Been trying to make some sense of life lately.  Been looking in some pretty heady places too. Some practical: Marc Bloom’s The Marathon — What It Takes To Go The Distance.  Some psychological: The Rhythm — Being Your Best In Sport & Business (Richard Lonetto’s brief and expensive treatise on “that harmonious balance of mind and body, enabling one to function at his best”).  Some plain desperate: How To Do Almost Everything (Burt Bacharach’s 1970 classic, for those of you who may have missed it).  Not much luck.

            Oh, I rediscovered Joe Henderson’s, Hal Higdon’s, and David Costill’s strategies for a successful race.  I now know that straight lines are bad; waves, with calm troughs, preceded by a preparatory state of excitement and followed by an equally charged point of release (sounds a little orgasmic to me) keep one in “rhythm”.  And last (and arguably, least), I have had it reaffirmed that leather hat bands should be wiped regularly with a soapy cloth to stave off build-up of oil and soil — thank you, Burt.

            What’s the search all about?  Seems a long-established and eminently sensible decision made some five years ago has been recently called into question — and I’m wondering why.  To wit: No More Marathons!  I have come to terms with any number of realities in my forty odd years.  That my high school gym teacher was right — I would lose a major portion of my hair by the late 1980’s.  That my parents were right — I would someday look back and understand why they put up with me as an adolescent.  And most significantly, that I was right — I am a middle distance runner, ill-equipped to go 42.2 kilometres.

            All this collected wisdom aside, the Forest City Marathon dangled out there like a sure thing in the fifth at Western Fair.  Hard to resist.  A little shift in training emphasis, a modest extension of mileage, four months of prep time — should be a piece of cake.  For better or worse, this is one cake that failed to rise.  Training has soured over the past several weeks, fatigue is constant, essential mileage has dwindled, and “test races” have been disappointing.  My search, then, at first was to find some answers to the immediate and disturbing question: how come hard work hasn’t produced the expected (and strongly yearned for) result?

            As has often been the case for me with running, asking the obvious question has led to a deeper truth, a truth that sports physiologists and psychologists (and, God forbid, even Burt) rarely address.  That life, no matter how much we may will it to be otherwise, is fraught with cycles — undeniable, unavoidable, sometimes inexplicable and, more often than not, frustrating and angering — highs and lows that come and go at will.  The best we can do is to identify them and know our place within them.

            In this particular struggle, I found my answers in two surprisingly divergent sources: the Tao te Ching (as reworked by John Heider in The Tao of Leadership)

            Natural events are cyclical, always changing from one extreme toward an opposite…That is  the way of nature: to relax what is tense, to fill  what is empty, to reduce what is     overflowing…The wise man follows this natural    order of events (and in so doing) becomes potent and successful (p. 153).

and elsewhere,

                       All behaviour consists of opposites or polarities.  If I do anything more and more, over and over,    its polarity will appear.  (Striving to be beautiful makes a person ugly.)  The wise man does not   push to makethings happen, but allows process to unfold on its own (p. 3).

and in a wonderfully simple lyric from a tune by Mark Knopfler:

                        Sometimes you’re the windshield

            Sometimes you’re the bug

             Sometimes you’re the Louisville Slugger

              Sometimes you’re the ball

              Sometimes it all comes together

               Sometimes you’re gonna lose it all.      

                                                            The Bug, Dire Straits

Guess it was just my turn to be the bug.

 

Bob Anderson would have us stretch every muscle, tendon, and ligament prior to any activity from ballooning to bowling.  So it is that South Florida (SF) demands that we flex our vocabulary somewhat to accommodate what passes for our sport in that part of the world.  Oh the words are the same; it’s just the attached definitions that depart from the usual northern meaning.  Rather like my first experience with the bathroom in a French youth hostel: the sign was close enough to “toilet” — but the porcelain hole in the floor (with a couple of footgrips and matching hand holds screwed to the wall) more resembled the sewer in my basement than the familiar throne I had anticipated.

            Although my stay each year is brief (a week at Spring Break), I’ve come to count myself among the “regulars” that return annually for their booster shot of warmth, Blue Jay spring training, Key Lime pie, and no tights.  The past thirteen seasons have afforded me ample chance to study the vagaries of running jargon as one moves south of the Mason-Dixon line.  Take “hill” for instance.  We, each of us has his own definition that we carry around.  There’s Animal Hill, a modest little climb weaving its way upwind (hopefully) of the zoo in Springbank Park.  There’s Heartbreak Hill for those of us who’ve sallied forth in Boston on Patriots’ Day.  And there’s Pike’s Peak for those who don’t count a run complete without a touch of altitude sickness.  But back to South Fla.  “Hill” to your resident Floridian refers to any bit of topography causing water to flow from one point to another.  Perhaps an example would help.  Imagine that narrow expanse of land between the ocean’s edge and the strip of asphalt parallel to it — we up here would call it a “beach”.  In S.F. it’s a hill.  And so, the race entry describing “a rolling course” requires a bit of creative translation.  Read: “A tabletop with a couple of pebbles”.

            “Cold day for a race.”  Before replying, I cast a quick glance at the digital thermometer in front of the First National Alligator Credit Union and Off Track Betting Emporium opposite the start line.  Hmmm. 72°F.  I eye the runner beside me for evidence of malaria or some other condition that may have dropped his core temperature by 20°’s or so.  Seems normal enough — except for the tights, long-sleeved polypro top and gloves.  “You a local?”, I query in return.  “Yeah.  How’d you know?”  “Lucky guess.”  Which brings me to the second aberration in the SF running lexicon: Outside Air Temperature — and how one perceives it.  The northerners are the intense ones with shorts and no shirt (modesty being thrown to the wind — after all, it was Spring Break) running pre-dawn to beat the heat.  The natives (to the extent that any venture onto the beach/hill anytime before noon) are invariably clad in full sweats with tell tale wires leading to electric socks.  It makes ’em shiver even more when you lapse and make reference to degrees Celsius.

            Imagine a land where 80% of the population speak from first hand experience of the Great Depression.  Consider then what that must do to our cherished “master” designation.  Age forty still qualifies — but the field is a little different.  More pre-race chat: “Who should I watch for?”, I inquire of my over-dressed Floridian.  “There are some pretty hot guys here today.”  He continues, pointing out the local speed merchants, “Dennis, was second in the 10K state masters’ championship last year.  And that guy over there can beat him!  Better just key off one of them and try to hang on.”  Race over and first master trophy tucked under my arm, I sidle up to Dennis who confesses he had a bit of an off day.  What’s it take to finish second in the state once you hit forty?  34:06 did it last year.  Bottom line: there’s a whole land ripe for the picking down yonder — once you learn to speak the language!

Allow me to make my point straight out by wickedly misquoting a sometime hero of mine, Colin Fletcher,

I had better admit right away that walking can in the end become an addiction, and that it is then as deadly as heroin…In this final stage it remains a (delectable) madness.                      The New Complete Walker

Our victimized author has essentially said it all.  Walking is:

1. a) deadly and
2. b) madness.

            Each year, as the season of ice and snow o’ertakes our streets, I am reminded of these truths.  Despite its geographic venue (firmly in the “snow belt”), Stratford has staunchly embraced a, shall I say conservative approach to shifting of same.  In short the city fathers generally adopt a wait and see posture — wait to see if it snows and see how long it takes to melt — before earmarking hard cash for its removal.  The upshot, to the chagrin of the pedestrian population is that of having their very foundation literally and progressively threatened as winter wears on and the layers build beneath their feet.

            I observe young and old, hale and infirm, inching their ways along the streets clearly fearful of raising a boot more than a centimetre or two from the surface lest they become fodder for the local orthopaedic surgeon.  The strutters, the striders, the brisk walkers, all reduced to tentative shufflers.  All that is except the runners!  Forward progress may be somewhat attenuated — from plant and push off to plant and slide (a sort of variation on the old two steps forward, one back theme) — but the stride goes on.

            Is this mere cockiness, hubris, a stubborn runner’s arrogance, a refusal to accept the realities of the season?  I think not.  More likely it is the conceit afforded the experienced.  Walkers tumble and fall; runners’ don’t.  Ipso facto, it is, quite simply safer to run than to walk!  What proof, you ask?  Poll any radiology department in mid-January as the clientele wait patiently to have this limb or that X-rayed.  “Excuse me madam.  Just how did that nasty fracture occur?.”  “Well, young man (running is not the only conceit), my feet went right out from under me as I stepped out the front door.”  Or query the runner regarding the torn hamstring: “Damnedest thing, just stepped in a hole catching the bus.”  Ever tried walking a cross country course?  Better you should run, tumble and recover your feet unscathed than risk six weeks in a cast, the victim of a bracing stroll in the winter bush.

            So as the salt stains creep up the back of your tights and the shoes become crusty and crystalline, stride proudly and sure-footedly, forsake that tentative gait, secure in the knowledge that you are protected and will remain erect.  Or to misquote the Ventures and that timeless tune of their’s: Run, Don’t Walk!