A few weeks ago, biking home from work
I’d finally gotten around, through, and ahead of all the buses on Congress and I was hauling ass over the bridge, slightly adrenalized because I’d jumped the light; I knew 3 lanes of traffic would be coming up behind me soon and I wanted to get out of the way. Geared down, pushing hard against the southerly wind heavy with heat and humidity and the sweet rotten fruit smell of bat guano, I felt pretty good.
About halfway over the bridge, a young woman breezed past me on her bike pretty much like I was standing still. Oh, no, I thought, this is simply unacceptable, and I stood up on my pedals and did my level best to keep up with her.
To absolutely no avail. It’s just a matter of human observation that she had a magnificent ass, and it’s simple truth that it was receding rapidly and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I’d like to put it off to her superior bicycle but the real story is she put me to shame, gone too quickly for me to even assess her machine.
A few hours later, I was at the Ann Richards school in South Austin, running around the 440 track (I’m about to go there now; I head over there on my bike most days, taking a variety of routes of varying cruelty). After a lap at a decently strong pace, I noticed this guy had joined me on the track, taking the inside lane. He was a youngish guy, maybe 20, 30 pounds overweight, short legs, sweating hard in the late afternoon heat. Yeah, man, I thought, that’s the way to do it, feeling a sort of paternal fitness largesse. Not smug, lord, no, especially after the bridge incident, just a sort of zen-like feeling: we are all trying together, and together we can encourage and inspire and grow.
All aglow, I didn’t notice at first that he was overtaking me rather easily, and suddenly I was looking at the undersides of his running shoes as he padded away from me.
Not again, I thought, and settled into a rather grimmer mindset as I struggled to catch him. By way of excuse-making I’d like to point out he was on the inside lane, and I habitually take the outside lane, and further that I’d taken an arduous bicycle path to the school, and beyond that I’d commuted to and from work that day on my bike — but in fact I wasn’t going to catch this guy under any circumstance. Like my friend PSP used to say, reasons don’t change the facts. I was running hard, heartrate way up, and not only was I not catching him, but it seemed clear he was actually going to lap me!
Well there’s just no fucking way, I thought, and began running just as hard as I could. Keeling over from a heart attack was better than giving up a whole lap.
I settled into pure running, using a Milton Nascimento song* I call on in emergencies, and lit out. My peripheral vision vanished. I was running in a tunnel of blood and respiration, stubbornly preferring death over dishonor.
You don’t have to tell me I’m a nitwit, I’ve known that for a long time.
As I came around the bend into the straight, I could see a cop running a speed trap on the sidestreet laughing at me from his car, and I dared a look over my shoulder –
– and there was no sign of my nemesis. I looked around and saw he’d jogged off to the soccer fields after a quick lap.
So I finished out the run, got back on my bike, and headed home, thoroughly winded and completely humbled. I thought I was in pretty amazing shape for a fifty year-old guy, but all the signs were telling me I remained a wheezy — and deluded — chump.
The thing is, I don’t want to spend hours a day on being fit. I’m no athlete – I’m a musician, writing about changing my life, experimenting with mind and spirit. I’m on a mission of discovery, and it seems obvious that a body that works will make the more important work — becoming a human worth killing — a lot easier. So I fold this exercise stuff into my life: I get up early and stretch out and do floor exercises, but really I’m writing. Then I get on my bike, but really I’m commuting to work, and saving money and a little bit of ozone. Later I bike to the track, but really it’s the evening’s shopping for food and supplies…
Discouraged from the whuppins I’d received, I started trying to figure out how to kick the body thing up a notch without taking too much precious time away from the shit that really matters, namely, not being a suckass fuckhead jerkwad dweeb. Which is, truthfully, what I am.
The following Friday, it came to me:
wind sprints.
So these days, I bike to the track, run my laps, and then at the end of it, I do sets of 100 yard wind sprints, which is to say, I run as fast a I can.
When was the last time you ran a fast as you possibly could? For a hundred yards? For me, it was close to 30 years ago — Pease Park, 5 miles in the morning before school, 3 in the evening, both runs punctuated by wind sprints.
The first week I could barely walk, and I’m still limping a little; the muscles on the tops of my thighs, apparently unused by either extensive biking or running or compulsive walking, are still hollering at me, and it’s tough stretching them out. But I’ve been relearning how to really run — it took me a week to get up on my toes, and fall forward into the sprint, slicing the air with my arms.
I’m NOT a fast runner, I never was. there are plenty of people who can outrun, outbike, out just-about-out-anything me. And boy, did I feel ridiculous charging full not-very-fast speed down the track for anyone to see. But last Friday, running around the track, I noticed I was fairly bounding around the oval. and I thought, wow, I could do this forever.
Okay, I’m out the door. Time for my evening shopping.
* The Milton Nascimento song is Ponta de Areia — beautiful song, it’s one of those melodies that just seems like it must’ve always been there, waiting to be discovered… I learned it from the incredible Wayne Shorter album Native Dancer. Here it is in a version by Boca Livre:
