(Howell Creek Radio address for December 15, 2012 -- ) # Running Thick On Friday night Trixie and I felt fine, mostly, but you know how it is when you have something uncomfortable coming up and your subconscious is coming up with all kinds of helpful reasons physical and psychological why you should just beg off and stay in bed instead. We'd just gotten back from the cinema, and gotten out of the car. Trixie didn't even make it all the way inside the door: she flopped against the doorjam pressing her forehead into her arm. "I think my system is trying to fight off a cold," she said. "I'm getting something too," I said in all earnestness. "I...I think it's a headache or something." The next morning would be the Reindeer Run 5k, a 3-mile run around Lake Harriet. It is, as its name implies, a festive affair. There are a few thousand runners, many of them in costume as Mr or Mrs Santa Claus, reindeer, wrapped presents, elves with red and white striped leggings, Pac-Man and the ghosts Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. There's always a squad of U.S. Marines calling out jodies. And bells, lots of bells. My mom and at least a few of my brothers and sisters have participated in this event almost every year since forever, or at least probably the late nineties; and each time, we're all laboring under some vague delusion that this year might be the very last year we have the chance to run it together. But this year, Trixie and I have pierced the veil. The Reindeer Run will be there next year. It will probably be there every year until the end of time. * * * Now, Trixie just _loves_ exercise. Down to the core of her little five-foot one-and-a-half-inch being, she exults in the feeling of hot blood flowing through her muscles. Whereas for me, being an athlete, is more a state of mind. In my life, the word 'excercise' has been identical with such medicinal concepts as 'duty', 'arithmetic', and 'potatoes'. My mother, a veteran of several marathons, and 5- and 10k races innumerable, used to get me up at 5:30 to go for a three-mile run several times a week, most memorably in -20 F windchills in January. I didn't enjoy it. She would take me on heart-rending routes through the darkness that looped around so that at the halfway mark we were almost within sight of our house again...and then we'd retrace our steps, running back all the way we'd come before I could actually get inside. It did make my Corn Flakes and coffee taste that much better, and gradually instilled in me a mild sense of athletic pride, and in my teens and early twenties I went on to finish enough half-marathons and 5ks to last me, I think, for the rest of my life. I'm grateful to have those finisher's medals hanging on the wall, but I've never been, and never will be, eager to add even one more mile to the lifelong tally of Miles Run On Foot. > "Here in Cambridge, we've always been proud of our athletic prowess. We believe, we've always believed, that our games are indespensible for helping to complete the education of an Englishman. They create character. They foster courage, honesty, and leadership, but most of all, an unassailable spirit of loyalty, comradeship, and mutual responsibility. Would you agree?" > > "Yes sir, I would." > > -- _Chariots of Fire_ Here was a different situation, however -- Trixie and I were in agreement: neither of us felt up to getting up early for the Reindeer Run. For one thing, the weather had changed: it was cold outside, and damp. Warmth was what we chiefly wanted. For another, we hadn't really trained for this. I couldn't remember the last time I'd gone running. Trixie could but we didn't feel like remembering it just then. Saturday mornings were for sleeping in, not for runs in the cold. There ought to have been no difficulty about the matter: sleep on now, and take your rest, turn upon your bed as a door upon its hinges. But blood runs thick, so they say -- perhaps more so in the cold? We really did hate to think what the fam would say or how they'd feel if we skipped out. It's one thing to be called in so many words a coward -- this can be laughed off; it's quite another thing to know that someone, your own friend and kinsperson, dragged themselves out of bed on a damp chilly morning, expecting at least the consolation of your aren't-we-a-sorry-lot countenance to make a fun experience out of a pointless one -- and that you disappointed them, and made their morning pointless after all. Loyalty, comradeship, and mutual responsibility. Would you agree? Yes sir, I would. Saturday morning we dragged ourselves out of bed and drove to Lake Harriet. And there was the fam, all minimally costumed in Santa hats or reindeer antlers, and all suitably overjoyed to see we'd come: my sister Emma, brother Snoo and his dog, other sister Gwen and her Swiss boyfriend, also named Joel, my inveterate-runner mother, and lo and behold, even my redoubted father came to run, something I can recall happening only once before. We ran our three miles around the lake. We ate bananas and salted nut rolls, stood around and talked for a bit with that post-cold-morning-run clammy feeling in our legs. We stopped at the grocery store and did all our shopping and went home and showered and changed into comfy clothes and had macaroni and cheese for lunch. And that night as we rejoined the extended family for pizza, as is our Saturday custom, we enjoyed the warmth of loyalty, comradeship and mutual responsibility...probably almost as much as we ever enjoyed the warmth of our down comforter on a Saturday morning. Synopsis: ------------ Radio address for Saturday, December 15, 2012. There are few things that can persuade us to go for a run in the cold, but they invariably find us out sooner or later. Music is [Man on Fire][mofe] by Ed Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and [Caliban's Dream][cald] from the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London (a really great running song by the way). The recorded dialogue in the middle is an excerpt from the movie _Chariots of Fire_. [mofe]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0081J9PJY/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0081J9PJY&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [cald]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008QAYF3E/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B008QAYF3E&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20