I'll Walk, Thanks.

Reading about the recent death of marathoner Ryan Shay, it strikes me how incredibly out of shape I am yet how relatively unbothered I am about it. At age 28, at the top of his game, he collapsed at the 2008 Olympic Marathon trials.

It absolutely can happen to anyone. Yet how disgusting that it should happen to him. If the good Lord comes ringing for me before my time, I hope I have the good sense to screen my calls.

He is from a family of runners, which I take as a testament to the dearth of amusements available to a growing boy up in Central Lake, Michigan, population 1,000. Every sibling runs or has run. His sister stills holds some sort of obscene high school record. Plus his parents coach. Is it dedication or obsession? Whatever it is, it's bloody impressive.

"Trials" is an appropriate word. In today's Times article about the tragedy, his coach's training scheme for such trials is described thus: a 14-week training period, peaking at about 130 to 140 miles of training a week, with workouts including 8 x 1 mile at 4:45 to 4:50 pace at 7,000 feet (in Arizona) with two minutes' rest in between.

Yikes! (Two minutes' rest? They are so fat and lazy. What hope do they have?)

People who are driven to be the best at what they do have to work for it, no doubt. And I respect that. But I don't want nearly as much. So I am perfectly content not to work nearly as hard as Ryan Shay, who can run a marathon in 2 hours and 15 minutes, proposed to.

Even a friend of mine, finishing last weekend's New York Marathon in 4:09 (a personal best for him, I think), leaves me in the dust. I wouldn't even try it. I detest running. I can't even think of something I enjoy doing for four hours and nine minutes!

I am just this side of hopeless. Truly, I miss my rugby team, which dragged me kicking and screaming into the best shape of my life over the last couple of years. Having taken a season away from the team, I am reduced with amazing speed to a quivering white pudding, winded by the staircase ascent from the subway, aware of every aching joint and wondering how long it will be before I end up an Old Man. This is how it starts! I think.

UPDATE: I stand corrected. From the horse's mouth: 4:04:27. Yikes!

Troubled Waters

	City of Lakes. I was treated to this every day for six years. [Greater Minneapolis Convention and Visitors Association]

Jeff woke me up this morning by telling me that there are still cars in the Mississippi River with bodies inside. It's so, so sad, what happened yesterday.

The video I've seen on TV makes the whole scene look relatively small, I think. That bridge was just a freeway overpass across the river, but it was huge. A crack in the bridge would cause chaos, let alone the whole thing tumbling into the river.

It's cliché, but I can't help but think that I drove across that bridge almost daily for more than six years. It's freaking I-35, after all.

What I remember most, and most endearingly, was the spectacular view of the Minneapolis skyline available crossing southbound on that bridge. In all the years that I saw it, speeding across the Mississippi, I never took it for granted. The sight of it at night, as the creamsicle sun was setting and the lights were beginning to show against the shadows of the city, made me proud to live in such a beautiful place. On winter mornings, with intensely clear skies and air cold enough to suck the breath out of your lungs, clouds of steam not normally visible rose from buildings downtown, and I was happy to belong to a city, my city, that had been radiating defiance against the cold for more than 150 years.

I still don't know for sure that no one I know was hurt or killed yesterday. My fingers remain crossed. My heart and sympathies go out to the folks who will never see that skyline again — and to their families, for whom that view will surely be heavy with memories and meaning.