Showing posts with label alone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alone. Show all posts

Friday, November 18, 2016

This Week's Long Run

Seven miles was my plan for a long run this week.  Actually it's for next week because I already finished my five days of running for this week, and I ran 23 miles even though the running week doesn't finish till Saturday.  My long run for this week, or now, last week, was 5.6 miles, which I did twice.

So today, in 68 degree weather, I set out in the afternoon to do seven miles.  Which I did, by burning up a neighborhood mile first, then doing a large loop around the greater neighborhood and adding a mile on the W&OD Trail at the end.  The impetus to get going was shaky, as I was listening to my body talk to my brain the first mile, telling me my joints hurt, my breathing was ragged, and a mile would be a good output; it would count for entry in my weekly tally.

I kept going though and got all seven miles done.   I run alone these days because every single running partner I ever had has dropped away most due to moving away, a few to injury and a couple to inertia.  Since my surgery in the summer I've struggled with my weight and have bemoaned my dropped-away friendships but that's life, it's always moving forward towards inevitable and unavoidable change.

So now I'm carrying a ten-pound barbell every time I run these days.  However, that beats carrying the sixty-pound anvil I was carrying on runs when I was trying to come back from injury in 2011.  Running more (or harder) is only half of the equation though, next I'll have to address the other half of the equation by eating less (or better).
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Monday, July 27, 2015

This is the end…or is it?

I was assigned Great Expectations in 8th grade and thought I'd read it then, or major parts of it at least. Now having finished "re-reading" it decades later, I have become quite certain that I didn't read any of it back then because I didn't recognize anything.
Whatever didn't make it into the Classics Illustrated comic back then, I didn't know about.  Do you suppose, in the pre-Internet days, eighth grade English teachers were familiar with the 64-page cartoon book rendition of Great Expectations and asked final exam question slightly outside of its exposition?
Dickens ties everything up so neatly, nothing and nobody wanders through its 500 pages for no purpose. The critics say this is his most pared down book!
Its ending was re-written before publication, his editor prevailing upon Dickens to alter the ending to provide for Pip's total redemption.  The brutally brief and cold discarded ending had Pip walking along in London, much later, when he was summoned by a servant to a nearby coach being driven by a lady of means, Estella.
"[T]he lady and I looked sadly enough on one another. 'I am greatly changed, I know, but I thought you would like to shake hands with Estella, too, Pip.'  … .  I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview, for in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be."
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Friday, June 29, 2012

Carly Simon is 68?

I was on the subway traveling to work reading one of the two free rag sheets handed out as you enter the system each morning.  I always take both offerings, the Express put out by the WaPo (this is the paper that brought RMN down and ensured the continuation of our democracy) and the the Chronicle (put out by the Washington Times, which I think is or was owned by the Reverend Moon).  I always like to know what the enemy is thinking.

The newsletter said Carly Simon's birthday was that day and she was 68.  Ouch.

I thought back to 1972, in the days of the turntable and LP (are they back?)  I bought her album, the one which showed her on the jacket picture as a luscious young woman who could belt out a song, and played her classic "You're So Vain" over and over again. 

At age 20, I was living at home, having dropped out of college to "find" myself and my folks were carefully keeping their comments about my life's orb to themselves.  I aspire to their approach (not that my kids communicate with me, whatever there're up to).  The song on the album I reallyliked was "Father, I'm Sorry."

A girl was telling her Dad she wouldn't be returning home that night because, well, she was in love.  You cannot try to stop love, it's like railing against the tide.

I heard the main song, You're So Vain, was about Mick Jagger because, well, when he enters, the entire room is focused on him.  But in fact Carly had vocals on the track from James Taylor and she married him afterwards.

She also divorced him afterwards.  I am shocked (I'm not a fan of the institution, people change and grow apart as the decades intercede)!

It was a bittersweet moment for me there jostling elbows with the suburban hordes on Metro, clouds in my coffee, as I had just passed 60 myself and become invisible to practically everyone and that this luscious girl in my memory who had confidently projected that she was totally independant and a hot catch now was calmy awaiting the end, alone I suppose (as we all are as we pass over).  Huh.
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Saturday, January 7, 2012

Life As A Pizza

Last year I finally fulfilled my lifelong desire to visit the remote battlefield of the Little Big Horn, known when I was a child as Custer's Last Stand, where about 212 troopers perished to the last man on June 25, 1876 in Montana when five 7th Cavalry troops under General Custer attacked a huge Indian encampment of up to 10,000 Sioux and Cheyenne, of whom perhaps 3,000 were warriors who came swarming out of their village like angry bees when provoked and annihilated the soldiers in about 90 minutes. A few miles away Major Reno with the other seven troops of the regiment barely held on in a hedgehog defense atop a hill for two days before he was rescued by General Terry arriving with reinforcements. (Left: Pizza for two last winter at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover on my youngest son's birthday. No, he didn't show up.)



It was the stuff of American lore, Remember the Maine, Send More Japs, I have not yet begun to fight, Nuts!, The Shot Heard Round the World, the Alamo. The reality, a hillside leading down to a meandering stream. impinged upon the heroic nature of the historic record, especially since it took me thirty-eight hours to drive there and back, alone, from my sister's house in St. Paul, but the memory in my mind's eye of the swirling fight, imprinted there by books, pictures and reflection, lives on. (Right: Homemade broccoli and tomato pizza last summer.)


That was my big trip last year, I thought, spending three hours wandering from the Custer site to the Reno site and back again in what is basically wasteland ranch land. Now at almost sixty, having seen almost every important thing I have wanted to see in America, I am free to cut the bonds of North America and go abroad.



But on my FB page lately I have been posting a photo each day of various izza pies I have had in the last year. The most spectacular picture shows an eighteen-inch supreme pizza pie I ordered for dinner, alone, the first night of trial in Dallas last month. (Left: An "everything" pizza in Dallas last month.)


My stay in Dallas to attend a seven-day trial was a typically intense litigation experience. Looking at the snapshot made me realize that that was my big trip last year, a work-detail of three months duration, off and on.



Looking at other pizza pie pictures taken last year showed me that the pies sort of defined my year that just passed, sort of life by pizza analogy. So I decided to post the photographs here also, for what they're worth. (Right: Neapolitan pizza at Orso's right here in Falls Church. Yes, that's an egg on top.)
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Friday, May 9, 2008

Marathons

I ran a marathon on Sunday.

Marathons are like, I imagine, combat. Intense experiences that you need time to decompress from. The closest I have ever come to a combat experience was the nine years of police work I did. Most nights I was out on my own on patrol, focused, active, confronting situations fraught with peril, occasionally experiencing fear (or once or twice, terror). It was intense and, at times, dangerous work. Twenty years after I left it, I'm still decompressing from it. Marathons are a lot like that.

You never really get over any of them. I can vividly remember each one I have run. For the several hours that you are engaged in them you are thrust deeply into their immediacy. All actions are aimed towards the solitary completion of a difficult task. Hours of drudgery and acute discomfort are coupled with an occasional uplifting moment such as when you view a magnificent vista or come upon a rehabilitating wounded veteran struggling along doggedly on injured or missing limbs.

You are limited by the possible. Do you need a 5:40 in the last mile to PR? It ain't gonna happen so enjoy the finish. Do you need a 7:40 instead? Then it's time to get a move on and hope for the best.

Like a soldier placed into the field, the whole community supports you. The supply train is loaded and people hand you drinks, food or comfort in the form of aspirin, cooling sprays or encouragement. If you falter, they will immediately succor you. But you have to go it alone. No one can cover any part of the 26 miles for you. On the race course, there is no place to hide from the elephant.

Also, you can't escape from your own effort. Were you a coward, did you do your duty, or did you perform extraordinarily? Deep down, you know the answer. It's your own secret, but the knowledge is there within you.

A few years back, a friend, perhaps feeling the tug of mortality after passing the half-century mark, asked me if I had done even one thing in years that had left me feeling truly exhilarated. The way the question was asked implied that after long reflection the answer would invariably be no, sort of like when W was asked if he could think of any mistake he had made following 9/11.

The answer instantly sprang into my head. Sure, I replied, I feel that way after every marathon.

That's how I felt about it then, and that's how I feel about it now.
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