PR
Stands for “personal record” in running parlance. The reason I needed to get to sleep last night was that I had to get up at 5 AM to run the Banco Popular Chicago Half Marathon. I did well, with a tremendous assist from my running pal Perry Vietti, who would not let me quit and hauled me in right after him with a PR of 1:30:18. I’ve always wanted to run a half marathon in 1:30, and now I’ve done it. (I allow myself, at my age, to round down.) Yay for me.
Thinking about this pissant little personal milestone in light of DFW (see below) I come to this conclusion: one of the things DFW wrote about, pretty constantly, especially in his more informal commentary, was the experience of us all being alone in our heads, and desperately trying to break out of it. I remember reading one comment he made (wouldn’t even know where to begin looking for it) that the whole point of fiction, maybe writing in general, was to send a message from one isolated head to another, with the meaning: you are not as alone as it seems.
It is possible that he no longer could stand the isolation of living in his own capacious head.
At any rate, one of the many reasons I run is that it is the one time in my daily life that I get the hell out of my own busy, cramped, musty cranium. In fact, I find thinking to be absolutely detrimental to my running… on more than one occasion, while running, I find my mind wandering to my various neuroses, worries, ambitions, irritations… and the next thing I know, I’ve stopped running. So I stop thinking, and get going again. This is something I recommend for everyone. Feeling depressed? Go run away from yourself. Sometimes, they even give you a medal for it.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Congrats on the PR. Back when I ran a lot (9 miles a day) I really liked the half marathon distance. It wasn’t as painful as a 10K, or as debilitating as a full 26.2 mile marathon. It’s nice to be able to walk down a flight of stairs the day after a race.
I hate running when I can’t seem to empty the coconut. Which is why I need to wear my iPod. But there are times, like running in the rain, where the experience can be ethereal. Love those runs.
September 19th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Ditto on the congrats and ditto on the coconut emptying issues. I’m always tweaking my perfect running playlist.
In fact, I don’t really like to run, but it’s the closest thing to socially acceptable solo-interpretive-dance-as-workout that I know.
But I love having just run.
September 19th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
And Runner’s world fears your fate to crocodiles…do they know you have turned in this impressive PR?
September 25th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
This is totally fascinating to me, because when I run I find I’m totally inside my own head and, oddly, at peace with it. I think running, maybe any physical activity, helps me cut through the static and just think — uncluttered and focused thinking, which is a rarity. It’s the one time the I don’t feel like there’s a remote control constantly changing the channel in my head, so to speak. I think about whatever it is I want to think about, without interference, and that, to me, is heaven. I also listen to music when I run (if I may offer a suggestion, Piglet … Bruce Springsteen’s “Backstreets”; don’t know why, but that’s my favorite song to run to); but the music rarely interferes with thinking. Funny how the same therapy gives different, but I suspect equally therapeutic, results.