A Thousand Times No

This morning two unusual things happened before I even reached my desk at work.  In my haste to make sure I arrived in time for a 9am trans-continental conference call, I opted for a brief interval run, trying to clock each full mile as quickly as possible.  Since I was only going to run one mile at a time, I made a deliberate effort to step up the pace.

As a slow newcomer to running, I made my peace long ago with being passed by other people running along the park trail.  But today was different — I actually wound up passing other people who were not merely walking.  I’m not sure that has ever happened before, and certainly not twice in one day.

After bolting home for a quick shower and change of clothes, I darted back outside in a pair of shoes with 2-inch (5cm) heels.  Speeding along one of Philadelphia’s picturesque historic brick sidewalks, I took a bad step amid the lumpy surface and felt my left ankle roll under my leg with one swift lurch.  Yes, that would be the same ankle I sprained a little over a year ago, the one that prevented me from sitting cross-legged for months.  I felt a twinge and feared the worst.

But this time around, the story has a happier ending.  Fortified by months of incrementally longer and harder runs, my ankle simply went on about its business as though nothing out-of-the-ordinary had occurred.  Despite starting off on the wrong foot, I managed to avoid getting out-of-joint.

With all my fretting over the prospect of hurting myself by taking up running, it never occurred to me that I might actually be preventing injury by strengthening some of the most vulnerable spots in my body.  Let’s hear it for change, progress, hope…and really good insoles.

Today was one of those days when I managed to partake of a huge slice of what makes city living enjoyable.

After waking up and simply lying in bed for a while, I got dressed and headed out for my long run of the week — six miles!  I saw one of my neighbors while jogging along the trail and waved as we passed in opposite directions.  Then I popped into my gym to stretch and to do some exercises to shore up my quadriceps muscles.

This was followed by a quick dash home to wash up and then a literal sprint along a city sidewalk to catch a bus that was headed across town. “Don’t worry, I saw you,” said the bus driver with a smile.  I told him that sometimes drivers see people running, waving, hollering…and just keep going.  He chuckled knowingly.

I spent a few hours tutoring, and then I began the dangerous enterprise known as the Crosstown Stroll.  The walk back to my house took me past dozens of shops.  Among the places where I took a look around but managed to leave without opening my wallet:

• a leather repair shop where I once bought a pair of like-new shoes and the secondhand Coach bag I happened to be carrying today
• an appliance store with stainless steel refrigerators and front-loading washer/dryer units
• a department store that is home to the world’s largest pipe organ
• a store filled with counterfeit designer purses where the woman in the shop was watching Chinese soap operas
• a clothing store featuring extremely inexpensive, slightly tawdry items and shoes made from various spinoffs of petrochemicals
• a shoe store that specializes in extremely affordable footwear
• a home furnishing store that carries a bookcase I’ve been waiting several months to buy
• a large chain bookstore
• a newly opened branch of a large chain sporting goods store where the clerk told me she had never heard of Converse Jack Purcells
• a clothing chain that outfitted the Obama daughters during the Inauguration
• a high-end cosmetics and skin care retailer where several women were receiving makeovers
• a clothing chain which was responsible for the bulk of the personal fortune accumulated by the name donor for the city’s premiere fine arts venue
• a low-priced European clothing chain known for its celebrity models and “designers”
• an exclusive, pricey luggage retailer known for the durability of its products

Nonetheless, damage was still done.  I stocked up on energy bars that were being deeply discounted from a vitamin shop, despite being months away from their sell-by dates.  I picked up some foaming hand soap and my favorite ink pens at a major office supply store.  And I could not resist the lilting strains emanating from a gorgeous pair of imported leather-soled ankle boots that I found in the men’s section of a clothing discounter.

Let’s just say I’m doing my part to help prop up the global economy.

Someone created this charming musical video tribute to one of my favorite places to shop…

TJ’s + bossa nova = Delish!

While discussing running techniques over lunch earlier this week, a friend asked me whether I had ever attempted to use something known as the POSE method.  Though I had come across the term in various running forums, I said that I wasn’t familiar with any details.

Created by sports scientist Dr. Nicholas Romanov in the former Soviet Union in the 1970s, the POSE method involves running with high cadence, minimal range of motion in the ankle, a heavy reliance upon the calves and hamstrings, and a slight forward tilt of the torso.  My friend mentioned that he had found it helpful.  After lunch, I read a little about the method online decided to give it a try later in the week.

After an initial test run through a series of intervals of different lengths on Thursday, I found that I was clocking in a series of personal bests for the mile and half-mile.  This morning I decided to see whether I would be able to sustain the higher cadence through my weekly long run, which has currently stretched to five-and-a-half miles in length.

The results?  Insanely good.

I managed to pull in five-and-a-half miles this morning more quickly than the first time I ran a full five miles three weeks ago.  In other words, I shaved off more than a minute per mile in pace while extending my total distance by 10%.  I felt like someone just dumped rocket fuel in my shoes.

Though I was tired when I finished running this morning, I actually felt slightly less banged up than usual.  We’ll see tomorrow and the next day what my legs have to say on the matter, but this method is supposed to decrease wear and tear on the knees.

It’s a matter of some debate within the running community whether running technique can actually be taught, and what in fact constitutes proper running form.  While the POSE method might not represent the end-all and be-all for every runner, my own self-taught interpretation of the technique is clearly a huge improvement over whatever I had been doing earlier.

If that makes me a poser, I’ll take it.

A couple of months ago I mentioned that several of my former amours had stopped by this site but had remained content to lurk without comment.  Shortly afterwards, one of the men in question sent me an email, simply entitled “Busted.”

I wrote back that I would have to find a way to tell a story about him in my blog. He’s been dropping by these pages from time to time, and I suspect he’s been disappointed that he hasn’t yet surfaced anecdotally here.  To make up for lost time, I’ll share one short and one long reminiscence.

Short: Once he took me to a house party where people were passing around two memorable items — a very sweet joint, and a brand-new, first-generation Apple Newton.  I partook of one and not the other.  (If you are even passing familiar with me, the choice will be obvious!)

Long: When I was a kid, I was a disaster when it came to sports.  I was always the last person chosen for dodge ball or any other team sport.  I never managed to shinny even two or three feet up the rope that hung from the gymnasium ceiling. I didn’t learn to ride a bike until I was in the third grade, and when I stepped up to the plate to play softball for the first time the following year, I stood facing directly at the pitcher until the teacher gently grasped my shoulders and rotated me clockwise by ninety degrees.  No matter how many tennis lessons I took, I never seemed to be able to chase down and return the ball.

By the time I entered adulthood, I’d had a lifetime of identity formation as a benchwarmer.  I’d also had more than one boyfriend who had critiqued my figure, telling me that I needed to change my shape and lose weight (for them, not for me).  So when this fellow commented to me one day while we were standing in a supermarket aisle that I was astonishingly fond of junk food, I responded defensively.

“I had the healthiest diet imaginable as a child.  My reaction formation is none of your business,” I pouted.

“Look, I’m not interested in telling you what you should put in your mouth,” he said, adding with a mischievous leer,  “…for the most part.”  Then he kindly continued, “It’s just that you’re already blessed with a naturally athletic physique, and I know that if you laid off the junk, you could really reach your potential.  You would be amazing.”

I did a double-take.  “Athletic?” I snorted.  “What, are you making fun of me?”

“No,” he replied earnestly.  “I’m surprised you don’t see it.”  He was serious.

He pointed out that I had a muscular build and that I moved with natural coordination.  And then it dawned on me that he was right.  Although I couldn’t (and still can’t) hit a ball to save my life, suddenly I began to clearly hear the countermelody to the unsporting theme song in my head:  The summer afternoons when I spent so much time on my bicycle that the outline of my cycling gloves was tanned into my hands.  The hours spent on the Universal machine at the college gym. The years of dance rehearsals and recitals.

This man, a lifelong sports enthusiast, held a mirror up to me that displayed the letters “J-O-C-K” when I peered into it.  After decades of being told that I was awkward and ungainly, receiving one sincere, enthusiastic vote of confidence permanently changed the way I looked at myself.

I’ve often heard people characterize their past romantic relationships as failures simply because those relationships did not last forever.  This is akin to describing a trip to faraway land as a flop because you didn’t wind up emigrating there.  If you are willing, your understanding of the world and your place in it can be indelibly altered by scaling Mt. Denali or the Great Wall of China just once in your life.  You don’t need to move somewhere to be better for having made the journey, or to cherish the time you spent there.

We had a good run back in the day, this man and I.  Which is part of what enables and inspires me to roll out of bed, lace up my shoes, and get in a good run all these years later.  Your mileage may vary — but in my book, I would call that a success.

In the midst of winter, I find myself repeatedly having to administer various concoctions to my skin in order to keep from chapping, cracking, flaking, peeling, parching, dessicating, and generally dehydrating into nothingness.  My desk at work is fully loaded with hand cream, skin cream, facial moisturizer, lip balm, cuticle cream, pure shea butter, and a few tins of solid perfume for good measure.

Make a phone call, daub, dash off an email, daub, set up a spreadsheet, daub.  Often, I’m not even consciously thinking about moisturizing, but I’m still fiddling with the various little containers sitting within arm’s reach.

There seems to be only a faint correlation between a product’s price and its overall efficacy.  The $3 drugstore lip balm loaded with plenty of plant extracts manages to smell, look, and feel great; the fancy $15 organic lip treatment, not so much.  Which is just as well, given that “savings” is the big thing on everyone’s lips these days.

Type up a blog entry, daub.  Save a few pennies, daub.

I’ve read numerous wrenching stories over the past several weeks about individuals who have been wiped out by the double-vapor bookkeeping of hedge fun manager Bernard Madoff.  Today’s public disclosure of the Madoff client list in court documents revealed that legendary baseball southpaw Sandy Koufax had assets under management with Madoff.

Stealing money is one thing, but stealing from Sandy Koufax?

Okay, your name may still be inscribed in the Book of Life, but I think this means your face is also permanently etched in the dictionary under “goniff,” you big schmuck.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a blazingly fast tanner.  My mother used to keep me out of the sun during the early afternoon hours every summer, but I always managed to wind up brown as a chestnut by the time school photos were snapped in the fall.  Yes, pale folk, I know:  I make you sick.

The downside of this otherwise fortunate condition is that I color so quickly that I can scarcely avoid winding up with a laughably obvious farmer’s tan.  Plus, we all know in the long haul melanin is no match for ultraviolet radiation.  So I try to remember to wear sunscreen as often as possible, even in everyday situations.  After all, it’s generally a good thing when your face is not twenty shades darker than the rest of your body.

Still, I’ve been forgetting to throw on sunscreen before I go out and run in the morning.  It hasn’t been that much of an issue during the winter months, but if I keep this up through the spring I’m going to wind up looking like a piece of marble cake by Memorial Day.  Which is how I ended up shopping for sunscreen during the first week of February.

My favorite all-purpose sunscreen is Coppertone Sport.  A devoted ultimate frisbee player told me it was the consensus choice of his entire disc league, since it was the only mass-market sunscreen that left everyone’s hands ungreasy enough to keep playing.  It goes on, stays put, and has a relatively neutral smell that immediately prompts my brain to think of greenery and summer.

Since everything except my face is covered when I head outside these days, I took note of the small bottle of Coppertone Sport Faces lotion in SPF 50.  While it was double the price of the body-grade Coppertone Sport SPF 50 lotion, I figured it was specially formulated for facial skin and its temperamental pores.  Out of curiosity, I flipped over one bottle of each type of sunscreen in order to compare their respective ingredient lists.

They were identical.

Tsk, tsk, Coppertone.  Caught you red-handed — albeit not red-faced, I’m sure.

I went out for a quick, short run after returning home from work today, hoping to log a few miles before the afternoon’s light snow turned to slush (and eventually ice).  After gingerly skittering around for a while and growing increasingly damp, I decided to run up the Rocky Steps to psych myself up for the trip home.

When I reached the top of the stairs, I looked out over the city’s skyline.  The illuminated light display on the side of the the Cira Centre shone in the distance, beaming out the image of a large, red… Uh, wait a sec, what’s that weird blob supposed to be?

I had to stare at the vaguely diagonal, jagged shape for several seconds until it dawned on me.  February is American Heart Month, and the large red splotch on the side of the skyscraper was supposed to be an anatomically correct heart (complete with portions of truncated veins and arteries protruding from its sides).  Yummy!

To which my own ticker said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah…can we get moving and head indoors already?  Sheesh.”  I complied — because it is winter, and because it is my heart.

I recently learned from a radio story on “The World” that the United States will soon be imposing a 300% duty on Roquefort cheese.  The expensive, aromatic foodstuff is already subject to a 100% tariff, and now it will effectively double in cost. This price hike is the result of a last-minute cowpoke-in-the-eye from the Bush administration, its retaliatory response to the European Union’s imposition of duties on hormone-treated American beef.

Come March, we can look forward to paying around $70/pound Stateside for the privilege of enjoying the pungent King of Cheeses.  Roquefort producers, the Washington Post reports, lament that this is effectively a ban on their historically unique product.

Meanwhile, I got while the getting was still good, making off to the checkout lane with a small wedge of Roquefort Carles this weekend after also sampling Roquefort from Papillon (peppery, with a vinegary finish) and Société (tangy, tart).  The cheesemongers at DiBruno Brothers fretted about the upcoming price hike on Roquefort, predicting that most people would turn to gorgonzola or other blue cheeses when faced with the sky-high cost of authentic Roquefort in the midst of an economic downturn.

Since the famous French cheese will soon be moving to somewhere far above my pay grade, I figured I’d have a final nibble as a hedge against regret.  As the shopworn parable says, “The quicker you let go of the old cheese, the sooner you can enjoy the new cheese.” A new cheese that isn’t fraught with quite so many issues, is kinder to the wallet, and maybe stinks a tad less.

Yes, I could do with some of that on my plate.