Throughout my fitness ‘career’, I have identified myself in different ways. I started out as a cyclist, I suppose, with my first distance ride a 20-mile excursion from Massena to Potsdam, NY with my cousin Donnie in tow. We were maybe 12 at the time and rode from his house to our grandparents. We both had single gear bikes with foot brakes and balloon tires the size of your arm. It probably took us a couple of hours and we likely stopped at some local store for pop and ice cream along the way.
Then the track team in ninth grade and a couple of first place finishes in the mile had me thinking I’d be the next Jim Ryan and break the 4-minute mile. I was a runner.
By my senior year in high school, I’d returned to the notion that I was a cyclist and with a friend, set off from Willoughby, Ohio to ride bikes across Pennsylvania, into New York and to my grandparents’ place just north of the city. Round trip – about 1,100 miles and we carried our gear and camped along the way.
In 1978 I watched Dave Scott win the Hawaii Iron Man, a triathlon that encompasses a 2.4 mile open ocean swim, 112-mile bike ride, and running a marathon – 26.2 miles. ‘I can do that,’ I said aloud and then spent the next two years preparing myself to do it.
At different times I would return to running or cycling only, but in later years – like right about now – I’ve become the jack of all and the master of none. Last Friday I again launched into a running career with a 2.5 mile slow plod along Tree Farm Trail in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It was painful, but pretty and the effort reminded me how much I enjoyed the challenge and freedom of running. I followed that effort with another Sunday morning, which really says something since I had to get out of a warm bed on a morning in the forties to complete the run before heading to breakfast to meet up with my brother and his wife at Fisher’s. I was the only one on the trail and the morning mist that shrouded the fields through which I passed made the effort more than worth it.
I’ve set the goal of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in two summers. I will keep talking and writing about it so that I stay on-task. I’m looking hard at starting up the Paleo Diet again and dropping some weight so that the runs, hikes and bike rides become easier and faster. I don’t know how to identify myself right now except to say that I’m back into a fitness ‘career’; out of semi-retirement.
Hike: 70 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 80-100 bpm.
Calories burned: 575.
Bonus: 21,000 steps.
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