Question of the Day

A few days short of his fifth birthday, Zen Master W challenges a widely used sportscasting statement: “In a game where the score is zero to zero, how come the announcers say, ‘There’s no score yet,’ when the score is zero to zero?”

Well, philosophers, linguists, and other honored guests, I do believe the boy has a point. Though neither team has scored, the game does indeed have a score. Chalk another one up for the little guys.

A Chronicle of Minor Negligence and Irresponsibility (pt. 3)

Six Things I Didn’t Do Last Week:

• Clip my toenails.
• Dine with a Middle Eastern potentate.
• Dine with a scion of American industry.
• Take home a puppy from the humane society.
• Take vows of any kind.
• Sing along with The Everly Brothers in the car (though I do confess that I did sing along with Van Morrison’s Moondance, the album, not the track, which I skipped each time it came around).

For English Teachers Only: Poems to Teach Alongside Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five

• “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen
• “why must itself up every of a park” by E.E. Cummings
• “next of course to god america i” by E.E. Cummings
• “i sing of Olaf glad and big” by E.E. Cummings
• “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell
• “On Being Asked to Write a Poem Against the Vietnam War” by Hayden Carruth
• “Plague Victims Catapulted over Walls into Besieged City” by Thomas Lux

• "At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border" by William Stafford

Bipolar Runner’s Disorder

I mentioned recently how easily I can go from Walter Mitty heights of imagined glory to the equally convincing depths of unworthiness during a single run. Well, the same thing happens (perhaps not surprisingly) from day to day as well.

Last week I had a couple of very successful runs. On Thursday I finally broke the 30-minute barrier for the first time in 2008 with a four-mile run, then on Saturday I went six, my longest run since November 2007. I felt like I had broken out of my rut, and was on my way to being in good enough shape to really start my marathon training program.

Of course, the two runs after that were sluggish and disappointing. I barely made thirty minutes one day, and opted for twenty the other. The bad runs were followed by two days off, when I either didn’t have time to run, or didn’t make time. One of them I woke up early enough to sneak in a workout, but I couldn’t convince myself to get out of bed. Two bad runs followed by two days off had me questioning whether I had any right to be attempting a marathon. I certainly didn’t feel like a real runner.

Yesterday, after the two days off, I went out slowly and had a relatively decent run. I was weary by the end, but I picked up my pace over the course of the run rather than flagging in the later stretches, and perhaps even more importantly, the ankle joints that have been extremely tight all winter and into the spring are loosening up, so I felt like I was running instead of just shuffling.

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A Chronicle of Minor Negligence and Irresponsibility (pt. 2)

Five things I didn’t do this week:

• Go to church.
• Swim laps at the Y.
• Spray chemicals on the lawn.
• Plan the ascent of a major peak requiring Sherpas and oxygen tanks.
• Go to a honky-tonk looking for trouble.

Good News!

The route I've been running that I estimated at around three miles is actually 3.5. That means I've been going a touch farther and a touch faster than I had been giving myself credit for. A nice boost on an off-day—added a couple miles to my weekly milage with a few clicks of the mouse.