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!

MUD!! Salons smear it on their customers’ faces—and youth is restored.  Johnny Cash mixed it with blood and beer and rekindled his relationship with father.  Kids bake it.  Potters shape it.  Shamans cure ills with it.  What marvellous stuff!  Surely it be magic.

            In case it escaped your attention, your average road racer is something of an intense character.  The speed work, the frustration of the year’s goals unrealized, the summer’s heat; who knows what the equation contains.  The sum is always the same: a runner with sore joints, a full log—and an attitude.  Take a look at the start line faces come September.  Not a happy lot!

            Well folks, I’m here to tell ya that the cure ain’t to be found in a Runner’s World diet, another “fool proof” training schedule, or visualization.  It’s MUD!  I’m forty-three and I use it to cleanse my runner’s soul each Fall.  Now I’m not going to go all quasi-philosophic or white-suit preacher on ya—although, for a $5.00 donation, I will send you a 100% guaranteed starter kit of your own (just add water and stir).  You don’t have to coat your body in it, eat it, heat it, or electrify it.  You just have to stand in it.  Yessir! I’m talkin’ muck, and that rhymes with _uck and that stands for FUN!

            What a ludicrous idea.  Having fun running.  Where’s the competition?  The thrill of victory (or more commonly, the agony of defeat)?  The $3.00 medal or the “Certificate of Participation”?  Tell the truth folks, they ain’t there.  There’s just you, a few dirty friends, and nature.  Pretty weird, eh?  Well, hear me out and, if not fully satisfied, toss me on the pile of used snake oil salesman and go back to your hard, cold asphalt.

            All right.  I confess.  It’s not the mud that heals—it’s Cross Country running.  Several years back, a well-meaning acquaintance suggested that, in place of the usual “Sunday long one”, we go for a trot over at Wildwood, our local Conservation Area.  Understating it, I was appalled.  Did she know the distances (measured to the nearest centimetre)?  How ’bout time?  Could she guarantee hitting target heart rate?  And the fragile ankles—on the roads, pebbles the size of peas raise the spectre of sprains and tears.  What would sole-sucking, tendon-twanging sink holes do to this frail frame?

            My friend adopted that kindly, patient posture reserved for wizened sage – airhead apprentice chats and explained that this was not about speed or killer aerobic pace.  It was about enjoyment and recovery.  Leave your watch at home, slip on these spikes, and try not to stab yourself getting out of the car, was all she’d say.  I was not convinced.

            I had been in the country before.  I live in the country.  But I most certainly had not run in the country—at least not without benefit of road signs, pavement, and a clear view of the next ten feet of route.  I’m not exactly the kind of person who gets lost coming out of a subway station—but neither am I Daniel Boone.  How was I supposed to know where I was going on these path things that she proposed following.  Why, in some places there were just trees and bushes; no arrows or signs warning you off a twenty-foot precipice.  Again, the patient reply: follow the orange blazes.

            Well, I don’t know what kind of twisted sadist marked the trails at Wildwood in orange, but he surely did it in high summer or the dead of winter—when your ubiquitous stands of maple trees were either green or leafless.  Let me tell you how hard it is to pick out a sloppy splash of orange paint on a tree resplendent with Autumn colour!

            Good ol’ Acer saccharum (that would be sugar maple, for those of us without grade 10 biology) is not the only bit of flora to be found in this woody wonderland.  Burdock thrives as well and, according to my daughter’s World Book Encyclopedia, is known to be “troublesome¼it’s seed heads stick(ing) to the hair of cattle and sheep”.  News flash!  It sticks to human beings clad in spandex as well.  This may have been the stimulus that prompted some creative Frenchman to design the prototypical Velcro fastener—but I don’t necessarily want to return from my runs looking like some cowboy wearing hairy chaps.  (The sage’s advice: “ditch the tights”.)

            Among the more attractive parts of my friend’s sales pitch was the solitude offered by our scheduled commune with nature.  This would certainly be a welcome switch from the all too familiar struggle to stake out one’s turf on city streets.             No dogs, no irate motorists, no head-down commuter cyclists.  All true.  In fact, if you haven’t had your monthly existential panic, try inducing it by running alone in the woods.  One’s mind starts to play subtle little tricks—like my flashback to Mirkwood.  Sure, to the casual observer that dense grove of spruce may be just another clump of conifers.  To the edgy, citified runner it bears an uncanny resemblance to the legendary home of Tolkien’s Orcs and Great Spiders.

            Neither is this to say that the only fauna to be found in them thar woods is imaginary.  At least I think that clutch of round-faced boy scouts we surprised, mid-breakfast was real.  Certainly the sounds of scout master Bob trying to restore the sense of blissful isolation and “roughing it in the bush” for his boys—so rudely intruded upon by two runners in red tights—could be heard far down the path.  But then I wouldn’t want to sell short the hallucinogenic powers of the place; after all it was Wildwood.

            But I digress.  We did emerge at long last—burdock pom poms where our shoe laces had been; brackish, black gunk oozing out around our ankles (oops, sorry, those are socks); and mud (magical mud) from head to heel.  Miraculously, no broken bones or twisted ankles (although my hamstrings did feel like someone was beating on them with a five pound sledge).  And best of all—I felt marvellous!  Positively rejuvenated.  I looked over at my friend and (from what I could see of her face), she was smiling.  And so was I.