The Logic of Long Distance

Why do I do this? (My feet hurt.) Why? Well, it's the need, I guess, for some sort of authentic experience. (My hip joint hurts.) As opposed to the merely synthetic experience of books, movies, TV, regular urban living. (My neck hurts.) To meet my God, my Maker, once again, face to face, beneath my feet, beyond my arms, above my head. (Will there be water at Cabeza Tank?) --Ed Abbey, Beyond the Wall Mr. Abbey, saint of lost causes, and his automobile. Another godawful eight miles in the books. The questions recur, or at least they should. They are old ones that we chew on, the cud of experience. What the hell is this all about, this onwards, this forwards, this march to who knows where? I barely got out the door after a day at work chasing my tail around. There are always good reasons, rational reasons, hella good arguments for just staying put. Like: I ran too hard last week and my legs are tired. Like: The grass really needs to be mowed. Like: Isn't this supposed to

Sorry for the hiatus. I needed a mental break. Lately I've been easing back into things. I ran my first workout in quite a while last night, and the increased blood flow to the brain ignited those same old dreams. This is how it works: Training is doing your homework. It's not exciting. More often than not it's tedious. There is certainly no glory in it. But you stick with it, over time, and incrementally through no specific session, your body changes. Your mind becomes calloused to effort. You stop thinking of running as difficult or interesting or magical. It just becomes what you do. It becomes a habit.    Workouts too become like this. Intervals, tempos, strides, hills. You go to the track, to the bottom of a hill, and your body finds the effort. You do your homework. That's training. Repetition--building deep habits, building a runner's body and a runner's mind. You do your homework, not obsessively, just regularly. Over time you grow to realize that