This whimsical artwork by Christopher Cudworthdepicts more than 25 bird species lining up for the “big race: down south. It’s a Migration Marathon with an eclectic set of competitors just like the human race. You can easily order a print or cards in multiple sizes online.
To view the order options, visit: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/migration-marathon-christopher-cudworth.html?newartwork=true
By Christopher Cudworth
We could all use a little Popeye in this world. Here he sets off for his morning run.
“Hewwwgggh. Hi theresk, mateys.
Gladsk to sees yah’sk.”
Heck eck eckeck.
Ahhh, Popeye. You could hardly understand a word he said, but that was the point, wasn’t it?
Popeye was a man of action. Once he got around to it.
Sure, it took a little provocation from Bluto at times, and Popeye would sometimes take a lickin’ before he fought back. Guess that’s another
Bluto. The perfect bully.
great moral lesson for us. Be slow to anger. Then eat your spinach and teach the bad guys a lesson. Heck eck eck. But we’ll get to that spinach thing later…
Let’s talk about the physiques and psyches of the Popeye cartoons.
Olive Oyl
Olive Oyl. The height of feminine internal conflict over which man to choose.
It appears to me that Olive Oyl might have been the the first role model for the hyper-thin female runner. I mean, look at that build! She was one skinny chick. Yet Popeye loved her.
So did Popey’s big rival Bluto, in his way. Seems like he almost crushed Olive Oyl half the time, yet Olive Oyl sort of seemed to like all that brusque attention.
Were we witnesses to the early version of 50 Shades of Gray? Kinky girl, that Olive Oyl. Wonder how she got her name?
Ahead of their time
Those cartoon characters were a lot more kinky and progressive than we sometimes give them credit for. Olive Oyl with her model-thin body and Popeye tanking up on spinach. Was that spinach simply an early
One hot little Olive Oyl, Sheryl Crow is reputed to have known about Lance Armstrong’s use of “spinach” to win bike races.
form of steroids? If so, was Lance Armstrong really doing anything wrong by doping up to win the girl? After all, he hung out with that Cougar Sheryl Crow for a while.
Alice the Goon
By comparison, the truly breathtaking character in the Popeye cartoons was Alice the Goon. Talk about your politically incorrect depiction of the not-so-lovely female! My brothers and I would completely freak out when Alice the Goon showed up on Popeye. She literally made our skin crawl. Some protective mothers even protested her presence on the show, because she was so domineering and persistent. But you know, if you’re the Sea Hag and need an Amazonian warrior on your side in a fight or a pursuit of hidden riches, you couldn’t do much better than Alice the Goon. There was a woman who could have broken the glass ceiling with ease.
What was in that spinach that Popeye always ate? Did someone ever dope-test that pop eyed sailor?
Was Popeye a doper?
For all the challenges he seemed to face in life, it all seemed to work out in the end for Popeye. He ate his spinach and won the day, thumping his rivals in a swift and fearsome pounding that included the famous “twister punch.”
But we really need to consider whether that spinach was laced with some sort of performance enhancer.
I mean, consider the forearms on Popeye. You don’t get those by lifting weights alone. Honestly, we’ve probably let Popeye off the hook for a little too long. Perhaps it’s time to call in the USADA and strip away a few victories over Bluto from the good old days. You know, our heroes sometimes never change.
Makes you wonder if we should be so rough on the dopers in the pro peloton, or those Olympic sprinters like Ben Johnson cranked up on steroids. It’s all just about going faster, getting stronger and whupping our rivals, isn’t it? Would you take something that you knew would guarantee you victory? Don’t you eat your spinach? Take a bottle of something good (Gatorade, whatever…) with you on your rides? Gobble a Gu during a marathon?
Could Popeye ride to victory in the Tour de France, or win the NYC Marathon if he ate his spinach?
Are we hypocrites here? Are we ignoring the lesson of Popeye, Bluto, Olive Oyl and Alice the Goon? Is anyone really clean and innocent in the end?
Hecck eck eckkeck. C’mon over heresk, Olive. I’ve gotsk some Baby Oyl I wantsck to use on yer backsk.
Heck eck eckeck.
By Christopher Cudworth
Bang bang, shoot shoot. Happiness is a Warm Gun.
Before anyone gets all hot and sweaty about what they’re about to read, know that I am not against the right to own guns. I respect the Second Amendment like every other aspect of our Constitution. But it is important to consider the state of gun ownership rights in America, and what it really might mean to the future of the country if we fail to grasp the portion of the Second Amendment that says we must maintain “a well-regulated militia.” So what you are about to read is a playful consideration with regards to the “other half” of the Second Amendment has to say. Now half fun.
Concealed Carry in the Land of Lincoln, who would be proud…
Here in Illinois (the Land of Lincoln) the courts just knocked down the last remaining concealed carry weapons ban in the country. We must suppose that makes a whole lot of people happy to be able to carry guns around hidden on their person.
Yet one simply must wonder what our 16th President Abraham Lincoln might have thought of the new law, considering that Lincoln himself was shot in the head from behind by a gunman who concealed his weapon, crept into a theater and assassinated the President in cold blood. Concealed carry indeed.
Violent fantasies and other practical matters
Let’s face it, we all have violent fantasies at times. I know I’ve fantasized about having a gun on me while running and riding on the very public roads of our state. When a truck or car buzzes me on the bike or while running (less common, but it still happens) it would certainly be tempting to shoot out the tires of the offending driver at the next stop light. After all, using a vehicle to harass or threaten a harmless cyclist really is a life-threatening gesture. We would be justified in pulling out our weapons to protect ourselves in those instances.
More than perceived threats
When a motorist is motivated enough to stop their vehicle and yell threats at you, like the time a guy with a bright red angry face and veins bulging out of his forehead leaned out of his pickup truck to yell at me, “I should come over there and break your f#cking pencil neck.” Well, that’s pretty much a clear threat of physical harm, wouldn’t you say?
If he actually got out of his truck, it would be fair and right to shoot him in the kneecap or right in the balls if I wanted. Because he shows a lot of balls getting so worked up over a 170 lb. cyclist on a 17lb. bike on a bright day in August when there’s plenty of room for everyone on the road if you have the basic intelligence to separate hazards, as Illinois motor laws suggest, rather than blasting around like a Humvee in the Iraqi desert. But perhaps we’re mixing fantasies here. Are we really at war for ownership and use of the roads here in America?
Packing heat while riding
Yes, I’ve had fantasies of packing heat while riding. And I’m curious (I suppose) how it would make me feel to have a handgun concealed in the back of my cycling kit pocket along with a Clif bar and my cellphone. I mean, think of the native possibilities there. If need be, I could shoot someone in so-called self defense, break out my Clif bar, take a bite, spit out some chunks in a fit of justified revenge (just like Clint Eastwood!) and dial up the cops to come get the body.
That’s the American form of justice we’re advocating these days. With laws like Stand Your Ground (Fla.) in force, you can logically or even illogically shoot someone for the reasons you choose. As reported on the Huffington Post, the story of the most recent fatal shooting in that state goes like this: “According to authorities, 17-year-old Jordan Russell Davis, a black teenager, and several friends were confronted by (Michael) Dunn, a white man, who pulled alongside the teens’ SUV in the parking lot of a Jacksonville, Fla., gas station. Dunn asked them to turn their music down, and after an exchange of words, he fired between 8 and 9 shots at the vehicle, several of which hit Davis, causing his death.”
The case may yet be decided in favor of Dunn (depending on Florida’s brand of justice), but there are a whole range of gray areas to consider. Was the shooting racially motivated? Was Dunn justifiably threatened by the teens playing loud music in the car? The list goes on.
Roll Your Ground
Now imagine that some cyclist in Florida is pedaling down the road and a vehicle flagrantly drives too close to the biker. Those of us who ride (and run) know that happens with some degree of frequency. Now imagine that the cyclist chases down and pulls up next to the vehicle at the next stop light, whips out a gun and shoots the driver in the face. There you have it, a violent fantasy comes to life.
The Ted Nugent Law
America’s “favorite” gun-toting, rock ‘n rolling gun rights advocate Ted Nugent says, “The only misuse of guns comes in environments where there are drugs, alcohol, bad parents and undisciplined children. Period.”
Which of those supposed environments was in play in Florida with Michael Dunn? All of them? Or was Dunn just a pissed off dude lacking self respect and self control who wanted to teach someone a lesson of his own accord.
And if the Ted Nugent Law were invoked, how does it apply in the case of the murders at Northern Illinois University where a gunman walked into an academic lecture hall and opened fire, killing students, or Virginia Tech, or Columbine, or a shopping mall? Nugent is a liar, you see. His ideology presupposes real law, and his is a worldview obsessed by self-interest. But that is exactly where we are in America right now. No wonder so many gun rights advocates like his “clear talk” about guns, meat and the apparent vegetable brains of liberals who dare question any aspect of gun laws. It suits their hatred of anyone they envision infringing upon their so-called rights.
Go ahead and use it when you lose it
We can talk about “responsible gun owners” all we want. We certainly need to maintain the right of an individual to protect their own home, family and property by use of force if necessary.
But we’ve burst out of that model so that now all 50 states have essentially said that it is right to hide a gun on your person and use it, if necessary, when you judge yourself to feel threatened. That is vigilante justice. Stop pretending it isn’t.
Operationally, there really are no laws when it comes to guns, so let’s quit mincing words here. With concealed carry in effect in all 50 states, people can buy and use guns however they like, then plea to the courts for support of their mission after someone else has lost their life. Right or wrong.
The open road is an open range
That means as cyclists and runners we can pack heat just like we carry water. And we can fire away at anyone on the road we deem to be a threat.
Wowzers! That should make the Saturday group ride quite an interesting venture. It will be like the posse days in the Wild West. Ride around for 50 miles looking for trouble, if you like. Shoot out a few tires. Take down a few dogs. Blast that minivan with the distracted mom talking on the cell phone and swatting the kids in the back seat. When she swerves at your group, plug her Caravan with 50 bullet holes. Never mind the kids inside. Legally, they’re parties to the potential crime of vehicular homicide. Seriously. Those little bastards will learn to settle down and shut up now, or pay the price.
Let’s say you have 20 people in your group ride, all packing heat. There’s no reason you can’t function like a freaking rolling militia out there, protecting the general public from bad drivers and vehicular miscreants.
Bike Wars and the Tour de France
We might even start a new cycling sport and a reality TV show to boot: Bike Wars. There will likely be a lot of holes in stop signs as a result, the result of target practice while riding along. Gives new meaning to the phrase “blowing a stop sign.” Just put a camera on a motorcycle and the peloton can roll across the countryside waving pistols and AK-47s at anyone who dares step on the road in front of them.
Imagine what that kind of force can do in a race like the Tour de France! That guy running ahead of Alberto Contador in the bright green string thong? El Pistolero can pull out the Real Thing and take him down. Let’s just say the climbs up Alpe du Huez will look a lot more orderly when pro riders carry concealed weapons.
Can cliches kill people?
We’ve all heard the line “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” But when you consider that 50% of gun deaths in America are by suicide, the facts seem to circle back on themselves, don’t they? Without use of a gun, we can suppose that people will find other ways to kill themselves, of course, and they do. But guns make it a whole lot easier to shoot yourself dead. And what is left after the deed? The gun, of course. Is it an innocent victim of the act of suicide? Hardly.
The tragedies of gun violence have claimed the lives of so many, and almost claimed many others. JFK. Martin Luther King, Jr. Bobby Kennedy. Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest. And John Lennon was shot dead in the streets of New York. Apocryphal, isn’t it? Happiness is a Warm Gun.
Are we giving up?
Have we begun to give up trying to make sense of the number of guns present in America? In his book “I Want You To Shut The F#ck Up,” author/actor/comedian D.L. Hughley begins his chapter on guns with these words: “I have been around guns my entire life. I will be around guns for the rest of my life. Any attempt to get guns off the street is an impossibility––and a policy based on the impossible is a failure at best and counterproductive at worst.”
Hughley’s words remind us that we are reaching a tipping point where the American imagination is succumbing to our inability to interpret the Second Amendment with any sense of balance.
The side of America that seeks to legislate common sense on the purchase and use of guns is being browbeaten and overwhelmed by a swarm of people addicted to to the notion that guns not only equal justice, they define it in both a legal and active sense.
We see it every day in our movies, on TV and on the daily news, where nightly newscasts about gun violence sell viewership by feeding the notion that somewhere out there is an American we’ve got to fear. So perhaps we have created a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Who is it we choose to fear? The potential lists are unlimited. A black American? A teen playing loud music? Maybe even a distracted mom driving a minivan threatens to run over cyclists or runners?
Do we all really need guns to protect ourselves from these fears? Looks like we do: we’re halfway there in terms of the number of guns in American compared to households.
The Whatevers Are Coming
Some people invoke the notion that as a nation we need guns to protect ourselves in the event of foreign invasion. But what is the real likelihood of anything on that order happening? Our country already spends more on military defense than the next 17 countries combined. We can blow up the entire planet 50 times over, so you won’t be needing your handguns to fight the Chinese or whoever you choose to fear. True sovereignty has succumbed to the tsunami of frightened self-interest.
Now we have the doomsday nuts on top of all that.
Let’s face it, America has gone insane over guns.
Required gun ownership?
A leading conservative talker on the Bill Maher show Politically Incorrect once said that he thought Americans should be required to own guns.
Well, that really is the law in Switzerland. But that is a country where it makes sense to own guns considering the presence of all those mischievous gnomes and faeries running around the forests hillsides. They’re literally taking over Scandinavia, those freaking tiny fantasy creatures.
We don’t want those threats to get out of hand like that here in America, where it could happen just as easily. Just look at how the Christmas season has taken over much of our calendar. Someone had better shoot Santa Claus, for starters, because he’s the ultimate home invader.
Let’s get Jesus while we’re at it. After all, the Good Shepard was an anti-government anarchist who encouraged disciples to mooch off other people and wipe the dust off their feet if they didn’t like how they were treated. Jesus was a threat to society. Better take him out too.
Don’t point fingers
The only gun I could find in the house today is pictured in the photo above. I point it at a lot of things these days, because it’s hard to find things to write about if you don’t keep an eye on what’s happening in the world. But I’m also pretty careful not to use the wrong finger, such as the middle one, in case someone gets the message I’m pointing a f#ck you weapon at them. After all, given the new concealed carry laws in Illinois, pointing the wrong finger can get you shot.
Chris, Linda and our dog Chuck on a healthy hike in a forest preserve. Ironically, it was my back that was out that day. Ha ha.
A year ago this morning my wife Linda emerged from surgery to remove a cancerous tumor at the base of her pelvis. The surgeon also repaired a hernia resulting from several previous surgeries. For 7 years my wife has been an ovarian cancer patient. It has not been an easy road.
Our hopes were lifted when the surgeon let us know that a colostomy was not necessary, and that he’d gotten the tumor out with a colon resection. Success for now. Yet there is no way to really know if you’re cancer-free until you take more chemo, pass the tests and can move on in life.
Not so fast
It is never easy when cancer comes back, as it has several times with my wife in the last several years. In some ways you get better at dealing with it––if only because you don’t get your hopes so high that life will ever return to normal.
She’s being sustained with Doxil now, after a short and somewhat failed experiment with tamoxifen, the breast cancer drug that apparently doesn’t work all that well on ovarian cancer. But America had run out of Doxil for several months when my wife came out of surgery, then the drug came back on the market in March. By then her cancer had gotten active again.
Let’s not lie to ourselves: taking all these drugs over the years adds up. My wife is like a marathoner who has done so many races a normal stride isn’t possible any more. So we take it slow to let her neuropathic feet adjust to sudden movement and adjust our activities to accommodate other side effects as well. But she’s still trucking. The dual tarsnakes of cancer and chemotherapy have not taken her down. Nor me.
High altitude and a tiny tent
This is a woman who with very little training hiked from 8000 feet up to 12,800 feet and back in the Maroon Bells of Colorado. She’d had bunion surgery only the month before, and she nearly collapsed with altitude sickness on the way back to camp. But she’s so tough we kept going. All it took was the rest of my water and a lot of coaxing.
Then we huddled together in a tiny tent for 7 hours while a massive Colorado rainstorm pummeled the valley where we camped. We talked and laughed and cried and got angry and finally emerged from the tent under a canopy of shining stars. That’s when I knew we could be married. Through thick and thin.
So it hasn’t really surprised me that she’s survived cancer for the last 7 years. We’ve survived it together. Just like we survived 7 hours in the tent. On summer nights we still sit out and look at the canopy of shining stars.
And life goes on beneath them.
Loss and grief
A year ago on January 2 we also lost her father to complications from heart disease. Only a week after her cancer surgery we checked her out of the hospital and the very next day she insisted we drive over to the hospital where her dear father lay in bed hooked up to who knows how many wires and a life support unit. He made it through Christmas and New Year’s Day, but passed away on January 2, 2012. We had Christmas together by his bedside last year, with his second daughter who is a violist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing Christmas carols on her instrument. The nurses all appreciated the atmosphere.
Employment challenges
We hoped to have time recover from her surgery and the loss of her father in the new year, but storms were brewing on a different front. The company where I worked had lost some critical business from the largest account and things were getting tight. Pressure built to bring in new business but it didn’t come in fast enough to stop the bleeding. The President warned that without a miracle someone would have to go. It turned out no less than 3 employees departed the firm last year.
It had already been an edgy year living with the secret of my wife’s cancer. As an employee who has had trouble before with small employers who express nervousness about having a cancer patient on their health care plans, I had kept my wife’s illness a secret from the day I was hired. After all, in my final hiring interview the President had said, “The only reason we can offer these benefits is that no one on the staff has had cancer.”
Forging ahead
It was too late to turn back, by then. So, rather than complicate things, we kept my wife’s cancer a relative secret. I just wanted to do my job, and did it well, earning a continual series of marketing and public relations awards for the projects I have led and collaborated on.
But in early April the news came that my wife’s cancer had again returned. This really was another shock. Fortunately I was home for lunch to take the call in case the news from the test was bad, and it was. I called into work that Tuesday to let them know I needed half a day off for a personal day, the first time I had ever done that.
The office wrote back an email that said they wanted to know how they could help, and they seemed sincere. So I prayed about it and told them I would like to meet with them the next morning to discuss things. It seemed like the right time to let them know my wife was going back into treatment. Keeping the secret through the previous fall’s chemotherapy treatments had been rough. Yet my wife still made it to a couple company functions to show her face. Her brave face.
Na na na nahhh…hey hey hey…goodbye…
But the day after I let the company know that my wife had cancer, they let me go, citing differences over office policies. I had a few high-powered lawyers look at the legal ramifications of what they’d done, and who wanted to take the case, but it is not in our family’s nature to sue them or any other employers over the years who have pulled similar stunts. Two others had either tried to cut off our right to be insured or create circumstances to make me want to leave. It’s not really a surprise, you know. It happens to people all the time. Yet suing a company is an ugliness my wife and I have simply decided we do not want in our lives. We’ve had doctors and nurses make mistakes, too. I think of one Easter holiday when we sat in the hospital watching chemo leak from the port in my wife’s stomach. The doctor came in looking like his career was over. We only wanted things made right.
Small business romanticized
It’s time for some hard truth: the world of small business (and medicine, for that matter) is not the pretty picture painted by politicians who tend to romanticize small business owners as heroes for ideological gain. You hear it all the time, politicians blabbing on about how the so-called “job creators” are saints for taking on the burden of employing others. They go on to complain how beset they all are by regulations, tax laws and other obstacles to success. Well, I’ve run my own business before, and the people with whom I collaborated or hired to do the job were not some commodity to be traded off or dumped at will. Without them, the business would not exist. So it is my belief that the perspectives we sustain on labor and ownership in this country are somewhat skewed.
I say it is ambiguous laws, not excessive regulations that make it hard for small businesses to operate by refusing to give them the clarity to effectively hire and sustain their companies. The same company that haggled me over office policies also flaunted independent contractor status with an “employee” who really did not work there, yet had a desk, phone, computer and office like the rest of us. It literally happens all the time. But you see, it’s the American Way. Business people want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to play by some rules that suit their needs, and dispense with those seemingly inconvenient rules that are too hard to manage.
Clear the decks
Our country could start by altogether removing the burden of health insurance from businesses large and small. There’s no reason why health insurance should be connected to your place of employment. None at all. Instead these poor (and rich) companies spend probably 30% of their time farting around with benefits and such because of the huge mistake America made years ago by letting an experiment in benefits become the norm.
Bring on the public option, I say. It will save American business billions in wasted “man-hours” administrating health insurance for employees, and take away the costs of paying for it too. At least Obamacare is a step in the right direction, ultimately removing pre-existing conditions as a disqualifier for coverage while raising the age of covered family members to 26 as well as a host of other benefits. It’s a step toward normalcy and a level playing field for everyone.
Different rules = difficult circumstances
The rules for employment and insurance are different for employers under 20 people. Go ahead and find out for yourself, if you like, but I’ve read the laws governing insurance and employment for small companies and they really are ambiguous. If the laws for employment and insurance were clear in protecting either the employee or the employer that would be fine. But they are not, and that leaves employers and employees in a netherland of disagreement over who owns what rights. It’s a disgrace of quasi-favoritism, authored by politicians without the guts to provide clarity to the situation because they constantly try to play both sides of the fence, ingratiating themselves to business while trying to mollify the voters. It’s bullshit.
Personal toll
All told the stress of keeping going during all the change and strain––including being primary executor for my stroke-ridden father’s care––has been quite a bit to handle.
Keep on running. That’s sometimes all you can do.
I tried to run and ride through all these challenges, and being out of work gives you a certain degree of freedom, but it is the type of freedom you don’t really want.
I do have a strong faith in God though, and can tell you that a trust in that relationship takes some of the pressure off. As such, many things have happened to help us through this strange year. I do not hesitate to call them miracles, because to us they were miraculous; in substance, timing and grace. You’ll have to trust me to that level of detail, because to delineate those miracles is to commit a breach of trust to those who have helped us, often without being asked, and that is how the kingdom of God often works. It is at once humbling and inspiring.
The road to salvation, of sorts
While my running and riding helped relieve the stress and keep me sane, I started to notice a strange effect on group rides, and when I tried to race. My mind was not capable of fighting through challenges as it normally likes to do. It felt like I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) where situations of stress shut down my ability to function.
On long rides when the going got tough I would hang for a couple miles but ultimately did not care if I stuck or not. It was like there were too many emotional parallels between the stress of competition and the stress of life. My mind chose on its own not to double its burden. Same thing with running. I could compete with myself but not with anyone else.
One crazy attempt at racing
The lone criterium I tried to ride turned into a crazy attempt at riding off the front in the early going. I was like a magnet being driven off the front of the peloton the first two laps. My fitness was good but no one can do that, just ride away from the pack! Insane. When I pulled over after two laps my cyclometer showed an average speed of 24mph but my legs were torched. I pedaled to my car, threw the bike in the back and drove home with my cleats on, shaking my head the whole way. “Enough of that for now,” I said.
The anxious mind
Anxiety and depression act that way on the human mind. Stressful situations and chronic anxiety force you to enter life through a new corridor. It felt like I was riding through a tunnel of ambiguity even as the riding miles piled up. 1000. 2000. 3000.
Then fall came around and I was really physically fit, with weight down to 165 and feeling healthy. I’d landed contract work and was getting job interviews. It was only a matter of time before something clicked. I wanted to get back to work for a hundred reasons.
And then the bike wobble crash happened on a hill in Wisconsin. That meant surgery and recovery and working through the stress of being injured. Yes, folks, it’s been quite a year.
Today is 12/12/12. Supposedly some sort of lucky day. Bring it on. This is one guy who would appreciate a little luck to go with the grace that has been shed on me. Bring it on.
Thought I’d reblog this infographic because it is so interesting! Thanks for reading We Run and Ride!
Every time our county repaves a road, it is cause for celebration among those who run and ride. Gone are the dangerous cracks and rubbery tar snakes that take down cyclists and cause runners to roll ankles or experience the dreaded “heel drop” into a pothole.
New roads are like a dream. Cracks are the nightmares.
A new road. Sans tarsnakes.
For a few months, the new road rides like a dream. Then winter comes. Snow flies (at least it used to here in Illinois…) and cold temperatures, frost heaves and truck traffic combine to stress and strain the road until it starts showing cracks along its edges.
Rhythm of the breakers
The worst phenomenon for cyclists are the 15-foot breakers. You know what they are. Cracks at 15-20 foot intervals that dip about half an inch into the pavement surface causing your tires to make that ‘dunt dunt’ noise as you pile along at 20 miles an hour. A road with cracks like that can literally drive you crazy after 4 or 5 miles or so.
Risk of insanity
Insanity can add up.
I have seen normally sane cyclists reduced to a stop from the constant pounding of a dunt-dunt road. Even found one guy rolling in the ditch in tears, screaming “I can’t take it! I just can’t take it anymore.” His bike wheels were still spinning, but they appeared to have flat sides on four ends of each tire. That’s what dunt-dunt road can do to you. And your bike. So be careful out there.
Horizontalness
They sometimes fix horizontal cracks in the road using tarsnakes, which usually have to be quite thick to fill in the 90-degree cracks. That method works fine to make things smoother for car tires. It does very little to make things smoother for cyclists. The dunt-dunt sound just becomes a little squishier and dull. More like duhnt-duhnt.
Tarsnake hypnosis
An above-grade tar snake seen from the side.
Along the road edges the tarsnakes ultimately become thick and intertwined. It’s almost like they are planning some sort of conspiracy to confuse your feet or your bike tires and take you down, once and for all. If you make the mistake of staring straight down while riding at 20 perhaps miles per hour, tarsnakes can literally hypnotize you.
Your mind goes numb, unable to process the abstract rhythms. Sooner or later you just veer off into a bean field or down an embankment, crashing happily to be ride of the dizzy, sick feeling. You try to consider where you are and suddenly realize, while looking up at the sky, that those contrails begin to look a lot like the white tarsnakes criss-crossing the great blue expanse. Then you realize: perhaps it really is all part of a giant government conspiracy.
Holding it together
Wet with anticipation. Tarsnakes hold the world together.
The real significance of tarsnakes is that they are the bandages holding together the temporal world of the roads we run and ride. To everything there really is a season, because that beautiful black asphalt you ride is eventually doomed, just like the rest of creation, to some form of crackling decay. None of us gets out alive. Not even Donald Trump, with that big yellow tarsnake of a combover flopped over his noggin. It’s all just a ruse.
Makeovers and do-overs okay. No comb overs allowed.
So it really is the time we have together that matters. Tarsnakes are trying to tell us that. Don’t take the good roads for granted and don’t blame the older roads for their dunt-dunt or duhnt-duhnt problems. We’re all built the same. We all get makeovers and d0-overs and still we fight the drag of time and purpose. But please, don’t resort to the combover. It really confuses things in time and space. Not right.
Tarsnakes will guide you
The cosmos reaches out to you. One Way or another.
Which means that you really must celebrate those moments when you are out running or riding on a perfect road when the weather is fine and the rolling is easy. The tarsnakes can wait, and when you rejoin them on a less maintained road, the tarsnakes will guide you along the way. They really make good company if you let them, like one long companion along the way. The cosmos is reaching out to you. One Way or another.
We can thank these signs for the reminder to seize the day. So “Carpe diem” which means, enjoy the new black road. It doesn’t last forever.
Rachel Johnson competing in Minnesota cross country
18-year-old Rachel Johnson exemplifies the growing diversity of interests among female athletes in America. In fall she’s a runner competing for Robbinsdale high school in Minnesota high school cross country. From November through February she hits the snow with the Nordic cross country ski team and from spring through summer she’s involved in a club sport that participants call Ultimate. This is a disc/Frisbee sport that abides by the general rules of football, only with a flying disc as the ball.
High effort but “no sweat”
While she keeps busy in aerobic sports year round, Rachel takes a rather chill attitude into each season. When asked how many miles her cross-country team does in training, she really wasn’t sure. “I don’t know. We do hard days and easy days, intervals and stuff. It’s a 6 day-per-week program pretty much. And we go to meets.”
She particularly appreciates the social side of sports like cross-country. “The atmosphere at meets is really fun. It’s exciting with all the other teams, and you can meet people from other schools when you’re not running.”
Nordic-styles
The same can be said when it comes to training and competing in Nordic skiing. “There are 30-40 girls out for the team. Even middle-schoolers come out to practice. “My favorite part is a trip we make to Giant’s Ridge in Biwabik (MN). We ski 20-30 hours in practice, then play games on skis at night. Sometimes we hit trees and stuff but it’s all kind of fun,” she laughs.
A 2-time All State competitor in Ultimate, Rachel Johnson uses her running fitness to compete in the sport
Ultimate fun
Her third sport on the annual calendar is the highly aerobic sport of Ultimate, a fast-growing sport in which players basically play a modified form of football using a flying disc. Players must keep a pivot foot in place when making a pass, but there is plenty of running to get into open positions, make plays and ultimately score points in the end zone. Rachel Johnson was actually All-State for two years in a row in Minnesota. So while she’s chill as a person, she’s also a competitive and highly skilled athlete.
Rachel Johnson knows how to chill. Photos by Dan Johnson.
When asked about the rigors of Ultimate, she laughs. “The girls don’t have too many injuries, although there’s an occasional concussion,” Rachel says. “The boys have a few more injuries. They play a little rougher.”
Moving on
With all that running, skiing and Ultimate competition in a year, does Rachel ever get sick of the constant movement? “Once in a while, with cross country you just get tired of running, doing intervals after school and then going home to do homework. It can be so exhausting.”
Rachel says the social component of sports is one of the most important benefits of participation.
If that pace of activity sounds a lot like the typical schedule of an American woman with a family and a job to manage, perhaps she is a symbol for many people facing similarly busy schedules? If so, take not. Rachel has made several decisions to help her avoid burnout. “I took my junior year off from cross country,” she admits. “It was just too much for a while. And I’m thinking of switching out Ultimate this spring for track, to give that a try.”
All in the family
That open-ended approach to sport seems to be the product of a family that is both active and well-adjusted. Her father Dan Johnson was a competitive cross country runner for Luther College who picked up cross country skiing with some seriousness after college and also ran a marathon in the mid-2:20s. Yet Dan has not tried to create a version of
Dan Johnson, center in blue tee, leads a trail race in Minnesota
Mini-Me in his daughter. In fact it was Rachel’s idea to go out for Nordic, not a suggestion by her father. “A bunch of my cross country friends were going to do it and they convinced me to give it a try.”
Nordic skiing is considered one of the toughest purely aerobic sports in the world. Skiers often have very high oxygen uptake, and the sport provides a supreme training base for running or Ultimate. There is also a dualistic nature to Nordic skiing in that competitors must do both traditional classic and skate skiing styles, earning a composite time as a full indication of their skill and conditioning.
On the move year round
It all works out well for Rachel, who obviously enjoys the feeling of being on the go, whether it’s crunching through leaves in the fall, gliding across snow in winter or cleating through fields of grass all spring and summer long. She’s a multisport athlete––without being confined by the definition of what that might mean to others. That’s a great role model for all of us who run, ride, ski or go Ultimate.
Country roads like this are not unique to America, but they are a primitive art form in our country, especially to those who run and ride.
By Christopher Cudworth
Friday afternoon on the bike I did not want to take any of my traditional routes. So I wound my way up the spine of Kane County and came to a country road that looked much like the one pictured above. (That is in Iowa, by the way.)
The road was dirt. Gravel covered dirt. Recently softened by rain and smoothed over by a road grader. So there were hardened tracks in the road surface, but also deep pockets of soft, sandy material.
My road bike was twitchy on the country road. I knew it would be. Usually there is a washboard pattern in the road I rode last Friday. On a road bike that means a butt-shaking, teeth-chattering ride that makes you grateful when you reach the asphalt again.
But that’s the point of riding or running a country road. “Got to get back to the land…set my soul free…” (to quote CSN.)
It takes a bit more pressure on the pedals and a firmer grip on the handlebars to ride a good, dirty country road. That’s true whether you’re on a road bike or a mountain bike. Fat tires are no guarantee that you won’t hit the dirt on a country road. All it takes is hitting the edge of a tire groove a little too fast and suddenly you’re in Swerveville.
It keeps you honest, in other words.
I’ve ridden and run the country road in the picture above probably 100 times in my career. It sits about 3 miles into a key loop that we often trained on in college. That road never looked the same way twice. The surface was always changing due to weather, precipitation and farm traffic. It led from a heavily trafficked Highway 52 north of Decorah, Iowa into the valley of the Upper Oneota River, a national wild and scenic river, ringed by 75-foot limestone chimney bluffs and thick stands of dark cedar.
The area around Decorah is full of such country roads. Cyclists on mountain bikes and cyclocross bikes ride them all winter, cruising down the snow-packed surfaces at risk of biting it at any moment. The distance runners from Luther College also do their miles on these country roads, which provide pretty good training conditions year round.
I’ve lived in the city and know how thrilling it can be to train among the skyscrapers along Michigan Avenue in Chicago. I’ve run in San Antonio, trotting down the Riverwalk at 6:00 to meet up with other runners staying out of the sun. I’ve cycled and run through Madison, Wisconsin, and raced the streets of Miami in January with thousands of other runners.
But for sheer benefit I’ll take a country road like the one above any day, with the sun just hitting the ridge tops and the air still cooled by the night in the valleys and canyons on either side.
There is a fine art to country roads because they are always changing, like great art always does.
Think about the art of what you do next time you run or ride down a country road. It’s worth capturing in that camera in your mind.
This poster by Christopher Cudworth earned the Runner’s World Cream of the Crop award for top 5 running art posters in the nation. You can your poster at the link provided below.
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.
A few days ago we considered the tarsnake of the common cold and how to avoid it.
Sometimes getting good sleep means tiring ourselves enough to overcome the distractions of the world. Click to view.
The subject of sleep was purposely left out of that article. It is obvious that waking rest is an important component in effective training, and to avoid overtraining that can lead to illness.
How sleep computes
Sleep lets your body recover and protects your immune system by restoring every system in your body to a normalized starting point. Sleep is a little like a computer software that checks your operating system, eliminates bad files and optimizes your hard drive. You need to run that software every night to keep your hard drive, OS and programs in working order.
Lack of sleep can be torture
Anyone who has ever struggled with insomnia or sleep deprivation knows it can be torture. In fact forced sleep deprivation is literally used as a form of torture to weaken a human being and create a desperate mental state. No fun.
Keeping sleep in balance
One of the known effects of mental health challenges such as depression is a strong desire to sleep. The human mind seeks to escape emotional pain just as the body has warning signals against physical pain that make you want to quit whatever it is that you are doing to produce that pain. People suffering from depression will often sleep for long periods of time. Yet the ironic twist is that people experiencing depression can also find themselves experiencing broken sleep patterns. The mind almost turns itself inside out, upsetting the natural levels brain chemistry that helps us all get to sleep. Getting normal amounts of sleep when you are depressed can be quite a challenge from either end of the spectrum. Interestingly, sleep is chemically linked to depression through a relationship of serotonin in the body. A Medical News Today article on the subject puts it this way: “Serotonin plays an important part in the regulation of learning, mood, sleep and vasoconstriction (constriction of blood vessels). Experts say serotonin also might have a role in anxiety, migraine, vomiting and appetite.”
So you see, the need for good sleep and the steps we need to take to get there are often intimately linked.
Exercise as a tool, and a challenge
Regular exercise can be a naturally helpful tool for getting good sleep. If you tire yourself out by running and riding to fall asleep naturally, then you have achieved a good balance.
But if you are losing sleep for any reason and keep trying to exercise, your body and mind can run into trouble. You’ll get overtired, then your immune system breaks down. Sooner or later you’ll get sick with a cold or other viral or bacterial ailment.
It takes preparation
We all know getting good sleep is an important thing. Yet some people take good sleep for granted. We’ve all heard people who happily chirp, “I never have troubles going to sleep.”
Lucky for them. Because people whose sleep habits do get interrupted can face enormous difficulties in living a normal life, much less training hard to run and ride and improve performance.
Gaming the system, versus knowing yourself
Taking sleep aids is a mixed bag, of course. Dependency can become a significant issue if the drug of choice is so strong that it replaces your natural ability to fall asleep.
Which means it can pay to get to know your sleep habits, and not take them for granted.
If you’ve ever fallen asleep on the couch in the afternoon after a hard run or ride, you know that sometimes when you try to go to bed later on, your mind and body are not ready again. The signals that turn on your ability to sleep have already been fired, and your brain is alert and restless.
Sometimes a late night (healthy) snack can relax you and help you get to sleep, or reading. Sleep experts do not seem to recommend watching TV, since that is a stimulating experience, but frankly, the experts are not always right. It seems to work for some people.
Sexual tension and other mental states can also lead some people to sleeplessness. In the absence of consensual sex a session of masturbation relaxes some people enough to get to sleep. But be judicious. At times, all that a tired body needs to put it over the edge to a risky level of fatigue is one more level of stimulation.
The primary goal is taking your mind off getting to sleep so that you naturally grow tired or sleepy and can let down enough to achieve Dreamland.
Be patient with yourself
It is important to know a few things about your own body’s need for sleep. Being patiently aware of when and how you best fall asleep is a healthy practice. There is likely a window of time in the evening when your mind is best ready to shut down, and your body too. It varies. For one person that magical hour might be 9:00 p.m., while another might not be ready to sleep until 11:00 p.m.––about the time you realize the guests on Letterman and Leno are just another pair of Hollywood stars pumping their next project. Those vapid words can convince just about anyone to doze off.
America asleep
Getting good sleep is a major issue for millions of America, and if you are genuinely having troubles do not take it lightly. You might want to start by researching your sleep issues at the Sleep Foundation.
Sleep for the runner or cyclist
This is you on exercise.
To put it plain and simple, running and riding can be used like a natural prescription to getting good sleep. Our bodies and minds really do crave physical activity once we have built a foundation for fitness. The goal, of course, is to learn to sleep like a baby.
Of course, well-trained athletes can actually have problems getting to sleep if they miss a workout or are tapering their training in preparation for a race. Generally a little less sleep the night before a competition will not affect you. It is the night before the night of a race that is most important, and the few days leading up to a competition.
Being aware of that cycle and getting good rest leading up to a race is crucial in the event you become too excited to sleep much the night before a race. Nothing to worry about. There will be plenty of time to sleep after you’ve set a PR!
Protect your schedule
Getting good sleep and maintaining it throughout your training and racing cycle is really a question of establishing trust in yourself and your daily routine. It does pay to be a little protective of your schedule and realize that even small variances in routine can produce sleep shortages that lead to trouble. Of course it can be just as difficult turning down great sex, for example, in favor of getting good sleep. So you sometimes have to take a risk or two. But the athlete in training invests so much other time in workouts and diet and immune system protection that it makes little sense to compromise your rest by staying up too late when your system is on a razor sharp line for a competition.
That’s why the Old School trainers used to counsel boxers not to have sex. Sure, they thought it drained the machismo somehow, or took the edge off aggression. Whatever. The real point is that staying up late and losing sleep for any reason is the real risk to the athlete in training. Or the person working a tough job. Or the parent caring for children day after day. We all need good sleep to be our best.
In sleep we trust, and that means trusting ourselves to sleep.
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