I’m a big fan of Ernest Hemmingway. Not the macho, bull-fighting alcoholic.
The writer.
Not the Man.
The word. The sentence and the paragraph.
Although, truth be told, I do appreciate the need for outsized characters in this Plain-Jane world of ours.
Characters who we can live through vicariously and show us that there can be ribaldry, glamor, and worthiness in pursuit of the perfect sentence.
We have a soft spot, it would seem, for swashbucklers and pirates.
These caricatures do us a great service as cardboard cutouts that we can try on for size and play at.
But the writing.
I remember the first time I read “Big Two Hearted River”. I was in college. Therefore, I was young, ignorant, and facile, but of course thought I was the smartest being in the universe.
The story made an impression on me. It was a study in using simple language to intensify the power of the language. The writing was hard-edged and powerful and beautiful – like a Bonsai tree trimmed to its perfect core truth.
I remember reading the Old Man and the Sea one day.
Sometime later.
I woke up at a friend’s house and it was lying around. I picked it up and read it. It’s only 26,000 words. Hardly a novella.
It’s a good read. Probably not as good as everyone would have you think. It won the Pulitzer. But that was because the literary world by this point knew they owed Hemingway something for the weight of his work on the world.
The profound impact.
Santiago, the unlucky Cubano who catches the Marlin says, in that work, “a man can be destroyed but not defeated”.
A man can be destroyed, but he cannot, will not, should not, be defeated.
Why?
Because the unlucky fools among us know that there is no destination. We know this because we got to the end, and they kicked us out ungracefully to the muddy curb.
And we found nothing there.
We live for the ride.
We need to look out the windows and sway sensuously to the music on the radio.
We need to live! Not just chase.
Sorry – got lost in my tendency to flowerize the language.
‘Flowerize’ is a word I just made up. But that’s perfectly ok. Shakespeare is credited by some to have invented over 10,000 new English words.
Santiago was a fisherman. Even when he could not catch the fish, he still got up every day and went out to fish.
I am a marathoner. And this weekend I will return to the marathon.
I would not call it a ‘triumphant’ return. I might even say the mako sharks of age have left me with a skeleton of ability.
But I feel strangely sanguine. Strangely optimistic. And overridingly happy.
Like I’m going home again. (With apologies to Thomas Wolfe)
…
“Hold one Chris!” You shout peevishly, “You were going to talk about the marathon and now you’re giving us a poor literature lesson, what gives Bucko?”
Who me?
The journey of this podcast over the last 20 years has been my journey. I take my investment in good books well read quite seriously.
Where else am I going to use this stuff?
4th wall broken.
…
How did I get from a career ending knee injury to lining up for an honest-to-goodness marathon this weekend?
Well…
There’s a story.
A story with striving, depression, chaos and derring-do!
Actually, no. It’s just a run of the mill story. But I will tell you.
…
It manifested at the end of February in 2020.
Many forces came together.
But one thing manifested.
The forces were me training hard for yet another Boston Marathon.
And, I don’t know if you remember this, but a potentially world-ending plague had settled in for a cozy vacation that had us all locked in our houses scowling nervously at our neighbors.
I went out for run. I was in pretty good shape. I had been maintaining a good level of fitness since the AFIB ablation incident of 2015.
I managed to requalify a couple times. But, honestly, I was carrying an ever increasing load of Ennui.
How many times could I throw myself at the marathon? Why should I?
Where was the exit?
Frankly I was psychologically looking for that ever-elusive soft landing.
I had just run a 100 miler, for lack of anything better to do and I was 58.
On that second to last hill repeat on that cool morning in the spring of my discontent. (And, let’s just say, right here and now that ‘second-to-last’ is the correct use of the word ‘penultimate’.
On that penultimate hill repeat, on that same old stretch of hilly road that I had been doing hill repeats on in servitude of the Boston Marathon for 20 years, something popped and there was a sharp pain in my knee.
The doctor said it was similar to a stress fracture. A deep bruise in the knob on the end of the bone.
It might heal. It might not.
Many appointments later. Many thousands of dollars pumped into the rigged slot machine that is the American medical system. And there was no clarity. There was no THING THAT I COULD DO to make it better.
There was only a knee that still hurt and no real solution other than the unspoken prognosis, the elephant in the room, of “you’re old.”
And of course, you go through the cycle.
I went through the cycle.
You all know the cycle.
Maybe a couple weeks off? Maybe some rehab?
But then it goes on and on and never gets better and you lose hope.
People disparage the concept of hope, but I think hope is the spark that enables all that slavish discipline you’re so proud of.
I tried to come back. I tried to walk-run. But every time the knee would complain.
I trained walk-run for the Flying Pig marathon in 2021. I had always wanted to run the Pig.
But the knee fought back and I downgraded to the half marathon, limping through it.
After that I came to terms with the fact that I was done running.
I had found the bottom.
I started trying to wrap my head around being done. I rolled it around in my head. What would it mean? What was next? How would I fill this hole?
I tried to cultivate a love of cycling and weightlifting. But, let’s face it, they are poor substitutes.
And yoga – let’s not forget the yoga!
I was forced to let running go.
This thing that had been such a big art of my life. This thing that had brought me so many gifts.
So many adventures.
So many friends.
And although I was empty, I was also very full.
Full of memories.
Full of gratitude.
Full of your friendships.
…
Then one morning as I was doing the social media dance that we cowards do when we are afraid to do real things in the real world, I saw that my friend, your friend, Ann had charity bibs for the Marine Corp Marathon.
Coach and Ann and I started joking about it. None of us were running. Someone dared someone. Coach told us if we ran, he’d coach us.
And I accepted the bet. Climbed back on the horse.
But this time was different.
I had survived the reset and was starting fresh.
I had let go.
I had no expectations.
I would take whatever the process gave me.
…
What would it give me?
The knee was sore and soft and weak.
What would it give me?
So coach and I started working.
The first challenge was volume. How much could I stand?
We settled on 3 runs a week.
When it hurt, I stopped. I discovered that the knee was most angry about running up hills.
I adapted almost the entire training cycle to be run on flat even ground.
I found a new passion for the flatness of the rail trail.
I took what it gave me.
I was tired after a couple miles. I was fat. I was slow. I walked a lot.
But I was happy.
I worked my way up from zero to an hour of running. And when I got there, I realized that, if this was all I got, I would be so happy.
I remembered the gift. The joy of being out there. Of feeling the morning air on your face and the leaves underfoot.
Funny Story:
Last week I took Ollie the Collie to the vet for his annual checkup. They pronounced him fit as a fiddle and noted that he had lost some weight.
Yes, he had.
So had I.
We were running again.
And we were happy.
And over the course of 4-5 months, I slowly got a little bit of my base back.
Consistency is the key to anything. I was slow, but I could now run continuously for 1:20 without gaping like a fish out of water.
The next challenge was the quality.
As the race approaches, all of us veterans know that you need some structured quality.
Hills were out. So the coach started to mix in some tempo runs. Run easy for an hour and finish the last 20 minutes hard. Accelerate and push the pace as you climb the ladder of the run.
I didn’t push any real speed work, but I worked the tempo.
Like an old piece of scrap iron red from the forge my body started to remember. Man and dog locked in the eternal battel with gravity on a trip that has no destination.
But I was not a slave to the training.
I worked in an all-day mountain hike. I worked in a 100-mile bike ride with my buddies. I ate what I wanted and didn’t worry too much about the pounds.
12 weeks out from the race the knee was good. Not strong but not painful.
Now we had a new challenge. My longest run had been 10ish miles.
You can’t run a marathon without some long runs.
So we began to climb the ladder in the Sunday long runs.
15 miles. No problem, last couple a bit of a struggle.
16 miles. Still struggling at the end.
Time to embrace reality. Time to once again work with what I had.
For my 18 miler I decided to walk 1 minute every 10 minutes.
Finally a 20 mile run capped off my campaign 3 weeks out.
I finished strong and happy.
I can still do it. The knee is good. I’m not struggling as long as I work within my constraints.
The hay is in the barn.
I’ve lost a minute or so off my pace. I haven’t been able to do much leg strength work because of the knee.
Surprisingly these last few tempo runs have seen relatively fast paces.
For where I am and what I have.
But that poses some interesting questions and opportunities for the future.
But I’m so confident and happy.
I’m so grateful to be able to ride this horsey ride again.
The sharks may have destroyed my mackerel, but they haven’t defeated me.
The truth to this story, hidden in there like a worm in the heart of a dog, is that I was able to get this back because I gave it up.
I let it go and it came back to me.
It is not our bodies that fail, it is our expectations that fail us.
No one cares how fast you go. No one cares how many medals are in your bottom drawer under the old bib numbers and signed posters and sweat stained hats.
Gifts cannot be taken.
Gifts can only be received.
I may not be indestructible.
But I’m timeless and alive.