweeee !

When it comes to running (and races) I favor doctors without borders. My kind podiatrist has me with a PT program that rocks – and a pledge to shoot these dogs with steroid painkillers in the event the condition doesn’t settle down by race day (Nov. 15).

In the meantime, that means exercises as prescribed by my doctor and my new physical therapist, and running when the pain subsides some. Otherwise low-impact cross-training. At night, massage the bottom of my foot with a tennis ball, treat the inflammation by step-and-roll on a frozen water bottle.

All for the race. My hubris handicap? Maybe. But how do I know? Being pigheaded has its advantages.

Next: Running for Your Life: The Long, Hot Stretch   

Running for Your Life: Roman Mood

Back from a best time of your life family vacation in Rome. We’re talking walking, eating pasta and drinking wine and amaro. Below is a taste of what we found:

Imperial Past I

This place Roma is one in which

People resist the other

While kissing her on both cheeks

And then a third time

To seal the illusion.

Imperial Past II

When you are so long gone

From being the Imperial

What to do but cling to

Your exception, no maps will

Mark the spot, find the center,

Your desire on terms of the ancient conquerors,

A mind game that isn’t tied to rules

You can possibly understand

And that, best of all, are so

Pre-digital as to make even the squarest

Disciple bow in disbelief.

Imperial Past III

We’re on board Alitalia, the nine-hour flight home. The plane so tight there is no extra room, a knee-crusher, and me with my deep vein thrombosis concerns. It’s been more than fourteen years since I’ve popped a blood clot, but the fear of spitting off a new one never leaves.

K is sitting across the aisle, trying to read “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed, but when she presses her “light” button on the handrest nothing is illuminated. In her row at least. A light in Row 34, directly in front of hers, does go on. She then turns to the fellow passenger behind her in Row 36 and kindly asks him to touch the lightbulb graphic on his handrest. He does so and Kate blinks out of darkness and into her “Wild” reading.

M and I notice later that in each of the four-seat middle rows to the bulkhead, the light switches work – but for the row directly in front, not overhead.

M presses her flight attendant button and when our assigned person comes by in due time, M tells her about the malfunction. People have also complained about hardly working entertainment systems. Mine is out for four of the nine hours, except for the channel that offers the slow narrative of the tiny white plane and Western world graphic whose 1980s Atari-style technology offers nostalgic comfort.

The flight attendant tests a few of the lights to see if what M says is true, and sure enough, it is.

“I’ve never seen that before,” she says with a Mona Lisa smile. Then she shakes her head and goes back to wherever it was she came from.

Next: Running for Your Life: Hubris Handicap

Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

For reasons that I won’t go into now, I’ve recently taken up with the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864). It’s curious to think in these hyper-political days during the run-up to next year’s presidential election that are ninety parts promotion and 10 parts substance (I’m not looking at you, Bernie Sanders!) of an American great who, according to Malcom Cowley’s introduction of the 1948 Penguin edition of “The Portable Hawthorne,”  “was reserved to the point of being secretive about his private life, and yet he spoke more about himself, with greater honesty, than any other American of his generation.”

More important to me – and I would imagine to all writers and would-be writers – is this quality, as described by Cowley:

“If Hawthorne in his later years had a better, more flexible style than any other American author of his time, the fact was easy to explain: he had learned to write, first by reading, then by talking to himself, and most of all by writing a great deal.”

Here is a national treasure who talked about himself with greater honesty at the service of art as he sought a deep understanding of the American condition. Hawthorne strived to write his books so that ever sentence “may be understood and felt,” so he said.

“There is nothing too trifling to write down,” he said in a letter to his friend Horatio Bridge.

So put down your smartphone and read a little Hawthorne. From a book. And then go ahead, talk to yourself. Could be, before long, you’ll be writing a great deal.

Next: Running for Your Life: Roman Mood

Running for Your Life: Stick-to-it-ness

It’s been awhile – January 2014, to be exact – since I’ve written about the importance of stick-to-it-ness. When it comes to running for your life – in your sixties, no less – it’s a lesson that deserves to be repeated.

As time goes by, so does the relatively pain-free aspect of high-mileage training. In July, while running in France, I pulled a hamstring muscle. Luckily, it wasn’t a severe strain. It slowed my training schedule, and did heal in time. These days, well into October, it feels like new.

Now it’s my right heel that’s inflamed. One of the things that I’ve written about in this space is the importance of knowing your body. When need be, I stop road training and switch to the low-impact elliptical machine. I’m deep into marathon training so as part of my regimen I’m taking anti-inflammatories for the residual pain. If the pain persists (it is a dull one when I run, on a scale of 1-10, a 2 to 3), I’ll be seeing my podiatrist before the marathon on November 15, just in case …

All of which is to say that despite the aches and pains (and an energy level that isn’t exactly what it was, say, ten years ago), I don’t miss a day of running. Or of cross-training.

Last week, our family went to Rome. The heel was sore, so instead of doing a long run, I did 20 reps up and down a 40-step staircase. Up on my toes where the inflammation didn’t hamper me. I did run through the pain, and have been running and doing low-impact workouts since we got back.

If you are going to run for your life, pain management is crucial. As is stick-to-it-ness. It’s hardest to do when you are not at your best physically. But the benefits are worth it, believe me.

Next: Running for Your Life: Roman Mood   

Running for Your Life: Canada Votes

In the United States, Harper’s is a respected progressive magazine. “Harper’s” has an entirely different connotation in Canada, my home and native land. For the past decade, Canada has been Harper’s. Stephen Harper’s, that is.

Today, Canada is voting, and if there is any social justice in the world, the country’s voters will vote Conservative Party Prime Minister Harper out of office.

I wish I were there to cast my vote for either the Liberals or the New Democratic Party. Not because I’m a big believer in politicians, or the idea that, as Lewis Lapham writes in November’s Harper’s, we – regular folks in Canada or the U.S. – can't realistically expect our vote to matter in terms of choosing democracy over concentrated wealth.

I would back the Liberals or the NDP because it would at least FEEL like the side of a civilized approach to government and public problem-solving is in charge. What a luxury to imagine the word citizen as a possible construct in a conversation. That would count for something.

Next: Running for Your Life: Stick-to-it-ness