I am no longer posting to this blog. You can still access all my old posts via the archive list to the right.

“There’s something lost, but something’s gained…”

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case you fail by default.

J.K. Rowling at Harvard, 2008

One of the things I both loved and feared about live performing was the possibility of surprise; it was a presence among us onstage, like an extra cast member. No matter how prepared I was (and sometimes I wasn’t all that prepared), there was always an element of chance – a musical blip, a wardrobe malfunction, a technical glitch. Or something wonderful that electrified the performance.

As Papageno in a Magical Magic Flute.

The same was true in athletic events. At the start of a long race there is no way I could predict what would happen over the next fourteen or more hours. And I’ve had a lot happen to me: a broken spoke in the pouring rain with 120 kilometres still to ride at Lake Placid; two flat tires followed by a water shortage at the aid stations on a very hot day in Penticton, leading to nauseating dehydration during the marathon. In both those cases I went on to finish the race. Then there was a flareup of Morton’s neuroma out of the blue at 65k of the Comrades Marathon and extreme vertigo coming out of the swim at Ironman Mont Tremblant. I dropped out of those races.

Standing at the starting line is like standing in the wings of the theatre; everything behind me disappears and all possibilities are before me. And both these are akin to starting out to write something new: I am certain not to end up where I was headed without course changes along the way. The published version of my memoir was like the mythical Ship of Theseus, containing almost none of the parts it had started out with.

After riding across the desert all night, sunrise outside Blythe CA. 

Interestingly, in my day-to-day life I am not much of a risk-taker or improviser. I tend to get riled if plans are upset; I like routine a lot of the time. To step outside familiar parameters is to open the gate to improvisation, failure, loss.

But three things in my life that came to me by surprise – singing, endurance athletics, and writing – invited me outside those parameters, where I have been given a chance to push myself to places I would never have dreamed of going: Carnegie Hall; a dusty road in South Africa, a mountain path in Iceland, a sunblasted highway in California; the pages of my published book.

If pressed for an analysis, I would say that I do these things to surprise myself.

When I started singing at age 16 and running at 33, I remember being elated to discover that there were things I had never done before that I could get better at. Each year I planned to do something more than I had the previous year. Sometimes I failed in spectacular fashion, but often I succeeded.

A hot day at Ironman Canada

Now, 33 years further on, I wonder if this is still true. I ran my first 50k two years ago at age 65 and improved my time the following year. Can I run farther this year than I did last year? How many more can I do? Or has the ship sailed? Is the challenge between now and age 99 simply not to lose what I have?

The answer is … it doesn’t matter. These days I find I am losing the need to create long-term goals to carry me forward. Once, goalsetting was therapy for my tired mind as well as a generator of useful milestones. Nowadays I focus more on simply seeing what happens. I enter maybe one or two trail races a year, and these are low-key events where people run as much for the joy of being out in the forest as to set a personal best or to clock more mileage into their running logs.

It no longer matters to me if I go farther than I did yesterday. There is no endgame, there are only the steps I take along the way.

Because I run to see what is possible; because I sang for the physical pleasure of guiding music through my body; because I write to enjoy the process of shaping words into communication; and because I am willing to accept whatever challenges these pursuits throw at me along with what they offer, I believe I’ve maximized my involvement in all of them.

By easing up on future goalsetting, I gain today. My reward for enjoying the moment is ... the moment – nothing more or less.

Pioneering astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin’s wrote two lines in her autobiography that speak clearly to me:

I was not consciously aiming at the point I finally reached. I simply went on plodding, rewarded by the beauty of the scenery, toward an unexpected goal.

For what I have chosen to assume is the final third of my life, I plan to keep my eyes open for those new and unexpected goals, and to enjoy the scenery.

This is my last Lyricycle post. I’ve run out of things to say here.

I’m not sure what I had planned for this blog when I began writing it in 2008; I only know that I enjoyed writing it. The people who visited unexpectedly touched me more than I can say: a writing colleague; a fellow cyclist from the Race Across the West; friends I met in a sandstorm in Death Valley; a volunteer from a trail race in Ontario.

My writing will have another home before too long, and I'll post a link here.

Two Solitudes

 "I couldn't see anybody, and I knew what the loneliness of the long-distance runner running across country felt like, realising that as far as I was concerned this feeling was the only honesty and realness there was in the world … no matter what anybody else tried to tell me."

― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

As the day warms, I am lacing up my shoes for a two-hour run.

In an alternate universe, a parallel me is starting to write a novel that has a theme of belonging. In both realities, I am aware that I am the only resident.

A writer is often an outlier, socially speaking; an observer and documenter rather than a participant. Even authors who excel at the social aspect of their job (and there is one) will admit that when they are sitting in front of a half-finished subplot wondering how they are ever going to get untangled from it, there isn’t much advantage to being a pleasant dinner companion or a social media maven.

I am a long distance runner who has never experienced loneliness. Last summer when I was slogging up a mountain in Iceland, up to my shins in slush with sleet whipping into my face, I didn’t look around for someone to share the experience with. It was mine – for better or worse – and I wanted it all to myself.

My memoir, Dr. Bartolo’s Umbrella, was aimed at a particular target audience and within the parameters I had set for myself it was more successful than I had ever dreamed it would be. These were the parameters: I wanted whoever read it to enjoy it. Word got back to me that many did.

But that is not why I wrote it. I wrote it because I loved the simple individuality of the process.

To me, the purest joy and greatest challenge was the writing itself: to write clearly but lyrically; to find new ways of saying things that have been said a million million times; to put thoughts in order logically but fantastically; to communicate symbolically and be believed viscerally.

To do this, I had to choose critically which advice I would accept from teachers, editors, and peers, because every word in my book is in held in place by my imagination and craft, not theirs. My Acknowledgements section is as a full and as heartfelt as any author’s, but ultimately I was the one who sat alone at my keyboard for years, conceiving, writing, revising. I do not write by committee.

(I have yet to experience the traditional author’s nightmare of having absolutely no one show up to one of my readings. This must be the literary manifestation of loneliness.)

Nor do I run as part of a team. Unless I decide to join the local Wednesday Afternoon Walking and Conversation Group – which I am not currently contemplating – a major characteristic of running for me is that it is a solitary, non-social activity.

So, if I cherish my solitude so much, why go into an organized running event at all? That’s a question I’ve asked myself increasingly in past years. For one thing, I like the challenge of an unfamiliar course planned and laid out by someone else; these always seem to be a bit less forgiving than the paths I choose for myself. But lately I’ve left behind races like Ironman and big-city marathons in favour of low-profile trail races – same great distances and support with much less noise.

For me, a running event is still an individual process that takes place in the company of several hundred others who are also locked in private negotiation with their own limitations and dreams. I am in company, but every step I take is mine alone.

I have always found purity – a “realness” as Sillitoe writes – in the fulfillment of a personal goal: in working to prepare for it; in stretching to achieve it; in doing what I told myself I was going to do. Pushing myself to go farther today than I did yesterday reminds me of the struggle to align words and thoughts. When I edit my writing I want the revision to be an improvement on what was on the page before; occasionally it is. Crossing a finish line is akin to the feeling of polishing a sentence that finally says exactly what you want it to – the certitude that there is no more work to be done.

Running and writing: two things that bring me joy.

Two things I do alone.

PS: This will be my penultimate post in Lyricycle. After ten years, I find that my focus and direction have moved beyond the scope of this blog. After all, there are only so many ways I can describe moving myself across the planet under my own power (a phrase I imagine I’ve used about a dozen times in the last decade). I am developing a new website, and I’ll leave a link to it on this page when it is operational.

Running in Stages

It’s been a long time since I used to leap out of bed at the sound of an alarm and head flying out the door, like Dagwood Bumstead, to my job in an office.

Nowadays I only use the alarm on my phone to wake me up for athletic events. The little tune it plays is an annoying way to start a day – even a race day – but it gets me up and moving. I even have a little verse that runs through my head to go with the music:

Time to rise and shine,

Get out of bed you lazy elf;

Time to toe the line,

That race won’t run itself.

On race morning I go through a predictable but real cycle of emotions that remind me somewhat of the Kübler Ross stages of grief:

4:30 a.m. – Denial. WTF? It can’t possibly be time to get up. I just closed my eyes.

5:30 a.m. – Anger. Why did I pay money to sign up for this stupid race that I’m not even properly trained for? I’m gonna have to drive for hours to get there. Line up to park. Line up to get my number. Line up to pee. Why couldn’t I just have gone for a nice run through the countryside on my own time at a decent hour? I’m 66 years old for cry-yi. I can’t fake it like I used to. Let the millennials do this.

6:30 a.m. – Bargaining. OK. If I just get through this one I will never rashly enter another race again. I will be properly trained and I will practise on the actual race course six times before the event. I will not show up in old running shoes with half a sole flapping under my left foot. I will dress properly for the weather and be neither chilled to the brisket nor baked like a potato.

7:30 a.m. – Depression. As Eeyore said: All right. We’re going. Only Don’t Blame Me if it Rains.

8:00 a.m. – Acceptance. Here I am running under the starting banner. Hundreds of feet shuffling around me. For every two feet there is one mind looking to the task ahead. Everything I have felt this morning falls away, leaving nothing but my heart, my body, and my goal. For the past three and a half hours I have been asking myself why I do this. As my legs begin to warm up and carry me across the earth, I modify Yoda’s saying: there is no why – there is only do.

Once again, for the hundredth or thousandth time since I began all this over three decades ago, I am running to surprise myself. Whether I have three, four, or eight hours of effort ahead, I’m content to let happen whatever is going to happen.

All of these emotions were in play a few weeks ago as I ran an out-and-back 26k trail event through a conservation area east of Toronto. There were last minute changes to the course as a result of construction (the distance was supposed to be 25k) and fallen trees due to extreme winds. The number of river crossings was doubled from one to two.

Despite all this, it turned out to be a great day, with good running weather and paths that were not as muddy as in some previous years. The extra water crossing proved so popular that the organizers are considering making it a permanent part of the race.

I am still running, and this always seems like a small miracle to me. What began as a dare with my sedentary, chain-smoking self to see if I could finish a 10k charity event back in 1985 has kept me challenged and fulfilled in a way that I could never have expected. In a way that, if I’m being honest, nothing else ever has.

Trotting along the forest floor about midway through the race I decided I had to add one more stage to the list of emotions:

10:00 a.m. – Gratitude.

Country Roads, Take Me Home

My annual practice of choosing a keyword to shine a light on the year ahead was delayed this time and I think I know why. It could be that 2017 – when the word was "climbing" – was the most remarkable and surprising year in recent memory.

If everything last year had gone as planned it would have been an eventful but typical year, with a major birthday, a book publication, an epic trail race in Iceland, and a hiking trip through Northern Scotland. It was the unplanned that gave the year its tang and reminded me that we are never in control of the future – at least not as much as we think we are. I sustained an injury that affected my Iceland race and nearly ended my running season. And we suddenly bought a house in the country and moved away from Toronto, a place I had called home for over 60 years.

So the idea of choosing a single word to represent what I hope my year will hold seemed a bit trite.

My life on an island in the Trent River is more different than I could ever have imagined it would be. Lifelong paradigms and templates are no longer valid. We get our water from a well. We swim in the river. My front yard is twice as wide and ten times longer than the one I left back in the city. Internet download speed is not always reliable and Netflix reception can be infuriating. There are stars in the sky. I often wonder why it took me so long to get here.

And I can run for hours on back country roads and see a maximum of half a dozen people the whole time. Although I had a decent path near my Toronto home, I now enjoy the freedom from having to dodge bicycles, off-leash dogs, and belligerently trespassing e-bikes. This itself is a reason to get out my door each morning. The routes are many and varied; it is flat on the island but hilly just across the bridge. There are trails, including the Trans-Canada Trail, which runs through our town. And when I get home, I jump in the river to cool off. (I’m talking summer here of course. At the moment the spring runoff owns the river.)

So I will run a lot this year and hopefully be more sure-footed than I was last year. My first event will be Around the Bay, in Hamilton Ontario. This year however I am not doing the full 30k, but rather the two-person relay with my son. I’m doing the first leg and I have been working on increasing my speed so that he is not the last one waiting for his partner to appear. So far I have improved my pace to somewhere near where it was ten years ago.

Following the release of my book last year, I find myself at a bit of a crossroads where my writing is concerned. There are many things I would like to try, and I need to remind myself that no one is telling me I can’t. (I figure I can get get some good work done on my novel while I'm waiting for Grace and Frankie to load on Netflix.) The signs at my crossroads point to many paths, and I am not going to limit myself to just one.

I spend a lot of time on the highway because I still travel back to what my friends call “civilization” once a week. When I do, I drive to the outskirts and take the train and then the subway. This takes longer but saves me the stress of trying to drive in gridlocked traffic – one of the reasons I left the city. Multiple routes also add to the adventure of travelling.

Because of all the above, the word I have alighted on for 2018 is “pathways.” Whatever happens in the coming year, I have a feeling it will involve being on the way to somewhere: a town, a lake, or a finish line. There will be paths I plan to take and paths that appear out of the forest, beckoning me or challenging me.

About Time

In you, my mind, do I measure time.

St. Augustine

Four laps of 12.5 kilometres each make up the Run for the Toad 50K race course. In the three years I have run this event, each lap has looked somehow different to me each time around, so beautiful is the setting.

Like many forest-based trail races, there is a sense of being removed from time and space. Despite the colourful signs marking each kilometre and the thoughtfully placed aid stations, this course has a labyrinthine layout that seems designed to turn you around and around so that you are never really sure where you are. But if you are running trails, knowing where you are is secondary to the experience of moving yourself along the quiet paths. Of listening to the whispering of trees. Of asking your body to carry you, and to feel it respond.

Runners doing the 50K are allowed to leave gear bags at the start/finish so you can drop or add clothes each time around – perfect for a chilly start or a rainy day – and you do not have to carry all your nutrition with you.

This year I turned 65, and maybe because of this milestone I have been aware of time passing more than before. Sometimes I have even felt my age, a new experience for me. Partly because of my injuries last spring, the Toad was my chance to get at least one long race done in 2017.

And so I presented myself at the starting line on a bright cool fall morning, ready to run.

The paths in the Pinehurst Lake Conservation Area are unfailingly lovely. There are the expected tree roots – not too many – and lots of rolling terrain, but no long killer hills. There is one short steep climb near the end of each lap; by the last time around it is an old friend.

I was quite enjoying my day when at the end of the second lap I overheard two runners talking about a cut-off time. This was news to me; I had no idea there was a time limit in this race. I had never seen anything on the website; maybe it had been announced at the start. (Note to race organizers: no one ever listens to what the announcer is saying at the starting line).

I asked a volunteer about it and she seemed to think that, yes, there was a seven-hour cut-off. Last year I had finished under that time anyway, so if there was a limit it hadn’t affected me.

At that point I became a bit concerned. I had been ambling along quite happily with no thought of a particular finishing time. Seven hours should be enough time for most people to run 50 kilometres. But I am a slow runner to start with, and this year I had intended to do four nice leisurely laps of the course, playing the senior citizen card and finishing when I felt like it.  

All of a sudden, my plans acquired a new dimension: time. Could I make the cut-off?

Love them or hate them. 

Cut-off times are a feature of many races, for different reasons, mostly valid. After all, the event has to end sometime (and the volunteers have to go home). The most draconian cut-off I know of is at the Comrades Marathon in South Africa, where an official will physically bar a runner from crossing the finish immediately after the final gun has sounded, even if that runner is two feet from the line.

Whether there was a valid time limit in place at Run for the Toad or not, I decided I had better get moving. This turned out to be a great exercise in pacing and pure willpower. I didn’t exactly set fire to the pine needles on the path, but I worked a bit harder and managed to keep such a steady pace that, remarkably, my fourth lap was an even split with my third. On a normal day I would have slowed toward the end as I stiffened up and began to feel lazy.

Whether you are an elite runner or a slowpoke like me, going for a personal best or just trying to get yourself to the finish, there are going to be some physical consequences involved in running 50 kilometres, probably some discomfort. You will get worn out and your muscles will protest the effort. I felt all those things, but the time limit – real or imagined – motivated me to put them aside and push myself just a little harder. 

I never did find out if any time restriction was in effect or if it was all in my head. As it was, I managed to knock a few minutes off last year’s time, so it was a non-issue. The timing system seemed to keep registering runners up to the eight-hour mark.

In the end, as I ran through the woods on my final lap, the ticking clock ceased to matter; only the extra effort did. My negotiation was no longer with time; it was between my mind and my body.

Time as an abstract does not exist; its only significance lies in what we do with it. After all, isn’t being a runner simply the chance to ask something more of ourselves today than we did yesterday? And isn’t that what makes it timeless?

Taking the Long Way Around

Laugavegur Ultramarathon, July 15, 2017

In a way, you could say I made it to the finish line of the 55k Laugavegur Ultramarathon in Iceland last month, although it wasn’t in the way the race organizers intended.

Officially I was a DNF, having missed the 6-hour cut-off at 38k. But if they gave an award for persistence and arriving at the finish by the most circuitous route, I, along with a fellow runner I will call Lisa (because that is her name) would get all the medals. Here is the story:

I knew going in that I would have to have an unusually great day to finish this very challenging race. My torn hamstring in May had eliminated the most critical 6 weeks from my training, and I simply did not have the miles or the hills in my legs. But since we were coming to Iceland on vacation anyway, it seemed a shame not to try.

However, at Laugavegur as with The Force, there is no try; there is only do.

The first 10k of the race went straight up a mountain; a good part of this was in heavy, wet, shin-deep snow. Sleet was blowing down the slope into my face, driven by a merciless wind. I didn’t see much of the advertised spectacular scenery on this stretch. Just sleet. And my feet. As we came over the top of the mountain, the weather cleared and runners were presented with the breathtaking sight of Alftavatn, a glacial lake way below and far away.

The run was now steeply downhill, and the footing was tricky.  Alftavatn is at 22k, where the first cut-off checkpoint is, and I made this without too much difficulty. But the elements and topography had taken a big toll on my undertrained body. I found it hard to get moving again with any decent speed.

By the time I waded across the icy waist-high river at the race’s halfway point, my hopes of making it to the second cut-off in time were pretty dim. I would have to run a pretty brisk 10k or so to make it, and I was feeling anything but brisk (hypothermic, more like, at least from the waist down). But I gamely trotted off, having taken time to change my socks.

The frustrating thing is that the terrain is mostly flat through this section, so if you’re in a hurry you can make pretty good time here. But all my high-distance training had been preempted by my injury layoff. I could jog slowly, but this would not get me to the cut-off point in time.

(I don’t mean to lean too much on my injury here; this race would have tested my limits even if I were in optimal shape. Those who finished have my unending admiration.)

The course took its final swipe at me when I tripped on a rock and face-planted into the trail at about 30k. OK, I said to the gravel against my cheek, you got me.

Eventually I came across a van that was looking for stragglers, of which I was now one. The official confirmed that my race was over and offered to drive me to the bus. My race was indeed over, but my journey was just beginning.

Let’s take a moment here to review the options for runners who drop out mid-race. There aren't many, and none are good (to their credit, the race organizers tell you this repeatedly in the advance information). This event takes place over mountainous terrain that is inaccessible for forty-eight weeks of the year and barely accessible for the other four. There are no real roads, just rocky tracks. So if you leave the race before you get to the end, the organizers will transport you to the nearest town of Hvolsvöllur, and from there you can get another bus back to Reykjavík.

But I didn’t want to go to Reykjavík; I wanted to go to Thorsmörk, where the finish line was and my wife was waiting.

As I was wondering what I would have to do to get to Thorsmörk, another runner came along, and she also had to get to the finish. It seemed that we two were the only ones who had spouses waiting there. There wasn’t a lot we could do. The sag bus would deposit us at Hvolsvöllur, and then we were basically on our own.

After a couple of hours bouncing over the rocks, we arrived in Hvolsvöllur at about 6:00 pm, where the other non-finishers got on their bus for the city. Lisa and I deciphered the schedule as best we could and figured that the last and only bus to Thorsmörk would come along in about 3 hours.

You can bet that there were not 3 hours’ worth of fun activities to do in Hvolsvöllur that evening (of course we were dressed only in our damp running gear, and it was not warm outside). But we made the best of it, eventually ending up in a German-Icelandic restaurant, where we dawdled over dinner as long as we could. I have to say that the day would have been very bleak without my fellow traveller, and I was grateful for the company.

The bus showed up at 9:00 pm and we climbed aboard, spending several more hours bouncing back over the rocks till we arrived at Thorsmörk at about 11:30, to be greeted by our patient reception committee of two. Doing the math, one can see that we spent far more time getting to the finish by bus than the actual finishers took getting there on foot. I also estimate that we could have casually strolled the remaining distance along the race course to the finish and still beaten the bus, but the race rules do not allow this. Once you’re out, you have to leave the trail. The bottom line is that you do not want to drop from this race.

It was an extraordinary experience. I wish I could have lived up to the physical and mental demands of the event. But of the handful of DNFs I have had in the past 32 years, this one was the easiest to take, although definitely the most challenging to accomplish.

The River I Stand In

Eeyore shook himself, and asked somebody to explain to Piglet what happened when you had been inside a river for quite a long time. 
A.A. Milne

It’s been an extraordinary spring. I use the word to mean neither wonderful nor ghastly, but simply beyond ordinary.

At the beginning of the year I had two simple personal goals: to see my first book published in May and to run an ultramarathon in Iceland in July. My book was published, and people seem to be enjoying it, which was my primary hope.

Then we bought a new house, unexpectedly. Doing such a thing had been part of a multi-year plan, which suddenly telescoped into immediacy. This necessitated quickly selling the place we already had, with all the attendant fuss and stress.

Finally, although it seemed the day would never arrive, last week we left the home we had lived in for 21 years and moved to a large, tree-covered property a couple of hours from Toronto, on the banks of a river. Watching the water flow past our back door is energizing, mesmerizing, and restful at the same time. The local running and cycling will be terrific and in the back of my mind I am wondering if I can use the river as a sort of Endless Pool to get my swimming back into shape.

In early May I was well into training for the trail race in Iceland – a spectacular event that I had chosen to celebrate turning 65, which would test me as much as any Ironman ever did – when I slipped and fell, badly damaging my right hamstring. The rug was pulled out from under my meticulously constructed Iceland training plan.

For two weeks I could barely walk. I didn’t run for another four. The Vikings would probably just have gone out and run anyway, chopping the bad leg off to reduce drag. My Gaelic ancestors would have holed up somewhere with a supply of Scotch.

The other day I went out and ran for twenty minutes, some of them uncomfortable; I took each step as if I were being chased by a Zamboni, frightened of slipping and reinjuring myself. Yesterday I ran a bit farther, with a bit less discomfort and a bit more joy, and today I made it even farther. If I can keep moving forward like this, I hope to get myself to a place where I feel like a runner again.

You see, this is what it means to ask so much of my body: it doesn’t always do what I want it to, but if I’m lucky, it doesn’t completely quit on me, but revives. Stirring dull roots with the spring rain.

At the beginning of the year, I had no immediate plans to buy a house and move away, and no plans to suffer one of my most debilitating injuries ever. Extraordinary changes have flowed over my world like a river in spring flood. If my athletic life has taught me nothing else, it is that plans change without notice, and that I must be prepared for quick course changes or simply give up.

The river I step in is not the river I stand in. Dreams flow past and are lost. New ones are made and new plans are drawn up to achieve them. As John Lennon sang, there’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be. I am here and nowhere else, and happy to be so. We’ll see what happens around the next turning.

A Different Value

I’m reviewing the situation … I think I’d better think it out again!

Fagin, in Lionel Bart’s “Oliver”

I had a great running season last year: I was 100% injury free; I set some PBs for certain distances; and I ran my first ultra. I established some lofty goals for this year and was out of the gate on January 1.

The best laid schemes…

A week ago I was running on a nearby trail when I slipped in some mud. My right leg went violently out in front of me and in a split-second I knew I had pulled a hamstring. I nursed it over the next 24 hours and it was starting to feel better. I was walking a little awkwardly, as you do, but there was reason to hope.

Two days later I was heading down some stairs into the subway during a rainstorm and the same leg slipped out from under me on the slick floor as commuters streamed by on all sides. The pain was transcendental, and a voice in my head said, “Your season is over.”

I may have been a little dramatic with the prognosis but there was no doubt that I was seriously hobbled and that the healing is going to be very slow. The trail event I had signed up for this Saturday will go on without me, and I’m doubtful I will make it to my target race in July.

I have to be philosophical. I’ve had my share of injuries over the years, but not as many as some people I know, and they have always healed completely. I’ve also raced while in sub-optimal shape: once a marathon when I had a bruised rib; once an Ironman after a bike crash that left me unable to swim for several weeks before the event; once, a century in Death Valley, shortly after tearing my acromio-clavicular ligament. In all these cases I went on to have an enjoyable day.

My book. Written by me.

At the moment it is physically impossible for me to run. When I get back into training, it will be on the bike or in the pool.

We had a manic winter, buying a new house and listing and selling our old one. We are moving at the end of this month. May also signals the publication of my first book, Dr.Bartolo’s Umbrella and Other Tales from my Surprising Operatic Life, a memoir of my years as a singer. I have been to one launch event and there is another two weeks from now. Because my publisher is a small one with few contacts in the music business, I have been doing a lot of the marketing and door-knocking myself. I am loving it all, but it wears a bit.

Adding into this my work with my editing clients and my attempts to write some new material, an outside observer might say that I am as hyperextended as the leg that slipped out from under me. I am not big on kismet or messages from the ether, but I can’t help thinking that something cosmic is trying to say, “Slow down.” Not to mention, "Watch where you're going."

A hot day at IMC

It is in my nature to want to set goals and work towards them. When I have to drop or re-evaluate one I feel lost and bereft. When my head is not full of plans, it feels empty. But surely I am more than my goals. An enforced idleness such as the one I’ve just slid into might be an invitation to look differently at those goals.

When they ran out of water on the bike course at Ironman Canada several years ago, I became badly dehydrated in the last half of the marathon. Every time I tried to run, I felt like throwing up or passing out. So I walked. As I moved slowly back towards town, I felt the warm breeze blow over my skin and watched the twinkling lights across the water grow closer. It was no longer a race I was in, but a journey through the pitch-dark stillness of the night. I let go of the frustration of not being able to move quicker and simply embraced the pace. And eventually I made it to the finish line.

My plans had not worked out that evening in Penticton, but I believe there was value – a different value – in what I did achieve. I think to be an endurance athlete is to be prepared for any change in course, even one that requires a redefinition of the objective.

New destinations

With my current injury, I am at that Ironman again, out at mile 20. I will have to see my objectives differently. And slowly, eventually, I’ll get there.

Staying Home

You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em,

Know when to fold ‘em,

Know when to walk away,

Know when to run.

The good news was that the freezing rain might stop by morning.

The other good news was that my right hamstring seemed to be on the mend and was not bothering me as much as it had been.

On the other hand, the remnants of a cold had settled uncomfortably in my chest, making breathing an irritating chore.

So much seemed to be conspiring to keep me from running my planned race, the Around the Bay 30k in Hamilton.

And there was the fact that I was vastly undertrained.

Training has not been a focus in the past two months. Our quick, unexpected decision to buy a house in the country and sell the one we’ve lived in for 21 years meant that much of the winter was taken up packing boxes and shifting furniture.

Once we had decided to list the house, we were in the hands of The Stagers. The mandate of The Stagers is to make your home look as if no one has ever lived there, the better to sell it, apparently. To us sellers, their word was law, and the word we got was that none of our furniture, art, or carpeting was worthy to be viewed by the buying public. It all had to go. So began a frantic period of moving everything we owned into the garage so that it could be replaced by one glass-topped coffee table and a throw pillow. Even my beloved treadmill, a wintertime refuge for me, was rolled into a corner while the house was being shown.

All of which goes to say that I didn’t do a lot of running in January and February.

The bottom line: Even If I did show up at the starting line, it would be to shuffle along like an old man in the final miles of Ironman, doing a run-walk, hacking and coughing, finishing on the last page of the results.

Actually I do that anyway, but this time it might not have been worth it.

A few people I know refer to my athletic habits as “crazy,” a term that drives me … well ... crazy. To me there is nothing crazy about setting a goal and taking steps to achieve it. These things mean being organized and focused, not nuts. I get defensive when someone points to everything I go through to do what I do and dismisses it as simply a mental aberration. No, my hobby is not shopping for antiques, having people over to dinner, or eating exotic cheeses. Yes, I sometimes get uncomfortable.

But occasionally an obsession to carry through with something despite a net negative outcome, or at least a lack of a measurable positive one, could be an indication of an approach that is a tad off balance.

No Country for Old Legs

The challenge for me here was to see the bigger picture. I have a long-term training plan to take me to my A race in Iceland this summer. From where I am currently sitting, finishing that race seems nearly impossible. Challenging terrain and weather are made even more daunting by what look like Draconian time cut-offs. Furthermore, it doesn’t seem like any country for old men; there are all of 5 people 65+ entered in a field of over 500. Even the four-hour bus ride to the start is off-putting.

Nevertheless I am looking forward to it as much as I did my first Ironman back in 2002. It will test me and my training, resolve, and focus as much as anything ever has.

But training will require running, and I have to be in shape for that. Starting off with a painful whimper is not how I wanted to do it.

Call me crazy, but in the end I decided to skip Around the Bay and live to run another day. I have run the race many times and I will run it many more, but this was not going to be my year.

And things are looking up. My sore muscles are feeling better, my chest cold is retreating, and I feel like running again. Now if I can just remember where I packed my trail shoes…

Climbing

Above the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan:
Excelsior!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Each January I like to find a word or phrase that will help frame my plans for the coming year. Last year I chose GETTING THERE. My hope was to learn to enjoy the process of moving myself forward and not spend so much time thinking about the endgame. I think I was moderately successful, no more so than in my last race of the year, the Run for the Toad 50k, in which I focused on the experience and let the goal come to me.

I figured out that in an ultra-distance race, you'd better not waste time and energy fussing about some distant finish line or it is going to be a very long day.

This year’s word, CLIMBING, sends me in a different direction. It's a multi-purpose word. You can climb up something, towards something, or out of something. In our rich, beautiful English language, you can also climb down something. You can climb a corporate ladder or a mountain. People even climb into bed.

From where you are in a climb, you can look upward to where you’re headed and downward to where you’ve been. Janus, this month’s eponym, would approve.

The months ahead could be exciting for me. My book, Dr. Bartolo’s Umbrella and Other Tales from my Surprising Operatic Life, a memoir of my years as a singer, will be published this spring. I am going to start a new website. I will reach an age milestone.

And I am going to Iceland for an ultramarathon.

The event takes place on a hiking trail in the southern highlands of Iceland. Hikers normally take several days to cover the distance. Runners in this race are expected to do it in under 9 hours, and I will get to spend some quality time pondering my word of the year.

One look at a photo of the race I have just entered tells me that we will not be in Kansas, Toto. There are mountain trails to go up and then get down somehow. The weather varies from year to year and can range from sleet and freezing rain to short-sleeve warmth. The terrain will feature sand, gravel, grass, snow, slush, ice, glacier-fed rivers and streams, and at least one climb down a hill requiring a rope.

It sounds irresistible. No?

Onward and upward. Mostly upward

Just to keep everyone moving along, there are time cutoffs. On paper they seem generous, but apparently a fair number of people do not make them. The prospect of sitting in the cold rain waiting for the sag wagon, stiff and sore and disqualified, will help keep me from dawdling I hope. But there’s only so fast you can climb – up or down.

I have planned and dreamed enough about the scores of events I’ve entered over the years to know that reality often quickly diverges from vision once the gun goes off. Mike Tyson said (somewhat ungrammatically) that everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face. The success of a lot of endurance pursuits hinges on how you recover after getting punched in the face. I expect this will be part of my training regimen over the next six months.

Monday: OFF. Tuesday: 6 km easy. Wednesday: Face Punch.

To date there are only a handful of people over 60 registered for the race. I should take this as a sign that this is no run for old men. Naturally, I will ignore that particular sign. 

Once again my reach is exceeding my grasp. As it was with my first 10k, my first marathon, and my first Ironman, I couldn’t do this race tomorrow – or even next month. Nor do I expect to. For me training for an event has always been equal or greater in value to the event itself. I am trusting myself when I pledge that I can raise my body and mind to a place where doing it is at least possible.

After all, as a runner in the Badwater Ultramarathon once said, “We are all here to see what is possible." I have often thought she could have been referring to the race, or to something larger.

And I do reserve the right to climb into bed at the end of it all.

How Far We Have Come

waywiser, n.

 An instrument for measuring and indicating distance travelled, especially by foot. Now historical.

One of my private goals for 2016 was to run a race longer than a marathon. I succeeded when I made it across the line at the Run for the Toad 50k in October. Because most ultramarathons take place on trails, I ended up doing most of my training in wilder settings than I’m used to. In this way, longer distances became my regular runs, and I became a trail runner. Except for the Around the Bay 30k race last March, all my events in 2016 were trail races.

Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood.

I got to run for hours and hours through mud, Turkish bath heat, pouring rain, and misty forests. I got to wade through streams created by just-melted snow and pick my way across makeshift bridges made of mossy logs. I slipped and tripped and bounced my way over rocks and roots and hundreds of kilometres of quiet forest pathways. This time last year I felt like a novice trail runner. Now I feel as if I have acquired something from every step I took. (On some of the muddier outings, I did.)

As I live in a very large city, simply planning a two- to three-hour training run without sidewalks and stoplights adds a challenge to the process. I am lucky to live right at the entrance to a vast system of ravines, which weave their way through the city providing biking paths and trails that go on for hours.

One of my best training runs took place a few weeks before the Run for the Toad in October. I ran about 39k on paths beside Lake Ontario and through the Don River Valley. The last two hours were in rain so steady it seemed the air was liquid. When you are tired and sore and it is pouring rain, the only thing to do is to keep calm and carry on toward your goal. So I did. It was a soggy, joyful day.

I am also fortunate to be part of a family summer cottage several hours north of the city. My favourite training route up there takes me 13km along winding, hilly, tree-shaded roads into the local town, finishing with a climb to the top of a large hill. There is a scenic lookout tower at the top of the hill and a spring water source that is almost indecently sensual on a hot summer day.

A few weeks ago this was solid ice.

In past years I would usually wait until someone was driving into town anyway and ask them meet me there and ferry me home. This year I decided to simply turn around and run back, doubling the distance and exponentially improving my workout. Oddly, no one ever expressed regret over the absence of my salt-covered body and sodden clothes in their car. A win/win.

I did that Tower Hill run several times last summer; hour after hour of “the green dark forest … too silent to be real” save for the sound of my feet hitting the ground. Now that I am city-bound by winter, the peaceful solitude of that 26k route has become a refuge for my mind.

My goals for next year – the year in which I will turn 65 – are varied and exciting. And like most private dreams, they are fanciful and farfetched and therefore completely malleable. But wherever I end up, I do plan to run farther and climb higher than I have any right to be able to. I will slip and trip and fall (my plan does include getting up again). I will be hot and cold and wet and learn how to deal with being these. As I move forward, I will become stronger and yes, maybe wiser. 

To the bewilderment of those who think I should suffer somehow for the audacity of wanting to transport my body over long distances under my own power, I intend to love every step.

A Forest Ultra

Run for the Toad 50k – October 1, 2016

The voice in my head began speaking to me as I was about 20k into my run. “Sure,” the voice said. “You’ve gone almost a half-marathon – a decent morning’s run for anyone. But you still have 30k to go. You’re not even halfway there.”

And I had “the feeling.” I have experienced it before: once long ago at 10k of a marathon I had entered at the last minute. A sinking, missing-the-last-bus, alone, hopeless feeling in the centre of my being. A feeling that I have no business being out here, that I will never finish and may in fact be forgotten out on the course as the sun sets and everybody goes home. Luckily I ignored the feeling that day and went on to run a personal best for the marathon.

So as I passed through 20k of the Run for the Toad 50k – my first try at the distance – I was expecting that feeling, as I was waiting for the voice, and this day too I was able to disconnect both and keep running. In a few minutes I felt fine again.

Note to self: remember how you did that.

A year ago I did the 25k version of this event and loved it. A helpful and optimistic volunteer suggested I might want to try the 50k this year. With no good reason other than her casual encouragement, I set this as my goal event for the season.

The race takes place in the Pinehurst Lake Conservation Area, about an hour west of Toronto,  over a very user-friendly course comprising well-groomed trails through pine forests and grassy paths across open fields. Each lap is 12.5k, so, 4 of them for the whole 50. 

It was a cool overcast day with rain threatening but never really materializing. I ran cautiously but steadily. I encountered my friend the volunteer from last year in her usual traffic-directing spot and let her know that it would be all her fault if I crashed and burned, ending up as a helpless pile of mushed muscle and snapped sinews. This is the kind of lame humour I typically offer the volunteers as I run past.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I detest it when someone labels what I do as “crazy.” I have no time for these people. With all the truly insane things going on in the world, I ask, how is it crazy to have a dream, set a goal, make plans, and then take steps to achieve your goal? Why can I not be labelled brave, or determined – or at least congenial?

As my voice had reminded me, two laps, or 25k, would have been a good morning’s workout, an honourable end to the season. But I wanted more. I have run lots of marathons – more than I can remember in fact – but this time, like Nigel Tufnel’s amplifier, I wanted to see what would happen if I turned it up to eleven.

Did I have the strides to carry me into ultramarathon territory?

As I ran I couldn’t resist looking at the time, something I rarely do in a trail run. Because all trails are different, there is no point in comparing today’s race with the one you did somewhere else a month ago. But since even finishing the distance was going to be a total learning experience for me, I glanced at my watch as I made my way around each of the first three laps. I didn’t care how long I took, but I wanted the finish line not to have been dismantled before I got across it.

Got 'er done.

My body knew what it had to do; I had been training for this race since last winter and I had put in the requisite work.  When I got to the last lap – the last 12.5k – I knew I had it and I enjoyed every step. The field of runners had thinned out (as it does when you are at the back of it) and I frequently had the dark green, misty trail all to myself. As I passed the 5k marker for the fourth time (telling me I had run a total distance of 42.5 kilometres), I stopped in the middle of the path in the silent forest, raised my arms heavenward, and let the voice in my head tell me, “You’re an ultramarathoner.”

Amazingly, I managed not to trip or stumble; this is probably due more to luck than skill – not to mention my Hoka One One Speedgoat shoes – but staying upright is always a great morale booster. As usual, I felt stronger as I approached the finish line than I had all day. When I finished, I had been running for just under seven hours. 

This was the finale of my season, which began with Around the Bay back in April. I have grandiose plans to build on what I've learned this year. The next task is to teach myself to pace better, to become more confident running up and down hills, and to remind the voice in my head that each step is one more closer to my goal, and that I am indeed getting there.