Virtual Actuality

"A neighbor is a person who can get to your house in less than a minute and takes two hours to go back home."

-----O.A. Battista

At their core, I believe most people are essentially lonely or live in fear of being alone.  I do not confuse being alone with the more comfortable and peaceful notion of solitude. Social media now provide the intrusive opportunity for us to be reached constantly, instantly and effortlessly.  When we get an email, a twitter, or a posting on our Facebook page, it is an external acknowledgement of our existence and reassurance-that we are not alone.  We are starving to feel connected. Cell phone and text message chimes trigger a Pavlovian slobber response to the arrival of each small tidbit of attention. They are the equivalent of mental cotton candy for the soul that craves a full meal.  A text is fast food cheap and easy but hardly satisfies compared to the feast of a handwritten letter arriving in the mail.

How did this happen? What makes us feel so isolated?  Part of the answer will become immediately apparent if you look closely.  I discovered it by casually observing the change over the years, in architecture and design of neighborhoods.  Well, we haven’t actually built a neighborhood lately.  Older cities still have grids of inter-woven and connected streets.  There is a mix of people and activities available all within walking distance. 

We don’t plan this way anymore though. Developers have unwittingly and negatively contributed to great, cultural change. They have managed to create spaces that have no sense of “place”.   As property values soared within cities and their immediate environs they pushed the suburbs further and further up the interstate into less costly rural areas.  Now, instead of building neighborhoods, they threw up isolated, dead end, cul-de-sac subdivisions along what used to be two lane country roads.   Unlike some of the originally designed bedroom communities like Levittown in NY, these are built completely without access to any mass transit or connection to the city other than the interstate. Most of the two lane roads do not have adequate shoulders, much less sidewalks that could be safely negotiated by cyclists or pedestrians.  These unconnected neighborhoods ensnare their residents into the trap of having to drive everywhere and this is further reinforced by zoning restrictions that forbid locating things like grocery stores, restaurants and other commercial amenities anywhere convenient.  There’s no “there” there and no “place” to be or go without spending endless hours in a car.  Furthermore, since everyone else’s poorly planned subdivision also dumps out into on the same meandering country road, left turns become impossible and the road is rapidly choked beyond its originally intended capacity. Do we have to wonder why traffic has become unbearable in these regions?  

What about the houses in the subdivisions themselves? Take a good look.  What’s missing?  Any kids in the front yard?  How about front porches? Do you see ANY people outside?

I am fortunate to live in one of the older neighborhoods in my city.  While out walking my dog I noticed that in one particular area, not only did some of houses have front porches; these same sections of the neighborhood also had sidewalks- the original social networks.  When I researched further I discovered that the area that had the houses where porches and sidewalks coincided happened to be in the section of the neighborhood that was designed prior to WWII.   Once the boundary is crossed between pre and post war construction, sidewalks and porches mysteriously and simultaneously vanish. What happened? Was there some conspiracy after WWII to eliminate sidewalks and front porches or was something else going on?

Here are a few theories…

1.  We weren’t going to need to walk again.  Neighborhoods were being designed with the automobile rather than pedestrian in mind.  The Jetson’s were the personification of the idealized, sci-fi family for which the new neighborhoods were being constructed. 

The “FUTURE” (insert full echo effects here) was envisioned as a time for humanity to become labor free. We were going to zip around in our flying cars, no fuss no muss, never having to lift a finger again.  What little exercise we might require could be had by running endless treadmills, completely removed from the environment.  “Outdoors” had somehow become a dirty word. 

What has happened to the state of our health since this mentality became pervasive?  Huge leaps in morbid obesity for one thing.  Of course there are many contributing factors but I’m certain this is one of them. We travel everywhere in our climate controlled vehicles because even short distances are too difficult or dangerous to negotiate on foot. We travel removed and insulated from our surroundings, just like the Jetson’s except they still haven’t managed to invent the flying car yet.

2.  Central air conditioning in homes became standard equipment... 

Obviously this had its practical application especially here in the south.  But what did we lose once we gained climate control? The front porch had always served as a cooler place to sit after dinner until bedtime, while the rest of the house was cooling down.  It was an essential part of the house.  Someone must have decided that since we had air conditioning we no longer had a reason to build porches. These days we would call it multitasking but out on the front porch a family might have spent their evenings doing one of any number things. A few things come to mind:star gazing, sewing, reading, telling stories, playing games, listening to music, enjoying a cool drink or any combination thereof. While you were out there it was only natural that you might wave to or even strike up conversations with your neighbors that happened to be walking by.  It was how genuine connections were forged and reinforced.  All of that is mostly gone now.  Not entirely, but it’s much less common than it used to be.  People are feeling the effects of the isolation from our fellow human beings and are instead turning longingly to digital surrogates. 

I’d like to offer a suggestion. How about instead of “friending” our next door neighbors and chatting virtually on Facebook, we all make the effort to restore our sidewalks and front porches. At the very least, get outside and wave to your neighbors. 

The “Barefoot Contestant” a Long, Running series…Part 1

“Success isn't how far you got, but the distance you traveled from where you started.”-Steve Prefontaine

You know who they are.  You have seen at least one.  The oddballs that show up for races-barefoot.  I saw one running The Mercedes Marathon in Birmingham this past February when the starting temperature, if memory serves, was about 19 degrees.  I just rolled my eyes.    

Back in the 80’s barefoot placekickers in football were all the rage, even in the snow. People were astounded that they could generate enough force to kick the ball powerfully without hurting themselves.  It didn’t seem unusual to me at the time because I had been involved in martial arts for years.  We broke boards with our bare feet all the time. We never wore shoes to work out.  It was more concerning to me that the kicker had to run and tackle opposing players with one shoe on and one shoe off.  That seemed infinitely more awkward than merely kicking the ball barefooted.  That was a long time, lots of miles and many pairs of running shoes ago.

Now, thanks to Born to Run, Christopher McDougal’s runaway best seller (pun intended) more and more of those unshod oddballs seem to keep appearing. 

I must admit, when I read the book back in 2010 I enjoyed it immensely. It was a fantastic and motivating story that has spawned a new school of thought in the running industry-Minimalism.  Well maybe it isn’t new but had been drowned out by all of the technologies screaming for our attention. I thought that the minimalist perspective made so much sense and appealed to the paleobiologist side of my brain. I came to the realization that it probably explained much of the pain and difficulty I was experiencing that had caused me to nearly give up running.  I will also confess that the moment I finished the book, I was so hyped about it that I immediately ran out the door and down the street barefoot to test out the theories.  It was incredibly liberating-for about 20 seconds.  And then along came reality. The book also does mention that those of us that were raised with shoes on our feet are not ready to shed our shoes quite so quickly and completely. I must have glossed over that part.  It was 95 degrees outside and the blacktop on our street was probably hot enough to fry eggs, not to mention my tender tootsies.  I hot footed it to the curb and tiptoed through the crabgrass in order to limp back to the safety of our driveway.

I was mildly distraught.

Had I devolved?  Was I not “born to run” like the author described? Well, to quote Lady Gaga, I probably was “born this way” but after years and years of wearing shoes I no longer was, “that way”.  If my enthusiasm for the concept of barefoot running hadn’t overwhelmed my good sense I would have also realized that my feet were not ready to take the full plunge and that returning my feet to their original state needed to be a more gradual process.

 As I stood there picking gravel out of my rapidly blistering feet, I thought about what sort of transition I’d need to make. 

I decided to start by purchasing a pair of Vibram Five Fingers (most folks refer to them as the “toe shoes”) whose development had also been described in the book.  After all, we may have evolved to run barefoot, but our Paleolithic ancestors didn’t have to deal with all of the urban hazards that we do.  Broken glass, hot asphalt, harsh chemicals and especially that unidentifiable sticky stuff in the road were not part of their equation.   Christopher McDougal described at length, the type of leather sandal that was developed by the tribe of Tarahumara people to use for protection between the bottoms of their feet and the punishing terrain of Copper Canyon.  I considered the Vibrams to be my modern, urban adaption of the same.

I couldn’t help but note that the notion of spending a bunch of money on something “minimalist” was more than just a touch ironic. Caught up in the pursuit of running pain free, less shoe, was supposed to be more beneficial, though just as expensive. In addition to Vibram, other companies have since jumped on the trend and have managed to flood the market in such a way as to ensure that you may now maximize your credit card usage in pursuit of minimalist nirvana.

Brushing away any conception I might have had about becoming some kind of financial hypocrite I pulled them (can I call them shoes?) out of the box and attempted to put them on.  I thought they would slide on like a pair of gloves for my feet.  That is what they look like, right?

After nearly 10 minutes of struggling, sweating and cursing I finally managed to get each of my toes into their designated slots.  After a workout like that a run seemed almost anticlimactic.

I walked out the door, down the driveway and hit the road running.  I should explain that I had always been somewhat of a shuffling runner, a bad heel striker and all the other negative habits about modern runners that I’d read about in “the book”.  

According to Christopher McDougal, running barefoot (or as close as reasonably possible) would encourage proper mid foot striking and all my problems would magically dissolve.  Well he didn’t exactly say that but it’s what I read into it.  I can honestly say that there was no magic on that first run.  There was no great change in my running motion and as I heel-toed hard through my stride I heard the thud/slap, thud/slap, thud/slap of my heel rapidly followed by my fore foot hitting the pavement more loudly than it had with regular shoes.  In typical runner fashion I carefully heeded the instructions to “start gradually” and I ran a mile that first day.  I felt ok so the next time out I ran about 6 miles on a local dirt trail with a small group of runners.  The next morning I could barely move.  My calves had seized up so badly from too much too soon.  It took several days before I could consider any type of running again, shod or unshod.   From then on, I could not go very far before the calf tightness reached out and grabbed me.  McDougal does mention the part about starting VERY gradually, but I couldn’t imagine running less than a mile each time out.  It would take me longer to put the damn things on than I would spend running in them. 

Eventually, I lost patience with the entire process and the Vibrams ended up somewhere in the back of the closet where they remained, until….

Stay tuned. Part 2 will coincide with its release in the August edition of the Birmingham Track Club Newsletter...

Author’s note-The Barefoot Contestant-A Long, Running Series will document my long running experiment, so to speak, with running in Vibrams. My current goal is the Talladega Half Marathon.  

Also-if anyone can provide some grammatical guidance regarding why/how/where I should use the word barefooted vs. barefoot I would greatly appreciate it.

The Tawanda Chronicles-Part II

Oath of enlistment:

“I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

An old Air Force buddy and I were recently discussing our fond memories of the time we spent at DLI- The Defense Language Institute, at The Presidio of Monterey (POM).  We talked about how challenging language school had been, the types of people we met there and just how unique and extraordinary our military experience was.  We also talked about what a beautiful place the Presidio and the entire Monterey Peninsula was.  So gorgeous in fact, that it required an enormous amount of discipline to fight the urge to spend all our spare time cruising up and down the coastal highway seeking the next adventure.  Studying exotic, foreign languages paled in comparison to the sunsets at Pfeiffer Beach.  Somehow though, we all managed to study enough to pass and enjoy everything northern California had to offer.

In those days, The POM was an open post considered a sub-installation of Fort Ord, located across the bay. (Open Post-meaning that access to the general public was not restricted- no guard gates/access points/fences etc…) Another unique feature was that although it was technically an army post, it was one of the few joint service schools that all 5 branches of the armed forces attended together, along with DOD civilian contractors as well as embassy personnel.

Language education and training was The POM’s primary mission and the open post fostered more of a collegiate atmosphere rather than that of a military base.  There were days I almost (but not quite) forgot I was in the Air Force.   Until the day the “Mad Bomber” as he came to be known, showed up. 

We had plenty of warning. 

Terrorism had not yet become the buzzword that it is today.  It had not entered our vocabulary in any of the languages we were studying.  All we knew was that some idiot kept calling in bomb threats to our barracks, on and off for weeks.  Apparently the idiot's wife, who roomed down the hall from me, and he were having some sort of domestic dispute.  No one in the barracks had a personal phone but there were two payphones in the stairwell entrances for us to use.  If the phone happened to ring when you walked by, you picked up it and banged on the door for the person they asked to speak with.   After his wife refused several times to speak with him, we all got tired of answering the Mad Bomber’s calls.  He would let it ring forever so eventually we learned to take the phone off the hook.

Mr. Mad Bomber then brilliantly figured out a way to get everyone’s attention including his wife’s.  That was when he discovered that he could disrupt our sleep by calling in bomb threats to the barracks.  It seems strange now but we became more or less complacent about hearing alarms go off at 2 am.  We’d drag ourselves out of bed and stand out in the cold for an hour or two while we waited for EOD crews (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) and their sniffer dogs to give us the all clear.

One particular evening while doing our homework, my roommate and I heard a scream from down the hall. That we heard anything at all is noteworthy as doing homework mostly entailed sitting at our desks with our huge cassette tape players turned up to 11, while feverishly translating whatever we managed to hear.  In the days before iPods and ear buds we wore the old school, standard issue, monster headphones.

 

The tone of the scream was chilling and in an instant I was up and running.  I saw a woman burst out of a room down the hall shrieking as she ran.  When I arrived at the door that she’d fled from, there he was- The Mad Bomber, except I didn’t know that yet.  He wasn’t a huge man but he was standing over his wife’s bed slapping her helpless figure around.  All I knew at that moment is that someone was bullying a woman and his was back towards me. 

Enraged, I charged into the room hitting him like a linebacker from behind as I grabbed him around the waist.  It startled him and like bucking bronco he tried scraping me off by taking one or two quick steps backward in to the nearest solid object which happened to be the door of the wall locker.  It dropped me to the floor, was quite painful and yet, it was simultaneously empowering.  At that moment I experienced something that was beyond ordinary anger.  It roused in me a real live, Bill Bixby-becomes-Lou Ferrigno’s-Incredible Hulk transformative fury. 

He must have presumed he’d knocked me senseless and turned his attention back to beating up on his wife.  To this day I am not exactly sure what happened next as the rest of the encounter in that room is a blur.  I know that I must have grabbed him again and that I somehow got him out of the room.  My roommate and others later reported that they saw him hurled through the air out of the room stopping only when he slammed into the far wall of the hallway. 

My memory of what happened re-engages there and all I remember thinking at the time was that somehow we had to get him under control.  I recall that by this time a crowd had gathered in the hallway and there was screaming as he stood up again.  I was hitting him everywhere as hard as I could and my roommate had pitched in by angling for his genitals.  Something was odd in his responses-he was unresponsive to the pain he should have been feeling.  I began to worry that he was high on drugs and could get completely crazy on us.  It was time to end this fight.  He was bent over a little bit and I hit him with a vicious upper cut to his abdomen.  One of my knuckles hit something with a “thunk” that I thought was his belt buckle.

 We’d find out what it was soon enough.

 

The blow caused him to rise up to his toes and then he finally collapsed to the floor.  I cranked his arm around behind his back, put my foot on his neck and locked his elbow in place.  This pain submission move finally stilled him. 

At that moment the CQ (Charge of Quarters) arrived.  He was a good friend and looked at me, standing there with one leg on top of this guy and said something to the effect that he might have known it would be me getting things under control.   

He and another guy grabbed him up off the floor and carted him down to the duty office to call the MP’s from Fort Ord.  I followed behind. 

It may seem unbelievable in this post 9/11 era, but no one in the entire Air Force barracks actually had a weapon or even handcuffs.  All we could do was call the military police to come and take care of things.  He was pretty badly beaten up so they sat this guy in a chair while waiting for the MP’s to arrive.  That’s when he reached into the top of his pants and pulled out a Molotov cocktail.  What I had thought was a belt buckle bruising my knuckles had been the edge of the bottle. I saw bullets taped to the outside of the glass and I knew that if he lit that thing the bullets would be flying as well. 

This time the bomb was real and I turned and pulled the alarm.   Others started running, banging on doors to get people out of their rooms and outside to safety.  We had no idea if he had more than one or what else he may have had strapped to his body.

Later on I found out that he had managed to ignite the cocktail and bullets did fly around the room, although no one was injured. The fire was quickly put out, but according to a friend of mine who is stationed there now, there is still a bullet hole in one of the windows of that room.

Later that evening, C.I.D. (Army-Criminal Investigation Division) and O.S.I. (Air Force-Office of Special Investigations) officers interviewed us for details about the incident.  I was standing there with my roommate as they questioned us. We talked about how we heard screaming, ran down the hall, beat him up, etc... 

Then they asked me, “How and at what point did you manage to take the knife away from him”?

“What knife?” I replied, and that’s when the shaking started.

“Well, he continued, “Mad Bomber’s wife reported that he came in to the room and threatened her and her roommate with a knife.  We found the knife on the floor by the bed and we want to know how you managed to get it away from him”.

A knife explained the blood curdling screams we heard and why the roommate looked so terrified when I saw her running away. 

I told the detective that I didn’t remember seeing a knife.  Suddenly I was dizzy and my knees buckled.  I passed out momentarily, partly from the shock of the entire incident and partly from the realization that I had just fought off an armed attacker.

My roommate picked me up off the ground and we finished answering their questions.  The next night a group of us went out for drinks and celebrated our “bringing down of the Mad Bomber”.   And that was the end of it.

We were never asked to appear as witnesses in a civilian courtroom or military tribunal and we have no idea if any charges were pressed at all.  Many of us have often wondered what became of the “Mad Bomber”.  We do not know if it was reported in the local press.  Considering that CID and OSI conducted an investigation it may not have been reported to the public at all.  What began as a domestic dispute became the focal point of a slew of federal offenses committed and yet…we never heard a word about it afterwards. 

For all we know he went back to his life in West Virginia (where we heard the couple was from) and still brags about the day he threw a bomb into the Air Force barracks at DLI.

A few months later Desert Shield evolved into Desert Storm and more precautions regarding access to the barracks were put into effect.  ID’s were checked, barricades were put into place and parking became restricted nearby in order to prevent a repeat of incidents such as the truck bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.  

Fast forward to 2012- if this had happened today there would have been a firestorm of media coverage, and no doubt there would have been a lengthy trial involving charges of domestic terrorism. 

The POM has since become a closed access post due to military restructuring in 1994. There are now fences, limited access guard gates and the general public may no longer use the roads through The POM.  The Mad Bomber would not have such an easy time getting in to the post, much less the barracks.

After the incident my friends and I went back to studying our respective languages; Russian, Korean, Chinese, Arabic etc… as though nothing much had happened.  We did not yet appreciate that we were only beginning to comprehend the full meaning of the English word, “terrorism”.

Past Perfect

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.” 
― Anaïs Nin

I can remember sitting in English classes years ago learning about “tenses”.  My eyes would cross while my brain performed exotic, snake-eating-its-own-tail type of maneuvers, as I struggled to fully appreciate concepts such as, Future in the Past.

“I knew you would do it.” is a sentence that conveys somehow, that in the past, you were aware that something would happen in the future, and yet the sentence happens all at once. For me, it was as much a study of Einstein’s relativity theory as it was English grammar, but I suppose both can only be truly understood intuitively.

The tense that seems to command attention these days is Past Perfect.   Ever since the past happened we haven’t been able to go backwards fast enough.

We worship the past so much that nothing from now seems to count. We admire the past and its perfective state through the haze of mass media filtered nostalgia.   

“Retro” is the rage and we have jumped through the rear view looking glass.

 Take the car companies for example.  They are recycling old name plates on vehicles that bear no resemblance in form or function to the originals because of the marketability of the brand.  When you see new versions of the Chrysler K Car, the Chevy Chevette, or Ford Granada, head for the hills, for surely the end of the world is nigh.  Certain things were meant to be sacrificed to the trash heap of history.   Some of the new cars with old names have been designed in ways that suggest their former glory, (Seen the Dodge Charger lately?) but it is becoming politically incorrect and downright expensive to own a real muscle car.

Despite all of the wistful longing for past perfection, we now actually live our lives in Present Continuous. 

History has stopped happening.  

Thanks to the internet, and websites like Facebook and YouTube everything that has occurred may perpetually continue to occur, on demand.   

Attention spans have shriveled because we are so distracted. Past and Present exist simultaneously and history is easily manipulated merely by updating a Wikipedia entry. George Orwell lives among us. Big Brother doesn’t have to spy on us as we once feared. Now we report in voluntarily. 

I first knew for sure that the time continuum had become distorted when a recently deceased friend posted something on my Facebook page.  Whether he had been reincarnated or resurrected was hard to determine but it has become apparent that though we may die, our digital souls have infinite half lives.

Shifts in the scale of time have blurred the edges of our own epoch as well.

Usually when I watch a movie determining the setting is simple.  One image of a panoramic scene, a close up on the technology or clothing and the century, continent or planet is revealed.  Each decade from the turn of the 20^th century through the 1980′s all had their distinct and clear iconic images. 

That no longer seems to be the case.

What if you were to film a movie today? How would you establish the time and place visually?

 So much time has been spent retro-fitting our lives, we no longer have much of a present.

 How would you make a distinction between a movie from 2007 or 1995?  Noting changes in cell phone technology or perhaps the widespread use of ever smaller and sophisticated computing devices is about it.  Will saggy pants and tattooed everything be our legacy?  When it comes to this generations’ stamp on our visual memory, there’s nothing that really sets apart the past 20 years.

1970’s fashions weren’t my favorite.  I didn’t like bell bottoms then and I didn’t like them when they were recycled in the 90’s.  I’m not asking for disco to stage a comeback either, but at least those years had a unique character and flavor. 

My parent’s generation had the humility and honor to call their music from the late 50’s - the dawn of the rock and roll era, “oldies".  It was at least a full acknowledgement that their childhood was over and in the past.  Starting in the early 1970’s movies like American Graffiti, the TV shows Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley signaled the beginning of our backwards longings and regression. 

 Baby Boomers managed to create a protracted adolescence for themselves and are now refusing to grow up.  They cling to their childhoods and label every artifact that defined it as “classic”.  Ah, The Wonder Years...The word classic has been dragged around so much lately it’s lost its true meaning.  I’m not sure how they decided that their memories are particularly precious and set some sort of standard.

My personal definition of “Classic Rock” is any popular band that has at least 1 dead member.  Somehow baby boomer stuff never gets old; the past is perfect and present all at once.  You can turn on the radio and  “Classic Rock” from the 60’s, 70’s and even 80’s  still dominates commercial airwaves, even though that music is further in the past now, than my parent’s late 1950’s era music was in the early 1970’s.   During the 1980’s the Woodstock generation did their best to continually rehash the 1960’s, pun intended.  The drugs obviously affected their ability to properly mature.

Surely I was not the only person to note the irony when The Who performed “My Generation” at the Super Bowl in 2010.   I was deeply embarrassed for myself, as well as Roger Daltry and Pete Townsend while they sang the lyrics, “Hope I die before I get old” as both were well into their 60’s at the time.

I don’t want anyone to get the impression that I think getting older is a negative thing.  I’m all for a healthy, mature outlook.  I would just like to see a more graceful means of embracing the changes wrought by age.   What was edgy and rebellious 40 years ago now sounds like the pathetic refrain of denial. 

Perhaps it is well past time we all grew up, looked to the future and changed our tunes just a bit?

Aging Up-A Runner Looks at 40… and Beyond

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot. 
Eleanor Roosevelt

Runners never get older, we just “Age-Up”, right?  Ah the benefits of denial, pride and vanity…

After blowing right  through the 40-44 age group without a hitch, I woke up one day, smack in the middle of the 45-49’ers.  And then it happened.  Shortly before my 47^th birthday we’d gone out to dinner to a local restaurant.   I was finding it difficult to read the menu and attributed it to the dim lighting and poor menu design.  My vision had always been perfect, so the thought that I might need glasses never entered my mind.    Shortly afterwards a coworker teased me about the size of the font on my cell phone text messages.  Denial and compensation could only carry me so far I guess.  It was time to visit the eye doctor.    As I sit here typing this story I’m using my shiny new reading glasses.  It annoyed me for the longest time that I needed them but I have come to accept it as normal.  Besides, it’s nice not to have to struggle to see what I’m doing. 

As runners when we experience the changes to our bodies wrought by age, denial and compensation kick in almost immediately.   Early morning stiffness, new aches and pains can all be rationalized away for a while.   We blame everything but age.  We try to ward off the effects of getting older with all things new: new shoes, new socks, new workouts, new gear, and new food.  Some of it does help but the inexorable toll that the years exact on our bodies will eventually show.  As runners we are better at warding off the effects of aging compared to the portion of society that doesn’t exercise, but eventually we all succumb.  This doesn’t mean we quit, we just need modify our expectations.

Years ago I had been able to roll out of bed, throw on my running shoes and shorts and head out the door.  Nowadays, it takes much longer for me to wake up, hydrate and “take care of business” before I get out the door. I can run just as far, but now I have to wake up earlier to prepare to cover the same distance.  Perhaps the biggest change I’ve had to deal with has to do with stretching. I was having the type of pain that was keeping me from running and it had gotten to the point where I was willing to try anything to fix it.  I’ve never been very flexible and rarely stretch much.  Face it, very few of us probably stretch “enough”, whatever that magical amount may be.  Yoga had often been recommended to me over the years.  I’d give it a half hearted try and then completely dismiss it.  It annoyed me and I bad mouthed it for years but had no idea why.   Why did yoga make me so angry?  I have come to realize that it was because doing yoga made it painfully obvious to me that I was not very flexible and needed to stretch more.  Yoga was hard and didn’t come easily to me.  It exposed my weakness, my vulnerability. Strength and endurance has always been my pride and vanity.  I imagine it’s a very human trait to avoid working our weak areas and playing it safe with the strengths. Don’t believe me?  How many times have you heard about runners avoiding hills because “they hate hills”?  We know hill work is good for us and makes us better so why do so many runners “hate” hills? Because they are difficult, they require hard work and expose our weaknesses.  So many runners miss out on the benefits of hill running by sticking to level ground where they feel competent, though remain unchallenged. 

Recently I thought about yoga again.  Deep down I knew it was exactly what I needed. I felt that old anger rise again but this time I thought about my reading glasses. I had disliked the idea that I needed them but was grateful that they made reading easier.  I realized that there was a lesson in that for me.

With a different mindset I decided to try yoga again.  I had resolved to view my weakness as a challenge rather than a threat.  It was time to face down my demons with hard work and a positive attitude. 

Turns out they helped- both the new attitude and the yoga. I found that the more I did the yoga stretches, the less painful my running was.  Nothing succeeds like success.  Each bit of forward progress fed into a positive feedback cycle and suddenly I found myself looking forward to doing yoga because it made me feel good and because my runs were so much better.  The big discovery here was that anger and denial had been replaced by acceptance and… improvement!

The old cliché is that with age comes wisdom.  I’d like to expand upon that for runners and say that “aging up” requires strategy.  Our bodies will weaken with time-we have no choice, no say in the matter.  What we do have control over is how we deal with it.  Challenging rather than denying weakness was the attitude adjustment I needed. We may have to do things a little bit differently; to adapt to aging in ways we never might have considered.  I dare you all to confront the weakness in yourselves. Do something you don’t usually do.  Get off the level ground and go run a hill, do a trail run, try some speed work, stretch a few minutes longer than usual. If you really want a challenging stretch-call me- I can show you a few yoga moves.

Om Shanti!

Personal Growth

“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.”

― Thomas Paine

Dear My Oncologist,

This year was my 11th anniversary as a breast cancer survivor. For the past 6 or 7 years I have visited your office every year. I graduated to yearly check-ups after I passed my 5 year anniversary, as you well know. My annual visit is usually sometime during the month of April as that coincides with when I received my diagnosis. Each year, during the weeks leading up to my appointment, presumably like most cancer survivors, I feel pangs of anxiety that manifest in various ways. Mostly I do a great deal of remembering, feeling and thinking about those miserable days during my illness.

Nasty memories of severe nausea intermingle with fond memories of the warmth, competence and compassion of “Mary” and “Jane”, the nurses that worked with me.

The recollections of pain caused by surgeries, endless needle sticks and physical therapy are assuaged because I recall the warm smile, genuine care, concern and skill of “Rita” who ran the lab.

The fear and panic I experienced from the initial diagnosis gave way to hope and confidence because of you, my physician. You were always candid, honest and direct with me, which I greatly appreciated. Despite the fact that my pathology report was concerning to you, I never at any time felt that you considered my long term survival in question. That attitude rubbed off on me as well and while I was frightened (ok more like scared shitless!) and knew I was facing a tough haul, I never doubted for a moment that I would survive.

Later on, I came to regard my yearly visits with you as more of a chance to receive a joyful hug and bring each other up to speed on the year’s personal highlights, rather than the medical visit that it was.

This year was different for me. I actually forgot my appointment that had been set the year before. This past April, I was out of town, traveling on business and something I saw must have brought it to mind when I suddenly realized…I had forgotten! I called your office and as it turned out, the person that answered said that they were in fact, about to call me.  I had missed my appointment that had been scheduled for that very day!  I forget many things, and often have to resort to relying on lists and calendar entries to keep my days in check, but I never had to make a note of an oncology appointment.  I guess something about me has changed and that somehow, the date didn’t loom as large as it had in the past.

I have finally come to the realization that I truly did kick cancer’s ass. I no longer require the services of an oncologist and the time has come for me to move on.

In many ways I have looked forward to writing you this letter for a very long time.

Dr. Oncologist, in so many words, what I would like to tell you, with the utmost love, humor and triumph I can muster is ....

You’re Fired!!!

Please accept my deepest appreciation for all that you and your staff have done for me over the years. I hope they too, understand and celebrate along with me for the reasons that I will no longer be returning as a patient. 

As I have mentioned in the past, I will always be more than happy to speak with any of your patients that you feel may need a pep talk or advice from a survivor, especially the ones just starting out on the arduous journey.

Fondly,

Me

Contact info inserted here

P.S. Perhaps if you decide to change your specialty to Geriatric Medicine I would be delighted to utilize your services in the distant future!

Gratitude

Good days and bad days.  We all have them.  People, animals, machines and even corporations.  There have been times when I have been so angry about something I experienced I immediately came home and wrote a nasty letter. Sometimes the issue would be resolved to my satisfaction. Sometimes not.  Regardless of whether or not I received a suitable response to my complaint, it always made me feel better to vent.  

 I also try to make it my business to write the good letters. 

Too often the negative is the only feedback in the loop. Think back to the last time you complained about someone or something.  I am willing to guess that it was pretty easy to remember the last incident.  Now think back to the most recent time you stopped to compliment someone, anyone : your spouse, a friend, a stranger or even contact a company when an employee went out of their way to provide you with good service?  Can you remember that as easily? I hope so.

Today is one of the good days.  I am happy to share with you a letter I wrote to Delta Airlines. 

                                               

To Whom It May Concern;

                                               

On a recent flight from Salt Lake City to Atlanta I noticed several uniformed members of the US Air Force boarding along with me.  As an Air Force veteran, I found myself observing how much the uniform had changed since I had served; though not much else.  Members of the military always carry themselves differently than civilians, especially in uniform and it made me smile with pride to see them.  I travel frequently and often encounter military personnel.  I always want to say something unique and special to each of them but usually all I manage to do is fumble around and thank them for their service. 

On this occasion I decided that I could show my appreciation, albeit in a small way.  Before we departed, I offered my Delta Sky Miles American Express card (yes, in my letter to Delta I even gave them a shameless plug!) to one of the flight attendants and requested that she use it to purchase drinks for all of the uniformed personnel onboard.  I requested that she keep my identity anonymous-to tell them only that the drinks were a gesture of thanks from one vet to others who are now serving their country.

 She thanked me and told me that it was very nice to offer to do that.

 She asked me if I would hold on to my card until the beverage service started.

I had figured she didn’t want to risk losing it. 

Shortly after take-off the ranking member of the group approached my seat and thanked me. Drinks hadn’t even been served yet and my anonymous cover was blown!  It was quite alright however as it afforded me the opportunity to shake his hand and express my appreciation for all of them directly.  I walked back with him to the section where they were sitting and shook all of their hands and thanked each and every one of them.  We chatted a little bit about where they were going as well as what my job with the Air Force had been.

 Later on, when the drink cart came to my seat I thought I’d order something for myself and settle the tab for the others as well.  Once again, I offered my card to pay but neither of the two flight attendants would take it. No, that doesn't quite cover it: they flat out refused to take my card!

I should mention that neither of them was the original attendant I had spoken with so it became apparent to me that this had been discussed among the crew. 

I had simply intended a small gesture of appreciation.  I was grateful that while I had been trying to honor others, I unexpectedly found myself being honored along with them.

I was deeply moved that the Delta crew was so thoughtful that they chose to amplify my personal expression of gratitude. 

As I write this there is a crew of airmen headed to Afghanistan thankful for the gratitude and acknowledgement they received on a Delta flight.  I made the offer and received the high fives, but the real thanks belong to the crew who made it happen-and took none of the credit.

Warmest Regards,

 -end of letter

I made sure to note the names of the crew and include all the pertinent details of the flight so that there was no question as for whom the compliments were intended.  I hope they get the accolades they deserve.

I inserted a P.S. as well:

I would also like to mention that it bodes well for Delta as a corporate entity to see that Delta empowers its employees enough to make these types of ad hoc decisions.  It enables them to enrich the customer experience well beyond the ordinary expectations of customer service.

Don't think I've swallowed too much Koolaid.

Someday Delta may do something stupid and I will be more than happy to let them know that, if and when it happens.

For today, I'm grateful for the opportunity to write the positive letter.

It feels good.