hobby

What does it mean to say that running is my hobby? Or, is it marathoning, not running, that's my hobby? The word, you probably know, originally referred to kind of pony, then a toy horse, and then in the 19th century, our “favourite occupation or topic, pursued merely for the amusement or interest that it affords.” Hobbies, then, have a deep connection to running animals. Merely for amusement: a running hobby has to be fun, its own goal. It can't be a means: of exercising, of keeping beautiful and trim looking.

The rest of the definition seems to follow logically for the first part, while being particularly applicable to runners: "an individual pursuit to which a person is devoted (in the speaker's opinion) out of proportion to its real importance. " That is to say, if a hobby is, by the first part of the definition, its own end, utterly unimportant for anything but the interest or amusement of the hobbyist it will appear silly to outside observers--as any unimportant pursuit will. Hobbies appear excessive to the observer because of their trivial, unproductive character. To me, your enthusiasm for your particular brand of fun always seems disproportionate, out of balance. Hiking: what's the point? Golf: not just trivial, boring too!

More later--I've got to go to bed. Ran 10 today in some slushy late afternoon sun--winter, slanted sun. I'm not training right now, just doing maintenance mileage, and good thing. It's still fun and amusing to run.

almost skipped today

I dare anyone to name the day: does anyone really know what day it is today, or was yesterday, or whether Christmas was on a Monday or a Saturday or a Wednesday? The order of the days of the week falls out of consciousness after December 23 as we remain in our semi-reluctant holiday stupor until January 2. What day does New Year's fall on? Who knows. It's in these days where the calendar breaks down that my running seems to as well, that I lose the sense of urgency about getting out the door. I almost skipped my run this morning but after coffee and some reading made it out for an easy, very easy, six.

cold day, windy run

I'm on the East Coast in the D.C. area, sitting in a sunny kitchen staring out at a cold and windy but snowless day. Yesterday BWI was shut down on what apparently was fear of snow. I overheard a flight attendent tell her colleauge that she'd gotten word about the shutdown on Christmas day! Odd. Why weren't we all told that we could have cancelled flights and innumerable inconveniences?

Nonetheless I'm glad the snow is north of here--I was able to run for 70 minutes in the cold and wind but it was sunny and the ground was dry, and I had a new pair of running gloves and new shoes so I was fine and happy.

the metropolis and mental life

My wife and I woke up at 6 this morning (our usual time but a time unusual for a holiday)for separate predawn runs, she recovering from last night's 14 and I out for ten at a decent clip. The loop took me around the empty main streets of the neighborhood and briefly into the vacant downtown in ways that always remap the city of birth for me, turning it into a grid of pure geography, mere physical miles of streets over which to lay a morning ten. Places that in thought and memory seem far from home seem, when running, almost inconveniently close, maybe a mere 1/2 mile or mile away. To loop west to the public junior high school, down town, and back across the bridge with the WPA statues measures a mere four miles or so. The neighborhood streets are closely gridded, each block less than .1 miles long. More later. It started snowing toward the end of my run, and the snow continues to fall peacefully. I have to shower now.

avoiding Christmas grumpiness

I get reflexively grumpy at Christmas. I don't know why -- aside from the usual complaints people have about Christmas, I've got nothing to gripe about. This year though I'm feeling the usual Christmas exaustion a little more acutely, and it's almost as if it's not just me but everyone, the whole country, that's overextended and exhausted. Anyhow--my wife's here in the midwest with me and is helping me hide my grumpiness behind a smile.

mid morning 10

This morning my wife and I slept in until 9 because we can, and we tend to do that on Friday's anyhow. For whatever reason, Thursday night begins the academic weekend, which is really no weekend at all. The rate and pace of work just slows. We broke our plans to go to a Christmas party last night and instead stayed home and watched a movie. We were in bed by 11:30.

Usually we get up before dawn. Out of habit now I wake up around six. We all know the pleasure of those mornings when we wake up at the usual time only to realize we can sleep in. I pull my wife close and go back to sleep.

Got up, had two cups of coffee, ran 10 on P. Brook, it cold, and the hills were harder than usual probably because I hadn't eaten much the night before. I've been worried about diabetes lately, ever since reading this article in the NYT. I'm giving up sugary foods, and I plan to be vigilant about my intake of hidden sugars. My wife has warned me that runners eat like fat people, that our organs work as hard as fat peoples' organs to process the outsized amounts of foods we eat, even as our skinny frames belie our crappy food habits. I believe her: kidneys, the liver have to process the crap we eat, even as we have abnormally low body fat percentages.

Last night we watched Dickie Roberts, Child Star, on sale for $5 at Barnes and Noble and better than we thought it would be. (Somehow, this movie choice makes a too telling transition from a paragraph about sugar consumption.) Our choice for tonight was Lars and the Real Girl, an appealing weird movie about a young Wisconsin man's love for a sex mannequin. (I mention the setting because it's important for the setting and costumes--it's a midwestern winter, everyone's wearing beige sweaters, the sky's a monochrome slate, the trees and dead grasses are shades of brown, shots blend the world into a bleak and lifeless earth-tone pallate.) Everyone in Lars's small town goes along with his fantasy that the doll is real. I'll have to think more about how to sum the movie up, but suffice it to say that it sets up more conflicts for the main character than it can resolve. This makes its plotting satisfyingly complex, its ending frustratingly pat. A much more interesting movie than I thought it would be, and I'll have to think about it before I say more about it.

It's almost Christmas. My favorite day of the year is December 23, traditionally a day on which nothing happens.

tech

For about a year I've had a Garmin. Until just recently, I took it on every run except speed workouts: on long runs, daily maintenance mileage, easy recovery runs. Lately though I've gotten tired of it: the incessant beeping, it's mass, the way I look down at it constantly. I've gone back to my old wristwatch, measured loop routes and out-and-backs.

Americans have contradictory attitudes about training and tech. We want it because we think tech unqualifiedly enhances life; yet we think our triumphs should be matters of heart and will. Here's an illustration of what I mean. It's one of the biggest lies of the Cold War:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q57qB6Kwroo&feature=related

winter light midmorning, a cold day

Sometimes I wonder how people lived before thermometers. How did you know what to wear outdoors? Today is in the 20s. I've left this morning's run for this afternoon. I needed a break from the routine. It's very hard to get up early in the winter and run in the dark. The cold doesn't bother me running in the winter, but what does bother me most about December has nothing to do with weather but with the way the year so quickly just peters out. My work is measured in months and years and not days so the turn of the year is significant.