On Running and Old Souls

My Russian translator, Maddie, just started her own blog. So if you like to read about running, but get slightly queazy every time I post something, then take a look. You won't regret it!

http://www.oldsoulmarathoner.wordpress.com/

Reading her blog made me think back to when I first started running. I wrote about it here, and probably elsewhere. But I actually ran even before that.

When I was... 11? It doesn't matter, it was a million years ago. When I was really young, I would run around the block at home and listen to Kris Kross on my Sony Walkman. Yes, that was a thing that played tapes. Tapes. Nowadays you can just tell your phone, "Play me music, phone!" And it'll probably do it. If I asked my phone to play Kris Kross, it would say, "dang your old."

Maybe they're still around. I don't know.

It was about a mile, the run. Although as a kid it was a long distance. I think mostly I wanted to have an excuse to use my Walkman. Actually, I listened to a lot of rap as a kid. I had no clue what any of the songs were about. I just liked that they rhymed. In retrospect a lot of the songs were.... not good for kids.


Most of the stuff had "parental advisory" stickers on it. My dad didn't care. He got me whatever would shut me up. Although, thinking about it now, it probably pained him. Seeing as he was a musician with a Double Masters from the Moscow Conservatory of Music. And I was asking him to get me stuff that was basically a guy rapping about killin' and pillagin' over some borrowed beats.

Shrug. I went to one of his baroque concerts recently. I'm hoping that made up for a childhood of me being a $hithead.

When I was in high school, one of my gym teachers said I should do track. I don't think it was because I was fast. It's just that I was the only kid in gym who actually ran when he told us to run. The other kids had friends, so they would walk together and talk about.... rap music maybe? I had no friends so I would just run in circles.

I didn't join track, because I didn't want to miss my soaps after school. No I'm serious. I would go home after school and watch soap operas. It was the only thing that was on at 3pm, and I got totally swept up with all the crazy drama. "She has how many babies with how many dudes now? How does she maintain her figure?!"

In retrospect I wish I had joined track. Or done anything in school really.

"You mean I could just do a LOT more of this?"

In my early twenties I had a 5 mile loop with one big hill I did. This was at a time when you had to measure distances with a map and a piece of string. I didn't stick with it for very long. I think without counting calories and tracking my runs with a watch, it's hard for me to give a $hit.

Interestingly, I've run that same loop, or overlapped it, many times since. The hill in the middle is really steep, but I can smash my way up it without much issue. I recall it being really hard when I was young. I'd be all winded and stumbly by the time I got to the top. So that's cool.

And then for most of my 20's I got really fat and lazy and did almost nothing other than sporadic weight-lifting. Without the structure of school, I just dissolved into a pile of over-indulgent laziness. "You mean I can do anything I want?! Booze and snacks please!"

"Screw future me. This looks awesome now."

And then after I turned 30 I turned all that around. But I've mostly documented that elsewhere in this blog at this point.

When I was young, I didn't really get the idea of fitness or health or anything. Running was just a thing you did because you weren't good at like soccer. I started lifting weights in college right around when I turned 19. I knew that would make me look less scrawny, so that was like a visible benefit. But I was still blessed with youthful metabolism, so I didn't "get" running at that point either.

Now that I count calories, running isn't necessary for me to lose weight. I wasn't running for the first 3 months that I started counting calories and I still lost about 30 pounds in that time. Running does let me eat more, which is fun, but that's a double edged sword. Before I quit drinking, running would actually cause me to drink more. After I quit drinking, running made me eat too much ice cream.

If such a thing is possible.

And yet I can't imagine not running anymore. It's meditative. Throughout my entire life I never had a sense of purpose or direction. I think you can tell that from the story above. Running is a thing I always do. It gives me meaning. It gives me a goal. It gives me a sense of power, control, structure, and accomplishment.

And at this point, I can't imagine quitting. Because I can look at the story above. I can look at the aimless loser I was as a kid. The meandering overweight 20-something. And all the other struggles in between. It immediately reminds me why I run. Why I need to run.

If I don't run, I don't have an excuse to wear a kilt!!

Fat is Normal

My caveman ancestor, Krog, was not a disciplined man. He wasn't thin of frame because he had the perfect diet nailed down, or because he was moderate in his eating habits. No, most likely it was because he was frickin' starving all the time.

And he didn't run to build strength or endurance. He did it to catch animals and look for water and - if he was lucky - an occasional bit of edible vegetation. Otherwise he preferred to just relax, paint some walls, throw some bones, push his friends into porcupines, that sort of thing. Krog was a big fan of laziness.

That's how we evolved. We're awesome at conserving energy. And if for some reason we're lucky enough to eat a few extra calories, it's immediately stored as fat for later use. That makes good sense! Having a bit of extra belly was a sign of prosperity! Good times were clearly being had!

Krog having a good time. I imagine he would
look a lot like my brother Alex.

We don't have to chase after our food anymore. We don't have to dig through the dirt and pray that the fungus we find is edible. We can just walk a couple of blocks and order literally a million calories of food if we wanted to. I mean, it would take them all day to make that many burgers and fries, but they could flippin' do it. They have the stock.

It's actually a miracle that we all don't explode from overeating. Food these days is blasted full of salt, sugar, and fat. All of it. Even your "healthy" breakfast cereal has sugar, salt and fat. These things were rare to Krog. So our bodies find them extra delicious. That's why you never get full from potato chips or ice cream. You could eat those for hours nonstop and still want more.

So if you take Krog and suddenly dump him into the modern age with access to all the food he wants.... He would eat it! And he wouldn't run around. He would sit on a soft fluffy thing and stare at the box with the magic sounds and colors and eat food all day. And it would be amazing!

The only reason the rest of us don't do this is because at some point our parents told us, "you can't do that."

"But why mommy? Why can't I just eat and watch TV?" You asked plaintively.

"Just... you can't. That's why."

"But why not?"

"Because I said so! Go outside you little snot!"

"But moooommy, I'll freeze to death!"

And televisions weren't addictive enough. You could at least get out of earshot of a TV. So they created devices that are literally on our persons 24 hours a day. They call them "phones", pretending that you had to carry it for, like, emergencies. And eating potatoes wasn't addictive enough, so they chopped them into bits and deep friend them and drenched them with salt. So soooo tasty.

And then it's your fault that you don't go outside and interact with real people anymore. And it's your fault that you're fat.

This is normal. You still have Krog's genes. You're just behaving the way your body was designed. All that stimulus and constant access to exceedingly addictive things.... How can you possible resist that?

By being not normal.

Exercising is not normal. That's why when a normal fat person sees an abnormal person running, they give them the stink eye. Eating broccoli when doughnuts are available is not normal. That's why there's lots of doughnut drive-thrus and zero broccoli drive-thrus. Nobody wants to be able to get raw crunchy broccoli at any time of day.

Except for not normal people.

The day I decided to stop being fat and to start eating less food and exercising more is the day my mind snapped. This wasn't a sane decision. Up until that point my body had been very happy being stuffed with addictive substances all the time. The only reason I had was vanity. Seriously. I wanted to look like.... less of me.

I'm glad I'm not normal.

"That's great and all but I can't survive on grapefruit."

Or at least that I wasn't at the time. But I've been at this for long enough now that I feel normal. And the other people like me seem normal too. And the people who don't exercise every day and who don't prefer broccoli over doughnuts are suddenly the weird ones for me. I mean, those people still outnumber us by a long shot, but we can outrun them!

Mostly now I can hang out with people who are crazy like me. And maybe Krog would be disappointed at me. But then again maybe he would enjoy us hunting a furry beast together.

---

That was supposed to be the last paragraph. You can tell because it has a satisfying conclusion about chasing tasty fur covered meat balls. But I wrote it yesterday and now I feel like writing more. But if your eyes are tired you can just close your browser window. And your browser. And your computer. And go outside for a run.

Just kidding. Eat a pie instead.

It's easy to blame "evil corporations" for smashing us with horrible but very cheap and delicious food. And it's easy to blame them for turning children into mindless automatons addicted to likes and thumbs-ups.

But it doesn't do you any good. It just makes you angry. They want your money. They're evil geniuses at making your spit that money up in slimy wads. Just accept it and deal with it. Thankfully you have a prefrontal cortex that says, "maybe don't eat all of the cake."

Sure, it can be an uphill battle. But you can manipulate your own mushy brain as well as Oreo ads can. I've convinced myself that I have to exercise every day or I will die a terrible death. Tomorrow. And I don't let myself eat until I've earned it. And I still loooove food.

Not all food though. I won't eat anything with hydrogenated oil because I want to live past 40. That automatically knocks out a huge number of snacks. I won't eat boxed cereal, because 7am is too early to eat candy that's pretending to be nutritious. And so on. High fructose corn syrup. Oh sure there's all sorts of studies that are saying, "no, it's like, totally fine." But who knows who's paying for those. And just assuming that it's a deadly poison makes it easy for me to avoid another huge heap of empty calories.

"Screw you deadly poisons!"

But accept the fact that you're human. You want to relax and creep on your "friends" on social media. You want to eat a whole box of cookies. That's normal and doesn't mean you're evil or weak. Don't let guilt be the thing that drives you to action. It'll fail. And then you'll feel more guilty. And fall into an endless pit of despair. Ask me how I know.

Just decide to be insane. However that's defined in your book. Break your own brain. Make crazy things into normal things. You have to fake it for a while, but eventually it will feel normal. And normal will suddenly look crazy to you.

I know. It's super weird. But it works. It really does.

[Something about chasing furry animals into the sunset.]

I ran a marathon at 12:01am, Jan 1

I blew up the social media with my announcement at about 4:20 this morning, so people are probably tired of hearing about it by now. "Oh look at you. You ran a marathon at midnight New Years. Shut up and eat a cake."

I can't help it. It was an extra crazy thing. Even for me.

I first got the idea when the LUNAR group created an event to run a virtual race in January to promote VHL research. Von Hippel-Lindau is what LUNAR's founder, Shawn, has been battling. He is a powerful inspiration and the group he created has motivated hundreds of people to run more. It is only fair for us to give back!

The event was to run a half-marathon (or shorter). The entry fee was a $1 donation for each mile you wanted to run. I put in 26, because it was a good cause. And then I thought, "well, ok, I guess that means I have to run a marathon?" And because I'm a jerk, I figured I should be the first person to complete the race.

So, I'm generous, but also I'm an a$$hole. Sounds about right.

I went to a New Year's Eve party at a friend's house that's about 18 miles from my house. I figured if I threw in a few extra miles, that would work out pretty great. So I was that crazy guy who brought running clothes to a party. There's always someone like that at every party. AmIright?

The same guy who puts on nipple tape at parties.
Photo cr. Alex

My friend who threw the party (and also the same friend who gave me Haiko, my awesome kokeshi running companion!) made me a ton of coffee. She thought I was insane, but you can't talk down an insane person. Just drench them with caffeine I guess. Before long everyone wanted to know about this ridiculous run, even though I just wanted to sit on the couch and stare at the clock!

Haiko's smiles conceals her judgment when I don't run...

I changed into my clothes at about 11:30, kilt included. And at 12:01, while my sister was singing Old Lang Syne, I shouted "Happy New Years!" and ran out the door. I tried to avoid breaking my legs on the steep stairs, because that would've been embarrassing. Then I was running in the middle of street, aglow with my headlamp and Geoffrey's running vest.

The roads were clear. The weather was perfect. And even though it was New Year's, the few drivers I encountered gave me a wide berth. Maybe they thought hitting me would infect them with the same insanity I apparently suffer from.

I hadn't tapered for this run at all. I had been off work all week. For most people that means eating lots of chicken and pie. For me it means exercising three times as much. Just a few hours previously I had swam and bicycled. The two days prior I ran a total of 18 intense miles. So no, I was not fresh.

Before pic. Cr. Alex

The run was glorious. There's something about running in the middle of the night that's... visceral. I felt like an animal. An animal covered in blinking lights. I just ran and ran, winding up the miles.

I'd tried not to think too much about the run beforehand, because thinking always screws me up. When I hit about 10 miles, I remembered that marathons were, like, hard. And I didn't have any food, water, fellow runners, or cheering spectators. Just me, all by myself, alternately sweating and freezing. I was sore and tired, but I didn't have anything else to do other than keep running.

Usually I manage to keep my mind occupied on long runs, but I was too tired to think. I felt every long mile. Every 5 miles I took off my glove and txted a few people to let them know I was alive. My brother stayed up and replied with encouraging comments. Meghan woke up every time her phone dinged. My best friend D passed out after mile 5. My Russian translator, Maddie, slept blissfully through the whole thing.

Mostly it was just me in the dark, running for a very long time. I thought about why I was doing it. There's really no reason to! I can just eat donuts and drive everywhere like the vast majority of people. And they get by fine. They have health insurance and alcohol. It's fine. There's no reason to torture yourself.

Finally, after a very long time, I saw the brightly lit Lowe's in my home town. I've never been that happy to see it. I'd already run for about 23 miles. I'd like to say I sprinted the rest, but I was exhausted. And I overshot the distance, so I ended up with 27 miles. I stopped in the middle of Main St., the drunken New Year's Eve party-goers had long since gone home to sleep off their hangovers.

Well there was one guy out at 4am, appearing confused as to why everyone else was gone.

My brother Alex was sitting on the couch, waiting for me to get home. The one guy at the finish line cheering me on. It was pretty awesome. Really awesome really. I can't do what I do without the amazing people in my life constantly motivating and encouraging me.

After pic. Cr. Alex

I climbed into my car that Alex had driven back for me, shivering violently as I blasted heat on myself. My body hurt. It took me about 20 minutes before I could drive home. Plenty of time to annoy the world via social media.

I barely slept.

I love adventure. Life can be boring. It can very easily be boring. And I get why people like boring. It's comfortable. It's easy. It's reasonably pain free. And there's plenty of drugs to make us feel good so we don't notice the boring. TV, smart phones, booze, food, whatever. But.... I just can't do that. There's always a moment, when you look up from staring at your phone while driving. That moment when you accidentally glance at yourself in the mirror.

That one moment is all I need to remind myself why I seek the adventure. And the many hours outside in the dark gives me plenty of time to think, "yeah, I'm f@#king doing this." It's quite exhilarating. I. Am. LIVING.

NBD