We Run and Ride

We Run and Ride for sex and a few other things.

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

We run and ride for fitness and for better sex.

Wake up people, because we’re about to deal with the topic of why you really run and ride.

Which is sex.

Getting it. Giving it. Round and round we go. We run and ride to get fit, stay fit and potentially perform better in bed.

Then we run and ride some more. Because there are moments when running and riding are just about as good as sex.

Like that moment in late June when you’re finally fit on the bike and you’re out riding in early morning sunshine with smoothly shaved legs and a sweet looking kit glued to your body. You hammer along and catch on to a small group of other cyclists and exchange pleasantries. Yet you feel so good that after a mile or so you ride off the front. Your thighs gleam with a light sweat and you give a short wave as you crest the hill and sprint away down the other side. Life is sweet. Like sex on two wheels.

Or perhaps you’re out for a 15-mile on a cool April morning and two weeks out from a half-marathon. For weeks you’ve struggled along feeling limp and weak when suddenly in the middle of your long run you feel a surge of energy and begin to pick up the pace. It goes like that for a couple miles and you begin to wonder if you’re having some sort of “out-of-body” experience. Everything feels good. Your feet sweep over the ground. Your deep breathing seems to fill you with strength. Even your arm carriage seems lighter and freer than ever before. You even look around to see if anyone’s watching you, and wish you had this moment on film, because it isn’t often quite like this. You could make running porn, it feels so good. Almost a guilty feeling running, isn’t it?

A couple days later you slip into the pool for a training and recovery swim and the water feels like butter around you. The swimsuit fits and you start alternate strokes; breast stroke, freestyle, even butterfly. Dang! This is awesome. It should be illegal to feel this good.

Sweet Spots

A couple takes a break from a 20-miler. Not.

Yes, riding and running and swimming can feel that good at times. You work hard for your Sweet Spots. Why feel guilty over a little healthy pleasure?

When you work hard to keep fit, your companion of choice appreciates you more. When you feel good about yourself, life is better in a whole lot of ways. You share your head and body more freely. You live more in the moment. When you finally fall into bed or the whirlpool or anywhere else you and your companion choose to hook up, the sex is so much better.

Crash Into You

If you’re tired from a long run or ride that day, you take it slow together. Making love is about collapsing into each other at times.

Or you can crash into each other with all that strength and energy. Dave Matthews sang it best in his song Crash:

Touch your lips just so I know
In your eyes, love, it glows so
I’m bare-boned and crazy for you
When you come crash
Into me, baby
And I come into you

See, it’s all about giving yourself over. The discipline of running and riding sets us up for a wonderful flip side in which we turn over our hearts and bodies to the ones we love. We strive through pain and difficulty to better appreciate the love we can feel in the presence of another. Sometimes it’s about stress release. Other times desire.

And when given before training or racing or competition, sex can be an expression of faith in the other person. A sign that says, “I love you. You can do it baby.”

Sexy is relative sometimes.

Full of love and courage

If you’ve ever raced after making love you know there’s a relaxation and confidence that comes with having been immersed in the arms of another. No one can scare you because your heart is full of love and courage. You race with freedom and confidence.

Reports tell us the Olympic Village is one giant humpfest as athletes with some of the best bodies in the world hook up for the love and joy of international relations.

For most of us,opportunities for sex are not of Olympic proportions. Yet people who love fitness are naturally attracted to those who also run, ride and swim. For one thing, the training and racing makes for shared experiences, and the social component is great for support and self esteem.

So you join a running or cycling club hoping to meet up with someone who has common interests. Or, you can try a site like www.fitness-singles.com. Honestly, that’s where I met the gal I’m dating. You might also try your hand on eHarmony.com and be sure to put your cycling and running interests into your profile. You might be surprised how many people looking for other fit people out there in the world.

Fitness breeds good sex

It’s an evolutionary fact. Fitness breeds good sex. It has taken millions and billions of years for the human race to evolve into sentient beings that can imagine and execute the crucial dance that leads to sex. And let’s admit it. That guy or gal in their bike shorts on the Saturday morning ride is just a little more fun to follow when their ass is so finely shaped. Or their skin gleams in the sun. Sweet hair hangs out the back of their helmet. You listen to their voice the entire ride. Desire builds inside. They even seem to sweat sexy. You decide to make a quiet play.

So give it your best shot this day. Go out there and run and ride. It’s a great tease even if it doesn’t land you in bed with the person of your dreams. Run on. Ride on. Swim away.

It’s all good baby. All good.

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, We Run and Ride Every Day | Tagged aerobic sports, better sex, Bicycling, bike shorts, Christopher Cudworth, cycling, eHarmony, evolution, evolution and sex, fitness breeds good sex, fitness singles, fitness-singles.com, half-marathon, marathon, sex, sex and fitness, sexual attraction, sexy bike shorts, triathlon, we run and ride | 1 Comment

Enlightenment from the locker room

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

I’m a member of XSport Fitness clubs. The chain is based in three states and does a really nice job of keeping their clubs clean. Which is most appreciated, because another club in our area recently had its hot tub shut down a second time because two club members came down with Legionnaire’s Disease.

OK, yuck. But it’s not all that surprising given the number of people who cycle through a health club on a given day. Wiping down equipment, cleaning mirrors, checking the chlorine and chemical balances in the pools and hot tubs; those are all really important aspects of keeping a club safe and clean.

Respect. And gratitude.

I don’t take the help for granted. I tell them how much I appreciate what they’re doing. If they’re emptying towels I say thank you. If they’re cleaning the bathroom or even moving cardboard boxes I make mention of their efforts. From what I can see, people who work at clubs work hard.

A month ago I stopped by the front desk to tell the staff how much the cleanliness of the club was appreciated. “Tell our manager,” they said, pointing to the buff guy in the corner talking with a customer. So I stood and waited for him to finish the discussion and shared the compliment. You could see a combination of relief and joy on his face.

Entitlement.

As you can imagine, so many people make a habit of complaining rather than paying compliments. There’s a feeling of entitlement, we must suppose, that comes with paying for a club membership. My companion teaches swimming at a regional club that has a door marked EXECUTIVE LOCKER ROOM. I’m thinking, “What the hell? The regular locker room is not good enough for some people?”

Guess not. Perhaps these executives grow accustomed to special treatment on the order of a golf club locker room, where shoes are polished, towels are handed to you and the entire experience is one of pampering and private displays of wealth.

Having come through some rough locker rooms in my time, and showered with coldish water after a 15 mile run in 8 degree weather, I personally do not feel the need for an EXECUTIVE LOCKER ROOM to make me feel like I’m important. The important thing in life is to feel healthy, strong and self-assured no matter how much you make or how much you can afford. And you should appreciate and respect everyone else who is trying to better themselves in some way. But some people make it pretty hard to do.

Perspective.

I think back to a moment when the President of a company where I once worked asked me a question. “What’s the best running shoe?”

I began to explain the difference between the various types of shoes, and asked how much he ran when he interrupted me and said. “No, I mean what’s the most expensive shoe?”

Well, if that’s how you measure your experience and your quality of life, one can’t really really be helped. Starting from a position with such a closed mind, one only arrives at the conclusions that match your worldview.

It’s the same with the health club experience. Everything you need is all there. The weight machines. The free weights. The gym. The kettle balls and exercise balls. The treadmills, spin machines and ellipticals. All you need to get fit and stay fit is there for the using with your basic membership fee.

And then there’s the people. That’s why we really go to the club. It’s a social way of working out.

Personal training.

Of course many people use a personal trainer. I’ve done so myself for instructional purposes. There is much I do not know about appropriate form and the breadth of exercises available to build core strength and such. So I don’t view such work as elitist. Personal trainers also vary by type and method, so it’s not like you’re buying a commodity of some sort. There’s a relationship there as well. It’s not some non-human investment.

Fine examples.

But again, it’s the basics I’m after. Thinking back to my first real personal trainer, it had to be a gym teacher in 7th grade by the name of Mr. Davis. He was a strong disciplinarian who taught us that personal hygiene came first in the locker room. You washed your stuff and did not wear your underwear to gym class and then back to regular class. If you screwed up he made you write long lists of words to teach you not to forget your lock, your jock or your soap in the shower. Everything was about order and good habits in the locker room. That’s where your fitness program began.

He also worked our asses off in gym class. We did gymnastics for one thing. It damn near killed you some days, but you learned how to use the equipment and took risks on jumping the pommel horse. Or the pummel horse as we called it sometimes. When we missed…

Earning your stripes.

Mr. Davis implemented a fitness program where you had to earn the color stripe on your shorts. There was Red (the lowest) White (the middle) and Blue. That top rank was tough to achieve. My downfall was pull-ups. I could only manage six with my skinny runner arms. Missed the Blue stripe by two points or something. That taught me a lesson about total fitness.

Locker room scenes.

The locker room experience greeted us every day upon our return from whatever tough workout Davis had us doing. We were 7th graders however, and sometimes things got a little strange. One of our classmates was quite well-endowed even at that age, and one morning the entire crew of boys got to teasing him and wouldn’t you know it, that dong went erect from the attention and pandemonium ensued. The kid started dancing around the shower waving that monster back and forth and people were clapping and falling down at the hilarity of it. Mr. Davis came hustling to see what the fuss was about and man did that scene end in a hurry.

Professionalism.

But here’s the thing. I learned years later that Mr. Davis was actually gay. Yet at no time during any of the many lessons he taught us was there any sort of physical or emotional contact that was inappropriate. Mr. Davis took his job seriously. The lessons he taught me have lasted my whole life through. Lessons of personal discipline and character. Of taking seriously the preparation needed to succeed in sports.

His requirement that we all do a 12:00 time trial also taught me that I was a runner. And for that I’m eternally thankful to Mr. Davis. I may have learned it some other way, but the feeling of circling that track on a wan fall day and knowing that feeling of full-on effort sticks in my mind to this day.

No threat. And have faith.

So it offends me to hear people insinuate that having gays in the locker room or in leadership positions is somehow an automatic threat to heterosexuals. It’s absurd.

I will acknowledge that I have been approached by gay men over the years. Only once in the locker room, but many times in public as well. Is that anything but a compliment, really? A polite “I’m not interested” is all that is required in such circumstances if you do not want the attention.

Evolving as people.

I view homosexuality as a completely natural product of human evolution. So it’s not like it’s a total surprise that gays exist. Nor is it a contradiction of my religious faith to accept gays as fully equal members of society.

I have read the Bible cover-to-cover several times. I have studied the balance between what the Bible says about important issues such as abuse of wealth and power, religious legalism and especially controlling the behavior of others in the name of God, which is what Jesus so hated in the religious leaders of his day. There’s a strong lesson in that, so lost on modern day zealots in religion and politics.

Context.

I have also read the passages about homosexuality many times over and now place them in context with laws that we no longer abide by in Leviticus, Deuteronomy and even the New Testament. Enlightened religious believers fully understand that the Bible was written in the context of a relatively primitive society without access to science, medicine or evolutionary science that now drives our understanding of everything from microbes to the infinite sea of stars beyond our world. There is no heaven but what we can conceive in our hearts, and the Kingdom of God is wrought here and now, among us. Or else there is no faith.

It is a highly ignorant brand of faith that cannot grow past ancient misunderstandings about former health laws and social mores based on fears. Plus the Bible shows that Jesus said absolutely nothing about homosexuality. So if it was not a threat to him or his vision of embracing love, then we should do as he says and find ways to love one another. Period.

Where we are.

A recent Gallup poll suggests the population of gay people in America may be in the range of 3-4%. That’s about 9 million people. Hardly the majority, but not an insignificant minority either.

The question that needs to be raised about gays as it pertains to the locker room is whether fear over homosexuality has led, to some degree, to a nearly complete lack of use of locker room facilities in high schools and middle schools across America. And what does that mean to actual physical education?

When high school kids go to gym class these days, they largely do not use the showers afterward. They seem to prefer to go back to class all grunged up rather than take the time or be seen using the showers. Frankly most kids probably make the choice to not play too hard rather than get sweated up and have to go back to class feeling like a wet rag. That means physical education classes are being compromised by attitudes of fear or shyness about the locker room. No wonder childhood obesity remains a problem!

Are kids that self-conscious that they do not want to be seen naked in the locker room? Is high school teasing and bullying that profound that kids cannot shower together and be objective about it? I truly doubt it.

Old norms. Good practices.

Hitting the showers was simply the norm 40 years ago. No one thought twice about it until the early 1980s when a wave of conservatism swept the country with Ronald Reagan, the control-obsessed Yuppies and a whole host of religious zealots like Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed complaining about social issues including homosexuality.

Probably liberals also contributed to the locker room problem with complaints about kids suffering blows to self esteem on fears of being seen naked. But conservatism especially contributed to making high school locker rooms into “NO GO” zones for kids. Fear of gays.

True equality.

The commonality of the locker room was actually something of a great equalizer. Sure, it could be harsh for some. Heavier kids do have to put up with teasing, and other body types as well. I can recall a conversation in 7th grade with a fellow classmate who told me he was constantly teased that his penis looked so small under his rather fat belly. I told him flat out not to worry about it. That was none of their business and he’d best find ways to accept his body as it was, and work on it if he was not happy. He thanked me for that advice. We were 12 years old. Some common sense never changes.

But the real problem wasn’t that kid. It was all the kids who saw fit to tease him. There needs to be an aggressive, solid reform movement to equalize the locker room. But we can’t do that when we’re held back by patently false religious attitudes that fears nakedness as a rule of morality, and accuses homosexuals of an “agenda” by practice. Conservative religion is killing the potential for a healthy locker room.

Basic Humanity.

The entire idea that people are under threat somehow by being seen naked or semi-clothed is, in the grand scope of things, a product of a fearful worldview poorly reconciled to the basic facts of humanity. Divorced from our evolutionary history by religious zealotry and fears about homosexuality, we are forced into narrow compartments of human existence. Rather than accept our mutual desires to better ourselves, society gets distracted into thinking that the equality of others is a threat to their own existence. But athletes who live and breathe in locker rooms know that it’s the person inside that counts.

We need more locker room common sense and a few more nude beaches to boot. Some segments of America remain so uptight about supposed moral standards the entire concept of what constitutes normal locker room existence has been warped out of proportion to the point that it is spilling into public discourse. That fearful undercurrent is driving a wedge through the very heart of American openness and tolerance. Those latter attributes are the values that most make America what should be.

Leadership role for athletes.

You may not have expected this brand of enlightenment from the locker room. But I write about it because athletes truly can provide important leadership to society by their example. It happened with black athletes in the 50s and 60s, leading to greater racial equality that exists today. Recall that there were fears of even drinking from the same fountain as “colored people.” It sounds quaint and frail to make such recollections today. Yet those attitudes were anything but harmless. People were murdered as a product of racist attitudes.

Sports and the locker room really can contribute to greater gender equity, understanding of sexual orientation and open attitudes toward gays in society. The NBA and NFL are still close-minded about gay players of course. But are we surprised? Consider the normalized hazing that goes on with rookies in football. These immature antics are the product of poorly developed social constructs, with fearful, controlling behavior at the heart of it.

If that’s the pinnacle of sporting attitudes in society, our culture truly is regressive, insecure and repressive. And sure enough, that’s how it is.

The Naked Truth.

So next time you’re in the locker room, consider the millions of people who work out each day. Man of them are gay. But get this, they’re not staring at you any more than the straight guy or gal in the locker room.

Humans are curious beings. We’re visually oriented. Whether you admit it or not, you notice other people in the locker room. If that strikes fear into your heart that you might be tempted somehow, then you still haven’t grown up. Have you?

Nothing anyone can do will “make you gay.” Being gay is a natural, normal outcome of genetic makeup. It’s been that way for thousands of years. But if you can’t handle evolution as a reality, then get the hell out of the locker room. Because everyone else is trying to evolve into better human beings by working out, accepting other human beings for what they are and living their lives with real purpose. If that bugs you, then stay behind in the past. Because while you have a right to that opinion, it would seem that you really have little to contribute to the betterment of society. If it does not promote equality for all, then it is a lie about the human condition.

Perhaps it’s finally time to pick up a towel on this issue, and go shower in peace. You don’t need the Good Book to help you lift weights, and you don’t need it to make you feel secure in the locker room, either.

Peace.

(Note: no commercial endorsements or interests are associated with this blog topic or its mention of commercial properties).

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, We Run and Ride Every Day | Tagged being gay, believers, Bible and homosexuality, blows to self esteem, conservatism, conservatives, Deuteronomny, fear of gays, gay, gay agenda, gay fears, gay friends, gay rights, gym class, health laws, high school locker rooms, homosexuality, humanity, Jerry Falwell, jesus and homosexuality, Leviticus, liberals, locker room shower scene, make you gay, physical education, religious intolerance of gays, Ronald Reagan, school showers, self esteem, showering, showers, social mores, The bile and homosexuality, XSport | Leave a comment

On what it means to be a runner

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

At the age of six years old, I grabbed a traditional old watch off my father’s dresser and headed out to the side yard of our Lancaster, Pennyslvania home. The yard had once been a clay tennis court, so it was flat, rectangular and ideal for running laps. With that watch in my hand, I stood at one of the corners waiting for the second hand to reach 12. Then I took off running as fast as I could around the entire lawn.

I don’t recall the time it took to circle the yard. I do recall running that lap again, and again. It was my goal to run faster, yet somehow my times were almost always the same. My first-grade mind did not accept this fact. I pushed myself even past the point where my legs were tired, my lungs ached and sweat rolled down my face. And then I stopped running that day.

But I didn’t give up.

The notion and feel of running sank deep into my being. I liked the feel of it, and took inspiration by glancing back at the single red circle on the back of my Red Ball Jets. Those were sneakers, as we called them. I swore they made me faster.

It was all there, you see. All the components of being a runner were installed in that early download. All that was left was to find out what being a runner really means.

By the time I was nine, it was beginning to become a bit more clear. I ran everywhere possible in those days. That was almost unlimited because we lived next to a golf course with long green fairways that felt good even under bare feet. I was a minimalist then.

At school, we chased each other around the playground all the time, running fast as we could to catch someone or run away. Playing tag was fun. And yes, there was something thrilling about not actually being able to catch a girl. Wait, she’s faster than me? And then it happened. She almost seemed to want to be caught, slowing down in that way that girls do when they seem to know something you don’t, and kind of want to tell you, but not quite. In fact, that seemed to be the case with girls all that time.

And then, when you drew close enough to see the sheen of sweat on her face gleaming in the morning sunshine, and laughter came out of her in that wonderful way only girls can laugh, you wondered about those strange feelings inside of your chest. Could it be that you really like her?

So began the strange relationship between being a runner, which can be a lonely occupation, and being wanted by someone else. Running can confuse and clarify these thoughts. That’s one of the tarsnakes of being a runner. It helps you figure out who you are even as it challenges the notion of who you really want to be. Perhaps it is no wonder, given the relational dynamic between love of running and love of life, that there are now more women runners than men?

Still, some of these discoveries come in stark increments. As the day I learned at the end of every baseball practice that I could outrun every other kid on the team. Out to the light pole beyond center field and back. I loved that feeling. I was a baseball player, and yet something more was at work…

Then came the day in 7th grade gym class when we ran a 12:00 time trial. I covered two whole miles on a cinder track in Converse basketball shoes and it turned out I was the kid in class who could run the longest, fastest. So what was that worth?

Then came the first 880 yard race in 8th grade track. It was a raw run on a cold April afternoon against a tough kid from an Aurora, Illinois school who would not give up. That’s how you learn respect for competitors. A valuable lifelong lesson.

In high school cross country and track it was time to learn the value of hard work. Hot pre-season runs and cold morning races in mud, wind and rain.

Then came college cross country and track, testing physical and mental limits with 100 mile weeks and track workouts so hard you literally threw up. But improvement came about as a result. Times dropped. Trophies came along. The relationship between commitment and achievement was affirmed.

And on the personal side, there was also true love. Those early feelings of chasing girls around the schoolyard got serious in the late teens and early 20s. Running was always a tool to figure out the love thing. You run with that person swimming around in your head and it is inspiring. I ran better than ever knowing there was someone waiting for me back at the dorm. It’s like the yin and yang of being. Motion and stillness. Strife and comfort. Joy and pain. Those feelings still abound today.

Then came life changes, and post-collegiate decision-making. That college romance fizzled out and the world opened up wide. Job choices and job changes came along, and still I kept training. You find out what it really means to be a runner when it comes down to choosing your priorities in life.

In my case I literally spent a year and a half trying to become the best runner I could be. It was nonsensical in a way because I was not world class by any measure except one. In the Marty Liquori book about training for distance running the cutoff for a world class time in the 10k was listed as 31:00. And I did that.

But that’s still not what it means to be a runner. There are actually tons of people who can run that fast. In the long run you learn that all numbers are in some sense arbitrary.

That means you have to define for yourself what a specific accomplishment means in context of your own being. Even truly world class runners have to grapple with that fact. No matter how well you ran yesterday, there is still tomorrow to define. Perhaps you leverage those experiences into inspiration for others. A noble cause. Because the watch doesn’t lie, and those who have achieved significant personal bests do deserve to document them. Those minutes and seconds are real.

As runners, we try hard to fix those moments in time. A sticker on your car? 26.2? 13.1? 70.2? We call ourselves marathoners. Half-marathoners. Triathletes. Ironman. That’s all nice, but it’s more than that.

What it means to be a runner is best defined as the knowledge that for as long as you can manage it, tomorrow is another opportunity to run. All your history and past achievements do matter, but what ultimately matters is fostering the will to do more. To the best of your ability at any age, what it means to be a runner is to make the most of the time you have on this earth by truly feeling alive.

That’s what started this kid running laps around a side yard with his father’s watch in hand. That’s what kept this man covering distances that could have taken him a couple times around the world. Running helps you see the world in a better way. That’s what it means to be a runner.

Want a poster with the artwork featured in today’s blog? Take a quick visit to my site at Fine Art America. The poster features images published with the original essay in Runner’s World using these illustrations.

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, Tarsnakes, We Run and Ride Every Day | Tagged aerobic sports, Christopher Cudworth, distance running, half-marathon, long distance running, marathon, philosophy of running, runners, running, running and riding, running shoes, sports psychology, tarsnakes, we run and ride, werunandride.com, what it means to be a runner, women runners | 2 Comments

On what it means to be a cyclist

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

What it means to be a cyclist (Edited Version)

We Run and Ride

By Christopher Cudworth

Five years ago there was a great group ride put on by our cycling club, Athletes By Design. It was a controlled pace ride that averaged 20mph. You knew that you’d get a good workout every Wednesday and cover between 35-40 miles. All you had to do was keep up your cadence and tuck in the draft if you wanted to simply finish.

For some reason I liked riding in 3rd or 4th position. For one thing, it felt safer. During one early summer ride a pileup had occurred when someone new to the ride hit their brakes too hard coming into a stop sign. Wheels clashed and a chain popped off. My reflexes were quick enough to allow me to avoid a collision. Other than an unfortunate communication mishap with a close friend that resulted in me turning into his front wheel, those are about the…

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On what it means to be a cyclist

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Other than racing, that is. Criteriums are a manic mix of high speed surges and tight turns. Because of that volatile environment, close calls are common. But you sign up for those the minute you put your front wheel on the line and the whistle blows. Racing does come with risks.

That first year I raced eight times and learned something harsh about my abilities and thinking at every event. It was trial by fire, yet the moment I nearly t-boned a downed rider on an uphill segment in a criterium, I felt like a “real cyclist.”

That’s how it is in the sport that never gets easier. Cycling is an “envelope” sport. If you’re serious about improving in some respect, you’re always pushing the edge of your envelope. The minute you can outride your own little group there is always another level, or a set of hardass riders coming up on your back when you’re out for a solo ride. Jump on and find out if you can keep up.

That’s what it means to be a cyclist. You must be willing to take on challenges to grow. Some of those challenges will outright flatten you. Yet you come back another day, another week, another month later and try again. For if you fail, or get dropped, or cancel a ride because you’re getting sick, there is always tomorrow. It’s important to remember that because cycling really can wear you down with all its pressing difficulty.

It happens every year, and year after year. Fighting back into shape after the winter months can be painful and even lonely. And when you get dropped there seems to be nothing but sullen air to breathe. Yet you keep on pedaling. Then you patch up your bruised ego and ride home as fast as you can. Might as well get something from the ride. It all adds up.

I recall riding into a 20 mph northwest gale one windy March day. It was all you could do just to do stay in the draft of the rider ahead of you. I chose to hunker in behind a big triathlete with a vee-shaped back. He made the perfect wind block and his strength was unending. Nothing else in the world exists at that point except to keep 6-12″ between your front wheel and the back wheel of the rider ahead of you.

It is one of the tarsnakes of riding that you can be so proud just to hang on during a group ride when someone else is doing all the work. You’re like, “Yeah, I rock!” and then you humbly realize that the three people at the front are the only ones who have a right to be proud in any way. The rest of us are merely wheel suckers.

But hey, that’s how you improve. You suck wheels until that day you find yourself at the front, and there is no place to hide. So you take a half-mile pull at 23 mph into the angled teeth of a crosswind and then another, and another. Suddenly you realize that you’re capable of much more than were just last week, or ever. On the final pull of the day a rider slides past and mutters, “Nice pulls,” and you think to yourself: “There is no better compliment on earth.” None.

Of course there’s always the pricks to contend with in cycling. Some people, blessed with the strength and desire to do all the pulling simply do not want you to suck on their wheel. They will go so far as to “gutter” you going into the wind so that you can’t even catch a draft. On and on they go at 26 mph, daring you to ride at their pace. Yet you do it somehow. But the satisfaction you feel is a rather bitter pill to swallow. There is no conviviality in fighting other cyclists that way. You wonder: why can’t some people be willing to work together?

The answer to that question is that cyclists are just as fucked up as the rest of the world. It takes all types, and the world is a tough place sometimes. Just ask Greg Lemond, who had to tangle with his own teammate, Bernard Hinault, to earn his first Tour victory. There was no easy road for Lemond that year, or any year after that. The fact that he had to battle back into shape after getting blasted in the chest by a shotgun is only more proof how tough and resilient a man he really was.

Still, you persist in trying to find a group that works together to improve. And within that group you still find the Whiners, the Excuse-Makers, the Haughty Elites, the Grinders and the Flakes. Truth be told, one person can be all five of those personalities in a single ride. If things are tough enough, cycling can do that to you. It squeezes alternate personalities out of you like hard bits of toothpaste popping out a tube.

When you finally crash and get road rash, bust a collarbone or your ass, you soak in soreness a few weeks and begin plotting your return to the bike. People ask, “You’re done for the season, right?” Spouses worry. Children think you’re crazy. But you go about your recovery with one goal in mind: to get back on the bike.

Usually your fellow riders understand this brand of cycling schizophrenia. They’ve all been visited by the ghosts, demons and clowns within themselves.

Imagine how pronounced those voices must be in an event as extreme as the Tour de France! Only a true professional cyclist can stand up to that kind of physical and emotional pressure. So it’s no surprise that those guys and gals are at times a bit flat in post-race interviews. They’re left most of their personality out there on the road. It drains off you like sweat.

That is also why the most daunting cyclists of all are the Stoics. They ride and ride without complaint or comment. They may make small talk well enough, but when the surge comes along the small talk ends and they are not only in the chase, they are leading it. Their faces are impassive and focused. They seem to see the smallest nail on the road and deftly steer around potholes where pinch flats await. They are consummate riders with quick cadence and legs that climb like pistons.

And that’s what it means to be a cyclist. Giving it all and not being able to explain exactly how or why you do it. Yet you live for that feeling early in the ride when your gear is all organized and in place. Your bike is well-tuned and the chain makes no noise. There are 70 miles of hard riding out there waiting to be done, and you know it is your job alone to do it. No one can push you up the hills or guide you down. There are decisions to be made at 25 mph and more.

We don’t necessarily think our way through that kind of process. We feel it. Gut it out. Hang in there. Ride through the pain. Then we head out another day and do it again. And again.

That’s what it means to be a cyclist. It gets in your blood. Fills your head with strange dreams about going fast and catching back on. You pull and pull the effort from yourself and stare down at the strange beast between your legs, all carbon or steel. Pretty paint and all, it still needs to be ridden. You’re just the person to do it.

You are both human and machine. Daydreamer and goal-setter. Hardass and commiserator. Soaking wet and dry as a bone. Hungry and Spartan. Bold and humble. Amalgamate and whole. You are a rider. Hard-earned.

What it means to be a cyclist is both simple and a riddle, because the one thing to be done each ride is to find out who you are. And when it’s all said and done for the day, you look yourself in the eye and say, “Damn, it feels good to be alive. ”

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, Tarsnakes, We Run and Ride Every Day | Tagged aerobic sports, Bicycling, Christopher Cudworth, competition, cycling, cycling accidents, cycling efficiency, cycling enthusiasts, cycling is hard, hardass cyclist, it gets in your blood, noob cyclist, tarsnakes, The Rules, Tour de France, triathlon, Velominati The Rules, we run and ride, what it means to be a cyclist, what it takes to be a cyclist | 1 Comment

On bike trails, class warfare and conservative buzzkills

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

So, the Supreme Court of the United States just ruled on a case against bike trails on former railroad beds. The case could have devastating effects on new and existing bike trails across the nation.

Essentially, a family in Wyoming (population 576,000 or so) inherited some land within a Forest Service property that contained a former railroad bed. When the Forest Service tried to put an extension of a popular bike trail through, the family sued. They initially lost twice in lower courts before winning a Supreme Court ruling.

That really should not surprise anyone paying attention to the actions of the conservative-led Supreme Court the last decade or so. Our SCOTUS is politically motivated and hears primarily cases that fit the objectives of the conservative majority currently at the helm of our national justice system.

To give perspective to this recent ruling, here’s how screwed up the priorities are in this case:

“The plaintiffs in the Wyoming case, Marvin Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, are descendants of the owner of a sawmill that produced railroad ties. The family was granted dozens of acres of land in Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest; they are resisting attempts to use part of that land for a trail.

“We traded for the land with a right of way on it for railroad uses,” Brandt said in December. “They want to bring a train through here, that’s fine. We never expected and we never agreed to a bicycle trail.”

Personal and impersonal rights

If you’ve been following along with the utterances of the Supreme Court the last few years, you know that they are really torn about the alignment of so-called personal rights with those issued to corporations, as people.

The Citizens United case essentially ruled that corporations are individuals in the sense that they cannot be impeded from making contributions to political campaigns because it infringes on their right to free speech. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney uttered the famous phrase “Corporations are people, my friend,” on grounds that because people run corporations, they are essentially the same thing.

Personal and political alignments

Now notice what the defendants in the recent ruling against bike trails have to say about their motives. “They want to bring a train through here, that’s fine. We never expected and we never agreed to a bicycle trail.”

So here we have a family that was granted rights to ownership in a federal plot of land. They feel they have the right to determine what use can be dictated on that property. And they prefer, as expressed in a very public statement, that a corporation that owns trains should have the right to punch through their property. Yetthey don’t want American citizens whose tax dollars pay for the maintenance and ownership of the public lands surrounding that property to have any access to the property they already own.

And that, my friends, is how screwed up our country has gotten. It’s not some liberal plot to jam bike trails through private property that’s causing this problem. It is the selfishly guarded aims of private citizens to dictate to society what our priorities should be.

The railroads were once granted carte blanche rights to shove rail lines through wherever they wanted. Railroads rim our rivers for grade access. They cut through cities and block traffic. And much of that is good, and needed access for rail lines. We might yet consider the benefits of high-speed rail.

Yet plenty of railroads went belly up, and that left thousands of miles of former railroad beds lying idle. So people got smart and put them to use.

Rails to Trails

The Rails-to-Trails movement has revolutionized American recreation. To keep this recent case in perspective, read this blog by the RailsToTrails organization. We’re not likely to face a whirlwind of litigation against bike trails. But that’s not the point here.

In our county alone, there are more than 160 miles of former railroad beds converted to bike trails. These are the most popular recreational resources in the Chicago region. Conversion of these trails has enhanced and protected large swaths of surrounding natural areas, leading to restoration efforts that have refurbished natural prairies, converted half-dead woodlands into thriving ecologies and provided access to both the public and private landowners, who otherwise would have had nothing but a cinder-topped gravel bed in their back yards.

So the conservative buzzkill here is that none of this matters in the recent Supreme Court ruling. What matters is a couple of yahoos out in Wyoming who would rather have a train running through their property than allow access to the general public. So private property rights granted on public lands trumps common use access? That’s screwy.

Not in my back yard

Here in Illinois battle such as there were fierce and prolonged. A visionary County Board and County Forest Preserve District Chairman named Philip Elfstrom was the guy who started building bike trails out of railroad beds. Miles of railroad beds along the scenic Fox River were rehabbed and paved over. The former industrial and trolley lines were perfect vantage points to ride along the river.

Yet when Elfstrom went to put bike paths through private property on the north end of the county, he ran into a buzz saw of objectors. One of them ultimately ran against Elfstrom who was deposed from office. Granted, he got a bit giddy and greedy with his objectives to the point of buying up entire houses along a section of river in an attempt to gain passageway for the bike path he wanted to install. The homes were in a depressed community so the price was cheap. That made it smack of a class warfare. Ironically, t was richer residents along the river who leveraged that story into “protection” of their own land along the river.

Which is funny in many respects. Since that time there have been many big homes built along the river in my Batavia home where the bike path transects the back of their property. No one has ever tried to sue to remove the bike trail before they build and move in. The trail is considered an “amenity” where it already exists. It actually raises property values all along the riverfront.

Personal liberties

So the idea that bike trails are somehow an infringement of liberties is a load of crap. It’s just the conservative buzzkills who want to use cases like these to foment some strange sense of personal liberty that never really existed in America. If it did, why were railroads allowed eminent domain wherever they wanted to go?

It’s an ugly little comedy that the conservative-led Supreme Court seems so desperate to project on America. SCJ Antonin Scalia admits this is true, when he says, “There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.”

In other words, there is no justice for the public interest except that which is granted by the eternal wisdom of a conservative few, whose obsession with “protection of privacy” reaches even to criminality for reasons of approval. That seems to be a tarsnake of epic legal proportions.

Bike paths and running routes

It’s a very interesting juncture in America political history if you consider the ongoing clash between motorists and those who run and ride. If people who drive cars do not want cyclists or runners on the roads, then it seems to make sense that an extensive trail system should be constructed to provide safe recreational opportunities. Otherwise America just gets fatter and slower and more unhealthy, driving up health-care costs which undermines American productivity. Yet the Supreme Court would rather focus on the rights of two people in Wyoming than rule in favor of the common good of America.

And that really is a criminal act. One of many perpetrated on American by our conservative-led Supreme Court. It’s now become more obvious than ever that the crazed and angry ideals of a conservative few are a real threat to the health of our nation.

But all you have to do to understand the public benefit of an extensive bike trail system is visit the St. Louis region. There are hundreds of miles of genuinely great bike trails built there. These trails are wide enough to accommodate both recreational and serious cyclists. The trails are smooth asphalt and there is room even to swing wide of baby carriages and slow-moving grandpas. It’s a vision for the health of America that some people just don’t seem to get.

Some people just seem like they could not care less about the health of others. Bike trails? Who needs them when you’ve got ATVs or trucks or fast cars? That’s Real America.

But you can see the lack of concern for others in the selfish, short-term distaste for health care reform. A little short-term pain and adjustment is just too much for some people to take. They’d rather criticize than engage, to complain rather than produce new solutions.

It all goes together, you see. This idea that trying to make things better is not worth it is growing old in many quarters. Even Fox News had to ask the GOP hard questions about where their ideas for health care reform were hiding?

The point here is that it’s a pity when the supposed highest court in the land just doesn’t get it on something like a simple bike trail. The real criminal acts are those that fail to comprehend what’s good for society. And you can even ask Jesus about that if you like.

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, Tarsnakes, We Run and Ride Every Day | Tagged antonin scalia, bike path, bike trail politics, bike trails, buzzkill, class warfare, conservative skill, conservatives, Fox News, GOP and health care reform, infringement of liberties, Marvin Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, personal property rights, philip elfstrom, rails to trails, Supreme Court ruling on bike trails, Wyoming | 1 Comment

Even those who run and ride have still gotta move

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Spring is the season for many people to move. Everyone goes through that experience in one way or another. Unless you’re part of a Royal Family, it seems we all move a few times in life.

The little brick bungalow in Geneva had 750 square feet of living space.

The last time I moved my own household was 1996. That’s when our family moved into our current home in Batavia, IL. That move was architectural, in its way. Our little bungalow in Geneva Illinois only had two bedrooms. We had a 5th grade boy and a 1st grade girl. It was time to get them out of the same bedroom.

Moving from Geneva to Batavia changed my running architecture as well. The street on which we lived in Geneva was named Anderson Boulevard. Wide and flat, it had once carried trolley traffic through town. Until the city repaved the surface in the early 1990s, you could still see railroad tracks in places where they had not been removed.

Road to success

For me that street was the location for many a fast training mile. For more than 20 years before that it had been part of a larger loop back over to my former house in St. Charles, a 7-8 mile loop that covered several of the best hills in the Fox Valley.

Anderson Boulevard in Geneva Illinois. Home for 20+ years of training runs.

Anderson Boulevard (left) was also the perfect road for long intervals during a hard training run. The surface was smooth and the roadway wide enough to clip along without worrying about traffic zooming too close to you. Years later when I took up cycling in the early 2000s that street turned out to be a riding joy as well. You could hit it hard and reach speeds of 25 mph, fast enough to keep up with some of the cars, since that was the speed limit in places.

So it was hard to give up the familiarity of all that and move away from training routes that had seen me through the best racing days of my career, through high school, college and beyond. As a bachelor I’d rented a coach house at 741 1/2 Illinois Street. Seriously. It was the only Half Address I ever enjoyed. That house as also close to Anderson Boulevard, so the memories of those years dovetail with those of early marriage.

New digs. New routes.

There’s both a thrill and an anxiety to setting up new running and riding loops when you move your home. Sometimes we can’t help repeating the first loop we choose. Our minds seem to cling to those initial steps and the surety that comes with them. We try to make our homes through these experiences.

Paoli Pennsylvania main drag. Outside of town the roads are a confusing maze of horse country lanes. But beautiful!

Paoli Days

I recall moving to Paoli, Pennyslvania in 1982. The move was required for a job, and though I had lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania as a kid, the move to Paoli felt foreign and strange. I knew no one except my brother in Lancaster, and that as an hour or more west.

Fortunately there was a running store called The Runner’s Edge just a half mile from my house. I joined their racing team and began training with a group of 10-15 runners on long, slow weekend runs. 2-3 hours we typically wandered through those Pennsylvania hills.

It was a welcome fraternity for a stranger in town. The first few runs I had done were almost tragic. The roads around Paoli wandered through horse country in a disconnected fashion, often T-boning into one road and picking up the same name a quarter mile down the way. Try finding your way around when the roads do that! I got lost several times. Nothing went purely north or south, east or west. It all made the move to Paoli feel that much more raw at first.

Fortunately my newfound running friends helped me orient and learn the area. It made going back home to a lonely upstairs apartment just that much better. In fact I lived for those runs as well as the hard intervals we did on the track over at Villanova. For the entire 9 months I lived in Paoli, running was my home. It helped me survive.

Lincoln Park, Chicago

And when the company cut the entire marketing department that spring, I packed up all my stuff and moved back to Chicago. The big old U-Haul truck nearly quit and died on a long mountain highway in western Pennsylvania. But I limped that clunker home to Chicago and dumped a bunch of stuff in my parent’s garage before moving a few things into an Old Town apartment with a friend.

This Chicago 2-flat at 1764 N. Clark, right on Lincoln Park, was a training base for 1.5 years.

We haul our crap around with us the best we can. But we live to hit the streets. That summer and winter and summer of life in Chicago saw some very hard training and great racing. My home was a two-flat on Clark Street right across from Lincoln Park. We chased girls all night and I chased running dreams all day. It was a great place to live when you’re young and not yet married. Glad as hell I did that.

Helping with a move

This all comes to mind as I spent the weekend helping my companion move her stuff across town here in Batavia. Her new place seems great. But we’ll know she’s really at home once we put on our running shoes and take our trek together by foot. And now the cycling season is upon us, we’ll be spinning down her block and onto the bike trails to swing out to the big roads out west. Her new place is great, but as people who run and ride, part of our new home is always out there on the road. It’s where we live, in many respects. It’s where we both love to move.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Batavia, Christopher Cudworth, cycling, distance running, finding a new home, Geneva, Lincoln Park Chicago, movers, moving, moving in spring, Paoli Pennsylvania, real estate, rental properties, running and riding, spring move, St. Charles, try-cities, upstairs apartment, we run and ride | Leave a comment

How not to be sore at yourself for working out too hard

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

It happens. You overdo it. Then you’re sore for days.

Soreness comes from exhaustion.

Soreness is the product of muscles and connective tissue that have been strained. The stretching and exhaustion that occurs in body tissue under stress can lead to profound soreness.

But relax. Soreness has a purpose. It’s the body’s way of telling you that you need to back off or treat the soreness with respect. Soreness is a form of pain designed to keep you from doing additional damage to your body–the kind that doesn’t heal so quickly.

So what should you do when you get sore? Sore muscles can be devastating to your daily workout routine. You need strategies to help you get past the soreness and back on the road or in the gym. Here’s a few rules you can follow to return to form.

1. Hydrate like crazy.

Fluids are important to restoring sore muscles to full, unhindered function. If you forget to drink after a hard workout, you are much more likely to get sore and stay sore. Soreness prevention begins during your workout and it absolutely must follow your workout to keep your muscles and joints from essentially “drying out” in ways that let muscle fibers get tender and raw. Keep drinking fluids during the days you feel sore, using not only water but liquids with electrolytes and other nutrients to refuel muscles. Lactid acid is one of the reasons why muscles get sore. You need to flush it out with water and fill those muscles back in with good stuff.

2. Keep warm.

Keep warm any way you can.

Stiff muscles do not like the cold. Think about it: When you’re out working in severe cold the feeling you get in your muscles and joints is one of stiffness. Cold muscles contract and can’t flex as well. It stands to reason that if you’re already sore from a workout, warming the area can help you build back into a zone where you can use those muscles again. Taking a warm shower before working out at the gym is a reasonable response to soreness gained from doing core work or weightlifting.

But if you’re sore from a long run or ride, it can also help to use a warm bath or shower to loosen muscles before bed or before heading off to work where your sore muscles have to hold you up all day at a desk. Dress a little warmer. Drink warm fluids. Give your body a chance to recover. Give hugs.

3. Get a massage. If you can take it.

Some soreness honestly needs to be left alone a day or two before you can knead those muscles back into function. A good massage can really help the process. Giving a massage to someone who is sore requires constant communication to prevent additional damage to already damaged tissue. If you are getting a massage you must also communicate what levels of pressure are acceptable. Trust a good massage therapist in any case to know the difference. Many times the short term pain is worth the long term gain.

Therapists know the feel of sore and damaged tissue. They can even discern “where it hurts” at critical muscle junctures. Also be careful about the “belly” of any muscle. where soreness can get a little flighty and difficult to heal. Use broad motions and flattened hands at first if you are giving a massage to someone who is sore. Give those muscles a chance to increase blood flow. It’s okay to just hold the muscle in your hand and warm it. Again, soreness is about cellular constriction and inflammation. So you need to help blood in and out of the area, yet not make it worse!

Massage is the fine art of “listening” to muscle. You will earn a rightful spot in heaven if you do this well for someone else.

4. Stay active as you can.

Those muscles need to be allowed to loosen up somehow.

If your core is sore from a hard workout, you may feel like curling up and doing nothing for 4-5 days. Resist the temptation. Same goes for sore calves or thighs. Use them. Gently. Active recovery is vital to ongoing training. If your core is sore, get in the pool and swim. If your calves are sore, hit the bike or spin machine and let muscles absorb heat and blood from consistent motion. There is always a way to “train around” soreness that keeps your fitness up and your risk down.

5. Alter your workout schedule.

This one goes with #4 of course. If you suddenly pull up lame from a too-long or too-hard effort on the bike or the run, it makes no sense to come back two days later with yet another hard workout. That’s asking for outright injury. Remember, soreness is you getting lucky that you did not actually pull something.

That’s one of the tarsnakes of working out. You simply have to push hard in order to get fit. Yet when you push too hard you can get injured. Knowing when to pull back is critical, and soreness is one of the key signs that you will not gain from going hard again right away.

6. Have sex instead.

Bond up with someone.

This whole thing was getting a little testy and dry, don’t you think? We Run and Ride believes in alternate forms of therapy at all times. That means we highly recommend the therapeutic treatment of rubbing your warm body against another warm body. Best treatment for soreness you’ll ever find. Like they say, anyway. No pain, no gain. Have at it.

7. Eat as well as you can.

Your short term diet counts when you’re sore. Along with fluids, eating fresh fruits and vegetables amounts to a “backfill” of muscle tissue. Enjoy some protein as well. That goes straight to the issue of the tissue.

8. Use pain relievers judiciously.

It’s easy to load up on ibuprofen and head back out to train. Not so smart. Recently it’s been discovered that ibuprofen can make stomach distress from exercise worse. There’s even evidence it may may some forms of inflammation worse. Inflammation has even been linked as a possible increased risk of cancer. That’s why the “natural” responses to soreness listed above precede use of pain relievers.

9. Repeat the same workout when recovered. Only smarter.

Get back out there. Only smarter.

Often soreness is the result of trying something completely new. A new routine. A new pace. Increased weight or reps. Soreness results when muscles are taxed to their maximum. But that doesn’t mean you should avoid the workout that caused the soreness in the first place. You likely learned from your experience that led to soreness. But you must get back on your horse and ride, so they say. If your core workout killed your gut for a few days, be proud that you found something that works. When you go back, take it a bit slower perhaps, especially in the decline mode. Soreness often comes about from “jerking” ourselves into position when we tire. Get smart and get back at it the right way.

10. Learn from experience.

Physical exertion requires concentration and experience to create the most benefit. As an athlete you need to learn what led to getting sore in the first place. That doesn’t mean you always back off when getting tired. In fact, it often means the opposite. Learning how to push through pain and not cause soreness, inflammation or injury is essentially the entire foundation of being an athlete.

It’s all about learning how to push the envelope and recover the right way. Then you won’t be sore at yourself for working out too hard.

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, Tarsnakes, We Run and Ride Every Day | Tagged Christopher Cudworth, distance running, exercise stress, exertion, get back on horse and ride, gut instincts, half-marathon, inflammation, marathon, maximum effort, physical therapy, physiological damage, physiology, soreness, stress, tarsnakes, we run and ride | 1 Comment

Rocking your way through time

Posted on March 27, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

The limestone bluffs of Decorah, Iowa are some of the most scenic in the Midwest.

Some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world are formed by rock. We love the tall walls of Yosemite and the Rock of Gibraltar for their solid expression of time and timelessness. Deep within many of those rocks rest timelines that explain the world as an old and weary place.

While driving through Wisconsin this week there were many road cuts through columns of limestone. In spots there was water seeping out in seams, the course of least resistance. It froze into icicles as it emerged from the cold stone bed and met even colder air.

It’s a pattern that works even more slowly in formation of stalagmites and stalactites within caves. Most recently I walked through the Cave of the Mounds in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. There we saw thousands of calcified formations hanging down along with the corresponding floor formations jutting up. That is time measured in the slowest possible way.

This outcrop of sandstone along the Mississippi is near MacGregor, Iowa.

We’re used to measuring time in seconds, minutes and hours. Rocks are not so impatient. They’re content to hang around for generations, millennia, or an eternity. So long as there is matter borne in the universe, there will be rocks.

That may be why we love to visit rocky places. They give us the peace of slow passage. The Grand Canyon has been cut by oceans and then rivers for millions of years. We stand in awe of its scope, and with reverence. Some people like to claim that the Grand Canyon is the product of the Noachian Flood. They want it to have happened quickly to fit their dramatically anachronistic worldview that says God only works through miracles. But what is their real point? That God is too impatient to let natural processes create great wonders? What an insult. And what a small and testy little God they claim to love!

Rocks know better. They not only hold testament to the migration of continents across the face of the earth, they bear testimony to the oceans that once covered those continents and then receded, leaving deep columns of sedimentary rock we can view today. It all fits together in one giant matrix across the face of the earth. The evidence is so clear and real there is no denying its verity. Yet people do because they struggle with their own significance.

The hills seem to be watching traffic pass by on Interstate 94 near Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

They yearn to be more important than the bacteria swimming around in their own gut, yet in doing so they deny the fact that without those microbes to drive digestion and keep us alive, we die. It’s a fabulous claim to say that we are specially created, because we are not. We are borne, we live, we die. Back to the carbon from which we are formed. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

It’s both a wonderful and humbling reality. But we’re not alone in all that. Rocks around the world hold fossils of millions of creatures that once lived on the earth and are now gone. We’ve even found fossils of humanoid creatures stuck in the rocks of ancient rifts in Africa. We see the resemblance between us and them and the transitional forms of apes found in that fossil record point to an evolution that brought us from tree and savanna

In 1985 I visited the Badlands of South Dakota, an area where geography is laid bare for all to see. I weighed 140 lbs. at the time. I weigh a stone more these days, but keep on running.

dwellers to the modern civilization we now run. And that’s where the convergence of history and the present really takes shape.

Think of it. First we used the ability to run to survive. Yet bipedal locomotion also enabled us to stand more erect and alert. That conveyed an evolutionary advantage and it became accentuated through the generations. Bipedal locomotion is also said to have stimulated and affirmed the growth of our brains to accommodate more intellect. We ran ourselves into being, it seems.

Now we run for pleasure, and to seek that sensation not just of staying alive, but of truly feeling alive. We run across the surface of a giant rock circling a molten sun. All of human history is contained on and in that rock. Nothing can change that except cataclysm. No claims of special creation can erase our true manifest destiny, which is not about the superiority of a race or creed, but the ongoing tale of human movement. But we do it all on a rock.

Some say we’re living in what someday will be called the Anthropocene Era. That means human influence has become as grand as the five other great changes in history that wiped out millions of species from our planet. Those were so-called “natural” events, versus the manmade climate change we’re now witnessing.

It can all make you feel rather powerless and small. Which is perhaps why I was so moved to go on a rock collecting mission during a recent road trip. The purpose of the trip was to drive a little (using fossil fuels! how ironic!) and think a lot about the passing of my wife a year ago. I stayed with friends and visited well, but one of the real, calculated purposes of the journey was to bring home some rocks from some of my favorite places in Decorah, Iowa.

Decorah limestone chimney bluffs.

Decorah sits in the middle of what is called the Driftless Region, where glaciers never scoured the landscape. That means there are tall limestone chimney bluffs. Each shows richly colored striations that are testament to the fact that deep continental oceans once laid down silt and organic material that ultimately formed into stone. Those processes have never stopped in history. They are taking place in our oceans today. We know the rates of deposit vary depending on forces of silt and temperature and biotic fluctuations. But we know how limestone forms.

The chimney of my house and its stones are made of limestone and sandstone. There is shell-based limestone in which I can see fossilized creatures stuck in the stone. That doesn’t happen in layers hundreds of feet deep from a single flood. It takes millions, even billions of years.

The rocks collected from Decorah roadside now form an arch for landscaping in my back yard. Testimony to time past, and appreciated.

I love that my house has that history built into it. And that is why I went on a rock collecting trip in Decorah last Monday. I picked up rocks from a roadside. Rocks that I’d run past many times during my years as a cross-country and track runner at Luther College 40 years ago. I brought home chunks of my personal history and have built a ground-level arch that I can gaze upon every day I live in this house.

Some of those rocks I recall gazing upon as we ran hill intervals up and down Palisades Park. They had tumbled out of the hillside in cracked glory. They lay in a ditch where running water coursed over them. All those years I was away they sat there in rocky happiness and glory.

I also climbed my bike past the spot where I hauled 250 lbs. of limestone up from a ditch and into my car. One stone weighed 80 lbs. on its own. My car springs sagged when I placed it between the axles. That was real weight. The car and I would earn our keep for taking that rock into possession.

Now those rocks are in my yard.

At left, competing in the St. Olaf Invitational in 1978. At right still running at age 56.

I can remember even a specific workout in which we did hills past some of the rocks I know have in the yard. During one of those interval sessions a teammate came up to me and said “Cud, we need you to be a leader this weekend.”

And I did. In fact that teammate and I together passed a runner from LaCrosse in the last 200 meters of a cross country race. We won that invitational and the feeling of being alive in that moment was like none other. I remember how hilly that course was. It sat up on the campus of St. Olaf College. The hill is formed of rock.

We run past rocks all the time that bear witness to our passing. They are the souls of the

No, that’s not a fossil in the above photo. That’s me. But if this dead farm cat gets covered by silt in the spring it may become fossilized one day.

earth. Timeless. Eternal. So much as we can conceive, rock is the foundation of all we know. If Peter was the Rock of the Christian church, then those of us who believe carry a piece of him with us. And if Rock is the Soundtrack of the current Generation, then the sounds we recognize as ours are a foundation of sorts as well.

There is nothing so important as conceiving all that. Our place in the universe, however humble, is still significant. Our consciousness and appreciation for all we see does have significance. Even if we all wind up back where we came in this physical world, it is a wonderful, if sometimes rocky journey that we make.

Rock on, runners and riders. Rock on.

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, We Run and Ride Every Day | Leave a comment

“Your whole life has been a preparation for this…”

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Years ago when my wife was first learning what it meant to deal with cancer, and my caregiving skills were being put to repeated tests, a longtime friend and former running and baseball coach called to offer his support. “Your whole life has been preparation for this,” he told me.

It was a compelling notion. Our connections were not only through sports, for we’d become friends and even partners in business as the years went past. Yet sports were the first component of our relationship. He coached me in baseball when I was 13. Our small town had no Pony League team for the 13-15 year age group, and I’d just thrown a perfect game against the younger kids after to moving to Illinois from Pennsylvania. So the parents got together and asked me if I wanted to pitch for the American Legion team. Of course I did. That went well enough and my coach for the next couple years was the fiery, motivated man that would by circumstance also later coach me in high school cross country.

It was a seemingly providential union, therefore, that drove us together. So he saw me at my best and worst over the years. I was the top runner on the cross-country team he coached. We dared enough to defeat a school that had not lost in more than 60 dual meets. We won the first-ever district team championships. We ran hot, sweaty miles together in August and thrilled to the feeling of cool fall air up our shorts as we kicked in race after race, winning and grinning.

Yet we also got our asses kicked a couple times toward the end of the season. So the lessons learned from life on the run were profound. You do your best, and you don’t always win. Yet the miracles that happen along the way make it all worth it.

The friendships from those days have lasted 40 years. I still ride and run with two of those teammates. How is that not a great thing? When I got married and had two children, I parted ways for a while with that former coach. Yet we’d keep in touch through parties and reunions and occasional phone calls. In a very direct way he’s always cut to the chase when it comes to observations about life.

As my high school coach he watched my basketball career thin out to the point where as a senior it was obvious there would be little playing time. I was good enough in many ways, but had not attended basketball camp that previous summer. Walking through the gym during the first few days of practice, he noticed that a fellow senior and I were basically sent off to a corner to practice passing. My friend and coach walked up and told us both, “If you haven’t figured it out, you guys aren’t going to play this year.”

Sometimes the hard advice is the best thing you can receive, of course. We both walked out of the gym that day and never went back. So you have to take into account that early, tough decisions do have formative value in later years. It’s not like we are one person when we’re young and we turn into another person as we age. We’re the same person inside and out. We live in our bodies and act through our brains. We feel with our hearts and we dream with our souls.

As life goes on and we meld ourselves with another person such as a wife or a partner, things get naturally more complicated to the point where you sometimes cannot tell yourself from the relationships in which you’re involved.

That’s true especially with your children, who both depend on you for guidance and rebel at your authority. Or if they do not rebel, they wish somehow to understand where to draw the lines.

When something like cancer enters this matrix of relationships and hopes, one can only hope to draw on past experiences to help you through. You fear for the person who suffers from a disease like cancer. But you fear for yourself as well. What will become of the person you’ve become, this flesh and soul mixed with the life of another person? And then there are the children, her family, and her friends…

Thanks to my wife’s terrific determination and will to live, those considerations lasted 8 years, and that is something to be grateful about. Her diagnosis of ovarian cancer in 2005 seemed terminal the moment we learned from her gynecologist that the cyst removed from her ovary was cancerous. Ovarian cancer is a kicker, you see. It does not go away easily. Yet my wife kicked it many times over those 8 years. Her ability to tolerate pain and discomfort was almost legendary among her friends and even the strangers who signed on to help with our caregiving group.

And that’s where the miracles truly began. We had so much help and hope come from friends and people we barely knew. It was not just from church, although that channel was massive in propping us up when we tottered. Help came from the preschool where she taught, and from people who simply heard our story and wanted to be part of helping out.

Miracles do happen. The sign nailed to our tree out back of our house has hung there for years. My wife and I saw it every day because it was placed where we could see it in a direct view from the kitchen sink.

It works like this: You live and pray and work through problems and suddenly something happens that is unexpected and wonderful and a blessing. You can’t predict when it would happen or why. You just know that at that moment there is enough hope to sustain you when you need money or patience.

Miracles happen. From my experience growing up, I knew this to be true. My old coach knew it too. He saw the work and he saw the joys in my participation in sports. He knew that athletics is a quirky, devlish sort of teacher, but that the angels do win out now and then. That’s what he meant when he said “Your whole life has been a preparation for this.”

You learn how to learn from defeat when you put your heart and guts on the line. That’s what my wife was doing every day. That’s what it took to be a caregiver in support of that effort. If you’re going to be a good teammate you have to sacrifice at the right time. Be selfless as you can.

It got more true as time went by. About a week before she died, it became necessary for me to engage in the most humbling of acts as my wife’s strength was waning and she needed help in everything she did. It was hard for her to even stand on her own two feet. I looked up at her naked before me and whispered, “One flesh, honey. I am you.”

Understood. Through all our challenges we were suddenly united in the most practical venture of all, which is dying the best way we can. She passed away on March 26 one year ago today. It took me many months to process the trauma of those last weeks.

Perhaps I even escaped a bit into daily life. It had been a long journey. It honestly felt good to coast a little after years of uphill climbing. I ask forgiveness for that. And yet the abiding feeling was, and is, one of love and pride for her. She lived extremely well through treatments that would flatten your very soul at times.

Yet she’d rise again to be there for her children. And to laugh, and drink wine when she could. It was a good life she led. So hard that it had to end. Obviously the shock rippled through our family when it was finally evident that this seemingly unstoppable women was in fact going to die. She had made it to one graduation, and another.

She had opened her heart to accept a dog in her life when for 25 years it was her joke that she would one day write a book titled “1001 Reasons Not To Own a Dog.”

So it’s not some pat story that gets written about a person’s life. Not hers or mine. But when that coach called and told me “Your whole life has been a preparation for this” it really rang true. It was true while she was alive and it has proven true as I’ve grieved and kept on without her.

I believe that Miracles Happen. I truly do. While she was alive all those years, my wife was a cancer survivor. She deserves so much credit for that. For what it gave all of us. But none of us lives forever. In life you have to keep your heart and mind open to possibilities. Some of them are so strange they do not make sense to everyone.

I can only say that during the 8 years of caregiving there were moments of terror and trepidation, but there were just as many, if not more, blessings that came our way. Miraculous blessings. Things I now try to share with our children and her family so that they know she was cared for by this world as well as them. And that is the strange and wonderful lesson of everyone’s life. Yours and mine.

We must not let daily worries or even fearful circumstances get us down. Our miracles may not always be profound, or save the one we love from something so inevitable as death. Yet the real healing of our grief comes from knowing that everything we’ve done before and everything we’re doing now is indeed the ideal preparation for life. It’s all we’ve got, and it’s everything we need. Just be prepared to share your worries and miracles may indeed happen. Be ready when they come along, or wake up to the moment if you must. Whatever it takes. And say thanks to whomever brings them about. Gratitude goes a long way in this world in healing our grief and casting light on the path ahead.

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, We Run and Ride Every Day | Tagged cancer survival, cancer survivor, Christopher Cudworth, distance running, miracles happen, riding, sports psychology, we run and ride | 2 Comments

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