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”