As I said in an earlier post I have a funny relationship with exercise. It's sort of half exhilaration, half degradation and altogether strange.
I love running - when it goes well. There is focus and intensity to it that can be similar to the feelings I have when writing a piece of music. I become completely absorbed in action, in problem solving and totally lost in the moment.
The problem comes with contemplation of how well so many of my friends live in their bodies - they take yoga, run, hike, dance and have played competitive sports with great comfort and success for most of their lives.
I've always hated sports (note - I said "sports" not "physical activity") and formal exercise.
I trace this self-deprecating attitude to my third grade year. As a Cub Scout (don't get me started) I took part in a Cub Scout Olympics at Lee School on a Saturday afternoon.
My father (he who studied with Jim Thorpe's trainer Pete Pitchlynn) really wanted me to be fast - however even then I had the solid build I have now - "Husky" was the nice way to put it.
The final event was a 50-yard dash between only two kids - me and Bill Floyd, literally the fasted kid in the school (and that I can remember his name over 4 decades later is telling - actually a really nice kid).
Were it done today I would have done two heats - and tried to beat my time on the second. Under no circumstance would you place a child (or any impressionable person) in the position where some version of success - especially in the eyes of one's father - was literally impossible.
But I was enjoined to "do my best" to try to beat Bill. I complained, loudly, that winning was impossible. I didn't have the nerve to walk away, or say it was "unfair" - ("unfair" was not part of the vocabulary of the male underdog in the 1960's - only someone with obvious superiority could complain about fairness back then).
So the whistle went off and Bill was true to his nature and flew down the track.
I got about halfway down, just stopped and walked off to the side. I think right then I could hear a door slamming shut on part of life that so many other kids shared with ease and grace.
It felt like I was cut off from an experience of myself as someone who could win, for whom participation and success, comfort and pride in oneself, was a natural and rightful part of life.
I suppose it was a sense that even if you couldn't succeed at that moment, you still could succeed if the circumstances allowed.
And so now decades later, I run. It's hard to do when running outside, like today (for the first time in seven years) but inside I use my little iPod - and the music accompanies me on my imagined run into an Olympic Stadium - Barcelona, usually. John Williams Olympic Fanfare plays as I enter - not winning, but just getting to the end - like the guy who finished his marathon in Barcelona outside the stadium, even as the closing ceremonies were happening.
That's all I want to do - finish with honor. FInally. FInally that race will be over - and the next one will begin.
