Day 110

I wasn’t able to keep the streak alive - Saturday morning basketball took it out of me (and for what it’s worth, I was playing at a pretty high level, hitting most of my mid-range shots, bullying defenders in the post, and even hitting a three) - but I made up for it on Sunday.

It was a nice day, about 80 degrees and a cool-ish breeze, when I left Lisa planting flowers in the front yard. I cued up my Garrison Keillor book to listen to more humorous ruminations on aging and death and, for the first time, took a right at the three mile intersection instead of heading back the way I came.

This was a brave new world for me. I kind of knew where that road would go, but from my old marathoning days, I also knew that roads sometimes go in unexpected ways and you can find yourself WAY out of your original course. The difference between then and now, however, is that I have a phone that tells me how to get back on the right path, and I have a phone that can summon help if the remaining path is too long.

(Side note: I went to play with my Sunday blues band, and about five miles from home, I realized I’d forgotten my phone. Ooof - I felt naked without that security blanket in my hand, but I was already late to practice and couldn’t turn back, and I kind of wanted to see how it would go without my Good Friend. Turns out it was okay: I found my way to the practice site without needing Apple Maps, I faked my way through the songs we played without using the chord charts on my phone, and I didn’t miss any important calls. Still…)

Garrison held my hand through the walk with his shambling baritone storytelling. The main plot in this new book is his reconnection with a woman he’d loved as a small town teenager who is now dying of pancreatic cancer. Fun! But it actually is very sweet, as he recalls his first love and the uncomplicated emotions it awakens at an age when that’s all you need and that’s all that matters. As she declines, he visits her and she asks him to tell her a joke. “Make me laugh,” she says.

He tells three jokes. One that I’d heard him tell before, one that wasn’t that funny, and one that made me laugh out loud on the road. That one goes:

A guy is ice-fishing with his friends when they see a funeral procession passing the lake on the road to the cemetery. The guy puts down his rod, stands up, takes off his hat, and turns to give respect to the procession. One of his buddies says, “That was very classy.” The guy responds, “It’s the least I could do. We were married for 35 years.”

I told that one to Lisa and, to her credit, she laughed out loud too.

As I finished my sixth mile, I knew where I was - about one and quarter miles from home. I was at a good stopping point in the book, so I switched to a running playlist on my iTunes, and the Stones launched into “Rip This Joint.” If you can’t run to that song, you can’t run at all.

So I ran. And at a pretty good pace.

According to my splits, that seventh mile came in at 10:02! I didn’t think I could run a ten minute mile at all, much less after walking six miles. But there it was.

When I got home, I was tired, but the good kind of tired - out of breath, but not hurting (except for my pinky toes, which had taken a beating). I needed a cold shower, but then I remembered that I have a pool! Who swims in February?

Me! It felt great, and it probably did a lot of good for my muscle recovery, like hopping into an ice bath.

And if my face looks red in that picture, it must be a bad photo filter.

When I sent my splits to my workout buddies, Art was not happy that I’d run a mile. “If you want to push yourself harder, find a bike,” he texted me.

I have a bike, and I will probably start using it. But running a ten minute mile did more for my self-esteem than 30 miles on a bike. More, please!

Day 108

Yesterday was my third day in a row on the road, and a good one. I walked eight miles and averaged just under 16 minutes a mile.

It was a mid-morning walk in strangely warm weather, given the time of year and the overcast conditions. At that time of day, the sidewalks pretty much belong to healthy retirees, moving at a comfortable pace, smiling as you pass them.

I am retired myself, but I have been reluctant to embrace the label “retiree.” Don’t get me wrong - if I can get ten percent off my tab at Denny’s for being a senior citizen, I’ll claim it, but I don’t think of myself as being in that demographic yet.

Over dinner at a Thai restaurant tonight, I told Lisa why I wasn’t there yet.

“I feel too good to be this old,” I said. “I keep expecting to start getting lumbago, or sore hips, or the Heartbreak of Psoriasis. But I move fine, and the gray in my beard doesn’t bother me.”

She nodded. “Me too. I feel more like … I don’t know, like mid-thirties,” she said.

So do I. I know I’m not - my kids and my nephew Andrew make sure that I don’t forget my age - but my mind feels clear and agile, my disposition still sunny and optimistic, like I’ve felt since my salad days.

Lisa threw some cold water on my attitude, however.  

“You know we’re only five years or so until things start going south, right?”

Yeah, I guess. But when we got home tonight, she started playing old songs by classic acts - the Brothers Johnson, Boz Scaggs (such a great name), Phil Collins - and we rocked out like we were kids.

Anyway, the walk yesterday was uneventful - two hours wandering my neighborhood, listening to the new Garrison Keillor novel (he has a very companionable voice for a long walk, and the book is about mortality and aging, which seemed appropriate), interrupted periodically by phone calls with my clients.

When I got to almost eight miles, I looked at my Apple Watch and saw that my pace was 16:01. Not today, I thought, and I ran the rest of the way in, lowering my average to 15:58. Ha!

Day 107

Short entry today.

I walked the dogs again last night for a couple of miles. I used the LightHound harnesses for the first time in a while - they looked like extras from the movie “Tron.”

Anyway, I keep promising a long walk.  Maybe tonight!

Day 106

I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.

— Helen Keller

It was going to be another night on the couch, but Art wouldn’t let me off the hook.

He texted me:

Every day we say to ourselves, “not tonight,” it gets easier to put it off. Well I’m not putting it off. NOT TONIGHT! I hope you’re not either.

Geez. I told him I was going to walk when Lisa got home (the boy has moved out, so I didn’t want to be out on the road without someone available to rescue me if necessary).  He then wrote:

Why waste the beautiful gift of walking?  Not everyone is so lucky.

As it happened, I was re-reading a biography of Elvis, who was a world-class couch potato in his later years. It’s pretty inspirational in a perverse way - you don’t want to end up like him, fat and addled and in massive denial.

So I got up and walked the dogs again for a couple of miles, this time in the dark. It was exactly the right temperature and the dogs were DELIGHTED.

Tomorrow: back to the long walks!

Day 101

On Thursdays, I don’t work out with Art.  Instead, I frequently go to Ninfa’s on Navigation for Boys Lunch with my old friends Bill, Bert, Mike, Edd, Jack and Jay, along with a rotating cast of guests.  

All alumni of the Harris County criminal justice system, we tell fun stories from old days and have provocative discussions about politics, both national and local. I am the resident liberal because I tend to be skeptical about the day’s Fox News talking points. We argue good-naturedly over chips and margaritas like people used to before everyone got so angry about everything.

I’ve been lunching with these guys for years.  Originally, we met at The Last Concert Cafe (great Tex-Mex and the best chicken sandwich in Houston) until the combination of the hurricane and the pandemic shuttered that place like it did so many other restaurants.

Today, it was me, Mike, Bert, Jay, Jack and our guest Frank, a lawyer who knows more about local Republican politics than anyone I know. We talked about the usual things and then something funny/sad happened. 

Late in the lunch, I told the guys that I was going to walk a few miles in the afternoon, and that I was planning to run the New York Marathon. The guys responded with pleasant support and a faint tinge of skepticism.  

Mike said, “You’re running a marathon?  You know, you don’t have to do that.”

“That’s not very nice,” Frank said.

“What?” Mike asked.

What followed was the kind of exchange men tend to have as they get older. Frank asked Mike to repeat what he had said, and then said, “Oh. I guess I misheard you.”

“What did you think I said?”

“When you said ‘You don’t have to do that,’ I thought you said that Scott was too hefty to do that,” Frank explained.

Ooof.  “Hefty” is one of those words that never reflects well on the person it describes. You might call the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man that, or the Michelin Man, but not ME.

Hefty?  Who, me?

But Frank could only have misheard that word because he actually thought Mike had said it. You don’t mishear “You’ve got a big hat” as “You’re big and fat” unless the “you” in the statement is actually capable of being described as big and fat.

Heartbreaking, but also motivating.  So after lunch, I came home and got my walking gear. My two dogs watched me closely, and my heart broke. They wanted to go walk so badly.

So they went with me!

I am working on breaking my walker’s block, one day at a time. Maybe the combination of sharing the road with happy dogs and being called hefty will get me going again.

(NOTE: Time was not great because dogs stop a lot.  A lot.  And the distance was not great because these dogs are kind of out of shape.)

Day 94

Well, that was some break.

I think I was experiencing walker’s block.  Sitting on the couch, I’d be thinking, “Need to walk, need to walk, need to walk,” but I wouldn’t.  

No good reason, just … wouldn’t.

Fortunately, Art didn’t give up on me. He needled me like the good trainer he is, asking, “Where’s today’s blog entry?” over and over, forcing me to acknowledge my block and overcome it.

So today, he sent me a text at 9:00:

And that was it.  I replied:

Avina was right - it was probably too late to be out walking, but it was time to get off the couch and back on the road. The walk was eerily quiet, a post-apocalyptic feeling with no cars or people, just an occasional plane overhead to reassure me that I was not the last walker on Earth.

I felt good - and even ran a little on the last mile home (check the splits below).

The other news of the day:  I officially entered the New York Marathon lottery.  No turning back now. If I win an entry, my credit card will get billed $295 whether I run it or not. And if I don’t get in, there are some other strategies to pursue that I will describe another day. In short, if I’m in marathon shape come November, I’m going. Period.

Glad to be back at it!