The Gym

My Dad was thin for his entire life even though he ate pretty much whatever he wanted.  My Mom struggled with her weight continually.   Through high school and college, I was trim and muscular, if I do say so myself, even though I ate (as my mom would say) like a horse.  Watching me as I lifeguarded at the local beach, our next-door neighbor once remarked that the more clothes I took off the better I looked (Embarrassing but flattering to a 16-year-old).   I assumed, therefore, I had my Dad’s metabolism.  I was wrong.   Once I was married and working, I began to gain weight.   When we drove to our new home in California, my wife Muri snapped a photo of me sitting on the hood of our car in the middle of the desert.   I was wearing a bright purple shirt and I looked like a giant grape.  Thus began a lifetime of working out to keep my weight down.

Bud Runs a Marathon

Over the weekend, while our house was being shown to prospective buyers, my wife Muri and I decided to go to the movies.  We chose Brittany Runs a Marathon, the indie film from Amazon Studios directed by Paul Downs Colaizzo, and starring Jillian Bell as Brittany.   Brittany is a 29 year-old Cornell graduate whose once promising life has faded into a montage of mindless partying, low paying jobs, and falling self-worth.   After being told by her doctor that she needs to lose weight she reluctantly decides to try running.  As played by Bell, Brittany is a funny, resilient but wounded girl whose self-deprecation masks deeper self-loathing, and whose self-sabotage veers precariously toward self-harm.  Toward the end of the film, Brittany is near mile twenty-two of the marathon, too tired to continue.  Friends convince her to keep going and the camera follows her painful steps toward the finish line.  Surprisingly, I found myself emotionally invested in her progress, crying like I rarely cry at movies.  What was that about?

Older Knees

Many years ago (shortly after that nasty asteroid put an end to the dinosaurs, I believe), I was running on the Santa Ana River trail, approaching the halfway point of my long Saturday run, about an hour out from my starting point, Yorba Regional Park.  I was minding my own business and in that relaxed place often  described as a runner’s high.   From the bike path, which travels along side the dirt trail I was running on, a passing bicyclist shouted, That will ruin your knees!  I have no idea what motivates people like that.  Perhaps he had ruined his own knees running and wanted to spread the word.   Perhaps he was just a horse’s ass.  I’d like to think I ignored him but I was in my arrogant forties, so it is likely I shouted a response, somewhere between, Mind your own business and Go (have a certain sex act with) yourself.  Of course, even then, I knew there was some truth in what he had shouted … I’d already had arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn meniscus and was running with orthotic inserts in my shoes to correct  a leg length discrepancy that was giving me … hello … sore knees.  But I loved running.

Boston

Just in case you’ve never read my bio on Who’s Bud, I’m a New Englander at heart even though I’ve lived in California for forty-two years.  I grew up in Connecticut but my first job was in the Boston area.   I lived several blocks from Fenway Park and I loved it there.  Muri’s sister, Selma, and her family lived in nearby Natick, and because her husband, Leon, introduced us to a friend of his who was in the diamond business, Muri and I were engaged there.   Over the years, I attended school at Northeastern University, frequently stopping at the famous Durgin Park for dinner on the way.   When Muri and I were first married and living in Rhode Island, we’d frequently drive to Boston for shopping or entertainment.  In 1983, when I ran my first Marathon in Long Beach, California, my goal became to qualify for the Boston Marathon.   Even though I trained hard and ran 12 more marathons, I never made it.  But I had the good fortune to be in Boston on business once on Patriot’s Day when the Boston Marathon is run.  It is not only the ultimate celebration of running, it is a celebration of the city’s place in the founding of our country.  And while I’ve never experienced crossing the finish line near the Prudential Center, I’ve finished enough marathons … with my family cheering me on … to know what a joyful experience finishing Boston would be.  When the cowards of the world seek to frighten us with evil acts, they seek out the joyful and the innocent, which is why they chose the finish line of the Boston Marathon today.

Friday Favorites 1/18/2013

A while back … in the Paleozoic era … when I was doing several marathons and triathlons plus an assortment of 10K runs each year, my training regimen consisted of cycling 100 miles, running 25 or 30 miles and swimming 4 or 5 miles a week.   It was the only time in my life that I had to try to eat more so that I wouldn’t lose weight.  The book that got me started was the 1977 best seller, The Complete Book of Running by Jim Fixx.  By the time Jim’s reputation as a running guru was tarnished by his death from a heart attack after a training run in 1984, I’d moved on to more specialized books like Jeff Galloway’s Book on Running, which in its first edition included a training schedule that I used to train for my first marathon and Scott Tinley’s Winning Triathlon.   Like most runners, I found that dealing with leg and foot injuries were part of the process, perhaps more in my case because I had more upper body mass than most runners.  Every book on training included at least a chapter on preventing and treating injuries but I needed more.   The more I found was The Runner’s Repair Manual by podiatrist Murray F. Weisenfeld.   My training books have departed from my bookshelves for places unknown … library donations, our storage bin or those unidentified boxes in the garage … but The Runner’s Repair Manual lives on in my nightstand because I know, as long as I am ambulatory, I will deal with leg and foot pain.

Knees

About twenty-five years ago,  I was nine miles into a twenty mile training run along the Santa Ana River trail.   I was on the dirt road that runs parallel to the asphalt bike trail, just reaching that runner’s high that comes after an hour of running.  It was a beautiful spring day and I was minding my own business, getting ready for the L.A. Marathon.   As an older gentleman sped by on an obviously expensive racing bike … in full cycling togs … he shouted, Hey!   That will ruin your knees, you know.   I probably flipped him off.   I thought of the old guy Tuesday morning when I woke with pain on my right knee cap.  It wasn’t too bad walking or going upstairs but coming downstairs was a real hobble.   If you’ve lived in a two story house, have you noticed how often the things you want and you aren’t on the same floor?  Well, it happens more as you age.  Today, my knee is feeling a little better.   At sixty-seven, knee pains come and go.  Maybe the old guy was right.

Running, Then and Now

You wouldn’t know it to look at me now but there was a time I was signing up at the Fullerton YMCA to run 1000 miles a year instead at WordPress to post every day in 2011.   But both are a reflection of something I told Terri of These Are Days in response to her comment yesterday – I am much more disciplined if I make a formal commitment to a measurable goal.   My diets work better if I commit to something like WeightWatchers or the South Beach Diet.   I’ve written more regularly since I committed to Postaday2011.   In 1981, struggling to keep my weight down, I began running and in 1982, I ran my first 10K.  The next year, a colleague at work talked me into training for the Long Beach Marathon.  Over the next ten years I’d run 13 marathons and be in the best shape of my life.

Detours

Some people take the same route home every time … the same for Point A to point B.  My wife is one of those people.   I like to try different routes even after I know which is the shortest or the quickest (not always the same here in trafficky Socal).   Partly, it’s because I like a change of scenery but it’s also because I tend to like variety and change.   As Supertramp said in their 1979 hit, I sometimes like to Take the Long Way Home just because I can.    One of the things I loved about training for long distance running was setting out for a long run and choosing roads or trails I’d never run before.   Since, at

In the Long Run

I began running at the height of the running boom when Jim Fixx’s The Complete Book of Running** was a fixture on the best seller list.  I started slowly, running two or three miles at a time but was eventually seduced into a 10K race by tales of the joys of competition in Runner’s World and books by Dr. George Sheehan, the running guru.  I joined a group of lunchtime runners at work and began to hear about running marathons.   The Long Beach Marathon is a good first marathon, Frank, my friend Fred told me, using my work-name.  I’ll run it with you.  He did … for the