Running for Your Life: Staying Cool

A pause to kvell. Kate, my daughter, she of the Rosa Luxemburg-like sensibility – “Enthusiasm combined with political thought. What more could we want of ourselves!” http://bit.ly/mIqiTV – burst onto the national opinion-making scene on June 17 http://nyp.st/ielb6l. That’s my daughter! Rosa’s letters, new ones recently published by Verso in English translation, cut to the heart of what I am talking about. Another quote: Attacking the decision by her former revolutionary allies, the parliamentary faction of the German Social Democratic Party, which voted in favor of the munitions budget in August 1914: “Workers of the world unite in peacetime – but in war slit one another’s throat.” Thank God Rosa wrote these letters – and that her friends saved them. Kate, I’m proud to say, is cut from this kind of cloth.

I’ve been on the cusp of many an addiction, never dangerously so. During the year after 9/11, I think of myself as never not being on a caffeine high due to lack of sleep during working hours or an alcohol buzz for low level depression at home. It’s not the same certainly, but in those years I feel I got a taste of what it means to be at war. Not Rosa-variety, but I did survive being at Ground Zero that day, and never went back to our offices that were badly damaged in the attacks.

Now, though, and I know this will sound hopelessly crunchy granola high-minded, but if I am addicted to anything now it is exercise. I am, if nothing else, an enthusiast, prone to spilling over to excess in food, drink and action, but these past eighteen months something happened. Calling it body chemistry is too simple, but I don’t know what. But I must have exercise. And like an Oxycodone addict, “I need my pills! I need my pills!” http://nyp.st/lnwojZ, I’ve got to get my exercise high. Every day. Whether it’s a one-hour run, with up-and-down-staircase sprints, or a minimum 700-calorie killer on the gym’s elliptical. Whatever feeds the addiction: pasta, plenty of water, natural fruit juices, coconut water, fruit and nuts, electrolyte chews, because it’s funny, if I were to eat and drink like I did before this new normal I wouldn’t, couldn’t keep it up: the running, the weight work, and yeah, I find myself on the subway platform correcting my posture and doing Tai Chi, and hamstring and quad stretches.

Even my writing revolves around exercise, movement, can actually convince myself I can feel the chemical changes taking place, memories come to me, and not just what’s spurred from the gym soundtrack, “Play That Funky Music (White Boy),”by Wild Cherry, in a sleeping bag on the floor in Sarnia, Ontario, almost forty years ago, or a Molson Export ice-cold going down listening to Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish,” my reward for a long run, training for the Windsor/Detroit Marathon in 1986, not the easy ones, but in the throes of this addiction, cardio exercise, I literally am that eleven-year-old boy on the playing field – baseball, lacrosse – and when it’s cold enough the ice rink that my dad made on our side yard, the inspiration for my memoir, “Tip of the Iceberg” http://bit.ly/kQTAdK, skating, the last scene before the hospital in “Love Story,” Ryan O’Neal (Preppy) skating like a kid, what Ali MacGraw (Jenny) wanted as her last perfect moment on Earth.

*

Here, in point form, is what you’ve got to keep in mind about hot weather running, based on thirty-five summers of running past people shaking their head, some doing tiny circles with the index finger at their temple:

 Before, drink water. At least eight ounces. If cold or inactive beforehand, do sets of calf, hamstring and quad stretches. If not, don’t bother

 Carry electrolyte chews or candy in your pocket

 Choose a route with SHADE. In my case, trying to keep my “Boston” on, I like to combine shade and hills – the first ten to fifteen minutes in heavy heat, slow down, especially in the first mile, work your wind and race the heart, but at a slower than normal pace. I find the leg muscles in hot weather will take some time catching up. Know your route, the times when shade patterns are best. I know, for example, that during the late morning the shade along the western edge of Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, floods the sidewalk, and if there is any breeze it will be blowing there. It’s about a mile into the run, and in that deep shade I will either make up some time or conserve energy in heavy heat, because the southern perimeter is a climb and in full sun. Wear a peak cap

 Run on woodland trails, if possible, and, when ready, include sprints – in Prospect Park I like to do sprints up and down tree-lined steps, a place where you’re joined by small animals, robins, cardinals and squirrels, say. If a runner’s high is coming it will be here: when the summer run becomes not about exercise, the benefits of health or weight loss or getting ripped, but the stuff of addiction. Where fresh memories live

 Run where, say, two or three miles in, even further when your fitness steps up, there’s a drinking water source. Reduce style points for running with one of those wide elastic belts with water-filled bladders attached, but in summer don’t run dry. And pause to DRINK, not just wet your lips

 Smile. Believe it or not that’s the key. You made it. You’re out there. You might be sweating your ass off, and pushing yourself perhaps a bit more than you’re used to. But don’t let the other guy know it with a sour, pained face. Besides, if you look like you’re enjoying yourself, you may be making a convert without even knowing it

 Before going out in the blazing sun for your run, set aside some reward or other for when you return. It doesn’t matter what it is: a glass of sparkling cider, hoppy ale, a favorite dance number, an ice cream bar. Whatever. While you’re gutting it out, the idea of rewarding yourself in sweaty glory will help sustain you.

Next: Running for Your Life: A Year of Blogging