Sunday, 11:34 a.m., 43 degrees, chilly, cloudy. Anthony Street, 5k.
Monday, 6:15 p.m., low 40's, crisp, beautiful, sun going down. Anthony Street, 5k.
Wednesday, 10:24 a.m., 54 degrees, gray,no breeze, a little humid ... great conditions. Aqueduct Road to Nott Terrace Stewart's, 7 1/4 miles.
"I AM A HOCKEY PLAYER!!"
That's a line from the Disney-fied movie "Miracle" about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team that beat the Soviets, then won the gold medal. Coach Herb Brooks, played by Kurt Russell, is trying to motivate Robby McClanahan during intermission to get back on the ice despite a deep thigh bruise. Brooks calls him a candyass - a term my dad has used more than once, along with its shorter incarnation "candy" - and McClanahan explodes in rage.
"You want me to play, huh? Is that what you want?"
"I want you to be a hockey player!!"
"I am a hockey player!!"
I'm not an angry person, but I use stuff like this to motivate me in the middle of runs sometimes, like on Sunday, when I was still (still) feeling the remnants of Thursday's UAlbany practice, and needed a little turbo boost to get my butt in gear. I had planned on running the USATF Cross Country Championship at Spa State Park, but why waste money on an entry fee for what would amount to another recovery run? Instead, I came back from two days off with a simple, controlled jog.
Monday was pretty much the same thing, an effort to get some blood and air flowing, and to remind my legs what they're about, except that it got kind of dark out. The run also conjured a movie line that dates to a time years ago when my friend Jeff Wilkin first enlisted me to provide a "Godfather Line of the Day." Every day. And it had to reflect some current event.
It started one morning when I was really, really sick, but had to show up for rec basketball, or we wouldn't have enough guys. After playing hard for an hour and a half or so, Jeff's brother, Tim, asked me, "You feeling better?" As a matter of fact, I was. Still sick, but "yeah, it's good, you sweat it out" - a line delivered by James Caan, as Sonny Corleone, with faux concern to Paulie Gatto, who was offered a stiff drink to cure the cold that had kept him from his duties guarding the Don. The Don was gunned down. Paulie wasn't feeling too good later, either.
Thus, the Godfather Line of the Day was born.
I wrote recently - crowed, really - about not having been sick for the last two years, but the embryonic stages of a cold started creeping up on me on Monday. Then I went running, got some good snot working, and bludgeoned this impertinent little micro-organism into oblivion. Problem solved. Yeah, it's good. You sweat it out.
Some other movies that offer lines that pop into my head at times of trouble include "Gladiator", "300" and "Hoosiers." You can see a clear thread here, weaving war and sports. Again, I'm not an angry, menacing or belligerent person, but sometimes you need some mechanism to drag yourself from the brink of passivity, or to rally your forces. I can't tell you how many times the voice of the captain from "300" has jumped into my head after I've weathered a hard push or made it to the top of a hill. The Persian army rained thousands of arrows on the Spartans, blotting out the sky, and after their shields had absorbed the fusillade, they stood up and swiped the arrows off their shields with their swords. "Recover" was the captain's simple and forceful order.
I'd like to incorporate lines from some of my favorite movies, like "On the Waterfront" and "In the Heat of the Night," but "Stop breathing that clam sauce all over me" doesn't really have any obvious application.
I got my DVD in the mail from the UAlbany practice, with an evaluation form. One of the coaches wrote "Was impressed with your hustle, effort and aggressiveness," which I respectfully choose not to translate into "You have no game."
The plan for the rest of the week is something easy on Thursday, coverage of the whole Stockade-athon course very early in the morning on Friday, something easy on Saturday and the Race in the Park 5k in Central Park on Sunday.
Wildlife Watch: On Monday night, on my way back in the dark, I saw a round poof of black hair just off the path to the right. I passed within three feet of a skunk coiled up on the ground looking at me. I fear that Furry Creature Nation is ready to go nuclear, but on this day, at least, the Kim Jong Il of the animal kingdom kept his missiles in their silos.
