Wednesday, June 27, 2012

It's a matter of instinct, it's a matter of conditioning. It's a matter of fact.

Beautiful, right? MIL took this.
I haven't been up at dawn since we got here.

"Recreation has its reasons."

Began the snake-eating-its-own-tail part of Born To Run where the author references the work of Dr. David Carrier and his theories about evolution and how humankind became the an animal that it is - we are - in order to run. Our physiology can only be explained as the demi-urge to become long-distance running animals. Not to outpace, but to outlast.

I read this somewhere before, years ago, in the book Running After Antelope by Scott Carrier, who is (wait for it) brother to Dr. David Carrier. So many pet theories about running with which I have bored my friends and family were either inspired by or stolen wholesale from that book. And now I find them nested within this one.

Five years ago, Edward McClelland famously wrote in Salon that Oprah Winfrey single-handedly ruined the marathon, which is to say, she ruined it for him. The sport had gone from a beautiful endurance test for elite athletes to something anyone might try, pathetically stumbling across the finish line after five or six hours and then proudly slapping a 26.2 oval sticker on the back of an SUV.

Born To Run, like Carrier's book before it, suggests that the teeming marathon is in fact a celebration of what makes us essentially human.

Temperature: 67°
Weather: Gorgeous, cloudless, breezy and beautiful
Distance: 2 miles. Could have gone longer. Don't want to be an idiot.

Yesterday I got out of bed, my feet like two swollen, painful sacks of pain. Today, not so much.

Super Bon Bon Genius Playlist
Brian Wilson - Barenaked Ladies
St. Louise Is Listening - Soul Coughing
One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces - Ben Folds Five
Kiss Them For Me - Siouxsie and the Banshees
We Care a Lot - Faith No More

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