James Fixx is dead (been so for some time, actually)

I began jogging in secret. Would have been 1977 or so. I used to walk (so no one in houses along the way to the cemetary would see me jogging -- it was a small town and the whole town, yes, would have known about and then asked me about my jogging) to the local cemetary and then run the permiter road around the graves. Jogging was not common then, although that was the year that running truly became a fad. I used to keep track of the laps I ran by saying them out loud to one of the "residents." Hmmm, forget his name. Didn't think I ever would as I said hello to him, saw his name on the grave stone so often. I'll have to remind myself of his name next time I'm in the cemetary visiting my dead father's grave.

Running became the very essence of me ever so quickly. It was so freeing and more so since it was a something I did secretly, I think. Gawd, the self esteem used to just pour into me when I'd do my daily 10k. I was such a non-jock teen (as if I have to say that; sheesh). I ran every day of the week in those early days the same distance at the same pace. Hung over (and was inevitably), sick, bad shoes, snow, rain, heat, dark, I ran. I still have Jim Fixx's book -- the first issue hardback. It's always the non runners who mock the fact he died of a heart attack on a day he forgot an appointment with his cardiologist. They tend to forget running clearly gave him 15 or so more years of life than he would have had. And real life, not some wheezing, fat existence that he had before his first heart scare had him lacing on his runners. Hey, running also gave him the most famous pair of anonymous legs in the world, maybe.

Have a sketch somewhere from the tattoo artist with whom I talked about having the latin phrase "I run therefore I am" (sorry can't remember what it is in latin) inked on my calf. The sketch was so bad I decided to find another artist and never did -- thank god as it would mock me now. Worse than "I love Myrtle" on a tattoo when years later it would need to read "I love Murray."

I will never run again. I've known that for the past few years, and it has been the well source of a what has kept me depressed for a very long, long time. But I have not really taken my final status as non-runner inside and let it settle -- have not tried to live as someone who will never run again. That pile of shit known as hope wrapped in denial always gave me a position of thinking I was just on the temporarily injured list, I guess.

But this weekend it really came home to roost for some reason: I will never run again. I went back to the gym this weekend. Today the muscle groups I worked are filled with that glorious post-workout pain, but there is no post-cardio workout fatique. Oh, I included 40 minutes on a stationary bike and nearly puked the green of an army truck from boredom(, not work!). I've got to figure out a way to teach myself to use the bike simply to get to some level of fitness and give up on the idea it might become more than a means to work my lungs and heart. And, of course, the very easy fake bike ride has left my knee hurting today, so even the bike may not be a meaningful means to find the road to cardio fitness...

Aiiiiiieeeyah, this is turning into a whine to self. Guess I just wanted to get on the page that I will never run again -- and even in this act, there is some false hope that by typing it, I will make a liar out of myself and indeed run again some day. Fat chance. Heavy, ahem, on the fat.

So, thanks to a couple of late 50 or early 60 year old guys coming back from a jog yesterday at the gym and lamenting they haven't seen me out running lately (can you say years!?), I realize I have to stop waiting for running to be the essence of me again. Fitness was a glorious side effect of running. I ran because it brought me joy. Ridiculous to say perhaps. Certainly, simple. Running = joy. But that was then and this is now. Now I just have to focus on the fitness, not the means.

The search for joy needs to be a separate pursuit. It ain't going to come with a bench press or on a bicycle. Those are now just tools to get fit.

I jogged up the street the other day -- about one quarter of a block before my knee had other ideas. Those few jogged steps made me grin like a kid running through a maze of tombstones.

steve