When Brett Mason sends you an email to post on your website, you post said email on your website. Just like when Blutarski, in Animal House, started giving his inspirational speech…”did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor…” “Let him go, he’s on a roll”.
Toilets To Tag: The bookends to being a runner.
The other day while out n about, I stopped at the park to use a porta potty. Its what you do when you’re over forty, drink coffee and carry a thermos around for constant proper hydration. My kids expect it.
A woman came out just before I entered. She exclaimed “its really bad in there”!
“eh, I’m a runner” I said, “I’ve seen it all”
Then I thought to myself, ‘I’ve used so many porta potties in my day that I’m now professing to total strangers, my apparent level of acceptance for said disgusting portable waste units’?
To be honest, I’ve actually mastered the art of entering one. The only part of my body to ever really touch anything inside is the very smallest tip of my knuckle, which I use to push the door open. Then I shoot through the gap like Indiana Jones, just before the spring loaded recoil of the door traps me back inside. Its an art, Not everyone can do it, but runners can. I eventually came to realize that the “wall sit” we were made to do in high school gym class was actually formal training for our futures as runners. Making that mid run pit stop..nothing supporting us as we hover in mid air, body shaking, legs burning, after having just run a few miles..trying not to pass out in the midst of an August afternoon.
If we’re lucky there’s sometimes actually a sink inside the porta potty. “Water not for drinking or cooking” it will say.
‘Great, I was just about to make a casserole and a pitcher of lemonade’.
There’s a good chance we’re in porta potties more than we are libraries. Which makes us less of a regular reader, and more, just “regular”.
I guess It’s all part of the fun.
And now the segway.. If we’re not having some kind of fun, we may burn out.
Sometimes we need breaks in the routine of mile counting, pace checking and heart rate monitoring. Its not a novel idea in the realm of running, I’m not gonna win a pulitzer prize for hatching this simple concept in written word, but I’ll just share a few of my own stories and experiences. Which in turn may get me back in the ‘running’ for the award. Perhaps it will make you reflect on you’re own experiences as well, reminding you of the many reasons we have such a positive attachment to running.
The “spirit or soul of running” I always call it. Stopping to smell the roses. I hate to use such an overused analogy, but it’s just so fitting. I think its good to do it a couple times a week. Maybe even leave the watch at home, if you know the route and can just manually put the miles in.
I remember one of my very first long runs ever, while training for my first marathon. My buddy Andy had lent me a watch. I was glancing down at it every mile post. He said “stop starring at that thing”. “it doesn’t matter what pace we’re going”. It didn’t matter because we were just getting the “time on our feet”. I of course want cold hard data! Sometimes, even fifteen years later, I do the same thing.
Today while on my long run, my watch died. It was only five miles into a twenty. I was a bit perturbed..’I’m not gonna have the data, no pace, no elevation, no Strava segments, which I actually care nothing about..
At the same time it let me focus a bit more on just running.
I don’t do as much exploring as I should. I tend to run the same routes, which often goes:Left out my front door, down the hill, up the hill, right, past the taco stand, four miles , turn around.
As I’ve become a bit older and have some miles behind me, Ive finally started slowing down more on the easy days.
One of my best runs ever was not a race or hard training run. It was a run down California’s Pacific Coast Highway, the “PCH”,and into Malibu. Obviously I was on vacation. It was roughly 20 miles. I landed in a part of the rocky California coast known as “Point Dume”. Prior to this, I had never heard of it, but it was cool. I explored the actual geographical point, a rocky elevated peninsula shape that sailors once used as a navigational marker. It’s actually a really popular spot for shooting commercials. To this day I see its distinct background fairly often in various ads, and say, “Hey I ran there”. Then I go out and buy the Nissan Rogue they just sold me.
That day I stopped somewhere and got a burrito(which I returned for the ingredient of hair), bought a gatorade at a popular iconic coastal restaurant, “Neptunes Net”, which I later come to find was featured in the movie “Point Break”. It’s the scene where “Johnny Utah” approaches “Tyler”, a waitress, and convinces her to teach him surfing. I didn’t have such any serendipitous encounters that led to waitresses taking me surfing, nor did I have any Keanu Reeves spottings, “Woe”. But I did go back home and write a song about the experience, “Point Dume”, which can be found on Soundcloud.
“I’ll meet you at Point Dume
Its just down in Malibu
I’ll run down the PCH
Discover the Zuma beach
I feel my heart beat, calm as you drive me back home
Im not an alien, but I’m floating in space again
I picked up my rusty pail and kicked up the dusty trail
I watched the waves crash seventy feet down below
Maybe its just as well
I’m deep in a west coast spell
It might be a long hard year
till I find my way back here
watching the waves crash seventy feet down below
It was truly a moment of inspiration.
Not all our runs in can this glorious and monumental of a personal experience, but when the opportunity arises, at least we have the tools to do so. I’ve always loved the ability to cover so much ground on foot. Even the simplicity of returning a movie, although now outdated.. or picking up a prescription. It’s the reward for our hard work. We get to be the chosen ones who tote the gas can three miles up the road when stranded. At least we feel like a hero when we return nineteen minutes and thirty seconds later. Pit stop included.
With the onset of warmer weather, I’ve recently started back up, the evening ritual of playing tag with my eight year old. Its just a free form of fartlek-esque running,chasing each other around for anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour. My general rule is that I don’t stop until he says he’s done. It keeps my legs loose, gives us some good laughs and gets him active as well. Its getting harder each year as he gets bigger and stronger, and I get more vintage. I still say however, I feel like it’s the reason I’ve acquired bit more speed over my older years. As a father of three boys, I’ve always loved being “in shape” enough to do these things, which now has been over a span of nineteen years, and counting. Again, it’s another small reward for all the work we do as runners, that doesn’t involve getting a “PR”.
N of 1 Running 