My Two Cents,pt.1

Some rambling thoughts while out on a run today.Someone once said,maybe it was George Sheehan,that they did their best thinking when running.I'd hardly call the following my best thinking but here goes:

Boring? Oh Really?!

I don't know about you but I can always gauge a person's degree of love for running if they describe this run or that run as being "boring." For those of us who live for the run,is there really any kind of running that you would call boring? Maybe it's the endorphins, maybe it's just the way your body feels while running, but for me, once I get going, running always makes me feel good. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Drug use in athletics.

Drug use by athletes to improve performance spoils their respective sports and makes the records they set a sham.For instance,what's a home run record worth when it's common knowledge that the competitors for that record were steroid users? Sadly, drug use for enhancing performance is also quite common in the world of "major league" distance running.With hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as appearance fees and endorsements on the line, athletes in any sport seem willing to cheat. Just wondering,do you believe anyone who races the Tour de France these days is "clean?"Just think, records and winning performances in most sports are tainted by drugs.

Prophet without honor.

Saw Percy Cerutty's, Athletics:How To Become A Champion for sale on Ebay. The initial bids, were in my opinion,ridiculously low for a book that good and that rare. Why hasn't it been re-released? About 20 years ago I had some friends who were going to Australia, I gave them a paper with Cerutty's name on it and asked them to go to a bookstore and pick up a few copies of whatever they had by him. They went into three stores and found nothing.

Glad they waited.

I sure am glad the African "invasion" onto the world distance running scene started in the late 80's instead of the early 70's, otherwise most of the American,British and European stars would have been relegated to being also rans. Just think, for those of us in the U.S., runners like Salazar,Rodgers,Shorter, Curp,Beardsley,Tabb,Sandoval,Meyer,Gregorek,Wells,Eyestone and so many others would not have had the success they did if the Africans had been on the scene in the numbers they are now.

At least something good came out of it.

Although I enjoyed the book Born To Run, I never bought into the barefoot running fad that was a result of that book's success. What was great though was that the running shoe companies began coming out with many excellent minimalist shoes. The kind of basic,lightweight shoe that Arthur Lydiard had been advocating for decades and was briefly produced by Converse under his direction(editor:not to be confused with a later Converse running shoe endorsed by Lydiard).

Happy Trails To All!