The Seasoned Runner

There is something in the air these days, and I'm not talking about the pollen that makes running very difficult for allergy-sufferers this time of year. You see, it was in April, 1982, that I first committed to running, and logged my first mile. Not miles. Well, not even a full mile, really. It was closer to 9/10ths of a mile, but at least it was a start. Who would have known at that time that 29 years later, I would have logged close to 25,000 miles beyond that first 9/10ths, and I'd still be counting? 

When I first decided to give running a try as an adult, I still remember how I sheepishly poked my head out the door to make sure that none of my neighbors were out before I was willing to give it a try. I didn't want to be seen trying something as risky as running, since I didn't know how successful I would be. And sure enough, I wasn't more than a quarter mile in to the run when my right foot caught the edge of the sidewalk and I twisted my ankle a little, but not badly enough to cut the run short. Thank goodness I didn't take that "twist of fate" as a sign to give up on running before I even started. If I had, my life would not be so full today.   

Physically, that run did not make me feel good. When I was done, I felt nauseous, overheated, and I clearly remember staggering back in the house, and laying down in the middle of the living room floor, almost unable to breathe or move. I was only 26 years old, but at that moment, I felt much, much older.   

Memories of that, and other early runs of April 1982, come back strongly to me this time of year, and those memories really help me understand why something as simple as left-right-repeat can hold one's attention for a lifetime. The run is about so much more than just the run. The run is about the brushing of the wind in your face, and the smells of Wisteria in bloom, and the damp earthy smell of the air just after an April shower. The run is really about everything surrounding it and everything you internalize while you are doing it.   

Thanks to a mixture of ingredients, the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) seasonings of Mother Nature, each run becomes unique. And from one year to the next, seasonal runs evolve us into "seasoned runners" and bring back memories of the same time last year, and the year before that, and so on. It happens every season, but for me, Spring is the most special, because it is in the Spring that running first started for me.   And I'm reliving that era once again lately. 

I started running in April, 29 years ago. And now that it's April once again, my mind's eye has been taking me back to that very first run, around my neighborhood in Massapequa Park, New York. As I lay there on the living room floor shortly after I returned from that run, after managing less than a mile, staring at the ceiling, I could feel each heartbeat pulsating throughout my entire body. Although I can still remember everything about that run and its aftermath as if it happened only yesterday, I had no idea at that time how different my life was to become as a result of building blocks I continued to add to that very first cornerstone run.   

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Spring running, and more specifically, April running, holds such a special place in my heart. The right mix of warmer air, longer hours of daylight, the singing birds, the bright colors and sweet aromas of the flowers and the blooms all take me right back to the beginning of time as a runner, when everything was new and exciting.   

I'm sure other runners must get the same feelings of recognition as they approach the same time of year when they first started running many years earlier. Whatever season it is, it stands as a reminder of the newness of running athleticism, and self-discovery as you constantly met, then exceeded your own expectations. Your season is a reminder of why you are a runner.   

I'm a seasoned runner, and my season is Spring. What's yours?

The Asphalt Assault

It's Saturday morning, a reason we run
The kiss of the wind, the glare of the sun,
With the wave of a hand or the shot of a gun
In an instant, the asphalt assault has begun

Five hundred runners start forming a line
Five hundred reasons so neatly aligned
The mob inches forward two feet at a time
The effort's intense, and the mood is sublime

We know why we do it, we're keenly aware
The asphalt assault, it's a thrill we all share
Breathing smoke out our mouths, there's a chill in the air
We do it like clockwork, a weekly affair

The line stretches longer, our legs start to ache
Our breath becomes labored, our will starts to break
From the front to the back, stretching out like a snake
Exerting, we're hurting.  It's no piece of cake

We battle ourselves, and we battle our foes
And we bask in the gift that our running bestows
The asphalt assault, the adrenaline flows
If the goal's just to finish, or to win by a nose

The finish-line banner creeps slowly in sight
As each person ducks under, emotions ignite
Five hundred victors have weathered the fight
Five hundred winners, and each one outright

It's Saturday evening, the day is rerun
In Five hundred minds, each person has won
From the first to the last one to finish, bar none
Until next time, the asphalt assault is now done

It Never Gets Old

The ear-piercing screech of the alarm blares at 4:15 in the morning.  It’s still over two hours until daylight, a most unnecessary hour for most human beings to be up.  Yet I do it voluntarily most weekday mornings without giving it much consideration.  In fact, I am usually already awake with anticipation of what I’m going to do next.

I won’t say I’ve always been a morning runner, but I’ve been doing it for so long now that I don’t clearly remember the days before the transition.  It’s just how I’m wired.  My body and my mind seem to like it that way.  While most people don’t understand the runner,   many runners don’t understand the one who rises two hours before dawn, in much the same way that I don’t understand the one who runs at high noon in the midday heat in the middle of a southern summer.  

Runners.  Yeah, we’re different, but we’re different from each other too.

I’ve been running for so long now that I have almost forgotten how not to run.  I do it for the same reasons I breathe, eat, and sleep.  It sustains me.  It defines me.  It supports me.  It soothes me.  It completes me.  When I think about how much everything around me has changed since those first committed steps almost 30 years ago, the one thing that hasn’t changed is the joy of the pure act of running.  It never gets old.

Quiet morning runs are always done in the silhouetted darkness, but within the shadows, there is abundant life.  This time of year, early spring, there are always the subtle background sounds of nature and hints of movement that one can soak in even more fully without the distraction of clear vision.  The sounds of stereophonic chirping birds and croaking frogs slice through the darkness, and the glimpse of scurrying bunnies, raccoons, possums, skunks, red fox, squirrels and an occasional deer at the same time startle and thrill me.  They are a reminder that the world does not all keep the same hours and that the night supports its own active life.  After a morning run, the entire remainder of the day is delivered with more clarity, insight, and energy.

A lot has happened to me and around me since I’ve started running, I’ve relocated from New York to North Carolina, then to Atlanta, which is possibly the best running city in the world.  Since I’ve started running, I’ve become a father and a grandfather.  Since I’ve started running, I’ve seen a space shuttle disaster, I’ve seen a great wall torn down and I’ve seen tall buildings crumble.  Since I’ve started running, I’ve seen the rollout of the Microsoft Word, handheld mobile phones, Apple computers, compact discs, Laptops, the launching of the first GPS satellites, and the launching of the Internet itself.

I’ve gone from running how I feel to wearing a Heart rate Monitor, and I’ve gone from bleeding nipples and blisters on my feet to Body Glide and blister-free socks.  I’ve gone from water in a bottle to Gatorade in a fuel belt and Camelbak, to Gu shots and Sports Beans.   Everything around it has become outdated, but running never gets old.

If I ran for any other reason than the pure joy of it, I would have stopped long ago.  Everything around running had gotten old, including me, but running never does.  I’ve slowed down.  I’ve lost flexibility.  I have nagging discomforts that never used to be there.   In the years I’ve been running, paper running logs have been replaced by spreadsheets, then by on-line running journals, and now, I just let my Garmin downloads track everything.  I’ve gone from cotton T-shirts to singlets, to high-tech moisture whisking running outfits.  

 Next Saturday is April 16^th, and it will be the 29^th anniversary of the day I started running as a way of life. Over the next year, leading up to 30 years of running, I plan to write a lot about the last 30 years, and what I hope to be the next 30 years.  I will celebrate it in the best possible way I can imagine.  I’ll be walking a 5K race in Roswell GA with my father, the one who inspired me to start running in the first place, and to one who gives me hope that I CAN still be doing it 30 years from now.   Yes, he is older now, as am I, and as is the world around us.  

But not running.  Running never gets old.

Springtime on the Robert Frost Trail

What trails are these I do not know

I know I need to run them, though.
The sight of deer, the sounds of birds
Whatever else the path will show?

The breezes gently brush my hair.
A damp earth smell is everywhere.
I give my head a hearty shake
A month ago, these trees were bare.

The life within the forest grows.
Amazing feats of nature show
A different trail than those before.
A trail of dreams. Do I dare go?

To follow dreams. I heed the call.
So what if I must trip and fall.
To try and fail has no regrets.
But never to attempt at all?

A trail less traveled brightly glows.
A trail I must go down, I know.
With miles to run before I go.
And miles to run before I go.

Back in the Game

Getting Back In The Game

 

The above pictures are from the very first race I ever ran with my father.  It was called The Firecracker 5K, and it was held in Massapequa, New York.  The date was July 3, 1982.  I was 26 at the time, and dad was 55.   This is significant, because today, as I write this, I am 55, the same age dad was when I first started running.  And I am happy to report that Dad is 84, and still walks for over an hour several days a week.

He beat me that first race, by about a minute. He was in the mid 24's for that race, and I was in the mid 25's. I have no doubt that he remembers it as vividly as I do.  Runners are funny in that way. Those times were considered slow, and we ran in the back of the pack. 

But I was new to running, and dad had already been running for years.  And we were running for different reasons.  He ran because his doctor told him to in an effort to control his high blood pressure.  And I ran because I loved T-shirts.  And I also had a competitive streak in me, and wanted to get faster.  But running for health was never my goal.  At least not back then.

Although dad had been "jogging" since the late 1960s, he caught the race bug from me, and the Firecracker 5K was the race in which he caught it.  We lived on Long Island, and it was an easy trip to New York's Central Park, home of the New York Running Club, headed up by Fred Lebow.  This venue featured some of the greatest races of its day.  

The race scene was much different back then than it is today.  For the most part, if you weren't fast, you didn't race.  Nobody walked, and if you couldn't keep at least an 8 minute per mile pace, you found another sport to participate in.  Another huge difference between then and now: the oldest age group in most races was 50 and over.  Can you imagine?  Just look at the race results from a race I did in 1983.  Notice the times, and the ages of the runners.  Yes, times have changed.

By the end of 1982, I could run a 5K in under 21 minutes, and early the next year, I met my goal of breaking 20.  Dad was steady at his pedestrian 23-24 minute 5K time, but he kept plugging along. he was 55, and I was 26.  And I thought he was slow and I knew that I would never slow down when I got to be his age.

Thus is the finite wisdom of a naive 26 year old.

In future columns, I'll be writing a lot more about the nearly 30 years between that first race we did together and the next race we do together in a couple of weeks.  But this column is about the here and now, so I will flash forward from that first race to today, where I am now the same age dad was back then.

At age 84, dad doesn't run any more, but he did until his mid-70s.  But as I mentioned earlier, he still walks.  And he goes to the gym.  And he still does projects around the house.  He is the most active 84 year old I know.  

And today, at 55, I am the same age he was when we started.  I still race often.  My running over the past 30 years has had some rough patches in it, periods of time when I didn't run at all.  The most painful gaps were due to injury.  The most palatable were due to changing priorities.  And the most disappointing were due to lethargy.

And it seems that every gap, regardless of the reason, set me back a step, as times slipped from the 20's, to the 21's, to the 22's......a figurative free fall from my best times to where I am now.  Today, I look at the 23 minute 5K times that dad did in his late 50s and even early 60s, and I am in total awe.  He wasn't nearly as slow as the ignorant 26 year old thought he was.  In fact, he wasn't slow at all.  He was still running 10Ks in under 50 minutes in his 60s.  It's all a matter of perspective.

Today, at 55 years old, I am lucky if I can break 26 minutes in a 5K.  That's 3 minutes slower than dad was running them at the age I am now.  But I am also lucky I can still run at all.  Too many people who started running when I did stopped running long ago.  For some it was because of injury.  For others, it was changing priorities.  And for the vast majority, I believe it was lethargy. 

For the life of me, I can't even imagine being able to cut an additional 3 minutes from what I currently run, to get to where dad was then, but it's a nice goal to have.  Once you've been running for 30 years, new goals in the same sport come harder and harder to come by.  The last big one I accomplished was to run a 10K in under my age, which I finally did a couple of years ago...by one tick.  I ran a 52.59 when I was 53 years old.

But the goal is still there, to be where dad was then.  sub 24 for a 5K.  That used to be a slow training run for me, and that statement alone illustrates another funny thing with runners.  it's so true, the older you get, the faster you used to be.  We love to reach back to the good old days, and lose sight of what lays ahead.  I think that's one of the reasons I've been quiet for so long with my writing.  

But there is a part of me that knows that I am not alone.  Aging runners slowing down.  We may be the largest running contingent in the entire running community.  We struggle to come to terms with our personal aging process, and we question why we still set our alarms for 4 in the morning just so we can keep on running.  Sometimes I feel like the only reason I still do it is because that's how it's always been, at least for the last 30 years.  Without running, a part of what has come to define me would be gone.

But also, there is a part of me who wants to be today what dad was then.  As I have gotten older, I would like to think I have gotten wiser.  I sure do hope so, as I have made many many mistakes over the years, and it would be a shame to not have learned and grown from them.  I don't run like that 26 year old kid any more, but I don't think like him any more either.   Long gone are the days of believing that everyone around me was getting older while I stayed frozen in time.  I have come to reluctantly embrace the fact that aging is a natural process that is a privilege to experience, as long as you continue to look forward, even though you can't help but to also look back.

In two weeks, dad will be back in town, and while he is here, we will be doing a 5K.  I'm going to walk it with him, step by step, just like we used to run together when we raced almost 30 years ago.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm still competitive, but I am also nostalgic.  There will be almost every other weekend to race as fast as I can, which is not nearly as fast as he used to run them when he was the age I am now.

And if it takes us an hour, so be it.  Today I know that whatever pace we do will be a great pace. Not only will I be thrilled to be able to walk a 5K in an hour when I am 84.  I will be thrilled if I am still alive.

  

Dad, Kelli and me at a race in November 2009

Introduction (or re-introduction, as it may be)

On a recent Saturday, I was going through some old financial files trying to pull some information together.  No, the IRS is not after me.  I’m simply in the process of refinancing.  While going through the filing cabinets, I came across many saved mementos of my writing past.  I called Kelli, who is my running and life partner, over to show her some of my archives.  She had not yet known me during my writing days, and I wanted to give her a brief history.

First, I showed her a contract that Amby Burfoot, then executive editor of Runner’s World, sent me for a piece they wanted to publish in the January 2000 issue.  It was called “Roads Scholars- From Running I have Learned”.  When she saw how much it paid, she said I really needed to start writing again.

Then There was the letter from Becky Lambros, at the time the Executive Director of the RRCA, congratulating me for winning the Jerry Little Memorial Award as Outstanding National Club Writer.  I will never forget the thrill of going to the awards ceremony that year, and enjoying dinner with two of the most outstanding writers I have ever known…Joe Henderson, long time author of running commentary, and Rich Benyo, editor of Marathon and Beyond Magazine. 

 Rich Benyo, Me, and Joe Henderson

I felt like this was a “Field of Dreams” for me, actually being able to spend time with these two great legends of the running community.  Although I had corresponded with both of them before, and in fact written several articles for Rich in the past, I had never met either one of them before that weekend, and we left that convention as friends.

I found another file that had some old Chattahoochee Road Runners newsletters, from when I had been newsletter editor for this fine running club.  It took me a while to initially learn the software to create the newsletter, but once I did, the newsletter became a high quality monthly chronicle of the club’s life, and in 2005, was honored with the coveted “Small Running Club Outstanding Newsletter” award by the RRCA.

Shortly after that, my life changed in many ways; some good, and some a little less desirable, but the bottom line is that I got busy with things other than running and writing, and they both got pushed to the far background rather abruptly.  But on that recent Saturday morning, it was fun walking through memory lane with Kelli and showing her a snapshot of a very exciting time of my life.

This is not to say that things haven’t been exciting since then.  If anything, they have been much more exciting as I have successfully transitioned careers, met the true love of my life, welcomed a grandchild into the world with another one due any day now, and seen my daughter blossom from my little girl to a her own person, wearing the hats of mother, wife and business professional. But as for my life as a runner, running is no longer who I am.  It has just became something I do.

That same evening Kelli and I ran a race called the “World’s Hoppiest 5K” road race.  At the starting line, I was standing with Tim Bagley, part runner and part race director, and got to talking about an old print publication, very popular in Georgia running circles.  About a year and a half ago, he and I were kicking around the idea of a new print publication with Will Chamberlain, but it never materialized before Will’s untimely death earlier this year.  I told Tim that in today's world, I really would have no venue for sharing my thoughts even if I did start writing again.  He volunteered to allow me a blog spot on the Classic Race Services page of Facebook if I ever again did get inspired to write.

Then, after the race, I was approached by someone whom I had never met, but who recalled when I used to write the column “Thoughts of a Roads Scholar.”  Back in the days of Gary Jenkins’ Georgia Runner print publication, I had a regular column for over 10 years and would write monthly muses based on my personal observations of runners, especially myself.  This is where I got my writing start, and it was the springboard for everything else I ever was as a writer.  My simple goal as a writer was always to entertain by capturing the thoughts of the common runner, and expressing those thoughts in an uncommon way.

I’ve always been a firm believer in Kismet and that everything happens for a reason. I also believe that there is no bad fortune, only positive experiences and opportunities for learning , self-discovery and improving one’s direction.  that day, my past writing life seemed to be popping up around every corner, and up every hill.  It was even there at the starting line and at the finish line.  It was pleading with me to make the past the present.

That night was not the first time I have been reminded of the now defunct column.  Kelli, upon reading some of my old essays, has continually encouraged me to start up again.  My father, who was my running inspiration nearly 30 years ago, and my staunchest supporter in running, writing, and life, also asks on a relatively regular basis if I’ve writing anything lately.  At least he used to, but after enough responses to the negative, has stopped asking.

So, today is my first step in repeating history.  Consider this a re-introduction to those who have read my thoughts in the past, and a first introduction to those who are reading me for the first time.  My goal once again will be to entertain to the best of my ability by capturing the funny stories and the true battles that encompass every runner.  I have nearly 30 years to draw on, but one can’t live totally in the past.  So my plan is to refer to the past but to live and write about the present and future.  As with all things, I do believe the best is yet to come.

My name is Michael, and I am a runner and a writer.