The Janus Charity Challenge

In my run up to Ironman Coeur d'Alene, I’m raising money for a great charity called Partners in Health. Top-ranked by CharityNavigator.org, Partners in Health does wonderful and innovative work the world over to improve the health of the poor. To make a donation, please visit my official Janus Charity Challenge page: click here. It's safe. It's secure. So why not herald in spring with a gift from the heart? Thanks very much.

Music in Dreamland

I have a long held belief that real runners don’t listen to music when they run. And while that may very well be true, I’ve recently taken to music on my long runs like William Bennett to slot machines. It helps pass the time, and it helps me maintain a more measured pace so I can settle down for some true LSD--long slow distance.

But, the other great bonus of music on the run, and possibly the most important: I get reacquainted with songs I haven’t heard for years. Music has always played a key role in my life. Once you have kids, though, you just don’t get quite as much time to listen to music as you’d like…which is OK. On my long runs, though, I now get the chance to listen (really l-i-s-t-e-n) to my music. It’s probably been five years or more since I’ve heard some of the songs streaming into my headphones. When I heard the first few bars of Music in Dreamland from Be Bop Deluxe’s Futurama, I was carried back over twenty years to my childhood home in Southern California, where I wore the grooves off that album. About every fifth song hits another memory and carries me elsewhere.

The soundtrack of each run is always different--not so much because the shuffle on the player throws different songs at you; it’s more that the tenor of every run is different. The weather, the route, the distance, how you’re feeling all come together to give a special imprint to each run. And on each run, there are always a few standout tracks. Sometimes it’s Van Halen; sometimes it’s Bruce Hornsby; sometimes it’s Lyle Lovett. You never know what’s going to play big (though it’s hard to go wrong with U2’s Mysterious Ways).

On my last long run, Prince was the king. Le Grind from the Black Album, Pink Cashmere from The Hits/The B-Sides, and the title track from Musicology were IT. Their funky R&B soulfulness synched with my pace and had me singing falsetto down the trail--scaring small animals and young children the whole way.

All this listening may disqualify me as a real runner, but I figure if I’m going to be putting all the miles in any way, I may as well enjoy them.

A Third Thing

In a recent issue of Poetry, Donald Hall wrote about the importance of having a “third thing” in life--something outside of family and work that added extra meaning to the day and, in so doing, brought greater stability, enjoyment, and passion to the whole of life.

Athletics has long-served as my third thing. I have many joys in life--baking, reading, writing, lounging around in omphaloskepsis--but it’s the concrete goals of athletics that really force me to focus, to carve out the time that really makes something a daily presence.

And nothing helps me to focus better than a race-too-far. Whether it’s trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon or finish an Ironman triathlon, such lofty goals (lofty for me at least) take a prime spot in my psyche and help anchor the whole.

It’s very easy to get sucked into the “importance” of work and the chaos (no quotation marks here) of family. Before you know it, you've become the monomaniacal Ahab hunting the White Whale--obsessed with checking email and perfecting the unperfectable course of the day with two young boys. The third thing of training gives me a mental and physical break from it all. It’s something to think about, and do, that has nothing to do with either work or family, and this ultimately helps me take work and family head-on with more creativity, verve, and happiness.