Running for Your Life: Faceplant or Face-plant?

Hmm. One word or hyphenated?

Current Merriam-Webster shows the word as hyphenated, to mean a sudden face-first fall.

In word use the hyphen has a way of dissolving – usually over a long period of time like forest rock giving way to matsutake mushrooms. But that process can be hurried by constant use.

In my case that applies. It just so happens the “faceplant” has emerged as my own private injury method. On Thursday, Sept. 29, only two days before my scheduled half-marathon in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, I managed my second faceplant in two years. The first one occurred when I faceplanted while walking the dog: one hand holding a hot coffee, the other the dog leash, and Wham!, I tripped over Thurber’s back leg and went down chin-first on pavement.

Seven stitches later I went to The Post to work on a Sunday.

Then, on that last Thursday in September, I’m face-first again, this time while on a final training run before the Oct. 1 race. While on a Prospect Park trail I was zooming along, feeling no pain, when I tripped on a tree root – Screw You, Tree Root, my daughter K rejoined – and fell even harder than the first time: Right on the same spot as I’d injured during the dog-tripping incident. Then off to the clinic: 12 stitches this time (because the collision was harder, my teeth opened a wound in the roof of my mouth.)

The upshot? No Bay Ridge Half. And yes, this result in the spelling of “faceplant.” It’s on my mind so much now that when I close my eyes I see the hyphen dissolving like Alka-Seltzer in water.   

Next: Running for Your Life: Deep State S--t

Running for Your Life: Yeah, That Addiction Thing

Okay, so you didn’t drop everything and read the “Put Down Your Phone” essay by Andrew Sullivan that I posted last month. Don’t worry. Here’s another, this one in that swishy new Economist lifestyle magazine that continues to find its way to my door at home.

This report, by Ian Leslie, is called “The Scientists Who Make Apps Addictive.” http://bit.ly/2dusGxV. Redeem yourself and stop everything to read THIS article. These Internet addiction pieces do seem to be piling up, like leaves falling year-round in our so-confused climate.

Some beauts. For those who insist on keeping their phone in their hands, rather than convince themselves they have time on the hands.

• When motivation is high enough, or a task easy enough, people become responsive to triggers such as the vibration of a phone, Facebook’s red dot, the email from the fashion store featuring a time-limited offer on jumpsuits.

• Respondents spent all their hours thinking about how to organize their lives in order to take pictures they could post to each persona, which meant they weren’t able to enjoy whatever they were doing, which made them stressed and unhappy.

• No matter how useful the products, the system itself is tilted in favor of its designers. The house always wins.

And finally:

• In theory, we can all opt out of the loops of incentive and reward which encircle us, but few of us choose to. It is just so much easier to accept and connect. If we are captives of captology, then we are willing ones.

Next: Running for Your Life: Deep State S--t

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

Today’s “Greats” honors Dwight D. Eisenhower. Why? For the greatest political speech in post-TV American history.

His topic? On what now we take as a vested interest that will never be torn asunder: the military-industrial complex.

(And this speech in 1961 occurred long before the military- and defense contract-serving NSA got its act down on tracking every shred of the people’s social and political lives.)

Consider these ideas and just try to imagine them being uttered by any one of our current leaders, in or out of office:

• We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

• It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

• We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

If only Eisenhower were with us. Alas, he is not. But these ideas are sound and the MIC much more threatening to our “democracy” than it was in this great American’s day.

Talk about making America great again! Let’s do something about the unstinting control exercised in our lives by the MIC of 2016.

Next: Running for Your Life: Deep State S--t

Running for Your Life: Screen Grab

The backlash is on!

Ex-blogger extraordinaire Andrew Sullivan fired the bazooka in this week’s New York magazine, to wit:

http://slct.al/2cP3Nww

There might be a few of you who bookmark this essay – or more radically – set aside time RIGHT NOW! to read it. Do otherwise and yes, as they said in The Sixties, consider yourself part of the problem – not the solution.

Readers of this blog have seen these thoughts here before. In fact, I’ve been running without headphones – more interested in achieving a meditative high than an adrenaline high – for forty years next year. On July 17, 2012, I wrote:

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“Item: Nokia slashes price of Lumia 900 Windows phone to $49.99 with a two-year contract.

Item: Young man in Prospect Park flogging cut-rate mobile-phone service near-interrupts me, thrusting a promotional postcard, while I’m on a fast-paced run.

It’ll get you, Internet addiction. Consider the following:

Item: The brains of Internet addicts look like brains of drug and alcohol addicts.

Item: A researcher on aging and memory selected 12 experienced Web users and 12 inexperienced ones and passed them all through a brain scanner. The difference was striking, with the Webbies showing fundamentally altered prefrontal cortexes. The novices went away for a week and were asked to spend a TOTAL of five hours online. The brains of the novices had rewired and were similar to the Webbies.

Item: The average teen processes 3,700 texts a month (123 texts daily).

Item: Teens fit some seven hours of screen time into the average school day; 11, if you count the time spent multitasking on several devices.

How hypocritical of me. People turning to this blog – either on a mobile device, a PC, a Mac, etc. – are adding to their screen time. And too often every day I find myself checking to see how many visits my blog posts have attracted. I’m typing into a computer screen right now, my rewired brain piqued by the rush that I’m attracting readers, maybe even followers.

In the event of followers, listen to this: Log off. Go out for a run. Pet the dog. Pick up a pen and journal and write. Call a friend and make a plan to play tennis, or golf. You can be assured that Facebook and Twitter – and yes, Running for Your Life – will be there when you get back.”

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So consider this shout-y protest as a grab for your screen. I am not so arrogant as to think that my way is better. (I use a flip phone that gets less smart by the day). Rather, I’m happy to have more company in the forefront of the backlash against the screen that mirrors your brain.

Next: Running for Your Life: Deep State S--t

Running for Your Life: September!

Back to school on Resolution Row: weigh less, drink fewer bottles, exercise more.

What fades in summer under the weight of humid air, lazy days, beachcomber malaise revives in the cool air of September. The extremes of the heat dome may return but it is more cap than cover. Soon to be swept off in the cold of October, the bite of November. September, that elegant pause between.

While summer is now, fall triggers memories. Action movies give way to emotional dramas, character driven. The dog, Thurber, taps energy that for months lay dormant within him. In Prospect Park, the New Doggy Beach is open. He is like a pup again.

The air conditioner is off. For days at a time. Weeks and weeks it whirred and rattled, making for unsound sleep. In September, subway platforms are no longer murderously sweltering. Sweat doesn’t bead on your forehead as you read a book, waiting for the express. You remember what you read, even pull out your notebook and write down an idea.

Celebrate September! Your friends are back in town for the season. Make a date for a coffee, a beer, an ale instead of a pilsner. Drink up (but not much, you’re on a diet). Raise a toast: It’s September!

Next: Running for Your Life: Screen Grab