Category: Running
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The Boston Marathon and the Return of “Boston Billy”
Today is Patriot's Day in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the occasion of the 113th running of the Boston Marathon, the grandpappy of them all. My mind drifts back to my own attempt 30 years ago in 1979. Like Bill Rodgers in 1999, I dropped out at Heartbreak Hill, 21.3 miles into it. I was running…
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Running as Equalizer?
Kirk Johnson, To the Edge: A Man, Death Valley, and the Mystery of Endurance, Warner 2001, p. 179: Runners, I believe, are the last great Calvinists. We all believe, on some level, that success or failure in a race — and thus in life — is a measure of our moral fiber. Part of that…
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Easter Morn
The magic came at 6:25 AM. I was 50 minutes into the run when conditions turned auspicious. The fleshly vehicle, now properly stoked, rose to the occasion of some serious striding under the sign of a celestial conjunction: the Moon, on the wane but still nearly full, was setting over Dinosaur Mountain just as Old Sol…
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Marathons Reduce Car Crash Deaths
It makes the news when a runner drops dead during a marathon, but it is not news when a motorist dies in a crash. This contributes to the illusion that marathoning is dangerous when it is not, compared to other things we do on a daily basis such as pilot metallic behemoths at 70 miles per hour…
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This Running Life: Sheehan Remembered
You cannot convey to the nonrunner the romance of the road any more than you can bring a spiritual slug to savor the exquisite joys of philosophy and chess. But if you are a runner you should be able to appreciate the following passage from On Running, pp. 166-167. George Sheehan (1918-1993) has been dead…
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Phantom Runners
I took up running almost 35 years ago in the summer of 1974 in that romantic hub of running, Boston on the Charles, the Athens of America, where Hopkinton is Marathon and the road to Athens traverses Heartbreak Hill. It was a great time and place to be alive, young, studying philosophy, and running down…
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Ruminations After a Road Race; Philippians 4:13
The following was written 19 February 2006. This year I did better, achieving a personal best for this course, completing it in 2:23. That's nothing to crow about, but without us rank-and-file pavement pounders, the real runners would not shine in all their glory. ……………… This morning I had occasion once again to verify the…
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Don’t Say ‘Turkey Day’
Say 'Thanksgiving' and give thanks. You don't need to eat turkey to be thankful. Gratitude is a good old conservative virtue. I'd expatiate further, but I've got a race to run. You guessed it: a 'turkey trot.' In Mesa, Arizona, 10 kilometers = 6.2 miles. With only a couple of exceptions I've run this race…