I'm a Runner

I am a runner...again.  In 2001, I decided I was going to run a marathon and I started running with an eye toward that goal.  I have always been somewhat athletic but in the darker days, months, and years of my young adulthood, I had a hard time maintaining an exercise program.  In 1993, at 33 years old, I went off to Army Basic Training because, for one reason, I wanted to get back into shape and, for another reason, I figured it was smarter for me to get paid to get away from the juice for a few months rather than to pay someone for that privilege.  The point is, I've always aspired to fitness even when the demons conspired against me.

So I was going to run a marathon, but I didn't, not in 2001.  In 2001, I found out how running in the wrong kind of shoes can cause injury and how running on a steeply slanted road can hurt you on longer runs and how heat effects me when I run and a lot of stuff like that.  I kept getting injured and canceling races until I finally just stopped in December and took it easy for a month.  Toward the end of the month, I recommitted.

In January, 2002 I started running consistently and building up my mileage slowly.  I figured out the right shoes and training gear. I added track workouts and tempo runs to my weekly long runs.  I designed training plans and logged my runs online. In July, I started driving to Memphis to compete in the Memphis Runners Track Club race series that goes from July through November and I ran the race-a-month required.  We started with a 5k in Overton Park and ended with a half-marathon on Singleton Parkway, going up in race distance each month.  On December 7, 2002, a few weeks after celebrating my sixth year of sobriety, I stood at the starting line of  the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville, Alabama.

Despite the bitter cold and strong winds, I had one of the most perfect moments of my life while standing at that start line.  It came to me that there was nowhere in the world I would rather be at that moment than right where I was. For that moment, I could not improve on my circumstances.  I was blinking back tears when the gun went off.  Every step after 20 miles was a new record for me and although I went out a little too fast, all in all, the race went well. 

In 2003, I ran the New York City Marathon and the next year, the Marine Corp in D.C.   I ran 1800-2000 miles a year during those years and did a lot of shorter races.  In 2007 I did a good bit of trail running before doing the Stump Jump 50k, a trail race on Signal Mountain in Chattanooga,TN and the only race I have done that is longer than a marathon. A month after Stump Jump, I completed  my seventh and final marathon,the Flying Monkey Marathon at Percy Warner Park in Nashville, TN.  Although I intended to run a marathon a year in law school, I just didn't make it to the line. 

I got in great running shape in my second year of law school in 2009 and I have no doubt I could have PRed at the marathon distance at the end of the year.  But, I had some nagging injuries and just not enough time to run as long in training as is required to get where I want to get before I commit to a marathon. See, I am not interested in just "doing" marathons; I like to run marathons as fast as I can.  And  "as fast as I can" is precisely what I mean.  Genetically, I am not set-up to be a front pack runner.  I accepted that long ago and I now compete against myself, sometimes using other runners as motivation.   If I don't reasonably feel ready to run as fast as my ability will let me, I don't line-up. While in law school, for a variety of reasons, I just couldn't get there. I did run three half-marathons in 2010, however, before finally slacking off.

Now I am about twenty-twenty five pounds heavier than my best running shape.  Not all of my gain is fat, there is some muscle under there because I have continued to mess with kettle bells and push-ups along with the occasional run or elliptical workout.  Regardless, I am heavier and I feel it when I run.  I am a good minute a mile slower on my easy runs and they are not all that easy.  This week, though, I started to feel a little spark on my runs.  I started to feel like I could maybe crank it up if I wanted to.  I wasn't feeling that at all for awhile.  This week I will run 22 miles total and next week I will go to 25 assuming there are no issues.  I run early in the morning and I have been looking forward to getting out there for the first time in a long time.  There have been cool mornings lately and there are cooler days coming.  It won't be long before the tights and gloves come out - My favorite time of the year.

I'm going to do 6ish in the a.m. and I am looking forward to it.  I'll start at the Square and head over to Molly Barr for some hills and then maybe run up University to Fraternity Row.  I like running across the campus on early mornings and especially on weekend mornings.  Tour de Ole Miss.  I'll run down the hill by the baseball field and turn up Old Taylor and back up the hill to Faulkner's house.  It will be flat after that and  I'll work my way back toward the Square, glide by the coffee shop (I always speed up when I run by the coffee shop) and finish at the Courthouse.  My third week back will be in the books and by tomorrow night I will be daydreaming about Monday morning.

Performance Art Piece as a Law Student (My real law school story) - Part One.

I visited New York City in the late 1970's in order to study Method Acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actor's Studio.  Because I didn't want others to realize that I was acting in many of the subsequent roles I played, I kept it a secret from all but a few close friends.  At the time, I claimed that I had attended an Ayn Rand's Objectivism convention.

While the vast majority of my actions since beginning training have been sincere, on occasion I have gone  into character for an isolated event or, more than once, an entire relationship.  The time that I almost married the habitual liar from Dyer County because I was convinced, at least initially, that God had sent her as an answer to my prayers and then I was too ashamed to admit she was actually a sociopath after having bragged so much about her - Acting.  Another notable performance in which I relied heavily on my improvisational skill for a specific event, was when I decided to see what would happen when I tried to go back to my girlfriend after having vanished for three months.

I decided to take on the role of "the repentant boyfriend" shortly after last call at the Amvets early one summer morning. Upon arrival at my girlfriend's apartment, I found the lock on the front door had been changed. Committed to the role, I went around to the back of her apartment and began pulling myself up to her  bedroom window.  I found the window unlocked and after quietly raising the window and parting the curtains, I found her lying with another man.  For a moment I was stunned because this was so out of character for her and I struggled for an appropriate response.  I slid down from the window and started walking back around the apartment to my car.  Then, suddenly struck by improvisational genius, I wheeled around and charged back to the bedroom window!  Regardless of whether the others broke character, I would remain faithful to the muse!   I leapt back up to the window ledge and crawled partially through the window.  The window opened right behind the headboard, affording me the opportunity to immediately start choking the gentleman while declaring with loud and colorful language my firm intent to kill him.  For dramatic effect, I tore the curtains down on top of both of them and then resumed my effort to get better leverage so as to apply maximum pressure. When through the woman's desperate screams, I was finally able to ascertain that this was not my girlfriend with another man at all, but a woman and her boyfriend who were house-sitting for my significant other while she was out of town, I instinctively feigned a drunken stupor, slid back out the window to the ground, and left without even a mumbled apology.  I consider this to be perhaps my finest "event" performance.

Through the years I did roles as diverse as:  late-night bartender; roustabout on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico; an admittedly disastrous performance as a juvenile probation officer; and, most famously,  a six year run as a finance manager in a Ford dealership.  There were many others. In 2007, wanting to shake things up a bit, I posed as a lesbian to increase my chance for a role as a Starbucks Barista  but I was unable to get past the second interview.  Dejected, I took a trip back to NYC for a refresher at the Studio. While running along the East River early one June morning, the seeds were planted for my most challenging role. (to be continued)

I can't find a job so I am starting a blog.

Contemplating the Juris Doctor

In 2007, I was in the car business and I was unhappy about my career.  I fell into the car business while buying a car in Texas in 1991.  I had dropped out of an Experimental Psychology graduate program at the University of North Texas in Denton for a variety of reasons and I had gone to work at a Circuit City in Dallas.  I went to buy a car when the air conditioner on my worn out Toyota Tercel would not come on despite my pounding on the dash - a tactic which had always worked before.  They offered me a job at the end of the deal and I was so flattered I took it (a recurring theme).  I made $6000 my first month and I thought I was The Natural.  You can be a ne'er-do-well and do well enough in the car business and although I fell out of love with the business quickly, it paid the bills.  That is, it paid the bills when I applied my check to bills rather than to the exploration of altered states. I could never predict what was going to happen when I got paid.  After I stopped drinking, several years later, I moved into more responsible positions in car dealerships but I was never comfortable with the work.
 
Along about 2004, people I knew began dying at an alarming rate.  My friend Craig was one of the first and this period culiminated with my step-son and my father both dying in the same week of May, 2006.  I suspect that all this dying triggered the excessive ruminating on my own death that I did during this time. Sometime in early 2007, I specifically wondered how I would feel if I found out that I only had one month to live.  Although my life looked pretty good on the surface (sober 10 years, running marathons, beautiful teenage daughter, nice home, etc...)  during this time, I was terrified when I considered this prospect.   I was living a lie, at least  two-thirds of my life was past, I was definitely going to die at some point regardless, and  I was working in a job that I was ashamed of and not taking any real steps to change this.  From that point forward, I knew that my car business career was "dead to me now" and I scheduled a trip to NYC for my daughter and me while we still had an income. 

We saw Mary Poppins, Spring Awakening, A Chorus Line (all excellent) and a Mets/Yankees game at Yankee Stadium among other things.  I ran a 5 mile race on Father's Day in Central Park.  We stayed at a cool little hotel (The Pod Hotel) around 51st and 3rd and we rode the subway everywhere and walked in the neighborhoods.  While running along the East River early one morning I decided I was going to go to law school and move to New York City.  Just like that. 

I graduated from law school in December, 2010.  Some other things have and haven't happened. I'm still thinking about New York City.