With devastating weather stretching from Dallas to New York, many of you are stuck in the house. Here are a few ideas to alleviate cabin fever. Read to the end for a big surprise.
What I'm Reading
Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. Disney made this their own, in an adaptation I really enjoyed. Now that I'm finally getting around to reading the book I can say for sure this one's not for kids. The jungle and its mysteries are scary in a chilling sort of way. Mowgli isn't just a cute kid but a natural born killer. Balloo, I should mention, is still a gentle giant.
Current Fascination
The Rest is History is a British podcast that has replaced Hardcore History as my go-to listen. It's worth admitting that I have enormous gaps in my historical knowledge. There aren't enough hours in the day to read every book on a certain topic to fill those holes. This is where a great pod comes in handy. I can listen to four or five one-hour episodes on a topic and have my curiosity sated. The recent segment on Nelson was masterful.
What's On TV
With Landman completed and Slow Horses almost finished, The Pitt is the show I wait for each Thursday. It's ER updated 20 years later, but better. Also, with Survivor's 50th season set to air in a month I think it's worth weighing in on the current state of the show. Lots of controversy swirled around last season and its rumors of cheating. My two cents is that there are too many immunity idols, too many puzzles, nobody's hungry (or bug bitten), and what's with all those changes of clothing? It's definitely not as tough as it used to be. Here's hoping 50 brings back the old mojo.
Workout of the Weekend
If you're snowbound you have one of two options: run on the treadmill or brave the outdoors. Neither is really inspirational. But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
Comfort Food
My oldest son lives back east. In anticipation of the storm, he says stores sold out of water first. Then beer and wine. Finally, the food began to disappear. Chief among those items were Vidalia onions. His theory is that the cold weather means everyone's in the mood for French Onion soup. It's 75 and balmy here in the OC, but that sounds pretty good to me, too. Check out this great recipe.
And finally...
If The Long Run was already on sale I'd ask you all to curl up with my new book for the duration. The next best thing is pre-ordering your copy today. Then write a review when your book arrives on April 14! Let me help the process along: here's a free chapter for my email subscribers. Stay warm!
Leaping Forward
September 10, 1972
Mather AFB, CA
Day
I did not know about the revolution. Not at first. I was just an eleven-year-old kid who got stuck in right field during little league games because I shied away from hot infield grounders and prayed for a walk every time I came to bat. Too light and small for football. Soccer didn’t exist. I faced a future without any sporting talent whatsoever. Surely, women would shun me for my lack of physicality. Then, like a cosmic gift, running came into my life.
I was glued to television coverage of the Munich Olympics. ABC Sports. Jim McKay. Mark Spitz and his seven gold medals, Olga Korbut’s back flip off the uneven bars, political larceny at the gold medal basketball game, and shocking tragedy that saw eleven Israeli Olympians murdered by the terrorist group Black September.
That was fifty-three years ago but I didn’t Google to write that paragraph. For all that went on, good and horrible, at Munich, what I remember most is the running. It’s no stretch whatsoever to say it changed my life. I loved how boldly Steve Prefontaine raced and soon put his poster over my bed. If only I could be as cool. I wore my “Go Pre” t-shirt until it was in tatters.
And Frank Shorter. I watched his Olympic marathon from start to finish. It was Shorter who chose to race just five days after the Israeli massacre, telling fellow American marathoner Kenny Moore that “if we don’t run, the terrorists win.”
We’re not to that part of the story. Not yet. We’re still going to make a big jump, leaping over significant portions of modern running’s history. I’ll explain why in a second. This is not to minimize advances in race speeds, training methodologies, footwear, and diet during those decades filled with war and social change. The world had no lack of incredible runners. The short list is names like Glenn Cunningham, Paavo Nurmi, Emil Zatopek, Arthur Wint, John Landy, Sandor Iharos, Vladimir Kuts, Tom Courtney, Jim Peters, Roger Moens, Pyotr Bolotnikov, Alain Mimoun, Murray Halberg, Abebe Bikila, Herb Elliot, Peter Snell.
Roger Bannister breaks the four-minute mile in 1954, the first time since the naked Mr. Powell from Birmingham in 1897. This time it’s official. Sports Illustrated names Bannister their first-ever Sportsman of the Year.
Ted Corbitt is a founder of the New York City Runners Club in 1958. Also, the Road Runners Club of America. The now-forgotten “Father of American Long-Distance Running.” Ran the Helsinki Olympic marathon in 1952.
The Tokyo Olympics in 1964 will bring surprise gold medal moments from Billy Mills and Bob Schul in the 10,000 and 5,000 meters.
Before getting to the revolution, it’s worth updating our views on a 1959 short story by Alan Sillitoe, if only for the title. The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner is a non-runner’s idea of the sport. We still quote this assessment of a runner’s mentality like it was handed down from the solitary Pheidippides himself. Yet most runners don’t find the sport lonely at all — and the introverts among us actually prefer solitude. Being alone and being lonely are two different things. Some will even tell you that a long group run is the best hour of their week, equal parts confessional, socializing, and righteous suffering.
Back to our list. Mighty runners, all. Iconic achievements. Strong athletic men (the women won’t arrive for awhile. But when they do, watch out) who bring crowds to their feet, thrilled with a burst of speed from nowhere. The rare individuals who make a casual bystander understand that distance runners are heroic.
Yet none sparked a mass stampede by millions of non-runners to buy a new pair of shoes with thick padded soles and set off on a long, solitary run. Then do the same day after day until it becomes not just a habit but a lifestyle. Better health. Better mental state. Better sex.
On that note, an aside. True story: I once borrowed a dollar from my mom after finishing Bay to Breakers at age thirteen. Came back with a bumper sticker stating, “Runners Keep It Up Longer.” I just thought it was a statement about long distance running that would look really cool on the back of the family Country Squire. My embarrassed mother had to cautiously explain what that meant.
The fact that some entrepreneur took the time and money to print bumper stickers about running at a time when very few people actually ran portended that something big was on the horizon. People feel it coming. And when it arrives, it will be bigger than anyone could possibly have imagined.
People won’t just be content to run their local marathon or 5k. They will fly to some distant city and rent a hotel room and spend money on movies and shows and dinner — because you want to stay off your feet as much as possible before race day — and go to an overcrowded expo at the local convention center or a big hotel ballroom on Saturday afternoon to pick up your bib and buy hundreds of dollars of merch, before waking up nervous at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning to slather Vaseline between your thighs and place band-aids over your nipples then run 26.2 miles with thousands of strangers, grabbing a paper cup of warm Gatorade from an aid station every other mile then spilling so much you barely get a mouthful. Finally, the finish line after three or four or five hours, where a stranger hands you a silver space blanket to ward off the chill. Another places a medal around your neck and says good job, like he or she’s said to all your fellow runners. Only you’re sure this individual is being sincere and you respond with an equally sincere thank you and smile so hard you feel like you just might cry a little because you’ve actually finished, after so many months of dreaming about it. This is followed by a stiffening and soreness in the quadriceps and hamstrings unlike anything you’ve felt before. Walking downstairs the next morning and unfolding from your seat after the flight home are just about the most painful things you’ve done in your lifetime — even worse than the race itself. Yet the suffering is like a badge of honor, and you’re actually a little sad when it all wears off a couple days later.
Which is when you plan your next race.
And you do it all over again and again, scheduling your vacations, friendships, bedtimes, and social calendar around running the next marathon. As will those thousands you raced alongside. Many more will be inspired to take up running then take their own shot at a big city marathon.
That’s called a running boom. And it was preceded by an unparalleled and overdue fitness revolution.
Let’s go back to the eleven-year-old boy who got planted out in right field. Shortly after Frank Shorter’s Olympic victory, my sixth-grade class took part in a special test of strength and endurance: push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, standing broad jump, shuttle sprint, and most significant of all, a timed mile run. The President’s Physical Fitness Award came about in 1966 as part of an ongoing drive to strengthen America’s youth. Those who met certain standards in every event were awarded a special badge from the president himself.
I really wanted that badge.
Did not get it. It all came down to the broad jump. In yet another sign that I was destined to be a long-distance runner, my muscles lacked the Type-IIA fast twitch fibers so often found in athletes with great leaping ability. I landed two inches short.
But finished second place in the mile.
I’d found my sport. Later it would become a passion, a calling, a discipline, an avocation, a source of pride, a way to eat a whole pizza and stay trim, an identity, and a quiet escape from life’s troubles. But in sixth grade it was just running.
It’s remarkable to see how this process is affected so greatly by solitary individuals: Pheidippides, Lord Desborough, Dorando Pietri.
Add a new name:
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
I know what you’re thinking: Wow. That really came out of nowhere.
But it’s a great story that deserves telling before it is altogether forgotten.