Saturday notes

Random Saturday notes:

I’m exhausted on this Saturday, but, mysteriously invigorated as well.  A small group of us banged out an eighteen-mile run this morning, my longest since last month’s disappointing marathon.  It was incredibly hot and humid.  I have to say, there’s a rather masochistic pleasure associated with running in these conditions.  When you’ve lost so much sweat that you can hear your shoes squeak from the accumulated fluid, you know it’s a good run!

On long runs like this, my faster companions usually drop me in the final few miles.  In the heat, and with tired legs from a hard week, I was struggling to stay under a nine-minute mile, while they were pulling solid sub-eights.  When I’m running with others, I love to talk; by myself, I keep right on talking.  I recite poetry (especially Auden) and sing songs to distract myself from discomfort, often to the amusement of passersby; it’s not every day you see a runner talking to his pencil (I always run with an unsharpened pencil) and singing.  Different songs get stuck in my head at different times, and this can be frustrating when one gets a song one doesn’t like or isn’t very inspiring.  Last week, I had Gram Parson’s "In my Hour of Darkness" in my head; it’s a great song but not very motivating (even if the refrain includes the line "Oh Lord grant me vision / Oh Lord grant me speed.") Today I had Coldplay’s "Fix You" in my head for most of the last hour of the run, and that is as stirring as anything I’ve heard on the radio in quite a while.  It’s funny — I snobbishly insist that real runners don’t ever wear headphones, but I end up singing off-key to the entire Arroyo Seco as I trundle along.

I’m afraid I’ve gotten quite addicted to I-Tunes; this week I’ve downloaded stuff from everyone from Bad Religion to Dar Williams to Joan Baez to the Alarm to Tift Merritt to Arlo Guthrie to Oingo Boingo.  (Oh, how I loved Oingo Boingo in high school and college!)  My Amex bill will show me the damage soon.

I’ve been reading Daniel Coyle’s Lance Armstrong’s War.  It’s a terrifically insightful book, and it neither lionizes nor demonizes this most deservedly celebrated of modern athletes.  I’m tired of reading the hagiography that is regularly produced (especially each July during the Tour); I have no patience with the bitter and the jealous detractors who are convinced that L.A. is an arrogant, overrated doper.    I’m not sure I’d want to be too close to a man like Lance; that single-minded intensity is a bit scary.  But from a distance, it’s splendid to watch. I don’t need him to be without flaws in order to admire him;  there’s nothing wrong with having complicated heroes.  And he’s one of mine.

Off to enjoy the rest of the weekend.