Yesterday's Legs

I ran five miles on yesterday’s legs.

Yesterday’s legs are sore and stiff from 45 minutes in the House of Pain twenty-four hours earlier, where the push-ups and pull-ups and lunges and ladders and lung-searing epiphanies have me hunched over and sweating and gasping for breath and wondering if age is making me soft and whether it is time I give up pizza, and whether this is the day I finally break down and hurl.

But I don’t.

I drive straight to the track and push my team to their limits, too. All for one, and one for all. They collapse on the turf next to Lane One when all is finished. I think I've broken them -- finally, because they are unbreakable -- but they rise and jog the cooldown, smiles on their exhausted faces for having gotten it done. Nobody hurls. 

I ran five miles on yesterday’s legs.

The air is hot but I wear a sweatshirt because I sometimes like to wring out every last bit of garlic and coffee and hops and decay from my pores, and running in a heavy cotton hoodie on a hot day is cheaper than installing a sauna somewhere in the bowels of my home.  The trail takes me under the freeway toward a cool, eucalyptus-lined climb known as Devo. I am drenched before I take my first step upward. 

Devo is a bitch. Devo is 100 yards at a grade so steep that I should be wearing a climbing harness. Devo is so steep they should attach ropes to the top so that I can rappel back down. Devo is so steep that it smacks away the worries and the whining and the doubts that inhabit each day. Devo is the truth. You either get to the top or your don’t. And if you don’t, you agonize over the name of the demon that made you quit.

I force myself not to quit. See, every single one of the hills that my team runs is named after one of our graduating seniors. Each one gets to pick the hill and its name. Devo is the hill my son chose to name after himself four years ago. No damn way I quit on Devo.

I ran five miles on yesterday’s legs.

I didn’t know that today’s legs will be so slow from yesterday’s workout. So heavy. So Frankenstein-like. They show oomph when a swarm of bees encircle me, flying angrily up out of their in-ground hive on the hill after Devo. The way is flat for a half-mile after that. Saddleback Mountain – beloved, Mother Saddleback, with snow on her mile-high roof after last weekend’s cold and storms – rises straight ahead to the east. Dana Point and the calm blue Pacific shine far down below, on the western side of the ridge. Yesterday’s legs catch a break on the flat. Sweat pores down my face, streaking my sunglasses. I take them off. My lumbering stride feels lighter as I dance across a flat, muddy vestige of Saturday’s rains. And then, I glide down the half-mile of Crazy Horse (don’t ask). It is a reprieve waiting to find me, and I am thankful as yesterday’s legs finally get a break.

I ran five miles on yesterday’s legs.

I almost didn’t run. There was the 7 a.m. conference call, the hours in the writing chair, the coziness of my slippers and sweats (never to be underestimated), and the awareness that an extra hour of writing is far more productive than even a sliver of running. But a run cannot be defined like words on a page or dollars in the bank or the satisfaction of the endorphin rush that comes with the total focus of butt-in-seat writing. And that’s what writing is – getting your butt in the seat, ignoring the phone and the email and the internet, and finding a way to make sentences. That's what all desk work is. But the run is vital to making all that happen. The run makes the emotions fresh, keeps the words flowing, keeps the butt from jiggling after all those long hours perched atop the desk chair like an eagle sitting on its nest eggs. The run isn’t always an hour, and it isn’t today. But it is a run. Even on yesterday’s battered and overworked and retail-stiff legs, with hamstrings like iron rods and quadriceps lacking the simple power to lift and sprint, it's a run. 

I ran five miles on yesterday’s legs.

I turn left at the bottom of Crazy Horse and start to climb again. Past the golf course and behind the mansions that nobody seems to live in. Up a hill, down a hill, breathing in bits of springtime in smells and pollen and bits of stray white flowers wafting off the ornamental plums. The run never gets easy, as runs sometimes do. No awards or rewards or sublime moments of inner bliss. No euphoria. Just one hill after another, red sweatshirt soaked at neck and nipples. No detached thoughts about the new Springsteen album, no rant about the equestrian people, no planning about what the year might hold. It is pain and catharsis and pain and catharsis and heavy legs and pain and catharsis and heavy legs that just want to find a nice place to sit down, even though we both know there are at least two more miles to run and one last amazing brute of a hill to climb.

I ran five miles on yesterday’s legs.

I hide on that trail behind the houses, the one with the sycamores and the eucalyptus and that inadvertent little wetlands that looks like it might be a terrifying place to get stuck on a dark and stormy night. My mind is not my mind these days, lost as it is in research – but thankfully, not worry. So to feel the sun on my face, even with legs that my 20-year-old self would have mocked, just because I was young and fast and didn’t understand that sometimes running isn’t about how fast you race, but about how many years you keep running.

I really wish I could run that fast again. But I won’t. Not ever. I need to let that go. The thought of it almost makes my heart break, but it's the truth.

The truth. 

I ran five miles on yesterday’s legs.

I climb that concrete hill and know that the last mile is downhill. Slightly downhill. Ever so slightly downhill. On the verge of being level. But downhill. Yesterday’s legs are like cows smelling the barn, and they tell me they want to be twenty again. So they pretend. We find a stretch of smooth dirt along the road and run facing traffic, red sweatshirt drenched in fear and anger and longing and jealousy. And desire. And stubborness. And memories. Yesterday’s legs coax me into believing that it is all a ruse – that yesterday’s legs are fresh and vital and have been full of spirit the entire run, and that it is my own plodding will that is lacking. Yesterday’s legs convince me that I have a certain smooth flow to my gait, if only I will believe in yesterday's legs.

I ran five miles on yesterday’s legs.

I am done. Walk to the truck. Drink an Izzy. Grab my stopwatch and slowly stroll to the track to await my team. Today is their easy day. They will run the sae loop as I did, but at a faster pace that feels so easy to them that simple conversation will make it feel like a dream. They don’t know what they have. They don’t know how good they are. They may never know. Sometimes it’s hard to find perspective in the midst of training and struggle. But someday they will run the same course on yesterday’s legs and realize that they are quite awesome, indeed. Yesterday's legs convince me -- as it will one day convince them -- that there is no yesterday. Not now. Not ever. 

I ran five miles on yesterday’s legs.

And I will again tomorrow.

Bunker Face

I can explain, I can explain.... 

The reasons I haven't posted for nearly a month are many and all quite lame. Sometimes it seems like there's just nothing to say. And sometimes it seems like there's too much being poured into a book or the training plan, with no water left in the bathtub to spread around to the site. But the other day my wife pointed out that I have Bunker Face, which is her euphemism for the bloat and crazy unshaven look I am sporting right now, all brought on by too much writing and stress (The Bunker is her euphemism about the change that comes over me when I write a book). So I thought this might be a good time to pull myself out of the stale air of the bunker -- literally. My dog loves to sleep on my office floor and fart away the morning -- to riff on running and life. 

Feels good to breathe a little. 

Before moving on, I should say I had a little fun recently, writing the afterword to a new edition of the Tour de France book A RACE FOR MADMEN. Felt good to dip a toe into the Tour waters again. 

Onward. That Bunker Face comment kind of stung, but not because it wasn't accurate. A close look in the mirror showed that Calene was spot-on. What bothered me was that I had deluded myself into thinking that I had everything under control -- watching my food after that love affair with bread and butter in Ireland, staying away from craft-brewed beer, limiting the coffee to a.m. hours only. And on and on. But I think we all know how a project can consume us slowly but surely, until it has taken up permanent residence in the prefrontal cortex. Right now I can feel my new book buzzing around the front of my brain, right behind the forehead, impatiently demanding that I stop with this silly blog and dig my nose back into my research. Other telltale signs of full immersion in a project are being unable to sit still when the work day is done, and that constant forgetfulness which comes with being otherwise absorbed. I am thankful I have my track team to take my mind off everything for a few hours every afternoon. If I didn't need to be at the track each day I'd just spend those hours alone in my office, growing more absorbed in the detective work of researching history. 

The antidote for all of this is running. I can't meditate to save my life. And yoga just puts me in a bad mood. BUt something as simple as a calming run -- doesn't need to be long, just a few easy miles -- washes away the stress. But when I did a mental tally of how much I've run over the last few months, I was amazed at how little I've actually been training. My typical week is 5-6 hours of training, but lately it's been down to two or three. No wonder the stress kicks in, sending out those hormones with leave me dazed and crazed. 

But here's the thing: why does it work that way? People who love to run or bike or swim get as much joy and sensual feedback as anyone addicted to food or reading or driving fast in their car. Those are stressbusters, too. But it seems that it's easier to reach for the simple stress buster, like a bar of chocolate, than to take that first step out the door. 

My garden, I realized the other day, is a melange of all my travels. There is the lavender from Provence. The daffodils from Green Park. The orange trees from all the years running in the groves. Even that should be a way to beat stress, but sitting out there isn't so easy these days. Can't figure out why. 

I am trying, really trying, to learn how to manage stress. But I think that somewhere, deep down inside, it's a drug all its own. I like it. I like being totally focused on a project, losing myself in such a way that each moment has a specific purpose. The detachment of a solitary trail run up on Chiquita Ridge and the full blown creative buzz of pouring every last emotion into what I very loosely call work are the yin and yang of the endorphin scale. I love them both, but sometimes one more than the other. 

So we'll see where all this leads. I'm not much of a devotional reader, but a good friend gave me a devotional not long ago and I have been energized by the perspective. Let's face it, being mentally healthy means stepping outside yourself once in a while. This goes as much for runners as it does for writers. That daily dose of the devotional, which I all too often try to drown out with loud music and caffeination, has become a two-paragraph reminder that there is running, there is writing, there is stress, and then there is perspective. 

Keep Pushing... Always