Bill Rodgers- icon, regular guy

  He doesn’t look like your usual 66 year old American male. For one thing, he is thin; some would say skinny. In fact, when he was young, he was called “scrawny”. His fair skin shows the wrinkles and freckles acquired in a lifetime spent outdoors. His features are pleasant, friendly, and framed around a generous nose and a quick smile. He has a shock of unruly hair, still sandy brown, that hasn’t changed much since he won his first Boston Marathon in 1975 as an unknown, wearing a ratty T-shirt on which he had penciled in “Boston GBTC (Greater Boston Track Club)”, setting an American record for the marathon in the process.  

 

Bill Rodgers is 66 and looks like he is capable of going out and winning another Boston. Today, though, he is sitting in a chair, behind a folding table in a room at the Mount Dora, FL community center. His book, Marathon Man, has just been published. Tomorrow is the 2013 Mount Dora half marathon and 5K on Sunday, December 15. He is in town to run the latter and sign copies of his book. When I heard that he would be there, I could not pass up the chance to see and meet an icon of the sport and one of my athletic heroes going back to when I first heard of the crazy thing called a marathon.

 

       I expected many others to do the same and arrived at the community center prepared to confront crowds, a long line, and an equally long wait. After all, this was Bill Rodgers. THE Bill Rodgers. Boston Billy. Winner of 4 Boston and 4 New York marathons in the five year span from 1975 to 1980. Inducted into the National Distance Running Hall of Fame in Utica, NY.  I hoped to spend a brief moment with him, shake his hand, and get his signature on the flyleaf of his book.  Instead, I found myself in a line, if you want to call it that, of about 10 people, two in front of me and the rest behind. Bill took a lot of time with the first two people. I could see that he wrote a lot on the inside of the books.  He spoke at length with them. Then, I was standing in front of the little guy in the green shirt and jeans with the wild hair, shorter than me, but a giant in the field of running.  Oddly, I didn't feel at all nervous. He wasn't a 6' 4" NFL linebacker or a 7' NBA star, just a little guy who looked like, well, any runner out there on any given day. We shook hands and I said, "Surely you remember me". He looked hard, as though he surely should. "You blew by me at the end of the Cape Cod Marathon in 1995." He smiled as though he did, indeed, remember.

 

I remembered it well. I had never seen an elite runner up close. I was hobbling along with a torn, bleeding toenail, ripped off on one of the many hills on this "flat" course, dejected, in pain, and knowing I had failed in my bid to qualify for the 100th running of the Boston Marathon the following year. Suddenly here came Bill, anchoring the Ocean Spray Relay Team. He was long past his prime but still loping along with this effortless, huge stride that made him look nothing less than a human gazelle, flying over the ground, barely touching earth. Even sprinting I could not have kept up. It was a thrill I have never forgotten.

 

  For the next five or more minutes, we chatted about running, my recent Ironman triathlon, keeping fit over a lifetime, cross training, staying balanced, the importance of family, and more. It was like chatting with an old friend. I became self-conscious about the time he was taking with me but at no time did he act as though he needed to cut things short to get on to the next in line. In fact, I had to beg off with a comment about not wanting to monopolize his time. He signed my book. “Rick”, it said, “Congratulations on your Ironman triathlon! I’ll never do one of those (this from someone who used to put in 170 mile training weeks routinely) but it’s part of your “running story”. Let’s run forever! Bill Rodgers”. He gave me a card with his personal email address.

 

    In a world where our sports heroes seem better known for their doping, cheating, lying, and oversized egos it is incredibly refreshing to meet one who seems the polar opposite. I think he was perfectly happy to just hang out and chat. I felt like Bill would have been thrilled to accept an invitation to go for a run if I had extended one. He made me feel like he was as delighted, if not more so, to meet me as I was to meet him. It made me proud to be a runner.

 

   So, with an icon this personable and approachable, why wasn’t his table mobbed with an adoring crowd? I think it comes down to the nature of running itself. While running is an extremely popular sport, it does not lend itself to the kind of media coverage that other sports do. With the exception of the quadrennial Olympics and the Boston Marathon, main stream media coverage of running is almost non-existent. Other than the occasional Rosie Ruiz hitching a ride to the end of a marathon, scandals in running are few and far between. Running, while certainly sociable, is not a team sport where rooting for your college or pro team is practiced. Professional runners don’t make the big bucks, like other athletes; they are much more likely to be your neighbor than the NFL quarterback or NBA center, making hero worship problematic. Running is everyman’s sport, requiring no organization, special equipment, or venue. You can’t play football with your pro team on Sunday, drive the lane with your NBA team at the local arena, or drive a ball at Augusta during the Master’s, but you can run Boston with the likes of Bill Rodgers as thousands have. To us runners, Bill is just another runner, who happens to get to the finish line a little faster.

Drowning a shark or, you can't rest on your laurels

Every kid growing up goes through phases as regards what they would like to do with their lives. You know, things like wanting to be a cowboy, superhero, fireman, etc. In my case, my evolution included a list of “ologies”- paleontology, ornithology, herpetology, etc. The first one that was really serious was marine biology, specifically, the study of sharks. This eventually gave way to medicine but my interest in sharks has never waned.

 

    Sharks are fascinating creatures. Some fascination is natural about any creature that can kill and eat us. In the case of sharks, this has been fueled by the lurid news stories of shark attacks and sensational fictional accounts of which, without a doubt, the top one is Jaws by Peter Benchley. Over time, the hysteria and overreaction regarding the danger posed by sharks has been mitigated by information and more scientific shows such as seen on the popular, annual feature of the Discovery Channel, Shark Week (although, admittedly some of the shows do border on the sensational but, then again, ratings trump all).

 

       A little known fact about sharks among those who have only a passing interest, or no interest at all, is that nearly every species of shark must swim continuously or they will suffocate. You could say they would drown. You see, sharks do not have the ability to move water across their gills as fish do. To keep water flowing, they must keep moving forward. As if that weren’t enough, they don’t have swim bladders either, an organ seen in fish which allows them to control their buoyancy. So, if a shark stops swimming, they not only die, they sink to the bottom as well. So, if a shark wants to grow, reproduce, and live a long life, they must constantly move forward.

 

  It has been over 5 weeks since I completed the Ironman triathlon at which time I was undoubtedly the fittest I have been in my adult life. I have been, to put it bluntly, a couch potato ever since, with one swim and a Thanksgiving day 5K run to my credit. Yesterday, I slipped on the running shoes and my Garmin and went out for a 3.5 mile run around the lake. I felt like I was starting over. My body revealed a disturbing amnesia for the Ironman effort and acted like this was something new and very demanding. My Garmin registered a training effect of 4.6. A 4 is “highly improving”. A 5 is “overreaching”. Before the Ironman, it would have taken a sustained, serious effort to register a 4.6, meaning that my body, in a few short weeks has “de-conditioned” almost totally. This is disheartening. It is also a fact of life that we ignore at our peril.

 

It is a truism that we cannot rest on our laurels. All accomplishments recede in time, replaced by the query, “what have you done lately?” Physiologically, our bodies ask this question of us when we cease to properly care for them. It doesn’t matter that you brushed your teeth a week ago. If you don’t do this regularly, you will likely find yourself dealing with dentures someday. Quit exercising and in a few weeks it won’t matter if you won at Kona (the world Ironman championship, for readers that don’t keep up with such things), you will become a couch potato.

 

So, in a figurative and more gradual way, we have this in common with sharks (beyond the voracity of certain human species like corporate raiders, day traders, attorneys, politicians, etc. who, in a frenzy, may attack others of their own kind): if we do not keep moving forward, we will sink to the bottom and die. It is an object lesson we either learn from nature, or pay the price. And, it is a steep price. I see it paid out in my practice every single day.

From Ironman to couch potato....now what?

  Time stops for no man. A dream becomes a goal, then a reality, and, finally, a pleasant memory. You can’t live in the past, though. Well, I suppose you can but this would obviously put a bit crimp in your ability to accomplish much in the future.

 

        It has been 4 weeks since November 2. In that time frame, before November 2 I have would put in 32 training sessions over 24 days, totaling nearly 15 hours. Since November 2 I swam once and did a 3 mile run (which left my calves more sore than the Ironman did). From Ironman to couch potato in a month, a devolution if there ever was one.

 

   I must say, however, that having an extended period of down time after such an intense year has been amazing. I had almost forgotten how wonderful it is to have leisure time. I am a night owl and love to stay up late at night but on most days I have to get up early in the morning. This is not a good combination for someone who feels sleep deprived much of the time. When I was younger, I used to hate to sleep, feeling that it was a big waste of precious time in which I could be doing something, anything. Now, I live for Sunday afternoon power naps and love the feeling of waking up on Saturday morning spontaneously, without the insistent chirp of the alarm breaking into my REM sleep. The latter is something I have not experienced the entire twelve months of Ironman training, as Saturday was always the day for my long bike rides. Up at 6 and out the house by 7-7:30 to spend the next 6-7 hours “at the office” so-to-speak pedaling away across the Lake County landscape.

 

To get up in the morning without an alarm, roll out of bed, fix breakfast, grab the morning paper, then sit at the breakfast nook enjoying both without a pressing deadline, chore, or exhaustive training session looming, ah, that is heaven.

 

There is a danger to having too much leisure time, however. After four weeks of this I am already feeling restless and unfocused. People with ADHD do not do well without structure. I know that I function best when I have a schedule, even when that schedule is ridiculously full. I seem to be able to move through a busy day more efficiently and purposefully than one which is full of free time. Most of my life, my schedule is made for me by others. In school, it was classes, assignments, etc. established by my teachers. In residency, both in general surgery and plastic surgery, it was established by the program director and the requirements of the respective certifying boards. In my medical practice, the schedule is set by my staff, patient appointments, and surgery. In the Ironman, it was set up for me by Karl and all I had to do was follow it.

 

Now, I have to establish a new schedule to fill the void left by the absence of the training requirements for an Ironman. Of course, I don’t want to lose all the physical fitness I gained, because it felt great. At the same time I know that I cannot maintain that peak level of physical fitness, nor do I want to, required for an Ironman. While some time will have to be set aside for regular swimming, running, and biking throughout the week this will still leave a lot of free time. My hope has been, as indicated in past blogs, that I can use this time to finish the re-writing of my book manuscript. This has been on the back burner since around April, when I received the 17 pages of suggestions from Emily, the developmental editor in California that I engaged to help me produce something potentially publishable. My disappointment that the manuscript was not perfect as submitted was mitigated by the information passed on to me from Emily, and a very successful writer, that all books go through multiple re-writes. It is just that the task of writing what turned out to be my first draft was monumental and the thought of doing it again is almost overwhelming.

 

Now, I have to establish a regular schedule of writing. All serious writers set aside time for their writing. William Nolan, the surgeon who wrote The Making of a Surgeon and is one of my inspirations for a writing career, used to put in at least one hour of writing each morning, before heading out to the hospital or his office. I need that kind of discipline but so far have only been able to find it in my physical activities. This is not going to be easy. It may be the literary equivalent of my first (did I really say that?) Ironman.