My Garmin watch went to sleep this morning when I woke up. I forgot to charge it after a few days of use. It has a great battery but even those eventually run out of energy.
The telltale tan line of a chronic watch-wearer
That left me with a naked wrist, as even the old Timex with which I used to time runs and rides is dead and blank.
I stuck my iPhone into a hip pouch and ran 7.25 miles on a familiar loop from North Aurora up to Batavia and back. Lacking the habitual pace readings from the Garmin, I was left to run on feel and see how it all turned out.
It was hot and humid. I ran up to the McDonald’s, got a drink and took a pee, then ran back down the east side of the river trail with all its hills and woodland windings.
It’s a healthy thing to run now and then without the clock guiding every step of your pace. I still tracked the run on Strava, to know how it all turned out. But’s it’s nice to not worry for once whether I was running 8:30 or 9:00 on a hot, dry morning in August. Just run.
I don’t know exactly how many miles I’ve covered in a lifetime of running, or cycling. Or swimming, for that matter. While I’ve kept journals over the years, even those mileage chronicles are typically guesstimates. I will say that I tested out a favorite running course from many years back and my call on mileage turned out to be quite accurate. That made me feel good.
Those miles. When we’re done each day, we check it out, give it a smile or a frown, and keep moving on. What comes next? Only time will tell.
There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government. ––Benjamin Franklin
To set the table about a discussion of dishonesty and the exhaustion it causes: Those of us who run, ride and swim have all done insane workouts and participated in crazy race conditions. In my case, that winter session of 28 X 400 meters repeats (80 sec. each) on a rural road in the middle of winter comes to mind. So does the 15-mile Midnight Madness Race that started and ended in the dark of night.
I’ve ridden bikes until there was nothing left in the tank. Been bonked beaten up by lactic acid. The only thing left to do is pedal home at whatever rate you can manage. There’s a form of honesty in that. Let’s not forget either… those exhaustingly windy days where the sheer wear and tear of air roaring past your ears makes you want to stop and scream. Been there, done that too.
Admittedly I have far less experience suffering in the pool or open water. But swimming is plenty exhausting in any situation, especially when you’re just starting out. Here’s a fact: All these experiences teach us patience in this world, and how to deal with frustration and develop perseverance.
The exhaustion of dishonesty
But nothing on earth is more exhausting than dealing with dishonest people. I was quite stunned in thinking about this topic to go online and Google the subject of dealing with dishonest people. I found an entire menu of artfully crafted memes describing the pain that dishonesty causes in this world.
I’ll share just one because it describes the current atmosphere of public and political discourse these days. It describes the cognitive dissonance required to maintain a permanent seal of dishonesty.
This describes many types of ideology, but for illustration’s sake, let’s consider the cause of one particularly dishonest type of worldview. That is the outlook of creationism, the idea that the Bible in its literal form is superior to science on theories about the origins of the universe. This is belief system is held by 35% plus of people in America, and it explains much of the reason that a parallel proportion of people in this country embrace political dishonesty as well. They are willingly and aggressively deceived by the desire to own the narrative for themselves.
The problem with creationism is that it begins with a premise of bad theology. That is, the act of defending God by writ of some highly limited interpretation of scripture. But if God is real and all-knowing, and scripture is God-breathed, then creationism is an absolute insult to the deity it professes to defend. Why does God need defending? Only for purposes of human control.
To also brand bad theology a “science” is beyond absurd. There is no practical use for creationism other than as a denial of actual science. That’s literally all it does. The creationist worldview is an apologetic that not only lies about the material origin of all things living and dead, it steadfastly steals and cherry-picks snippets from actual science pose as a scientific-sounding theory. No aspect of creationism can be tested or proven by any standard of applied scientific method, because it call comes back to “God did it.” No one can test that claim. Yet this brand of tautology is what people seek to impose upon the world in place of practical fields of study ranging from biology to geology, paleontology to physics, and from medicine to technology. Creationism aggressively denies all these fields of human knowlege as dishonestly human attempts to deny the truth of the Bible as the absolute authority on all things in existence, and how they work. This is the lie and damage caused by bad theology. It doesn’t end there.
Bumper stickers are frequently the weapon of dishonest propaganda.
The final, and most exhausting claim of all, is that challenging these errant claims of bad theology beliefs is an infringement on the “religious freedom” of those who espouse them and try to impose them on others through public policy.
That effort is exacerbated by the application of biblical literalism to a mountain of other social issues such as women’s rights, gay rights, racial equality, environmental conservation and regulation of financial interests according to law. These are the bulwarks of America’s culture wars, and religious zealots have formed political alliances to assist them in imposing their beliefs, and by proxy, dominate the nation. We can throw in the irony of gun control and the conflated issue of abortion (while at the same time banning birth control, go figure…) and the exhausting paradox of dishonest theology is a plague without end.
The realm of dishonest public discourse includes the politically diseased ideology that America was founded as a Christian nation. That’s a claim made by religious zealots seeking to impose the bad theology of biblical literalism on history, ignoring the fact that it is literally corrupted Bible verses that justified slavery, approved genocide of Native Americans, founded Manifest Destiny and to this day fuel racist, militant militias marching on American streets today. Nothing sets evil loose on the world like corrupted religion unleashed.
Hitler’s Pet Project
On a worldwide scale, bad theology plays a deadly game of chicken with the truth. It has long made accusations that the theory of evolution was responsible for the Holocaust, conveniently forgetting that Adolf Hitler clearly stated, in defense of killing six million Jews and other targets of his hate, that “We are not doing anything that Christians have not been doing for 1500 years.”
Yet despite this actual history of religion’s damage to democracy and human equality as a cause, it loves to project its supposed values as absolute principles favored by the Founding Fathers. These were the same people who wrote the Separation Clause to avoid the ugly specter of theocracy taking over the Republic.
Exhausting world
Commuters, a painting by Christopher Cudworth
Yes, it is exhausting work fighting the gaslighting of the world by people who are dishonest in their religious worldview and eager to use it in leveraging votes and influence. They deny the true sources of evil in order to gain power for their own tribal instincts.
That has made me realize that we are running a race that cannot be completed. We are engaged in a battle that cannot be won. Instead, we are like characters in the play No Exit by Jean Paul Sartre, locked in a room for eternity without a door for escape. At any time, two people in the room hate and conspire against the other one. Quite sadly, that is the latter-day truth of “Hell is other people.” It surely feels like that these days.
Fallen worlds
If what the Book of Genesis says is true, the “world” is a fallen place not because Adam and Eve succumbed to temptation, but because a legalistic Serpent acting out the role of a religious advisor took control of their destinies and convinced them they would never die if they bought into the promise that the Serpent knew what was good for them. Does that sound vaguely familiar to anyone?
We are left, as a result, with a lifelong effort to outstrip and outrace evil in a “fallen world” created by those who least abide in the principles that provide salvation from that fate. This is a struggle to the end of time, whatever that means.
What that really means is that the existentialism that we studied in college was right all along. The “irreversibility of time” is a fact of our existence. We can’t go back to fix our mistakes. Nor can we predict the future, as apocalyptic Bible-beaters love to claim. They’ve taken to applying the bad theology of reverse literalism; the Book of Revelations, Daniel and other cryptic literature, to invent from whole cloth a false belief in the Rapture to force a fatalistic worldview on all of reality. This is the worst kind of bad theology because it erases hope, replacing it with a literalistic notion that the “new world” to come is a physical place. It is not. The “new world” is instead realized following the principles of God to produce an entirely new reality based on the belief that love drives out evil. That is what cures the selfish greed of worldliness.
The book Unholy by Sarah Posner examines the influence of religious belief on American politics.
Schemes and dreams
But people get rich off turning religious beliefs into wealth-generating schemes. Televangelists tell people to send money to their ministries before even feeding themselves. That’s how dishonest people operate. They claim their selfish purposes are those of God, or the Market, or some pro football team. People cheat to win.
So much winning based on so much dishonesty. It draws in so many radically conflicted, confused believers who “stay honest to their dishonesty.” Then they force or coerce other people to abide with corrupt interests through force of their power or position in society. Jesus branded these types a “brood of vipers” and “hypocrites” for their sins of power. The worst among us spit in the face of that call to repentance.
Exhausting times
That will to flaunt power and claim glory explains the times we’re in, and why it is so exhausting to be alive these days. As mentioned, it wasn’t much different two thousand years ago when Jesus challenged the legalistic, tradition-wrought system of religious authority that he saw corrupting and abusing people, especially the meek, the needy and those struggling for hope in this world.
But the dishonest never care about that population or the state of the world around them. That is true even when people who rank among the most needy are caught in those circumstances. They are manipulated by promises from the wealthy and powerful that they can get one rung above the people they hate by stomping on the people one run down on the ladder of social status. They’ll even follow the leader to their death in the “cheat to win” philosophy. All wars are based on that psychology.
That’s not what Jesus or America has ever been about. It’s quite the opposite really. Both the Bible and the Constitution speak to a world of equality if we take the time to read the symbolic merit of the words contained within.
Lazy minds
Dishonest people never take the time to figure all that out, and they seldom take “no” for an answer. They have lazy minds and look for a quick fix. As a result, they’re always busying themselves worshipping Golden Idols and demanding their own set of Kings and Queens to rule over them. As the Bible shares, God often grants them those wishes whether it is good for them or not. That typically leads to utter ruin. Among this brand of believers and followers, few actually embrace or welcome the true spiritual growth that comes through accepting equality in the world. They would rather try to win than humbly accept their neighbors.
We see it in the workplace too, where fearful people twist the truth and manipulate or seek power over others to suit their own needs. We see it in families as well, when sibling rivalries and other needless conflicts result in estrangement. It happens every day. Most typically it is the result of one sort of dishonesty or another.
It is truly exhausting to realize all this. But you are not alone in wondering why and how it all happens. That is why it is more important than ever to stay the course. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith,” (1 Timothy 4:7). If we learn anything from our running, riding, and swimming, it is that nothing worth gaining comes easily.
Be honest
First and foremost, be honest with yourself in all respects, whenever you can. Second of all, seek out people who are also honest. Be eagerly cautious with what you consume in both volume and source, and test the truth of it. Be courageous when you sense the truth is threatened, and seek help when evil or difficulty surrounds you. That is where the meaning of true faith emerges. If there is a Kingdom of God, it resides therein.
You know all this from experience. You’ve chosen to go through hardships willingly, and endured unwilling situations the best you can. Character emerges through the passage of time and instinct. Learn to trust yourself and respect, progress and love will follow, like a shadow of your soul.
The purity of the moment is made through the absence of time–Cheik Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure
This morning my wife let our dog Lucy out the door to greet me at the moment when two squirrels ran out from beneath the line of cedar trees next to our lawn. Lucy gave chase to one of the squirrels that raced toward a maple tree near the cul de sac. Then it bounced off that tree and headed toward another. Our pup was right on its tail, and I have no idea what the dog would have done had she caught the squirrel. We don’t encourage such encounters. Most of the time she’s on the leash and we make her sit when she spies a squirrel or rabbit. That happens quite a bit in our neighborhood. Frankly, it happens everywhere. Squirrels are a universal problem of distraction.
After her little squirrel chase, Lucy circled the tree making sure the critter was not coming back down. She was full of pride, it seemed, at having made the squirrel run so fast.
The ‘dog and squirrel’ dynamic has come to symbolize human distraction as well. Everyone is subject to distraction of one type or another. The song in this video is about one of the most famous distractions of all, captured in distinctively misogynistic style by a group called the O’Kaysons in the 1960s.
I’ll completely admit that like many men, the sight of an attractive woman distracts me. I still get distracted when my wife walks through the kitchen with her tan legs in white shorts, her strong arms in a sleeveless shirt and her hair flowing in its summer freedom. That’s a healthy distraction, I’d say.
Of course, distraction takes on many forms. These days social media is a huge source of distraction for many people. This morning an ad for the app Calm appeared in my Instagram feed. The ad warned that scrolling through social media feeds and platforms is not the path to serenity. Instead, it is likely such behavior leads to increased anxiety, especially in this period of political conflict and upheaval.
Those of us that run, ride and swim seek to find solace in motion. But one of the things that often happens during those activities is that our brains get stimulated in creative ways. Some use that time for problem-solving because nothing feels better than coming home with a mind relieved by a fresh insight on the circumstances or challenges at hand. We always hope for that.
Walking offers the same opportunity to move out of a distracted, stress-filled space into a mind-state where perspective can be gained. Others enjoy golf as a distraction, but some say the sport is simply a “good walk spoiled” and riding a golf cart takes away the physical benefits of that aspect of the sport. That said, our President is so lazy he even drives his golf carts on the greens.
A pre-Covid ride in the mountains of Arizona.
Healthy people tend to appreciate etiquette of many varieties, because respecting others is a great sign of compatibility and collaboration. For those who run, ride and swim, it is sharing that experience of exertion that makes us feel better about the world. Sadly, the isolation caused by the pandemic has raised the sense of anxiety and confined spaces during 2020. People are eagerly finding ways to safely engage and get back out there in the world. Together.
What the world has learned through all this madness is what it’s like for people whose brains are endemically affected by anxiety. There is also a known relationship between symptoms of anxiety and conditions such as attention-deficit disorder. While these are separate conditions, they often vex people in both ways.
That’s a wicked cycle when anxiety leads to distraction and distraction leads to anxiety. The human mind goes round in circles from losing focus to feelings of fear and dread when events or obligations are forgotten or messed up. Those who experience that cycle of active rumination have to work hard to gain a steady functional state.
Our dog Lucy was found as a puppy with a broken leg in Tennessee. She was rescued by Safe Haven.
Picture a dog that was born into in less-than-perfect circumstances as a puppy. Perhaps they were originally anxious, then experienced abuse at the hands of some human owner. For the rest of their lives, that upbringing affects their behavior. Their fears are both instinctual and learned. It may take years to build trust in that creature.
Then along comes a twitchy little squirrel running across the path. The fight-or-flight instincts of the dog combine with the will to chase. Off goes the dog with the owner hollering to stop. But it feels so good for the dog to release that pent-up anxiety they refuse to halt until that squirrel is up that tree. Certainly we recognize the importance of teaching a dog not to race off after squirrels. That instinct puts their lives at risk if they run into traffic.
Traffic also symbolizes the threats we face during our lives. When crisis comes along, distraction is one of the first places people seek to hide. They might retreat into watching TV or worse, resort to self-medicating. Some people even pour themselves into too much exercise as an escape from stress, anxiety and its flip-side, depression.
These are all normal human reactions to abnormal circumstances. Facing life is difficult enough without getting hit by some major tragedy or obstacle. When health, financial, or work challenges impact our lives, it is the squirrel of distraction that often seems most inviting.
Painting of a great horned owl by Christopher Cudworth
As a creative person I’ve always had a number of outlets for personal expression. My writing, painting and love of the outdoors is always a source of solace and perspective. The same goes for the running, riding, and swimming. Yet I’ve long recognized that there are times when even these joys must be set aside to buckle down and write out that list of problems to be solved. It pays to pay attention in the long run.
This blog and others that I write are a form of therapy for me. All my life I’ve wrestled with creative distraction, and this is one way that I wick off creative energy to get to the task at hand. My need to express thoughts is perhaps a bit compulsive. Often I make mistakes. Creative ADD is like that. So is anxiety.
I’ve been blogging almost daily since 2012, and I have helped others find their way to writing as a result. Along the way I’ve exposed my flaws and celebrated experiences. Interviewed interesting and inspiring people. Covered issues of the day. My readers are most appreciated.
I’ve also frustrated relatives and friends because I’m an immensely flawed individual. For that all one can do is ask forgiveness. The squirrels are real for me, so I chase them daily, then try to move on with life.
The Great Western Trail is a former railroad bed running from St. Charles, Illinois out to the town of Sycamore, seventeen miles away. For much of the trail from St. Charles to Lily Lake, there is ample shade at all times of the day to keep runners and cyclists, walkers and wanderers from baking in the sun. That doesn’t mean the trail doesn’t dry out during the summer. Lacking rain for the last few weeks, the GWT is a dusty trail indeed.
This Sunday we ran four miles out to Brown Road and turned around to come back home. On the way, I glanced down to notice that both sets of our running shoes were covered in the dry dust formed of crushed limestone and a base of claylike dirt.
Active rail line
I well recall when the trail we now traverse by foot and bike was an active rail line. Trains rumbled through town by crossing a tall bridge spanning the Fox River and continued west at a fast pace through the cornfields heading west to Iowa. Back in town, a set of spurs once served thriving manufacturing plants upon which the city’s population depended for employment. Those rail spurs leading to those old industrial buildings are torn up now. Progress left them all behind.
But the railroad bed west of town serves hundreds of people every day. Local marathon clubs and the running groups sponsored by the Dick Pond running store also train on the trail. Groups of high school runners gathered in groups of ten this summer to train for their possible fall cross country season.
For the last forty years, I’ve been running on that trail. It was establisehed when a county chairman by the name of Phil Elfstrom first adapted the rails-to-trails philosophy in our area. During that same era, the county snatched up miles of riverside railroad beds as well. That work led to a trail system covering thirty miles south to north, even crossing county lines.
The cost of vision
We’re grateful for these trails, yet they eventually cost Phil Elfstrom his job. His aggressive attempts to purchase river’s edge property pitted him against some wealthier private property owners north of St. Charles and he was eventually ousted from his position leading the county board and forest preserve districts. Like Winston Churchill, he’d done a ton of good in his public life. But ingratitude and selfishness ultimately brought him down. Those standards applied to all parties involved.
The Oregon Trail
Just west of St. Charles there is a small forest preserve where a broad rut from the former Oregon Trail is visible in the earth. So many wagons crossed through the region on their way west that they wore a three-foot deep and thirty-foot wide groove in the earth. Over the last thirty years a grove of trees has invaded that historic rut, and it’s barely visible any more. I think that’s a helluva shame. To me that rut is an important reminder of a time when trains didn’t even cross the nation. People had to hit the dusty trail if they wanted to get anywhere. There is something valuable in the both the pride and humility of those ventures.
Historical perspective
America is such a young nation we can hardly afford to forget its history. The country as a whole is not much more than two hundred years old. Yet the truth of its formation is so shrouded in popular myths about nobility and ideals that our country is now embroiled in a war of self-deception. Some seek to ignore and dismiss the truth of slavery and the genocide of Native Americans while claiming the spirit of democracy was at work the whole time. But I’ve come to the conclusion that much of America’s history is like that remnant of the Oregon Trail. It is obscured by the aggressive trees of selfish tradition. At the same time, our history is symbolized by the spurious scourge of the Dust Bowl era when lies about agricultural speculation on the Great Plains led to a nation choking on the dust of its own fortunes. Such are the times again.
Thus I find it ironic that people now run and ride where railroad trains once ruled. All of us are reclaiming a sense of space, and yet we are also called to consider our place in this world. The dust we kick up floats through the air for a bit and settles back down. We make our mark, breathe the air, and move on. It’s best that we consider that brevity and its “dust to dust” reminders, then consider what it is we’re doing for the next generation besides moving down a dusty trail.
I picked up the oddest little “injury” this weekend during our trip to Florida. There’s a ligament on the back of my leg that lays flat on the Achilles and kind of wraps around that major tendon. It is sore, but only slightly tight. I can run with it, and cycle with it, so it’s hard to tell how much to push it.
The best thing to do in these situations is work incrementally with an injury of this nature. It emanated from either of two places. Either I tweaked something by twisting that leg during golf, or I inflamed it while pushing with my lower while kayaking.
But I’ve learned that you can’t mess around even with an ancillary injury. Typically traveling ‘owies’ such as this respond to rest. But active rest is a key indicator of the total picture. So you have to try short runs and then add a mile or two each day to see how it holds up.
A few years back I suddenly came down with really sore Achilles tendons on both legs. That turned out to be caused by the way the heel counter of my Saucony Glide shoes impinged on that tendon. As soon as I abandoned that model of shoe, the problems went away. Almost overnight. I raced that same weekend.
Life is full of mystery ailments and tweaks that cause us problems. But almost all of them have an identifiable cause and ultimately, a rational cure.
It’s all a question of tweaking your training so that you don’t make it worse. We’ll see how this goes. Until then, may the Tweaks Be With You, not against you.
As the son of an avid golfer, I’ve had golf clubs in my hands since the age of three. That never made me a Tiger Woods. But I can play the game respectably.
These days the technology in golf clubs actually makes it a bit easier to hit good shots. This past weekend while playing golf with my wife at Southern Hills Plantation Club in Florida, I hit all nine fairways with the rented Callaway driver. There were also metal three and five irons in the bag. Those made it simpler to hit out of the rough. I wound up with five pars and four bogeys in nine holes.
Like I said, that’s respectable golf, but not great. The previous day I played eighteen holes with my brother-in-law and my wife’s sister’s significant other. It was hot as heck outside, but the sweat wicked away as we drove around the hilly course on golf carts. I had a couple snowmen along the way, but overall my touch was decent and putting was solid. I probably shot 85 or so.
The putter in the bag was a Star Wars looking thing with two wings sticking off the back. It was extremely balanced and delivered a true feel of confidence. I was making consistent putts under four to six feet. That’s always a good feeling.
Changing times
The interesting part of the game on the greens is that rules have changed due in part to the game of golf looking to increase playing pace. So it is no longer required to take the pin out of the cup while putting. At first that’s a funny feeling for a guy who did a bit of caddying as a kid. The ritual of yanking the stick out while tending the pin is ingrained quite deeply. But the time it takes to do all that holds everyone up.
These days the stick stays in the cup if you want it there. Studies have shown that the practice actually improves the odds of making a putt. It must stop the faster putts from sailing over the hole. But then again, there’s the ricochet effect. There’s always a price to pay for too much aggression on the golf course.
The other reason the stick stays in the cup these days is to reduce the risk of spreading Coronavirus. Course instructions also encouraged less high-fives and other potentially risky sporting rituals. But as I was playing golf with my wife, those worries were greatly reduced. We both just got tested for Covid-19 and turned up negative.
Birthday blues
After four holes with the crew the second day, the Birthday Boy among us needed to return to the clubhouse. His buddies had plied him with drinks and shots before we departed, and he’d already played eighteen holes in a morning round. That left Sue and I to play alone for five holes.
It was quiet and serene on the course that afternoon. The storms that delayed our round initially had produced a ton of rain, but the course absorbed it for the most part. Still, we drove our carts in the rough most of the holes.
Sue loves to golf. We don’t get to do much of it. Most of our leisure time is consumed with running, cycling and swimming. Yet one of our first weekend trips together included a round of golf at a sweet little club near Dixon, Illinois. She was cute in her white golf skirt and black shirt. This past weekend she wore a blue top that made me want to hug her after every shot.
My father would have appreciated my wife’s enjoyment of the game. He adored playing golf and encouraged all his boys to develop a good swing. My mother and father played golf together on a regular basis. Late in life my mother scored a hole-in-one at the fourth hole on Pottawatomie Golf Club in St. Charles. That was their home turf, and I’ve played that course many times. The hole on which she scored the hole-in-one is a snug par three along the Fox River. From the women’s tee it is probably 130 yards. The club pro gave her a mini-trophy with a golf ball perched in the cup. She prized that little award, and loved to tease my father that she was the only one between them that ever scored a hole-in-one. The next year she passed away from cancer at the age of eighty years old.
Running amok
There were years during college when I seldom played golf at all. But that didn’t mean I never set foot on a golf course. Back then, many cross country races were held on golf courses. It seems that practice has largely vanished. Probably the members these days frown on the idea of anyone tearing up the prized fairways. I get that. But it was thrilling to put on spikes and race down smooth turf in the company of other good runners.
I also trained quite a bit on golf courses. Again, that is frowned upon in this day and age. Too much liability, or so the saying goes. Running on a golf course will get you booted off in most places.
That doesn’t mean I’ll never do it. Once in a while I’ll skirt the edge of some local course and think back on both the golfing and running I’ve done in those places over the years. In the past ten years however, some of those golf courses have closed up shop. Even before the Bush-era recession caused economic contraction, the golf industry recognized that there was a surplus of courses. The sport was overbuilt, and golf courses and even some country clubs were closing. When the overall participation in golf dropped by some 5 million players after the recession, even more courses closed.
State of Golf in America
There are still about 1.5M acres of land used as golf courses in America. That’s equivalent to the State of Rhode Island. So there is a State of Golf in this country. About 10% of the population, or 25M people typically play golf in a given year.
I know these statistics because I’ve written a book titled Nature Is My Country Club. It examines the land-use practices of golf courses, and how organizations like Audubon International are encouraging the golf industry to naturalize their landscapes with native plantings, wetland conservation and use of less pesticides. That makes me feel better about playing golf. Because whether nature purists (like me) care to admit it or not, a considerable amount of wildlife likes to hang out on golf courses. During our round last weekend, we saw wild turkey, sandhill cranes, black-bellied tree ducks, gallinules, grebes, little blue heron, great blue heron, common egret, black vulture, bluebirds and many other species. There were alligators in the ponds too, and turtles.
I used to point that stuff out when I was a caddy, but it was seldom appreciated by the golfers I accompanied while carrying their bag. Most people on the golf course, it seems, are there for one reason, to play the game. The course itself is a piece of fiction, a place to be conquered. And golf courses are indeed a manufactured landscape. There is nothing essentially natural about acres of closely mowed turf grass, and it used to be sustained with tons of toxic pesticides and herbicides. Some of those practices are changing, but not completely.
But it sure is beautiful in its homogenous way, a shadescaped glory fantasyland where golf carts sail like ships on a green sea.
Sailing there with my honey was a lot of fun. She started hitting great shots as the round went by, landing some on the green from some distance. She even picked one out of the fairway trap with what I called the “magic” club in her bag.
#444 at the start of the Geneva Community Classic 10K that was won in 31:52 on a long course. The record stood for 20 years.
I was never a national class runner. My best times at 5000 meters were about a minute behind those competing at the top levels of Division 1 track and field. My best place at cross country nationals as a senior in college was about 60th place. That helped our team take second place to North Central College and make us Team All-Americans, but that was a group effort, not an individual triumph.
Despite this modest success, many runners of my caliber continued competing well after college. In my case, the times continued to drop in every category of racing; road, track and the rare post-collegiate cross country meet.
The invitation
By the fall of 1983, I was winning a few regional road races and finishing in the top five almost every week. After winning the Run For the Money 10K in Arlington Heights, Illinois, I got a call from the owners of Running Unlimited, a new shop that was looking for promotional opportunities. The owners Frank and Carolyn Gibbard were putting together a racing team to represent the store on the local running scene.
Pre-race concentration
That team consisted of some of Chicago’s mid-to-upper tier distance runners, including the Macnider brothers, John and Jim. There was Bill Friedman, a competitor in his late 30s still running under 15:00 for 5K. Jukka Kallio was a marathoner of Finnish descent who barely missed qualifying for the Olympic Trials with a time over 2:19. Rick Stabeck was one of the most solid performers across many distances as well. Altogether it was a team of 10-12 runners receiving simple incentives such as Nike shoe price reductions, paid entry fees and small travel stipends as we all raced across the Chicago area.
Overload
Sometimes the effect of having us all race in one place was not all that positive. At one race in the Northwest suburbs, we took all top ten places, hogging the awards in several age group categories. I was racing in the 20-24 group and took second at 31:10 to Jim Macnider as I recall.
It was not uncommon at many races in those days to run 5:00 pace for 5K or 10K and not even finish in the Top Ten. The relative depth of sub-elite runners was strong. My personal racing schedule involved running 24 races on behalf of Running Unlimited. I won the Geneva Community Classic 10k, the Frank Lloyd Wright 10K, finished second to Kallio in the River Forest 10k, second at the Sycamore Pumpkinfest 10k, fourth at a highly competitive Melrose Park 10-mile race won by Kevin Higdon, and third at the Deerbrook 25K in 1:24:47 wearing a race number given to me by Bill Rodgers, who decided not to run after I escorted him from the hotel to the race.
That’s a weekend that I should have been running marathon. Leading up to the race weekend, I’d put in a burst of training because I was planning to devote time on Sunday and ran twelve miles in two runs on Thursday, put in another fifteen miles in two runs on Friday and another ten miles “strong” on Saturday. Had I simply tacked on another ten miles at even 6:00 pace that would have produced a 2:25 marathon.
My training journal shows all the miles leading up to the 25K racing in late September, 1984
Running for small glories
Those are not regrets, just observations realized over the years. As a sponsored team, our priorities in racing for the Running Unlimited team were not about racing single races such as a marathon. In fact, relatively few runners planned their racing schedule around such long races in that era. Both our desire and our obligation was more about racing frequently. That also meant more opportunities to wear the team warmup kits, and produce good performances that reflected well on the store. That year I led the CARA 20-24 age group in points.
The year before the Running Unlimited commitment, I’d raced for a team in Paoli, Pennsylvania called Runner’s Edge. In that region, there were a number of teams hosted by clubs and sponsors. On a typical weekend, there might be 10-15 teams at a five-mile road race, each wearing their kits. That scene was a bit like being back in college again, with real rivalries evolving between those clubs.
Along with racing as a store sponsored club with the requisite team uniforms consisting of singlet, shorts and nylon warmups, we also trained together as a team. Team leader included the Crooke brothers, Rich, Peter and John that ran the Runner’s Edge store. We did track workouts at Villanova University where world-class distance runners such as Don Paige and Sydnee Maree could sometimes be seen working out.
Back in Chicago
That association ended when I moved back to Chicago after the job out east ended. Living in the City with a friend, I dived into the local running scene training with Tom Brunick’s group at the University of lllinois track. Top guys such as Dave Casillas, Jim Whitnah, Jim Terry and others all showed up those nights. We also ran at the Northwestern University track in the shadows of tall buildings in the near north Loop.
But after two years of living the bachelors life in the city and training full-time, it was time to move on from the world of sub-elite running. I got married in 1985 but kept up with the training to some degree. By then, Running Unlimited had disbanded as a racing team and the store was soon sold to an owner that moved it to Palatine.
Approaching fatherhood
A part of me still clung to the racing lifestyle that year, and having long association with Vertels Chicago, I was invited to race for them. But during early 1985, I was only rounding into shape and the team manager wasn’t too impressed with my fitness. That meant I got a kit shirt for the “B” squad rather than the elite racing singlet with the sleek Nike logo on it.
I still managed some fast times that summer, clocking a 20:14 four-mile to win a twosome race, and ran a big 10-mile race n 54:00 in some south suburb. But I could feel the transition to full fatherhood coming on. My son was born that October 30. It was time to leave those racing teams behind. I was twenty-seven years old and had been competing as a runner since the age of twelve. Those times run in my 20s would remain whatever legacy I could accomplish in this world as a runner.
But I actually knew from one experience exactly where I stood. It was the Race Of the America’s five-miler in which I went out with the world class guys for a mile or two at 4:40 pace, then faded to finish in 25:30 overall. Nothing puts you in your place like an honest finish time. I was always a good team player, but never the sensational type or Olympic qualifier that one might have wished for. And that’s okay. To this day, I still enjoy running and win the occasional age-group award in either road races or triathlons. This year my pace is actually improving after last year was wracked by injury and illness.
Sharing assets
Overall, it was, and has continued to be, a fun ride. Looking back on those years as a semi-sponsored runner, I realize that few people really get to experience the pleasures and pressures of having enough talent to fulfill some obligations of a semi-sponsored runner. The only regret I ever had was having to race a half-marathon when I had a wicked cold and congestion. That was not the most fun experience in the world.
My glimpse into the pressures of sponsorship makes me appreciate the world-class folks I now follow on Instagram. Their pressures are multiplied beyond what most of us can comprehend. Can you imagine being a top-flite runner capable of running under 13:00 in the 5K and having to justify your sponsorship status on the basis of the number of follower you have on Instagram or some other app? That’s a modern dynamic indeed. As a result, some spend more time sharing their assets rather than talking about their accomplishments. That’s especially true for women, where body image…and exposure, is a keen driver of social media.
On the whole, it still comes down to performing under pressure in one way or another. But the cut-and-dried world of running times and weekend warriors seems long gone.
In August of 1978, I was returning as a senior to Luther College as both a Resident Assistant and Captain of the cross country team. That meant the latter part of August was largely spoken for as my schedule called for attending a weeklong RA Retreat at Bethel Horizons north of Dodgeville, Wisconsin. Then it was back to Luther for the start of cross country practice.
But what if Covid-19 had hit the world that summer and college cross country, and even onsite learning at college itself, was canceled? All that training I did to prepare for the fall season would have been for naught. Nor would I have attended the RA Retreat where I fell deeply in love with a woman for the first time in my life.
That would have been a loss in my life. Because in that positive state of mind and fitness, I helped lead the cross country team through many of its 13 meets, even placing as our top man in a dual meet on our own campus. Then we combined to take second place in the NCAA national cross country meet for Division III. I became a Team All-American.
Circa 1976, front and center with the Luther College CC team. And the opposite of social distancing.
But all that could have been erased if a worldwide pandemic had taken hold.
As it stands, it looks like the sport of cross country at the high school and college level will proceed at some level going into the 2020 season. There is enough open space at every cross country meet to allow for social distancing. At least those runners will have some competition this fall. But I empathize with kids at every level of education and sports these days. It was hard enough for me to concentrate on the work at hand in my high school years, and I struggled in subjects like Algebra and Economics. I did better in college, but distance learning might have afforded me too much latitude.
But who knows?
On track for a clash
In this day and age, it looks like college football will be postponed from fall to spring all the way up to the Power 5 Conferences. Last summer I attended a track reunion at my alma mater and there was already consternation about the fact that many football coaches don’t want their athletes participating in spring track. They’d prefer to have their kids come out and grovel around in spring football than diversify their experience by building speed and toughness in track and field. So football and track are on track for a clash in many places. The convergence of both sports in spring spells trouble.
Why such obsessive preoccupation with the one sport of football? Well, such is the perversity of the American work ethic, where singularity of mind is now so highly prized that selfishness has become the lead instinct of the day. The desire to “have” football at all costs is a reflection of a selfish instinct that has taken over American society today. Even Anti-Vice President Mike Pence is begging for student athletes and coaches, staff and trainers to put themselves at risk in order that others be entertained.
His statement that they “deserve the chance to safely get back on the field” ignores the fact that President Trump is leading a country with one of the worst Covid infection and death rates in the entire world. Yet all Pence cares about is his notion that the “Nation” depends on the “gridiron” for normalcy.
When it comes to normalcy, I’ll side with young people running in a pastoral landscape rather than banging into each other on a field constructed for that purpose with tens of thousand of people that never even played the game cheering or criticizing their every move. There’s actually nothing normal at all about football. It is a manufactured reality.
Both sides of the field
I don’t hate football. Yet even my friend who coaches one of the best programs in Illinois would be first to admit that sports specialization has gotten out of hand. He encourages kids to do both football and track because he is the track coach. But that means he understands that diversity of experience is important to self-development. The football coach at the first high school I attended was also the track coach at Kaneland High School. When I entered as a freshman there was neither a soccer or a baseball program available at the school. Because that football and track coach also happened to be the athletic director. So the more things change, the more they stay the same.
When it all comes down to it, all I wish for student athletes is at some point to experience the thrill of competition. I was blessed in many ways by experiences in years of sports participation, and I played many of them. Baseball, basketball, soccer, track, cross country, and even football, but only in flag tournaments or pickup games.
The only advice anyone can offer kids eager to play the games they love is to keep on practicing. That’s 95% of the sport anyway. That’s where character comes from, but that character is being tested in all new ways these days.
With social occasions delayed due to the Coronavirus pandemic, it was difficult for graduating high school seniors to find the right time to transition toward college or other plans beyond. As a result, the graduation party for a young man that I’ve known since he was born eighteen years ago was held this past weekend. He’s off to the same school as his sister in Holland, Michigan.
Beau Cunningham and Christopher Cudworth 2020
His name is Beau Cunningham. We were back door neighbors for much of his life. I watched him grow from a baby to toddler to curious elementary school kid. Then he started mowing lawns and got rather good at it, starting his own business before he was about ten years old, if I recall correctly. He ran his old Montgomery Ward riding mower until it couldn’t run anymore. Then I pre-contracted and pre-paid him for a summer of mowing my father’s lawn. That plan helped him pay for an all new mower that he put to work with multiple accounts in the neighborhood.
Occasionally we’d go out riding bikes together. One Sunday afternoon when his folks were busy taking care of some family business downtown, Beau and I rode to a mysterious little spot behind the government center in Geneva. He was eager to share the secret of a strange little crypt that was built by a sect of religious sisters years ago. It was a perfect summer adventure.
Beau and I also shared a love of running. He participated in middle school and high school cross country until his interests broadened and he developed all new contacts and contracts in other businesses. He saved his money to get a truck and life kept rambling on with a cute girlfriend or two along the way.
He’s going to major in business and communications at Hope College. His eagerness for college is clear. What strikes me as different from myself at that age is his greater sense of self-awareness. He’s always been a curious person. We’d often sit and have quiet talks on the back steps of the back porch at our house. Sometimes he’d have concerns to discuss or be trying to understand aspects of family, church or friend life. Other times we’d simply dig in the dirt and make heads out of clay. He also loved to walk our dog Chuck, and was responsible enough to do it.
The neighborhood kids when they were little. Beau is at far right.
I remember babysitting him after surgery to remove his tonsils. His mother approved a light diet of liquids with a cookie as a compliment to his evening. Somehow he negotiated a second cookie, and that’s indicative of his savvy outlook on life.We also played with cars on the carpet that night, smashing them together and making wicked collision noises. He needed to wick off pent-up energy after the surgery, it seemed. Somehow one of his father’s die-cast models wound up involved in the wreckage after Beau pulled it down off the shelf. I think an apology on my part was due the family. But blessedly the nicked up toy car was forgiven.
Standing next to Beau at his party this past weekend I could feel the youthful energy and determination of a young man entering adulthood. I also recalled the amusing day when he was three and he leaned down next to my ear while I was on the ground working on a project for his mother and he whispered, “You have no hair!”
It was true back then, and it’s still true today. That proves the one thing in life that I’d pass along to Beau Cunningham. The more things change in one way in life, the more they seem to stay the same in another. He and I have both experienced our share of shifting circumstances, but found our roots just the same.
I’ve always urged him to keep that in mind in life and things never feel so out of control. If and when they do, I’ve always turned to writing it all down on a sheet of paper to look it over. That always seems to help put things in perspective.
And if that’s not enough, start a blog like this one and process life for all you’re worth. It may be a relatively small audience that one reaches, but the audience of one’s own mind is sometimes the most important connection of all.
While researching technical information for an engineering client’s website, I found a series of maps that answer a ton of questions I’ve had over the years. For example, why does it always feel like the wind is against me no matter which direction I bike, run or swim?
Here’s a map of North American wind patterns. I think it explains everything in living color.
Have you ever seen such a confusing shitshow in your life? The wind clearly cannot make up its mind, blowing here and there with all its might. Oh sure, there are “trends” but isn’t that small consolation. Have you ever known the wind to follow orders? Tell me with a straight face that you can honestly count on a tailwind on any given day even after you’ve traveled five miles into a stiff headwind.
More than likely, you’ll turn around and run or ride back into a gale just as strong as the one you just fought for half an hour. That’s because the wind is a capricious bastard, On other days an unforgiving bitch. On other day’s it’s a transition mix of toxic whims.
Perhaps this is because the wind literally sucks. That’s right. It doesn’t blow, it sucks. It’s all about high and low pressure systems, it seems. But even in a local scenario, the wind bends like a cheap hockey stick.
All you have to do to bend the wind is put something in front of it like a hill or a row of corn and it goes whipping around in a furiously compensatory fashion. We can feel this effect whenever a big truck goes blowing past us and the wind is sucked clean out of its path. If you are unlucky enough to be riding or running in a crosswind when one of those big trucks motors past, it is wise to be on your guard. You can get sucked toward the road or wind up clattering down the asphalt.
It’s not much better when you go swimming in open water during high wind conditions. When chop builds up to two or three feet, or the swells come tumbling at you from out of the Big Blue, beware. The wind does not give two shits if you want to go fast in such conditions. It does not even care if you survive or not.
Of course, the wind is radically altered not only by pressure systems, but also regional and local temperatures. The map below of national temps gives you a clue that there is a great big conspiracy afoot in North America. The Southwest is clearly hogging most of the warm air.
Not only is this proof that people in the Southwest are selfish, it also an illustration of what we can call the Dog Turd Phenomenon. Based on the colors clearly show in southernmost New Mexico and Arizona, it is clear that dog turds will stink the worst in those states. Fortunately, these are also the places where “dry heat” supposedly reigns. So the theory here is that the stink of dog poo on hot asphalt will be most profuse those first few minutes, but then dissipate quickly as the dessicated dog poo turns to dried out bits of commercial kibble. The rest of the country is left to deal with sticky piles of slippery dog poo that can cause you to slip or fall. And that is why most of North America is so hard to navigate.
Sign in the park telling dog owners to pick up dog turd after their dogs are done with it
That’s all because there are some people in the population that think being asked to pick up their dog’s shit is an infringement on their liberties. They consider it a breach of their constitutional and even their religious rights to be “forced” to bend over and pick up their dog’s crap off the sidewalk or the lawn. So they leave it there as a sign of protest that their personal “freedom” comes before the needs of all other people in society.
But when it comes to big piles of poo lying around forever because it never dries out in the heat, the worst part of the country is poor old Alaska! There’s hardly any dark areas in that state at all. That means dog poo or moose poo or caribou dung will hang around for decades and even centuries if left out in the open. If you don’t believe me, consider the problems they have on top of Mt. Everest. , where 8000 lbs of human waste were left on the mountain in 2019 alone. This appears to be proof that many who climb that peak are some of the shittiest people in the world.
And Alaska has been around just as long as Mt. Everest. Which means there are probably even mastodon turds lying around in the muskeg if you care to walk around and look. But be careful, if you notice fresh grizzly bear poo it is best to hope there is a decent sized tree nearby. The bears up there are sensitive about these things, and people who get close to bear poop are know to get mauled because the bears are clearly embarrassed about the stench of their prodigious poo. They also don’t like to admit there are so many berry seeds. The bears have a reputation to protect as giant predators. Eating berries is bad for the Bear Brand, you know.
There are other reasons it is hard to run, ride or swim in Alaska. For one thing, if no one has ever told you, it’s really hard to swim in a frozen lake. That used to be a big problem for Alaskan triathletes. But now that global warming has swept up the continent thanks to the dog turd policymaking of politicians denying climate change in the Lower 48, we’ll all soon be able to swim across Alaska by jumping from lake to river to lake again. And won’t that be swell?
All told, I hope this helps you understand why it’s so hard to run, bike and swim in North America. We live in the midst of a giant conspiracy to make it more difficult to train and race in a country so confused by its own wind and temperature conditions that we’ve been reduced to studying dog turds to make sense of it all.
That also happens to explain why there is a massive dog turd now rotting in the White House. The weather can be blamed for that problem too, because when it comes to elections, it’s all about which way the political winds blow. Or do they suck? Apparently so.
We Run and Ride 