About to board the plane for LaGuardia. Thence to the Expo at the Javits Center, then to dinner with my running friends, then to a play directed by a friend, then to bed, then to run. I wanted to thank everybody who sent me good wishes for the race, and those who told me how much our podcasts or broadcasts help them through runs. One of the great things about running (or, I would imagine, any endurance sport) is that it is a great leveler. We shed our clothes and other signifiers of wealth, career, fame or privilege; we put on the same silly looking shorts and singlets and arm-socks, we wait for the gun and everybody goes.
Every year, it seems, around fall marathon season, there’s another article about Good Runners complaining about Bad Runners: “It used to be that running a marathon was worth something — there used to be a pride saying that you ran a marathon, but not anymore.” Oh, shut up. If you’re not taking pride in running a marathon, go run an ultra and leave the rest of us alone. Everybody runs their own marathon, against their own demons, over their own obstacles, and for their own reasons. I’m running because I’m not quite done seeing how well I can do this thing, and I want to qualify for Boston once more before my knees give out, and I want to wave hello to the pudgy kid who is watching the race thirty years ago next to his dad and grandfather on 1st Ave near the Queensboro Bridge off-ramp, never dreaming — never believing, if I could go back in time and tell him — that he’d someday run this race.
To my fellow runners, my brothers and sisters in technical fabric and Body Glide — go out strong, end stronger, and I’ll see you on the streets.
As is moderately well known, in addition to being a radio host, I am also a dedicated long distance runner. In fact, I will go so far as to say that I am the best long distance runner among those people who host hour long comedy shows produced or distributed by NPR, which basically means I can kick Ray Magliozzi’s ass in the 10K.
This Sunday, I’m returning to New York, just a little more than a week after our Carnegie Hall debut. Instead of a tux, I’ll be wearing shorts and singlet (it’s like a snuggie, but without arms) and running the 40th annual New York City Marathon, along with some really, really fast people from Kenya and about 40,000 other plodding, sprinting, dogged runners. Look for me somewhere in the middle, desperately dueling Anthony Edwards for the title of fastest bald semi-celebrity. (Okay, the “semi” really only applies to me. He’s Goose!)
More seriously: nothing helps a runner, especially an aging one like me, than support from the crowd. if you’d like to come out and cheer, first check this map of the course and find the point on the course most convenient to you. Note the mile marker nearest the spot, and then take a look at the last column of this chart, and read off the result for a 7:30 pace. Find the mileage, add that time to the 9:40 AM start, and that’s when I’ll hope to be running by. For example, I’ll hope to reach the Pulaski Bridge, at the halfway point, at 9:40 AM plus 1:37, or… thinking thinking thinking… 11:17 AM.
Cheers will be welcomed. And if you’re not sure it’s me… if it might be another short bald dogged guy who looks like he might plotz any moment… cheer anyway. Whoever we are, we can use it.
One of the things I collect, besides grievances against all those who have wronged me, is stories of what people do while they’re listening to the show: dish washing, house-cleaning, laundry. One guy told me our show helped him strip the paint from his boat one summer. Stephen Colbert told me he listens to our show while chopping vegetables for soup. (Though he told Ira Glass the same thing, so now I’ll never trust again.) Many people, knowing I’m a runner, tell me our show has gotten through some long lonely runs. My job: making America’s otherwise dreary tasks bearable. Hey, somebody’s got to do it.
Last night, after our taping, we were greeting the audience members and signing autographs, per usual, when I was approached by a lovely young woman, and her date, both seemingly in their mid-twenties. She was dressed, or rather decorated, in hipster/goth style, with black hair, piercings, and a fine collection of rings. In fact, I complimented her on her lovely Green Lantern power ring, and she told me she had it custom made at Tiffany’s. “Blue Box and everything,” she said.
So she was telling me about how much she likes the show, and that she often listens at work, when maybe she shouldn’t. I asked what she did for a living. (more…)
I got a credible report that a bike very much like mine — a black and yellow Felt F75 – was sold on Thursday 10/8 at the swap meet at 41st and Ashland in Chicago. If you know anything about it — the seller, or especially buyer — please let me know via email.
You can get to Carnegie Hall by bidding for two tickets to see Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me there on October 22.
I donated this pair of tickets from my personal reserve to Alternate Roots, to raise money for the care of Jo Carson, as described below. All the proceeds will go directly to Jo, via Alternate Roots (that’s not entirely clear from the auction site, but it’s true.)
The Carnegie Hall show sold out in an hour, and at present we have no plans to return to NYC. If you live in or near the city, want to see Wait Wait live, and want to help out a dear friend of mind, this is a great way to do both. Please bid here.
Every now and then, I get asked by other media to weigh in on various topics, and last week the BBC asked me to come on their show BBC Americana — a show broadcast in the UK, about the USA — and talk about Chicago’s Olympic bid. Happy to do so… it’s my beloved adopted city, and I always enjoy making fun of it in front of foreigners.
What I didn’t quite grasp — even though I was told beforehand — was that a) the other guest would be international grandmaster level pundit George Will, and that b) we’d be talking about other things. Like the Supreme Court. And the Second Amendment. Which is, as the cliche goes, a little out of my lane. I will bring myself to listen to it sometime soon, I’m sure… sometime real soon… but you can listen in here.
(Cross posted from the new “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” blog.)
I was waiting for someone to say it, and it ended up being commenter Lynn on the post below:
“It is just a thing, you know. It can be replaced.”
Which is not only true, but it’s what I say — I say it to my kids, when they lose or break or just want something they don’t have, it’s what I said to a friends when they lose something valuable but replaceable. It’s interesting to me that for at least 12 hours after my bike was stolen, I wasn’t able to say it to myself, with any conviction. But eventually, I thought about my friend Jo, who’s struggling with colon cancer, another friend who — and this is true — might lose her house and custody of her child because her boyfriend hit his head in a motorcycle accident and became evil – and my dear friend Adam Felber who lost his mother to cancer and spent the summer sorting out her affairs, and I remember a bit of wisdom from my grandmother, which I’ve repeated, again, to my children at the moments when Everything is So Awful: “May this be the worst thing that ever happens to you.” And here’s the sick thing: it probably is. Which means I’m — pace Lou Gehrig — the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
But because I am, if anything, perpetually self-involved, some musing on why I was so upset after the gap. In the meantime, thanks for the condolences, sympathy, and lectures about cable locks, and please give to Jo.
This summer, I decided to try my first triathlon, and entered, and completed, the Chicago Triathlon, international distance. It was a fun though sometimes frightening experience — which I’ll write about for Runner’s World in the coming year — but one of the best parts was buying a new bike, a 2007 Felt F75, my first real high quality racing bike.
It’s a great bike, nimble and light, and I did well in the race with it, and since then I’ve been getting out on the road with it whenever I can. Today, Monday, I rode it to work, thinking I’d stop by the bike shop on the way home and have it adjusted after its first month or so of use. I used a cable lock — because its lighter and easier to carry in my pack — and locked it to the bike racks outside the offices of WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, in a covered area patrolled by Navy Pier security that everyone at the office uses. I’ve locked my various bikes there for more than a decade, and have never had any problems, nor, to my knowledge, had anyone else.
Of course — I came out today, my bike shoes clattering, and spent a strange thirty seconds staring at the space where it was, denying to myself that I couldn’t see it. Then I found the cable lock, sliced through, on the ground with my helmet.
The bike was brand new, black and yellow, as you see, with Time road pedals and an underseat bag with tubes and inflater. Anybody see anybody riding it on the streets of Chicago, hit them with a rock, but try not to scratch the paint.
