lame-o abortive track workout

I felt like crap today -- gave up on a track workout after one 400.  I have been running a lot.  And sometimes you just break down.  It's all part of the game.  Things will work better tomorrow.  Hitting the breaking point is an important part of training, and so is knowing when to back off.

Europeans seem to (hmm...how to put this gently), um, lack some of the sensitivities to different cultures that we value in the U.S.  This requires a far longer and more thoughtful post than I have time for here but just as an example, take this newspaper article about the marathon Tammi ran in (Tammi's translation):  "When do you recall having seen two Leghisti that applaud the arrival...of two sweaty North Africans in underpants?"  He's talking about the two North Africans who won the marathon...but I saw them pass, and they were wearing split racing shorts and a singlet: standard, modest running attire much less offensive than the spandex salume outlining tights that the native Italians seem to wear in all weather.

Even when it's sunny and in the 60s, the Italians love their spandex--long tights, long sleeve shirts.  I agree with Tammi that this is a cultural phenomenon, but its roots remain obscure.  Perhaps it's considered stylish, and style is important to the Italians, even the runners.  Often, I'm the only one out running in a plain cotton T-shirt.

Tammy Falconer: Huge PR!

Join me in congratulating Tammy on a huge marathon PR (the time left off here because of our anonymity)!

long run yesterday, Cronon

Our feline neighbor: eyes closed, but not to injustice

I ran for two hours and twenty minutes yesterday, and I'll call that about 20.  It was a great spring day.  Today I ran ten, easy.

There's a disturbing attack on academic freedom in today's news.  Officials from Wisconsin's Republican party have filed a public records request for history professor William Cronon's emails.  Cronon recently wrote an op-ed for the NYT about the attacks on labor in the state.  They are more angry that on his blog he posted information about the American Legislative Exchange Council, information he tracked down simply by examining what's available to the public.  Here is the email request available at Cronon's website  http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/2011/03/24/open-records-attack-on-academic-freedom/:

From: Stephan Thompson [mailto:SThompson@wisgop.org]
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2011 2:37 PM
To: Dowling, John
Subject: Open Records Request
Dear Mr. Dowling,
Under Wisconsin open records law, we are requesting copies of the following items:
Copies of all emails into and out of Prof. William Cronon’s state email account from January 1, 2011 to present which reference any of the following terms: Republican, Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, Rob Cowles, Scott Fitzgerald, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Glenn Grothman, Mary Lazich, Jeff Fitzgerald, Marty Beil, or Mary Bell.
We are making this request under Chapter 19.32 of the Wisconsin state statutes, through the Open Records law. Specifically, we would like to cite the following section of Wis. Stat. 19.32 (2) that defines a public record as “anything recorded or preserved that has been created or is being kept by the agency. This includes tapes, films, charts, photographs, computer printouts, etc.”
Thank you for your prompt attention, and please make us aware of any costs in advance of preparation of this request.
Sincerely,
Stephan Thompson
Republican Party of Wisconsin

Cronon is an incredible scholar and no political radical.  He is an environmental historian who writes histories of particular places that stretch far back into ecological time.  His masterwork is a history of Chicago that explains why of all the cities of the West that vied for prominence in the mid-19c--St. Louis, Cincinati, Milwaukee--Chicago won out.  He says it is because Chicago was located at a place where water and rail transportation could move goods east, and also because geographically, it was located at a regional juncture convenient to the places where different types of natural resources were extracted: lumber from Wisconsin and Minnesota, wheat and corn from Iowa and Illinois, beef and pork from various places on the plains.

But as in the McCarthy days we see Wisconsin Republicans going nuts and paranoid once again.  When asked about the request by newspapers, one of them gave this outrageous reply:

“Like anyone else who makes an open records request in Wisconsin, the Republican Party of Wisconsin does not have to give a reason for doing so.

“I have never seen such a concerted effort to intimidate someone from lawfully seeking information about their government.

“Further, it is chilling to see that so many members of the media would take up the cause of a professor who seeks to quash a lawful open records request. Taxpayers have a right to accountable government and a right to know if public officials are conducting themselves in an ethical manner. The Left is far more aggressive in this state than the Right in its use of open records requests, yet these rights do extend beyond the liberal left and members of the media.

"Finally, I find it appalling that Professor Cronin seems to have plenty of time to round up reporters from around the nation to push the Republican Party of Wisconsin into explaining its motives behind a lawful open records request, but has apparently not found time to provide any of the requested information.

“We look forward to the University’s prompt response to our request and hope those who seek to intimidate us from making such requests will reconsider their actions.”

As if this poor professor is trying to intimidate the Republican party,  and as if they're the injured party.  The other thing that merits note is the way this Republican, Mark Jefferson, characterizes a history professor as a "public official" whose personal records are subject to the same scrutiny as, say, the state comptroller.  There's a difference between the kind of scrutiny a professor can receive and that which an elected official should get.  

But hey, at least someone thinks we're powerful.  At least someone thinks we pose political threats of some kind.  Anyway, I'm glad I'm done with college and a few score of pages away from finishing my education.  But I fear for my kids, the way Republicans are going after the state schools.  We're seeing the end of America's happily functioning multi-tiered educational system where state schools afforded top-notch educations and entry into top grad schools and into the professions.  Within twenty years, we'll see state schools decrease in quality to University of Pheonix levels, while the private schools will do better and better.  Wealthy kids will continue to do well, but no longer will higher ed be a means of rewarding hard work.  Even more than it does now, it'll continue to replicate the inequities rending the American social fabric.

medium long run, intervals

Yesterday I went out for a 90 minute run with the intention of circling by the local track and dropping four marathon-pace (or thereabouts) miles before running the two miles home.  Did this successfully, and the run turned out to be around 95 minutes, about 14-14.5 miles.  The marathon-pace miles (miles 8-12 of the workout) felt pretty easy.  That's a good sign.  It took a few days to get un-stiff from a full day of travel Friday.

Today I did 8 x 400 at the same track and I think I'm seeing some progress, as my splits were 3-4 seconds faster than when I started doing 400s six weeks or so ago.  I felt like I had some turnover and speed, so maybe the rust is coming off, the gears are shifting: you pick the mechanical metaphor.  Today I finally got to the point where I could run in the anaerobic range.  Seriously: I'm so slow that it's hard for me to transition from aerobic to anaerobic modes.  I tend to be a single-pace marathoner, a one-trick running pony with my best half-marathon time ever the split from a marathon.  Hopefully, this speedwork will give me some range.  Maybe it's the weather.  The dogwoods and other floriferous trees and shrubs have scented the air of a city more filled with bikers and amblers and smiling gawkers than the one I left a few weeks ago.

more on opportunity cost

I got to thinking on this morning's run that in yesterday's post I left out the obvious, meaningful thing you give up when you go running: time with loved ones, maybe a phone call home, time spent building relationships with people.  Well, this is always the major worry about running.  For me and Tammi, running makes up a big part of our relationship.  It's a way we have fun with each other and support each other and learn from each other.  It was a common interest we immediately shared on first dates and probably was a signal that we shared similar habits and values.  This easy symmetry will of course change if we're lucky enough to have kids--then we'll manage something.

Anyway, appropos of that article in the WSJ sometime back, there was a thread on letsrun.com, a very informative running website, where runners discussed running and marriage.  It's an anecdotal goldmine:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3898568

missed workout

I had a 15 miler planned today that I simply missed/skipped/didn't get around to.  I slept in today because I've been very tired and haven't been getting much sleep and it was raining, etc.  Last night before I decided to do the run after a 2:30 meeting I had this afternoon, but then the meeting went longer than planned, and I hadn't eaten since 10.30 (an odd time to eat, I know -- but I wanted to grab something before heading into the library and by the way I recommend the Subway breakfast menu)...I had to send some emails to follow up on some things from the meeting, then it was 7:30 and dark.  Even grad students have their hectic days, whether for some of us that simply means having to put on pants and see the sun.  Lesson learned: better to run in the morning because the best laid plans go awry. 

It was just one of those days.  Poked at my chapter from mid morning to mid afternoon and increased mankind's store of knowledge by an unimpressive 611 words.  Readers of this blog will note that over the last 48 hours I've written more about Magnum PI and clandestine pooping than about the subject in which a major institution of higher learning is certifying me as an expert. 

Anyway--it takes about two days to start losing fitness so no harm done but then again no fitness gained.  The midweek medium long run is a major part of my marathon training goals, and this season, I haven't been doing them. 

It's a constant worry of mine that running will ultimately diminish the quality of my life, that the opportunity cost of an hour or two on the road will not be worth it when in my senescence I look back on my years as a runner.  I wonder, shouldn't I be spending running time reading Latin poetry or learning programming or figuring out bond valuation? 

A lost running day tells me no.  There's a limit to how much I can do cognitively in a single day.  I can't pay attention all day long to productive work.  After I finished all my work around 7.30 I felt totally restless.  It was too late to go for a run but I didn't have the energy to do some of the other things in my life I've been  meaning to get around to: finish The Bostonians, write the cover letter to send out that Henry James paper, give the paper one more quick revision, read The American, read more Saul Bellow, read an academic journal, read more poetry, watch more French films, figure out how to build websites, etc.  I'm too tired, and too distractable.  So it's OK to run, because I probably overestimate its opportunity cost.

In Praise of Tom Selleck

Barely recognizable as TS

On Tuesday afternoons I generally start to dread whatever interval workout I have planned for the day.  I half hope that the track team will be using the track so that I will have an excuse to run something else.  But when I'm doing intervals, I never hate them as much as I fear I will and in fact I tend to enjoy them.  Today I did 3x1600 and 1x3200, with 200 jog in between each (5:39, 5:39, 5:35, 11:17). 

On the advice of interval maven Tammi I kept the recovery short.  She says, for short intervals have a long recovery.  Have a short recovery for long intervals.  The reason for this is because when you're working on aerobic/threshold capacity you want to keep the pressure on.  When you're working on speed and strength with the shorter stuff you want enough recovery so that you're body is charged and fully explosive. 

It's true about running that you never feel worse for having done it, and it was true today despite my inclination to bail on the workout.

You know who would never bail on a workout?  Tom Selleck.  In every role he plays Selleck represents rectitude, authority, and probity.  He is a stable, unwavering 6'4" oak of justice who can be counted on to do the right thing, whether as detective Thomas Magnum; as one of a trio of surprised, hapless, but ultimately caring dads in Three Men and a Baby; as Eisenhower in a fictionalized representation of D-Day; or as Commissioner Frank Regan in his latest vehicle, cop drama Blue Bloods. 

Selleck can be counted on to deliver one convincing performance after another in the episodic (as opposed to serial) TV dramas that have become his specialty as an actor: crime dramas and other shows where each week's plot turns on a central masculine authority figure.   Genres such as the cop drama and the western (recall Quigley Down Under) convert Selleck's limited seemingly expressive range (I emphasize the "seemingly") into the impassivity that characteristically befits the unimpeachable authority of lawmen and cowboys. 

Thomas Magnum

Selleck does not emote.  He rarely even gets convincingly angry.  But this would-be limitation as an actor turns him into a force of stability around which a plot can take shape.  Throughout the course of his long career, directors, producers, and casting agents have year by year whittled Selleck down to a type, but he works expertly in the mold.  Selleck will serve more as a structural support in the plot of a show than as a character whose turmoil captivates the viewer.  To put it another way, he doesn't play characters--he plays plots.  Once Selleck gets involved the plot can get going, the case begin to be solved, because he radiates rectitude and the knowledge of when and how and why to do the right thing.  These are the qualities that set a good cop show in motion.  They don't belong to the actors; they belong to the architecture of the genre.

To be fair, we cannot know from the body of his work that Selleck does not in fact possess a mine of emotional range left lying untapped deep beneath the bristles of his famous moustache  However, a look at his early work in Magnum PI gives us some indication of his strengths and weaknesses as an actor.  This is because as originally written, the character of Thomas Magnum is not actually that well matched to Tom Selleck the actor.  As the series progresses Selleck makes the character his own, but in the early episodes, Selleck seems almost uncomfortable in Magnum's Hawaiian shirt and too-cool-for-school manner, uneasy being the easygoing, worry-free surfer-detective that is the Thomas Magnum character.  Viewing the early episodes, it becomes clear that Thomas Magnum was a character probably written more for an actor like the guy who played Murdoch in the A-Team.  But Selleck launched his career by making Thomas Magnum his own, taking the role and tailoring it to his own strengths.

A still from Blue Bloods

The current show Blue Bloods exploits Selleck's talents in their full flower.  The show is about a family of Irish Catholic cops in New York. Selleck is the reigning patriarch, but he's watched over by his own retired cop-father, the patriarch emeritus.  They sit at the heads of the table at the Sunday family dinners that comprise a regular part of each episode.  (The show is family on steroids with four generations involved.)  Donnie Wahlberg--who shares his brother's expressive brow and is a subtle craftsman in his own right--plays the older of Selleck's two cop sons, one of who has traded a career as a Harvard-trained lawyer to stand in the filial line of blue uniforms. Selleck's daughter plays a rising DA's assistant.

Whatever happens in Blue Bloods, Selleck knows how to handle it.  In the last episode some affluent young developers beat to death a homeless Iraq vet.  Donnie Wahlberg was on the case, incensed because like him (and like all the men in the family except the Harvard lawyer) he's a Marine combat vet.  When it appears that Wahlberg might be on the verge of crossing the line with the suspect, Selleck steps in and counsels his hotheaded son against compromising the case and imperiling justice.

Selleck puts his talents to use in steady TV work, but one wonders what would've happened if he had become a leading move actor.  Had Selleck turned to movies, his resume would probably boast higher highs but would also be saddled with lower lows than one finds upon review of the steady stream of TV shows that comprise his career.  With years left in his career Selleck may yet find additional range as an actor, but one has to admire him for finding a niche and doing something right time after time.  As a figure who can telegraph stalwart authority to an audience in one reliable performance after another, he is irreplaceable.  No one does it better.

Hannah Arendt: political theorist who doesn't give a shit if you're smart

Hannah Arendt writes in The Human Condition that speech and action reveal man (that's her word, not mine) in his distinctness.  These are the "modes through which human beings appear to each other, not indeed as physical objects, but qua men.  This appearence, as distinguished from mere bodily existence, rests on intitaitve, but it is an initiative from which no human being can refrain and still be human."  She goes on to stipulate that "A life without speech and without action, on the other hand...is literally dead to the world; it has ceased to be a human life because it is no longer lived among men."

You have to show up and do stuff, and do it in public in front of other people and with risk involved, in order to be a complete person, Arendt argues.  Life is achieved, not given.

Looking over The Human Condition I am struck by just how little it valorizes intelligence for its own sake.  Here one of the greatest theorists of the 20c tells us to shine forth in the public and strive in front of our betters, distinguish ourselves as excellent.  Sure, one can do this as an intellectual, as she did, but one doesn't have to. 

What Arendt says is the kind of thing you'd tell a group of high school students, not a group of professional academics.  But this is only to the detriment of the academics, and if the high school students have taken to heart her lessons of striving, excellence, and distinction, then they have set themselves up for no small portion of happiness.
Academic talks are followed by ritual dinners at affordable local restaurants where the talk ranges from lighter professional topics to the various amenities of the college town the speaker is from to the shockingly backward political and religious beliefs of the residents of that town to whether folks have seen the latest movies.  One night I was at one of these dinners and people got to talking about the financial crisis and apropos of I forget what, I commented: "I think we in the humanities tend to underestimate how smart finance people can be."  The reply on the part of our guest speaker betrayed a mixture of envy and probably some uncomfortable family dynamics: "Well, my brother-in-law," he bantered back, "is in finanance and he certainly isn't brilliant.  It doesn't take too much brains."

A man in his late-40s/early-50s gave a talk about the history of interdisciplinary scholarship to about ten graduate students, about two of whom could muster up the enthusiasm to feign the sycophancy requisite on such occasions; his brother-in-law, meanwhile, had been in the throws of history, riding tidal fortune and in some way participating in, or suffering through, the big story of his times. 

Alvin Kernan was a WWII sailor who went to college on the GI Bill and became an English professor at Yale, and eventually, Stephen Greenblatt's advisor; he then went on to become Dean of the Graduate School at Princeton.  In his memior (which is an extremely interesting read) Kernan says of incoming English graduate students that of all the hundreds who apply each year to programs around the country, on a few are really outstanding.  It's a hard truth that he tells, but one worth facing directly.  Looking through the names in an old journal is like looking at the names of the tracks on an Fleetwood Mac album in a used record store: maybe, just maybe, one is recognizable.  The rest are forgetable throwaways.

I used to worry about being smart, and I used to think intelligence was something to admire in people.  I don't admire it.  I am sometimes bowled over by it, but I don't admire it.  I used to think that critique was special, that when I heard an academic paper applying Zizek to the news I was hearing something empowering and penetrating and disillusioning. 

I don't really care about being smart anymore.  I care about reading and writing because I enjoy these activities, but I am beyond worrying about my own native abilities (what ever native ability is) and beyond secretely measuring them against the strengths and weaknesses of others.  (What did Lionel Trilling mean by the moral obligation to be intelligent?)  Perhaps to admit this is a cardinal sin of academe.

Children of Academe

Tuna casserole makes excellent running food, and it's super easy (and super cheap - you can get all the ingredients for under $5).  Boil some egg noodles and preheat oven to 375.  Strain them.  Run cold water over them.  Mix the noodles with two cans of cream of mushroom soup, one soupcan of milk, two or three cans of tuna, a can of peas/carrots, and maybe some diced onions if you're inclined.  Spread the mixture into an 8"x11" pan, and bake for about 40 minutes.  Then, cover with slices of American cheese, and put back in the oven for about 10 minutes, til the cheese is melted.  You can't beat this dish.  It was my Lenten Friday pre-long run meal.  If you're worried about the high fat content of the cheese slices, try the fat free kind.  Personally, I go for the 2%.

I love tuna casserole for another reason though, one that has to as much to do with its connotations as with its hearty goodness.  There's refuge in a can of cream of mushroom soup.  The gelatinous unpronounceability of its ingredients in all their sublime chemistry reminds one, paradoxically, of the simplicity of eating.  It induces one into the comfort of again taking for granted--rather than being astonished by or critical of--the convenience of the grocery store and the scale and efficiency of the modern food economy, however excescent and diabolical.  We can leave the Michael Pollans of the world to their scolding and their kale.  The casserole is ready.

Casserole abides.  My attachment to casserole feels traditional, as if it were a regional dish passed through generations of grandmothers -- though I realize, of course, that tuna casserole, like my invented food tradition, is manufactured, the invention of 1950s recipe books that helped Americans adjust to the stunning abundance of postwar life, with its aisles and aisles of packaged convience foods to store in the pantry or the bomb shelter.  How much harder it is to cook from scratch.  How much harder it is, as well, to cook dishes other than what you were raised on.  The heavy casserole pulls with the gravity of the familiar past.  It pleads its rightness against ways of eating ungoverned by its gentle precepts of economy, convenience, taste, and the presumption of sharing.  A casserole is rarely eaten alone.

Another Europhilic humanities scholar with pretentious jet ski

Despite their radical politics and extravagant readings of lierature, despite their uncut hair, despite the clothes sometimes too fashion forward for their age, despite their choice to earn a small fraction of the money commanded by similarly educated members of their age cohort, despite their often very genuine indifference to money--humanities academics are extremely conservative in their habits and values, most especially their valuing of education and intelligence above all.  Academia, unlike everywhere else, has clearly defined steps for advancement and markers of merit, for achieving all of which the criteria are usually fairly clear.  And while luck plays no small role in who lands academic jobs, academia is as much a meritocracy as anywhere, at least as much as I imagine the military to be.  On a more psychic, less institutional level, academia replicates at every stage the child-parent, child-teacher relationship, such that every academic, this one included, strives in his heart of hearts to be a good schoolboy, the smartest in the gradeschool class, the precocious tot who makes the teacher beam.

Maybe at one time in my life I considered myself unconventional for ten days or so, but I've always known, and over the last few years been able to admit, how thoroughly conventional I am.  I have whiled away hours in a chair or on a couch reading Freud, Lacan, Zizek, Judith Butler, and a host of lesser psychoanalytic lights on the conditioned nature of our desires, on the supposed conflict between what society tells us we think we want and what we really want, on our epistemological alienation from the desires that drive us, while I know I have at the same time been striving for what everyone else wants, and what I see as my true desire: helping others, being respected and loved, having a fulfilling job, getting paid enough to stand tall in the world.  Perhaps I have no non-traditional desires.  So be it.  Perhaps this is because I lack imagination.  But there are worse qualities to lack.  Imagination only multiplies the complexity of what an honest look at the existing world presents on its face.  Do I have any deviant desires?  I lack the intellect to dream them up.  So be it.  Creativity isn't everything.  Imitatio.

The great theme of Philip Roth is the cost of having what we want when our desires break with tradition. Desire in Roth never solely liberates, following it out rarely leads to uncomplicated happiness, pursuing it is not uncomplicated and merely heroic.  Roth is famous for all the sex in his books, but the sex is a red herring.  His characters don't want liberation from stultifying sex mores but instead want liberation from stultifying tradition.  the problem, though, is that the traditions they consider narrow and ignorant have provided them with comfort and unstinting love. 

In the Zuckerman trilogy, Roth's alter-ego, novelist Nathan Zuckerman, has achieved literary fame and financial success with a novel that satirizes the narrowness of his own family and the mores of the neighborhood in Newark where he grew up.  His family and community feel betrayed, and prominent critics and intellectuals accuse him of ethnic self-hatred.  Zuckerman is baffled at first, wondering why people cannot see fiction as fiction.  His father calls him a bastard on his deathbed, and his brother, a dentist in Newark, accuses him of speeding their father's death with his scandalous novel.  In The Anatomy Lesson, the one I just finished, Zuckerman is forty and suffering from a mysterious pain in his upper back; he decides to quit writing and go to medical school.  There's more to say but I won't spoil it. 

What makes Roth so wonderful is he comes down squarely neither on the side of the autonomous liberated artist unfettered by family and tradition, nor on the side of family and tradition. Were the Zuckerman trilogy merely another bildungsroman of heroic artist, it wouldn't be half as compelling; it isn't about the trials of fashioning novels but about the trials of fashioning a self.  Autonomy trades flight for a loss of balast; the cost of stability is inertia and restlessness.  We're always simultaneously children and adults, we like childhood because it's easy and adulthood because we think we can have what we want.  The good parent provides comfort to the child by denying it its desires; the child rages against the "no" but craves it just the same for the feeling of protection it provides and for the boundaries it sets; Roth's adult goes to bed as late as he wants (and with whomever he wants) and ends up a little sadder inside but more completely human for having risked the satisfaction of pursuing his own ambitions past the bounds set by his past.  Having a self, Roth knows, will involve losses, entail risks, and bring inevitable pain.  It is a yoke, as Zuckerman's neck pain in The Anatomy Lesson suggests.

Saturday AM: dropped a double deuce

Our for 22 on a lovely Saturday AM.  Left around 7:15, when the temp read 40.  I waffled about how to dress for this one.  Shorts and a T-shirt, but also hat and gloves?  I decided in favor of hat and gloves.  It got warmer through the run and I started to get hot, so I threw them away in a garbage can I passed.

Spring and fall are seasons of ambiguous temps - and they call for cheap hats and gloves that you can throw out without feeling bad about it.  I have a nice pair of winter gloves my sister in law gave me for Christmas, but on days like today I wear $1 dollar gardening gloves and a $3 wal-mart hat.  No sense in going all technical for long runs where you might need to adjust your clothing needs.

I'm also a believer in clothing the extremities and wearing stocking caps.  I often run in shorts and a T-shirt and a hat and gloves, putting tights on only when it's below 35.  I go back and forth on long sleeves: depends.



Bill Rodgers with stocking cap, victory in hand



The Psychology of Effort

I've argued previously against the idea that our runs have somehow to be intellectual or personally productive, or even a supplementary restorative to leisure--a Derridean dangerous supplement with a salt crusted face and Bodyglide protected thighs if there ever was one.  That is to say, leisure has to be about leisure.  As restoration, it's still bedevilled by, still dwelling in the shadow of, the work it's trying to escape, the work it ultimately aims to make more productive.  Granted, I prattle on about all this as a man without a real job and with the flexible schedule of a PhD student.  If there's such thing as flex time in PhD world, it's measured not in days or weeks or even months but years and years, such that a PhD program sometimes has a Ruplestilksin or Castaway-starring-Tom-Hanks-type vibe about it: You settle into a corner of the library, gleefully piling up the books beside you, then step out into the light solidly in your 30s with creeping crows' feet and sprouting ear hairs and realize that they have since invented Facebook and iPads and that the juniors were born the year Nevermind was released and view themselves with far less irony than the obsolete sensibility of their natal decade would advise. 

But I digress, divagate, essay.  Indeed, I understand as well as anyone how running can be productive for thought and in my life it often is.  Not for the precise kinds of thinking that academic writing demands, but for letting large ideas bubble up in the brain, for unfettering yourself from the inhibitions that sometimes keep us from our best thoughts.  A run is the only hour or so in the waking day when I'm not dealing with written language of some kind, it's the time when I come to be most present to myself, mediated only by myself and myself alone.  Sadly, it may be the only time in the day when I'm not trying to multitask, not distracted but rather fully attentive.  Wordsworth composed walking in the woods, images of walking about in Heidegger's writings, and the more I run the more I take his talk about pathways literally.  Though has rhythm and motion.  And if poets were always attuned to the kinetic character of thought, late 19c psychologists began to try to understand what it was. 

In "The Psychology of Effort," one of the earlier essays of his long career, Dewey tries to settle the question of how easy perceptions, like reading a billboard, differ from perceptions that require effort (like wading through Dewey's prose).  What exactly, he asks, is the sensation of effort?  Dewey says that the sensation of effort is frustrated movement.  We go through much of our lives automatically, pulled along by habit, but then, situations arise for which we're unprepared, novelties arise to which we have to adapt and adjust.  Our everyday activities, even thought, involve physical movement--furrowing the brow when we read, shifting in our chairs when we write email.  (Dewey never lets his readers forget that the mind and body are not separate entities but instead are one, that though is indeed embodied, and that in a real sense one thinks through the body.)  The sense of effort comes when the physical movement of thought becomes inadequate its task.  Effort, he writes, is "tension between means and ends in action" and the sense of effort is awareness of this tension.  "Sensations of the bodily state report to us this conflict and readjustment."

The essay pertains to endurance sports in two ways.  First, Dewey gives as an example of conflict and readjustment learning to ride a bike.  "Take the alternation of ridiculous excess of effort, with total collapse of effort in learning to ride a bicycle.  Before one mounts one has perhaps a pretty definite visual image of himself in balance and in motion.  This image persists as a desirability.  On the other hand, there comes into play at once the consciousness of the familiar motor adjustments,--for the most part, related to walking.  The two sets of sensations refuse to coincide, and the result is an amount of stress and strain relevant to the most serious problems of the universe."

Another has to do with repetitive activity--which can be applied to running: "If a monotonous physical movement be indefinitely repeated, it will generally be found that as long as 'activity' is put forth, and accomplishes something objectively...there is little sense of effort.  Let the effort be exhausted and action practically cease, then the sense of effort will be at its maximum."  Yup -- I agree.  The end of a race, when effort is almost exhausted, is definitely the hardest part.  Running is a repetitive, habitual motion -- but the body's own depleting resources eventually mount an obstacle to that motion, an obstacle to which we adapt through training and adjust to through effort.

Speaking of fatigue, I've been waking up about before my alarm clock for the last ten days and have been getting about six and a half hours of sleep to my usual seven or seven and a half.  It's been nice for running, because instead of getting up at six like usually I've been up at quarter to six or even 5:30 and out the door.  The days are getting longer and it's lighter earlier and it's great to be on the road as the sun rises.  I woke up at around 5:10 this morning, tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't so I got out of bed at 5:25 and was out the door twenty minutes later, and back at 7:02 -- about 11 mi, 7min pace.

McRunner

This is pretty great: http://mcrunner.com/

One Joe D'Amico has been eating nothing but McDonald's in the 30 days leading up to the LA Marathon.  That is exciting.  I am taking suggestions for how to get famous through a blog gimmick - pass your ideas along.  Ideas that have come to mind include:


• Peepng into a neighbor's window at 10pm each night just to see what they're doing; I'll take a picture, post it to the blog, and write up my observations.  After 365 days, I'll have a ready-to-go book: I Know You Wear Ratty Tighty Whiteys, And Now You Know I Know
• Furtively dropping into my local fair-trade coffee shop, pooping, wiping, flushing, leaving without ordering anything at all.  Then blogging.  Documentary evidence in this case crosses the line of good taste.  Book Title: I Left You Something Locally Grown.  Or howabout this: Clogging and Blogging.  Or even: Put the LOG into Blog!
• To move from the locally grown to the opposite end of the food spectrum: poop in Long John Silver's (any restaurant; doesn't have to be the same franchise, but probably better if it is) for 365 days straight.  Wear same pirate hat to do so and photograph self.  Call book: Captain's Log.  This title gets at the too easily forgotten etymology of "blog," which is "web-log."  But the real beauty is that like the others, it punningly refers to the log-like shapes into which turds arrange themselves in the course of passing through the small intestine, out the anus, and into any number of possible toilets in your community--the range and variety of which is limited only by your budget, your location, and your imagination. 

Julie considers the lobster

Joan Benoit Samuelson

A less forgiving, less inviting face

At a book drive the other day I paid a dollar for a used copy of Joan Benoit Samuelson's Running for Women (1995).  Now, I love reading old training guides, not so much for the advice they give (which is enduringly the same) but for the differences in attitude and values that they evince.  The difference in attitude has to do, mainly, with how manuals treat the more unseemly and ascetic aspects of running, like staying as light as possible, that make runners seem a bit unbalanced to outside observers.

Here's what Samuelson says about another seemingly crazy part of the running life, running during pregnancy:

"For athletically inclined women, being told not to exercise during pregnancy can be more stressful than the exercise itself.  In the seventh month of my second pregnancy, I was ordered to stop running because of low amniotic fluid...I didn't run a step for four days until I saw a specialist in high-risk pregnancies...who reassured me that everything appeared fine.  For those four days out of my routine, though, I was so stressed that I'm sure my blood pressure rose."

She goes to relate how she ran the day she gave birth.  I'll never let a wet rainy day stop me again. 

With a 2:21 PR, a time that beats the winning times of most major marathons today, Samuelson was best female runner the US ever produced until Deena Kastor came along.  Despite Samuelson's victories, despite Kastor's astonishing 2:19 London victory in 2006, the pretty face of women's running today is Kara Goucher, a better runner than I'll ever be but in the scheme of things, no Joan Benoit, no Deena Kastor.  We thus have to wonder what it means for running that Goucher has become such a celebrity. 



Kara Goucher and Paula Radcliffe

Admittedly, she's the best around, the best American marathoner running today.  Fair enough.  Shalane Flanagan is hot on her heels but Goucher still has the best PR.  Goucher, though, represents something different than Samuelson, namely, the central role of women in the second running boom.  Goucher is an icon for a new type of fitness enthusiast runner, a woman for whom running fits as a piece in a pie that includes yoga, diet, maybe meditation, plus work and motherhood--a striving after autonomy.

She is a commercial sensation as well.  Her Nike handlers have created a Goucher-persona (see video) that's got an every-woman kind of appeal, effectively downplaying her superhuman athleticism.  Goucher's one of us, terrestrial and grounded, down-to-earth, unlike the more famous Nike incarnation, Michael Jordan, whose appeal consisted in his distance and difference from the consumer, as the brand "Flight" would indicate. 

I am not surprised she was so public with her pregnancy -- what could be a better branding tool for women's running than a pregnant elite runner?  What I am saying is that the body of the female runner, as exemplified by Kara Goucher, has become an object of identification.  That identification is cultivated by Nike in particular and serves as a successful means through which to market various running gear.  The money in running now is in women.  Men go out in shorts, shoes, and a cotton T-shirt (if that).  Women simply need more gear.

On a concluding note, one of the more inspiring things I've ever witnessed as a runner was seeing Joanie run at the 2008 women's Olympic trials, held in Boston the day before the marathon.  Kastor won, but the then 50-year-old Joanie turned in a 2:49:08, beating many in a field consisting of women half her age.  She ran the 2010 Chicago Marathon in 2:47.  Flinty and indomitable, Joanie has a worn face and short iron-grey that hair do not endear her to many, for her heroic, inhuman prowess deflects easy identification.  At least, it transcends the indentification that can easily be commodified.





on the road



American distance running needs better facial hair

 Been traveling a lot this week but able to get in a decent week of training, mainly by running as early in the morning as I can.  Friday morning, I ran for two hours, and ran twelve miles yesterday and about ten this morning.  Tammi's in the thick of marathon training and has also been putting in high mileage.  There's a great podcast with '83 Boston Marathon winner Greg Meyer here.  He talks about the buildup training to his victory and argues that we all need to race more, even when we're tired from training.  One thing he says is, if you love to run, you probably want to race, and I guess that's true.  It's taken me a long time to get over the need to PR every time I race. 

When you first start running, the PRs come easy and in succession because you're getting in better and better shape, but eventually, you reach a sort of a plateau -- a plateau that's physical but that also has to do with the constraints of daily life and how much you're willing to give to the sport.  You can gain a lot of fitness by upping your mileage, but eventually, you top out the number of miles you can reasonably run in a given week; you can add intervals for intensity, too, and get in better shape that way.  But though the PRs still come, you have to work harder for them; and if you're to enjoy racing, you have to get over the need to PR and race, even when you're not tapered, even when you're not trained.  This has been hard for me to do but something I've been improving at over the last two years or so -- just racing as much as I can and enjoying it.

I have to admit to another thing here: I haven't exactly kept to my vegetarian pledge - it was too hard.  I was feeling crappy on my runs, especially on long runs which are marathon training bread and butter, and very tired overall, so I had some beef and began feeling better.  My training's going great now.  It's wrong not to eat mindfully, but how wrong is it?  That's the question I'm asking myself.  It's very selfish to put running ahead of the welfare of sentient creatures.  It's also impossible to act in the world without being complicit in some way with something you can't morally sign on to, and we have to choose our battles. 

Watched some of Weeds last night -- great show.  It's amazing how durable the genre of suburban anomie is, and how many directions it can go in.  Also, why did TV get so good in the 00s?  

Tammi's 20

Tammi ran 20 yesterday in preparation for her marathon.  Great job!  We're both in Cambridge, MA for research so she did it in unfamiliar territory, which makes it all the more of an accomplishment.  The first step of a 20-miler is always an intimidating one, all the more so in a place you don't know well. It was cold and windy.

I went 90 minutes yesterday morning before heading to library for research; this morning I ran a little over ten along the Charles. 

self-compassion

Good article in today's NYT about self compassion.  Scientists say go easy on yourself about your imperfections.  Not bad advice.  What's striking about this article is that the examples of imperfections are failures to diet and exercise.  People castigate who themselves "for perceived failures like being overweight or not exercising" would do well to ease up on the self-flagellating.  Apropos of the last post here, we have another example of exercise turned into, if not a moral issue, at least another category of behaviors to chastise ourselves about.  What gives?

Anyhow--check this out.  An ameteur runner, government worker Yuki Kawauchi, took third at the Tokyo marathon, running 2:08.  He passed out after crossing the finish line, which according to him was the fifth time he's ended up in the medical tent after a marathon.  In a race, there's always a little more to give.  Amazingly, he did it by himself.  The Japanese running scene is dominated by corporate teams (like company softball teams, but for serious runners), but he didn't join one.