The Logic of Long Distance

Oh, God! You should have been with me yesterday when I finished my ham and eggs and knocked back some whiskey and picked up my Weatherby Mark V .300 Magnum and a ball of black Opium for dessert and went outside with a fierce kind of joy in my heart because I was Proud to be an American on a day like this. If felt like a goddamn Football Game, Jann -- it was like Paradise.... You remember that bliss you felt when we powered down to the farm and whipped Stanford? Well, it felt like That. O Ghost, O Lost, Lost and Gone, O Ghost, come back again. --Hunter S. Thompson, Ph.D. Yes, in case you were wondering, I do realize that most of the time I'm painting a picture of running like it's this thing worthy of philosophizing about in this high, mighty, and mostly serious way. It's a pretentious blog. I am a philosopher after all. And yes, in my last post, I even went so far as to talk about running as a religious experience. But if we're going to keep the record straight then i

" Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion. ... Religion is nothing if it not be the vital act by which the entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to the principle from which it draws its life. This act is prayer, by which term I understand no vain exercise of words, no mere repetition of certain sacred formulae, but the very movement itself of the soul, putting itself in a personal relation of contact with the mysterious power of which it feels the presence,--it may be even before it has the name by which to call it. Wherever this interior prayer is lacking, there is no religion; wherever, on the other hand, this prayer rises and stirs the soul, even in the absence of forms or of doctrines, we have living religion." --Auguste Sabathier (quoted from W. James' The Varieties of Religious Experience ) It is difficult and probably dangerous to speak positively of religion in the Bible belt during the war on terror (remember, we are at war? I keep for

Yesterday's easy run went well. It won't be long until I'm running workouts. Until then, I'm living vicariously. Oklahoma State Workout with the Cowboys - Episode #7 | April 11, 2009 on Flotrack Posted using ShareThis

Today marks my first day back into training. The ankle is not totally healed, but it's good to go for easy running. It's fitting that the first day back will be the standard Monday 12 with the boys. The Monday 12 is about as far from a workout as you can get. There's nothing intense about it. It's not a long run. It's not a tempo. It's not a workout. It's a jog with a couple friends. But if there is a secret to my training, it's encapsulated by the values of Monday 12. The Monday 12 is all about sustainability. There is a tendency to overemphasize the value of the runs that push the envelope. Those long runs, those fast runs. The runs where you grit your teeth and dig for new capacities. These have a place in training, for sure. But training, like life, is mostly made up of runs like the Monday 12. The runs that don't do anything special. They don't serve any particular purpose. They don't prove anything in particular. You can't brag abou