On the Road

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Christopher Cudworth
Seeing the world at road level can give you insight into the infinite.

Seeing the world at road level can give you insight into the infinite.

By Christopher Cudworth

“I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.” 
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

By the time you’re an adult, you spend most of your time looking at roads only as a route to get somewhere. And that’s a shame, in a way. Because roads are an endless feature of our existence, wrapped in infinite wonder if you know how to look. Yet we roll over them with hardly a thought as we run and ride. Not even a word of admiration or thanks. We ride on snapshots of our memories. The well-ordered sidewalks of life. Instead we should consider the raggedy madness. The hell of it. The senseless emptiness. Because that’s where the real miles take place. On The Road.

Good and bad roads?

We cherish the good roads and disparage the bad ones. We pass judgement, in other words. With which reasons, and why? A fresh new strip of blacktop on a fresh summer morning can be a joy for both runner and rider, of course. You cruise along without looking down because you do not need to watch your footing or where your tires will go. It is temporarily safe to assume you’ll be safe.

But get down low, at road level, and even the worst road is still a miracle of construction. Billions of stone particles and tar woven together and compressed into a relatively consistent surface. Or broken into bits by traffic and the elements.

No road goes on forever

Tar clouds on an urban street.

Tar clouds on an urban street.

Looking at a new road, you figure it will last forever. Many a city or municipality or township wishes that were true. We take all that administration for granted as we run our 20-milers or ride our 70 milers on a Saturday and arrive home bitching that those middle ten miles were a little rough for our liking. What a bunch of pretentious pricks we runners and riders can be.

Get down low and really look at a road sometime. Bend down and put your face close to the asphalt, like you used to do as a kid. Then you’ll see up close the miracle on which you run and ride. The fact that we human beings assemble all this material and smooth it out into a road should not be taken for granted. Our messy lives deserve some messy consideration.

Steamrollers

If you’ve ever been present when the steamroller pushes the hissing tar into place, flattening and smoothing as they go, then you know that roads don’t just happen on their own. It takes skill for the steamroller driver to hitch back and forth, mile after mile, pressing the road into place. I once rode across a freshly placed piece of road and felt my skinny bike tires sink into the surface for 30 feet. I thought the tire would pop from the heat, and I might tip and fall into the hot, steaming asphalt, burns all over my body. That’s how fast the mind works when you realize you’ve just fucked up.

So I kept riding, hard as I could go. Figured the steamroller dude would have had a right, if he chose, to jump down off his rig and punch me in the face with a tarry glove, to pay me back for messing up his hard work. And I’d have had to take it without complaint. Next time I won’t ride across his artistry. But we all live messy lives. So we ride on.

Tarsnakes and potholes, brick streets and cobbles

When you hit the bricks or ride the cobbles, it's as much about what ISN'T there as what is underfoot, or hitting your wheels

When you hit the bricks or ride the cobbles, it’s as much about what ISN’T there as what is underfoot, or hitting your wheels

It’s not just fresh asphalt about which we need to talk. It’s the older and less tame type of road that holds so much interest if you give it consideration. The kind of road that makes up the Spring Classics in cycling. Hell of the North. Paris-Robaix. Tour of Flanders. 101st Scheldeprijs. Hard roads in Belgium and France. Cobbles and country lanes. Dust and mud and shredded tires.

Asphalt and cement that’s been left in the elements for several years takes on an unworldly patina. Cracks and potholes. Tarsnakes and sealants line the surface. It’s like the whole road is glued together, yet keeps falling apart.

Hell’s Road

There’s a strip of downhill road in a rural township on our main Saturday loop that no one seems to claim. It seems to have fallen between the domains of two townships, who can’t seem to agree whose job it is to pave the 100 yard strip of road.

For several years that section of road got worse and worse. Potholes as big as your foot, then deeper and deeper. Pinch flats and dropped water bottles were a common occurrence riding down that little hill. You could hear the unsuspecting riders in the group, the ones who’d fallen asleep and forgotten about Hell’s Road cursing and weaving trying to avoid potholes. Usually someone would have to stop and search for a water bottle thrown out of its cage. You’d sometimes see several riders hunching around the ditch in their cycling shoes trying to find $11.99 worth of plastic filled with water or Go Juice. We cyclists live in an absurd world.

Then one day last summer we turned the corner toward Hell’s Road and. It was Paved. Paved! No more potholes. No more pinch flats. We sailed over the road whooping and hollering, going 35 miles an hour when it used to slow us down to 10 or 15 just to survive.

Hands on the road

A tarsnake meets some tar sticks. We cyclists and runners live in the gutters, where the real action occurs.

A tarsnake meets some tar sticks. We cyclists and runners live in the gutters, where the real action occurs.

I get down low and look at the road sometimes. I like to look at tarsnakes and think of the guys out laying that goo in the cracks. It must be a long and lonely job, walking down those roads with the tar dispenser. I’ve stopped to talk to the guys (it’s always guys) who put the tarsnakes in place. There’s a bunch of technical language to describe their job, but pretty much it all adds up to one thing: Filling cracks.

The weather changes and the roads buckle under the pressure of cold, heat and tires. A lattice of cracks forms on the road edge and slowly the integrity of the asphalt is compromised. Our county has taken to throwing down a substance I call gravel slaps. They pour tar in a big fat patch and then dump gravel on it. Cars and runners soar right over those slaps, but cyclists feel them. The gravel crunches and the slight rise in the road reads like a speed bump. It’s a cheap and easy fix but it’s a costly feel.

Take some time and get low, sometime. Be a kid and look at the road through a kid’s eyes. Take your digital camera out on a shiny wet day and take photos from road level. You’ll find a shining, miraculous world at that level, and it will make you appreciate the miles you cover, and what you cover them on.

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Posted on March 9, 2013 by Christopher Cudworth

This poster was one of the Top 5 Cream of the Crop designs as named by Runner’s World Magazine. It would look great on your wall. Enjoy!

Christopher Cudworth's avatarWe Run and Ride

You can order this poster at my Etsy site. https://www.etsy.com/listing/117535102/running-poster

Cost: $15.00 plus $2.00 shipping in United States. $3.00 overseas. 

This print is beautifully produced on gloss black paper. The original scratchboards were produced by Christopher Cudworth and this poster earned the Runner’s World Cream of the Crop Award for Top 5 running art posters in the country.

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Doing the Shamrock Shuffle

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Christopher Cudworth
Some early spring races you're pretty sure you've frozen your head off.

Some early spring races you’re pretty sure you’ve frozen your head off.

The temperature was 16 degrees. A strong wind blew from the northeast, off Lake Michigan. “This is going to be painful,” I thought to myself.

The thin tight line

The starting pistol rang out and the leaders formed a thin, tight line heading into the northeast wind. No one wanted to lead, of course. But someone did.

Probably the guy we saw lying dead or frozen on the return trip down the park drive. It was either a dead guy or a pile of garbage, but you cannot always tell at the end of a Chicago winter. Everything looks the same. Grey and compressed. Either the snow flattens the landscape or the wind blows everything away.

Spring detritus

Racing through the washed out detritus of spring is always a strange sensation. Even when you’re fit and prepared, as I was for the Shamrock Shuffle that year it was so cold, there’s a vague uneasiness that you’re moving too fast through what is obviously a dead and not year revived landscape.

The first mile was awful. Straight into a biting wind, laughingly laced with spray off the whitecaps on Lake Michigan 150 yards distant. That’s right: Water flew through the air for more than 100 yards and struck us cold in the face. “Fuhhhhhhhhccccck,” I heard one runner moan, wiping sea foam from his cheek. I passed him by. “Kindy chilly, ain’t it?” I said. But my lips weren’t working that well.

Well prepared

I was dressed well enough to handle the weather. That wasn’t the problem. I also trained on the lakefront all the time and was quite used to the sound of gulls laughing at you as you leaned 45 degrees into the wind, trying to reach the turnaround point before your back gave out. But this was a race. Performance counted. All the training in January and February…depended on for confidence… felt long gone. It was just me, the wind and a few nearby competitors.

Turning back with the wind the pace got manic. All of us were running so fast it was necessary to land our heels to keep from falling forward. Looking down at my watch at the 3 mile point the split was 15:15. The first mile had been 5:10. So the middle two miles were really quick.

The crucible

But when you turned around on that spit of ground on Montrose Point in north Lincoln Park, the last 2 miles loomed like a crucible. 2 miles straight back into the damned teeth of that wind. Cold air blew through the weave of my tights. My feet and hands were even stiff as cardboard. My face, frigid. Lips tingling, then numb. Nothing to do but toe up and try to keep pace.

Crossing the finish line in 16th place, 1:20 behind the leaders it was good just to be done. My time of 26:15 was nothing to brag about, but it was fine by me.

April Shamrock Shuffle in Chicago

It makes sense now that the Shamrock Shuffle is held in April instead of March in Chicago. Those early days of running in March brought quite a few cold mornings. Even early April remains a risk, yet global warming is making it possible to be confident that April will spring warmer than 16 degrees.

It took most of the day for my thace to faw that day. I mean, my face to thaw. But that’s what memories are made of. That, and frozen spittle.

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The ever present tarsnake of road rage

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Christopher Cudworth
By Monte Wehrkamp
The edge of the road is too often a battle zone for space.

The edge of the road is too often a battle zone for space.

Hugging the white line, I navigated my way around a busy downtown intersection. Head on a swivel, I checked the parking lot exit of a nearby business — one of the local bike stores — all clear. Then I made my way toward the 4-lane bridge.  That’s when I heard the engine roaring, the horn blasting.

A huge, hulking man in a blue Chevy Trailblazer had pulled up to a stop sign at the exit out of a riverfront parking lot at the exact moment I was riding past. This caused the driver to actually stop instead of rolling through the sign. This action cost the man approximately five seconds of his life, and so infuriated him, he pulled up behind me as I crossed the bridge, revving his engine and laying on the horn the entire way.

Road rage. When it’s directed at you, the road cyclist, it’s pretty scary.

Driver-on-cyclist aggression has been in the news more and more often. I’m not sure if tempers are running shorter these days, or if it’s a matter of better reporting and enforcement, or the fact there are more cyclists out on the roads. Probably a combination of all three. In any case, driver-on-cyclist aggression is one of the tarsnakes of riding––or even running––on the roads.

Even pros can become victims of road rage

Take this road rage incident from last week. The Jamis bike company’s cycling team, Jamis-Hagens Berman (presented by Sutter Home), was out for a training ride. Having weaved their way through Tucson’s suburbs, the team was just reaching the quiet roads at the edge of town and was preparing to drop the hammer. They were riding to the right of the white line, completely off the highway on a very wide shoulder in two parallel pace lines when a driver pulled up next to them and began shouting obsenities. The driver then swerved his car into the riders, crashing into Tyler Wren and Todd Harriot. They both went down hard, and there was a bit of a pile-up behind. Wren and Harriot (the team’s longest tenured rider and fitness coach, respectively) suffered some nasty bruises and road rash and their bikes were trashed, but neither suffered broken bones or other serious injury. Thank goodness.

Luckily the Jamis-Hagens Berman team car was not far ahead and managed to catch up to the enraged driver and a team photographer got a shot of his license plate. Tucson police found the man a few hours later and took him into custody.

The irony of this will be known to the road rager soon, I imagine. Hagens Berman, the team’s lead sponsor, is a huge powerhouse law firm, with offices across the entire country. They’re a “plaintiff-focused law firm that seeks to protect the rights of consumers, workers, whistelblowers, investors and others…” according to their website. Only a guess here, but I think these lawyers may take exception to someone commiting assualt on their cycling team.

If you’d like an in-depth report, check out Wren’s first-hand account of the attack…
Keep camera rolling

Another road rage incident making national news took place last fall outside Longmont, Colorado. Two road cylists were enjoying a beautiful day, getting in a great ride when an enraged driver pulled up behind them, slowed down, and started honking. This went on for quite awhile — the driver was not being obstructed in any way and had every opportunity to pass, yet he continued to attempt to intimidate the two riders. These guys had the presence of mind to pull out their cell phones and shoot video of the incident. If you haven’t seen the video, which has gone viral, here it is...Note how the riders keep their cool and continue riding calmly. Kudos to them. Having been in almost exactly the same situation just a few days earlier myself, I wrote an email to the Colorado State Police, expessing my hope they catch the driver. I got several replies from the CSP communications officer: the first, saying they were searching for the driver, and a second follow-up saying they’d found him, arrested him, and issued five citations which would require a court appearance. The last email was an invitation to ride Colorado, pointing out it’s a very bike friendly state, and this ugly incident was the exception to the rule. (Having ridden Ride the Rockies years ago, he’s right — cycling in Colorado is a great experience.)
Stay Calm and Pedal On

So what’s the take away here?I guess the best advice I’ve got is Stay Calm and Pedal On. Don’t escalate the situation. As tempting as it is, don’t curse back. Don’t wave a one-fingered response. Remember, you’re flesh and bones and on a bike, and the road rager is emotionally out of control and inside two tons of steel. Get a license plate number. If you can get a photo or shoot some video with your cell phone without putting yourself in greater danger, do it. It’ll help law enforcement and the courts – if it comes to that. If you have to, find a place to pull off the road and stop, let the rager go on ahead. Yeah, it may screw up your Strava or Map My Ride, but it’s a better option than ending up crashed.

How have you dealt with road rage?

I’d like to hear from readers of this blog — have you ever been the victim of a road rage incident while running or riding? Or has one of your training friends? If so, what happened? How did you deal with it? And how do you keep an ugly incident like this from ruining the rest of your run or ride?

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Seeing your way to better running and riding

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Christopher Cudworth
Floaters in your eyes can make you crazy. Just ask Gollum.

Floaters in your eyes can make you crazy. Just ask Gollum.

Right after graduating from college, I went to an optometrist in the little town of Decorah, Iowa where Luther College is located. The appointment was going well until the optometrist dilated my eyes and took a look inside. Then he sat back and said to his assistant, “Uh oh….”

“What uhohhh?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Er. Um. Nothing wrong. I mean I can’t be sure. I can’t say.”

“Yes you can say,” I told the optometrist. “I’m not leaving this chair until you do.”

He glanced at his assistant and said, “Well, we can’t be sure, but it appears you might have a small retinal detachment. In the lower part of your eye. But I can’t be sure.”

“What’s that?” I asked. “What’s a retinal detachment?”

He explained how the retina can be put under strain in a number of ways. How the eye can lengthen or warp due to the pull on muscles from astigmatism or other eye conditions. Which I had. My eyes were getting worse than they’d been, and that might have pulled loose a small patch of tissue on the lower part of the eye.

“So what do we do?” I asked, nervously.

“Well, I’m going to send you to the Gunderson Clinic in LaCrosse,” he said. “They’ll need to take a better look than I can get. I’m only an optometrist. You need an opthamalogist.”

Great, I thought. I’m going up in both vowels and consonants. Never good. Not when medicine’s involved. Next thing you know you’re into otolaryngology. People are sticking things up your nose, and if that doesn’t work, the proctologist comes at you the other way, up your behind. If they somehow meet somewhere in the middle, you know you’ve got real problems. Because you’re a sea anemone.

I was pissed about my eye, however, because I thought I’d put all the weird stuff of injured youth and bad glasses behind me. My senior year in college my parents finally let me get contact lenses instead of wearing the Coke bottle Napolean Dynamite glasses I’d worn my whole junior year. What a travesty that whole year turned out to be. The bad beard. The ugly glasses. The girlfriend who got jealous of my running and tried to kill me with Rum and Cokes one night in a LaCrosse hotel. She almost got me too.

But my senior year with contacts went great. I moved from 7th man on the cross country team to 2nd man for most of the year, and we placed 2nd in the nation. The contact lenses let me run without pushing up my damn glasses all the time, and the confidence they gave me socially convinced me to cut my beard and long hair, and that got me a girlfriend that I really liked. I could see my way to a brighter future.

Then the optometrist told me I might lose sight in one eye.

When my eye was dilated for retinal surgery I told some girls at the bar that night I was half drunk. They half believed me.

When my eye was dilated for retinal surgery I told some girls at the bar that night I was half drunk. They half believed me.

The surgery was dramatic, to say the least. They hooked me up to a huge machine the size of a Volkswagon. They put a big wet suction cup on my eye with goo and told me to hold still. I hyperventilated and fainted flat on the floor. Waking up from the impact, I grabbed the nurse around the waist and told her, “I love you!”

She hoisted me up, stuck me back on the machine and said sternly, “Stop it. Now breathe normal.”

And they proceeded to shoot bright green light into my eyeball, cauterizing the retinal detachment. It has lasted for decades. No more problems.

Until the floaters showed up a couple months ago.

It started with just one floater, in my left eye. That didn’t bother me too much, but I went to the opthamologist nevertheless. That’s right, skipped right over the optometrist this time. The Big O told me all about floaters, and asked if I’d seen any bright flashes. Told him I had. “Hmmm, not good,” he said, rubbing his face with his hand. “But it might not mean anything either. We’ll dilate you and take a look.”

There was no new detachment. But he told me I’d have to live with the floaters. “You’ll get used to them,” he assured me. “Sooner or later you see right through them.”

Everyone has floaters. They vary in size. But sometimes bigger floaters break loose and dangle around inside the liquid in your eye like a cheap chandelier with no lights on it. They can get really annoying, particularly when you’re staring at the crystal clear screen of a retinal display Macintosh, as I do all day. And how ironic. A retinal display for a guy at who once had a retinal detachment.

Whatever. Soon, as predicted, the other eye developed a floater too. Now they bounce around before me like a macabre half-invisible amoeboid dance team. Nothing you can do about them.

While riding they sometimes interfere with my view of the road up ahead. Running too. But at least I have my vision. Haven’t lost that. And I’m used to compensating for this or that ailment. Isn’t everyone? It’s just that bothersome floaters also interfere with looking at people while you’re talking to them. And when I birdwatch I keep thinking I see a Cooper’s Hawk out of the corner of my eye when in fact it is only a floater. Bugs me.

I’ve had an optical migraine before where your vision completely blacks out in one eye. That’s weird. To me it appears to be dietary. Absence of chocolate perhaps. But one can’t be sure.

Vision is pretty vital to running and riding. Although people do without. They amaze me. Like Marla Runyan. People like that really do amaze with their ability to overcome difficult physical attributes. Makes a couple floaters seem like no big deal.

And they aren’t really. Seeing your way to better running and riding takes a little extra work sometimes. At least I don’t have to wipe off my Napolean Dynamite lenses anymore. Usually.

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Can you tell me all the things I did wrong in this marathon?

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Christopher Cudworth
The tarsnake of a marathon is that there are so many opportunities make mistakes.

The tarsnake of a marathon is that there are so many opportunities make mistakes.

A week before the Twin Cities Marathon, it hit me that I really hadn’t gotten in as many long runs as I’d like. The fall racing season had gone fairly well. 32:00 for 10k. A 14:57 5K.  So the sharpness was there, and I’d raced a 10-miler in 54:00 which told me there was a decent endurance base. But my eagerness to race a really great marathon made me decide to get in one more long run. That’s the tarsnake of doubt creeping in.

It was a cool, damp morning in late September. I choose a course that went 10 miles north up one side of the Fox River and 10 miles back home the other. Uphill, then downhill, but only with an elevation of about 400 feet. So no big hills. Just steady running.

Starting slow

Feeling a little stale at the start, I began at 8:00 pace and kept that up for 5 miles or so. A slight mist blew and then faded. But my legs still didn’t feel sharp. At 10 miles a sluggishness set in that would not leave.

By 15 miles I knew there was trouble brewing. My feet started to scuffle the path on which I was running. Energy dropped even after a long drink at a park fountain. I didn’t feel like keeping on.

Uh oh

But I did, and hit a mini-wall at 18 miles. The last 2 miles home were painful and slow. I jumped in the shower and ate as much as I could for the next 2 hours. My body weight was down under 140. Regular weight, 142. Heart rate was up. Legs ached.

The next day I did not run at all. Just went for a walk. Same with the day after. Slowly some energy came back into my legs and it looked like the marathon that coming weekend would be possible after all. The week had been weak and harrowing, but my body felt like it rebounded after all.

Getting psyched

On the plane to the race I was tired, sleepy and lethargic. Yet when I got to the friend’s house where I would stay, a nice feeling of anticipation swept over me. The legs got some snap back. We went for a three-miler together, my former college roommate and me. “Get psyched Cud. You look fit,” he told me.

I felt fit. So fit in fact that I lined up in the front line of the race. Looking around I could see the previous year’s winner and a whole stock of fit looking marathoners. I was determined to be among them. At least in the top 50 in the race.

Chilly predictions

The temperature was 29 degrees at the start. Not wanting to overheat, I wore a red tee shirt under a singlet, shorts and a set of cotton gloves.

The lead pack took off at 5:00 pace. I ran the first mile in 5:30, my prescribed pace, and kept an eye out for other runners in my pace. Soon enough a group sidled by with a tall, lean runner at the front. It was Olympian Don Kardong and a group of 8-10 other runners.

Running jokes

The breeze off the lakes was brisk, and cold, and I could feel it stiffening the muscles in my thighs and chilling my forearms as I swung in behind the group. There was a lively chatter that Kardong kept up mile after mile. This was easy pace for him. The other guys seemed pretty fit. We passed knots of fans and laughed because their cheers went up and faded quickly, just like groups of people in the cartoon George of the Jungle. I mentioned that fact, trying to see if Kardong would get the joke. He chuckled but not recognizing me as a part of the group, he kept his attention on the cadre of runners with him.

At 10 miles passed in just over 56:00, I knew the pace was quick enough. Another 10 at that pace meant would put me in a zone to run sub-2:30.

Core chill

But then the cold really began to set in. Every time we went around a lake, the breeze off the water was so brisk and chilling I could feel it all the way into my core. At 12 miles my fingers felt numb. At 14 my lips were turning blue. Another friend was waiting at the 25K point and jumped out on the course to pull me off. The time was 1:25: 50. But I was frozen stiff. Couldn’t talk. Tongue was thick and purplish. The race was over. Frozen out.

“Come with me,” my friend said. “Let’s get you in the car.”

10 minutes later I felt fine and unfrozen. Wanting to jump back out on the course. But my friend wisely grabbed my arm and said, “You’re done today. Give it a rest. There’s always another race.”

Perhaps you recognize a bit of yourself in a race like this?  But it’s an interesting question: How many mistakes did I make leading up to and during the Twin Cities Marathon?

So you play the coach and sum them up. It will be interesting to hear your take, especially from experienced marathoners.

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What it really means to compete

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Christopher Cudworth
A girls cross country competitor sails over the ground

A girls cross country competitor sails over the ground

Competition is good or all of us. Whether we want to admit it or not, competition forces us to reckon with who we really are. What we care about. How hard we’re willing to try to get what we want in life.

Competition tears away the extraneous layers of our self love and self deprecation. Only a fool continues to abide in elements of their being that fail us in competition. And if we do not learn from our failures, we also fail to appreciate our successes in any constructive way.

Evolving purposes

Whether you run or ride, if you choose to compete you choose to engage in a process as old as the evolution of the human race. Pitting ourselves in a race against fellow human beings is both a test of self and a test of time. The only honest sports on this earth are the games in which self and time are the only elements. The rest, being dictated by a judge or a referee, may be competitions of a sort. But they are not as elemental and basic as a race on your feet, or pedaling a bike.

Naked endeavors

That means you learn something special and direct by competing in the sports you love. Running is the original and only human endeavor that requires no other implement. You can run naked and win the race if you try. Or you can dress up in $1000 worth of gear and perhaps go 2% faster, if you’re lucky.

Cycling naked doesn’t confer you much advantage, but it is funny to consider how close we try to come in cycling gear to going naked on the bike. The less wind resistance, the better. Triathletes come the closest of all to riding sans gear, dressed in unisingletbibs and nothing much else.

The point is this: competing in running and riding is a naked endeavor whether you’re dressed or not. You put it out there when you step to the line or roll your bike to the start of a criterium, a road race or a time trial. It’s just you and whatever distance you seek to cover.

Measuring competitive success

Every time we step to the starting line, we seek to define ourselves, for ourselves.

Every time we step to the starting line, we seek to define ourselves, for ourselves.

Perhaps that’s why so many people put stickers on their cars that say “26.2” or “13.1.” It’s a public statement that you’ve taken a risk with your self image and succeeded.

It works that way in all of society. Fortune 500 companies like to be included in that select group. People who run those companies tend to be driven types, pushing for success and demanding the same drive from the people who work there. We admire the competitive instincts in others while proclaiming them in ourselves.

But that doesn’t answer the question: What does it really mean to compete?

Defying convention

Defying convention is often equivalent to taking the driver's wheel of your own destiny.

Defying convention is often equivalent to taking the driver’s wheel of your own destiny.

The answer is simple, and profound. To compete is to defy the convention that anyone but you alone can define who you are. You may win or lose against your competitors, but you learn something from that experience if you’re smart, or lucky. People who let themselves be defined by a loss or a DNF or other failed attempt at competition are simply at a loss to explain themselves any other way. And that’s the only real failure to be drawn from competing. If you let your last loss or your last effort become the final word on who you are, then you will be constrained by that idea.

But if you view competition as the path to continual growth; in sports, in business, or whether you run or ride–or both–then you are continually a winner. For having competed, and wanting to compete.

Competitive urges

The nature of our competitive urges can and will change with time and circumstance. You can’t win races at age 50 that you won at age 25. It simply isn’t possible. But you can redefine your victories in terms of circumstance and consequence, and not lose any of your cumulative edge.

When people say they will “not be defined by age” or that “age is just a number,” this is what they really mean. That they have not stopped competing with themselves, and thus maintain control of how they define their own image in the world.

That’s a valuable insight whether you are 15 or 75. Go out there and compete. The road is waiting. It’s why we all run and ride. Competing to define ourselves, rather than the other way around, letting others determine who we are, or who we want to be.

2Timothy 7: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

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A run-in with some snowmen

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Christopher Cudworth
A snowman keeping cool in the shade.

A snowman keeping cool in the shade. Click pics for a larger view.

Some of us have weird relationships in this world. Like being friends with snowmen. And snowgals. And all points in between.

I even imagined a world where snowmen can run in races of their own. Scroll down when you get there. 

Snowman world

We received a wet snow here in Chicago recently and kids were out making snowmen like crazy. They had lots of personalities. The snowmen I mean. Probably the kids making them do too. Their creativity came through in the snowmen they made.

I carry an iPhone during my runs for Strava tracking, and decided to snap a photo of some of the snowmen I saw during a 4-mile run. There was plenty of subject matter.

Snow people everywhere

Everywhere I turned during the run another snowman appeared down the next block. Keeping the camera on was easiest, and I’d run down the street or sidewalk, jump through the snow on the lawn and snap a photo of one snowman after another.

Looking a little surprised to be alive.

Looking a little surprised to be alive.

They were an amusing bunch. Quite diverse in character. Some leaned a little. Others had blank or existential expressions. Others seemed to want to tell you something. Probably it wasn’t so important. How much worldly experience can a snowman have, given their brains are made of ice and they’ve only existed for a day?

Life is precious

But perhaps there is value in that perspective as well. Life on earth is pretty precious to a snowman, you might guess. They know there’s not a lot of time to say what’s on their mind. Other than it’s cold outside. And can you please put my mitten back on. Or my nose just fell off. Plus it’s a little embarrassing being naked except for this scarf.

The art of snowmen

As you have perhaps already seen, I’ve painted a few snowmen in my time. As you can tell I seem to find a little more in their character than you might characterize as normal consideration of such things.

In making birthday cards for my brother-in-law, whose birthday is December 8, there have been a few snowman themes over the years. This past year when I made his card, it featured three snowman in a row. A patch of yellow snow streamed out from the bottom of the third snowman. The words inside said, “Don’t be pissed. It’s just another birthday.”

“You made that card already,” my wife told me.

“No I didn’t”

“Yes you did,” she insisted. “A few years ago. Exact same card. Stop making the same card for Paul.”

Well, it turned out she was right. By coincidence my brother-in-law had saved all his cards over the years and pulled them out to show the family. Some were pretty funny. Others were likely dashed off before jumping in the car with the kids on a cold winter day. But hey, they’re all hand made. And sure enough, about 10 years ago I’d conceived and drawn almost the exact same card for Paul that I drew this past year. Maybe that’s inevitable. Or maybe the mind of a genius works the same way twice. I think that’s how we got the K car from Chrysler.

But then again, maybe not.

The Easter Bunny. Frozen.

The Easter Bunny. Frozen.

The Easter Hare

So I continued my run thinking thoughts about snowmen as Winnie the Pooh might do. Meandering here, wandering there. Wondering perhaps whether Piglet had a crush on Rabbit. Suddenly there appeared on a lawn a giant, freaking rabbit. Made of snow. My. God! I stopped and took a photo. The critter was like an Easter nightmare. Made of snow.

It made me recall the year the Easter eggs we set out in the yard got covered by an overnight blanket of snow.

Must have been this Easter bunny. The Snow Hare. Laughing his way to Easter day thinking about kids freezing their little mitts off trying to pluck eggs out of snowdrifts. Evil bastard. Never trusted that Easter Bunny, really. Too conniving.

An existential drift

Finally I met the Existential Snowman. His stare bore right through you. This fellow had a lot to say about life as a snowman. No Exit, except by melting. We all

The Existential Snowman had a lot to say. Without saying much.

The Existential Snowman had a lot to say. Without saying much.

melt, really, if you think about it. It just takes us humans longer to do it than it does a snowman.

The Existential Snowman didn’t say much, but he did not have to. I tried to remember quotes from Jean Paul Sartre or Albert Camus. I like this one from Camus: “I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live my life as if there isn’t and die to find out there is.”

There. Albert solved a lot of problems with that quote. You can torture yourself with thoughts of eternity if you try, but you shouldn’t. Well, the Existential Snowman seemed to be doing just that. So stop worrying. Go out there and live like there’s no tomorrow. We’re all snowmen and snowgals of a sort. Doomed to melt sooner or later.

She's a hot mess. But have compassion. She deserves to be loved.

She’s a hot mess. But have compassion. She deserves to be loved.

The Hot Mess

But try not to live like the hot mess of a snow gal with lipstick smeared all over her snowy face. Have some dignity. And if you’re going to mess around under the moonlight with all the other snowmen in the neighborhood, at least have the class to clean yourself up by morning. Because some fool like me might be running around with a camera on his person, and catch you doing the Walk of Shame back to your own yard.

Or perhaps we shouldn’t blame the Hot mess for her condition. Blame those selfish, horny snowmen instead. The Hot Mess deserves so much better. Albert Camus also told us, “I know of only one duty, and that is to love.”

Camus also said, “In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” 

Good words to follow on your final cold, long runs of late winter and early spring. Run with the snowmen and you find these things out.

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Saturday Artwork: Life on the road

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Christopher Cudworth
Life on the road is not always so glamorous. This illustration for a piece I wrote on Escape to Wisconsin years ago captures some of the more inglorious aspects of running and riding in the country. Debris, road kill and litter.

Life on the road is not always so glamorous. This illustration for a piece I wrote on Escape to Wisconsin years ago captures some of the more inglorious aspects of running and riding in the country. Debris, road kill and litter.

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If your fitness isn’t everything you want it to be, so be it.

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Christopher Cudworth
Comparing yourselves to others all the time gets old after a while.

Comparing yourselves to others all the time gets old after a while.

It used to matter so much what other people thought of my fitness. Friends were competitors. Strangers had to be convinced I was somehow better than them for being in great running shape. Later it even mattered how fast I rode my bike on a particular day. Seeking to prove myself as a cyclist, it was not uncommon to brag about MPH on a group ride, or how fast a solo ride went.

People would politely nod if they knew me. The need for acceptance is so transparent. It’s the same as if someone is asking you for money. You can feel the whole conversation leading to the big question, “Can you lend me…”

Or when someone wants to get you to join their network marketing group. They talk and talk about the “business” they now own but can’t (or won’t) tell you a thing about it. Time to run away, I always say. Network marketing is evil.

Need for acceptance. Not.

Running or riding hills alone is both a humbling and uplifting experience.

Running or riding hills alone is both a humbling and uplifting experience.

All that need for acceptance is fading away now. It’s quite liberating in some ways but also disconcerting to be free of all the emotional anchors and chains you are used to wearing, and fighting against as a matter of habit.

It’s like one of those dreams where you know you can fly or run really fast if you can only get your feet out of the heavy shoes you’re wearing. When you finally start to wriggle free and feel the freedom rising within, you wake up. Sometimes we’re better off in our dreams.

Heavy shoes to fill

So it’s not like the past is completely gone. My feet are still in the heavy shoes of old habits. Tracking every ride and run on an iPhone, for example, is heavy shoe stuff. So is worrying if you’re going to keep up with the March group rides when all those obsessive types who’ve been pedaling away their bikes in stuffy basements emerge in spring to show off their pasty white and super-fit muscle packs. They ride away into the wind and you can only sigh.

And those runners without so many miles on their bodies. I admire their 20 milers and such, but I’ve been there. Done that. If I’m happy with 5 at 8:00 pace, why should that bother me or anyone else. Like Marty Liquori once said in his book about competitive distance running, “Train hard while you’re young so that you don’t have to prove yourself at the family picnic.” Here, here, Marty. Good advice. I’m wearing it well. I still get out and cover ground fast once in a while, and go long. Good enough for me. 6’1″. 170. Fit enough to get fit, I guess.

The bike trainers have sat idle this winter.

The bike trainers have sat idle this winter.

Instead, now I’ll take what I can get from training. The winter here in Illinois allowed quite a few winter rides, especially on the mountain bike. So while I’m not exactly fit like those basement trainer people, and I know the first few longer group rides will hurt like hell, so be it.

So be it. Say it. So be it. 

Sticks in your brain, don’t it? So be it. 

Repeat after me: So be it.

Why So Be It Works

This is what I’m saying to myself now. “I’m going to go out and do my best and train hard and hurt when I can. But if something comes along that prevents me from going crazy in my running or riding, so be it. I’m not going to torture myself over my fitness to prove myself to anyone else, or even to myself. In fact I think Nike should change their tagline under the Swoosh to So Be It rather than Just Do It.

So Be It is just as open ended as Just Do It, but with a tinge of forgiveness. It could be the mantra for the Christian athlete, or perhaps the Buddhist in training.

The lesson of the crystal goblet

When you imagine the shining crystal goblet as already broken, there is no reason to covet it. You can then carry it around in a rough satchel without worry if you like, and use it to drink bitter ale without insult, should you choose. A crystal goblet is both a wonder and nothing to behold.

That crystal goblet is you.

So be it. 

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