Maverick Philosopher

The Buster Martin story. Take a lesson, Phil. But is this guy really 101?

This one goes out to Darci M, then of Brookline, Mass., with fond thoughts and thanks for introducing me to Jackson Browne way back when. This tune was a standard running warm-up number for me in the '70s. Running on empty is what I'll be doing tomorrow at a local half-marathon.

Here is what a world class runner looks like. Note that both feet are off the ground. (Compare the foot placement in my photos.) This was Rodger's fourth Boston win. He completed the 26.2 mile course in 2:12:11. In second place was the Italian M. Marchei at 2:13:20. 1980 was the year Rosie Ruiz pulled her stunt. More here.

Yesterday I ran the Lost Dutchman Half Marathon. It has become an annual event for me. Two miles into it, I was chugging along Lost Dutchman Boulevard and crossing State Route 88 when I noticed a pack of runners heading northeast on SR 88 toward Canyon Lake. "What race is that?" I asked the runner next to me. "Can't be the 10 K -- it hasn't started yet, and it can't be the 8 K trail run or the marathon which is coming from Peralta trailhead." It turned out that the front runners had taken a wrong turn, and a sizeable contingent played follow the leader.

There are marathoners bare of foot and marathoners bare of butt. But are there any marathoners who bare it all?

If the sky is the daily bread of the eyes (Emerson), then hiking, running, and cycling are the daily bread of the legs and lungs. And what better way to appreciate the sky, and the lambent light of the desert Southwest, than by running over mountain trails at sunrise? Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two men, both veteran law enforcement officers, suffered fatal heart attacks while running in Sunday's Los Angeles Marathon, marking the first deaths in the event since 1990, organizers said on Monday. Read the rest.

To die in an act of self-transcendence, battling the hebetude of the flesh, is to die a noble death.

EXCLUSIVITY: "Any idiot can run a marathon, but it takes a special kind of idiot to run an ultra."

TO PUSH THE ENVELOPE: "If we didn't run these, how would we ever know how far we could go?"

EXISTENTIALISM: "To those who know, no explanation is necessary; to those who do not, no explanation will suffice."

TO LIVE LONGER (OR AT LEAST FEEL THAT WAY): "Some folks complain that life passes too quickly. Not in an ultra."

ANATOMICAL AESTHETICS: "Your feet look better without toenails."

(Runner's World, February 2005, p. 65)

In the interests of full disclosure, my official finishing time yesterday was 2:25:47.1 which is of course nothing to crow about. I am not crowing, merely recording: the unrecorded, and not merely the unexamined, life is not worth living. And that is part of what a weblog is for.

This morning I had occasion once again to verify the proposition that the strenuous life is best by test, but also the proposition that I am not much of a runner: it took me 2:26 to jog through the 13.1 mile Lost Dutchman half-marathon course. But we do the best we can with what we've got, and given my age, modest training base, and paucity of fast-twitch fibers, I am more than satisfied. I have never regretted any road race, hike, backpacking trip, or indeed any Jamesian 'strenuosity' whether physical, mental, moral, or spiritual. We are simply not made for sloth but for exertion, with Hegel's Anstrengung des Begriffs as important as any. Whatever the reason, experience teaches that we are most happy when active, or better, when actuating our powers, including our powers of contemplative repose.

Time was when I called myself a runner and corrected those who referred to me as a jogger. I even had the chutzpah to correct a man who interviewed me for a job. (And I got the job!) Pressed for the distinction, I would cite the 8-minute mile. At or above that pace, one is running; below, jogging.

But now I favor a three-fold distinction. (Philosophers have an affinity for the triadic and the tripartite.) At or below a 10 minute per mile pace one becomes a plodder, the running equivalent of the patzer in chess. But just as pazters can be dangerous, plodders can go the distance and pour it on when it suits them.

In the 70's I was a runner, in the 80's a jogger, and in the 90's a plodder. But now I am back in the ranks of the joggers (on good days anyway) and next decade I will be a runner again -- or die trying.

Think you are tough? See how you stack up against Ultramarathon Man. I read his book a couple of months back. Excerpt:

I'd also come to realize that the simplicity of running was quite liberating. Modern man has virtually everything one could desire, but too often we're still not fulfilled. "Things" don't bring happiness. Some of my finest moments came while running down the open road, little more than a pair of shoes and shorts to my name. A runner doesn't need much. Thoreau once said that a man's riches are based on what he can do without. Perhaps in needing less, you're actually getting more.

Review here. Interview here.

As the years and miles roll by, some of us runners are beginning to wonder how long we can keep it up. If Ed Whitlock is any indication, we have plenty of mileage left. An inspiring story.

As a 'Zone Man,' I am well aware of the dangers of dehydration and heat stroke especially when out for an infernal hike. Although a U.S. gallon of water weighs 8 1/3 lbs, those are pounds I don't leave home without. Some will be surprised to learn that even with water there can be too much of a good thing. Thales take note. See here. The danger is increased if you drink pure water. Since my reverse osmosis water purifier delivers water that is around 95% pure, I add electrolyte replacements such as Gookinaid, the thinking man's drink, to my water.

I took up running thirty one 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 the road. ‘Boston Billy’ Rodgers was in his prime; I lived a couple of blocks from the Boston Marathon course, and my training runs took me around the Chestnut Hill reservoir and past Rodger’s running center at Cleveland Circle. I actually ran abreast of Rodgers once on Commonwealth Avenue. He was headed for the Boston College track, racing flats in his hands, to run intervals. (I’ll leave it to the reader to figure out how I could possibly have been abreast of a marathoner who won Boston one year running at a blistering 4:54 min/mile pace. No, he didn't overtake me, and of course I didn't overtake him.)

Nowadays I confine my running to two long trail runs on weekdays and a two hour road run on Sunday mornings. I ‘compete’ in a couple or three 10 K or half-marathon races per year. I no longer insist on being called a runner; you can call me a jogger or worse and get away with it.

I received a race entry form in the mail the other day. There was a category for phantom runners: people who send in $18.00 receive a T-shirt, but don’t run. It disgusted me. To me, the T-shirt is a badge; you earn it by completing the race as best you can. It doesn’t matter what sort of miserable plodder you are; if you do your best and complete the course, then you earn the right to wear the shirt. Thus for me it is a point of honor never to wear the shirt of a race which I have yet to complete.

We are drifting toward a reality-denying egalitarian society in which everyone is equal and everyone is a winner. But when everyone is a winner, everyone is a loser. The superior lose by being denied the recognition they deserve; the inferior lose by being made to believe they are something they are not.