If my family has a motto, it's this: "If you eat a live toad first thing every morning, it'll probably be the worst thing that happens to you all day." I thought about that expression on my way over to Dort Munder's house this morning. (We've decided on a pseudonym, such that I will feel comfortable being, as Dort says, "brutally honest in these posts" about his condition, shape, form or lacks thereof.) I thought about eating the toad, because I was thinking about the weather, yes, and running, of course, but also about the way we choose our resolutions, the way we plan to make change(s) in our lives. I think it's interesting that in our culture we have chosen New Year's Day as a starting point for resolutions.
On the one hand, it makes absolute sense to begin something with the New Year. Our entrance into 2012, we'll always remember, was also the rebirth of our running careers. It's an easy day to remember, because whatever else we believe in our lives, most folks in our culture adhere to the modern ordinal calendar. We celebrate it, in a sense, unanimously: the secular with the religious, Democrats and Republicans, East Coast and West Coast Rappers alike -- we reflect on the old and welcome the new; many of us watch a ball drop for no apparent reason, and most of us wear earmuffs for the only time this year (though we should wear them much more often). It's a perfect day to celebrate, to challenge ourselves, to resolve.
On the other hand, 01 January follows swiftly on the heels of the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, and we are a species prone to feeling poopie without sunshine (I hear Vitamin D helps some folks when the sun's not as frequent as we'd like, but I'll leave the rest to the learned vitaminologists). So why do we resolve to make ourselves and the world a better place when the world is so cold and dark that the gravelly mud tracks by the side of the road are frozen, begging us to sprain our ankles on their surprisingly sharp angles?
My first guess is that we're masochists.
I say that, of course, jokingly, but there is something to it: testing the limits of our will power seems a very human thing to do. I have no doubt this is why so many folks pick New Year's Day to quit smoking after staying out at the bar until 2:15 a.m. New Year's Eve, decidedly not quitting smoking. No doubt many of us have come off a month and a half of heavy eating and spent the past day and a half miserably dieting -- Yay for us all who have done so: 2012 is going to be a great year! Yes, we challenge ourselves in these ways sometimes it seems just to see what we're capable of, what we can stand up against, how many times we can listen to "Eye of the Tiger" on repeat. So it is, in part, some sort of test for oneself, going for one's first run in three decades today the coldest windiest snowiest day so far this season.
But there is also some wisdom in my family's eating of the toad. At this point, Dort Munder and I have braved weather about as cold as would be safe to run -- in truth, we'll probably meet at a treadmill farm for subsequent runs, until the weather breaks -- if we can run today, we can run any day. We've eaten our toad. I feel good about this.
About the run proper:
The weather is cold. The roads are cold. The wind is cold. The world is cold.
Because I have been running regularly for several years, he has left the training regimen up to me. I've suggested a half hour each day for the first two weeks, because it seems like a good amount of time to get some blood flowing, to get our heartbeats raised, to break a little bit of a sweat. At the same time, we are not likely to come home too tired to make it through the rest of our lives. We have agreed that if Dort should feel some sort of pain, that we will back off -- again in his own words, "If I break anything, I'm screwed."
This sounds like good advice for anybody thinking of this new year as a chance to get in shape: trying to push past pain early in your return to fitness is often a gateway to injury. Obvious, yes, but not unwarranted advice. A lot of folks, I often imagine, are like me in that our early athletic training is competitive athletic training. For me, getting in shape meant two-a-days at cross country camp (running upwards of seventy miles), or two weeks of basketball conditioning, or everything it takes to prepare one for track season. These kinds of workouts came at a moment in my life when I could have the hardest, most intense two-hour session imaginable, and all I needed to recover was half a large meat-lovers pizza, a two liter of Mountain Dew, and a twenty-minute nap. This body that I have today . . . it's not that same body. And I am happy to embrace this limitation.
I met Dort Munder at his house this morning for a thirty minute walk / run. This is our starting point. We did not measure the distance in linear feet, rather we're going to spend the next two weeks walking / running half an hour a day. As I mentioned last post, Dort has not been a runner for three decades or better, but he is active -- he often walks or rides his bike to work; he does yoga; he plays tennis once or twice a week, so it's not as if we're starting from absolute zero.
He is, in fact, rather fit. Still half an hour was plenty for a first day, and the fact that we only ran a block was plenty, too. Dort, in the interest of full disclosure, would like for me, I'm certain, to point out that he is not as slim as he was three decades ago. He's about my height (to paraphrase one of my favorite Introduction to Creative Writing Metaphors: "About as tall as a five-foot-eleven-inch birch tree"), and he claims to weigh 250 pounds. Perhaps we'll get a verifiable reading on that at some point, but his weight today and his weight this spring are not the concern of this resolution. (He did mention that as a tangential goal, it would probably be wise for him to shed some weight: he thinks it would be better for his knees and other body parts.) And, again, as the Nature Channel once told me, "Nothing exists in isolation in the forest." Nor in our bodies. Nor in our lives.
And thus begins our resolution of 2012. Dort has agreed to keep up with the regular running, and we will meet once a week to run together (whether on tread mill or concrete), and I will post results, accomplishments, other things as they become beautiful, necessary, and true -- we'll see you all at a 5K this spring.
* * *
Post Script: Dort Munder ran today in jeans and a leather coat, a scarf, gloves, a hat -- it was, after all, damn freaking cold. I not this as of interest to us all, because so many of the modern world's resolutions seem more accessible to those of us who can drop $500 on running gear, double that on a gym membership, triple that for a personal trainer. But that's mostly a myth. While I do suggest a decent pair of running shoes if you're going to join this adventure, the rest of your attire can be whatever you've got on, clean or dirty. It's my running opinion that whatever you're wearing when you go for a run are, at least for the moment, running clothes. As for me, I have a pair of gray socks from my blue-collar days that I wear on my hands -- preferring those to mittens -- and, should it get any colder, I'll put on a second pair of gray socks.
This advice, I believe, extends far beyond resolving to workout. If anybody out there has resolved to write a novel, but all you got is a yellow legal pad for the holidays, start scribbling -- a good novel has never been the result of owning one's own Macbook Air.
On the one hand, it makes absolute sense to begin something with the New Year. Our entrance into 2012, we'll always remember, was also the rebirth of our running careers. It's an easy day to remember, because whatever else we believe in our lives, most folks in our culture adhere to the modern ordinal calendar. We celebrate it, in a sense, unanimously: the secular with the religious, Democrats and Republicans, East Coast and West Coast Rappers alike -- we reflect on the old and welcome the new; many of us watch a ball drop for no apparent reason, and most of us wear earmuffs for the only time this year (though we should wear them much more often). It's a perfect day to celebrate, to challenge ourselves, to resolve.
On the other hand, 01 January follows swiftly on the heels of the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, and we are a species prone to feeling poopie without sunshine (I hear Vitamin D helps some folks when the sun's not as frequent as we'd like, but I'll leave the rest to the learned vitaminologists). So why do we resolve to make ourselves and the world a better place when the world is so cold and dark that the gravelly mud tracks by the side of the road are frozen, begging us to sprain our ankles on their surprisingly sharp angles?
My first guess is that we're masochists.
I say that, of course, jokingly, but there is something to it: testing the limits of our will power seems a very human thing to do. I have no doubt this is why so many folks pick New Year's Day to quit smoking after staying out at the bar until 2:15 a.m. New Year's Eve, decidedly not quitting smoking. No doubt many of us have come off a month and a half of heavy eating and spent the past day and a half miserably dieting -- Yay for us all who have done so: 2012 is going to be a great year! Yes, we challenge ourselves in these ways sometimes it seems just to see what we're capable of, what we can stand up against, how many times we can listen to "Eye of the Tiger" on repeat. So it is, in part, some sort of test for oneself, going for one's first run in three decades today the coldest windiest snowiest day so far this season.
But there is also some wisdom in my family's eating of the toad. At this point, Dort Munder and I have braved weather about as cold as would be safe to run -- in truth, we'll probably meet at a treadmill farm for subsequent runs, until the weather breaks -- if we can run today, we can run any day. We've eaten our toad. I feel good about this.
About the run proper:
The weather is cold. The roads are cold. The wind is cold. The world is cold.
Because I have been running regularly for several years, he has left the training regimen up to me. I've suggested a half hour each day for the first two weeks, because it seems like a good amount of time to get some blood flowing, to get our heartbeats raised, to break a little bit of a sweat. At the same time, we are not likely to come home too tired to make it through the rest of our lives. We have agreed that if Dort should feel some sort of pain, that we will back off -- again in his own words, "If I break anything, I'm screwed."
This sounds like good advice for anybody thinking of this new year as a chance to get in shape: trying to push past pain early in your return to fitness is often a gateway to injury. Obvious, yes, but not unwarranted advice. A lot of folks, I often imagine, are like me in that our early athletic training is competitive athletic training. For me, getting in shape meant two-a-days at cross country camp (running upwards of seventy miles), or two weeks of basketball conditioning, or everything it takes to prepare one for track season. These kinds of workouts came at a moment in my life when I could have the hardest, most intense two-hour session imaginable, and all I needed to recover was half a large meat-lovers pizza, a two liter of Mountain Dew, and a twenty-minute nap. This body that I have today . . . it's not that same body. And I am happy to embrace this limitation.
I met Dort Munder at his house this morning for a thirty minute walk / run. This is our starting point. We did not measure the distance in linear feet, rather we're going to spend the next two weeks walking / running half an hour a day. As I mentioned last post, Dort has not been a runner for three decades or better, but he is active -- he often walks or rides his bike to work; he does yoga; he plays tennis once or twice a week, so it's not as if we're starting from absolute zero.
He is, in fact, rather fit. Still half an hour was plenty for a first day, and the fact that we only ran a block was plenty, too. Dort, in the interest of full disclosure, would like for me, I'm certain, to point out that he is not as slim as he was three decades ago. He's about my height (to paraphrase one of my favorite Introduction to Creative Writing Metaphors: "About as tall as a five-foot-eleven-inch birch tree"), and he claims to weigh 250 pounds. Perhaps we'll get a verifiable reading on that at some point, but his weight today and his weight this spring are not the concern of this resolution. (He did mention that as a tangential goal, it would probably be wise for him to shed some weight: he thinks it would be better for his knees and other body parts.) And, again, as the Nature Channel once told me, "Nothing exists in isolation in the forest." Nor in our bodies. Nor in our lives.
And thus begins our resolution of 2012. Dort has agreed to keep up with the regular running, and we will meet once a week to run together (whether on tread mill or concrete), and I will post results, accomplishments, other things as they become beautiful, necessary, and true -- we'll see you all at a 5K this spring.
* * *
Post Script: Dort Munder ran today in jeans and a leather coat, a scarf, gloves, a hat -- it was, after all, damn freaking cold. I not this as of interest to us all, because so many of the modern world's resolutions seem more accessible to those of us who can drop $500 on running gear, double that on a gym membership, triple that for a personal trainer. But that's mostly a myth. While I do suggest a decent pair of running shoes if you're going to join this adventure, the rest of your attire can be whatever you've got on, clean or dirty. It's my running opinion that whatever you're wearing when you go for a run are, at least for the moment, running clothes. As for me, I have a pair of gray socks from my blue-collar days that I wear on my hands -- preferring those to mittens -- and, should it get any colder, I'll put on a second pair of gray socks.
This advice, I believe, extends far beyond resolving to workout. If anybody out there has resolved to write a novel, but all you got is a yellow legal pad for the holidays, start scribbling -- a good novel has never been the result of owning one's own Macbook Air.
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