Clutter

“T don’t think I’ll be able to run without my iPod.” Elizabeth Yoke, quoted in the Cincinnati Enquirer, May 3, 2008, the day before the Flying Pig Marathon.

Is it just me, or am I missing something? Oh, yeah—that would be some electronic contrivance either attached to me or to which I’m attached.

When you look around and see the number of people with cell phones protruding from their ears, iPod blossoms or whatever they are dripping wires out of ear canals, or glazed-over eyes locked on a miniature keypad, it seems as though the film /nvasion of the Body Snatchers has come to pass. We are surrounded by pod people. Be afraid. Be very afraid. We are being overtaken by a whole subrace of people mindlessly sucking cyber honey from the electronic tit.

In California, it is currently illegal to drive a car or ride a bike while headphones caress your ears. As of July it willalso be illegal to talk ona cell phone while driving, which can’t be any too soon. Just yesterday, on an eight-mile drive into town, I was twice nearly run into by idiots talking (and gesticulating) on cell phones while driving . . . er… while behind the wheel of a car. They obviously weren’t driving or they

wouldn’t have pulled out in front of me as though I wasn’t there, moving along at 55 miles per hour, while they lugubriously wandered out into my path and then proceeded to hold up a line of eight cars by traveling at 38 mph while their hands frantically went at 835 mph during an argument with someone on the other end of the phone.

We are, literally, living amid an army of pod people, people so attuned to whatever dribble is coming out of their electronic gadgets that they are completely oblivious of the world around them.

One study after another has been published detailing the dangers of being distracted while driving. If you pay attention while you are driving, it is easy to do your own survey of the causes of accidents, and most of them involve inattention to the road, whether because someone is talking on a cell phone, applying lipstick, eating lunch, reading a newspaper, or having a heated argument with a passenger instead of looking out the windshield of the car. Or, more common these days, reaching around behind themselves to punch some buttons on the in-van DVD player so the kiddos will remain narcotized. (Whatever happened to having the kids count cows or out-ofstate license plates?)

SLOW COLLISIONS

It is similar with people who are running and either listening to music or talking on a cell phone. Fortunately, they are going at a much slower speed, so when they cut people off, there aren’t loud metallic noises of bumpers coming together violently. But they are certainly in a fog as to what is going on around them, and apparently that’s just how they like it.

The controversy over the USATF ruling to outlaw headphones from races it sanctions is not going to be over anytime soon. The USATF ruling is sensible, but enforcing it is nearly impossible. Runners who slavishly cling to their headphones are of the same breed as dog owners who bring their mutts to school campuses where it is illegal to have dogs but who become irate when asked to remove their dogs because, of course, the rules don’t apply to them.

At the Napa Valley Marathon, our first run-in with the downside of headphones came nearly a decade ago. For the first half of the marathon, runners have the entire road to themselves. But from the halfway point, they need to stay on the right (southbound) side of the road while the left (northbound) side is used to allow emergency vehicles to get through and also to allow workers to get to their jobs. Not long after the halfway point, a runner equipped with headphones blithely ran down the center line of the highway while a California Highway Patrol cruiser sat on his butt, the CHP officer speaking to him

over the loudspeaker housed behind the grill of the patrol car. The runner, his headphones turned up to “11,” was totally ignorant of the presence of the CHP officer. The officer then had to drive into oncoming traffic and pull up in front of the runner, get out of the car, and stop him to remind him that he was supposed to stay on the right side of the road. Needless to say, the incident was one of the postrace topics the CHP wanted to discuss with us.

And it hasn’t gotten any better since then.

This dependency on artificial stimulation is getting scary. It is as though people so indoctrinated are unable, under pain of death, to deal with silence or with the audio flutters of nature or— God forbid!—with their own thoughts … if any are being generated.

Speaking of the pod people, it has become even more bizarre to see people walking around with those phone jack things attached (permanently?) to their ears. It looks like a cover from a dreadful 1950s pulp science fiction magazine. And it’s not as if they are discussing anything profound or interesting, as all of us who are fortunate enough to sit near them at the boarding area of an airport will be happy to confirm.

Apparently pod people cannot run unless powered by audio currents, and the world cannot turn properly on its axis unless a certain percentage of walking-around people are plugged in and talking about something .. . or nothing.

How did we get along a decade ago? How did anything get done? How did

two people meet at a mutually agreeable spot without homing in on each other through cell phone connections like two heat-seeking missiles? “I’m standing in front of the left-hand pillar in front of Crate & Barrel. Yeah, with the cell phone up to my ear. Yeah, yeah … Where are you?”

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Whatever happened to: “I’ll meet you in the lobby of the Intercontinental at precisely 7:15. I’ll be wearing a doubleworsted suit with a white carnation in the lapel, and I’ll be carrying a copy of the International Herald Tribune under my left armpit.” Now those were the days.

Maybe part of the problem is that some hospitals have begun to use Bose headphones so patients can hear soothing music while they are undergoing an operation or while they are in labor. Perhaps the resulting infant has already been attuned to living life with an ear bud inserted. Or perhaps it is the fault of that goofy movement that urged mothers to play Mozart for the in vitro kid by pressing little speakers up against the swollen abdomen.

Let’s face it—unless there is a mass Luddite uprising, as there was against the Industrial Revolution, gadgets will continue to proliferate and to become smaller and smaller until people will seem to be walking around talking to themselves as though they were housed in the local loony bin. The phones will be too small to detect, as will the ear budettes.

We do have to hand it to race director Les Smith and the Portland Marathon, though. Les has taken the tack that while other marathons ban the headphones, his race welcomes them … in fact, it encourages them. If you can’t run without your iPod, come to Portland.

Of course, there are some streets in the Portland Marathon course that runners have to cross, and God help us if one of the runners gets nipped by a car, especially one who is a lawyer. But wait, not to worry: Les Smith is a lawyer, too.

Eo * *

Modest proposal number 1: Because many new runners get into the sport and immediately want to run a marathon (especially one of the big-name marathons) without going through the logical shorter-distance stages to get there, and because few of them read how-to books about running but instead get much of their information from the Internet, and because many of them drop out of the other end of the marathon experience after it didn’t turn out to be the blissful proposition that they thought it would be, why not require a test before they can sign up for a marathon? It would work the same way you would administer a driver’s test.

For instance, if they wanted to get into the ING New York City Marathon, they would go online at the race’s Web site, and before they could get through to the sign-up page, they would have to complete a test. The questions would not have to be especially difficult. The

first question would be “How long is a marathon?” Laugh if you want; we get questions about the length of a marathon all the time. We assume everyone knows how long a marathon is, and we are wrong about that. Another question would concern hyponatremia. If enough people knew what it was and how it is instigated in the exercising body, fewer people would end up suffering from it.

NOW YOU CAN SIGN UP

Once the runners answered all the questions correctly, they could proceed to the sign-up page. Those who failed to answer 90 percent of the questions correctly could be shunted over to a “lesson” page where the correct answers would be explained. It would help eliminate first-time marathoners trying to line up in the front row of a major race because “I paid as much to get into this race as those skinny guys did, so I should be able to line up where I want.”

Modest proposal number 2: In order to get into a major race that fills up quickly, a potential entrant would have to volunteer to work at least one other race that the sponsoring club puts on. It would help clubs that aren’t getting a lot of volunteers from the younger ranks, and it would educate the runner as to what goes on behind the scenes to make a race happen.

Some races already require volunteer work. Western States 100 requires entrants to spend a certain amount of time working on the course to keep it

in good shape. Hood-to-Coast teams in the Portland, Oregon, area are required to provide three volunteers for race weekend, so it’s not really something new. But it is something that could greatly benefit both the sponsoring club and the would-be marathoner.

RUNNING BOOKS, WE GOT ’EM!

Amass of fresh-off-the-presses running books has arrived just in time to take them out to the tree swing and read them while sipping some beer . . . er . .. lemonade. This time we managed to get through five of ’em.

Rachel Toor has written extensively for this magazine, and she is also a senior writer for Running Times. Her stories are always insightful and well written, and she has unique “takes” on the sport. She’s one of those runners we often talk about who didn’t know she had a talent for running until she tried it, which she did after her high school and college careers were well behind her. She took up the sport, found she had some talent for it, and besides wallowing in the joys it brings to her personally, she also gives of herself both with the Clif Bar Pacing Teams and asa volunteer pacer for folks running ultras such as the Western States 100.

Rachel has put together 26.2 short pieces about running into a book, Personal Record: A Love Affair With Running (University of Nebraska Press, 176 pages, $24.95 clothbound), which will be released October 8. Some of the pieces have appeared (in different form)

in Running Times and in Marathon & Beyond. Some of the pieces are seeing daylight for the first time. The pieces are fashioned together ina logical, pleasant sequence so that the reader can grow in the sport as Rachel does. Each piece gives a reader new insight into some profound or mundane aspect of the sport and lifestyle. Every once in a while there is an “aha!” moment of insight that comes when a good writer takes a seemingly simple topic between the teeth and shakes it as a dog does a bone. There are quite a few “aha!” moments here. And there are some very moving moments, and we don’t mean where you put one foot in front of another. One of our favorite Rachel stories is of her pacing Ralph at Western States; even on rereading, it is still moving. In her new book, the chapter is titled simply “The Western State.”

We are currently witnessing an onslaught of running books, some good, some dull, and some surprising. Rachel’s is both good and surprising. It makes a good read for hard-core runners who enjoy sharing the running experience, but it is well suited to give to a nonrunner who is always asking you, “What do you get out of running? I just don’t understand.” Rachel will help bridge the understanding gap.

ON SEVEN CONTINENTS

Running Shoes Are Cheaper Than Insulin: Marathon Adventures on All Seven Continents (280 pages, $19.95 trade paperback) by Anthony “Tony” R. Reed, CPA, is sort of a bound scrapbook

of Tony’s own personal grail: to be the first African American runner to run a marathon on all seven continents. The book takes you on that quest as Tony runs marathons in North America (Cowtown, Fort Worth), Europe (Denmark’s Tailwinds), Oceania (Australia’s Gold Coast Marathon), Asia (Great Wall), Antarctica (Antarctica Marathon), South America (Argentina’s Fin del Mundo Marathon), and Africa (Kenya’s Safaricom Lewa Marathon).

The title of the book comes from the fact that as a preteen, Tony was diagnosed with a prediabetic condition so he began playing sports, headed off insulin dependence, and hasn’t stopped since. We know some diabetics who run ultras, and exercise is certainly an excellent way of preventing diabetes from getting worse—especially from getting worse when there is also excessive body weight involved.

Tony’s book is pedestrian in that it is a step-by-step journal of each of his seven marathons toward spanning the continents. There aren’t a lot of subtleties in the narration and no profound themes: “Buenos Aires, Argentina— February 20: I’m writing this while watching The Simpsons in Spanish . . . They’re dumb in any language.” Tony is moved by seeing so many black runners in the marathon he runs in Kenya: “Midway up a long curving [of] the hill, my eyes began to tear up. As I looked in front and behind me, I saw a long stream of Black runners. In 25 years of running 86 marathons and 150 races, I had never seen this many Blacks in a distance race. Unforgettable.” True

enough. There have been very few African Americans running marathons, and fewer still who ran them well. The legendary Ted Corbitt (the father of American ultrarunning, a cofounder of the RRCA, and a 1952 Olympic marathoner) comes to mind, as well as Herm Atkins (who since 1979 has held the record for African American marathoners with a 2:11:52).

Tony Reed has attempted to inspire more African Americans to run marathons as a cofounder of the National Black Marathoners’ Association. The group designates a specific marathon each year where members can congregate and offer support. Some African American marathoners (such as Lancelot A. Smith, Attp://harlemrunner.blogspot.com) are critical of Tony Reed’s efforts, saying the NBMA has too much self-promotion and pays too little attention to the history of African American long-distance runners such as Bunion Derby runners Toby Joseph Cotton Jr., Samuel L. Robinson, and Eddie “The Sheik” Gardner, as well as former college president and marathoner Dolores Cross, and of course, Corbitt. The chief benefit of Lancelot Smith’s Web site is that it gives valuable information about other African American long-distance runners. Tony Reed’s organization promotes everyday African Americans running marathons or planning to do so.

ACROSS THE ISLAND

In the wake of a charity run, a pair of English recreational runners decides

to run across England from St. Bees Head in the west to Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire in the east, roughly 180 miles, which they want to do in seven days. They manage to talk several friends into crewing for them (one on a bike and two others in achase car), and they’re off. They then decided to write a book about the lark: Life on the Run: Coast to Coast (117 pages, Arima Publishing, UK, $16.95) by Matt Beardshall. As with any such adventure run, there are unforeseen obstacles along the way and a lot of bonding among the five friends. The book is a pleasant little read, primarily focused on their step-by-step progress. We were enjoying the book well enough until we hit page 68 and learned that Matt had signed up to be coached by our very own Mike “Mad Dog” Schreiber, who taught him things such as this: “”,. that ultrarunning had nothing to do with sanity and everything to do with carrying on regardless.” And this: “He claimed that for ultrarunning, the brain was the most important organ in the body.” Since Mad Dog always comes through, you can imagine that the boys were successful on their little trek. If you would like to visit their Web site, it is www.RespectTheStupidity.com. Naturally. And, of course, they are now cogitating on what running adventure to cook up next. And we’re sure Mad Dog will be right there egging them on. Drew Williams, who wrote our “Most Unforgettable” this issue, has just come out with a book that, in light of the increasing worldwide food crisis, seems quite timely. Eat Healthy …