Roads, Mills, Laps

I got into a plane in Philadelphia and wedged myself between two enormous men in row 14. One of the guys was pure Arizona: flashy beltbuckle, flannel shirt and enormous, calloused hands ready to string barbed wired across his newly purchased cattle ranch atop some Hopi mesa. He gripped his plastic cup firmly and crunched the ice with his teeth while I cowered, reading John Masters’ autobiographical sequel to Bengals and a Tiger — The Road Past Mandalay.

I was entranced reading about Masters in the jungle with his Ghurkas and their deadly kukris infiltrating through Japanese lines in Burma with my elbows up off the rests surrendering them freely to the large men enroute to Arizona to make large deals. Everybody on planes is always making a deal. Everyone has to look important; some at decibel level ten and others going new skool Lando Calrissian style. People are buying and selling material, bartering prices, and throwing out Harvard Business school buzzwords — loudly, forcefully, menacingly and all laughingly from the back of the coach section.

I always sit there and listen and always thank myself that I’m not doing that nor ever will. I’m not a big cell phone-on-the-plane guy. I am too shy. Everyone’s a captive audience and I don’t want to fucking hear that you just landed. Put the thing away. Grab your bag and exit the plane. Chop bloody chop. Upon landing I took a gander outside. Phoenix sits in the Valley of the Sun–360-degrees of nothing but stunning crag rock formations jutting up off the floor of the valley in all directions. They resemble the sharpened talons of that mythical bird. It wasn’t till I got a closer look at the vast expanse of concrete insanity, carpeted developments creeping up the ridges of the talons, and the blackened smog cloud sitting over the valley, that sadly I concluded the talons of the bird reach out in vain; there’s no rising from the ashes of sprawl.

I’m checked into a hotel on the edge of a supermall called the ‘metrocenter mall.’ Its massive store fronts are sunk down below some sort of parking lot moat resembling a Vauban-like shopping fortress in the desert; it’s an eyesore. My hotel is in the middle of a renovation project. My room was originally assigned between the breakroom for the Mexican illegal immigrant carpenters whooping it up to a Mariachi band while zipping off Spanish at 100mph and some sort of makeshift sawing room that buzzed and chattered the first five seconds I entered the room. I turned around and got another room.

I threw on my running shoes and headed out along the Arizona Canal Path which is about 13 miles of gravel and bike path wonderfully maintained along a slumbering canal that contains ducks and rusting shopping carts. Traces of the water had that glossy petroleum shimmer when you looked at it in the right light. The path winds across all social strata. I started by first running past a place called Castles and Coaster. It’s an eclectic funland/tourist trap of miniature golf greens, roller coasters, and bumper cars within sight of Vauban’s nightmare. When I ran past it, there was one kid on the roller coaster screaming away while 10 teenager attendants sat idle, flicking their keys, chitchatting about whatever their hormones dictated. The canal then winds past shantytown — dusty wooden structures with cacti plants in the back and smells of ground beef wafting onto the bikepath.

Shirtless Mexican teenagers shared bike rides while pulling up their black Levis jeans laughing away in Spanish. Other white guys with mullets holding popsicles rode bikes too small for them on their way to the Cops casting call. As I ran out of the city, I spotted a guy hauling ass coming towards me. The closer he got the more he looked like Ryan Shay. He was at Ryan Shay pace and had the Ryan Shay upright gait ambling along at about 5:20 pace. He didn’t look my way and probably cursed the shirtless endomorph with his swish-swish pants out hogging HIS canal on January 3rd — bastard. I don’t know if it was Shay. Shay lives in Michigan, but he might be here for the winter, reading from the elite runner playbook — follow the warm temps and run all day in between book signings, endorsement photo ops, and massage appointments. I’m not mocking, I’m jealous.

I turned around when the canal abruptly came to a halt and wound back past my starting point. I found a track to do speed stuff on while I’m here. I ran along watching the sun move across the sky slipping in and out of the wisps of cirrus clouds you only see in the West and set below the vast, open horizon. I’m in love with the West. I always will be; this is home to me. I ended the insanity at 2:00 on the button, took a shower, and found a real Mexican restaurant with Mexicans eating real Mexican food. I drank margaritas at the bar while they ordered Budweisers and we all watched kickboxing.

I’m tired and my right quad is hurting. I’ve got more than traction now, I’ve got good purchase at a big mileage week but work and social calls will get in the way of the climb from here on out. In the real world, recreational runners have jobs. To run the miles nearing the elites, bookended at 5am and 11pm wearing the blinking raiment of a fool….to pay the bills making charts and spewing gobbledygook while flying coach across the country sardined in between lard and callousness is to do it all, shoving life into a Fred Myers backpack with a broken zipper.
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120 minute run. Single workout. Again. Along the canal. Again. ————————————–
After hitting the snooze on the radio ten times this morning, I sat up in bed and realized that I’d be staring down the long, cold barrel of another single workout late tonight. Again, I’d be forced to fit the miles and effort of my true passion outside the parenthesis of the normal day.

I knew all day as I stared at charts and listened to the corporate action items, that it’d be me alone out in the dark crunching along the side of the still water ready to get jumped by the kids in the black Levis.

The game. Everything today was about The Game. “Did you see the game?” “Whadya think of that game?” “Man what a game!” I’d pretend along and shook my head with everyone else not knowing who won The game let alone who played in it. I’d spare my remarks and keep them neutral, vanilla, and plausible for every possible outcome. I’d say things like “Yeah, a close one! Hard fought! Wow!” I’d begin to bow out of the conversation as the details would take center stage. I’d exit with, “Whew…man I was up late watching it….gotta get some coffee…” and I’d come back just in time to hear that the Nittany Lions really did it. Hooray!!!! We all played such a vital role in the outcome. Yay team. So The game was on tonight. We all ate at a Steakhouse after work and I bowed out to go pull the trigger on the gun with a nod, a goodnight and a mention that I’d be glued to The game.

I drove home pushing the waste of the rental car down the highway looking at the broad sky with the peppered dots of light –planes coming into land at Sky Harbor; the pilots and the passengers surely glued to The Game. I changed clothes, grabbed my Shuffle and dashed out the back door avoiding the overly friendly ‘guest service’ staff wishing me countless good evenings and good mornings as they listened to The Game. I had my South Wales Borderers meets King Cetswayo shirt on; I was listening to Smashing Pumpkins’ album Adore and I headed out into the night.

The streets were empty as I turned onto the Arizona Canal. I slipped along moving pretty fast, listening to my breath and gauging pace off the time between footfalls on the gravel. Every now and then I’d climb onto islands of light — kids playing basketball here, empty parks there. I’d crunch a few steps and drop off the islands back into a sea of blackness guessing and hoping that I wouldn’t fall off the trail or stumble into a hole. Every now and then, shirtless men on ancient, squeaking ten speeds with unraveling ramshorn handlebars would pass me enroute to God knows where.

I hit my 1:30 mark, turned back around and headed home. The crescent moon was staring back at me — serving as the true closing parenthesis of the day.
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1 hr 40 minute single run.
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I am baked. This ain’t how you are supposed to train, but this is reality. This is running and has turned into an out of body experience. The workday ended around 9pm when I pushed my plate of PF Changs Chinese food aside, and tossed my $100 fortune cookie fortune into my napkin leaving it on the chair for some bus boy to ponder. The fortune read, “Sometimes you don’t want your dreams to come true.” What? The dinner was superb though. We sat outside under some heatlamp listening to the occasional midlife crisis man dressed in terminator leather roll up to the front of the restaurant on his shiny hog and knock the kickstand down with his big ass, toughguy boot. He’d then saunter into the restaurant like his hero from the movies. He’d smile at the hostess with the fake boobs and wave to the bartender cleaning the glasses thinking that these people know HIM and liked HIM — he’d think that he was some big shit in a little town ready to drink a scotch on the rocks and wolf down some gourmet lo mein.

The menu at the restaurant caught my eye. The right side of it looked like this….(artistic license granted) “Marathon training isn’t for the weak of heart. Endurance athletes and marathon runners need to eat a healthy meal in order for them to cross the finish line strong. Just ask Olympic medalists Meb Keflezighi or Deena Kastor! We at PF Changs know this. In fact PF Changs sponsors the PF Changs Rock n Roll Marathon (trademark symbol). Therefore we are offering some healthy dish recommendations for you marathon runners out there. X Y Z meals listed These meals were selected by a committee of elite athletes such as Meb, Deena, Steve Scott, and Frank Shorter. We hope you eat healthy and consider the PF Changs Rock n Roll Marathon (trademark symbol)! We also hope that you consider running for charity (various charities named) when you sign up for the PF Changs Rock n Roll Marathon (trademark symbol)”
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So at 9:30 I was out on the streets again — on the canal again. I had a lot on my mind tonight and chewed on a lot of things at a slow pace. Lots of people were out tonight: street people. Perhaps the most memorable was the man bedding down beside the trail overpass. He was squatting down to lay out his bed of blankets and as I came out of the sea of black onto the island of the overpass light I startled him. He was caked in the dust of the desert. His skin was cracked, blistering and dry — his lips parched. His bike and bike trailer, powdered. This man had been riding here. He had made some sort of overland trek; perhaps he came from Los Angeles with the only means available on some urgent mission to visit a sick, estranged child or a dying mother? Perhaps the man just came from the void of the desert like a lost hermit seeking truth and solace in the sprawl. He had been ignored, overlooked, mocked, shunned, and left to push a bicycle across 40 days of desert under a beating sun being blown past by semis and families with their fat kids watching Shrek 2 on a portable DVD player enroute to saunter down the Grand Canyon on a donkey named Gus and a guide with pot plants in his backyard who doesn’t give two shits about the tourists or their dropped camera.

The man was left to spread out a blanket quietly by himself taking in his thoughts and lay his weary, dusty head on his only extra shirt drifting off to sleep and dream about better, happier times — wondering if better, happier times will ever come again. I just ran past him. I was at the end of my run and I was limping along. We exchanged smiles; solace for solace –two kindred souls, alone, who both somehow felt like we were starting to crack the safe of life and find that its precious contents don’t contain shiny material objects, but rather nothingness, suffering, and that liberating spirit of being happy and content with absolutely nothing but noble goals and dusty feet.