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For me, running is as much about reflection and reminiscing as it is about actually putting foot to pavement. Over the last few days I had the opportunity to run around town and the golf course on absolutely perfect early summer days. The air is a bit moist as the humidity rises but each day had a slight cool headwind that felt so sweet it more than compensated for the impact it had on my pace. I love the fragrances that are released each time you brush up against a piece of foliage that's trying to reclaim the dirt path. And the critters that constantly scurry out of your way. But what really jumped out at me were the associations I was making between my environment, my music, and my childhood.

For whatever reason the early summer time always conjures up memories of growing up in Northeast Philadelphia during the mid-seventies. I think this may have been the happiest time of my childhood. In part because I was moving from being a child to becoming an adolescent and was beginning to develop tastes of my own. Particularly in music. In 1975 I bought my fist album with my birthday money. Elton John's Greatest Hits. I was 10 and Elton was the first artist that I discovered on my own, meaning he wasn't necessarily something I head my parents listen to first.

The first time I heard Elton was at Rosie's Pinball Palace. A forbidden dark world in a converted auto garage. It was always packed with teenagers smoking cigarettes, drinking soda, and pumping quarters into Bally machines with exotic names like Surfer and Aladdin's Castle. Someone played Bennie and the Jets on the jukebox and my life would never be the same from the first time that electric piano hit me. I entered the world of the big kids who had paper routes, rode unicycles, and lied about what they did with girls. It made it hard to go back to playing with my Action Jackson figurines.

Fly Like an Eagle, by the Steve Miller band, was the sound of the Summer of seventy-six for me.  I was twelve and I remember thinking how deep the music was with it's use of synthesizers and guitars. Singing songs about Billy Joe and Bobby Sue, two anti-heroes, who took the money and ran. The seventies were the hey-day of the anti-hero and the music and movies were full of realism where distinguishing between good and bad, right or wrong, was a matter of perspective.

In seventy-seven my new found disillusionment was pushed aside by the discovery of girls. I spent a great part of that summer pining over one of mt best friend's older sisters. I was going into eighth grade and she was going to be a freshman at St. Hubert's High School for girls. The holy grail of schools. She was into Wings Over America. Therefore, so was I. That summer ended spectacularly for me with my first full-blown make out session in the basement of my friend's house.

So now, the running mix on my iPod is crammed with Elton, Steve Miller, and Paul McCartney. Each song and every step taking me back.

"Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It (Art) is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself. " - Henry Miller

I love this quote from Miller. I believe in it's veracity. And, I feel the same way about running.

I've often wondered why I run. Or more importantly, why I love to run. You see for me, I derive no sense of joy from running. I don't run for the love of running. I've never felt 'free' when I ran. Or lighter than air. Yet I love to run. I like that running hurts. I like that it's demanding. I like that each day I have to do it again and that what I did the day before means nothing. I enjoy the pain. And I delight in the liberation I feel when I break through it. You see, when I conquer the pain I leave the rest of my limitations behind with it laying vanquished by the side of the road and I can create and re-create myself. And that for me is where my running becomes art.

There is no meaning in my running without the suffering along the way. It may be my catholic upbringing where self denial and sacrifice were necessary for spiritual transcendence and the pleasing of God. Or it may be what Viktor Frankl described as logos, or the search for meaning in this life, that makes me think this, but I believe that for something, anything, to be considered art, there has to be a meaning to it for the maker of it. And meaning does not come free. Hell it often isn't cheap. There has to be a cost associated with something for it to have meaning. (This could be financial, emotional, personal, spiritual or some combination thereof but there has to be something there for meaning to exist.)

For example, at the Arts Fest last year I saw a lovely abstract watercolor that I wanted to buy. The way the swirls of gold wrapped themselves around the red base coat conjured up a scene of something being born. A mundane way to put it is to say I saw a golden phoenix rising out of a well of fire int this abstraction. But when I asked the artist what her inspiration was for the work she looked at me as if I was out of my gourd. "What were you trying to say?" I asked her. Her answer, with a polite, condescending smile that said I was naive and that I should best leave art to the artists, was that she wasn't trying to say anything. There was nothing behind her work. She just swirled colors on canvas and if they looked good she's put it up for sale.

She was shocked when I put the piece back on the rack and walked out. The piece had lost it's meaning to me. How could I find meaning and pleasure in a piece that contained neither for the person who made it? I could understand if she interpreted the piece differently. In fact it would have added a layer of complexity that made it more interesting. But for her own work to be nothing more to her than the mechanics of putting paint on paper...

It's the same way for me with my running. If it didn't have meaning, if it didn't lead me to something greater, then I wouldn't do it. No, I couldn't do it. For me running and art are both means to an end. Each run, each work is unique. Having created a piece the day before is no guarantee of success today. Each run must tell me something about myself that I didn't know before.

Over the winter we finally painted my study. At least the walls anyway. Although, I do have the color for the doors and trim picked out. I just haven't got to them yet. I chose cornflower blue for the color and we added depth to the walls with a striping technique using flat and semi-gloss paint. But the construction of my study is for another post. It's relevance here is that once the walls were painted I could begin decorating my room. Which for me meant I could break out my books.

I've always been a bibliophile. I love to read and am a lover of stories in general. I also love to collect books and having a room of my own offers me a chance to display some of them in a way that uniquely represents me without upsetting the aesthetic of the rest of the house. Books, as a collective, add a touch of formality to a room. In a bookcase, on a shelf, or stacked on the floor, they tend to ground any room in which they reside by adding a sense of intellectual gravitas to the space they occupy. They are heavy in both their physical nature (ever move boxes full of books?) as well as in the ideals they represent. What you read does say a lot about the person you are. And the person your becoming.

Besides bringing this sense of depth to a room, books also add an air of timelessness. The invention of the printing press is arguably the first information revolution the world has ever known. Religious organizations feared they would become obsolete if the common man could read the word of God directly. And governments believed there would be revolution and anarchy in the streets because people who read and think for themselves are more dangerous and difficult to control. Hell, the burning of the library in Alexandria set the human race back hundreds of years because of the collective knowledge that was lost in that fire. Owning books connects you to all that. And having them in a room where you most likely work on a device that can transport data through the air makes you a conduit connecting the two greatest information ages in history.

I've always maintained that reading is active as opposed to passive by nature. It's as much an exercise as running. It demands commitment if you are to do it successfully. In return it brings you mental fitness. The mind becomes agile and adaptable. Your powers of concentration and critical thinking are strengthened. It is work but it brings pleasure. Again for me like running.

There are books that I read over and over. These develop a fine patina. Their dust jackets fade from exposure to light and fray at the base from rubbing against my lap. The edges of the pages turn brown, almost like the color of toast.  As the paper ages it dries and emits an aroma that one can only describe as the smell of wisdom. That's why I love libraries and used bookstores the best. For me there's a thrill in rummaging through stacks of booksarranged in seemingly no particular order looking for personal gems. I am a heretic in the sense that I will 'work' my books. I do break the spines of paperbacks and I will mark favorite passages with a pencil. (I use a pencil for books of pleasure but a highlighter for academic and professional materials). And I love buying a book that's been beat up from use. For me, that is a book that's been cared for. I love reading what people leave behind in their books. "To Joe. Love Mom. Xmas '48" adds a layer to the story for me. Who was Joe? And why was this book so appropriate to give to hims as a gift? I love seeing what passages others found important. I love finding newspaper clippings and ticket stubs that were used for bookmarks.  I've been doing this myself for so long now that I've developed these imaginary emotional links between the book and the marker I've chosen for it. Silly. But it's a great conversation piece when exchanging books with friends.

My bookcase is a carefully choreographed display of books and artifacts arranged to be pleasing to the eye. What bins them together is th deep emotional meaning each item has for me. There's my cigar box and a JoePa autographed football that Sue won for me in a silent auction (and gave it to me as a surprise). Sitting in between them are Vonnegut and Twain. Hemingway and O'Hara. Capote and T.S. Eliot. And there's adventure books and leather journals right next to a photograph album whose cover is an old world map. And on top of that is a wooden toy bi-plane that we bought at the State College Arts Festival we attended the year we moved here. There's my James Bond paperback collection (found in a letter box under an old Hallmark greeting card stand in the back of a used bookstore in Bradford, PA.).

My display is not meant to be definitive collection of all my books. Rather it is a sampling of the various subjects that interest me. It is a collage of memories.

Muscle memory comes from doing an act repeatedly and as identically as possible that conscious thought is no longer needed to perform it. Some common examples include writing, walking, and driving. As a runner developing muscle memory is an essential part of training. It's how you develop the proper gait, regulate breathing, and learn to run at a certain pace without the need of a watch. It's also a way to know it's time to switch up your training. I don't know if other runners are like this but, I can run the same route for months on end without giving it a second thought. But there comes a time, and it always does, when the feet rebel and threaten mutiny if they feel the save bend in the same road again (This is true. I once trod over the same bottle cap five days in a row because it happened to be in line with my stride). So you know it's time for a change.

And lately I've noticed my muscle memory has developed the ability to mine my sub-conscious arousing long dormant memories. I don't know if it is true for other runners but for me there seems to be a correlation between the reaction my feet and legs have to a particular piece of road and the images my mind conjures up. It's kind of like time traveling through the memories of my muscles.

Running is a multi-sensory exercise. A whiff of lilacs in the front yard of a house on Bishop Street when I'm in full stride takes me back to spring times of my younger days and running my neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia. I think of my friend Itchy and going to Gearo's for pizza. And late night ball games when cable television featured regional stations from all over. Does anybody remember Piggly Wiggly commercials on TBS during Atlanta Braves games?

Two weeks ago running on campus I splashed through a puddle in front of the Schreyer Honors college and was transported back to Pennypack Park. I literally felt the rivulets of water from 1985 flecking off my calves leaving little dots of mud behind. And I made the same decision twenty-odd years later to blow off studying for the same poli-sci test in order to go to McNally's and chat up some girl who presently only exists in that form in my memory.

These are good memories and I enjoy when they bubble up. They're cheerful and comforting. But there is also the other side of memory. The unpleasant ones. The times when I came up short or life dealt me a bad blow. I have this recurring dream where I'm begging some old friends for forgiveness that's never granted. Deep down I know what I did and why it's unforgivable but it still doesn't stop me from asking each time until the sound of my own begging wakes me up and I have to roll over and touch Sue for reassurance that I'm back in the now.

I'm fortunate that my pile of good memories far outweigh the bad and I pray the scales never have to balance out but it doesn't make dealing with these malevolent spirits any easier. And lately images have been popping up that I'd just as soon see remained buried. I haven't forgotten them. I'd just rather not think about them. But sometimes my (muscle) memory has other ideas.

Yesterday was our last long training run in preparation for Cincinnati. We were scheduled to do 20 miles. A.G., my running partner, suggested we break the run up by mixing in one or both of the charity races taking place on campus. At 10 a.m. on the northeastern end of campus was the Coaches vs. Cancer 5k and at noon on the southern end of town was the third annual "We Are...Curing Autism" 5k. Because A.G. has a personal connection to autism and because of the timing of each event we decided on the latter. We left Rec Hall around 7:45. I finished around 10:04 (2:19:04 according to my iPod). A 7:41 pace which is a very good time for me at that distance. My cruising pace for 5 miles is 7:47.

I grabbed a shower, changed into a fresh pair of running clothes and made my way to the race. A.G. arrived shortly thereafter. During my long run, and afterward, I made sure to keep hydrated. My weight prior to the run was 159 and afterwards was 157 3/4. I'm really pleased with my weight. I the fall I ran PhilIy at 164 and my goal was to five to seven pounds lighter for the Flying Pig in May without sacrificing muscle so I'm on track.

In between events I ate a banana and finished another liter of water (I'd finished one during my run along with half a bottle of Coke). And this is where I made my mistake. Instead of stopping there, I think because I had so much time to kill, I split a bagel and then another one, with A.G. and washed the second down with a cup of coffee. I wasn't hungry or in need of a kick but, was bored waiting for the race to start.

When the gun went off my muscles were tight despite the extra stretching.I expected this. The delay was to long. We didn't kick off until after twelve and my muscles were a bit surprised to be called back into duty. What I didn't expect was the severe cramps that gripped me around mile one and stayed with me throughout the race. I made the mistake of starting out to hard. One of A.G.'s friends who met us there is an excellent short distance runner and I made the mistake of trying to pace myself off of her.  I quickly abandoned that strategy but not before the cramps set in.  The rest of the race was a struggle to keep my body in motion, wishing I could puke to feel better. It didn't help that the entire course consisted of hills. Steep, steep hills.



If you've ever run Central Pennsylvania you know there's not a patch of flat ground to be found. It's a bitch to consistently run but it pays off when you travel to more level areas. I finished the race in a respectable 23:27 (not to shabby considering I had to pull of the road at one point with the dry heaves.)

We decided to do the 5k after a long run because it was there. It was something neither of us had done before. Would I do it again? You bet. As a matter of fact, I think with  the knowledge gained from this experience  I could improve my race time.