There’s a Line…

Tags

Connecticut, days, Loggins, Messina

I dug up an old cd a few days ago.  It was the first Loggins and Messina effort called ” Sittin’ In.”  It still sounds as fresh as the first time I heard the record back in Storrs, Connecticut sometime in the early 1970’s.

Those were heady days for all of us, Kenny and Jim included I’m sure.  I knew every word to every song but one line now haunts me as though I had never heard it before.  It goes like this, ” As our days disappeared all too soon.”

It’s from a simple child’s song that Kenny wrote called ” House at Pooh Corner.”  Back when my days went on forever with a girl who had long brown hair, a flashing smile, a yellow VW and a red guitar.

And so as I find myself getting older every day I am struck by days disappearing too soon.   When did this happen?  Back then days went on forever.

Days disappearing all too soon is a sweet child’s way to lament that there are just not enough hours in the day to do everything that they want to do. Now it has a very different meaning.   I’m reminded of a book that was a favorite of my kids when they were young – It was called ” The Days Are Just Packed.”  I need to figure this out.

 

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A Dusty Relic of Some Long Ago Forgotten Dream

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country music, dream, relic

That’s all I got this morning.

Maybe, might be a theme for a Country & Western love song.  Does Country and Western music even exist anymore?  I know what gets called Country music these days and to me it’s like rock and roll in a cowboy hat all while sangin’ through your nose.

Hank Williams was country music.  So was Patsy Kline and so was Bob Willa and the Texas Playboys.

This stuff today – meh.

Sir Roger Bannister

Tags

mile, Roger Bannister

The man who broke the 4 minute mile barrier in 1954 is 85 years old today.

It was long considered an unattainable goal.  People thought that if a runner did break 4 minutes that his heart would burst.   Roger was a medical student at the time, not a professional runner.

His journey through to and through the a sub 4 minute mile is in a wonderful book called ” The Perfect Mile.”

After the 4 minute mark was broken the record rapidly tumbled as though a great wall had been breached and runners began sprinting through the opening.

My fastest mile ever is – I can’t recall.  I think I got under 6 minutes once or twice in high school.  Some people are born with speed and others are not.  I’m not in a hurry to complete the mile run anymore.  And I’m just fine with that.

Still Running After All These Years

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Running

Which brings me sort of up to date with running.  Nine marathons and optimistic that I can run more of them.  My kids both ran XC and track in high school and my daughter continued running in college for all four years.  Both of my kids have completed marathons.

It’s funny how as a parent you influence your kids in now so much in what you say but in what you do, how you live and what is important to you.  I never pushed the kids into running.  They did it all on their own as opposed to taking piano lessons which was a grand experiment that crashed and burned.  In the end I took lessons longer than both of them.

Running is something I can control.  Out of the house on my own terms and at my own speed.  Often I take scenery  runs where it’s just an opportunity just to look around.  Sometimes it’s a good day and sometimes not.  Just like life.  My shortest run anymore is 2 miles although I can easily do from 3 to 5 miles with no problem pretty much anytime I want.

I have been so blessed to be able to run and to enjoy it too.  Marathons get really tough somewhere around 16 miles and the enjoyment factor is out the window.  It hurts and it’s painful.  But with the encouragement of family, the fans and other runners and then seeing that finish line come into view it’s more than worth the price of the ticket.  It’s something that no one can ever take away from me.

Running makes me feel special and I guess in a sense I was born to run.  There is no feeling like finishing a run and relaxing,  feeling the buzz from head to toe both inside and out.  It’s a real gift.

Running helps clear my head.  Running is where I dive deep into myself and go places I don’t normally go.  I guess I’m tuned to introspection once I get a few miles into a run.  I love to sweat and breathe hard and feel exhausted.

Here’s to running, yours and mine.  Happy Trails.

Below is Philadelphia 2013 around mile 13.  Only 13.2 to go.

 

Fifty Years – Still Running and Writing

Living in Pennsylvania and the popularity of running as a sport and a way of life had started to take hold,  Road races were organized and running shops were springing up.  It was coincidentally around this time that I picked up a guitar and I’ve been playing ever since.

I was young and strong enough that I could enter 5 mile races with not much training and run well.  Those were the good old days.

I ran a marathon, again without much training in 1985.  I’m leaving out a lot of details mostly because I can’t really recall them and also because some of them I have chosen to forget.  By now though running was a natural part of my life and even though it pegged me as somewhat of a weirdo I keep on doing it because it made me feel special and it added an intangible to my life.  I couldn’t see it or taste it but overall I knew that it was a good thing.  Sometimes good things appear without notice, sneak into your life and they become natural as breathing in and breathing out.  Running and guitars, for example.

The next couple of years flew by with kids but I kept running and running and running until I couldn’t find the line where running ended and I began.  We were pretty much one and the same.

I am absolutely certain that I was the only one on my block who got up at 6 am to watch the marathon run at the Atlanta Olympics in 1992.  Ran another marathon in 1998 but I hardly considered myself a serious marathoner.  It was a painful slog.  My son told me that the guy who finished ahead of me did a cartwheel across the finish line.  I just wanted to be wheeled home.

But here is where running became even more deeply ingrained in me as a lesson in toughing things out, not quitting and finding out more about me.  I read a quote once that said – ” If you have any questions about yourself that you want answered then run a marathon.”  Yeah – I get that.

If I were a drummer I think that this would be a fun song to play.

Running for Fifty Years – Another Installment

I ran XC in Connecticut during the fall of my senior year in college.  We were a good team and definitely had more runners than were on my Iowa team.  I think that I trained off and on during the summer leading to the season. My teammates were serious runners.

I was working in a luncheonette from 6 am to 10 every morning that summer and I lived right above it.  The commute was very easy.  Mostly what I can recall from that summer is that I ran in shoes that were taped together as they were literally falling apart.  Who had money for luxuries like running shoes?

Once again I started out near the bottom of the pack and advanced only slightly.  I still didn’t quite get running as an endeavor beyond the team or the season.  I remember the last race of the season where I ran my best time of the year and came in next to last.  Or maybe it was last but it didn’t matter.  I was able to enjoy and be happy for the fact I had run my best race.

Cross Country that fall introduced me to a woman who became my girlfriend for a few months.  We were just what we both needed at the time and we were pretty good for each other.  That spring the song ” It’s Too Late” was a hit on the radio and eventually became an important song to me as eventually it was too late baby and that was the end of that.

Running as a release and as exercise was starting to become a part of my life and running in public for fun was becoming acceptable although there were still years and years ahead where runners would be hounded and mocked by drivers on the roads.

Connecticut soon gave way to Pennsylvania.

Given that this is such a pretty and warm tune and that it deals with a relationship ending makes it all the more poignant.  As I write these notes about running I’m rediscovering how much music has been a part of my life for many, many years.   And that I really can’t separate those threads from my life into categories.  It’s all part of who I am and in a very lovely way.

A Chance Meeting, Regrets and Maybe Next Thursday

Tags

chances, Meeting, moments. regrets

He was just coming around a corner inside the bank one afternoon when he saw her staring at him.  He had some business at the teller window and so she must have seen him while he was facing away from her.  When he turned she was looking right at him with a look that invited him to look right back.

He did look back at her stopping just short of staring but with a smiling and friendly gaze.  He looked away to break the moment but couldn’t resist looking again and she was still there with her eyes pointed right at him.  He suddenly felt warm and very relaxed.

This went on for a minute or so.  To him it felt like a moment that had been planned by some cosmic force that said:” This is the time, this is the place.”  I’ve done my part, now the rest is up to you.”

A voice inside told him that maybe what he thought he was thinking and feeling was not real and that he should not trust the moment.  But there she was still was stealing glances.  ” Great, now what should I do?” he thought.

He left the bank walking slowly back to his car which was parked two blocks away at the library.  He walked at a deliberate pace hoping that she would follow.  He turned back once and she was about a half block behind him.  The light was green on the corner was green and he crossed.  “Maybe I’m just imagining this” he thought.  He kept walking and turned at the library pausing on the steps.  She walked right by.

For an instant he struggled with a way to make contact.  Maybe – ” Pardon me do you have the time?” even though he was wearing a watch.  There was a coffee shop two doors down.  Maybe that would work.  But he froze and she kept walking looking straight ahead.  He quickly got to his car and drove around the block hoping to see her one more time.

Maybe it was a moment, maybe it was the moment or maybe it was nothing.  He looked at his watch, noted the time and made a note to be in the bank again next Thursday at 1:10 in the afternoon.  Maybe lightning and luck would strike twice in the same place.

Maybe next Thursday.

 

 

Fifty Years of Running – Part Two

After high school I found myself in college in Iowa where I ran cross country during my sophomore year.  Runners  in those days were still considered weird guys.  On the surface it makes no sense to run but speaking from my present standpoint it makes perfect sense.

We had a small squad of about 7 or 8 runners and most of the time I was either number 7 or 8 but towards the end of the season I was inching up near number 6 and I might have had a chance to get the fifth slot if the season were longer or I had properly trained the previous summer.

One time the team piled into two cars for an away weekend meet at I forget where.  It was far enough away that we had to overnight and I think we all piled into two motel rooms.  I can only assume that the budget for the team was pretty small – this was the fall of 1968.

There was no women’s team as woman’s running was still far off in the future.  Having a women’s team would have made life much more interesting especially to a 20 year old college sophomore.

Most of my recollection’s are sketchy but I recall that our captain was from Libertyville, Illinois.  When the season ended so did my running for the year.  No one ran for fun or to keep in shape.  By now I was also aware that with my lack of speed that I was never going to be an outdoor miler in college so cross country fit me perfectly as an outlet.

The championship meet finished with what seemed like a quarter mile uphill slog to the finish line.  I still have that program and the race results somewhere.  One of these days I’ll make a concentrated effort to find them.

I remember seeing Simon and Garfunkel at an all girls catholic college across town.  At the end of the second semester I left Iowa for good.  

The running ” boom” still had not taken hold.  But I do recall that while I was in high school I was enamored by Jim Ryun and his sub 4 minute mile as a high school runner.  I always watched the US – USSR track meet on TV.  It was an annual event and another name I remember from those days was Jim Beatty who was a miler and of course Billy Mills who won the 1964 Tokyo Olympics 10,000 meter race.

Some fifty plus years later I’m still running – ran a marathon ( #9) last fall.  The dynamics of running for sport and recreation have all changed.  I guess that I have always been drawn to running whether I knew it or not.  It was always something I could do that not many other of my peers could  do and it made me standout, made me feel special.  Running taught me a lot about endurance, personal toughness and being able to hang and gut something out.  

I’ve had minor injuries along the way but no surgeries on any moving parts despite the commonly held claim that I would ruin my knees.  When I’m asked about my love of running I tell people that it’s in my genes.  My people were runners in Poland and Ukraine.  Running from Huns, Taters, Visigoths, Mongols, Vikings and everyone else who had a hand in carving up the steppes of eastern Europe.

To get back to the story – after my sophomore year I transferred to college in Connecticut. 

 

 

Songwriting, of Sorts

Here’s my first pass at an old love, new love, gotta get to you love…song

Drivin’ all night with just one headlight…

Gotta get to you again

The radio is busted and the heater won’t work

I’m playing gas gauge roulette

MIght be a country song I suspect.

Spring sends her Regrets

Tags

regrets, Spring

Hi, this is Spring and I can’t take your call right now.

 Please leave a detailed message at the beep and I’ll get back to you sometime in April.  Have a nice day.