On Tuesday, I posted this very short note about my frustration with those who walk too slowly; the thread turned out to be rather fun.
Reading the comments, it occurs to me I’ve never posted about one of my future plans: to create a company that offers running tours of major historical sites. Not just running tours of famous cities, but of museums, cathedrals, temples, and so forth. You combine my natural hyperactivity, my inattentiveness, my love of running, my love of travel, and an unfortunate tendency to be a cultural philistine, and voila! A brand new way to see the world!
When I spent a semester teaching in a study abroad program in Italy, I mastered getting in and out of museums while still seeing all that needed to be seen. The Uffizi? Twenty minutes. The Doge’s Palace? Fifteen minutes. The Bargello? Seventeen. The Vatican museum took forty, but that was due to crowds that slowed down my steaming pace, not to any great desire to linger. And during my few months in Italy, I got an idea: create running tours of museums.
We’d need to rent out museums early in the morning, when runners like to work out and before the crowds come. We’d have to wear special racing flats that wouldn’t scuff the floors of the glorious galleries. Gathering before dawn, I’d work in conjunction with some athletic art historians, and we’d lead a pack of similarly-minded folks through a whirl-wind tour of the great galleries, palaces, and museums. We’d see everything, if not on a dead run, at least at a steady jog. Ten seconds with Botticelli, five with Donatello, three quick circuits around the feet of David in the Accademia. We’d run through all the rooms at Versailles; we’d climb the Eiffel Tower; we’d race through Schoenbrunn, do fartlek in the Tate, and sprint the Hermitage. Folks who needed to linger would be allowed to do so for a minute or two, and then catch up with our merry band composed of the spandex-clad and the Asics-hooved.
As the day wore on, this happy, sweaty group would move outside into the dawn (this tour will work best in spring or summer). We’d find the coffee shops, slurp down the local stimulating beverage, and then head off to the parks. In Dublin, we’d cavort in Phoenix Park; in London, run with the squirrels in Hyde Park; in Madrid, we might do intervals in the Jardin Botanico.
You get the idea.
At the very least, I’d like to go to Europe with a camera crew. I could be miked to lecture as I ran, and offer breezy, light-footed commentary as I jogged through the cities. I’d show visiting runners the best routes, and I’d conduct guest interviews with athletic locals; there’s always some expert in the antiquities about who also likes to lace up the trainers and break a sweat. Our conversations would be conducted at a pace rapid enough for a workout, slow enough for us to chat easily. We’d do a series of half-hour episodes, and air them on some happy mix of the History Channel and ESPN.
I’m fortunate to have run in many different cities. Some cities around the world are marvelous to run in, of course. Running the shoreline in Chicago, running Central Park, running the Mall in our nation’s capital, running Hayward field in Eugene: these are sublime experiences for the tourist. Europe offers its glorious parks and boulevards. When I spent those many months in Florence, I ran the Cascine every day; when I visit family in Devon, I run for miles along the banks of the lugubrious river Exe. Not all places are easy to run: Hong Kong is very, very crowded! I made a sincere effort to run through Central at midday, and it didn’t go well until I gave up and jogged up the Peak Road. Bogota is, well, not very safe for this little white boy; it’s the one city I’ve ever visited where I’ve felt compelled to confine my running to the treadmill in the hotel gym.
I remember trying to run in John O’Groats in northern Scotland in the wind and the rain. That was tough. I tried to run up the side of Table Mountain in Cape Town, got winded, and had to break it off to my considerable shame. And when it comes to cities that are unfriendly to runners, Venice is the greatest challenge. I managed to do a few runs through the streets between the train station and San Marco, but after I knocked over a couple of slow-moving tourists and a postcard stand, I surrendered to the elements and gave up.
Let me get a book or two out, and then I’m pitching this “run the great heritage sites of the world” idea to the Discovery channel. Don’t go scooping me, now!
Yeah, I’ve contemplated a similar idea but with music. See, by playing it fast forward, you get through the entire works Beehtoven, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin in less than 2 hours!
I see you belong to the peripatetic school of thought on taking in cultural monuments… I can see its appeal for large outdoor spaces, but would be considerably less enthusiastic about using it in museums, where the primary attraction is visual engagement with (usually) small, stationary objects. It seems kind of stereotypically American tourist-y – sprinting through a pantheon of sites to check them off your to-do list, in a way.
Indeed, it is very American. I remember reading an English novel in which the protagonist has a blind date with a woman who isn’t his intellectual equal. I wish I could remember the exact quote, but he says something like:
“She was the sort who went to museums because she felt she ‘ought’ to; she pretended to be absorbed in what she was seeing, but all the while, secretly longed for the gift shop, a nice cup of tea, and a biscuit.”
I thought, yeah, that’s pretty much me. I may have the doctorate, I may have led my share of tours, I may know my Kandinsky from my Klee and my Manet from my Monet, but pretty much, I just want the tea towel from the souvenir shop. And the coffee.
Hugo, can I say that as a woman, my first thought reading this (after I laughed) is “I really, really hope that this isn’t what he’s like in bed.”
“Thirty seconds for the nipple, twenty for the clitoris, three minutes of frantic intercourse.”
I am sure you and your wife are very happy in that area, and with all your experience, you surely ought to be awesome in the sack (no offense), but your celebration of speed in everything makes me worry about you…
Alli, I have no reply for that. Sheesh.
Hmm, personally, this combines two of my great dislikes: running, and people who rush me through museums.
I could see how this would be incredibly popular, but count me out.
Antigone, you will be invited to tour the museum at a leisurely pace later in the day, while the runners gather in a sweaty herd somewhere else, far from you… promise.
Oh, Hugo. To each his own and all that, but let me just say that I am of the opposite persuasion *entirely*. When I went to London last year? I spent most of *two days* in the British Museum and most of *two days* in the Victoria & Albert. I can’t even imagine doing it your way. But I suppose if you start up your running tours, the rushers will be safely bundled off by the time us dawdlers show up!