Classic Chronicle Archives
Each month as a new Classic Chronicle is posted to the main page, the previous Chronicle will be moved here, to the Classic Chronicle Archives.
The Full-Throttle Waddle
All runners eventually get asked the question: "Why do you run?" The question often is asked by someone who's thinking about starting. Sometimes it is asked by a person like I once was—someone who truly doesn't understand the act of running, let alone the sport. Most runners have their own answer to "Why do you run?" Their responses usually have to do with how running makes them feel or look or think. Some enjoy the solitude of running, while others appreciate the social aspects. The answer often tells you more about the person than about running...
Number One
Looking up, I see the finish banner and clock. I pick up the pace, releasing the energy I've been saving for the final kick. I am gasping for air; my heart is pounding. I am going to have a PR. I am going to break 30 minutes for 5-K. What?...
The Metamorphosis
I wasn't always a penguin. I wasn't always as slow as I am now. I used to be much slower! It took 40 years to become so overweight and out of shape that running a mile and running a marathon were equally unthinkable...
Waddling Through History
Yes, I was there. Through the most unlikely cosmic hiccup, my name was drawn in the Boston lottery. I ran the 100th not because I possessed the talent, but because I had the audacity to put my name on a postcard. Destiny, it seems, has a sense of humor...
Survival of the Slowest
Steven Pinker, in The Language Instinct, suggests that if language didn't exist, people would be so driven to communicate that they would create a language. So strong is our instinct toward communication that there are almost no recorded instances of groups of people who have not developed a means of talking to one another...
Embrace Your Local Penguin
Of all the changes that running has brought to my life, maybe the most important one is my awareness of my need for people. Having spent most of my first 40 years as a musician, I became accustomed to spending hours alone in a practice room. The practice room became a sanctuary, a safe haven from the pressures of work and relationships and family...
Buzzard Bait
I should have known from the name. All week long I kept hearing about running up Buzzard Bait Hill. The veterans talked about it in hushed tones. The first timers, like me, listened intently as they regaled us with stories of years past. As our day to take on the hill approached, the stories got more and more preposterous. After all, how hard could it be, I thought...
A Decade of Hope
What I learned in my first 10 years of running.
I can't believe it. My anniversary almost slipped by without my realizing it. If someone
hadn't asked, I might have missed it altogether. Wedding anniversary? Nope. My running
anniversary. I've now been a runner for 10 years...
Prized Possessions
They were all over my parent's house, those monuments to my childhood: the plaster cast of my hand, a Valentine's card I made myself. Now, my home is filled with the same monuments to my son's childhood: the wreath made of rotini pasta that gets hung on the door every Christmas, the rock on which is glued felt feet, head, and tail that, if you have enough imagination, looks very much like a turtle. They are prized possessions...
Finding Your Way
The Shortest Distance isn't always a straight line.
Some of the best parts of being a runner have nothing to do with running. As one who got
active later in life I keep finding new and interesting challenges that I would have never
even considered before I became a runner. Knowing how difficult is was to overcome the inertia
of my early life, and knowing that I did, has given me the courage to try almost anything...
Hoop Dreams
I had my shot. There was one brief moment where my destiny was in my hands. Watching the ball sail off the tip of my fingers I had no idea what that one shot would mean...
The Longest Day
"You won't need press credentials at the race" I heard her say. "We'll give you and the other journalists maps and you can make your way to the checkpoints". There were several disconcerting words in those sentences. First off, I had never been called a journalist before, I'm not very good at reading maps, and I had no idea what a checkpoint was. Of course, that just made me all the more eager...
Present Perfect Tense
Most runners I know are too tense. They are tense before they run, while they run, and after they run. It's not their muscles that are tense, it's their heads. Rather than running in the present, they always seem to be in running the PAST tense or the FUTURE tense...
The Popeye Syndrome
People are always calling me names! I've been labeled a Baby Boomer, a Hippie, a Yuppie, Cool, Uncool, With it, and Clueless. I'm also, it turns out, a part of the Television Generation...
Working the Shovel
Some of life's lessons I've only had to learn once; like not to put my tongue on a frozen flagpole no matter how funny my buddies think it will be. Some of life's lesson took me a little longer; like, when I'm given 16 weeks to do a project, I can't wait to start until the day before it's due. And some of life's lessons are absolutes. Thin is the only word to use in a sentence that contains the word hips...
Personal Record
I'm going to ask for a point of personal privilege this month. For those of you who don't have your Robert's Rules of Order handy, a point of personal privilege is when, in the middle of a formal debate, someone just has to speak passionately about a topic not on the floor. So, everyone moans and lets the person wax eloquently about something that is important only to him or her...
Rally Cap
He had the look. I'd seen it before. It's when your will is more important than your skill, when preparation is replaced my desperation, and when, if you're not careful, fun becomes foolishness. He was there. And we both knew it...
The Inner Penguin
I'm a 90's guy. Or at least I was. That all seems so... "20th Century" now. I'm not ready to call myself a "zero" guy, but I'll bet there are others that might. I'm in touch with my feminine side, I know all about male bounding, and I am way too in touch with my inner child. But, I am just beginning to learn how to be in touch with my inner Penguin...
Sex, Lies, and Videotape
OK, this column has very little to do with sex, but I got your attention. It's got to do with the small and large lies we tell our selves, and how the truth was revealed to me on videotape...
Are We There Yet?
I've always liked traveling by car. And, I've always subjected my family to my terminal wanderlust. On many occasions my then young son would moan from the back seat, "Are we there yet?"...
Running Home
There are many advantages to starting to run later in life. Among them is the ability to use running as a means to rediscover memories long forgotten. For me, running is the key that has unlocked the most foreboding doors in the cellar of my psyche...