Maintaining > Succes or Failure

Cutting grass for what must be the 36th time this mowing season the thought of maintaining something really set in.  I cut my yard twice a week on average, not because I’m particularly obsessed with how neatly manicured it looks but simply because it looks best when freshly cut.  The reason for this is Crab Grass, Johnson Grass , Bermuda Grass whatever you call it has overtaken the yard over the years.   I paid a guy off and on to spray it,  I spread some fertilizers with 16-4-8 blends of go-go juice to make it grow about as often as the Cincinnati Reds made the playoffs, yeah, yeah.  But in the long run the fact is I haven’t “maintained” the yard so now I push my veteran Briggs &  Stratton mulcher ’round and ’round like that farmer under Amarillo skies.  Judge me if you like you crazy Lawn Purists who stare out your front windows waiting to snatch up leaves as they fall or yell at little Garry from across the street for having the audacity to come after his ball when it rolled onto your pristine environment  but the same lesson applies to every area of life.

I propose that maintaining is more difficult than success or failure.  College basketball coach John Calipari is fond of saying “there’s no escaping hard work” and it’s true, excellence is built out of putting in the extra hours of practice when everyone else went elsewhere.  Now that they are both finished with their professional careers go back and compare Michael Jordan with Allen Iverson,   one maintained over the years, the other didn’t.  But even at that Michael couldn’t maintain his level of excellence forever, the Second Law of Thermodynamics holds true outside the lab as well.  Everything left to itself runs down without an outside force to maintain it.

Success, which in our current culture is defined by being #1 in whatever field of endeavor a person finds themselves,  can be fueled by passion, getting in the zone, going above and beyond, pushing through boundaries and for a short time it holds but it does not sustain itself.  Tiger Woods, the Dallas Cowboys, Steven Speilberg, author John Grisham, or any number of blaze across the sky rock bands who hit the scene in a rush of glory only to end up hoping to get just one more mention in Rolling Stone .  The flip side, Failure, if we aren’t honest about it, can always be blamed on some circumstance that spiraled out of control, or a person who wouldn’t cooperate, or the timing was off, yada, yada, yada, we’ve all been there; but maintaining, now there’s some serious long term hard unrelenting, insert your own adjective, work.

To maintain you have to continually be vigilant at the thing you’re after.  The yard, your health or weight, your relationships both public and private, your spiritual life, your golf game, the distance or speed you hope to continue in running, your position at work or in politics so tied into key performance indicators and focus group approval, whatever it is it has to be maintained and maintaining is the serious business of life.  The day to day grind, the “we did that yesterday”, the “we had spaghetti three times last week”,  the “why do we have to follow this stupid rule”, etc, etc, on and on.

I’m signed up, meaning paid for, a 13.1 mile run in about three months and if I had maintained my running over the summer the extra hard work of again losing weight, returning to a decent diet and rebuilding my running base of miles wouldn’t seem so daunting.  But I slacked off and now have to reacquaint myself  with what the tools of success or the ease of failure are for;  to get me to a level than I want to maintain from there on out, or chuck the entry fee down the drain and just wait for the next season of The Walking Dead to start back up.

Not every area of our life deserves this treatment, some things are just stages or places we occupy for certain seasons but others such as lines of communication staying open and honest within the family, the checkbook still is funded when the month runs out (looking at you Washington DC), staying plugged in at work or school, hitting the pavement and or gym five times a week, keeping up with current events and happenings in what interests you by actively reading and studying the subject or hobby, starting one more load of laundry before hitting the sack, these are all maintaining and all will keep the creeping malaze from slowly but surely catching you off guard.  Forget these wise words “and then one day you’ll find, 10 years have got behind you, no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun”*and you’ll grow slack on maintaining what’s important and proverbial lawn mower will be at the end of your arms much more than is necessary.

Success or failure happen along our path, but maintaining is where the real payoff happens in the things that truly matter to us.  As a disclaimer, this is just a reminder.  I’m awful at most of the subjects mentioned and fair to middling at the rest but since we don’t necessarily need something new but just need a swift kick in the pants every now and again I thought I’d take the liberty.

*un Pink de Floyd, circa 1973.

A Fall Run, The Boss & Reminders

While it’s hard to remember last Fall during this scorcher of a Summer in Louisville, this forgotten post ,that lingered in my draft folder, is a shout out for cooler weather and turning leaves.

As soon as the play button was touched the crowd noise came though my headphones, when my watch started tracking time a young Bruce Springsteen yells to his band and audience “Lets Go!” and off my feet start for a 15+ mile run.  The path will wind along the banks of the mighty Ohio in downtown Louisville heading west toward 100 year old Shawnee Park and back.  Along the way my feet pass the new development of Waterfront Park, the Belle of Louisville Steamboat with her recently damaged red paddle wheel, the McApline locks that sit at the 604 mile mark of the flow of the Ohio and are responsible for 50 million tons of movement of the basic materials that keep our  energy, food and manufacturing capabilities moving from the East to the Mid-West.  Shuffling on through a couple of streets of the old Portland neighborhood, under the Sherman-Minton bridge and on past the backside of Shawnee Golf Course towards the turnaround at the western edge of Shawnee Park the high sets in.  As I run along the sites and sounds bring up many reminders, thoughts that just don’t seen to rise to the surface if a person doesn’t allow themselves the opportunity to put all the issues, to-do lists and urgent action items on the back burner for awhile.  The concert flowing through my ears was from September 19th, 1978 where Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band were back in New Jersey for first of a three night stand at the Capitol Theatre.  Springsteen was not yet the massive success we would become within the next 5-10 years he was touring for his life after legal issues with a former manager had left him on the road for two years and fallout from expectations put on him from his breakout Born to Run album had him literally on the run.

That night on stage and this morning of running made me think of some of the continuing themes and lessons that running teaches.  Endurance, pushing yourself to limits and beyond, setting goals and not putting them aside for the sake of taking the easy road.  Springsteen’s early music was full of hard knock stories, driving that old beater of a car and yourself to better places, memories, experiences and people from his past and this run was bringing up similar thoughts for me.  After awhile my legs seemed to move on their own, the motion handled independently, fluid.  The point where effort, planning and desire to accomplish burst through to results and you experience something that was harder than you thought it would be to achieve but with greater rewards than you believed possible…now if only I could tell it as well as Bruce explained the story of how he wrote “Thunder Road”…

Springing Spring

After waiting out the clouds yesterday afternoon the Sun broke through and it was time to put in the mileage I’d kinda been putting off for the day.  The last leg of Louisville’s Triple Crown of Running, the Papa John’s 10 Miler, is Saturday morning so step by step on the pavement it had to be done to prepare.  My route of choice was the Ohio River Flood Wall, a 7.25 mile flat smooth run along the winding Ohio River where you can watch the river flow while the miles roll away.  Two song lyric references there by the way and since this post will ultimately be about music I guess they should be explained.  “Watching the River Flow” is an outstanding Bob Dylan track and “while the miles roll away” is taken from the classic Jackson Browne tune Running on Empty and for the me “the only time that seems too short” is not the time we get to play but the time I get to run.  This was one of those runs and about half way through a song that I had forgotten was the in the playlist came spilling into my ears.  It was a live tune from Louisville’s own My Morning Jacket and their triumphant return home concert on the Waterfront in August of 2008 that goes by the name of  Phone Went West.  While its a song of a longing that has passed it’s possibilities it still holds a sense of hope that the future will be alright down the road and that with each step led me out of a frustrating work weekend into the coming of Spring, thoughts of an upcoming 20th Anniversary with my beautiful and amazing wife and thankfulness for three daughters who are each doing well in their completely different stages of life.  Lots of folks were out enjoying the afternoon running, cycling and walking their dogs and the Sun was shining down on the Ohio and at that moment all was right with the world.  Of course all the realities of life are still there but it was still an opportunity to be grounded again in what’s really important and that’s why running, which now seems to be the real reason of this post, is part of the saving grace I’ve been granted over the last few years.  The next tune was Eddie Vedder covering Tom Waits’ Picture in a Frame which was enough to push me over to the sentimental little cuss attitude I get every in now and then…it didn’t last long as Sports Talk was on the radio on the way home concerning the ‘ol University of Kentucky Wildcats and Honest John Calapari’s coaching…oh well, it’s Spring, Easter Season – behold all things are new.

Mini or Full Marathon?

Last week my longest distance run passed the 15 mile mark and the pace increased by almost a minute to 9:35.  My plan had been to run the Kentucky Derby Festival’s Mini-Marathon in April but I feel the full marathon is within reach in the same time frame.  Last year the race sold out early so a decision will have to be made in early December I would image and if the 20 mile mark can be broken by then it looks like my first marathon will be in Louisville and not Chicago next October as was the original plan.  The feeling of gliding along from early along until about mile 11 was amazing, mile 7-8 in particular was beyond belief as the run was covered in a canopy of trees full of fall colors, the trail was covered with crunching leaves whose smell took me back to days of raking the leaves into what seemed like huge piles with all the neighborhood kids and jumping into what felt like a bottomless pit of orange, red, and brown.  The 31 year old Bruce Springsteen bootleg on my headphones helped as well, especially “Jungleland” from Born to Run where the scope of the lyrics The Boss wrote matched with the power of the E Street Band kicking in just lifted my feet and carried me along the Ohio River trail where I was eating up the miles.  Amazing run in a great city, that’s why I run and why the question about increased mileage may already be answered.

4-27-10:  As an update on this post, my decision ended up being to run the Mini. It was a great experience see 15,000 folks out running the park loop that a large number of my training miles were run on. Events like these are such a positive time for communities not only for the obvious economic/tourist benefits but more importantly it shows the general population that anyone can make a change in their lifestyle that will benefit their health. The time was a bit slower than my 2:15 goal finishing in 2:17:41 but that only leaves room for improvement next year.

Bourbon Chase 2009

This weekend I took part in something that last year at this time I would have though was nuts, inconceivable, completely off the radar.  A 200 mile overnight relay race in which I would run 15.7 miles in just over 24 hours.  The event was the Inaugural running of The Bourbon Chase and it wound its path from Clemont to Lexington Kentucky.  As its name states the Chase traveled through the Bourbon Trail of Distilleries in Central Kentucky and ended in the back yard of Rupp Arena, home to the University of Kentucky Basketball Team.  It was inconceivable because a year ago I was quite probably the most inactive I’ve ever been in my life working a rotating 12 hour night shift and not taking advantage of the days off at all.  220 pounds built around me and it became clear that a change was needed.  After a few months of treadmill running, then taking part in a couple of 5K races with my Cross Country runner of a daughter and actually hitting the pavement and putting in a few miles I stumbled across the website for the Bourbon Chase and the investigation began.  This sounded interesting, running such a distance with a team overnight, training for a goal and ending near the University of Kentucky campus where our oldest daughter was in her first semester of college.  I asked around the few runners that I knew in town but got the same quick response, “your nuts, no thanks” and mulled over the old to do or not do decision making process for a while.  In August I took the plunge and posted my interest in joining a team if anyone had any openings as the 150 team spots had sold out and after a couple of responses I joined on with a team that ended up with members from four different states and many walks of life that gelled together well and created a great time for all.

The Have Bourbon Will Travel Team - Van 2

We encountered all sorts of situations that are common to these types of events I assume:  pouring rain, wind, temperature changes, loose dogs, drivers not watching, rednecks yelling and tossing beer bottles, learning about a new group of people, hearing great stories and jokes, dealing with the various pains of running and rooting for all the teams to finish and do better than their goals.  In the end we finished just about right on our projected time in about 32 1/2 hours after sleeping on the brewery floor of a distillery, on picnic tables and concrete floors of a fairgrounds barn that we swore the roof was going to blow off of during a very heavy rain and wind storm, in a van when we just couldn’t stay awake any longer and Tim’s couches and floor during the Saturday morning break when Van 1 took back over.  It’s an endurance test that seems crazy to those who have never been involved but it’s part of what I find to be of great importance to me as I learn more about myself and life since my feet have started me on this path of running.  We need to test ourselves every now and again because it gets all too easy to just sit around and watch others play out the old Nike ad line “Just Do It”.  We need to feel the hurts of the muscles, the tiredness of our entire body and mind, the push to do something we either never or long since forgot we had the ability to do.  Because we need endurance in all of our walks of life:  our families, our work, our faith, our daily chores that get put aside and left undone to the point where it seems everything around us is running down.

Leaving Maker's Mark in the "Cold Kentucky Rain"

There’s an old Police song, “When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What’s Still Around” (yes, that’s the actual title, one of the longest in Rock History, but that’s for another post) that kinda fits with this train of thought as we move through time we find ourselves in a country that seems to be changing before our very eyes, we’re moving into different phases of life and our values are tested and we make concessions or hold firm.  Running for me gives the opportunity to make the best of the free time available so I can reflect on my surroundings, clear my mind and think though situations, listen, study and learn while my feet underneath me move at times without effort it seems.  I’ve been introduced to some authors I would never of had exposure to, made some fantastic playlists that flow between my ears amazingly and listened to some rock solid preaching that inspires and convicts and keeps me growing.  All because, thankfully, wasting my off days sleeping in the living room chair added some notches to my belt that have since tightened up 40 pounds ago.

So, all of this is to say that this blog will be changing focus and hopefully become much more active over the coming months as some of the lessons learned need to be shared with who ever may be reading.  Folks have asked how so much weight dropped off, how I’ve been able to increase the miles put in each week and how to run without much pain – because as the quote goes “pain in inevitable, but suffering is optional” and this relates to so many areas of life so there’s lots to write about and there’s a goal out there of running the 2010 Chicago Marathon that I believe I’m on a collision course with…

Our Team after the 200 miles & 32.5 hrs.

The Waiting

Back in 1981 Tom Petty had been fighting with his record company over several issues, which are well discussed in other areas, that had delayed the follow up to his break through album “Damn the Torpedoes” for several months. During the process he took to writing and penned one of his most memorable tunes, “The Waiting”.

Oh baby don’t it feel like heaven right now
Don’t it feel like something from a dream
Yeah I’ve never known nothing quite like this
Don’t it feel like tonight might never be again
We know better than to try and pretend
Baby no one could have ever told me ’bout this

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

Well yeah I might have chased a couple of women around
All it ever got me was down
Then there were those that made me feel good
But never as good as I feel right now
Baby you’re the only one that’s ever known how
To make me wanna live like I wanna live now

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

Don’t let it kill you baby, don’t let it get to you
Don’t let ‘em kill you baby, don’t let ‘em get to you
I’ll be your bleedin’ heart, I’ll be your cryin’ fool
Don’t let this go to far, don’t let it get to you

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you get one more yard
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

Copyright © 1981 Gone Gator Music

The chorus runs “The waiting is the hardest part” and relates to a relationship and being together but for the last few seasons it also means for me waiting for God’s work to happen in all my family members lives. Some things are short term waits and other much longer. What we consider a long time waiting varies considerably with the situation.  When we’re in a hurry at the store and behind someone who has brought an item to checkout that needs a price check those minutes seem like hours.  When it’s 2:00pm on Friday afternoon and we start vacation at 5:00pm those three hours seem like days.  When we get disturbing news from the test results at the Doctors office and have to wait until next Thursday to get in to see the Specialist those days seem like weeks.  When you are waiting for the job offer that you’ve interviewed three times for and the background check results are fourteen days out those two weeks seem like months.  When your son/daughter/grandchild goes off the deep end in making bad choices those months can seem like years and may literally turn into years.  My point in all this is that The Waiting is a part of life that we must accept and learn to live and listen for God in.  We worry about individual minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years but in reading the Scriptures we see that God deals in very long term projects:  Noah – 100 years of building and ridicule waiting on rain, Abraham – 25 years of hoping and forcing and manipulating God’s Promise waiting on a son, Moses – 40 years of waiting in the desert being manufactured into God’s chosen instrument, David – 7 years of running for his life waiting for his promised throne.  It appears that God’s factory is not the mass production of a General Motors who used to produce around 13,000 vehicles a day (when our economy was rolling), but the care and hand craft of a Rolls-Royce that produces a car in 30 days.  The value of this personalized type of work in our own lives has to come from a sense of contentment that Paul speaks of in Philippians 4:11-12:  ^“I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.  I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.   I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” To get where we want to be we have to wait, we waited to even arrive where we are at, we must simply wait as we do, as we live, as we experience our day by day minute by minute life – wait that reminds me of yet another tune…

Sweetheart Like You

The line has been stuck in my head for 25 years, “Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings”, from Bob Dylan’s pen through his nasal vocal delivery and into my memory banks it’s been lodged there popping in and out of my thoughts like the poor victim in a Whac-a-Mole game. The context of the lyric comes a couple of years or so into the first Reagan administration years after Vietnam, Watergate, the Carter economy and Disco. Dylan was coming out of his Gospel phase, still two years from releasing one of the first career spanning boxsets in Biograph, and I was a rocker looking to hear the next Led Zeppelin replacement when I borrowed “Infidels” from our local library.  The thing about music that most pulls me in and embedds itself to the point that it stays for years in my thought life is the lyric delivered by a voice is not pitch perfect, something Randy Jackson is always so concerned about, but just delivered in a way that makes the message believable to me.  Whether the song is about cars, love, politics, society, etc the key is that the one giving up control of their ear gate for next three and half minutes believes that the singer has experienced what is being sung about. Bob Dylan is, of course, a master of this and Sweetheart like You is a fine example. Whether it comes from an actual experience of Mr. Dylan or out of his imagination the voice he delivers these words in takes you to the rundown establishment that has been graced by the sweetheart’s presence. What his intentions are, well again another quality of Rock over other forms of lyricism, is really up to the listeners’ imagination giving us the opportunity to relate the scene to our own lives, choices and experiences.

Well, the pressure’s down, the boss ain’t here,
He gone North, he ain’t around,
They say that vanity got the best of him
But he sure left here after sundown.
By the way, that’s a cute hat,
And that smile’s so hard to resist
But what’s a sweetheart like you doin’ in a dump like this?

You know, I once knew a woman who looked like you,
She wanted a whole man, not just a half,
She used to call me sweet daddy when I was only a child,
You kind of remind me of her when you laugh.
In order to deal in this game, got to make the queen disappear,
It’s done with a flick of the wrist.
What’s a sweetheart like you doin’ in a dump like this?

You know, a woman like you should be at home,
That’s where you belong,
Watching out for someone who loves you true
Who would never do you wrong.
Just how much abuse will you be able to take?
Well, there’s no way to tell by that first kiss.
What’s a sweetheart like you doin’ in a dump like this?

You know you can make a name for yourself,
You can hear them tires squeal,
You can be known as the most beautiful woman
Who ever crawled across cut glass to make a deal.

You know, news of you has come down the line
Even before ya came in the door.
They say in your father’s house, there’s many mansions
Each one of them got a fireproof floor.
Snap out of it, baby, people are jealous of you,
They smile to your face, but behind your back they hiss.
What’s a sweetheart like you doin’ in a dump like this?

Got to be an important person to be in here, honey,
Got to have done some evil deed,
Got to have your own harem when you come in the door,
Got to play your harp until your lips bleed.

They say that patriotism is the last refuge
To which a scoundrel clings.
Steal a little and they throw you in jail,
Steal a lot and they make you king.
There’s only one step down from here, baby,
It’s called the land of permanent bliss.
What’s a sweetheart like you doin’ in a dump like this?

Copyright © 1983 Special Rider Music

Idol and 15 minutes

Visited the American Idol audition process this week with my oldest daughter. Andy Warhol was correct about that 15 minutes of fame desire we Americans have. Not that his original statement put the 15 minutes as a desire but more of a part of the normal course of life in a future that has now arrived.