Category: life itself

2023: Not Bad

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I don’t usually do annual letters or year-end reports to brag about my accomplishments or complain about life’s burdens. But this time I am going to blow my own horn shamelessly. I could invoke the excuse that I am trying to demonstrate that even at the age of 65, you can have new experiences, learn new shit, and do cool things that you had hitherto never imagined — the way retirement is supposed to be. But… nah, fuck that.

The so-called TLDR

In 2023, in my third year of retirement, I studied (and learned some) Brazilian Portuguese; spent a couple weeks in Brazil; traveled to British Columbia; published more writing than I had in years; made my theatrical debut, as the Fool in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, no less; acted in a Halloween-themed immersive theatrical experience, playing the Grim Reaper; and performed as singer/guitarist in public a few times. Although I would have done all this for free, I got paid for acting and music-making. The compensation, though nominal, came as a deeply satisfying surprise; I had never dared imagine anyone ever paying me anything to act in a play or sing jazz standards, much less at this stage of my life.

Travel and Language Study

I did more international traveling than usual: first a trip to Vancouver, British Colombia in January; and in March I went to see a dear old friend who lives in Serra da Natividade in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. I had not seen this guy for 20 years during which we had little contact. The death in 2022 of a mutual friend, the musician Leon Atkinson, had served as a wake-up call. It was one of those bucket-list things: if you say you want to go see your friend Peter in Brazil some day, you better fucking do it because later may be too late.

One cool thing I did in preparation for the trip was study Brazilian Portuguese systematically for six months. I happen to have fluent Spanish already, which gives you not a free lunch, but a deeply discounted one. And I happen to have moved to the one region in the US where Spanish is not the second most spoken language. On the Cape and islands, it’s Portuguese. So after bemoaning but not doing anything about my ignorance of Portuguese for the first couple years of living here, with the added motivation of the upcoming trip, I finally got busy using two methods: the Pimsleur system, and talking with Brazilian people on the island. The latter is what I call street lessons. The learning process was not only fun but effective. My Portuguese still sucks, but it’s far better than nothing.

Not bad, right?

The Brazil trip was memorable. I also got around to other places to see people in 2023: my stepson and his girlfriend in the Vancouver area of British Colombia; my nephew and his family in Chicago; one of my stepdaughters in San Diego; my daughter in New Jersey; some very dear old friends in Connecticut.

Acting!

In the spring I succumbed to the temptation to audition for the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse production of the Shakespeare comedy Twelfth Night. With exactly zero real theatrical experience, I felt a bit presumptuous, because this is not quite a community theater where everyone gets to participate who wants to. The first thing I did was check out a copy of the play from the library and read it with a view to finding a character who could conceivably be as old as me. I settled on the Fool, a natural fit: he says just the kind of shit I myself would say if I were more clever and speaking Shakespearean English. With a combination of merit and right-place-right-time luck — there being nobody else around who was better suited — I got the part.

The whole experience was amazing, from the first rehearsals all the way through to the end of the run. I never had more fun in my life. It was an honor to take the stage with this fabulous cast, and the show was extremely successful. Now that I have hit that crack pipe, you know I will be back for more.

The only fucked up part of the Twelfth Night experience was COVID. We had three cast members fall. The first went down during rehearsals but recovered in time for the opening. The second was our Countess Olivia who missed the first four shows. Our outrageously talented and heroic director (left of the Fool with the guitar) stepped into the role, learning it with less than a week’s notice. Then your humble servant fell to COVID in the middle of the run, and that selfsame director learned my part on two days’ notice, performing it five times before I was able to come back.

The second theatrical gig I had in 2023 — and the only other one on my résumé — was the Halloween-themed immersive theatrical experience that took place in the fall. Abby Bender comes up with wildly imaginative stuff, and in collaboration with other brilliant minds, puts together shows that are sui generis. Sometimes these shows are site-specific, informed by the history and architecture of the building where they happen. I won’t try to describe Granger Things. Let’s just say there were deer/dancers, farm animals, Halloween monsters, and more. I was the Grim Reaper.

Making Music

In 2023, I managed to get in front of audiences to sing jazz standards, accompanying myself on the guitar. This is remarkable only because just a couple years ago I would not have imagined it happening. I don’t consider myself a “real” singer. I just do it because sometimes I want to hear my favorite tunes performed, and I am the only person around to do the singing. After doing this for a while, I decided to inflict it on others.

Writing

In 2023, I wrote: an article for the World Socialist Website about some Massachusetts court interpreters’ struggle for a living wage; a rather boring article about the same thing for Proteus, official publication of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators (NAJIT); a little essay for the NAJIT blog about the court interpreter as actor; and an op-ed for the Martha’s Vineyard Times challenging the lie that equates opposition to the Gaza genocide with antisemitism. That makes 2023 an unusually prolific year for me.

Anti-genocide Activism

When the Israeli state began its genocidal assault on Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 attack, I responded by doing what little I can do: writing, protesting, encouraging others to do the same. Some other islanders and I got together and founded an informal organization called CeasefireMV, also known as MVforPalestine. I slapped together a minimal website for us.

Distance Running

In my 50s I ran some marathons and ultramarathons, and numerous shorter races, getting respectable results in age-relative terms. Then I got older and stopped training seriously, but kept moving my feet about three times a week. Pace discipline has never come easily to me. But in 2023 I ran the smoothest, most disciplined and well-executed half marathon of my career, starting slow, then gradually accelerating all the way through. It was also one of the slowest. This race was a parable: at last the old man had the wisdom and self-control to execute a race plan, but was now too old to run his half marathon any faster than 2:01:43.

Please, admire these split times:

There was one day in the summer when I got up in the morning and won the men 60-69 age group in a local 5K race, then went to the amphitheater later the same day to perform in the Shakespeare show. What a stud!

Conclusion

Thank you for indulging this shameless exercise in self-aggrandizement. It was a rewarding and productive year. Being 65 can be a lot of fun. If you’re younger than that, I hope too you have this much fun when you get here.

Memo to God

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To: The Supreme Being
From: HR Department
Subject: Immediate termination

Dear God:

This is to advise You that Your employment is terminated effectively immediately. You are hereby ordered to leave the premises at once.

Do not let the door of Your creation hit You in Your divine ass on the way out.

Very truly Yours,

Human Resources Department

On Getting Old

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I would like to say that as I approached my 60th birthday, my attitude was one of equanimity, gratitude, all that wisdom bullshit.  The fact is that I was only partially successful in getting my head around this milestone. Any way you spin it, 60 is not young — unless, perhaps, you’re talking about a Supreme Court Justice, or the conductor of a world-class orchestra. Let’s face it: I am a lot closer to death than I was a few decades ago. My future is a lot shorter than my past. Of course, being dead is perfectly safe. Mark Twain is said to have said that he wasn’t the slightest bit worried about death because he had been dead for billions of years before he was born, and had suffered not the slightest inconvenience. That’s a great line, easy to agree with. Easy to talk the talk. But walking the walk: I admit that it freaked me out a bit to be walking down the street one day and suddenly noticing I was over 60. What is this,  some stupendous existential joke?

I considered sharing a few of these reflections in a blog post, but did not for a variety of reasons. One is that I procrastinate; another is that I expect no one to be interested in my bloviations. But I’ve overcome the first obstacle by delaying for a year and a half, sufficient even for a world-class procrastinator. As for the second, well, fuck it. Moreover, the urge to write was revivified the other day when something abruptly shifted inside my head.

Standing in my house, in a room,  staring into space, not doing whatever it was I was supposed to be doing (when you have the Attention Deficit Disorder, this happens a lot, irrespective of your age), it dawned on me that in the spring I would be 62 years old. And rather than feeling the clutch of fear, I felt elation. Sixty-two! How cool is that?

Sixty-two years old, and not only have they yet to put a toe-tag on me —  I am healthy. I’ve done quite a number things I wanted to do in this life, been involved in rewarding relationships with fascinating people, and have had a lot of fun. I’ve paid some dues, but on balance, this has unquestionably been a good run — and it ain’t over yet. I’ve landed in a good place, thanks to a modicum of discipline, a few wise decisions and not too many disastrous ones, and a lot of luck.

Granted, there’s a substantial chance that I will progress from old to very old, hence frail and sick, maybe lonely and depressed. Maybe the dementia will get me. That will surely suck, and I may well change my tune at that point (assuming the cognitive wherewithal). But in the meantime, I’ve realized moving through my 60s is nothing to complain or get upset about — quite the contrary.

I have noticed in myself an increased tendency towards retrospection as I’ve gotten older, and wonder if others around my age have the same experience. It would make sense that you would turn your gaze towards the past when you’ve arrived at the point, as noted above, where your future is a lot shorter than your past. There’s more of the latter and less of the former to think about. Life is like this at any age — you experience shit, then process it and hopefully learn something, even if not consciously. Maybe in the final stretch we do this, but on a greater scale. Now comes the time for reflection, grand summaries, conclusions, and — dare I say it? — deeper levels of understanding. Understanding what, you reasonably ask? The way in which events and interactions with others have unfolded in your life. Or, to put it more simply, at the risk of sounding sententious:  life.

 

Top ten books — because you asked for it

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People on Facebook have inviting their FB friends to list the top ten books that have had the greatest impact in our lives. Some people start naming big-name classics like Cervantes, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Joyce. This strikes me as rather uninteresting, but maybe I am just envious because I am not well-read in the classics. Others are surprisingly candid — or perhaps, naive — in listing some real crap, self-help junk, various pop-schlock titles. I guess I am somewhere between an intellectual and a moron; ignorant, but a snob.
Problem is, I can’t bring myself to do this top ten list. I have been living 50+ years and reading for so long that I no longer remember very well the books that had a great impact at the time I read them, even where their impact was indeed great. The more recently read books tend to displace the old ones. So most of my top ten would be things from the past five years or so. All right, let’s give it a try anyway:
(1) Nietszche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Made a huge impression on me when I was 16 years old, so it has to stay on the list. I may not have understood it deeply, but nevertheless.
(2) Juliet Schor – The Overworked American. I read it in the early 1990s and keep remembering it time and again, so it makes the list.
(3) Duke and Gross – America’s Longest War. Greatly informed my thinking about the so-called War on Drugs, which I have been observing from the perspective of a judiciary employee for the past 20 years.
(4) Mathieu Ricard – Happiness. Picked up a copy while looking for something to do at an airport in December 2006. The timing was perfect. It actually changed my life for the better, permanently.
(5) Michael Pollan – The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I was already leaning in the direction of a vegetarian diet, but after reading this, I changed the way I eat.
(6) The Gateless Barrier, a/k/a The Gateless Gate. I was a student at a zendo for about two and a half years, studying with a teacher. Maybe some of it was bullshit. But we went through this koan collection, and I did a lot of sitting (still do hit the mat every day). I know the exercise had a profound effect.
(7) Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse 5. I never read it until recently — a couple years ago. I think it’s one of the finest novels I have ever read.
(8) Haruki Murakami – 1Q84. It isn’t just this novel, but that it introduced me to this writer and I went on to read several more of his books. You talk about a work of fiction grabbing you in the first few pages. This one grabbed me and did not let go for the next 900+ pages. I don’t know what it is about this guy. He sees the world in a weird way that is peculiar to him, and yet… universal? “Remember: there is always only one reality.” Really?
(9) Don deLillo – Underground. The one that begins at the famous Dodgers-Giants game in 1959. Man, that was one fucking good book.
(10) Terry Eagleton – Why Marx Was Right. My father and I have a decades-long history of talking about politics, about which we generally agree, although I have moved to the left of him. He lent me this book, and it had an enormous impact. Hitherto, I had often said I would consider myself a socialist but for the fact that I had not read any Marx or Engels, much less Lenin or Trotsky. I went on to establish contact with some real, practicing Marxists. In a conversation with one of them — a particularly feisty and erudite old bastard whom I’ll call Fred — he scoffed at Why Marx Was Right, saying Eagleton was a “Catholic Marxist,” i.e., something of a joke. But this book got me started reading some of the works of Trotsky, Lenin, Marx, Engels, and finding out for myself what the political theory is. Combining that with readings of countless contemporary articles that use Marxist methods of analysis, attending some lectures, and observing world events unfold through my own eyes, my political education has advanced greatly in the past two or three years. I am a Marxist-Trotskyist. In this capitalist culture, much of what my generation has been taught about history and socialism is utter nonsense. I have developed a reasonable level of confidence in my ability to sort out the truth from the bullshit.

Running another Philadelphia marathon

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I never expected this. For over 20 years I was a typical jogger, going out two or three times a week for about four miles at a leisurely pace. With no goal other than fitness and enjoyment, I was unconcerned about going farther or faster. Suddenly I was 55 years old and lacing up my shoes for my fifth marathon.

It started in the winter of 2008, when a friend with marathon experience invited me to join him for a half marathon in Central Park, and I discovered that I enjoyed running nonstop for two hours. The idea of a marathon, hitherto almost inconceivable, became attractive. In the fall of that same year I ran Philly in 3:51, and loved it. I had the appropriate attitude of humility and respect for the distance, running a disciplined, well-regulated race the likes of which, ironically, I haven’t been able to match ever since.

Next was New York in 2009. By now I had moved to South Orange and fell in with a delightful gang of experienced, enthusiastic, and talented distance runners known as The South Mountain Running Collective. I became ambitious, and wanted to meet the Boston qualifying standard of 3:35. Like a fool, I went out too fast, and had to struggle and suffer to hang on over the last 10K, attaining the goal with only seconds to spare. Going out too fast is the classic mistake in distance running, though you might think it would not be so difficult to avoid.

But this performance got me to Boston in 2011, where I repeated the same error, albeit not as drastically: another positive split, but I beat my goal of 3:20 by five seconds, and easily qualified again for Boston in 2012. (Runners call it a negative split where the second half of a race is faster than the first, and it is well established that it is far more effective than the reverse.)

And how could I resist going back to Boston again? I could not, and trained with a view to another personal record (or PR, which is also a verb in runnerspeak) of about 3:17. But the temperatures were in the high 80s that day in April. We were forced to revise our plans and focus on simple survival. Hence my disappointing 3:43, 13 minutes short of Boston qualification (BQ) for my age group.

By now I was thinking it might be nice to get off the crazy train. Marathon training is a time- and energy-consuming pain in the ass, and try though we might to keep it tucked away in its own discreet little compartment, it inevitably has an impact on other people in our lives. And sometimes those people don’t like it. But could I really go out like that, credible excuse notwithstanding? With a 3:43?

No. In November 2013 I was back in Philadelphia again to settle accounts with the marathon gods. This time, however, the training cycle had been more challenging. It is not unusual to encounter setbacks of some kind during 20 weeks of training. Sickness, injuries, family dramas, the demands of work — in short, life — sometimes interfere. I had successfully navigated through bronchitis, a death in the family, and other challenges in previous training cycles. But this time injuries cost me a week and a half in August and several more days in October, and I was not able to get all the mileage I would have liked.

Even so, when I walked up to the line, I felt fit to run a successful marathon. The key workouts in the final stage of training had gone well. My injuries had subsided, the weather was fine, even my pre-race jitters seemed noticeably less severe than in the past. This time I did not have a fixed, specific goal. I thought 3:15 was conceivable, but decided anything up to 3:17:30 would be acceptable. And I had a plan, known as 10 + 10 + 10: go out relatively conservatively for the first 10 miles, i.e., at a 3:17:30 pace; pick it by a few seconds per mile for the next 10 miles; and for the last 10K, be in a position to pick up the pace even more, possibly enough to get me there in 3:15.

Once we got underway, embarrassing though it is to admit, I am not really sure what I was thinking. I do recall making a conscious effort to hold back initially. Over the first mile, traffic was congested, and I decided to go with it rather than fight. My first mile was a 7:42, but that was perfectly OK. A slow start was desirable; there was plenty of time to make it up.

For the next 18 miles or so, it seemed that nobody was in charge. The data on my GPS watch says that mile 2 was 7:18; mile 3, 7:08. For miles 4 and 5 I dialed it back to 7:24, but that was still about 8 seconds per mile too fast. The next few miles included a couple of moderate ones, and my average pace for the first 10 was around 7:30. The pushing and pulling continued over the second 10 miles, but the average overall was around 7:25 — consistent with the overall plan, yes, but too late because I had already blown too much energy in the first 10. By around mile 17 or 18 I was still feeling OK, but tired enough to predict that after 20 miles it was going to be hard to maintain the pace. Miles 22 to 25 were 7:40, 7:44, 7:48, 7:56, 7:55.

Crossing 26 with the crowds screaming encouragement, I was able to pick it up to a 6:53 pace, but over the last 10K I averaged about 7:48 and came in at 3:17:23. (The gory details are published at http://connect.garmin.com/activity/406675139.)

This marathon experience was different from the previous two in which I was seriously trying to reach a goal. In New York, the last 10K were hellish, but my addled mind had enough command of the numbers to understand that I would meet the BQ threshold if and only if I ran like hell. This motivated me to fight hard against the fatigue. The same was true in Boston in 2011: I knew the 3:20 mark was still within reach, but I had to dig. In this race, the goal was comparatively vague: sub-3:17:30, hopefully something closer to 3:15. For the last 10K I felt fatigue, but it wasn’t especially painful — I simply couldn’t convince myself to run faster. But I also felt pretty sure that the 3:17:30, and certainly the PR, was in the bag. That complacency probably hurt my cause; a bit of drama, pressure and anxiety might have provided helpful motivation.

3:17:23 represents a PR by over two minutes, and a Boston qualifier with over 22 minutes to spare; it was also good enough for 16th place among 319 men in the 55-59 age group. Maybe I ought to be happy with that. And although I am not completely disappointed with the bottom line, I am pretty disgusted with myself for not having better discipline. The objective numbers demonstrate that I had the fitness; the subjective experience of how smoothly the whole 26.2 went by, weak finish nothwithstanding, confirms it. I am almost certain I was physically prepared to run at least one, maybe even as much as two minutes faster. But I positive-split it by 1:22 and squandered this splendid opportunity.

Why is it so hard to slow down in those early miles? For me, I think one problem — if it can be considered a problem — is that proper marathon training really works. On race day you are fit, tuned up, but also tapered and rested — not to mention jacked up with the excitement. When the gun goes off and you start running, it is extremely difficult to believe that running can feel this easy and still be fast enough. It seems like you should be exerting at least a little bit. Even the minutes and seconds your watch displays at the mile markers do not convince. So, for me, the lesson is: believe it, bitch. It may even be that I could run a faster marathon next time by setting out to run it slower. Then there might be enough gas in the tank at the end to finish strong enough to get a better result.

Wait — did I just say next time? Uh, yeah, I guess I did. Which brings us back to where we started. I said I never expected to be running marathons, much less running them this fast. I said I would like to get off the crazy train, and maybe I will. But it isn’t easy. When you’re an athlete, you enjoy the challenge of seeing how well you can do, so you keep trying. Eventually the inevitable effects of age overcome the positive effects of training, but that’s no reason to give up prematurely. Another factor is that running marathons (and shorter races as well) is really cool, and fun, and profoundly rewarding. It gets into your bones and becomes part of your identity: you’re a runner. What’s the use of trying to be anybody else?

Remembering Nancy F.

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It has been just about a year since a good friend died at a mere 57 years of age. I observe this anniversary by publishing the eulogy that my evil twin gave at her memorial, with just a couple of minor edits. Whereas he spoke of the legendary SDNY Courthouse Follies in the past tense, I have changed it to the present tense. That’s because at the time, Nancy’s colleagues were too stupified with grief to think seriously about doing the Follies without her. Not long thereafter, they came to the realization that the Courthouse Follies is too good not to continue, and that there is absolutely no better and more appropriate way to honor Nancy’s memory than by putting on the show.

Good evening.

We are all going to die. That simple, self-evident fact is perfectly easy to accept as an intellectual, objective proposition; it is much harder to come to grips with on a deeper, emotional and psychological level.

I’ve come to believe that one of our most important tasks in this thrilling, unpredictable, supremely delightful, horribly painful game known as life is not to obliterate our fear of death, but rather to learn to live with that fear — truly live with it — and be free at last from that ever-present undercurrent of anxiety and fear of our inevitable death. If we accomplish that, we have a chance at genuine happiness, and liberation: the freedom to live our life exactly as it is right now, rather than worrying about losing it.

This is much more easily said than done. In Buddhism they have a word for it: they call it Practice.
Nancy was not a Buddhist — not any kind of -ist as far as I could tell. But she surely had a Practice. I am convinced that on some level she understood and embraced the kind of worldview I’m describing — especially as she approached the end of her life, in which she was short-changed by who knows how many decades. Rather than trying to mention her many wonderful achievements and attributes, I will emphasize this: she had a fabulous sense of humor. Underlying that splendid humor was deep wisdom: though she was no stranger to pain and loss, she knew how to live and enjoy life. She knew how to appreciate life’s offerings. She knew how to have fun.

Over the 20 years I worked as one of the staff interpreters in the office she managed so ably, I must have had hundreds of conversations with her that followed a common pattern: they would begin with me poking my head into her office to discuss something or other, usually office business. She would always look up from her monitor and keyboard to greet me with her characteristic warmth. “Yes, mon cher?” Then one or the other of us would say something funny. And the conversation would end with both of us laughing. You know the way she laughed, with lots of nasal involvement.

We’re talking a lot this evening about Courthouse Follies because the deservedly legendary show was one of her signature achievements, possibly the most visible and well-loved. Entertaining as it is, the show is about so much more than just amusement. No, it is a matter of utmost importance to us all. As Nancy sometimes liked to quip, comedy is serious business. (Not sure whom she stole that line from.) Our job can be brutally stressful. We witness suffering and pain every day. We are all duty-bound to remain stuck in our rigidly defined roles, even at those times when our humanity cries out for us to do otherwise. Nothing is more important to our collective mental health than the Follies. At least once a year we need to sit in a room together and just laugh. Nancy was the leader of that noble project. It was she who put it all together and made it happen. (If this were a federal Sentencing Guidelines analysis, she would get an enhancement for being a leader, supervisor, manager…)
I remember one time when she addressed the cast just before a Follies performance, back stage. She gave us a pep talk in which she reminded us to pay attention and be where we were supposed to be at the appropriate time (incorrigibly ragged band of amateurs that we are, drinking our wine backstage before going on, she had to remind us of that!). She closed these remarks by saying something like: last but not least, have fun. Have fun.

Thank you, Nancy. Thank you for making such a positive contribution to the world and enriching our lives.

You know how she loved comedy. I’ll share this with you on condition of the strictest confidentiality, all 200 of you my closest friends, lest I incriminate myself: I sometimes do judge imitations. Especially when I’m just back from a courtroom assignment with a judge’s idiosyncracies still fresh in memory. Nancy absolutely loved laughing at these imitations. She would sometimes come up to me, eyes ablaze with that childlike, gleeful enthusiasm of hers — and urge me to to entertain the assembly with my imitation of Judge So-and-So. I would comply, and she would laugh and laugh, hoot with laughter.

I usually prefered to launch into an imitation spontaneously, that is, whenever the Muses moved me to it. So there were times when she would ask me to do an imitation, and I would decline on the grounds that I wasn’t in the mood, or some such nonsense. I now understand, and have learned this valuable lesson from Nancy: life is too short not to “do” one more judge. Even on demand.

I survived the 2012 Boston Marathon

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In December 2011 I started 20 weeks of training for the Boston Marathon on April 16, 2012. For this my fourth marathon my goal time was 3:17 to 3:18, a two or three minute improvement over my person record (PR) 3:19:55 that I ran Boston in 2011.
For those not familiar with the marathon game: this goal represents not a spectacular but a thoroughly respectable time for a man in his mid 50s For context, consider that a world-class male marathoner will run 26.2 in a few minutes over two hours, and the guy who won the men’s 50-54 age group last year ran a 2:34:52 — preposterous, but conclusively demonstrating that it is possible. From my point of view, anything under around 3:10 is seriously kicking ass, and getting much below 3:00 is unfathomable.
At my modest level of experience one has already learned that it is unusual for a training cycle to go smoothly from end to end. Injury, sickness, extreme weather, or a personal or work-related situation of some sort will often present challenges in addition to the expected physical and logistical demands of the mileage. I was therefore grateful that this time my training had gone remarkably well — mild winter, no death in the family, no more than a few days downtime due to a cold in February. Then, in the days just preceding the race, the organizers saw the forecast for temperatures in the upper 80s and began to email dire warnings to race registrants. As the forecast temperatures rose, so did the tone of alarm in the emails. In the last of these they urged anyone who was not extremely fit to withdraw from the race, and those who did not should slow way down, forget about racing and treat it as an “experience.”
I grudgingly revised my race plan. The PR goal was abandoned; instead, I decided aiming for a Boston-qualifying 3:30 would be acceptable, a full 30 seconds per mile slower than my ideal. But fear and uncertainty set in. During the last two days I had an persistent, unpleasant feeling that I could not quite identify — until 3:30 on the morning of the race, when I awoke in my hotel room to the realization that my problem with this enterprise was simple: I did not want to do it. Running 26.2 miles in the high 80s has never been on my list of things to do in this life. I must have understood that while this was unlikely to end in catastrophe, it was certain to be truly painful — even more so than your typical marathon effort. Hence my fantasies about running away rather than running the race.
We have a robust community of accomplished distance runners in the area where I live, and one of my running companions was also in this race — I’ll call him Patrick. When I mentioned to him that I was tempted to bail on the project, Patrick reminded me that we aren’t just in this for ourselves. All of us support and encourage each other so strongly that we are invested in each other’s success. I was never entirely serious about walking away, but this strengthened my resolve. It takes character to be insane.
The nervous early hours of race day morning went by quickly, and then we were in the starting area, already sweating in the sun at 10:00. The Boston Marathon has upwards of 20,000 runners, so the start is staged in three waves which in turn are organized into corrals based on expected pace. My friend Patrick and I were both assigned to the first corral of Wave 2. Patrick is similar to me in age, but a substantially faster runner, so I was pleasantly surprised when we spontaneously decided to run together. And off we went, at a pace a little below 8:00/mile for the first several, largely downhill miles, thinking this sufficiently conservative.
The first 10, 12, 13 miles went by in reasonable comfort. No longer attached to PRs, we made the ride as fun as possible, engaging with the crowds, entertaining ourselves, watching out for each other. We drank copious amounts of water and Gatorade, as did everyone; around the hydration stops we kicked our way through masses of discarded Poland Spring cups. We also dumped countless cups of water onto ourselves; our clothing, shoes and socks were saturated most of the way. And our 8:00/mile gradually gave way to 8:15, 8:30, 9:00, and beyond as we let the conditions dictate the pace.
Our friend and coach — let’s call him Bill Haskins — was monitoring our progress from afar via the Athlete Alert service, which sends to your phone or email address a snapshot of a runner’s pace and time as of 10K, 13.1 miles, 30K, and finish. Every time Patrick and I crossed one of the electronic timing mats together, I drew deep satisfaction from knowing we were sending the signal back home to Bill that his runners were hanging tough, and hanging together.
Around mile 17 the course takes you through about four miles of what are called the Newton Hills, the last of which is known as Heartbreak Hill. We ground our way up the first hill at a moderate but steady pace, and I felt encouraged. I was experiencing some pain, but nothing too extreme.
By the top of Heartbreak I felt like shit, and struggled to hold a pace faster than 10:00/mile. Every step was pain from my hips to the soles of my feet. I wondered if there might be some way of putting my foot down that did not hurt. In retrospect I realize there is indeed such a method: it’s called walking. Thousands of people were doing it, but we never seriously considered it an option.
A couple miles after Heartbreak, Patrick was suffering even worse than me; he bade me go forward without him, and I reluctantly complied. At long last, the right turn onto Hereford Street, then left onto the final stretch of Boyleston. For the last quarter mile I managed to increase my speed to something comparable to the 7:30 I had originally dreamed of averaging, and crossed the finish in 3:43:41. Unable to decide whether to puke or pass out, I did neither. Patrick showed up about a minute and a half later. We greeted each other with the greatest high five of all time, then staggered onward together to collect our medals and head home.
All of our running friends commended our courageous performance. It is gratifying that we had the fitness and the fortitude to get through this with dignity, and the intelligence to manage our pace and hydration well enough to avoid the hospital. But in terms of absolute performance, it was a terrific frustration and disappointment. Nobody wants to train for 20 weeks and 1000 miles just to be thwarted by a one-day spike in temperature (the days following and preceding were of course much cooler). The post-race challenge for me has been to get my head around what happened, accept it, and move on. This too, I realize, is part of this strange and wonderful sport of distance running.

Highlights from 2011

Posted on | by Professor B | Leave a Comment on Highlights from 2011

Here are a few salient events from another interesting year:

  • I won myself a trophy for third place in my 50-54 age/gender group in a half marathon in Monmouth County, NJ. This is remarkable because it was not long ago that the very idea was inconceivable. The trophy itself is hideously ugly, but I am glad to accept it nonetheless.
  • I ran my third marathon, in Boston. In short, it was a successful and rewarding venture. See this report if you want the gory details.
  • I won my age group in not one but two local 5K races — small ones, but still… The second was noteworthy because I was actually disappointed in my performance, feeling sluggish and uncomfortable and posting a slower time than I thought I should. Winning my age group and still not satisfied — have I lost my mind?
  • My stepfather died at the age of 93, in March. He was an accomplished astronomer who led a long and productive life, and is remembered with great admiration and affection by hundreds of people.
  • In May I crashed the shit out of my car, with two of my kids in the back seat. It wasn’t good, but could have been far worse.
  • My uncle died at the age of something like 88, in August. He too was a smart man who managed to get through his long life pretty much doing as he pleased, founding and running a successful aerial photography business.
  • One of our cats, Master Lin-chi, used up a couple of his lives. First he disappeared for a full week, during the summer. He had us grieving and stapling flyers to trees all over the neighborhood. Then he walked into the house, skinny and filthy but very much alive. We have no idea where the hell he was.

    As if that wasn’t enough, he then surpassed this performance by surviving an encounter with a car with nothing more than some bruises and abrasions. I took him to the vet (and what a splendid vet he is, Felix Escudero at the emergency clinic in Bloomfield, NJ) who pronounced him OK.

    I don’t remember if it was before or after that incident that I called him to come home one evening, when he hadn’t been seen for 24 hours. When he still didn’t show up I called a little louder, and heard a faint whimper in the distance. Following the sound, I located him in the back yard two houses away, trapped in what’s know as a “Have a Heart” trap — a cage that automatically closes when an animal enters to get at some bait, stepping on a metal plate in the process. It seems that our neighbor had set it to to catch some other creature that had been giving him grief, and then saw fit to leave for the weekend. Thus Lin-chi sat with no food or water, next to a little pile of his own shit, until I rescued him. I got him out and otherwise left the trap as I found it, shit included.Master Lin-chi

    (You may say, obviously this cat should live entirely indoors, and I wouldn’t disagree. But it’s not an easy policy to enforce, and I am of two minds about the issue of letting cats go outdoors — a topic for another day.)

  • Like so many others on the planet,we endured extreme weather, including tough snowstorms, a brush with a hurricane in late August, and a seasonally inappropriate winter storm in October that left us without power for a full five days.
  • Our four kids got a year bigger, all them thriving and developing and fascinating my wife and me.
  • My lovely wife and I observed another wedding anniversary, and are still crazy about each other. It’s a glorious thing.