Running in the Fall is Better than Falling in the Run - preceded by a deep thought

I woke up in the middle of the night this past week with a thought: Mid-life crisis occurs exactly at the moment when one stops looking forward, and instead shifts to gazing into the past. It is so easy to look at where you are in your life and mentally catalogue and second-guess all of the decisions you've made that got you to this point. I suggest that that is a practice not worth undertaking. Don't beat yourself up over past choices. Many of them were probably right for you at the time. But even the ones that were not are OK. You were younger then. Now you know more. Live your life as if you are just out of school and looking forward to what you can accomplish. See if you can set a goal for a day, week, month, year ahead, and take steps to reach it. I went back to sleep vowing to try to look forward as much as possible. I'm going to continue to try to live by that line of thinking as much as I can.

Now running:

It seems as if there is little that can destroy a week of running. Cold and wind can be held at bay by wearing the right clothing and picking the right trail that can block the breeze. Rain? No, that's just fun to run in. Heat? Nah. I either go early and avoid the worst of it. Or I pretend I'm training for Badwater. Ice or icy rain? Well, yeah. That'll do it. But so far this fall (knock wood), there has been nothing in the weather that will truly impede the committed runner.

I knocked out 39 miles last week. 29 were on trails. I normally try to get in around 30 mile each week. But my running club, the Lawrence Trail Hawks, were hosting the 10K and 25K Sanders Saunter trail races over the weekend, and I opted to volunteer rather than run. So I did my normal 10-ish mile Saturday run on Friday. I ran 18 miles in the new Hoka Mafates. The shoes took a bit of getting used to on steep downhills and turns. But overall, I found them to be quite adequate for hilly, somewhat rocky terrain. On Friday I wore them on the flat sandy surface of the levee. For that run, I felt good. My feet were incredibly comfortable with the mattress-like feel of the thick soles. I don't know if it was the height, the drop, or the very slight difference in weight of the Hokas vs my Mizuno road shoes (the Hokas are a bit heavier), but I did have a bit of muscle soreness in my quads (where I never experience problems) after the run. I will attribute it to an adjustment issue. All in all, my first week with the oversize soles was fun.

Yesterday, Sunday, the weather was spectacular. It felt like an early morning in Florida. The air was thick with humidity. The temperature was in the 60s, with just a slight wind. My main running buddy of late popped by and we hit the river trails. He and I have been running the much more difficult Clinton North Shore trails lately, and we both wanted a change.

While neither of us was really feeling the run early on, we knew if we just ran through the blahs that things would get better. We got to the farthest point on the trail and popped out the end onto a gravel parking lot that was next to a boat ramp littered with .22 caliber shell casings. We followed the access road to where it intersected with the levee, and then, for a change, took the gravel country roads back into town. I have biked the route many times, but had never run it. It was a nice change and we were in no hurry. We both had gotten our mojo back, and eased into enjoying what we were doing. We ran with wide open fields surrounding us in all directions until we hit the industrial area and had to deal with odd gas fumes and the stench of a dead fox. But we were feeling good. The last mile of our run was the fastest of the day. We cruised on the N. Lawrence streets back to the trail head before calling it a day. It felt so good to be in shorts and short sleeves. We both realized the run might be the last without a jacket for months to come.

Musings, Miles, Kinetic Revolution Training Program, and a Gratuitous Pic of my New Hoka Mafate 3's

I had a catastrophic failure on my 5 year old HP Pavilion notebook a few days ago. It is odd how we use the word 'catastrophic' to describe incidents that really are not. It's akin to the disturbing overuse of the word 'awesome' - which seems to have started with the hipster community and moved into the lexicon of the general population at an alarming rate (although I should point out here that I'm not truly 'alarmed' by this occurrence). In a similar vein, I've always found the British use of the word 'brilliant' (to describe things that are particularly not brilliant) to be hilarious. If you spend about five minutes watching the BBC (or its ilk), you'll see someone say something like, "I managed to get the last drops of jam out of the jar by using a long spoon rather than a knife." To which the response is always, "Brilliant." Is it really? I don't know, maybe it is. Maybe that is the outer limit of the person's mental and physical capacities. But I like to think that a species that is able to land a piece of equipment on a passing asteroid some billions of miles from Earth, would be able to find a more suitable descriptor for removing a gelatinous sugary sludge from the depths of a glass jar.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, the computer. So, because I can't work, buy things I don't need, or seemingly wipe my ass without a computer, I made the immediate decision to purchase another. I got on my iPad within an hour of accepting the fact that my HP was not going to return to life, and ordered another device. Because I have an iPhone, an iPod (Shuffle), and the aforementioned iPad, for the first time in my life, I decided to splurge and buy a MacBook Air. As of this writing, I'm still getting used to the new machine - which seems to do everything my old machine did for four times the price (but it did come in better packaging). So I am now fully part of the Mac minions. I'll have no more comments on the subject until I do comment on it in the future... Let's stop now.

On to running. What a wonderful week. It was cold and windy. I braved the outdoors on three occasions (18F, 19F, and 26F), and ran on treadmills, an indoor track, and an elliptical trainer three times as well. The main issue I had on the outdoor jaunts was what to wear. Every winter it takes a week or two to figure out how to stay just barely warm enough, but not too warm. Sadly, I have failed in all three cold-weather instances so far. I have been over-dressed, and have returned to my house at the runs' conclusions with clothes that are about as sweat-soaked as if I had run wearing them in the middle of July (that's summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, for any readers from OZ or S. Am). With there being no choice but to continue to experiment, I'm sure I'll have more to report in the near future - including how I can cleverly trap moisture next to my body by wearing a wicking shirt, but covering it with a non-wicking windbreaker (my career as a sports clothing designer is obviously a bust).

So, with the weather being what it is, I opted to leave my brand new Hoka Mafate 3's untested until I can try them on surfaces I know that aren't slightly snow-packed.

These Herman Munster-ish shoes are so fun to look at that I've left them out in my living room. Every time I see them I smile. I've walked around the house in them a couple of times. They are ridiculously comfortable. I will have an update in the future.

One thing I have been doing while being stuck indoors is to start James Dunne's Kinetic Revolution 30 day challenge. http://www.kinetic-revolution.com/30daychallenge/ This program is easy and free. I would suggest it to everyone. Worst case, it will offer some new stretches and add a little muscle. Best case, it will improve your core, balance, and speed. Following the program takes 5-10 minutes each day for 30 days (duh). I'm on day 9. I find myself incorporating stretches and balance exercises into my pre and post run warm-ups/cool-downs. Having had hamstring issues, and having been to PT because of them, I can attest that some of what the program offers is exactly the same as PT. I have a runner friend with a bit of a sciatic issue who found one of the stretches to be quite difficult. It is one that I used to find difficult/painful as well. But I have a feeling that doing the exercise as suggested, with repeated pulses, is going to be a big help to him in the very near future. I heartily recommend that anyone reading this try out this remarkable running-improvement site.

So, next week I hope to have more info re: Hokas, an update on the Kinetic Revolution 30 day Challenge, and maybe a race report on the Sanders Saunter 25K and 10K - put on by the Lawrence Trail Hawks on the very challenging Clinton North Shore Trails.

RUN As Seen InThe Context of Masterminds and Wingmen

As I mentioned in this blog a couple of weeks ago, I was in Boulder, CO last month. A book group had invited me to attend their monthly meeting where they planned to discuss my novel, RUN - which had been the club's book choice for September. Part of the discussion involved viewing RUN's characters in the context of another book, Masterminds and Wingmen, by Rosalind Wiseman.

Being a single guy, I had not read any of Wiseman's works - and there are a good number. She is, perhaps, best known as the author of the book, Queen Bees and Wannabees. That book, about girls and girl culture, would become the basis for Tina Fey's excellent movie, Mean Girls. Masterminds and Wingmen is Wiseman's sequel for boys and boy culture.

When Masterminds and Wingmen (M&W) was mentioned a few days before my trip, I hit up Wikipedia and Wiseman's website in order to be slightly conversant for the book club's meeting. Since then, I have read the book, and I posses a fuller understanding of why M&W would come to mind for someone reading RUN.

In researching RUN, I spent a huge amount of time looking at videos of college and high school cross country teams. I probably viewed 300-400 races. But more importantly, I looked for teams that posted videos outside of races. I watched to see how they interacted both during training and downtime. I followed a lot of Twitter feeds, team Facebook sites, Instagram postings, and paid particular attention to the lexicon used by young runners in comments and photo descriptions. As part of the research, every time a music group, show, or star was mentioned, I'd dutifully track it down and familiarize myself with the subject as much as possible. For instance, I watched a whole season of Zoey 101 (something I would not recommend to anyone over the age of 14), after the show was mentioned in a tweet. In that case, I learned that Zoey was one of a number of shows  (ie Saved by the Bell, Degrassi, and Leave it to Beaver) that each generation looks back on as sort of an electronic comfort blanket. It is not that unusual to have a twenty-something watch an episode of the (to me, insipid) show, Zoey, because it is familiar and nostalgic.

In creating M&W, Wiseman went further than looking at how boys/young men talk and act. On an ongoing basis, she spoke with boys from different socio-economic groups, as well as from differing geographies and urban/suburban/rural settings. Rather than simply report, she analyzed what was behind the way boys/young men interacted with their peers, adults, and the world around them. And because she was thorough and inclusive in her research, Wiseman  created a work that describes the forces behind the boy culture experience better than anything I've encountered. I found several instances in the book where I was thrown into a reverie - which could be quite emotional - as universal adolescent experiences were covered. At the book's conclusion, I could see the importance its contents would hold for parents of boys. I could see the benefits that I, a single guy, would (and will) derive from Wiseman's insights as well. As people, we all are better off if we are able to understand those around us - their motivations, emotions, thoughts, and the triggers for their actions. It is also helpful to be reminded of lessons we learned, but may have forgotten, as we have matured. M&W is, in some ways, a guidebook for how to positively coexist and collaborate with a significant portion of our population.

Looking at RUN through M&W glasses was a fun and informative experience. The process taught me a bit more about my characters. I also was able to look backwards at M&W through RUN, and had some additional thoughts for Wiseman's work as well.

If you have read both books, keep reading below. If not, you still might find the following discussion interesting, but it won't likely be as meaningful as if you were familiar with both.

In the context of M&W, RUN's main character/narrator, Andy, could be described as a former associate who has become a champion (ital. are terms used to describe boy culture types in M&W). While Andy has mild OCD and ADHD, he has still been able to rise to a high social level because of his talent as a runner and because he can keep his conditions just enough under the radar that most people don't notice them. Chris, in some ways, is an associate, and in others, a limited mastermind - he leads the team, but is not the best runner on the team. Juniors Skids and Ben are both champions and associates, who will no longer be associates once Andy, Chris, and a character named Kit graduate, and Skids and Ben become seniors. And Chad, the antagonist, has obviously been a mastermind.  But now he is a mastermind without a posse since he has transferred to Westborough High from his old school for his senior year. So Chad, who many readers have found to be one of the more interesting characters, has trouble fitting in because, as a mastermind, he has only had to adhere to social norms that he created in the past. And now, in a new school, he finds the act of conforming to the culture to be nearly impossible.

Since the book is about cross country running, there is a good amount of content that, on the surface, fits neatly into Wiseman's descriptions of boy culture in relation to sports. Though cross country is not one of the most prestigious sports (ALMB, "act like a man") in M&W's estimation, it still has its own culture, practices, and contracts of conduct.

One thing M&W does not cover well (at least the edition I read) is gay/gay and gay/straight boy relationships and friendships. The book is hetero-centric with little examination given to the topic of gay boys. Even in discussing the 'friend zone', Wiseman only uses examples of boys wanting to date girls. Since 'friend zone' and sports are only discussed from a straight perspective, a good percentage of parents raising gay sons will find no easy answers from M&W. And that is too bad, because a big strength of Wiseman's book is that it can almost be seen as a go-to quick reference guide for many situations. I am hopeful that there will be a future edition that addresses gay and transgender kids. With suicide and substance abuse levels running high in that segment of our younger population, having more clear and supportive resources like M&W would be helpful to both parents and their sons.

The lack of a lot of gay information made it a bit difficult to fully cover the aspects of sports and friendships in RUN from a M&W perspective since a gay character plays such a large role in RUN (the narrator's best friend is gay). Yet there are certainly instances where examples are present. When a couple of kids break team rules, they learn that their actions have consequences. They are not hated or abused, but instead are made to follow the rules they had agreed to when they joined the sport. In another instance, bullying and rough talk are addressed by a coach. The kids, particularly Skids, a gay runner, are good at not letting too many sexist remarks fly by without challenge.

While Andy may be a M&W champion in disposition and in most of his actions, he is unable to act against the biggest issue the team faces. His associates, Chris and Skids (who, as I wrote earlier have some mastermind and champion traits), are ultimately the two who try separately, and in their own very different ways, to fix the problem.

I learned a lot by taking another look at RUN after reading Masterminds and Wingmen. I better understood my characters' motivations. I spent time looking back at my own childhood to think about how I fit in. I also examined how I interact with boys (and kids in general) in my life as an adult. Am I sending them the right message? Or am I falling into an ALMB role? With different kids, I think I probably do a bit of both. And that will, I hope change for the better in the immediate future.

While I am working on a new book (with very different subject matter) at the moment, I have been asked many times about writing a sequel to RUN. When I do, Wiseman's Masterminds and Wingmen will certainly be a top reference guide.