Songs of Experience

Did anyone see that piece on 60 Minutes last week on ultra-distance runners? It was about a man and a woman both training for Bad Water (an extreme insane race of 135 miles through the Mojave desert). At one point, the grizzled-looking woman told the interviewer that running 5 times a day helped her be a better mother. What a load of crap! This woman is an addict, plain and simple. How PRESENT can you be in a child’s life if you are running out the door (literally running away) five times a day?! At least the male runner didn’t insult the audience by claiming his 100-mile runs on the week-end made him a better father. He was so self-obsessed that he didn’t even mention his kids; his pizzas and hamburgers and milkshakes, called in from his cell phone that he carries on his all-day runs, get more attention. Talk about an eating disorder!

Geez. I hate to see my beloved running so “notoriously abused.” This morning I came across a quote about alcoholics by Alice Munro. I think it applies to these two ultra-addicts:

“It wasn’t the drinking that was responsible. The same thing was waiting, no matter what, and all the time. Drinking, needing to drink – that was just some sort of distraction, like everything else.”

Running, needing to run, 5 times a day … was just some sort of distraction.

… this poet needs no introduction

“dumb
Jesus Christ
some people are so dumb
you can hear them
splashing around
in their dumbness …

I want to
run and hide
I want to
escape their engulfing
nullity.”

(more…)

In light of the recent controversy surrounding major league baseball and steroids, I have to say a word (or four) about our athletic playing fields: THEY ARE NOT LEVEL! In my own little world of American female distance running, two giants were not only caught [finally] using performance-enhancing drugs … but one of them, Mary Slaney, was inducted into the track & field hall of fame after she tested positive. What’s up with that!? What exactly does it mean to take the 5th? Does it mean, “Hey, I’m guilty but you won’t hear me say it”? I am the most sickened by Regina Jacobs, who was so dirty for so long that all of us in the running commuity accepted it as the way things are. For nearly two decades, Regina cheated her way on to every World and Olympic team, leaving only two spots open (out of three possible) for honest runners. When you lined up to try to make a US team in a race with Jacobs, you thought, “Okay, after Juice Jacobs … a sort of cyborg creature, part man/part machine … who do I need to beat?” After the story broke that Jacobs had taken EPO, human growth hormone, THG, and insulin [the same conconction Marion Jones purportedly was on], lo-and-behold!, Juice retired from the sport. I have heard she is selling real-estate in Califonia. Anybody wanna buy some swampland in Florida? Juice is your gal.

If anyone is interested, here’s an article I wrote for Running Times on how to exit the athletic stage gracefully.

Admit it, ladies, we all watch Oprah … now and then, or every day. I TIVO it and watch only the “good ones,” fast-forwarding through all the blah-blah-blah parts. I even make my husband watch it with me (but he hasn’t enjoyed it as much since Dr. Phil left – he loved it when Phil slammed those guys with questions like, “How’s that working for you?”). Anyway, I mention Oprah becasue she spent the first half of her life figuring it out and is now spending the second half telling everybody!
I admire her blogging spirit.

Here’s one thing she “knows for sure” that we all better GET before we die:
“In the final analysis of our lives—when the to-do lists are no more, when the frenzy is finished, when our e-mail boxes are empty—the only thing that will have any lasting value is whether we’ve loved others and whether they’ve loved us. ”

Bravoprah!