Why Paris?

So you want to live in Park Slope Department
(Overheard while on a Prospect Park six-miler)

“I don’t even know if he is a guy.”


Why Paris?

It isn’t for the runners, all seemingly well to do and oh so many Americans contentedly running along the hushed-stone main paths of Parc Monceau.

Or the cobbled walkway along the Seine, which is both uneven and yields too many dead-ends into tunnels chock-a-block with cars, always bumper to bumper (at least in the one in which I ran for about a kilometer – not so smartly along a narrow ledge for emergencies, which cars zoomed past with zero regard to my foolish presence).

Or the rare bike lanes.

Or in certain arrondissement sidewalks where you’re just as likely to see a scooter as a person, driven by not just messengers and delivery folks as one finds in New York City but by all manner of men and women professionals in helmets, fast-moving burners who like New Yorkers seemed so much in a hurry but unlike New Yorkers unconditioned to seeing runners as they zip around the myriad blind corners of the old city.

Or for the prospects of running along the Canal Saint Martin, an inner city waterway that one would think would draw evening joggers, even more so to the north, the Canal de l’Ourcq, with its hushed-stone surfaces that make for pick-up bocce games. Not so much. At the northern end of Canal Saint Martin in June 2012 the Sally Ann deliver services to the down and out, all men, hungry-looking with pinched Orwellian faces, thirty clochards per evening runner.

Or for the tourists that clog up the Seine sidewalks at twilight, folks grabbing a postcard souvenir or a Tour Eiffel magnet for a 2 euro piece, and then back on the bus.

If I didn’t run in Paris I’d discover none of this. I’d be in Prospect Park. Or at the entrance to Green-Wood Cemetery, listening to the squawk of the Quaker parrots. Paris is a place where running feels as unique as it did when I first started thirty-plus years ago. That is, except in Parc Monceau. Where if you care to run in USA-like 2012, be my guest.

Next: Running for Your Life: More Why Paris?

Running for Your Life: A Paris Dream

It’s two days into our visit, our first since October. (Why I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks; I’ve been pretty much off line since May 30). Jet-lagged, I awake from a long nap at 10 p.m. in our top-floor Paris apartment with horizon views of the Eiffel Tower and Montmartre.

From the bed I see that the dark, stormy cloud cover has changed. In its place, against the still-bright sky, is a cloud shape of an ancien regime French schoolgirl in a bonnet. I’m amazed, thinking that she is so long in the sky that she is permanent, but as I watch, now wide awake, she slowly changes to a cockroach-like bug about to be taken by a predator and then the cloud-play is swift: shifting to a toupee atop an ever-broadening face, and it is at this time that I see M is awake too, and she answers to my question, “Do you want to go out for a walk?” with a decisive “Yes!” – and in a half-hour we’re at the Seine, under the darkening sky, the cobbles streaked with rain, the place deserted beyond my wildest imagination and for one of the rare times during the past two weeks there are few clouds to be seen when I realize that it isn’t the late evening sun that had floodlit my cloud show but a full moon that is now high above Notre Dame Cathedral.

Next: Running for Your Life: Why Paris?

Running for Your Life: In Praise of Haruki

So You Want to Live in Park Slope Dept.

Memorial Day Run With Thurb:

He’s better now – with the e-collar, doesn’t pull me, like a shopping cart coupled to freight train engine; it’s elementary and not seemingly hard on Ole UnReliable, not like he’s suddenly a rag dog when I use the e-collar device.

In any event, I go out on an ill-advised run, 90-plus degrees yet with a slight breeze at 7ish p.m., prime picnic time in Prospect Park.

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Running for Your Life: Healthy Habits

Judging from my neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn, you'd never think America had a health problem. Even on Monday (May 21), a stormy day, a sheets-of-rain dumping associated with Tropical Storm Alberto, I darted outside during a lull and ran with Thurb in Prospect Park. In Park Slope, that's common. You'll find joggers and runners going up and down the Slope during all hours, especially in the warmer weather months like now. When you come upon overweight people on the street, or in cafes, etc., your first thought is: Hmm, must be an out of towner . . .

All of which, of course, helps me stay on course in my effort to keep healthy habits. If I'm surrounded by people jogging and eating well, etc., then it makes it easier to do so myself. Not just every-other day runs, alternating with cross-training days, but in nutritional choices. As I've written on the blog, I've been following the spirit of the diet prescriptions detailed in The Runner's Body http://bit.ly/MbZ8QR. I've also been enjoying higher energy levels, better sleeping, and most amazingly to me, an end to cravings for food and drink that do not fuel the runner's body: ie, trans-fat loaded potato chips, Diet Cokes, and more than one or two glasses of wine at night.

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Running for Your Life: Thurber Gets It Going

We can take Thurber to early morning off-leash hours in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, and despite the high level of play and doggie chaos, he will come to us when we call him.

Thurber! Come! And he comes.

At 8:30 a.m. on Mother’s Day, M and I sat on a grassy knoll and watched as Thoroughbred Thurb raced across the Long Meadow, his nose clipping the ground. For the first time since T arrived on the First Street scene in September 2010, M and I were relaxed in public with him, sipping our coffee, just watching him run.

K, at home from LA, was sleeping in her childhood room.

Later, over overpriced overdone Eggs Benedict, K’s eyes lit up with the story of it. That Thurber is finally – after many months of fits and starts – free to run. He is starting to put his fear at bay, thanks to Tyril and the e-collar http://bit.ly/KQaiel. (See Running for Your Life: Thurber Sketch)

Following Thurb’s park-perfect run in the Long Meadow, he actually walked along with us throughout the park.

Come! Thurb! And he comes.

With Tyril’s help, M, K and I have got to the point where our pup – two years old next month – hardly needs to be e-collar paged, nicked or constant-ed. He is simply with us, with the promise of many years like this: the beautiful redbone coonhound scampering at our side, giving pleasure and comfort to us all.

Next: Running for Your Life: Healthy Habits