Pool girls are monsters of wickedness; Insatiable in their lust for hygiene and acid.

For the entirety of my childhood, water was an absolute antagonist towards my being. I took swim lessons as a pre-teen while others were entering kindergarten. I choked and dragged myself into the water.

About three years ago at a local YMCA, I signed up for a swim class, wherein I could not swim from one end to the other. Frustrated to a point of maximum exertion, I quickly resolved to find a means to make this work.

After suffering for an hour or so, I began to realize I needed to exhale under water. Not the most esoteric of directions, but nonetheless impossible prior to this date. I came home that evening and my mother said my face was grey and I looked worthy of an emergency room visit. I resisted, and slept.

As an ancillary comment, I often find the most challenging of endeavors arise from new pursuits in the evening.

The aforementioned swim was the most difficult task I have ever faced in a pool of water.

Yesterday paralleled itself to that summer’s day three years ago.

I had the full intent and purpose to swim two miles. Within eight minutes of swimming, I realized how sick I was due to a cold that my body can’t exterminate because of my lack of running.

My arms, back, and core all failed to exercise their physiological duties, and my ensuing workout was a swim unbecoming of a triathlete.

It ought be noted that from the start, I was sharing a lane. I promised myself that at 30 minutes I would rest and re-evaluate if this was worth it. My goggles continued to leak, my eyes continued to burn, and I kept cracking the lane divider with my body. I was utterly over my head.

Swimming does something to the anatomical constitution that is not found in running or cycling. When the human body is on a horizontal plane, torqueing to receive oxygen, it becomes bitterly self-interested. For the moment you deviate, (i.e. turn vertically, or alter your breathing pattern) an awful and ignominious state of nausea begins. Witness my impediment.

Every time I stopped swimming, either due to the acidity within my goggles, or to regain a sense of balance as more swimmers entered my lane, I became sea-sick.

Through rest came greater discomfort.

Thirty minutes away became an eternity. At the forty-five minute mark there were a total of four swimmers plus a child in my lane. At this point my vision had assumed a shade of grey due to the bloodshot quality of my eyes, my muscles felt as if a fine fork were scraping through the soft tissue, and the excess of chlorinated water felt as if my skin tissue had become plasticized.

Shortly after reaching the 2700 meter mark, the pool girl began to dutifully wash the deck with a pressure washer, powered by a diesel generator. As I would enter the water and pull the weight of my being away from the wall, a dull noise would replace the horror of the machine. I could hear and feel the resulting water from the machine sprinkle upon my back, as if I were a groundhog trying to shelter his head from the mechanized armies of man.

At this point I was swimming blind. If I hit someone in my pursuit of goal, so be it. The assistant pool girl then began to check the pH balance of the water, and swiftly hurried into the control room of this aquatic black hole.

I remember back at the 1200 meter mark, floating and taking my goggles off for a second, and every instinct of my childhood wanting to erupt. I wanted to break down, just sit on the corner and cry. Wishing I could just scream out loud, rather than continuing to find no meaning in the struggle at hand.

At 3,000 meters, and clad in the armor of this battle, and having now only about 200 meters remaining, I recalled Shakespeare’s Henry V and it’s description of combat “Once more unto the breach, dear friends”

Those whom have shared similar experiences, can recount the thrill and excitement that comes with the simple struggle. Some injure themselves for days, weeks, months, or even years. And when that moment comes – When the past is acknowledged but forgotten – When fear exists but replaced through courage – When suffering only elicits a smile – And finally, when walls of inhibition are finally shattered with the tools of strength and integrity, the zenith of human will is manifest.

This much I now know.

Physical labor breeds a far different fatigue than endurance sport.

But at times I feel that certain ideals, practices and events define my understanding of Christmas.

I try my best to deviate from these traditions, to experience the new and evade the old. It works to a point, but then it falls back into the awful whirlpool of tradition.

I spent the better part of this warm winter’s day constructing an igloo. It had the purpose of becoming an ancillary holiday decoration, but slowly (as most of my projects do) grew into an Anglo-Saxon shelter from the age of feudalism.

I built it with the volunteered assistance of an 8 year old and a 12 year old. It taught me something about the creative energies of man. Nothing mandated that it become an igloo. It could very well capitulate into a mess of snow and stick and grass. But we searched the barn, searched the yard, search the garage, and we exited with a bail of hay and several wet logs.

I rode long on the trainer before this, and never thought to recover or hydrate. I’ve learned something new in the last thirty days or so. Our bodies are engineered to stand the test of a cruel and dark world. Runner’s are people too.

We aren’t merely sadistic and selfish and lonely people who prefer a solitary pursuit of happiness. We aren’t bound by our perennially tight hamstrings or a fear of a lateral movement. We are dynamic people, too.

So I worked hard at this project for the better part of the day, grossly dehydrated but determined to finish. Albeit the entire time I was envisioning a run thereafter that was never supposed to transpire.

I took the run by the horns.

While running in the darkened shadows of what in another day might hope to be a sidewalk, I listened to an old carol, made anew.

“Remember Christ our Savior…To save us all from Satan’s power when we have gone astray.”

Oh tidings of comfort of joy.





For those whom are perplexed by such archaic vernacular (such as myself), a tiding is literally “news” or “information pertaining to something”

Arguably the biggest bang of a proverbial light-bulb going off in my head occurred after these words were uttered in my ear-buds. It hit me so hard I thought I kicked a large stone in the road.

Star of wonder. Star of loyal beauty bright.

I then jumped over numerous snowbanks, opened up the larger biomechanical gears, and ran through the light mist of a 40-degree December’s night, amidst 4 foot snowbanks melting abound.

Westward leading… Still proceeding.


When I came home, I felt more learned. I felt as if someone who had just had 2,007 years of history injected into his cerebellum, which executed the lesson into a 7:00 min/mi pace in just under four miles.

Guide us to that perfect light.

I am now, in all likelihood, riding the dangerous wave of overtraining. But it is an event and an exercise that has become all too familiar in these seasons of truncated light and exaggerated feasts. This being done, I can now slumber.


God rest ye merry gentlemen.

Rest ye, indeed.

I’ve heard much talk of struggle in sport. I also hear myself aggrandizing the difficulties I personally face therein.

Yet at times the loudest volumes come from the most quiet of days;

I speak of the Faustian temptation of the off-day;

I speak of the ambitions of a 20-something trying to run until he is buried;

I speak of the pandemonium of metaphysical message boxes counted 14 deep, compounded by layers of G-Talk, and the clarity somewhere therein.

I have been blessed with so many privileges. I therefore have the obligation to help those whom are less well off. I’m not referring to a progressive ideal of feeding the poor, or assist those whom cannot afford bread. But I speak of a brazen reality. The fact that despite the cavernous abyss of scheduling time with friends and family, is someone whom is forgotten. They don’t have a place to go. A friend to laugh with. They sit alone. And they have forgotten the joy of spontaneity.

It may sound above my experience to dictate of such a struggle. But it is not. I spent one year in an institution wherein I isolated myself, confined myself, and punished myself in a manner that no one, no matter how disoriented, ought to experience.

I see it others. I see others struggle within themselves. They are surviving widows, lonely husbands. People whom seemingly lost everything when they lost vocational duties.

Let me tell you something: Clarity doesn’t come to fruition through the routine. It doesn’t come from repetition. Story and memory may be relished from nostalgia, but progress is not killed in such habits.

Breaking barriers and trying new endeavors are the means of understanding. Seven years ago the idea of running wasn’t repulsive, but it wasn’t a part of me. Six years ago the thought of running 12 laps instead of 8 on a track was a feat. And two years ago I swore I would never embark on a legal crusade of education. Witness a comedy of errors.

If it was not that important to me, it would be funny.

Today I voluntarily chose to rest my body. I haven’t done this since I was forced to do this since last September. And before then I can’t recall. The greatest fear I have in doing this is creating distance from the sport. I fear I will lose the strength and tenacity to go out on a cold December morning. I.e. Expecting to be picked up by someone whom I misinformed about my estimate time of arrival -The possibility of running that course again to return home, because the coldness dried the strength of a cell phone’s battery.

I’m not referring to getting “out of shape”. Fitness is merely a bi-product of this pastime. If gaining 20 pounds and developing a lust for dark chocolate was a bi-product of running, I’d still do it. For me, it rarely is about the end.

The only instant that the end becomes within my field of vision, is when I lay awake wondering if I’ll be able to run forty years from now. I want my ability to stare back at me like a hand-less clock with numbers.

It is exactly this desire that makes me become more aware of my state. I recognize those whom never started; Those whom through no virtue or control of their own, have been denied the right to participate in something they may one day come to love.

Today effectively ended my first semester at law school.

The ability to step back and reflect on the experience has been something on an ever-contracting appendix. Minutes thrown about in the most precise manner – And yet at the end of the day few things seem orderly.

But today it is over. My final exam on property law, taking just under four hours to complete has been conquered. But the war has just begun. I now face a long break, employed in a new entity, anxiously awaiting the second semester.

My nerves were raw, my brain turned to sludge, and my emotions 3 seconds away from utter capitlation.. But at the end of the exam today I had a very simple thing I wanted to do – To talk.

I wanted to talk law with people whom don’t engage themselves therein. I wanted to talk about sledding in early winter. I wanted to talk about running cross-country. Anything -Just something to get the knotted tensions out of my own head. Inculcate my inherent feeling of insanity upon another.

When you have someone you can do this with, they become more than a friend. To say they are a sounding board is a brazen mistake, but at times all they have to do is listen. They are someone whom you can talk with, talk to, and understand until eternity.

I have few of these people in my life, but tonight I talked to a few of them. They understand me. They give me their shoulder when it is needed, and they never ask why.

At the end of this pandemonium, I vest in simple passions. Running. Reading. And the ability to yearn for something that was so challenging that is now behind me.

I wish I was still in the classroom studying criminal and property law. It conveyed a distinct sense of understanding, as esoteric as it was. I felt as if a trade was being acquired. Something far beyond the realm of undergraduate education.

For within the last week I have thrown everything I could at it. The mountain was grand, but the insane drive to surpass the mediocre was irrevocable.

The drive is not solitary. It requires unyielding support and understanding. And I have received it.

I had to take a break from articulating the affirmative defense of entrapment because of the irresistible impulse to describe what this storm means to me.

The greater New England area is enslaved to a massive snow-storm that paralyzed nearly a half million Americans in the mid-west and killed 27. This morning I woke up before it arrived, and ran my favorite 8 mile loop around this area. Came home, drank coffee, and began to study.

As I listened to the radio, the traffic reporters were aroused by the vehicular paralysis spread far and wide over the Commonwealth. They would expose the wonders of gridlock and “brake-riding” as if it were a cardinal virtue. People rushed to the nearby markets to stock on provisions and solace – A most animalistic behavior.

Others rushed outside to speak with neighbors upon the forecasted ignominious plunder mother nature will bestow upon the northeast. I sit and sip my coffee and work.

The school children run out of school with their parents and sport utility vehicles, complete with xenon headlamps, gargantuan tires, and in-seat DVD players, only to become frantic and neurotic inside these monsters of passive safety.

Being a runner has a physiological side effect that literally alters the way human cognition occurs. It releases the stresses and energies and fears that the body normally generates. It heightens the senses and awareness. And it makes one far more placid that others in a moment of great crisis.

Fear, panic, and utter chaos produce nothing. They are merely airborne diseseases that spread faster and more chronically than the nastiest of infections. Nothing positive comes from aggrandizing something that is beyond one’s control.

But sitting here and not being captivated by the anarchy outside gives me great solace and comfort in an hour of great peril.

A year ago at this time I was eerily close to hanging it up. I could not seem to heal myself. I thought my body’s inherent ability to run had been erased through a cyclical pattern of injury.

I can recall running at the lake for long runs; Wherein, I would injure myself for the next six days, only to return the following Sunday with my running buddy to do it all again. This is how I ran Disney. This is how I ran Boston.

One of two things would happen. I would either solider on to the next thing, ignoring the pains and suffrages that I learned to embrace - Or I would simply stop.

At times I thought maybe I had run too much for my own good. Degenerated my tissue and skeletal system to an ignominious level of peril. What was most disconcerting was the fact that none of my ailments were “clinical”. I didn’t have a torn meniscus, a ligamental tear, or even shin splints. I had pains that wouldn’t leave which rendered me incapable of walking without some limp or stride deficiency.

Waking up on a rainy May morning, the day of commencement, I walked down to the hotel treadmill and gave it a whirl. I ran two miles absent the sharp, snapping pain of compartment syndrome.

Throughout the summer I ran more and more, but still careful not to do anything that would elicit the old pains of autumn, winter and spring.

I feel blessed to be able to run now. Going out without thinking of what I’ll feel like after; Not forecasting how hard it will be to walk to class the following morning; Or even if I’ll be able to run many years from now.

Every step I take at this place is one of understanding.

Every hill can spark a flash-bulb memory of some sort of pain.

But sometime between the pre-dawn hours and the ride home, I have begun anew.

I long to run with those who presently cannot. On these trails I learned to become a distance runner. Every time I run here, I think of someone who painfully can’t. I no longer begin the run and condemn those whom are not out here. I breathe the same cold air in ecstasy today that I breathed a year ago on the most familiar trails, but under the most uncomfortable of conditions.

A runner whom is removed from his habits faces a test far greater than any race, or of any physiological capacity. The best runners are those who can recover from forced physical inhibition, and find a renewed passion for the sport.

Whatever the ailment, wherever the recovery, and however long the leave of absence, the human will soldiers on. It’s what brought me back here. It is what ensures the survival of contentment. It is the antagonist of false security. It is what has ensured the democratic promises of the English-speaking peoples for centuries.

The human will is a simple organism, which is engineered for a single quality:

To prevail.

Hindsight: Part II

The beauty in this sport is that you never lose anything you can’t re-gain. Other athletic endeavors are composed of cutting edge moments of opportunity. 4th Quarter Mayhem; Penalty Shot Overtimes; 9th inning bases loaded and down by one run. They all express a sense of singular opportunity.

Ask any competitive team-sport athlete where he was when he dropped the fly ball. What stadium the hockey player struck the post at during a breakaway. A basketball player could eloquently describe the distinct odor of the parkay when he missed the buzzer shot.

Running has none of these. Everything you have, and everything you do is left on the road, or in the muffled wood. It exists for a nano-second and then it is gone forever. Races are won by increments of time that have no relevance in any other sport. If a marathoner can outlast a fellow competitor and beat him by .0092 seconds, I challenge any official, in any other game, to evaluate a play within the same frame of time. It’s mechanically impossible.

The late Dr. George Sheehan once wrote that he had given up thousands of things for his running. None of which was a sacrifice.

I raise these points only to describe what it’s like regain something I thought I had lost. When you enjoy yourself and your fellows to a degree of insomnia, it is hard to want anything more. So naturally one begins to realize what they have lost. The thousands of gains a man reaps in a day can instantly vanish if he has lost a single thing. This is why it is crucial to reflect on the fortunes, the privileges, and the inherent character that defines us. For it builds up so very tall, that a stiff wind could swiftly extinguish its fortitude.

I thought I had lost a place I held in sacrosanct. I knew it was there. It was not going to have waste committed upon it, for it was conserved and protected land. But conservation is only as good as the distance between its’ patrons. Witness the open-market; If every soul in the western hemisphere went to the same store to purchase their daily dosage of contentment, I doubt the store would exhibit the same traits it vends. Three is a crowd. Familiarity can breed contempt.

Distance running has a unique trait. After 6 miles of distance run, the mind enters its’ most humanistic state. Antagonisms are trampled and disagreements are happily rectified.

Armed with such an absolute truth, I cannot lose anything. Running is now, what it was then. It is the same earth. The same water. I explored it with people and shared feelings that forged what we have became, and what we still are. One by one they follow a path I ran so many times before. learned what Zatopek meant when he said “We are different, in essence, from other men.”

I learned what was dedication, and what is the marathon.

HINDSIGHT: Part I

I am pained.

I am witness to a point in time that has torn my thoughts and emotions and all that I stand for in two very contrasting ways.

To stand firm at this point in time if one of the hardest things I have had to do. It transcends one’s politics or religion. I am beginning to wonder how much more time I have before I have to certify my policy on life.

I have friends whom are both conservative and liberal, Democrat and Republican, Runners and those whom are not. At times I feel as if I am linchpin therein.

I can only attest to what I’ve experienced thus far. But when everything boils down, I still am raw and unlearned in so many arenas.

Contrasting my beliefs is a system that I feel no longer can suffice. At some point in a man’s lifespan a point of certainty must be reached; A man must evolve into one of principle – A time when nothing will come from equivocating.

I refute the idea that the most definitive mind is the most educated. The measure of a man is rarely determined in his allegiance to an ideology.

Yet I also feel that the basis of human cognition is one of infinite capacity. The human being will not cease in the presence of danger or the manifestation of indecision. It must re-assured, if by no one but itself, that it is the master of its own house.

Paradoxically, the promulgation of laws ensure the legitimacy of a free society. The Sovereign can only exist in an arena wherein the citizens respect the authority therein.

The beauty about our constitutional republic is the very fact that there are exceptions to this paradox. Statutes are overwritten. Policies are abolished. And minds disagree.

In the long, history of the world, only a few states have been granted the role of preserving democracy, in tyrannical times. We are blessed to live under the wing of a mighty eagle, who assures the survival and the success of liberty. But we are also under the vindictive mentality of might makes right. This is not an eagle. To quote Churchill “It is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in its’ lust for blood and plunder.” But the ability to vest in the armaments of the world’s last superpower is to sleep under the wing of a dragon. And it is warmer than you may think.

Falling under a guise of history, and emboldened by a false pretense, I spent time under such an illusion. But once the beast begins to awake, you can no longer equivocate. You must determine where you stand. You must understand the calling versus the passion. And you must be able to discern them.

I support those who brave men and women who stay awake at night. Who lumber along 100 degree desert floors, who make light the savageness of the world, to ensure the last bastions of Christian Civilization do not blow out.

And for this reason, I have developed an enlightened degree of self-interest.