No physical appearance is worth not eating pasta for.
— Matt Haig, with “One Beautiful Thing” in “The Comfort Book” (Penguin Life, July 6, 2021)
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Tag: Exercise
Running. With Ripley. Believe It Or Not.
Monday. 4:15 a.m. Up since 3:15 a.m. And for the life of me, I can’t understand why. Monday is a holiday, followed by two weeks vacation, and here I am. Hypnos, where are thou Hypnos?
I skim through old blog posts. My last running blog post, aka last time I ran, June 6, 2020 — Running. No More. (For now). Wowza. 15 months ago. 457 consecutive days without running. Like in a Row.
Jan Grue “…but the days slip by at an uncomfortable speed.”
I put on my running gear, and I step out the door.
68° F, humidity is thick. Eugenides: “…the air wishing it was water.” Mist hangs low over the street. Exactly, exactly like Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
You might ask Why? Why this sudden urge to run. And I would say, I have no clue. But the real Deep State, the subconscious, is whispering, yes you do DK. Yes you do. Two major, MAJOR, dates approaching.
I put in 1.5 miles, feeling like a ½ marathon.
Soles hurt.
Ankles hurt.
Groins hurt.
Calves hurt.
Knees hurt.
Sciatica? Gone!
Tuesday. This morning. 4:00 a.m. 60° F. No humidity. Runner’s weather. Continue reading “Running. With Ripley. Believe It Or Not.”
Walking. With Someday & Soon.
479 consecutive days. Like in a Row. Walking, at Cove Island Park.
~ 20 minutes before sunrise, and I’m walking the shoreline. It twitches. The surface stirs. Their bellies, silver flashes, mica flickering in twilight.
I look overhead. No gulls, no egrets, no herons. Enjoy your quiet time little people, while it lasts.
I keep walking. Multiple schools swirl ahead of me.
The Twilight Zone.
I walk.
Pages of James Tate Hill’s new memoir, Blind Man’s Bluff, turn. “It’s that meaning can rest in the smallest details, in every moment and gesture and line of dialogue.”
The middle aged Chinese woman runner. Hardy girl that she is, running every morning straight through the winter months. She no longer runs on Weed Avenue, the main artery to the Park. She ducks in and out of the side streets. Fearing assault? Retribution for the Chinese Virus?
The Veteran Retiree. No sign of him in months. Visiting his grandchildren? Ill? Hospitalized?
Runner with Spandex and wired, Over-The-Ear headphones. He rolls on. Wired. With Over-the-Ear headphones. With Spandex. Luminescent disco blue. Continue reading “Walking. With Someday & Soon.”
Walking. With Billy Summers. (2)
77° F. 5:05 a.m. Morning Walk @ Cove Island Park. 466 consecutive days. Like in a Row.
Another sh*t night of no-to-restless sleep. Another, like in a row. I’m tired. I look up ‘irascible’ when I get home, because that’s a word that Lori would use. I am Irascible. I-R-A-S-C-I-B-L-E. Oxford defines it as quick-tempered. Yes, with a capital “I”.
I pull into the parking lot. ‘My’ parking spot is taken. I park in the same spot each morning. There has to be 300 open spots, and someone had to choose mine. ‘Mine.’
I get out of the car, grab my camera gear from the back seat, and walk. It’s twilight, aka near dark. I fail to see the curb next to the car. My right toe slams into the concrete curb. I somehow manage not to take a header. F*cking curb. What is that doing here!*!$ The rest of the morning, my right toe tingles.
I note that there’s an unusually large number of cars at daybreak. And a large number of middle aged women mingling in front of the gate. [Don’t start slinging unfriendly fire at me Followers — I said ‘large number’, not ‘Large.’] They are blocking the first entrance to the park, requiring me to walk 50 feet down the line to the second entry. I mean really? Do you all need to congregate in front of the gate chitter-chattering at 5:10 a.m. What could there possibly be so important to talk about.
My rhythm is disrupted. I have a routine here, people. 466 days of it. And here you come with your, what, yoga group? Meditation sutras? Keep clear.
Air is thick, heavy. I need to wear long pants and a long sweat shirt as armor from the gnats and mosquitos. It’s 5:25 a.m, it’s hot and I haven’t even gotten started. Leather straps from the backpack bite into my shoulder. Camera straps pinch my neck. And that swish swish of the backpack pulls on the straps which dig and then cut skin. Latin: Irascibillis.
The scene reminds me of a line in Stephen King’s new book which is being pumped by Audible into my airpods: Billy Summers: “When things go wrong, they don’t waste time.” Continue reading “Walking. With Billy Summers. (2)”
Walking. Like who’s watching who?
The nocturnals. Or the insomniacs. Or both.
There’s a handful of us that walk Cove Island Park in twilight, before daybreak.
There’s the lady with the Lime Green winter coat. Knee length. Fur lined hood, always up. Most noticeable, besides the strobe-like-pulsing, lime green coat, is that you can see her across the entire length of the park. Her arms stiff and straight, swing up and high, then sharply down, and repeat. I watch her. I find it all hypnotic. Like a giant tropical parrot, with her wings clipped, trying to get airborne. She read somewhere that if you ball your fingers into a fist and slash your arms way up and sharply down, you will lose many more calories then if you walked like a normal human. She passes me, never makes eye contact. I wouldn’t make eye contact either walking like that.
I walk.
I note that I hold my arms tight to my sides, then wonder if others look at me. “Look at him. Poor thing. He must have something wrong with him. His arms don’t move.” So I move my arms just a wee bit to and fro but it’s awkward. It’s somewhere in between Lime Green and a Robot, creating a lot of resistance so I can’t build up any momentum. Jesus help me.
I walk.
There’s the runner. Always shares a perky good morning. No matter what the conditions. Man, ~ est. early 40’s, tight spandex-like bottoms. Large, big bezeled iPhone (Early model) strapped to his right bicep. A runner, he circles the loop 3x, big grin on his face as he passes. Reminds me of a younger Roper (Norman Fell), the landlord on Three’s Company. I watch him as he passes. Happy SOB isn’t he? When’s that last time I ran? It’s been months. And there used to be a time when I cared. And look at me, I could care less. God, what a slug. Continue reading “Walking. Like who’s watching who?”