Running off the edge of the world

The thing I hate about training is that you can't really pull one over on yourself. You're lungs aren't going to forget you took a week off. Rather than run (poorly) the same path I usually do, I decided to just run. Somewhere I've never been so I didn't have to feel terrible for running it less well than I had sometime back in June.

It didn't go spectacularly, but I did manage to triple my distance even if a half mile was walking up a 45 degree incline. I crested and managed to slog my way home. There were a few downsides to a new route. I almost got hit my a car, and I took a pizza box in the face running along store fronts, but I can feel in my legs today that they got a workout.

Maybe I've found a new way to lie to myself, in the end. Maybe I can't pretend I didn't just eat a steak 15 mins ago, or that my 2 week vacation of booze binging and sitting on a couch were a resting period, but I can at least unhinge my mind from expectations by running in some unknown direction until I feel like I've gone far enough. Then I can head back to civilization on the west side of Somerville.

With the cold creeping in, the options are becoming less apparent. Soon I'll be strapped to a treadmill for my long runs, when black ice and uprooted sidewalks make outdooring running more deadly than smoking. Still for the time being, I'm going to chart new courses, let go of my own frantic paranoia, and pretend I'm going somewhere I cna't return from.

The Wastelands of Summer

T.S. Elliot said that April was the cruelest month. I'd take a bet (without googling first) he didn't live in New England. At least in April, nature itself isn't trying to kill you.

Running in Boston can be a pleasurable experience. Our major river is well preserved, there are enough parks and greenery to provide a decent amount of shade, and its a healthy enough city that most running areas are well populated. But the weather, which is likely are least pleasurable experience, makes all efforts heretofore irrelevant. The don't make DryFit fit enough to keep out our humidity. I'm sure our Houston readers (both of them) are scoffing profusely right now, but I should mention we're a North Eastern sea port, and it shouldn't be comparable. Even the trail-runners have to deal with what an old running buddy of mine used to refer to as "the lingering damp." That 10 degree bump that sits in the woods but some scientific reasons I'm too lazy to look into, but that still defies my school yard understanding of climate.

Its why I've taken to the late run. 10:00 p.m. or later when, after a few hours without sun, the temperature drops to a comfortable 75. When my sweat is only from running, and when I can get a peace back I haven't seen since the depths of Winter. Tonight I went out at 11 pm, just as I did last night. Its the only time, as best I could arrange it, when I had the streets to myself. When my only fan club is the third shift at 7-11 out on a smoking break thinking to himself how ridiculous I had to be to run at this hour. There is a great unspoken morale boost to running at this time that the biologists and kinesiologists can't find with all the labs and studies in the world. Running by a thousand houses full of sleeping people and knowing that while everyone else takes it easy in their air conditioned homes, you're out here busting your ass.

Summer in New England is as challenging as anything else here. But there is also beauty. For me, and moreover for me as a runner, it sits just outside the window, beneath the leafy suburban streets. Its dodging trash cans and watching drunken college kids make out sloppily as you just to run past them. Its transient vagrants and their eyes full of broken dreams. The drunkards spilling out of pubs, the red-eye refugees clamming home after too many hours and not enough coffee. And occasionally, for some of us, its a free and clear sidewalk and a good old fashioned run.

Fool in the rain

In case you haven't noticed, it's raining, and it will be for several more days. This frustrates many runners. I am no exception.

Rain is the only weather condition that really stifles my training. I don't like the heat or the humidity, but if I run early or (far more likely) late in the day, it's not an issue. On the other end of the thermometer, I actually enjoy running in the cold, provided there's no wind. The air seems more still, and there tend to be far fewer folks outside; both factors evoke a sort of peace that's much easier to experience than to describe. I don't even mind running when it's snowing, so long as it's safe, I'm in no danger of getting hit by a plow, and the air is cold enough to produce light, fluffy snow that won't weigh me down. (I should point out that my fiancée, equally more logical and sane than I, tends to successfully nullify any effort I make to run in the snow.)

For some reason, though, I hate running in the rain. A couple weeks ago, I tried to sneak out for a quick 30-minute run before the ominous clouds overhead could burst open. Less than a mile from home, the downpour began. By the time I got home, my shirt, shorts, and socks had all absorbed so much rain that I had to ring them out before tossing them in the wash. That was gross. Fortunately, I had thought ahead and had laced up an older pair of shoes, lest I ruin the new pair I had only recently broken in.

Any decent therapist would ask if there's some repressed childhood memory that's triggered when it begins to rain. There isn't. Ironically, two of my most despised high school cross country workouts involved not rain but snow -- needing an hour to trudge through foot-deep snow on our 3.1-mile home course and, a couple seasons later, running repeat quarters on a snow-covered track. (Our coach called them "snotters." I was not amused.) On the other hand, my only memory of running in the rain was a midsummer run cut short because of a downpour -- and I didn't even mind, because I was home in time for the first pitch of the baseball All-Star Game, back when I cared about that sort of thing.

Perhaps it's not the act of running in the rain that I abhor so much as the aftermath -- the aforementioned smelly clothes, the streaks of mud on the legs, the hair in the face. Since, you know, I have a shower, a washing machine, and above all the health and good fortune to be able to run in the first place, perhaps I shouldn't really complain, either. No matter. Until the sun comes out, I'll be hitting the treadmill, the stationary bike, and the weights -- anything to avoid being a fool running in the rain.

Endurance, Racing, and the failure to quit.

The other day, I had to give myself a pep-talk mid run. I’d gone running with a friend of mine who was expecting to complete a far greater distance than I was planning to, and I thought it would be a good idea to push myself further and see if I could complete another lap on our 1.5 mile loop. My options, I decided, were to wait around for an extended period of time, or see what happened when I tried for a 4th loop.

10 years ago this wouldn’t have been a big deal. I ran all the time, I was active. I biked more. I swam more. My body was conditioned to be on the move. I ran constantly over snow banks in the winter, and freshly laid asphalt in the summer. There was no problem. But 10 years on, I’d grown sedentary. Despite being 165 lbs. I’ve grown something of a beer gut that makes me disgusted with myself, and last summer I dislocated my arm which, despite being cleared to run, isn’t something I wanted to risk. I generally, as a rule, enjoy my appendages best when in their appropriate socket. For the first time in about 10 years, I was going to run more than 5 miles.

Distance is not an important thing; at least not in the scheme of things. No matter how far and how fast you’ve run, there are people out there who make that look like a joke. With the advent of Ultra-marathoners, few mortals are really impressive anymore. Not to mention if you just go through the practice routine, anyone can make it from A to B if they want to. We’re designed, as a species for distance. What the 6 miles really was asking of me was “Do you have the mental ability to go further than you really want to?” At the end of the day, that’s what drove me to endurance sports in the first place.

Mental toughness is not something easily measured or flashy enough to hold a national televised interest. Anyone who’s ever watched the Iron Man or Boston Marathon on television knows that they delve endlessly into back-stories and the good will organizations that are affiliated with the athletes. But that, as a group, is what we’re after. These are generally individualized sports, not because they lack a team, but because greatness is subjective. The person competing, and maybe a small group surrounding them, know what they’re capable of, what they’ve done to get here, and if they really pushed themselves. To outsiders, it all looks like a rank of people crossing a line somewhere.

Back when Lance Armstrong was giving Europe regular heart attacks by dominating the Tour de France, one of our home grown sports writers wrote an article that went something like this: “Its an impressive feat to finish [the tour], but the Tour de France isn’t a sport, its just people peddling a bike.” And that, in a nutshell, is what I mean. He’s not wrong – it is just peddling a bicycle – but that’s not the test of strength we’re looking for. What we don’t see, and what we can’t film, is the seizing muscles and nervous system telling the body it should stop. What we don’t see is a mind trying feverishly to focus on the task at hand while the nagging of organ failure is knocking at the door. There’s no camera watching the mental discipline of saying “I should drown out the zipwheels hum coming up behind me” or the “don’t be tempted to chase him, stay on pace…he’ll burn out in two miles.” Anyone who’s run a 5k has felt the bait of the season veteran, in the senior bracket but still sharp enough to bait younger, arrogant runners into listening to their pride and trying to chase them down. The toughest thing is all of endurance sports is to have stayed on task. There’s a brinkmanship out on the course that makes everything that much more interesting.

With Lance, everything was a little easier to market. He overcame Cancer which, until recently (past 30 years) wasn’t even discussed it was thought to be so awful, referring to it instead as “The big C.” He not only raced before the cancer, he’d raced after treatment to come back and win it. Papers told of him on the trainer, vomiting into buckets through the pain and toll the Chemotherapy treatment had taken on him. Not to mention it spoke to a national interest: An America, stepping onto European soil, playing a European game and winning 7 times in a row. He had a pugnacious attitude that people embraced as a 21st Century cowboy bravado. Sports writers could get away with disparaging him only because he was a big enough entity to warrant discussion.

But for the rest of us, the struggle remains our own; Too tame for the ESPN crowd to really sink their teeth into, too personal for anyone else to see. We’re seen less as sportsman and more as Fitness people. “I’m a runner” is generally followed by “I wish I was in that kind of shape.” Our response really ought to be “Mentally of Physically?” Our great race happens on a daily basis. That pep-talk I gave myself consisted mostly of starving off the same old lions. The same old talking points that are your only line of defense when you’re miles on and you need to go more. Don’t think about the finish line. Don’t look to see how much is left. The next step you take has nothing to do with any of that. Just keep going, one foot in front of the other. Think about bills, and plans, vacations, memories and everything else you can throw in the way until the last step is taken. But that’s not for awhile now. Stay focused, stay upright, and stay out of the road. The comeback trail isn’t such a bad place to be.

"I want you to know that you haven't lived until you've fought back, that you haven't won until you've lost, that you can't understand what it's like to relish something until you've suffered, and that some mistakes you never stop paying for"- Roy Hobbs

The City

Recently I traveled back to my hometown of Guilderland, New York for the Easter weekend. Guilderland is a typical suburb whose only notoriety is being the town with "the big mall." Neighborhoods are dotted with identical houses and long driveways. In Guilderland, high school sports rule and lawn care is a favorite pastime. In keeping with my newly found running regime, I decided to go out running in my old 'hood when I was home a few weekends ago. Since I didn't do much running in high school, almost all of my running experience has been on the streets of Boston--a city. Despite running at my usual pace and a comfortable mileage, I couldn't have had a more different experience when running in the 'burbs. If there was ever a question as to what atmosphere provides a better running experience, I would have to say that without a shadow of a doubt, the city would win.

Let's start with the terrain. The roads in Guilderland are nicely paved and relatively flat. One would think that this would make for a better running environment. I disagree. Running down the sidewalks of Boston is an exhilarating, and death defying experience. Stray bricks poking out of the ground add an element of danger to the run, making fancy footwork a must for avoiding a face plant.

While running through the streets in my childhood neighborhood, there's not much to think about. I noticed the house of my childhood friend, still looking exactly the same. I ran by the spot where I know I fell over while riding my bike. Thrilling stuff. When running around the streets of Cambridge, particularly Harvard University, my mind always wanders to the people who have pounded the same pavement before me. Presidents, Supreme Court Justices, Nobel laurets, Facebook founders--some of the most important and influential people in the world have ran (okay, probably walked) the streets of Harvard. The suburbs will never have the history and culture that is found in the city.

If I haven't already made a case for the perks of running in the city, then let me leave you with the most important reason: the camaraderie. On my 4 mile run in Guilderland on a Saturday afternoon, I passed 0 runners, 3 walkers, 2 children, and a dog. While on my runs in Cambridge I pass a multifarious group of city dwellers that have become a familiar comfort to me. First off, there are the other runners that I encounter. I love the feeling that I'm not out there trudging along by myself. The friendly hello's from my fellow exercisers lift my spirits (even if it comes from the speed walker who frequently laps me). Secondly, there is my cheering section, made up of the homeless people who hang out in Mass Ave. Smokes-a-lot lady always has an encouraging smile for me, and the toothless man outside of the 7-Eleven thinks I'm super fast (I think he's just humoring me).

So next time you're on a run and curse the city Gods because there's construction blocking your path, or you almost get hit by a car, please keep this post in mind. Because clearly the city wins.

The Brighton Reservoir

Few places in the city are as conducive to communal exercise as the Brighton Reservoir. It has ample parking, its accessible by the T, and if you happen to pass out mid-run, there’s half a million people out there, so the chances are high that you’ll get immediate help. What more could you ask for?

Well for one thing, a goal. And I’ve yet to find a place in Greater Boston that provides one as easily. Because there is enough wiggle room, the distance of the path changes too much from measurement to measurement for anyone to get an accurate read, but all reports fall within 1.75 miles with a standard deviation of .25. For guys like me, that’s huge.

Running coaches all my life have told me, “if you’re just getting off the ground, its best to run for time, rather than distance, until you know you can run for 30 mins stright. Then move over and track distance.” The problem is, no matter how fast you run, a minute is still a minute. For me, that’s not incentive enough to keep going. I could crawl and meet the requirements. But with distance, I can finish early if I want to. If all I have to do is get from A to B, then I can convince myself to do it. Each step matters, and for me, that’s what matters.

If you’re getting into fitness, understand this. Sometimes advice is smart because its uniform. If you roll an ankle and it swells, icing it is always a good thing. Most times though, fitness advice is half-informed. Beyond universal causality that occurs within human biology (like swelling), people are different. What works for A doesn’t necessarily work for B. The quicker people learn that, the happier and more successful they’re going to be with their exercise routine. And 90% of getting in shape is just doing something. When I did corporate sales for a health club, I did enough research to know that roughly 11% of American’s have a gym membership. How many of those 11% do you think actually use it? Those numbers were bad news for my sales career, but they were certainly motivational. It means, really, that if you go out and take a walk, you’ve exercised more than well over 75% of the country. According to information from 2009 that puts you in front of 230,254,913 Americans. Its hard not to be motivated when you’re kicking that much ass.

But the Reservoir isn’t just math, hard figures, and heart-attack prevention. Its got some soft-value that’s hard to see in the short run (pun intended). First of all, its dirt. Or it looks like dirt, either way, its easier on the knees. I’ve spoke to enough 45+ year olds who come to me like Jacob Marley warning against the perils of running on asphalt. I make my bones defying convention, but its hard to refute their arguments when they’re saying them to you while wearing a knee brace and sitting a week away from replacement surgery.

It also has water. Given that it’s a Reservoir, I’m sure you’re shocked. But in the summer, that means a cooler breeze. It also means Goose shit and gnats all over the place, but if you want to run through hot tar on an 85 degree day while your knees slowly deteriorate, more power to you. In short, I can’t recommend going here enough. Last night I went down at 9:30/10:00 p.m. and there were still 7 or 8 people there. If that isn’t enough of an endorsement, just remember that its not a road, and you don’t have to worry about cars, cyclists, or idiot pedestrians sauntering out into the sidewalk, oblivious to their surroundings, you, and what the impact of 7 minute miles feels like slamming into an inert object.

The Club

I have always been an active person. As a child, I was schlepped to countless dance classes, swimming practices, and other various athletic activities that kept me busy and active. Graduating from college marked the end of my organized athletic activity. Like other young twenty-somethings, I was left to my own devices to counteract the sitting I did every day at work, and the boozing I did every weekend in order to not end up the size of a house.

Being left to my own devices, I jumped into Boston's organized exercise scene with an assortment of dance classes, bootcamps, and whatever other fads caught my eye. While practicing the latest African dancing craze was fun and for the most part, extremely effective, it was also extremely unkind on my wallet. It took me years to realize that my expensive, and often times sporadic exercise schedule was simply not working.

Where did that leave me? Well, it left me with the one thing that I did not want to do--run. I was not a runner. Running the mile in high school every year was a despised activity, and I only participated in sports where running was scant or non-existent. I scoffed at the thought of running, convincing myself that I lacked the running gene. And when you live in an active city like Boston, running is everywhere. No need to go to a bar to meet a member of the opposite sex, just go running around the Charles at about 6:00 PM on a Thursday night where you'll find most of the eligible men/women in the city.

To me, runners were smug. It's like they all knew something that I didn't. They were better looking, smarter and richer. (Okay, maybe not but you get the idea). They bugged me with their free and efficient form of exercise. It was as if they were in a club, and I was not invited. And truthfully, I did not want to be a part of that. Okay that's a lie. I desperately wanted to be a part of the club. It was so completely frustrating to me that I did not find enjoyment in the sport. Running was my Mount Everest, and there was no way of getting to the top.

I honestly can't say what changed in me. It was almost like a switch being turned on inside. I just started running. Not thinking, just doing. I started slow, with a few miles here and there. I'm pretty sure a 5 year old could run faster than I was running, but that didn't matter. I was doing it. I was turning into one of those obnoxious people that I used to despise. I would talk about running to people who didn't care, and even went as far as doing the unthinkable--run on a Friday night.

I think I am slowly but surely conquering my Everest. Running no longer feels like a form of torture, and I am consistently increasing my pace/mileage. I've learned to actually enjoy the time spent pounding the pavement around the Charles, (especially on Thursday nights at 6:00 PM). I'm finally part of the club, and it feels good.

Running in Graveyards

Its an odd mind-set to go for a run when you think you might have bronchitis, but thats where I found myself. "Its allergies, its good to tough it out" More specifically, that is how I found myself there. And Waltham being Waltham, its best to go running in graveyards.

As a general rule of thumb, they're generally quite and not in use. Thankfully I've never run through and found a funeral procession, but there have been times where, in the distance, I was running by a mourner or two laying flowers and paying their respect. On the surface it seems innocuous, but no runner in the Spring is simply - silently - running by.

Fast forward to my hair-brained, tougher-than-thou run tonight. The gross details about running are never displayed in Runner's World or on gym posters, but if you've run, or you know an avid runner, they are omnipresent. If there are children in the room, stop reading this to them and jump down to the next paragraph. Hacking, Coughing, Snot Rockets and any cousin of spitting, slobbering, or generally leaking (sweating is in there too) is all a part of the territory.

How offensive is this? Is it disrespectful to traipse through row after rows of our dearly departed, wholly immune to our potential disrespect because Ke$ha drowns out any dissent being screamed from the sidelines (or tears, but I care not to think about that.)

So runners...what do you think?

The start of something casual

Boston is a cruel city. Its streets aren't on a grid, its residents are short-tempered, and its weather is schizophrenic. Bike lanes are considered to be ample parking space by too many motorists; Canadian Geese use our running trails as dumping grounds.

Staying fit in this berg takes some resolve and a monk's patience, and still a little venting might be required now and then. So to the fleet-footed, lead-bellied, heart-broken, or just uninspired masses of the Hub, we present to you the grumblings of a few who've rumbled with the rabble, drank Rum in Kendall, and who've signed up for the James Joyce Ramble.

We hope you enjoy.