Definition; a stroke of luck: something good that happens to you by chance
I headed to the swimming pool today because a rain storm threatened to swamp our region by mid afternoon. Part of me was considering a mountain bike ride, but with temps hanging out in the mid-40s and a massive green creature of evil weather arriving soon, the idea of getting caught in a cold rain was not that appetizing.
Of course that is ironic considering my alternate plan was to dive into the water for 1000 meters of swimming. So many of our choices in this world are odd. We don’t want to get wet in one way so we get soaked in another.
As I started in swimming it felt good to be moving along in the water. I use a pool buoy to warm up after stretching my shoulders for five minutes on the pool deck.
That is just not some tactic to avoid getting into the pool. It is a strategy to prevent muscle pulls. The sudden shock of cool water can cause muscles to seize and cramp. Later during my swim session a friend showed up on the pool deck over the lane next to me. He dipped his toe in the water and looked my way. “It’s cold today,” he lamented. “Last week I dove right in and my back seized up.”
I have had my share of back tension during the last week. On one of those cold mornings where frost covers everything outside, I put our dog Lucy on the leash and started walking her up the block. She got excited by the shimmer of the frost and leapt at the end of the leash. That yank must have torqued the middle of my spine, because the first thing that I noticed was a queasy feeling in my gut. Then the muscles attached to the spinal column started to tighten. That is a warning sign to take things easy. So I called to Lucy and told her in no uncertain terms, “Heel!” We walked together for a half mile but the back was fairly tight when we got home.
So I don’t take back problems lightly. While no sufferer of constant back pain, a few times over the years a back spasm at the base of the trapezoids has caused pain so sharp it takes the breath away.
That’s why I don’t just flop into the pool without stretching some. Plus I like to warm up my shoulders to increase range of motion and prevent injury.
I’m now heading to the pool at least three times a week now to build endurance back up after a layoff period during fall. With swimming, I don’t try to accomplish things all at once by piling on yardage too soon. As a relatively novice swimmer, the risk of overuse injury increases as I tire or lose form. It’s best to build up yardage by increments. Plus it takes a while to adapt mentally to spending more time in the pool.
Creating your own brand of preparation is what adds up to a stroke of good luck in the pool. Mostly that means not hurting yourself until building up enough endurance to actually improve pace and times. Right now I’m at 2:00 per hundred meters. I’m not very fast. On that front, I’ve learned to be patient. Just put one good stroke in front of the other. Then repeat. With a stroke of luck, I’ll get better over time.
The annual rite of running the Turkey Trot in my former hometown of Batavia is going by the wayside this year. For one thing, my knee is slightly swollen from the hit it took by a yellow lab at the dog park on Saturday. But for another thing, my longtime relationship with the town where the race is held needs some breathing room.
I’ve lived in the Fox Valley west of Chicago for most of my lifetime, including formative years in St. Charles, where I graduated from high school. I also lived in Geneva as a young bachelor and later for eleven years with my wife and kids in a little bungalow near the high school. Finally, we moved to Batavia when our children were in fifth and first grade.
A working relationship
By that time in the late 1990s, I had a long working relationship with Batavia. I liked the fact that it was a bit more integrated than the other two cities along the Fox River. The school system had a good reputation, and I’d already served as President of both the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club.
Those two positions came about as a result of my employment with the newspaper that covered all three of the Tri-cities. Initially I was in advertising sales covering the cities of Batavia and Aurora. Back then the retail world was different. There was a Coast-to-Coast Hardware and a True Value Hardware within a block of each other. There were no businesses out on Randall Road, the county thruway that would fill with big box retailers by the late 1990s.
Service to community
In the late 1980s, I called on mom-and-pop businesses in downtown Batavia and helped some of them launch their first-ever advertising programs. One of those businesses, East China Inn, ultimately grew to four or five locations. The family that runs those businesses has employed their own children and many others, putting kids through college by providing the same high-quality food year after year.
After a couple years in ad sales, I moved into promotions for the newspaper and signed up to serve on the Chamber of Commerce board. When a spot opened up for President, I was nominated and was serving as President-Elect when the acting President had a stroke and had to take a medical leave. So I launched into service and quickly realized there was a problem with how the Chamber was being run. None of the events or activity committees had a budget. They just ran things and turned in the bills. The first thing I did was the require a budget for everything the Chamber did.
In some ways that was ironic, because my financial acumen was not that great at that time in life. But I understood one thing well enough: those minus signs at the end of the spreadsheet meant we were losing money.
Downsizing
The next thing I proposed was a reduction in the size of the Chamber Board. There were twenty members at the time I became President and meetings were a mess with people sitting so far apart in the City Council Chambers and too many voices at work to make good decisions. So we shrank the Board to nine members plus one representative from the schools, parks and city. We finished in the black for the first time in many years.
The night of the actual installment as President, the executive director met my wife in the ladies room and told her, “Well, you won’t be seeing much of your husband this year.” To which my wife replied, “Then you don’t know my husband.”
We ran the chamber with efficiency, keeping board meetings to one hour rather than the two-to-three hour marathons that had preceded my tenure. While that put pressure on the board and committees, it did free people to get back to their working lives. We still managed to put out all new marketing collateral for the Chamber that year, and installed a benefits guarantee for chamber members, that resulted in growth and retention year-to-year.
Despite that fiscal and management responsibility, there were rumors within town that I was just a “carpetbagger” looking out for the interests of the newspaper where I worked. I know who started those rumors, yet it was one of those learning experiences about community life that has to be learned time and again. There are always back channel discussions and small betrayals going on for selfish reasons at all times. The lip service people give to good intentions and their actions often stand in opposition.
I was no carpetbagger. That assessment was a prejudice of sorts, and also a fear of being held accountable that served as a wedge in case of actual confrontation. It is far easier for some people to snark their fears than address them. And that lie about me neglected the fact that we’d actually lived in the City of Batavia as newlyweds. We rented a small house on the less-wealthy east side of town.
Running commentary
This painting series titled Batavia Night and Day combined two separate paintings into one commentary on the people and services that serve Batavia around the clock. By Christopher Cudworth 2016.
I’ve always contended that being a runner or cyclist in a community gives you a unique insight on the rhythms of the place Getting out before dawn to run or ride through town, one finds out who rises early and who lays in bed. The barking dogs usher you down the block, and you wave at the garbage men or public works employees cleaning streets or taking care of some emergency around town.
It also gives you a bit of a critical eye about the place where you live. The potholes and cracks in the sidewalk all become well known. The places where people leave dog shit and don’t pick it up… The graffiti that took place overnight at the park. All these things are absorbed through community osmosis. That includes the arguments and hot engines of residents not getting along. The code violations and crazy displays of people obsessed with Christmas or Halloween, the NRA or some NIMBY topic. And there were many over the years.
Normally only the police encounter the ugly guts of the community, or the fire department. But I’ve stopped to help aged people to their feet after they’ve fallen in some public place. I once ran headlong home to get my car when I found a neighbor all sweaty and leaning on a lamp post in need of help. His heart was failing him and neither of us had a cell phone with us. He later credited me with saving his life.
Family life
For twenty years our family lived in a simple ranch home near Memorial Park, the open field with baseball diamonds that once served as a giant practice field for the brick-built high school six blocks away. The cinders from the former track prevented grass from growing in a stripe across center field on the main diamond. I’d walk our dog around that park every day, stopping to chat with wives of weekend warrior softball players and parents of little boys and girls learning the game of baseball. Over twenty years I picked up a lot of forgotten baseballs, some in good condition, others ragged with age. Moss and rust never sleep.
The same was true for so much else in that community. When called upon to serve on a committee to assess the needs of the school district, I wound up writing the Facilities Commission Report that led to passage of a $75M referendum to upgrade buildings in much need of expansion and repair. That included a new indoor track that I’d later help open up for early morning runners during the winter months.
Harsh words from an expert
Photo of Batavia, Illinois by Christopher Cudworth
The City of Batavia wasn’t always open to large-scale change such as that. Back in 1992, the Chamber hired a consultant named Bert Stitt to come into town and assess the community from all angles. His report was scathing in many respects, criticizing the overall lack of vision about the downtown and almost making fun of some aspects of town that showed utter confusion about its identity. The community was largely appalled by Stitt’s harsh truths, but many citizens did take action on one account: building a riverwalk on the isthmus that juts into the Fox River.
That was nice, but it was still a bit like putting lipstick on a pig. There was no new bridge to improve traffic flow through town. No plan to upgrade or enhance the ragged riverbanks or address the jumbled south entrance to town where random zoning left a hodgepodge of buildings that the consultant mocked. Many of these issues are still unresolved thirty years later.
Admirable points
The more admirable aspects of Batavia are its commitment to intellectual pursuits and culture. The Water Street Studios arts center was made from an abandoned factory building. The community committed to building a new library, but then refused to fund its operations. There are writer’s groups and a Pechakucha movement. The music and drama and athletic endeavors of its students are inspiring.
Such is life in almost every small and large town in America. I never thought myself better than the place where I lived and worked. If anything, I watched my own face and body age in the mirror and felt kinship with the little world where I lived, such as it was. During those years I lost a wife to cancer, a mother to cancer, a father to stroke. When they were all gone, I spent time alone in that house in Batavia figuring it all out.
Moving on and out
I moved out of that house in Batavia with the woman I married four years after the passing of my late wife. We live now in North Aurora with a house that backs up to a wetland where a path managed by the Batavia Park District passes by the soggy swampland. That path is flooded ten months out of the year but I love it that way. When I leave to go out on runs there are often several species of ducks, a band of sandhill cranes or crayfish sucking around in the mud near the water. I like that nature cannot be contained by man or anything else in this world. We now walk our dog Lucy on that path.
We’ve yet to see wild turkeys in our backyard, but we have seen pheasant and coyotes, plus plenty of rabbits and squirrels. On Thanksgiving morning I’ll likely get up early and go for a quiet Turkey Trot of my own or with Sue. I like to run out the path and over to Dick Young Forest Preserve where I’ve been birding and hiking for more than thirty years as well.
That means I’ll leave the hubbub of the Turkey Trot in Batavia to others. The course passes right in front of my old house, and every time I run past my mind is flooded with memories of all those years and how I even eventually came to work for the City of Batavia, but that didn’t work out either. I think I knew the place too well, with all its flaws and history, and mine as well, for that to have lasted for long.
So it will be a Thanksgiving morning with the clouds and cool air for company. And that’s good enough for me.
2019 has been a doggone tough year for me in terms of strange little injuries. But yesterday an incident took place that was a doggone fluke.
Our dog Lucy loves to run and play at a large local dog park Our weekly visits are a mixed bag of joy and possible confrontation. Most weeks she plays well with other dogs and things go fine. But there are always couple dogs that get touchy or Lucy pushes a bit too much and that sets off a snarlfest. So I typically keep close watch on her.
But that wasn’t what caused a problem for me yesterday. Lucy was busy wrestling with a pointer named Apple ten yards away when a big yellow lab broke from the thin woods forty yards away and came running toward me. I’d given that dog a big butt scratch earlier and a happy rub on the ears too boot. So I wasn’t initially concerned there was a problem, but he was coming fast. I stood there wondering when he’d veer to one side or the other to avoid hitting me in the knees. He never veered.
That ninety-pound yellow labrador retriever ran right through my legs without a pause and kept on running. The impact knocked me off my feet. I lay there on my side, stunned by what had just happened. The owner of the dog Lucy was wrestling stood nearby and witnessed the event. He inquired, “Are you okay?”
I muttered, quite honestly, “No, I’m not.” I was scared that I’d been really hurt.
Then he asked, not knowing what else to say, “What was up with that?”
“I have no idea,” I replied, climbing back up to my feet. By that time the lab had run back toward its owner. There was no barking or malicious behavior on the dog’s part. I’ll never know what went through that dog’s mind as it took out my legs at probably fifteen miles an hour. It’s a happy pup that I’ve seen a few times at the park. It was just a doggone fluke. The price of random activity at the dog park.
I likely should have moved before the dog struck me. When dogs in a group are chasing and playing, they often lose their bearings and crash into each other or the people standing around watching the action. Dogs love physical contact just as much as people do. I used to love playing basketball at open gym because it gave me a chance bang into other people and let out aggressions. Did I get injured? Not that often. I was a good player and athletic enough to handle myself.
So I blame myself for getting splatted like a frog on the road. I should have known that the dog might well have seen that speed strike as a form of play. That’s the best explanation I can offer.
The dog’s owner wandered over to check on me after a minute, and I didn’t have much to say. Certainly I didn’t blame him for his dog’s actions. Shit happens at the dog park. I mean that literally and figuratively.
A few minutes after the lab took me out the play between Lucy and Apple turned aggressive. There was snarling and teeth and I stepped in to break it up.
We left after that. I know dog trainers aren’t big fans of open dog parks like the one we visit. It’s hard to predict what will go on because the behavior of dogs is so unpredictable and the level of training and control on the part of the owners is so randomly uneven. A few weeks back there were dogs that bit each other and that’s never good. It the same on the human playing field as well. The lyrics from the Pink Floyd Song “Dogs” reminds us of that:
You got to be crazy, you gotta have a real need You gotta sleep on your toes and when you’re on the street You got to be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight You got to strike when the moment is right without thinking
The knee grew a little sore by evening. I lay on the couch watching the movie Free Solo, which was hardly a relaxing endeavor. But it took my mind off concerns that the outside ligament might be damaged or that the meniscus inside my knee might be torn. I’m a year-and-a-half out from surgery to fix a previous tear and happy to be running pain free.
The good news is that I managed to run a hilly five miles this morning with Sue at the Morton Arboretum. The first two miles were a bit sketchy and ginger as the joint loosened up. The knee band that I’d used to hold the torn meniscus a couple years ago came in handy this morning as it provided a little back up stability.
It’s a doggone shame to pick up an injury anytime it happens. But the sight of that dog charging at me taught an important lesson. Never take the random actions of nature for granted. They can knock you to the doggone ground.
Walking Lucy on the former cross country course at Elburn Forest Preserve
Yesterday was a wonderfully dank November day here in Illinois. I needed to pick up a prescription at the Meijer store in Geneva and drove up to the corner of Route 38 and Randall Road. Our dog Lucy came along for the ride because she gets bored around the house. Outside the store, I looked west and thought it would be fun to take a trip out through Elburn on my way back home.
What I actually had in mind was a walk through Elburn Forest Preserve. That woods was a natural refuge for my brothers after we moved from Pennsylvania out to Illinois in 1970. We’d walk the railroad tracks out to the forest preserve to go birding. The preserve back then was mowed all the way into the woods. It served as the site for the Kaneland High School cross country course.
As a freshman at Kaneland I ran on both the sophomore and varsity teams. The course started on a long stretch of grass and turned toward the woods at 400 meters. Up the gravel road we’d go as the incline increased. The last fifty yards were the steepest. The wise runner ran steady below and saved some gas for that last climb.
The incline increases near the top of the hill at Elburn Forest Preserve
Then the course took a winding route through the woods. I well recall running that gravelly trail in my Puma kangaroo leather spikes with velcro tabs. Only once during those two years at Kaneland did I lead the entire pack in a race at Elburn Woods. It was a dual meet in which our top runner Bill Creamean had to withdraw with back problems. I took the lead at the mile marker and never looked back. There is no joy like that in the world.
A few years later, following graduation from college, I was invited back to run with the Kaneland squad in its preseason meet. By then I was much faster and stronger than most high school kids. I soared up the hill and found myself all alone for the rest of the race. But it was a nostalgic journey nevertheless. I so treasure those early cross country experiences for their influence on my life. Our coaches Rich Born and assistant coach Larry Eddington believed in us. It was always a thrilling experience to race through those woods as part of a team that was motivated to do our best.
Colorful fungi engage in the process of turning fallen trees into soil
The years have long passed since those days in high school cross country. I’ve returned many times to that preserve with binoculars and camera in hand for nature walks. It’s a strange sensation to realize that many of the trees I passed at full pace during races all those years ago are still standing in silent testimony to the years. Yet many have fallen as well. Now their trunks lay rotting on the forest floor where fungi grab hold and help turn them to soil. The fungi sport the pattern and color of nature’s uniforms. Human beings are no different. We decorate ourselves with colors and insignia to mark our tribal affiliations.
The K Varsity Letter earned as a sophomore in high school cross country
Over the last 45 years I’ve watched the lower woods at Elburn FP fill in with shrubs and trees where grass was once mowed and a white line once led runners through the trees. The grassy area where races once started and finished is now grown over with marsh plants in a soggy wetland. Going up the hill, a series of drainage ruts in the gravel road has grown so deep it would be a danger to legs and ankles if runners came through. It appears the racing days at Elburn Forest Preserve are well past. The forest preserve district has returned much of the property back to its natural state. And that’s fine with me.
There is no real loss in any of that. The shouts and cries of encouragement at cross country meets are both and ephemeral and eternal thing. The parents who once urged us on are also gone. Yet the clouds of mosquitoes that bit us on warm fall days and the falling leaves that riddled the course continue their rhythms unabated. Nature absorbs our energies and our memories.
Every cross country race is like that, a mix of brightly colored human endeavor amid autumn’s natural succession. All we can do is smile at those recollections and bear witness to the importance of these rituals to each new generation.
Finishing with my teammate Kirk Kresse at the Elburn Forest Preserve cross country course, circa 1972
Lucy with the Bontrager cycling glove I bequeathed to her because I lost the other one on a trip.
Our sweet dog Lucy is a puppy-level bundle of canine energy. She’s seven months old and loves running because she’s a 50% pitty mix with border collie, box and beagle mixed in. She has a nose for fun and isn’t afraid to run. Just like me.
Yet that makes it a challenging job to contain her behavior at times. She is still learning not to yank on the leash or follow her nose into the brush at ever scent. I’m always torn reining her in because her walks are obviously the highlight of her day. In summer she bounds after frogs into the green bushes. Now it has snowed. Everything’s brown and damped down. So now she sits and barks out the window at the fat squirrels hanging around our bird feeder.
“There used to be frogs here,” she might be thinking. Too cold now that autumn’s here.
But when she gets to the dog park it’s open season on fun. Trouble is, she can be overly assertive in her play. When the dog group is right she usually does fine. Her hyper nature passes after a few minutes and everyone gets along. But sometimes she sticks her nose where another dog doesn’t like it and some snarling ensues. Dog politics.
Of course dogs snarl when they’re at play too. Yesterday Lucy and a dog named Apple wrestled and played for a full half hour. While Lucy is fast, Apple was faster. So Lucy charged after her and Apple ran like a middle distance runner laughing at the 10K runner trying to keep up over a short sprint. Apple would glance back and you could see the playful look in her eyes while Lucy charged after with her back hackles up in frustration. Then they’d meet, wrestle some more and make a mess out of each other in the soggy grass. In fact she got so tired she trotted over to the gate and wanted to leave. That was a first for her.
Lucy has a white coat and she came home covered in mud. I took her to the tub for a bath and she was happy once she felt the warm water. Plus she smells better.
A tired dog is a happy dog, they say.
But thinking back to the dog park made me realize how much much alike dogs and people can be. The other dogs wrestled with Lucy over a stick and fortunately everyone got along. They usually do. But sometimes dogs get possessive and things get dicey for a moment. Just like people.
The sight of her running full bore around the big open field is worth the occasional intervention on my part. She’s getting socialized after being initially fearful of the whole dog park dynamic. Now my job is to teach her manners. That happens by regular visit. The other dogs also teach her too.
It’s all part of dealing at the dog park. Our goal is to get her tired enough each day to chill out when she’s at home. Then she can rest her head on our legs and dream about fun another time.
Self-portrait, Christopher Cudworth, November 1978
In November 1978 I was a senior at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Our team had just placed second in the NCAA National Cross Country Championships in Rock Island, Illinois. I was fifth man for the team that day after performing most of the season as our second runner on the varsity.
That was a large step up from the first three years of my college running career. I’d largely lurked in the bottom half of the Top 7, but still finished in the Top 10 in conference three times. So I was a contributor to our team success, just not the leader each season.
But thanks to my own running progression coming off a successful junior track season in which I set all my distance PRs from one mile to the steeplechase, I came to school that fall in good condition and ready to change my fate.
It also helped that I cut off the long hair and scruffy beard that had been my hallmark the year before. I fashioned myself a copy of Finnish distance runner Lasse Viren, and looked like him in the thinning hair and pale skin department. My thin chin beard also matched the look.
But it was time for a change, so that summer I told the barber to cut off my shoulder-length hair. That same week I got my first pair of contact lenses. I retained the mustache in keeping with a Steve Prefontaine or Frank Shorter look.
We ran hundreds of miles in training. Week after week I was second man behind my roommate, Dani Fjelstad, another Luther runner who took it upon himself to meet his true potential that season. He’d been similar to me in his cross country career at Luther, typically in the middle of the roster when he wasn’t hurt. He came to campus that fall in awesome shape, winning the Luther Invitational against a tough field, and many other races as well.
we pushed each other to lead the team, which was by happenstance beset by injuries to two of our best runners. That year a pair of freshman arrived on campus with keen credentials, so the stage was set for Luther to finally place at Nationals. We won several invites that fall, yet barely made it through regionals in 5th place.
So it was a shock to many that we placed second in the nation. Our margin of error was thin. We only beat the third and fourth place teams by a couple points. That made the sensations I felt in the last half mile seem surreal. I knew somehow that I had to pass people and let no one pass me. Time seemed to slow down.
After our triumph, I returned to campus to find myself behind in a couple courses. Our training and meets consumed so much time that I had to make up tests and finish other projects before the term ended. One of those obligations was a drawing course within my Art major. My professor John Whelan was himself a runner of note. But he believed in the merit of real college-level work in art. He informed me that there were still eighteen hours of outside-class drawing due to complete the course requirements. I had a weekend in which to finish the work.
So I recruited models and worked from studies of other great artists. The live models sat for me as life drawing subjects. But come Sunday evening everyone was busy with their own end-of-term work. So I sat down and started the self-portrait that would finish up the last two hours of drawing.
Recently while going through my portfolio drawers I stumbled on that drawing (first image in this post) again. I see the thin and determined face of a young man that had just completed one of the most challenging thirteen weeks of his athletic career. I was lean and fit as a hawk during hunting season. In fact the self-portrait has the head of a red-tailed hawk drawn next to it. That’s because I’d made a talisman from the talon of a road kill hawk and turned it into a necklace. It was my promise to myself that I’d get back to the art work after devoting myself 100% to the task at hand, a winning season.
Granted, I was not “national class” in the sense that I placed in the Top 25 to earn individual All-American status. I’d run 25:16 on a flat, fast Arsenal Island course on a cool fall day and placed around 60th overall. Dan Henderson of Wheaton College won the race in the low 23:00 range. A few years later I’d run 24:46 for five miles and that was as fast as I ever got.
But it took determination to do even what I did. Of that I’m proud and still feel those strains of determination within me to this day. It’s something you learn through effort, and keep the same way. The face may have changed with age, but the self portrait is a depiction of a spirit I’ll never give up.
Before hopping on the train to Chicago this morning, I slipped into the restroom at the Perk Up! cafe in the Geneva train station. The walls in that room were decorated with skeleton wallpaper.
The first image that stood out was the band of cycling skeletons.
I think I’ve ridden with some of those folks. Most of them seem to be wearing helmets. But not to worry if they’re not. It’s impossible to get a debilitating head injury if there’s nothing inside. And if you dare claim, “My legs are killing me,” the entire group ride will just laugh at you and say, “That can’t be true! You’re already dead!”
The next band of skeletons appeared to be having a fit of existential angst about their city life. I can certainly relate to their urban blues. Yet the pile of skeleton heads to the right is a bit disconcerting. But now it appears one of their kin is heading over to investigate. Perhaps he’s just looking for a friend. In the pile. Such is life in Skeleton City.
Whoa! Lookee there! If there’s such a thing as a Skeleton Hottie, I guess that babe with the boney hips with the cell phone and skelepup is one of them. Perhaps the skeledog walker had been trying to impress her with his deathly trie, but struck out because he couldn’t promise that he’d get a boner later on. Well, no worries. The gal in the sundress and shades seems to have gotten a chuckle out of that. Perhaps he’ll get lucky with her. Unless Mr. Alcohol gets there first.
But wait! It appears there really is romance in the skeleton world! Here’s a bride and groom about to bone up on their vows. They’ll love the part that says “Til death do us part,” because they’ve already knocked that one out of the park. Perhaps that’s the head of her Ex in the left foreground.
Who says skeletons aren’t up for a little old-fashioned fun? Here are a few skeletal folks enjoying the thrills of a Merry-Go-Round. Those first two horses seem jealous of the skeleton centaur in the lead. I guess the skeleton world is a bit more complicated than I thought. But the motif seems a little repetitive with skulls on top for decoration.
There you have it. So, from one bag of bones to another, here’s hoping your femur supports your tibia and all that nonsense. It’s all about putting one foot in front of the other in this life, even when you’re dead.
Last winter a friend advocating for gay rights through our church offered me a rainbow cap. It turned out the thing was comfortable, not cheaply made, and I wear it quite a few places. It keeps my head warm. But it also warms my heart.
The rainbow has come to symbolize LGBTQ rights in this world, and I fully support gay rights on every front. My son is gay and so are many of my friends and associates, and their children two. There is a gay female couple that lives at the front of our cul de sac, which fits the general diversity of our neighborhood with families that are black, Latino, Asian and white.
Recently while making calls for our Luther College class reunion, I touched base with a classmate that I knew was gay back in the day. But that period in history did not welcome people coming out of the closet. We talked at length about his experience during college and beyond. We compared notes about relationships and I was pleased to meet his partner at the class reunion.
It’s interesting to meet gay partners because it helps you realize that it is differences that make relationships work. My former neighbor was a gay man I’ll call Bill partner could not have been more different in personality from his boyfriend. While Bill was studious and religious in demeanor, his partner Derrick was rambunctious and irreverent. He loved to tease Bill’s mother Beth Ann, who adored the attention. Even Bill’s somewhat crusty, seemingly grumpy father Jack loved the celebratory nature of Derrick, who knew how to throw a party, among other things. And good old Jack loved a good party.
Those two gay men looked after Bill’s parent’s as age-related health faded for both of them. The other siblings helped some, but not much. They knew they could rely on Bill who took care of everything from the lawn work to gardening to their health care as needed. Jack almost died one year after contracting West Nile virus from a mosquito bite. Bill tended to Beth Ann in his father’s absence. It was not easy work. The complaint’s of elders can wear you down.
I shave my legs for cycling. Some people consider that effeminate. Tough luck.
Bill and I had many long conversations about life and religion. He was deeply Catholic, loved to go to church and recommended many religious authors to me. Bill’s reverence for life was obvious, especially expressed through respect and love for his parents. He never pretended to be perfect and addressed his own notions of sin with honesty and pragmatic. But I certainly never considered him what some would consider a “sinful” man. He was quite the opposite.
Bill is one of many such men and women that I have met over six decades of life. While my attitudes about gay or queer men and women were originally shaped by cultural prejudice and fear, those outlooks changed quickly once I got to know people who actually were gay, transexual or gender neutral.
I’m fairly sure that one of my cross country teammates, if not several over the years, were homosexual. One once tweaked by butt in the showers after a workout. I jumped and told him not to do that again, but that’s as far as it went. I’m pretty sure he was conflicted about his feelings and found it difficult to come out in that era. But he had a nervous habit of pulling hair from the top of his head that I think was a redirected aggression from denying his true sexuality.
When I lived in Lincoln Park in the early 1980s, I attracted from gay men in the city. One followed me on and off the bus several times before I told him to stop with the pursuit. Frankly I was a bit flattered but also disconcerted. My sexual leanings simply don’t go that directions.
Yet a friend and I once attended an intentionally wild party on the north side of the city and we wound up drunk and dancing in a dark nightclub. My friend hit the floor quickly but I stood back a bit looking for someone to invite when I turned to a friendly face next to me and asked for a dance. The young man turned to me and said, “I’d love to.”
Running has always been my way of coping with changes in life.
I was so shook that I took off out the door and ran home. The fear of “being gay” was still rife with me at that time. A long line of friends in sports had imposed their trepidation at “being queer” and in that moment, all those projected fears came together in a single instance. But what if I had stayed to dance that night? Would it have ended my world?
Likely not. It may have awakened me earlier to the notion that gay people are simply that. They’re gay. And they’re people. Their sexuality doesn’t necessarily determine who or what they are. Not in totality.
Which is why, by the time my own son came out to our family, I was fully reconciled to the normalcy of sexual orientation of many types. When my late wife asked my daughter, “What do you think of this,” Emily replied. “I think it means we both like good-looking guys.”
And that’s why I’m proud to wear the rainbow cap when I’m out and about. I’m pretty sure it raises some eyebrows among people who fear what they consider “gay culture” or the so-called “gay lifestyle.” There are many who claim that society is being taken over by people with a “gay agenda.”
If there is such a thing, it only means that gay people want the same rights as everyone else. Yet there are still court cases being tried on grounds that employers should have the right to discriminate against gay people and even fire them for their sexual orientation. Our own military is conflicted about gay rights, and the treatment of transgender people by the current administration is absurd.
Early in life, trying to figure out what type of person I was, or wanted to be. Friends could influence self esteem and machismo with a single comment.
It’s all the product of ignorance and for the most part, a product of religious prejudice and fears dating back four-thousand years or more. Select passages of the Bible indict gays as sinful people worthy of death. And some religious jerks still selectively emphasize those anachronism while dismissing other religious laws as irrelevant in the modern age. This is hypocrisy at its most hateful level.
The opposite is much more life-affirming. During a stop at our local Home Depot the other day, a young woman listened to me talking with a water heater supplier on the phone and realized that I might just be a nice person. Plus I was wearing my rainbow hat. Upon hanging up the landline phone at the desk, I smiled at her. She said, “I like your hat.”
I explained that my son is gay and she said, “I came out to my parents too. I’m really blessed that it’s no big deal to them.”
That’s how the world should be about the issue of gay rights. The ugly truth is that there are still people so selfish about their fears they feel the need to impose those illogical prejudices on others through cultural pressure and through law.
I’m going to wear my rainbow hat to challenge those perceptions in every way I can. People should not have to fear being gay any more than folks should fear being black, or an immigrant, or an artist, or whatever their orientation and pursuits may be. Life is far too short for that prejudicial bullshit.
So to hell with Trump and all this divisive dog-whistle bullshit that half the nation seems to admire. It’s all part of the same selfish, hate-based package. It’s a prejudicial, “I’ve got mine” mentality that feeds on notions of cultural entitlement and ugly tradition. I’ve run against that grain all my life, and I’m sure as hell not stopping now.
Josh Methner and Craig Virgin. Photo capture from Daily Herald Website. Link in story at right.
The day after the 2019 Illinois state cross country championship, I turned to the website of my former employer, the Daily Herald, to find a story by Michael Eakenof the record-setting run by a Hersey high school senior Josh Methner:
“Hersey senior Josh Methner ran to his second consecutive Class 3A title, running a time of 13:49.86 over 3 miles to set an IHSA state record at Detweiller Park in Peoria.
I was present the day in 1972 when Craig Virgin ran the course record that would last 47 years. As a high school sophomore standing on the sidelines with my Kaneland High School teammates, it was daunting to witness the soon-to-be-world class Virgin tear through the Detweiler Park course in Peoria, Illinois. How could anyone run that fast? My best times at fifteen years old were in the low 16:00 range.
It was not easy for a small school such as Kaneland to advance downstate in those days. I entered the cross country program at Kaneland as a freshman runner under coach Rich Born and assistant Larry Eddington in 1971. I ran varsity all season but dropped down to help win the sophomore conference title that year. The following year I was second man on the varsity squad that won the first-ever Little Seven conference title for the school. We ran in districts but did not advance.
That winter my father moved our family ten miles east to St. Charles. I led the team that next year to a district title and engaged in heady competition against runners in great programs from Elgin and Dekalb and Naperville in the Upstate Eight conference. Again our team did not advance through sectionals because we traveled east to compete in one of the toughest sectionals in the entire state.
Districts 1974, fourth place and advance to sections (378, second from left)
Those were great experiences in both programs. In a result perhaps unique to my own running history, this year both Kaneland High School and St. Charles East won state titles in cross country. So I can share in the joy of those victories, having contributed leadership in the formative years of those programs.
I never got downstate in cross country but witness that record-setting victory by Craig Virgin was a formative experience all its own. A few years back, I reached out to Virgin to inquire whether he had ever considered doing a biography of his life and career. Indeed he was already working on a book about his life with a sportswriter named Randy Sharer, whose diligent research and documentary writing style provided a vivid portrait in the book Virgin Territory. It is a compelling read, a chronicle of the obstacles Virgin overcame in his career, and an honest one at that.
It was interesting in the wake of that contact to get to know Craig Virgin as a person outside his career as a runner. We had lunch together at a Panera in the northwest suburbs of Chicago to talk about running, public relations and life in general. I’d only met Virgin once or twice before, initially through acquaintance with a sports podiatrist, Dr. John Durkin. I also watched Craig run intervals on the indoor track at the East Bank Club in Chicago. Like a shark among goldfish, he was.
That was in 1983 or so. Craig was already a legend in Illinois running by then. As it turned out, his running career would wind down after the 1984 Olympics. He remains the only American to have won the world cross country championships. And he did it twice.
Craig was present downstate yesterday to witness the somewhat unexpected breaking of his course record in Peoria. It must have been wistful and perhaps shocking for him to watch. No one really anticipated that result.
Yet it must also be gratifying for Craig to know that something he’d done literally stood the test of time for so long. The runners who nearly broke his record or followed in his historic wake were the best Illinois had to offer. Many went on to become Olympians on their own. That was a status Craig Virgin achieved three times. Yet he was robbed of his best chance to medal in the 1980 Olympics for reasons that sound beyond ironic in the contest of recent history…”In 1980, the United States led a boycott of the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow to protest the late 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In total, 65 nations refused to participate in the games, whereas 80 countries sent athletes to compete.”
Of course the United States has now been meddling in the politics of Afghanistan for seventeen years. It is America’s longest war and largely the product of an unwitting devotion to ideology over basic awareness of the danger in this world.
It all demonstrates the hypocrisy of politics and the insanity of war. But through it all, some efforts stand pure and real. Craig Virgin’s race that day in 1972 was one of those events in life that I was grateful to have witnessed. There was nothing false or ironic about it. Just the reality of a well-trained athlete soaring across an autumn landscape dotted with fallen leaves. When he crossed the finish line, we not only cheered, some of us cried.
It was something to witness. It surely was.
But time marches on and this young man who set the new record is the product of a new generation of runners. It must have been something to watch. That should give us hope in a world where so much falseness and hypocrisy persists, and even presidents claim valor for things they did not do.
Here for posterity and a testament to things that are real is a listing of the top times in Illinois cross country history:
13:49.86, Josh Methner, Hersey, 2019 13:50.6, Craig Virgin, Lebanon, 1972 13:52, Chris Derrick, Naperville (Neuqua Valley), 2007-3A 13:54, Lukas Verzbicas, Orland Park (Sandburg), 2010 13:56.6, Tom Graves (Sr.), Orland Park (Sandburg), 1977 13:57.7, Dave Walters, New Lenox (Lincoln-Way), 1973 13:59.3, Craig Virgin, Lebanon, 1971 14:00.0, Jim Spivey, Bensenville (Fenton), 1977AA 14:00, Jorge Torres, Wheeling, 1998AA 14:00, Jon Davis, Fithian (Oakwood) [Coop], 2015-1A 14:02, Soren Knudsen, Minooka, 2016-3A 14:03, Donald Sage, Elmhurst (York), 1999AA 14:05, Jack Keelan, Chicago (St. Ignatius College Prep), 2012-3A 14:06.0, Bill Fritz, Glen Ellyn (Glenbard West), 1973 14:07, Evan Jager, Algonquin (Jacobs), 2006AA 14:07, Lukas Verzbicas, Orland Park (Sandburg), 2009-3A 14:08.0, Len Sitko, Niles (Notre Dame), 1986AA 14:08, Danny Kilrea, LaGrange (Lyons), 2016-3A
At least I got to lead a group ride in Tucson for a while.
It hasn’t been by choice that I did not race a triathlon in 2019. The year started out strong with a training camp in Tucson. But perhaps there was an omen in that experience. While climbing Mt. Lemmon the temps dropped and the jackets we wore began to feel insufficient. On the way down the mountain we froze into locked positions on the bike and the neck problems I’d experienced over four days of camp turned serious.
On the way down a fear of crashing took hold. I pulled over to recover some feeling in my arms and my wife followed suit. We stood there a bit panicked at the prospect of riding more in that cold. When a gap in traffic appeared we eased onto the road and braked our way down the slope. The cyclometer still showed 26 mph.
At that moment a wasp flew at my face and stuck in the chin strap of my helmet. I felt a slight buzz and then a sharp sting as the insect tried to wrest itself free in the high wind. Two days later after arriving home from the camp my chin swelled up and my throat felt thick. Some ice took the swelling down but the incident scared me. You never know how your body is going to react to a bee sting from some place you’ve never been.
We kept training through April and chose to run a 10K in at the Morton Arboretum to prepare for the upcoming tri-season. The race finished in driving snow. That was the last time this year I’d make it to the starting line of a competition.
Crash course
The weird luck on the bike picked up again in May when I was riding on an incline approaching I-88 west of our home. Two cars were parked flush on the side of the white line next to the road. Some guy was trying to get roadside assistance for his broken-down GTO and stepped out from behind his wife’s tall white SUV right in my path when I was approaching. The front tire of my Specialized Venge struck him flush in the back. The force of the collision popped the tube and bent the bike wheel. I wound up lying on the road with what felt like a broken wrist.
A few weeks later after the wrist had recovered some, but not much, I was playing Sherpa for my wife’s half-Ironman in Madison and went for a trot during her bike segment. I ran on the dirt path toward downtown. On the way back my toe caught on a root while rounding a tree and I fell face-side-first in the dirt. My body also landed on my sore wrist. The hand was bloody as was my face, and covered with dirt to boot.
Toothy issues
Three weeks later a new problem cropped up with a sore tooth in my mouth. The root canal work took four separate tries with a real pro but the swelling in my face kept getting worse. And was it ever painful. I was exhausted for weeks from the stress of it all. The oral surgeon finally sat me down in the chair and said, without a hint of humor, “This tooth needs to come out or you could die.”
Such are the vagaries of second-rate dentistry…a few years back when I was self-insured or something I visited a dentist that did some bad work and it damn near killed me.
The clouds to the north on the morning of what would have been Race Day.
That scenario with the bad tooth took about seven weeks to take place. I wound up on heavy antibiotics and pain meds. Still, I was scheduled to race an Olympic triathlon in Lake Zurich and went to pick up my packet the day before. I stood at the Finish Line to take a pre-race photo because I hoped to make it there. But that afternoon the dentist called to tell me to be careful during treatment with anti-biotics. I couldn’t afford to stress my body much more.
It would all be for naught anyway. A storm blew in overnight and the entire race was canceled due to lightning and heavy rain. I turned my sights to September but logistically, those races were washed out as a cold month turned rainy as well. So here I sit in November without having done a triathlon all year. Even my plan to get certified as a triathlon coach got nixed when the organization holding the training lost my digital application. They called the week before and said “Hey, you’re in…” but it was too late. We’d made other plans.
The entire year was sort of a bust. I was signed up or in the queue to do no less than four different races. None of them happened. But oh well.
There’s a Turkey Trot in four weeks and a half-marathon after that. I’m not going to plan anything or hold my breath given the weird year of 2019. That said, I did some of the strongest cycling I’ve done in years using my newly converted Felt tri-bike. A cycling buddy warned me not to fix the thing up because he insists it could fall apart like a piece of old birch wood. But that’s the only thing that held together in terms of planning this year.
That’s one of the tarsnakes of life. You can never predict what kind of year you’ll have until you have it. Then all you can do is look back at the tracks of where you’ve been and try to make sense of it all.
