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Humor and Running Fiction
Mind Games
By Bernie GreeneNovember/December 2002
For the Washington Running Report
How confusing the beams from memory's lamp are.
-- Ogden Nash
H: We met at nine.
G: We met at eight.
H: I was on time.
G: No, you were late.
H: Ah yes! I remember it well.
----Alan Jay Lerner
[Note: I tried not to write about this topic. Really, I did. For weeks, I resisted out of fear that irate silver-haired runners would remove me, and all traces of my existence, from the face of the earth, leaving only the dashes in my social security number. But...my brain made me do it anyway. Which is not without some irony because my brain----and the brain of every other runner on the backside of 50----is the subject of this article.]
"Memory," wrote Proust, "dissolves into undifferentiated globs of PowerGel."
Wait, that's not right. But it may be close. What was Proust's first name, anyway? Sheldon? That sounds like it. No, I take it back. Sheldon Proust was the guy who won the first New York City Marathon. I wonder why they decided to have a marathon in New York. Poute. Sheldon Poute, the guy's name was.
Welcome to a glimpse of life in your 50s, a glimpse that should convince you that one of my longstanding assertions----namely, that running causes brain damage----is true. (Since I'm not an expert on the central nervous system of humans, I can only speculate about how that happens. Perhaps running causes the brain to shrink, just as swimming in cold water causes, ahem, another kind of anatomical shrinkage.) How else can one explain oldsters' incredible PRs that get faster over time? How else can one explain their far-fetched racing stories that become more implausible with each retelling?
Consider, if you will, the following scenario and decide for yourself whether there is any validity to my theory of running- induced dementia:
John breezes through his 40s, mind intact, running well, with no inclination to embellish his running history. Sometime after he hits the Big Five-O, John runs a taxing 10-mile race on a notoriously slow course. He's bummed. He doesn't remember having to work so hard for such a slow time. At the postrace foodfest, John is chatting with some running buddies, and they suddenly notice that something is amiss: John's 10-mile PR, two decades old, has gotten faster----a LOT faster----and the race in which the PR was set has now become high drama, replete with subplots, bad blood, and weeping and wailing worthy of an Italian opera.
I think you'll have to agree with me on this one (it's really a no-brainer): John's mind has just begun its long, slow journey into the proverbial dumpster.
(Lest you think I'm pointing fingers at everyone else, I should mention that in the few years since I turned 50, my brain----not exactly Mensa material----has lowered my 10K PR from a respectable 33:18 to a Gebrselassiesque 27:18. As you can well imagine, I have to put up with that "liar, liar, pants on fire" look on the faces of my running friends whenever my brain drops the PR another notch. As for racing stories, well, my brain has been known to put a few words in my mouth----words that somehow end up as, ahem, tall tales. But enough about my brain; let's head back to our regularly scheduled neurolysis.)
In midlife, you see, years of LSD, fartlek, hill workouts, and racing (not to mention wild Gatorade parties) begin to take a toll, and the fabric of a runner's mind gradually devolves from sharkskin into mohair.
Aging runners have said to me, "I can't remember anything," but that isn't true. They can remember all kinds of stuff. It's just that, as they get older, it's rarely the right stuff. Loose tufts of recall attach themselves to completely unrelated material. For example, the names of comedians and baseball managers may become interwoven with the names of past marathon greats:
What was the Canadian marathoner Drayton's first name, anyway? Stanley? Earl? Wasn't he a gardener before he became a runner? No, that was Erle Stanley Gardner, the U.S. Supreme Court justice.
Another problem experienced by runners in their 50s is that, due to Gatorade-induced cerebral exfoliation, previously buried patches of brain tissue are laid bare, and bits of information they thought they'd forgotten suddenly waft into consciousness. I don't know about you, but it irritates the hell out of me when that happens. Not just because it disrupts my immediate thought process, but because most of the newly released information would have been more useful to me in, say, 1963 when I was desperately trying to remember it during the final exam for an elective course in 20th-century American political science:
Me (to my brain): "The race director just asked me what my 10K PR is. He says that if it's fast enough, he'll grant me invited- runner status. Do we, um, have that?"
My brain (to me): "Whaddya mean we? I have it in my frontal lobes, but I can't quite download it right now."
Me: "Please try harder. This is very important to me. I have a chance to be an invited runner."
My brain: "Well, whoop-de-doo for you. Tell him...tell him Charles Evans Hughes was secretary of state under both Harding and Coolidge."
Me: "I don't know if I should. He seems pretty serious about wanting that 10K PR."
My brain: "Stall him! I need more time. Here, give him this..."
Me (to the race director): "Did you know that Teddy Roosevelt received the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in the settlement of the Russo-Japanese War?"
My brain struck again last week after a hard track workout. My car was in the shop at the time, and I desperately needed a lift to the big 24-hour relay race. Problem was, I couldn't give my club's team coordinator a call to ask for a ride because I couldn't remember his name. The name that sprang to mind, of course, was Henry Cabot Lodge, former U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and vice-presidential nominee of the Republican national convention of 1960. I remember Henry quite well, even though he never had a smidgeon of significance in my life----and never will. Needless to say, I didn't make it to the race.
My brain's shenanigans are costing me money, too. It recently ordered----can you believe it?----eight satin athletic supporters from a mail-order company. And when I demanded to know why it went on a pecuniary toot like that, my brain...uh, you know how a song sometimes runs through your head for days on end?...well, instead of answering me, my brain repeatedly played the lyrics from a golden oldie by Blue Swede: "Ooga-chaka, ooga, ooga, ooga- chaka, ooga, ooga, I-I-I-I-I'm hooked on a feeling..." Which, now that I think about it, is an answer of sorts.
Another true confession: After a 20-mile fun-run at last year's RRCA convention, I told attendees at my seminar on the first running boom how delighted I was to share my memories of running with Shorter in the '72 Olympic Marathon (never mind that I have never been to Munich) and of battling Joan Benoit Samuelson for the lead as we entered the L.A. Coliseum in the first-ever women's marathon in '84 (never mind that I am the wrong gender), only to be passed on the track by Boyer, Kubek, Richardson, and Skowron...or, um, were they the starting infield for the Yankees at one time? Anyway, I told them they could easily spot me on old videotapes because I'm the one racing in Florsheim wingtips, my all-time favorite racing flat.
By now, many of you are asking, "How can I tell if my mind is going south because I've run too much?"
Herewith my response: If you find yourself reading A Guide to Becoming Crotchety, if your idea of a sports drink is prune juice, Geritol, or Ensure, if the idea of an ultra exclusively for geezers and grannies turns you on, if you remember the marathon you ran in '76 better than the 5K you ran last weekend, if you're giving up your membership in your local running club for membership in the AARP, if you're calling up everyone you know and giving them advice on how to run their runs and run their lives, and if you are hitting early-bird dinners and ordering the meatloaf, then you can be pretty sure your cerebral cortex has been irreversibly harmed.
I'd better go. I want to call an old running partner and tell him I ran my 75,000th lifetime mile yesterday. I wanted to call him before I started this article, but I couldn't remember his phone number, even after a careful search of the "Old Running Partners' Phone Numbers" file in my brain. What did turn up, however, was this bit of information: The Kamakura period in Japanese history stretched from 1192 to 1333, during which time the most significant ruler was, of course, Henry Cabot Lodge.
Bernie Greene said that after 75,000 miles of running, he thinks his brain is totally shot. He allowed as how his brain was now urging him to wear a white belt and white shoes, hike his pants up around his chest, and cruise around mall parking lots in a Buick Electra.