Hugo Schwyzer

Thoughtful posts will appear this week, I hope.

For now, it’s a quiet Sunday night, and I’ve got the chinchillas out in their “nursery.” I ran a half marathon this morning, the Valley Crest trail race out in the Santa Monica Mountains. It’s a tough dirt course, very hilly, but I’m still disappointed in my time. Though I pushed myself up each and every hill as best I could, I managed only a 2:04 — thirty-five minutes slower than what I was running less than a decade ago. I finished in the middle of the pack, and though I felt fine at the end, I was incredibly frustrated at my inability to generate more “leg turnover” — or speed.

Yes, it’s harder to be fast in one’s forties than in one’s thirties. But I’m also running so much less than I was in the late ’90s, when I was single, newly sober, and trading one set of addictions for another. I haven’t stepped onto a track to do speed workouts of any kind in more than five years, but it wasn’t so long ago that I was pounding out 10×800 repeats on a local track before dawn. I was never as fast as I wanted to be, but could usually manage to finish in the top 10% of the men in most of the races I entered.

And yet, as slow as I am these days, I wouldn’t go back to that old way of living. For me, that kind of training was monumentally self-centered. Yes, I was very fit. Yes, I was sober (and at my fastest, celibate), and it was clearly important that I go through a process of replacing one set of addictions (sex, alcohol, etc.) with another (running). I still run, but four days a week instead of six and 25-30 miles a week instead of 60-70. And I finish well back in the pack in the races I run these days instead of contending for, if not an overall win, at least an age-group placement.

I’m reminded again that my wife, my animals, my students, my friends, my colleagues, my mentees, and my large and wonderful extended family don’t need me to be fast. They certainly don’t need me to go back to 4% body fat, and they don’t need me to excuse myself from function after function because I’ve got training or recovery to do. I still make time for running, because running keeps me sane and happy; the addiction to endorphins continues. But I’ve learned that athletic pursuits must take a back seat to other obligations. I have no intention of ever ceasing to exercise regularly, but I also have no intention of having my wife or my future children become “running widows.”

I wrote a long post with a long title about endurance sports and communal obligations here: Tennyson and Sharon Olds, Ulysses and Telemachus: a very long post about endurance athletes, independence, and the single body alone in the universe against its own best time. I note that my inner Telemachus is winning out over my Ulysses these days. And I am kinder, I am gentler — and, I note with rueful acceptance, softer and slower.