Bear, Delaware. That’s where I’m headed tomorrow morning around 4:15 AM. It’s about an hour drive and I need to check-in for my bib and maybe partake of a few of the Mainly Marathon PB&J sandwiches before the race. There’s something about somebody else making a PB&J for you that makes it particularly tasty. It’s like cut fruit or salad — maybe it’s not the hardest thing in the world to do, but, man, it’s just so much better when somebody else does that work.
It’s been great seeing my brother however it’s surprisingly dreary and chilly here in the Northeast. It’s May, people. Spring has sprung. But the weather seems stuck in late-winter neutral.
The most recent hourly forecast I saw calls for rain in Bear around 10 AM… if the race starts at 6 AM I should conceivably be able to get out before the rain. But as I’ve often said, weather forecasts are notoriously poor when it comes to life in general and ESPECIALLY when it comes to race days.
I’m sitting in a Starbucks trying to crank through my “To Do” list of various odds and ends so hopefully I can just enjoy running tomorrow without fretting over various items. That’s impossible as I can’t resolve ALL my outstanding issues (who ever can though?). I’ve got a couple of flight arrangements that annoyingly can’t seem to be sorted — fares are too high, dates are too amorphous, routes aren’t finalized. The races are booked but I haven’t quite gotten the logistics “done and dusted.”
I say this because I’m often asked what I think about when I run. A friend of mine recently forwarded me an interesting article by Melissa Dahl over at NY Magazine. The title was “How Neuroscientists Explain the Mind-Clearing Magic of Running.” It’s true that people can always tell when I have and have not gone for a run. And I do usually feel that mental boost post-run. Sometimes I think about problems, sometimes I think about nothing. It’s an article therefore that described the phenomena I experience quite well… and though I’d seen the quote before, it bears repeating (Bear! Just like Delaware! Look at how I’ve tied it all together!):
Dahl quotes Haruki Murakami from his book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. She summarizes: “Sometimes he thinks while on the run; sometimes, he doesn’t. It doesn’t really matter.”
“I just run. I run in void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.”
— Haruki Murakami
And so as I prep for the next five days of marathons, I think a lot about thinking nothing… and thinking about everything. It’s heady stuff even if it’s about nothing.
For a variety of reasons, my brother and I were talking about the failed Muppets revival on ABC this season. Perhaps the most profound utterance on TV came from Fozzie Bear in the fourth episode, “Pig Out.”
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Fozzie Bear: You know, it’s so hot in Phoenix that—[pauses; melancholy] Aw, who cares? We’re all just hanging by a thread. Tomorrow’s promised to no one. Enjoy the show.
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Waldorf: Bravo!
In the weird connective spiderweb of thought, I’m also reminded of an interview with Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt regarding their book, “The Rainbow Comes and Goes.” I found the discussion particularly profound and it’s stayed with me the past few weeks. Mother and son were discussing how the title means different things to them. Cooper said he’s pessimistic and views the title as almost a warning, that the rainbow will eventually leave and may not come back; that there may not be better times ahead and so be mindful. Conversely, his mom, he said, is inherently optimistic and views the rainbow coming and going as a sign that all things pass and good things will always come back.
I like Anderson Cooper but I’m with his Mom on this one. Things happen but there will ALWAYS be another rainbow. So if rain happens tomorrow in Bear, so be it. It only means a rainbow is not far behind.
And to circle the prose back upon itself, a literary and visual corckscrew, how about I close today with this: