A first blog post should be celebrated, much like the first step of a race. So as I type away, I am also guzzling champagne whilst wearing a party hat!
Ok, I'm actually drinking a Coke Zero, and there is no party hat....although I have excellent fluffy hair at the moment from doing laundry all afternoon. While laundering socks today I spent copious amounts of time trying to decide what content my first post should have. I decided to copy Charles Foster Kane, he ran a race too, and to publish my Declaration of Principles:
Running Arts' Declaration of Principles
1. I shall exert my mind here on the page as I exert my lungs on the road.
2. I shall endeavor to be entertaining, and realistic, when discussing non-professional running.
3. I shall invent the phrase "non-professional running" in order to describe all of us that are middle-aged and occasionally pull off a 10 min/mile pace.
4. I shall never NEVER promote a product that I do not believe in just to get free stuff! If they let me try it out, they get brutal honestly if their product pinches my toes, or makes my tongue feel fuzzy for 20 minutes!
5. I shall dedicate myself to faithfully documenting the trials and tribulations of this runner as he spends this year preparing for the 2014 TCS New York Marathon, and fundraising a frighteningly huge, need to change my running shorts, amount of money for The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research!
When I first started working for a large entertainment company in Orlando, I went through the company's traditional orientation. It was sweet and pretty and full of warm-fuzzys. I then had to go to a class on how to handle fires, and being screamed at, and what to do if a lion escaped; the instructor used his own phrase to describe this change in direction, he said it was going from pixie-dust to sawdust. I liked that brutal honesty, and so I am stealing it here to explain the niche I want to fill in the running community. As runners, we need some sawdust on occasion to know it's ok to hurt, it's ok to doubt, it's ok to not have the newest shoes, and it's even ok when someone who is 30 years older runs past you.
Just remember, there is no better feeling in the world than running past an exhausted teenager at a water stop!
Read well! Run Well! and Live!
