2/13
Up Martin-made the turn at the “Saddle”…the meadow where all roads cross on the way to Spencer Butte summit…took me an hour…took the Bigfoot, Merlin and Flash 40 minutes. My longest, furthest yet. Easy to hate young legs at my age. Took 50 min. going down. Fog heavy in the lichen, valley sky lit with purple sunrise. Home roasted coffee leaning against the pick up. The day unrolls to a steady runners’ beat.

Photo Credit

©Michael Lebowitz

Tarmac Meditations #78: Longest, Furthest Yet. is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Went for coffee after a long run. had my camera in the car. A friend was sitting, lost in thought, as the saying goes. I thought to see if the camera might record lost. Grey light and drifting rain, exhaustion of the long hills and the metaphors of relationship and parenthood. A man sits alone at a table thinking on things, a cup across from him. Is he waiting and for whom? In truth he was waiting for the photographer to leave him alone and sit back down but for a moment a glimpse of all of us left alone with our thoughts on a rainy sunday morning, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Photo Credit

©Michael Lebowitz

Tarmac Meditations #77: Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

2/12
Gonna walk to my meeting. Gonna listen to Gordon Lightfoot. Early morning rain, big steel rails, Canada when I was young and so was love…gonna walk slow and steady, gonna drift along the floodin’ river, gonna let the rain wash my hair and the music carry the memories. Gonna get a workout, and maybe some writing time all in one…gonna come home, have a little somethin’ somethin’ and do the work of the day. Saturday, you’re ok with me.

Photo Credit

©Michael Lebowitz

Tarmac Meditations #76: Big Steel Rails is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Went out earlier today. I walked 30 minutes on account of coach said so. Afterwards Merlin and I did a minute run, a minute walk, on the track, and finished by walking the quarter mile. Then we did it again. A kind of interval work out except not really since intervals generally include running faster and recovering in sets of four or five repeats. In this case we ran very slowly, my doing, walked even more slowly, complained a little, clearly my doing. Then did it again.

Two repeats do not an interval session make. Maybe two repeats imply intervals but interval training it ain’t. To call it intervals is possibly correct in “Lit” class but pure heresy in the shadow of Hayward Field – not seen in this photo – home to more legends in track and field than any place in these good ol’ United States. But it sure felt like running when the running was happening. Then, later, when I locked my keys in the car I blamed it on oxygen debt, not advancing age. Clever that…

Photo Credit:
©Michael Lebowitz

Tarmac Meditations #75: Interval Training is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Met the usual suspects, Flash, Merlin and Bigfoot (don’t ask) We call me F-Stop, OldNSlow, OldDude, Shooter. I figure there is so much of me these days that I can use a few names. In fact it seems that there is no consensus on MY nickname. It is a local rule, is it not, that a guy just can’t go around nicknaming himself, can he now?

They ran I walked up 24th towards Agate. They disappear in the fog. I’m giving away 40-60 pounds and 20+ years. It gave me a chance to warm up and then RUN a minute, walk three minutes, then repeat and repeat.-for the first time in a long while there was running on a run for me. 65 miles is a long way away but closer now, way closer.

Photo Credit

©Michael Lebowitz

Tarmac Meditations #74: Nickname is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Long day yesterday. Track work, doctors, coaches, photo shoot. I got it all done but found myself thinking that beauty in the world has a moral imperative. Or does it? I’m not even sure I know what that means except that I think that as a writer and a shooter I often feel like I can’t leave things undone, words unwritten, shots untaken, no matter that the end product is not “beautiful” only that the quest is joined and the effort made. When did this happen to me? Wasn’t always like this, I can you that…Ry(Cooder) and Taj (Mahal)are sayin’ let the good times roll-Alright!

Photo Credit

Photo Is © Michael Lebowitz

Tarmac Meditations #73: It Rains here in February except sometimes it snows. Part One is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

A Lion had come to the end of his days and lay sick unto death at the mouth of his cave, gasping for breath. The animals, his subjects, came round him and drew nearer as he grew more and more helpless. When they saw him on the point of death they thought to themselves: “Now is the time to pay off old grudges.” So the Boar came up and drove at him with his tusks; then a Bull gored him with his horns; still the Lion lay helpless before them: so the Ass, feeling quite safe from danger, came up, and turning his tail to the Lion kicked up his heels into his face. “This is a double death,” growled the Lion.  ~Joseph Jacobs translation according to wikipedia

6:00 Am at the foot of Martin, the Sunday run, the usual suspects…everyone felt good, well, everyone but me. I had my best week of pre training-6 runs, 3 core workouts; the downside is that by this morning I am tired and not really rarin’ to go. From jump I let them go and stay in my pace. I have lots to think about, mostly I have the book proposal due at the end of the week. Fog in rain bowed droplets drifts past the headlamp, headlamps bob in the forest ahead. Silence grows, the chatter gets further away. For awhile there is only me, my light, my breath in clouds rising into the cold morning air. Thoughts of pride intrude, of being left behind, of having become the old man in the bunch, once the fierce leader of many a posse, now an old lion running steady but far behind the young ones. And yet, with a glimmer of pride and hope, still in the hunt. No wonder, I think, the polar bears put the old ones on the ice, or is that “polar” legend, and old lions become jackal bait. For now though what’s left is to keep truckin’, to slow down and get it right, to suit up and show up and rely on my experience, my faith and my community. Old lions ain’t dead, they just old and it takes a little longer but what they know is that sometimes longer is better. And that thought makes me smile although to see it some might call it a wry and a little bit dirty for a morning smile.If longer is all you have, then it is the product of what has come before. Slowing down and smelling the roses is not always a choice, sometimes it is an unexpected gift.The herd of deer and I watched each other for a few minutes and then we both went on our way. Fox Hollow Road ran empty this morning, no one but me, the creek was low, the coffee afterwards was fine. Another day on the trail, another few miles, Sunday morning came in on the heels of the disappearing herd and the rising sun. Grace is where you find it.

Photo Credit

©Rachel Glickman

Tarmac Meditations #72: Grace is Where You Find It is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

I woke up that morning to find that overnight summer had ended. The morning wind brought a hint of winter chill and the lake was flat. The fog lay heavy in the weeds, blue in the absence of sunlight. The steel boats tied to the floats had a resigned feel, at least to me they did. It was only later that I noticed the upright long pole net standing as if bearing witness to the end of the things, signal to the coming closures, to winter and faint possibility of another summer after the winter rains.

Was thinking about my friend Howard this morning. I realized with a mixture of chagrin and delight that I no longer need worry about his smoking and caffeine, gout, whatever-at the risk of blasphemy Joda came to mind, and indeed, for too brief a moment, the Force was there in Denton, hiding unsuccessfully behind clouds of smoke, layers of jackets and a god awful purple tee. Missing an absent friend today.

Photo Credit

Photo is © Michael Lebowitz

Tarmac Meditations #72: Overnight Summer had Ended is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Tarmac Meditations #70 – Martin, Howard and Ed is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

The Fastest Doc In Canada

In the early years of the Twentieth Century the townsfolk of Antigonish, Nova Scotia would often see pre-medical student Ronald J. MacDonald nonchalantly running past horse drawn wagons and carriages on the highways surrounding their town. “What a grand doctor he’ll make”, the old folk said. “He’ll just grab up his bag and set off on the run, and be half way there before a horse could be hitched up. He can beat any horse.” (Antigonish Casket, April 24, 1947)

Ronnie J., as he was known to his friends, was perhaps the fastest physician to grace the roads and tracks of our country…and the United States. Born in 1877 at Frasers Grant, Nova Scotia, near the university town of Antigonish, Ronnie got his early running experience chasing cattle in the fields of the family farm. His father, Lauchlin “the Drover” MacDonald, made his living driving cattle and would often travel on schooners to supervise as cattle were transported around the Maritimes. Tragically, young Ronnie’s father died in 1888, when the schooner “Mary Ellen” was lost with all hands on a return trip from Newfoundland. When he was sixteen, Ronnie’s mother, Elizabeth, decided to move the family to Massachusetts. Older brother Alex became a linesman with New England Telephone and Telegraph. Ronald soon joined his brother in the linesman’s trade, but the two diverted themselves in their off hours by running with Father Scully’s gym club.

Ronnie J. showed early promise as a runner, with especial talent for the newly re-discovered “marathon”. The re-establishment of the Olympic Games by Baron deCoubertin in 1896 sparked a revival of the long distance race, inspired by the feat of a Greek runner who brought news of his nation’s stunning victory over the Persians at the town of Marathon in 490 B.C. In 1897 the Nova Scotian won the 7-mile United States Cross Country Championship. In 1898 he set a new world record for the 11-mile cross country race.

Later in 1898 MacDonald entered the newly established 25-mile Boston Marathon and became the first Canadian, and only the second person to win this event with a time of 2:42:00. The race was a bit of an upset for by the fifteen mile mark Macdonald was two and a half miles behind the 8 leading runners. With a burst of energy Ronnie surged ahead and completed the last ten miles in only 56 minutes, leaving the erstwhile leader, New Yorker Hamilton Gray, in his dust. The Boston Globe described the race as “the fastest ever run by a human being”.

Ronnie enrolled in pre-medical studies at Boston College in 1899, but continued to run, and in 1900 once again entered The Boston Marathon. Betting was legal at that time and thousands of dollars changed hands based on the outcome of the race. MacDonald put in quite a credible performance until he was handed a sponge in the latter part of the race, which turned out to be laced with chloroform. Canadian J. Caffery, from Hamilton, Ontario went on to win the race.

Despite being a Canadian citizen, Ronnie J. was chosen to represent the American Olympic Team in 1900. The 25-mile Olympic Marathon was held in Paris on a blistering hot day. MacDonald was comfortably in the lead near the end of the race, having passed the other contenders in the seventeen-man field. To his surprise he found many of the French contestants at the finish line on his arrival, looking surprisingly fresh. It was alleged that nationalistic Frenchmen had ensured their compatriots would take the top four spots in the race by providing free taxi rides.

In 1901 Ronnie competed in the Boston Marathon once again, running neck and neck with Sam Mellor, the winner, until he was forced to stop due to stomach cramps. Later that year, Ronnie moved back to Antigonish, Nova Scotia to continue his pre-medical studies at St. Francis Xavier University.

In addition to embarrassing the carriage owners of the town over the next two years he broke the Canadian three and five mile records, and went on to set a new world record for the indoor mile. Graduating from St. F.X. University in 1907, MacDonald enrolled in Tuft’s Medical School, and upon graduation completed postgraduate work at Harvard.

Dr. MacDonald went on to set up practice in the town of St. George’s and later in Aguathuna, Newfoundland. He ran his last marathon in St. John’s, Newfoundland, beating John Lorden of Ireland. In 1913 Ronnie J. married Ad Pieroway of St. George’s, subsequently raising a brood of 3 sons and two daughters. After 27 years of rural practice on the island, he chose to relocate his practice to Antigonish to provide his children with expanded educational opportunities. His last appearance at a public race was as a starter for the 1942 Highland Games (which he had won in 1901).

Tragically, Ronnie J. suffered a stroke in 1942, after which he was confined to a bed or wheelchair. He died on September 3, 1947, apparently after a seizure, and is now buried in Heatherton, Nova Scotia.

Photo Credit

Ronald John MacDonald – Public Domain

Doc Jocks: Dr. Ronald J. MacDonald is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN