Monday, April 28, 2014

Number 23 - Get High

After thorough investigative research, I have found the 10 most common fears are (in ascending order):

10.       Fear of commitment (commitmentphobia)
9.         Fear of spiders (arachnophobia) and/or snakes (ophidiophobia)
8.         Fear of rejection
7.         Fear of failure (kakorrhaphiophobia)
6.         Fear of dying (thanatophobia)
5.         Fear of intimacy
4.         Fear of the dark (nyctophobia)
3.         Fear of heights (acrophobia)
2.         Fear of public speaking (glossophobia)
1.         Fear of flying (aviophobia)

I learned two things from looking over this list (also in ascending order):

2.         Apparently I’m not very ‘common,’ as I only have one of these 10 most ‘common’ fears.
1.         The one common fear I have is not my fault; it’s hereditary.

Let me expound on the nine I don’t have:

10.       I married my high school sweetheart in June of 1977.  We remain married to this day.  I’ve run every day since November 30, 1978.  Color me committed (it’s a reddish brown; you might even call it ‘auburn’).
9.         I had a pet boa constrictor my freshman year in college.  I never knew if it was male or female but it didn’t really matter, seeing as I named it ‘Alice’ after my favorite rock band at the time, Alice Cooper.
8.         I played one season of Little League Baseball, one season of middle school football and one season of junior varsity basketball.  There was a reason I decided to quit after one season of each.  Besides the fact I made three coaches very, very happy with my decisions, I discovered rejection to be the least of my fears. 
7.         I tried running 100 miles through the Sierra Nevada mountain range in 2004 with virtually no trail-running experience to my name.  I tried running 135 miles through Death Valley in the middle of July in 2003 without ever setting foot there.  I asked Dolores Ruiz, the best-looking girl in Moanalua Intermediate School to go steady with me the first time I ever talked to her.  Any questions?    
6.         Thankfully the jury is still out on this one.  But I do realize that every day is one day closer to finding and now that I put that thought in writing it’s going to stick in my mind for—hopefully—another 30 years or so.
5.         All of my close, long-time running friends know everything there is to know about me, inside and out.  I can say the same thing about them.  Ask any long-distance runners if they have a fear of intimacy and they’ll tell you the same thing.
4.         I love the dark. I’m either sleeping or running when it’s dark, two of my favorite things in the whole wide world.  Once in a while I can do both at the same time.  Ask any long-distance runner if they can sleep and run at the same time and they’ll tell you the same thing. 
2.         There is nothing I like more than to get up in front of several hundred people and talk…as long as the material is (a) light in nature, (b) about running or other topics I enjoy and/or (c) supported by audio/visual aids.  I’ve been fortunate to speak to hundreds of people under those conditions on several occasions.  Do you know what would have made those speaking engagements even better?  If I were (d) paid for them.
1.         The simple fact I flew a total of 40 hours round-trip to South Africa and back is all the evidence I need to prove I don’t have a fear of flying.  The simple fact I will never fly 40 hours round-trip to South Africa ever again is all the evidence I need to prove I have a modicum of common sense.  The simple fact I used the word ‘modicum’ in a sentence is all the evidence I need to prove I don’t care if any University of Georgia graduates know what I’m talking about. 

Now, about that one remaining thing I do have a fear of…the one that causes me to uncontrollably break out in a cold sweat…my pulse to double in the blink of an eye…my a** to (Editors note: This passage was deemed unsuitable for the PG13 rating the author was targeting, therefore it was removed.)... Yes, THAT one…the one I skipped over in the list above.

Number 3: Fear of heights.
The first time I noticed I was predisposed to acrophobia was when I was nine years old.  We were on a family vacation in France and had the opportunity to visit the Eiffel Tower.  We had the option of climbing the stairs all the way to the top, but my dad was satisfied with stopping on the first level; that was as far as he was willing to go.  I had mixed feelings at the time, as I was disappointed we didn’t make it to the top yet at the same time relieved that was as high as we were going.  I couldn’t explain those mixed feelings at the time, but several years later when we visited the Empire State Building and my dad refused to go to the top, I was totally on board.  I realized then and there: Heights creep me out. 

I’ve run the Jacksonville River Run several times.  The course crosses the St. John’s River twice: Early in the race over the Main Street Bridge and then again late in the race over the Isaiah Hart Bridge.   The Main Street Bridge isn’t particularly high, but most of it is grated so if you are looking down you can see the water of the St. John’s beneath your feet.  You would be right in assuming I ran that section of the race pretty hard.  The Isaiah Hart Bridge, however is high.  Extremely high, in fact.  So high that there is always a strong breeze, regardless of what might be happening at sea level…way down below.  The majority of the runners will stay close to the guardrail at the edge of the bridge, the shortest possible route and therefore the wisest route to run if you’re looking to run the tangents.  I, however always chose to stick close to the large cement median in the center of the bridge.  I didn’t want to take any chances of a sudden gust of wind blowing me over the guardrail at the edge of the bridge if I absent-mindedly decided to run the tangents.   I also didn’t want to look down.   It’s hard to believe this was the same person who asked Dolores Ruiz to go steady in the sixth grade… 

So today at work I decided to see if I could summon the strength to try out for the JV basketball team in the dark with a snake in my pocket.

I asked Tim, one of the employees at my warehouse to take me up in a cherry picker (it’s like a forklift, except the operator elevates with the forks as it extends upward).  I put the safety harness on and in the blink of an eye we were a couple feet away from the 32-foot ceiling.  I didn’t bat an eye, my pulse didn’t quicken and I could actually look straight down without wetting my pants.   Everything was fine… until Tim decided it would be fun if he ‘rocked’ the platform we were standing on from side to side.  That’s when heredity kicked in. 

The chances of a 136-pound man rocking a two-ton cherry picker side-to-side and causing it to tip over were about the same as me winning the lottery when it reaches the $500 million mark.  But today was the day my life would be changing: I’d pack up and leave and move to the Swiss Alps and live the rest of my days in my $20 million dollar mountain home overlooking the most luxurious ski resort in Switzerland.  In other words, today would be the day the cherry picker would be tumblin’ down. 

Once I managed to summon enough saliva to articulate ‘take me down now’—and then got my feet back on the ground, I put a spider in my other pocket and decided to board a plane for South Africa.

‘Isn’t there a hatch that leads to the warehouse roof?’

Tim led me to a mezzanine in the middle of the warehouse and asked me to follow him up the perfectly vertical ladder—all 10 rungs of it—to the hatch allowing access to the roof.  I noticed the top of the hatch was about four feet higher than the last rung of the ladder, so a lot more physical effort was required to get to the roof than I thought.  Or psychologically planned for, either.

‘What if I can’t get my 59-year old body over the top of the hatch, slip and fall straight down? As far as I was concerned, the Isaiah Hart Bridge seemed like small potatoes compared to what I was now facing.

With a death grip on the sides of the hatch I pulled myself over and onto the roof.  Tim was already standing by the ledge, looking straight down and encouraging me to come and take a look.  Tim wasn’t aware how large the spider in my pocket had grown or that I was now in my 30th hour of flying on an airplane. 

‘This is as close as I get.’  I was at least 10 feet away from the ledge.  My feet had a death grip (if that’s even possible) on the roof.  I recalled the time I went to the top of the Sears Tower with a group of friends.  I exited the elevator that runs directly up the center of the building when we reached the top floor, only to realize I was surrounded by glass.  You could see Chicago in every direction.  I stood with my back against the enclosure around the elevator shaft with my palms glued to the wall; a reverse-spread eagle, so to speak.  I never took one single step towards the glass.  In any direction.  

So instead Tim walks over to me.  The b*st*rd starts jumping on the roof.  I notice the roof is bouncing as he jumps.  I immediately begin assessing the situation: If a 136-pound object repeatedly strikes a load-bearing roof from a height of six inches, at what point does the roof become compromised? 

I head for the hatch, dreading the four-foot drop to the top rung of the ladder.  I slither like a boa constrictor over the top of the hatch until my left foot strikes pay dirt.  Now if I can just…get…my…right…foot…

I’ve done it!  Just nine more steps and I’ll be home free!         

Nine slow, agonizing, meticulously taken steps later I’m back on terra firma (loosely translated from Latin to mean ‘Thank you  sweet Jesus’).  Safe and sound, although now I’m wearing a shirt almost completely drenched in perspiration from a fear-induced and panic-stricken cold sweat.  But let’s focus on the ‘safe and sound,’ shall we?

While I can’t say I’ve conquered my fear of heights—it ain’t easy overcoming heredity, folks—I did face it as best as I could.  Or maybe I should say I faced it as much as I wanted to.


Or ever will again. 

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Number 21 - Sober Up


I was reading this week’s issue of Sports Illustrated (April 21, 2014) and saw where some talking head said ‘athletes should sleep about 8.2 to 8.4 hours per 24.’  Then this little nugget: ‘A person who goes a week with four hours of sleep per night has impairment equivalent to a blood-alcohol level of .1%.’

So immediately my thought balloon kicked into hyper drive:

Is a person who has run 10 miles a day for over 35 years considered an ‘athlete?’

If so, what if this athlete averaged 5 ½ hours of sleep ‘per 24’ for those 35+ years?

Wouldn’t that translate to at least a blood-alcohol level of .08, the legal limit in Georgia?

Has this person in fact been ‘legally intoxicated’ for well over three decades?

If the last question can be answered with a simple ‘yes’ it would explain a lot.  It might very well be the reason:

·      Sometimes I can’t remember if I ran a particular ½-mile loop through a particular subdivision during my morning run.  Fortunately I can usually tell by looking at my chronograph once the run is over.  Well, except for the morning runs when I have to make a pit stop (or two) at the 24-hour Kroger because those intermittent times out always mess up my splits.     
·      I can’t find the former Yugoslavia on a world map, even though I went on a ski trip to Sarajevo in 1985—the year after the Winter Olympics were held there. Truth be known, I’m not sure I knew where Yugoslavia could be found on a world map even when it was still known as Yugoslavia.  Then again, geography has never been one of my strong suits.
·      I have a tendency to bounce off objects (walls, desks, automobiles) to the left of me.  Then again, balance has never been one of my strong suits, either.  
·      I watched the 4th Die Hard movie a couple weeks ago and couldn’t remember if I had seen it before.  To make matters worse, after I watched it all the way through I still didn’t know.
·      If it weren’t for GPS I would never find anything, regardless of how clear the directions are, how prominent the signs are leading to the destination or how familiar I am with the route because I drive it at least once a week. 
·      Bad hair days?  I have bad balance days, bad coordination days, bad articulation days, bad vision days and bad (Read: incredibly short) attention span days.  Not to mention the Good-Lord-why-am-I-having-so-much-trouble-eating-corn-on-the-cob days. 
·      I occasionally can’t remember if I brushed my teeth in the morning.  The easiest way for me to know is to squeeze the bristles on my toothbrush to see if they’re still wet.  If so, then I check the bedroom to make sure none of the cats are under the bed, thus ruling out the possibility that said cat(s) chewed on my toothbrush while I was in the shower. 
·      Possum Kingdom by the Toadies (1995) was playing during music trivia one night and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the name of the song.  That song has now been around for almost 20 years and I imagine I’ve heard it a couple hundred times and have known the name of it every single time, except for the one time when it really mattered.
·      I tend to trip over things I’ve never tripped over before.  Slight cracks in the sidewalk, small cat toys, sticks with diameters larger than a plastic straw, plastic straws…
·      I hit a personal low when I couldn’t remember if Rhode Island was a state.  To make matters worse I once lived in Quonset Point for three years.  You know: Quonset Point, Rhode Island.
So I’m feeling a little bit better about myself.  I’ve firmly established that I have IN FACT been legally intoxicated almost every single day since the early ‘80’s.  Excluding, of course the two or three days each year I manage to ‘sleep in’ that never amounts to anything more than seven hours of sleep.  In other words, when I sleep in it’s the equivalent of starting the day with only a couple shots of Peppermint Schnapps instead of my usual six-pack of beer. 

As far as the immediate future is concerned, the talking head in Sports Illustrated went on to say ‘if you only sleep five to six hours per night (Guilty!) a two to three hour-snooze in the afternoon could be your savior.’

Say no more, talking head: I’m buying what you’re selling.  I love naps.

Let’s just hope my boss and wife feel the same way.   
  
 





Sunday, April 20, 2014

Patriot's Day


There was a time when I referred to the weekend of the Boston Marathon as my ‘Christmas in April.’  I consider myself very fortunate to have had the opportunity to run in the greatest footrace in the world 12 times.  When I first started running in 1978 I dreamed of one day lining up with the finest runners in the world in Hopkinton to run the fabled 26.2 mile route to Boston on Patriot’s Day, a civic holiday in Massachusetts commemorating the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. 

My first experience in Boston, perhaps my finest and certainly my most emotional was in 1987.  I can still vividly remember choking up as I ran the final stretch on Boylston Street and the finish line banner was clearly within sight.  To think that someone like me could run in this, the most prestigious marathon in the world, was indeed quite the thrill.  I feel honored to have experienced that thrill 11 more times over the next 23 years, my last trip to Boston being in 2010.  Ironically it was the first time Cindy made the trip with me.  Although I didn’t run particularly well in my Boston swan song, I was glad Cindy finally got to see me run beneath Boston’s finish line banner.

I have some great memories of Boston.  I lowered my personal best marathon time at my first Boston in 1987.  I ran on the Atlanta Track Club Men’s Masters Team several years, breaking three hours (my personal indicator of a solid effort) three times; my younger son Josh made the trip with me and witnessed one of them.  In 2003 I ran the course from the finish line to the start and then turned around and ran the race with everyone else to celebrate my 100th lifetime marathon (Note: I was training for the Badwater Ultramarathon, an event I would be running three months later).

Nana, my grandmother on my mom’s side and arguably my biggest supporter in running passed away the weekend of the 1999 Boston Marathon.  When I called my parents to tell them how I did after the race (my fastest Boston since my first one in 1987) my mom told me that Nana had passed away the day before…but she waited until then to tell me because she knew Nana would not want me to be distracted from running well.  Ironically I was running in the pair of running shoes Nana had given me for Christmas four months earlier. 

I had the privilege to meet many of my running idols during the Boston Marathon weekend: Bill Rodgers, Frank Shorter and Bobbi Gibb, to name a few.  I feel honored to have told Bobbi’s story in my book A Passion for Running: Portraits of the Everyday Runner.  Bobbi was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon and her story is remarkable (I won’t tell you about it here in hopes that you’ll track down a copy of Passion!).  I met Bobbi in person after the 2010 Boston Marathon (my 12th and in all probability my last) and will always remember what a genuinely nice and sincere woman she is.

I won’t be running the Boston Marathon this year.  Many of my friends will be, however and for them I have one piece of advice:

Savor every step.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

The Calipari List

The Calipari List
 
The Calipari List is a compilation of things I've done only one time in my life...and have absolutely no plans to do again.  You know, my 'one and dones.'

The list is named after current University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari, who makes a living recruiting the top freshman in the country only to play one season of college basketball for him, display their prowess in front of the entire nation and leave for the NBA well before they turn 20.

You should also know the list is named after John Calipari not as a flattering gesture, but rather as a means to express my reprehension for what he has done to the game of college basketball.

With that being said, here is the first installment of my Calipari List; things I've only done once and vow to never do again:

   Wear sunglasses at night.  I tried it once.  What a stupid idea: I couldn't see sh*t.  If you see someone wearing sunglass at night you have my blessing to tell them they look stupid.  Footnote: I have never worn sunglasses inside, since I've never been in a house with a glass roof on a sunny day.  I doubt anyone else has either, so if you see someone wearing sunglasses inside, tell them they look stupid also.

   Watch Blade Runner.  Rotten tomatoes calls it 'a visually remarkable, achingly human sci-fi masterpiece.'  I call it a master piece as well; a master piece of sh*t.

   Pierce an ear.  Long story, but here's the short version: Happy hour + too much 'happy' + well-timed dare + very sharp needle + one solitary ice cube = pierced ear.      

   Eat octopus.  Cindy and I had dinner at Burt's Place (owned by Burt Reynolds) on our honeymoon.  Cindy ordered a fancy dish--Neptune's Pasta, maybe--and offered me a bite.  I took one bite and thought I detected a piece of seafood in the sauce, perhaps from the shellfish family.  WRONG!  Octopus tentacle.  Further inspection of Cindy's dinner revealed all kinds of tentacles covered in suction cups (not the scientific term for them, but you know what I mean) sticking out of the plate of pasta.  Miraculously we didn't turn Burt's Place into a modern-day vomitorium.

   Chew chewing tobacco.  If only I had stopped at 'chew.'  If only the person who gave me the chewing tobacco had TOLD me to stop at 'chew.'  At least it was wintergreen flavored (I've always liked wintergreen) and I didn't turn the softball field into a modern-day vomitorium.

   Ingest a flower.  It was the night I became a Cardinal Puff at the local bar during my sophomore year in college.  It only took me two pitchers of beer to achieve that distinction, quite the accomplishment for someone who hadn't reached their 20th birthday.  So I ate a flower to celebrate.  Had I had a couple of dollars I would have bought a pizza, but like I said, I was a sophomore in college.  I spent all my money on beer.

   Make a hole-in-one.  April 8, 1972.  Mayport Naval Station Golf Course.  I fancied myself as a pretty good golfer at the time, keeping my scores in the low 70's most of the time.  One year later--TO THE DAY--I saw my dad make a hole-in-one on the very same golf course.  My dad struggled to break 100.  That was the day I realized making a hole-in-one had nothing to do with being good.

   Travel to South Africa.  I flew for 20 hours to run a race from Durban to Johannesburg.  I was robbed at knife point in Durban a mere 12 hours before the start of the race.  Three hours later I discovered the local police didn't give a rat's ass about the lives of tourists in their country.  After a sleepless night I managed to finish the hilly-as-hell 54-mile race, more a testament to the anger I felt towards South Africa than a tribute to the condition I was in at the time.  I vowed never to return: YOU try sitting in an airplane for 20 hours sometime.    

   Use the word 'ingest' when I could have (and most likely should have) used 'ate.'