Walk, Don't Run

I used to run. In my youth. And not badly. A 4:56 mile once, a 9:54 two-mile. A 36 minute 10K. A single 10-mile run, but never a marathon (that’s crazy). I hated running mostly, the oxygen debt, that completely arbitrary left-side rib stitch, and, seriously, the pointlessness. At least now, for an old guy. Even in youth, I never experienced the mythical “high.” In middle age I stopped running with any regularity, a recurrent, persistent calf cramp would lock me up at about the 1.5 mile mark. My brother, the PT, chalked it up to “athletic deconditioning,” and so the deconditioning continues, happily. Now I tread the treadmill and ellipt at the gym for exercise and quietly, to myself, mock runners and running, the ridiculous gaits, the obvious labor of unrunnerly bodies, runners’ naïve hopes, and their burgeoning, misplaced self-righteousness. I make exceptions; for example, for Bill, a friend who sports a greyhound like physique, and a former graduate schoolmate of mine, Fred, who, with 100,000 miles now behind him after thirty-seven years of consecutive daily runs of at least 2 miles, among others. Which is not to say that I understand them or share their enthusiasm for that particular form of masochism, but I grant fetishists a bit of leeway.

Last week, for reasons I won’t elaborate upon—senior moment—I experimented with a return to running, beautiful weather for it and a lovely course along the river greenway. After lacing up, I made it about a mile before the slightly winded tedium of soulless exertion set in, long before any calf-cramping or the serious build-up of lactic acid. I slowed to a walk. Walking felt about right. I tried half a dozen times over the next 5 miles to pick the pace up even to a jog, but to no avail. Why run? Whereto? And I had to pee. Twice. A young man breezed past me on the bridge in a shirt that declared oxymoronically “Run and Fun.” He passed me again on that loop at the same pace (little fucker), but I was not convinced. I have already arrived at old age, to stroll, saunter, ramble, loiter.

Borland's

It’s Father’s Day, and I’m watching the final round of what used to be known as the Bing Crosby Golf Tournament at Pebble Beach, a landmark course celebrating its one hundredth year. I’ve mowed the lawn and will smoke my pipe on the stoop this evening on the lookout for the full moon and brood just a little on the passing of time and the unequal fates of landmarks.

The summerscape of my childhood is gone now to wrack and ruin, the remnants of the par-3 built by my father and my avuncular godfather in 1960. Uncle Dickie died years ago. Many now, most golfers of those days are dead; long extinguished their cigarettes and their occasional victory cigars, King Edwards, R.G. Dun, Dutch Masters, White Owl Invincibles. They’ve all been vinced, vanquished, except my father, whose handiwork now passes away. Golf is comatose here, though the course is strangely more alive than ever. Nine fairways are wildly overgrown with clover, broad leaf, cinque-foil, thistle, hardwood seedling. Nine greens preserve only faint outlines among these prolific new meadows. Eight flags lie flat in perfect disuse, marking nothing but demise. Number 1, alone, remains upright, but slanting irrevocably earthward. That landscape, once of seemingly endless and objective summer, is ending, with only its inscape surviving in memory. Though more than a little sad to me, its return to nature nevertheless has real beauties. If Borland’s becomes real estate, alas, sections of a bedroom community, those beauties will disappear as well—for me anyway. But perhaps, children, or a single child, will find their own edenic garden here on the lawn in what will become their own backyard.