Moving Pictures

(This piece is for my book-in-progress titled See How We Run: Best Writings from 25 Years of Running Commentary. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from May 2000.)

Rich Benyo, my partner on the Running Encyclopedia book being written this year, noticed that the master list I’d compiled had reached thousands of entries but never once mentioned running movies. I blame the oversight on being a word guy. I’ve never had anything to do with the illustrations and layout of my work, only with the words, so my thoughts on the visual media are few.

Now the films are in the book, and the list of those that fit within its scope – road events, 5K to marathon – is short. Outside these boundaries lie those with running titles (“The Running Man,” an Arnold Schwarzenegger thriller, and “Marathon Man,” a look at sadistic dentistry) but which are about this sport in name only.

Also missing from the book are the “Without Limits” and “Prefontaine,” since Pre was never a road racer. “Personal Best” is a track film with marathoner Kenny Moore playing another brand of athlete, a swimmer. The 1960s classic “Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” is only marginally about running, and not very long runs at that.

In the maybe category fall “On the Edge,” whose Dipsea-like race runs partly on the roads and whose cast includes several road racers. “Running Brave” has no footage of Billy Mills’s anticlimactic Olympic Marathon, which he ran after winning the 10,000.

The fictional movies with road racing at their heart are mostly forgettable. Joanne Woodward in “See How She Runs,” Michael Douglas in “Running,” Ryan O’Neal in “The Games” – come across as actors trying and failing to look like runners. They lack The Look.

The videos I like best are the real ones. I much prefer the Steve Prefontaine documentary that Kenny Moore co-authored, “Fire on the Track,” to either of the theatrical productions.

“Endurance” is a true story, with Haile Gebrselassie playing himself. In an unintentionally comical scene he pretends to be a novice marathoner and almost trips over his feet at six-minute-mile pace.

Best of the lot are the various Olympic films, as real runners run real races. Setting a high early standard was director Leni Reifenstahl with her “Olympia,” an almost-four-hour look at the 1936 Games.

Bud Greenspan directed the 1984 Olympic summary, “Sixteen Days of Glory.” The Munich Games report, “Visions of Eight” (the combined effort of eight directors), carries memorable footage of Frank Shorter’s marathon victory.

Nothing I’ve ever watched on screen was as memorable as the marathon in “Tokyo Olympiad” by Kon Ichikawa. The late-race, slow-motion closeups of an apparently tireless Abebe Bikila give a look into the face of this sport’s African future.

UPDATE FROM 2014

Since this writing, runners-on-film (or videotape, or DVD) have found their best friend ever in Mark Hale-Brown. He manages the website runningmovies.com, which identifies and describes hundreds of titles.

The most notable additions in recent years are Jon Dunham’s “Spirit of the Marathon,” versions I and II. Another sequel in the works, centered on Boston.

[Hundreds of previous articles, dating back to 1998, can be found at joehenderson.com/archive/. Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in  as many as three different formats: (1) in print from Amazon.com; (2) as e-books from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com; (3) as PDFs for e-reader devices and apps, from Lulu.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Marathon Training, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

Trial Mile

(This piece is for my book-in-progress titled See How We Run: Best Writings from 25 Years of Running Commentary. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from March 2000.)

The last year of the 1900s was one of my healthiest ever, with no interruptions in routine. The streak broke in January 2000, when a heel injury gave me a chance to renew an old practice and learn that it still works if I let it.

A Kenyan taught me this lesson. The New York Times carried a profile on Cosmas Ndeti before one of his three Boston Marathon victories. Its most influential lines read:

“He runs according to the way he feels each morning, not according to any rigid schedule. He has been known to wake up, run for a kilometer, then climb back into bed.”

When this story first appeared, I was limping through one of my frequent spells of achilles tendinitis. It had stayed with me for weeks, without improving, as I’d tried to stay on a schedule of “easy” runs that weren’t easy enough.

Taking a clue from Ndeti, I listened more closely to what the achilles told me each morning. Because “miles” and not “meters” is my first language, I ran a mile and then decided what to do next. If signs of trouble appeared or didn’t clear, and especially if they worsened, I forced myself to stop for that day and try again the next.

The pain limited me to a single mile at first. But soon the tendon announced that it was healing quickly under this more gentle treatment, and distances eased up to normal. Within a few weeks I was ready for a half-marathon race – a slow one, to be sure, but on a pain-free foot.

The stubborn heel injury of early 2000 let me retest the trial mile. This time, less than a month after graduating from a long string of single-mile days, I was back to running 26 times that far.

Why, you might ask, even bother with this trial mile? Why not just decide whether to run or not before bothering to dress and go out the door?

The answer has to do with listening to your body. Running advisers all tell you to do this, but they rarely say when to listen most closely.

Before the run isn’t the right time. That’s when the body tells its biggest lies – trying to convince you that it feels better or worse than it really does.

Sometimes running injuries go into hibernation between runs. You tell yourself at the start that you’re okay, you try to run as planned, you overdo, the pain comes out of hiding, and you suffer a recovery setback by not stopping soon enough.

Just as often, though, the problem feels worst when you’re not running. You think before starting that you’re hurting and need another day off. A warmup might have worked out the stiffness and soreness.

The trial mile acts as a truth serum. It tells honestly what you’re able to do that day. Listen.

Another value of the trial mile is that it tricks you into starting and seeing what happens. A basic law of physics reads that a body at rest wants to stay resting, and one in motion wants to keep moving. This is also a basic rule of running.

The hardest step to take is the first one out the door. Then once you’ve started, the momentum kicks in.

UPDATE FROM 2014

At the 2000 Napa Valley Marathon this law of running motion worked longer for me than it ever before or since. I almost didn’t start at all, debating until the last moment about taking a run alone – or even taking a day off.

The excitement of race day drew me to the starting line. But even then the plan was just to run a minority of those miles, then beg a ride.

The early testing period passed while giving no compelling reason to stop. The half-marathon came and went as I agreed to stay with a companion, Jan Seeley, for her 16 miles.

She stopped as planned. I said I’d like to run “a couple more.”

Eighteen miles still wasn’t quite enough, nor was 20. Momentum finally carried me to the finish line of my slowest marathon to date but also the most surprising ever.

[Hundreds of previous articles, dating back to 1998, can be found at joehenderson.com/archive/. Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in  as many as three different formats: (1) in print from Amazon.com; (2) as e-books from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com; (3) as PDFs for e-reader devices and apps, from Lulu.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Marathon Training, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

Aiming Low

(This piece is for my book-in-progress titled See How We Run: Best Writings from 25 Years of Running Commentary. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from March 2000.)

I’m not quite ready to tell you to quit setting goals. That would sound anti-athletic. But let’s at least look at goals from another angle.

At the Napa Valley Marathon a few years ago I ran some miles with Jeff Hagen. Since then, Jeff has taught me a lot.

First he has guided me through a medical condition that we share (vertigo episodes, unrelated to running). Later we learned that we share views on goals.

Both of us like to think of them as floors to spring from instead of ceilings to bang against. Instead of pointing to the highest target we’d like to reach, we try to see how far we can exceed certain minimums.

Jeff’s minimum standards are immensely higher than mine. He’s an ultrarunner who does especially well in track races that last a day or more.

Now living in Yakima, Washington, he wrote in his club newsletter, Hard Core Runners News, “In the dozens of ultramarathons that I have run, my basic approach has been simply to go out there and have fun. I do stick to a race strategy, in order to run as efficiently as possible, but I have always steered clear of setting lofty race goals.

“For some reason, setting modest goals seems to work better. With lofty goals comes pressure, and if any little thing goes wrong – which is almost a certainty in any ultra event – one can easily become demoralized. This translates to poor performance.

“By setting goals that are more achievable, I find that even if things don’t go exactly as planned, there may be a chance of meeting my original goal. And if things happen to be going well, I sometimes adjust my goal upward during the second half of the event.”

Before you conclude that aiming low is a sure recipe for setting PWs, let me share another Jeff Hagen story. He went into a 48-hour race, in 1999, aiming high. “This was one of those rare times when I had a specific, and lofty, goal in mind – the North American record of 213 miles for men 50 to 54.”

Before the race began, the course and weather conditions relieved him of that plan. Jeff told his wife, “Well, that takes the pressure off. I’ll just enjoy the race and forget about the record.” He totaled 216 miles.

Goals have rarely been good to me. At least not the types of goal-setting that athletes are asked to do: aim for the stars; your reach must exceed your grasp; if you don’t dream it, you can’t do it.

I caved under the pressure of such goals from the start. Two starts, in fact:

– In my first high school mile I aimed to beat the big boys. The only one beaten up, by a too-fast start, was me, I quit the race after little more than a lap.

– In my first college race I set as a goal breaking 4:20 in the mile, though I’d never gone that fast and this event followed a season of slow training. The time fell short by a dozen seconds and left me despondent.

For my first marathon, however, I aimed low. For Boston 1967 my longest training run had been 20 miles at eight-minute pace. Holding that same pace for the extra 10K seemed a reasonable minimal goal.

I started as planned but steadily nudged up the pace. To my shocked delight I averaged 6:30 miles in that marathon. The new goal became that pace or better, which I never averaged again.

Goals can be stopping places. You either reach them and stop because you’re satisfied, or you don’t reach them and stop out of frustration.

By setting high goals, you set yourself up for high pressure and a high probability of failure. Low goals lead to low pressure and surprising results.

Instead of reaching for the highest point you might touch, see how far you can exceed a minimum standard. Instead of straining to make things happen, relax and let them happen. Instead of thinking of goals as the most you might achieve, consider them as the least you will accept.

UPDATE FROM 2014

A surprising run at the 2000 Napa Valley Marathon prompted this column. Seldom if ever has my destination so far exceeded my day’s plan as it did there.

I didn’t really have a goal that day, except to accompany Jan Seeley, the Marathon & Beyond publisher, for 10 miles or so. I ended up finishing that marathon – my only one not trained for or planned for. It illustrates another practice in the next chapter, “Trial Mile,” and its update.

[Hundreds of previous articles, dating back to 1998, can be found at joehenderson.com/archive/. Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in as many as three different formats: (1) in print from Amazon.com; (2) as e-books from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com; (3) as PDFs for e-reader devices and apps, from Lulu.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Marathon Training, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]

Happy New Day

(This piece is for my book-in-progress titled See How We Run: Best Writings from 25 Years of Running Commentary. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from January 2000.)

No one alive today will ever again see two zeroes at the end of a new year, let alone 000. Yet the much-ballyhooed, and in some circles feared, passage of 1999 to 2000 came without any help from me.

I chose to sit out all celebrations of the 2000s. Only once will I type the word millenium here – not because it was so overworked during the rollover to triple-zero, but because it’s too big a chunk of time to get my mind around. So is a century.

A month is just the right size for me. I ended December the same way as all months – by listing all runs taken (and their daily averages), races run, illnesses or injuries suffered, writings published, trips taken and work done on the road.

Even a month is too big for my daughter Leslie to grasp. She thinks of time in smaller, less precise terms.

Leslie doesn’t fit the stereotype of kids with Down syndrome, who are thought to live in the eternal present – with no memory of the past and no future to anticipate. My girl knows the days of the week, but mainly deals (with sign language, because she’s also deaf) in terms of now, before, after, yesterday, tomorrow, long ago and next week.

Leslie also knows signs for the months. But she can’t conceive of how many days or weeks make a month or how many months add up to a year, let alone the years in a decade, decades in a century and so on.

The handicapped, along with the very old and very young and the primitives, don’t know what year it is. Their days run by the sun, not the calendar.

Leslie skipped the party at our house that welcomed the 2000s, falling into bed by nine o’clock as always. This was just another night to her, leading into a day much like the one before. 

She trusted that the sun would come up at almost exactly the same time on January 1^st as it had on December 31^st, and that she could charge into another day. No night, even one that comes but once a year, or every hundred or thousand years, was worth losing sleep over.

My daughter told me, without saying a word, about how to start the new year. On the first day of 2000 I’d be same person, doing the same things, as on the last day of 1999. The first run would be longer than usual, but it would celebrate nothing more than the end of a week when I always get to go longer than usual.

My hope on December 31^st was to follow Leslie to bed and trust the new year to arrive safely, as it always had before. Her nonfunctional ears let her sleep blissfully through the midnight hour and the explosions of celebration that greeted it.

I’d sat out the partying, but the second-hand excitement still left me too wired to think about sleeping. With the new day just an hour old, I slipped outside to run.

Runs act as the most versatile of drugs. They can wake you up when tired or calm you down when agitated.

Mine usually have the first effect, so I came home expecting to carry on with the usual daily pattern of writing after running. Instead I decided to rest for a few minutes on the couch – and promptly dozed off for what felt like less than an hour.

Leslie woke me up with the cooing she does while playing happily by herself. I thought, Why is she awake so early? It wasn’t all that early. My watch read 6:30.

Leslie didn’t know what time or day it was, or that I’d slept half my preferred amount. It’s morning, Dad, she would soon tell me. Get up so we can do more of the same good things we did yesterday.

UPDATE FROM 2014

Leslie was 17 then, a student at the Oregon School for the Deaf. She’s now 32, living in a group home with other women like herself.

She doesn’t know the number of this year, but she knows the day when dad will come to visit every other week. She sends me simple text messages about it from her own phone.

[Hundreds of previous articles, dating back to 1998, can be found at joehenderson.com/archive/. Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in  as many as three different formats: (1) in print from Amazon.com; (2) as e-books from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com; (3) as PDFs for e-reader devices and apps, from Lulu.com. Latest released was Going Far. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Journal, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Marathon Training, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]