You need to get a book bag and put some weights in it

Today I went running in this.

It was worse than this by the time I was done. This was a couple hours into the winter storm, and it was still going the whole time I was out there. When I took up running, a buddy of mine advised me that I should make a point of running in bad weather. Running in bad weather, he said, is one of the easiest ways to feel like a bad-ass. It’s a great point, but it’s a little easier said than done. Each time you see some awful weather out there, you have to decide to go face it. You have to put your running clothes on and walk out that door and do it.

Today I did it. I had run in the snow once before, but I had never run with snow accumulating on the ground.

By the time I got out there, the snow was still coming, but plenty had already accumulated.

I have been meaning to write about running on here for a while. Here’s the thing: I was never a runner before this summer. In fact, just the opposite. I would not run. Sure, I’d play sports that involved running and etc, but you could not convince me to go out and go for a run, at least not regularly. Over the last couple years or so, I had started playing around with running as a way of fitting in workouts a little more, but they were really run-walks. Good workouts, because I’d work in sprints and jumps and such, but it wasn’t “running,” you know?

Then all of the sudden, this summer, I took up running pretty seriously. It wasn’t planned. One day (in fact, the day I happened to pass a frequent visitor to this site on Girard Avenue), I went out for a run walk and it became very nearly a full on run, much to my surprise. Since then, I get in at least one 6 miler about every week. Usually a couple more runs of 4 or 5 miles each week as well. Nothing huge, but that’s the point. Running is the single easiest hard workout to slip into your life. You just put the shoes on and go, you know? I don’t want to be a marathoner. I want to be someone who can go on vacation with a pair of trainers in his bag and know that he’ll be able to fit in the odd workout even if the hotel doesn’t have a gym. I never would have guessed that this would be something I could do one day.

My point is this: you can do more than you think. You can even surprise yourself.

That’s my positive, go you, spin. Here’s my other thought: I’m not nearly as committed to the arts as I like to think I am. Whenever I do something like I did today — some crazy athletic endeavor that leads people to tell me I’m a little bit crazy — I have to confront the fact that in a given year I am far more likely to apply that crazy discipline to more athletic activities than I am to artistic activity. The irony here is that I’m a pretty crappy athlete. Even if I take on some challenges, my stats are never impressive. Even if I get a lot better at something, I know I’ll never really be a contender at any sport. I’m never the ringer on the field or the fastest runner in the race or the strongest climber on the bike. Still, the hardest things I do in a given year are always related to sports or fitness.

My big artistic achievements are rare and getting more rare. Yet, I’m a much better artist than I am an athlete (in fact, I think I’m only an athlete in the most generous sense of that word).

I thought about this a lot as I did this run. I guarantee you that I was the only runner out there in North Philadelphia today. Maybe there were some more down in Center City, but not up here. I was an unusual sight on the street today. I’m glad I did this run without my iPod. I would have missed the old guy saying, “Boy, where’s your pants?” (I run in shorts, always) and the younger guy who said, “You’re the champ! I don’t know what you’re doing, but I hope you win!” When no one was yelling at me, though, I was thinking. And only a few people had anything to say to me. I had to ask myself why I was able to convince myself to pull this strange little athletic feat, yet most nights I go to bed without writing a word of fiction or without drawing one line.

“Know thyself,” Socrates or the oracle or somebody said. But how? One method, try to quantify your own decisions. Don’t look to your heart. Look to what you actually do when you have choices to make. As I rocked my way through Philadelphia’s growing blanket of snow this morning, I confronted the fact that an objective analysis of my decisions revealed a greater commitment to fitness than it did to the creative life that I have always been, in words anyway, more committed to.

I’ve got to say it again: I’m better at writing stories than I am at running. There’s just never any chance that I’m going to be a great runner, but I might be a good writer if I focus. There’s a chance, anyway.

Perhaps the last call out I got on my run was the most instructive. Maybe it was my morning’s little message from God. It came at the start of the last mile. The last mile was the worst part of this run. It was harder than all four miles before it. I was headed back to my place, up 6th Street. The wind was in my face, snowflakes were getting in my eyes. Hardly anyone on 6th had shoveled their sidewalks so far, and the snow seemed appreciably deeper here than it had been anywhere else. I was getting a little tired, too. Not bad, but struggling a bit. I stumbled and slid more. I worried more about the curbs I couldn’t see for the drifts.

I was on the sidewalk, passing in front of a house. A young black guy was leaning out the door of his house, talking to a friend who was getting his car swept clear of snow and ready to go somewhere. He looked at me running past his stoop and said, “You need to get yourself a bookbag and put some weights in it.” In other words, I see you’re trying hard, son, but we both know you could try harder.

Well said.