One thing I love about this time of year is that things
usually slow down a bit at work, and it presents an opportunity for all of the family
to spend time together and celebrate just being a family. I am very fortunate that my family has somehow
mostly settled in the same geographic area, and four generations of us can get
together with an hour’s notice.
Yesterday was such a day.
My daughter Monica offered to host a Chanumas gathering at her house to
spread some holiday joy (and we found out a little later, the flu virus,
compliments of her middle of her three sons).
My younger brother David was there with his lovely fiancée Linda. Monica’s husband Wes arrived a little later
with their three children, coming from another family gathering on his side of
the family. Together, that family has
made me the proudest father and grandfather in the world. And my mother and father were there. They are still the glue that keeps us all as
close as we are as a family, and chose to re-retire in Atlanta, just to be near
us all.
During the visit, I made plans to see Mom and Dad today. At
83 and 88 years old respectively, they are both still vibrant and alert, look
much younger than you might expect, and though there are signs of slowing down
with both of them, they both still think about their own future with the
assumption they will still be around for a while. They are both still very active, alternating
their time between here and Atlanta, with summers spent in Asheville, NC. And they still drive back and forth when they
go.
There is nothing in this world that I can do to make my
father any happier than when I am running and writing. That is probably because he knows it is a
sign of contentment on my part, and a parent wants nothing more for their
children than peace and happiness. Well,
I am running regularly again, and I am writing as well, and when we talked
about it yesterday, he was almost in tears.
I could see that he could not be any more proud and pleased.
Of course it takes many things for me to arrive at my “place”
but is seems to always start with running.
I have been doing it on and off for over 30 years, and writing about it,
on and off, for about 20. I say on and
off because, as many things, it has ebbed and flowed. There have been months I ran close to 300
miles, and there have been years I have not run a step. There have been times I wrote every day, and
there have been years I have not picked up a pen, or had a creative thought.
And all around it, there has been the rest of my life, sometimes turbulent, and
at some times, seemingly perfect. But it
has always been eventful.
Those of you who have read my writing over the years know
that my father and I have had a special bond over the years, created by, and
held together by our common passion for running. When I first started running in early spring
of 1982, Dad was already a seasoned veteran, who already had about 15 years of “jogging”
under his belt. But he never really
caught the racing bug until I promoted it to him shortly after I started
running. Looking back, it is surprising
he didn’t race all along. I knew that I
had a competitive spirit, but only discovered it in my father once we started
racing.
I decided earlier this week to go through all my running
logs in order to create a spreadsheet of every race I have ever run and
documented. After going through the
first couple of years, I can see this is going to be a mammoth undertaking, but
it has already brought back a flood of memories, and taken me back to the
smells, feels, and emotions of each race.
I am so thankful that I journalized my runs so consistently for so many
years. And I found myself getting
emotional mostly about the races I ran with my dad. Over the next few weeks, I will share our
running and racing history as best as I can.
It will be interesting to see if he recalls the races the same way I do.
This is for you dad.
Hope you enjoy!
1982 Races
OK, so we had actually done a couple of races together
before this one, but I don’t count them, because I was not yet a “real” runner,
and ran them mainly to support my father, whose company sponsored the race. I also did it for the T-shirt, and was very disappointed
when, the second time I did it, T-shirts were not even offered. The race was called the Riverdale Ramble, and
to this day, I believe it was the most
difficult 10K course I have ever run. It
was bad enough to give anyone a bad attitude about running, but was not bad
enough to deter me for actually starting to train in the spring of 1982. So,
fast forward.
July 3, 1982-
Firecracker Run 5K- Massapequa New York
This was a nice hometown race that is still going to this
day, but the year we did it was I believe the 2nd annual. I have very few photos of Dad and me at
races, but for some reason, we got one at this race. I had run my first 10K the week before at
Shelter Island (wearing the t-shirt from it here) and had gotten to about the 3
mile mark when I had to start walking.
My only hope was to be able to run the whole 5K without walking.
 |
| First "Real" race together, July 3, 1982 |
This was an evening race, and I believe it was a warm humid dreary
drizzly evening and there seemed to be a nice sized crowd of runners doing it. Back
then, everyone who ran in races was a “runner”.
I don’t say this to mock or offend regarding today’s race demographics,
but things were much different back then.
If you didn’t run an 8-minute mile, you were in the back of the pack. Runners were mostly young, male, and
athletic, and most races stopped handing out awards at the 50 and over age
group, because few people over 50 years old raced.
If I recall
correctly, Mom and my brother David were there too as spectators. I knew I couldn’t beat Dad. Though I had been training for three months
already, it was intermittent training, and with my natural propensity and body
type preferring sprinting, it was talking a long time for my abundance of fast twitch
muscle fibers to convert over.
When the race started, I remember actually staying with my
father for about a quarter of a mile before he started to distance himself from
me and pull further and further ahead. I
could still see the back of his head when I passed the mile marker, but he was
well out ahead of me and distancing himself further by the minute. When my mile split was called at 8:05, I
gasped. I had never run a mile in my
life in under nine minutes in training.
This was my first ever experience of what Joe Henderson referred to as “race-day
magic.” I liked it, but at the same
time, it scared me, because I had never experienced a kjile like this before,
and knew I still had two miles and a little more to go.
I don’t remember much of the detail of the next two miles,
but I know dad pulled further and further ahead, and ended up beating me by
about a minute. His final time was in
the low 24 minute range, and I think mine was in the mid 25’s, so I actually
averaged 9 minutes per mile after the first one. I do remember I ran the whole thing, and was
very tired, but felt accomplished at the finish. Racing was now in my blood, as
was a desire to beat him in a race.
October 3, 1982-
Suburbia 10K- Eisenhower Park, NY
Between July 3 and October 3, 1982, I ran ten races on my
own all around Long Island, and experienced a new breakthrough just about every
race. My training became consistent, and I was shattering my PR’s just about
every race. I had run a 5K PR of 22:10
in the Long Beach boardwalk in early August and a 10K PR of 43:55 at the end of
September in a new defunct race in Cold Spring Harbor of Billy Joel fame. I knew I had dad’s number, but after all, I had
just turned 27 the day before, and Dad was closing in on his 56th
birthday the next month.
I’m guessing Dad doesn’t remember much about this race, as
it was a low key race in a very popular park for running, Eisenhower Park. I had only discovered it less than a month
earlier, and had eased into a training routine which included regular runs in
this park. At that time, within the park,
there were marked loops of 1 mile, 3 miles, 5K, 4 miles and 5 miles, all with
the same starting point, and each route was marked with a different color arrow.
A couple of the loops actually went outside the park, and when I went back
years later after moving away from New York, I learned that the longer routes were
no longer marked because they went outside the park, creating a liability
issue.
 |
| Log entry from the day I first discovered Eisenhower Park |
I was starting to recover from my first ever running injury,
knee pain which was caused by a terrible choice of running shoes. It may have not been the model as much as the
size, which was about 2 sizes too small.
As a new runner, missing a single day because of an injury was
unacceptable, so I started seeing a chiropractor who was also a friend of a
friend. Not so smart in retrospect, but I was a new running addict, and would
have run through about anything.
I switched from my original misfit pair of shoes to Saucony,
I believe it was the Freedom Trainer, a solid, burgundy-colored shoe that
probably weighed about 2 pounds, but boy were they cushioned. The knee pain started to ease. Runners are a funny breed, especially when it
comes to brand loyalty. From 1982 to this
day, I have never worn any brand of running shoe except Saucony,and doubt I
ever will.
As mentioned earlier, I had run a wonderful 10K PR of 43:55
a week earlier but the knee was very tender afterwards, so I had only run a
couple of 4-milers during the week. My
expectations were not very high for this race, which was much flatter than the
Whaling Museum race the week before. I
remember being surprised at my finishing time of 44:10, not far off from the
previous week’s time. Dad ran in the 52’s,
so I beat him with ease, but it was a good race for both of us.
 |
| Suburbia Challenge 10K journal entry-Oct.3, 1982 |
These were the only two races Dad and I ran together in
1982, but it laid the foundation for a long history of memorable races in the years
that followed, and a special bond that ended up shaping everything in my life,
which probably none of which would have been possible without running.
Next chapter- 1983 races and thoughts. For everyone reading this that is not my
father, hope you enjoy the journey. For
Dad, I’m running and writing. Are you as
happy as I am?
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