This morning a short headline appeared in my feed describing the fact that a firefighter had been killed battling forest fires in California. Perhaps you’ve seen video of that entire hillside in California pulsing with flames. Someone filmed it while sitting in traffic. The visual so closely resembled scenes from the movie This Is The End that one wondered if the apocalypse was indeed encroaching on our tender existence.
Those who work as first responders necessarily see the world from a different perspective than the rest of us. So do those who work in the military. The gap between how people who confront danger for a living versus those of us who court challenges for thrills through sports is quite dramatic.
Fighting fires
It’s an interesting scene at the finish of an Ironman when competitors run down the last 400 meters and people are banging on the barriers cheering them home. We think of them as heroes of sorts for having completed the Ironman distance. And that’s true in a sense. Personal heroics are legitimate endeavors that challenge us to discipline ourselves. We have to first light then put out the fires within us.
It’s different for firefighters caught in a dayslong battle with smoke and fire and heat consuming massive amounts of acreage. Those battles are primally external. I once watched a forest fire eating the top of a ridge outside Glacier National Park. The smoke blew out the tip of the fire like the exhalations of a sleeping dragon. There were helicopters flying giant buckets of water and fire retardant over the woods. They looked like orange locusts flying back and forth. Those efforts slowed the fires somewhat, but did not stop them.
Down on the ground, firefighters run the risk of being overwhelmed by smoke and fire. Lives can be snuffed out in a second. There are moments when all the training in the world means nothing if the right gust of wind or a turnabout fire gives life to the conflagration.
Yet there is great irony in the way firefighters sometimes do their jobs. They literally fight fires by lighting fires in advance of the approaching flames. Their job is to head the fire off at the pass by burning away the fuel that could help it grow larger or go new places. There’s a lesson in that approach for society in general. Sometimes it pays to fight fire with fire by confronting evil thoughts and actions at their source. That source might be wrongheaded religious or political beliefs, ignorance or prejudice, even sometimes basic selfishness. Some of these harmful outlooks can only be burned off at the source. Once they gain credence, they spread like wildfire. We’re seeing that fact come alive in America every day.
Admiration
I admire the people who do those jobs. Men and women, and all points in between. The idea that transgender people are not allowed to serve in the military when they’re willing to serve their country and face potential danger from enemies is absurd. It’s an arrogance, an idiocy of assumed authority to disavow them the right to serve when they are willing and able.
If someone is capable of protecting lives and the nation itself, their commitment surpasses every provision. I’m personally grateful to people who serve in fire and police departments. I’ve seen firsthand how paramedics and trained emergency personnel do their job. Watched them cart my loved ones off on a stretcher or driven by ambulance to the hospital. They do these things every day.
Thanking public servants
And while I’m out running or riding or swimming in open water I don’t take that commitment for granted. I’ve been scooped up by ambulance myself after a bike crash in the hills of Wisconsin. I trust the police who guard the streets during running and bike races.
It is so unfortunate that our police face threats from so many directions these days. My personal belief is that our gun laws are mightily flawed, and the national priorities are skewed toward selfish aims. When it comes to gun laws in America, we’re living in a Twilight Zone, defined as “a conceptual area that is undefined or intermediate.” And life in America has become a surreal experience in which one-man armies can mow down 50 people at a concert and the government doesn’t lift a finger to do anything about it.
Obviously millions of people disagree that we’re in a Twilight Zone at all. They happily support laws such as Concealed Carry as the solution to personal safety. I think that’s a fool’s game, and has proven to be so on multiple occasions. Thus I think it will be 100 years from now before anything changes. Thousands more people will die simply because people choose to ignore the first clause of the Second Amendment in favor of another that affirms their selfish beliefs. That simple yet inelegant choice is responsible for 30,000 people dying from gun violence of one kind or another every year.
And I say that’s a Twilight Zone if there ever was one.
Revenge is not so sweet and idea
It’s true that I’ve fantasized about carrying a gun myself during my bike rides. When vehicles threaten my life by buzzing me close or drivers scream angry words out the window or climb out of their vehicles wanting to start a fight over my right to ride on public roads, it feels good to imagine plugging their trunks full of bullets. I’m human. I’d like to seek revenge as much as the next person.
Yet I realize those are irrational thoughts, not the beliefs of a truly civilized person. This Concealed and Open Carry idea that we should bring back the Wild West with vigilante law enforcement by private citizens toting guns is beyond insane. Yet that’s how many Americans seem to think. They believe that it is better to take matters into their “own hands” with a gun than invest faith in those entrusted with the responsibility to maintain a safe and civil society.
Principles honest and right
I guess I have real faith in God that justice does prevail when people exhibit honest and right principles rather than walking around armed and pretending like everything’s normal about that. It’s not normal or what the Founding Fathers ever intended. We can be sure of that, because a ‘well-regulated militia’ does not operate in secret, or claim outright distrust of the government itself, much less express fears and prejudice and distrust that drives so many people to carry weapons.
Granted, some claim to only want guns for “personal protection.” Yet somehow millions of us manage to accomplish safe lives without the need for a gun on our hips.
Why is that? Why are some people so vested in the idea that violence is inevitable and an expected aspect of life? I think it’s because there is a basic misunderstanding of what constitutes real social justice. That is how criminals and enemies and those we brand “real evil” in this world actually thrive. They are empowered by the fact that fear is our first response to their presence. They see the distrust and feel justified striking out at those who most refuse to acknowledge their humanity, their religion or their raw insanity. It’s a simple fact of creating and opportunity and taking advantage of it. If disenfranchised people don’t see conventional means to achieve their aims, they will take drastic measures to gain what they want.
That’s why mass shooters are prone to suddenly “go off” with no seeming motivation for the killing. They are merely creating an opportunity for their own expression of hate or fear or disenfranchisement. It’s no more complex than that.
But it can be culturally driven as well. That’s why entire wings of a religion see fit to issue death threats toward perceived enemies, blow up abortion clinics or hide chronic abuse from the public eye.
That’s also why even those chartered to protect our lives in a police force learn to ‘protect their own’ lest they be exposed for having fears and insecurities of their own.
Acknowledgement
People who stand strong in the face of angry force and terror should be acknowledged and admired. But so should the seemingly weak and powerless whose case may not be clear to us, but whose irrational motivations or actions should not remain a mystery.
Certainly mental health issues enter this formula of acknowledgement and treatment. But so should violent strains of religion on every side. These need to be addressed not through war, but through confrontation of the very principles driving the insanity.
Martin Luther King, Jr. faced many of these cultural divisions and died by a bullet anyway. But in his ministry he spoke truths that have not been embraced to this day. Like I’ve said, I admire those entrusted to protect lives and serve in the police, military, fire and emergency worlds. But Martin Luther King, Jr. had words meaningful to the rest of us, that we should dwell upon while we’re out exercising our freedoms to run, ride and swim. Read this and give it some thought, and I’d love to hear what you believe about the real confrontations we face in the world today.
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Martin Luther King Jr.
As we look ahead to the new year, we should ask ourselves what sorts of thinking should be taking place when it comes to training for the next season’s triathlons.
Train for the 10K portion of the Olympic with running workouts designed as if that were the only part of the event you’re going to do. The combined effort of training long on the bike and doing increasing workouts on the run will push you in the right direction. It is the cumulative effort that represents the true “brick” of training. It’s not necessarily running right after a bike that’s so important. We all know what tired legs feel like by now. Yes, learning cadence and concentration is important through bricks, but you can also sacrifice the opportunity to actually get faster by doing all your run training on wobbly, post-ride legs.
This morning during the middle of an interval workout at the indoor track, the feeling of being healthy transitioned into gratitude. While my knee still has a torn bit of meniscus inside and my age works against getting faster year after year, my pace around the track felt as fun and challenging as ever.
It would have been possible in those moments to write myself off. Perhaps you’ve had that feeling during a race. “What will it matter if I do or don’t do my best? Who even cares?”
A week ago we returned from sunny Florida. It was eighty degrees every day. We ran in shorts and swam in the afternoon. I walked a boardwalk taking photos of semi-tropical birds. It was lovely.
So let’s talk about angles. That’s part of the reason why sunny Florida feels warm this time of year when windy Illinois feels cold as the freezer box at a grocery story. The northern hemisphere is currently tilted in relation to the angle of the sun’s rays. In summer the northern hemisphere is treated to longer days and warmer weather. In winter the days are cut shorter by the angle of the earth relative to the sun, and the power of those rays is not strong enough to overcome either the angle or shorter time the sun’s rays reach the northern portion of the earth.
Way up by the north pole of the earth, the days grow short during the winter and long during the summer months. The sun does not even set before another new “day” begins.
And it doesn’t help to pretend we’re all still running down a Yellow Brick Road.
Meanwhile the earth keeps tilting and the sun keeps roiling within itself. The sun’s rays course through 93 million miles of space to penetrate the earth’s atmosphere at whatever thickness it exists. It’s both a coarse and delicate process when you think about it. So much energy, yet rather precisely balanced to allow life on earth to exist and propagate. Some credit the power of God to that balance. Others give credence to time and the existential fact that everything must exist, or nothing would ever exist. It’s that simple.
So this morning as I stood over a small salt granule on the sidewalk outside my office, I studied how the angle of the sun cast a long shadow even with that tiny object. Then I bent down to look at the cool blue tone of the shadow, and the cold hard appearance of that salt granule. It would melt soon enough, and return to the earth. That is what it is designed to do: fight the ice on sidewalks so that people can walk and ride and run down those paths without falling on their ass. We can imagine we’re separate from nature all we want, but it isn’t true. There are seven billion people on this earth. All of those individuals will someday day and rot away like cosmic road kill, only to replaced by others waiting their turn to “run the race set before them.”
The Illinois running community has produced some famous coaches over the years. Decades ago there was Ted Haydon, the former leader of the University of Chicago Track Club. His athletes included world record holders such as Rick Wolhuter and many others.
That is why it is so interesting to compare and think about the career of North Central’s Al Carius as a coach. In five decades of coaching in college cross country, Carius repeatedly has taken high school runners with mediocre resumes and weak PRs and turned them into national champions. A kid might come into the program with a 10:20 two mile PR and emerge from college having run under nine-minutes for the distance.
Those plans went up in smoke when the developers refused to give the most interested hospital any money for use of their name. Perhaps there were other factors at work as well, but declining the hospital any value for their name was plain selfish and stupid.
the health plan with my employer there’s a monthly stipend of $25 to pay for fitness center membership so it makes sense to point that toward the local club where I can get a workout in during the day if I like. Membership there is exactly $25 per month.
hard against the wall. My feet punched a hole in the drywall. I was so shocked in the moment that I drove straight home clutching my shoulder, which really hurt. Then I called my buddy who owned the club and said, without explanation, “I just put a hole in your wall.”
lifts I brushed against the bar end of a machine and the black plug that seals the metal tube fell off. Oh well, I thought, and put it back on.
So I can see the value of both types of facility in this world. The local, privately owned health club cuts the mustard for many people. I don’t think it’s got the same energy as when my friend owned and ran the club. He had trained fitness coaches on his staff, and there were classes of all types.
Yesterday morning my wife and I noticed a pair of coyotes walking the path behind our house. Our yard backs up to a wetland that attracts wildlife year-round. Rabbits lurk in the hedge between our property and the tall grasses behind.
By comparison I have the relative motivation of a koala bear crawling the limbs of a eucalyptus tree for leaves to munch. If they’re in reach, I’m all good. If they’re not, I sit there a moment with my eyes half open hoping the winds will blow enough to bring the leaves closer. At least that’s how I feel after she leaves our warm bed in the morning and I’m still there under the covers.
Or maybe it was like being in my own beaver den below the ice and freezing waters of a winter pond. Warm in my pelt of thick, soft fur, the world outside could not reach inside my huddling den.
What other places in the world could be so cozy and warm?
From the evidence of recent news reports, it appears that every penis on the planet has now officially either been photographed and either sent as a text or exposed directly to a member (pun intended) of the female human race. So it’s time for some serious discussion as to why this habit of men exposing themselves is so common.
Yesterday I visited Lettuce Lake, a nature reserve park east of Tampa, Florida. The park is situated next to the University of South Florida on the Hillsborough River. The environment is classic backwater swamp habitat. Big cypress trees with characteristic “knees” line the waterways. All other ground in the river basin is soggy if not completely immersed under deep vegetation and methane-freckled water.
I went there specifically for the birds, but there were plenty of people tromping around the boardwalk path that snakes through the woods. My feet were tired from a morning run of five miles, so I wasn’t in for a huge-ass hike anyway. I could have done a quick stint at Lettuce Lake and headed north for a much larger preserve east of Spring Hill on the way home, but something told me to stay put.
Most of the bird action was not focused above, but within feet of the walkways. Hung on the moss-covered trees were large flocks of white ibis. Their voices sound digital, clucking and chucking like a video game stuck in repeat. The requisite white egrets were there too, but I can get them at home too.
Instead, I wanted to see real Florida birds, and was not disappointed to hear the calls of Limpkins carrying through the woods. They hunt for large snails to eat in the deep muck, and can’t be seen while wading through the tall “lettuce” of water plants. So I cheated and played a limpkin call on my bird app and like magic, a limpkin head popped up from the green void looking for the source of the call.
I’d see several more before the day was through. Their olive-green plumage flecked with white streaks was perfect coloration in the deep shadows. Then I saw an individual within ten feet of the walkway plunge its head into the water and pull out a large black snail. “There,” I thought ot myself, “Is the source of life itself.”
I decided to walk even more slowly, and so things turned up that I might otherwise have missed. There was a modest-sized alligator lolling on a dirt hummock. Its dark skin was lumped with spikes and knobs. It looked so quiet it was hard to image such a creature could move quickly. We all like to think we’re faster than other animals in nature, but it isn’t true. Not for the average human being anyway. While visiting this time around, I golfed with my brother-in-law and we recalled the news story in which a father wading in a pond with his child in Central Florida was horrified to see a large gator take his child out from his grasp.
So it’s a bit of a desperate balance we seek to achieve by setting up parks such as Lettuce Lake. Lifted above the muck and water by the boardwalk, there are not many dangers to encounter. The cool reminder of this safety was a water moccasin coiled on a hummock just below the trail. It had the prototypical diamond-shaped head of a poisonous snake. Those venom sacks take up space in the head. So do the fangs.
As the evening sun sank lower the birds settled into a heavy feeding pattern. I saw a white phase Little Blue Heron and then a giant white Wood stork with its naked, bare head. These birds are still threatened by diminished habitat in Florida. They need plenty of accessible food and the human population down here is hungry for land as well. While elderly come here to retire, the birds only hope of survival is this spit of land sticking down into the Gulf of Mexico.
We Run and Ride 