Keepin' it Real

On Sunday, I was at the second of my four free personal training sessions at the Y, and I made an offhand remark that, in hindsight, I think was kind of dickish. It wasn't really directed at anyone other than myself, but as I thought about it later, it was insulting to a lot of runners, including myself, and also completely dishonest.

My trainer asked how my run on Saturday had gone. I replied that it had been fine except that I was still feeling the effect of being sick, but that:

"I'm going to try for five miles this Saturday. Then I'll feel like a real runner again."

Bullshit.

The fall of 2006 is a long time ago, but not so long ago that I don't remember how cool I felt when I was doing the Couch to 5K plan and could first run five minutes without a walk break, then 10 minutes, then 15 etc. And my feeling of accomplishment at crossing the finish line of my first 5K in 2007 was probably equal to that at the end of the first marathon. I definitely felt like a real runner, whatever that even means.

It was a cool feeling the first time I ran 5 miles, and added new personal distance records after that, but I ran two full seasons of 5Ks before ever running, much less racing, any distance longer than 3.1 and I definitely thought of myself a real runner during those two years.

Sure, I'm frustrated right now that some pretty minor injuries have given me a pretty big setback. I'm looking forward to getting back to miles 5 and above. But there's no reason to be an elitist jerk about it.

I didn't mean any ill-intent by my remark and I don't think anyone was offended (and none of you would have known about it if I hadn't told you!), so I don't write this as an apology, but just because it made me think as I considered what I'd said.

So, I ask you, my readers, how far or how much did you have to run before you thought of yourself as a runner? In my case, I'd say it wasn't yet when I first started the Couch to 5K, when the one-minute intervals of running were really, really awful, but I would say it was at a point before I'd ever ran my first 5K (which was also the first time I'd run three miles).

There are probably people who would say there are right and wrong answers to these questions. Despite my stupid remark on Sunday, I'm not one of them. I think that if someone thinks of him/herself as a runner, they are one. There's no speed or mileage requirements for this club.

No Preference

This post has little direct connection whatsoever to the normal subject matter of this blog. I visited my alma mater, Elizabethtown College, on Saturday for its homecoming. Elizabethtown (Etown) has a timeless quality to it -- no matter how many new buildings the college puts up, there's an essential "Etowness" that never changes. Being back at Etown always makes me think how my life changed during the four mostly great years that I spent there, but those changes were really set in motion well before I moved into my dorm room on Founders B2.

When I think back on all the decisions I've made in my life, there's one in particular that I think set the stage for my life as I now know it. I chose where to go to college, and of course that was a necessary condition for everything that came after, but it was a subsequent choice -- and luck or the whim of a college administrator -- that cast me in my current role. I made that second choice with little more thought than I would consider the toss of a coin. Really, I chose to make no choice at all.
I picked a college with no idea of which major I would ultimately choose or any real vision for what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I chose Etown over two other colleges that were offering similar scholarship packages primarily because I liked Etown's campus the most. Great reason. My best friend chose one of the other two, and I think if he'd picked before me that I probably would have ended up there, too.

(The High Library. A beautiful place for research and napping.)

I wasn't looking forward to college much at all, since for the first time in years I wouldn't know anyone. Thus, I didn't have strong feelings when the Elizabethtown College Residence Life Office sent me a short questionnaire about room selection. Quiet study floor? Substance free? Male only? Co-ed? No preference?

Well, I didn't drink or use any illegal substances, and I was afraid of talking to girls, but I didn't really want to be on a quiet study floor, either, since I value stupid fun as much as anyone. My parents encouraged me to pick substance free, but I was afraid that might have too great an overlap with "quiet study". After seconds of consideration, I checked, "no preference" and sent the form back. I got placed in a non-substance free, non-quiet study, co-ed floor, the 2nd floor of B-Wing of Founders Hall, also known as Founders B2 or just "B2".

(Founders Hall. B-Wing is the farthest away, in the middle of the picture.)

I spent my first semester completely destroying my social life, and then spent the second semester repairing it, but that's a story for -- well, never. My point is that almost all of my current friends are college friends, and I met almost all of them during my three years on B2, or had them introduced to me by my B2 hallmates. One B2 friend introduced me to Chris, my future wife, and two others pressured me into asking her out when I was too cowardly or shy to take any initiative.

Maybe it was destiny or maybe it was just chance. That's way above my pay grade. Etown is not a big college, so there's a chance that I would have met those friends another way, but I suspect I would have gone through college with a mostly different set of friends and been none the wiser. Many of my B2 hallmates were communication majors, as Chris was. I was undeclared and then a psychology major, so with a different set of friends it's pretty likely that our paths would have never crossed.

If I hadn't been dating Chris, would I have taken my first job in Philadelphia, or would I have looked for a job closer to home? That first job, by the way, has directly led to the job I have today, 11 years later.

To a large degree, I am where I am today, and with who I am today in part because I checked "no preference." An insignificant-seeming choice that I made, combined with a room-assignment decision made by a college administrator, who had no real idea who I was nor who the freshmen being assigned to the hall were, impacted the rest of my life immeasurably. I think that's interesting, but I don't think this is unique. I'm sure anyone could point to to some simple, thoughtless decision they made or some random-seeming circumstance that went on to have a huge impact in their life, and I suspect most college grads could point to a very similar situation in their lives..

Nor do I mean to imply I didn't later have to (try to) make extremely well-thought-out decisions over the following years, since most of the time, of course, there is no "no preference" box, but that might be a blog post for another day.

To be continued...?

The Bad Guys Wear __ Hats

You've probably already heard about Bryan Stow, a 42 year old San Francisco Giants fan who was beaten within an inch of his life when he had the gall to wear a Giants jersey to the LA Dodgers' home opener.

The incident has justifiably garnered a great deal of media attention, but today I was directed (via my favorite Orioles blog and the blog of Jeff Pearlman, a writer at - among other places - SI) to a slightly different take on the incident by Pittsburgh area sports media personality John Steigerwald.

His article, "Know When You've Outgrown the Jersey", takes a look at some negative aspects of sports fan culture and also seems to place blame not only with these idiot Dodgers fans (who I strongly suspect represent only the tiniest minority of their fan base) but with Stow himself:

Maybe someone can ask Stow, if he ever comes out of his coma, why he thought it was a good idea to wear Giants' gear to a Dodgers' home opener when there was a history of out-of-control drunkenness and arrests at that event going back several years.

Not only does sound tasteless and unsympathetic, it appears to be a classic case of blaming the victim. Unfortunately, I think there's a shred of truth here. The person who wears an opposing team's jersey at many arenas faces increased risk of being the target of not only verbal harassment (both good-natured and not) but physical violence as well. However, it seems like Steigerwald’s missing the point that it shouldn’t be that way -- a fan who wears the opposing team's jersey shouldn't be risking life and limb -- as well as the important questions, such as “why is it that way?” and “how do we fix it?"

Steigerwald goes on to say that maybe we all need to grow up:

Remember when it was the kids who were wearing the team jerseys to games? It was a common sight to see an adult male coming through the turnstile dressed as a regular human being with a kid dressed in a "real" jersey holding his hand.

Cute.

Are the 42-year-olds who find it necessary to wear their replica jerseys to a road game, those kids who are now fathers who haven't grown up?

Are there really 40-something men who think that wearing the jersey makes them part of the team? It was cute when a 10-year-old kid got that feeling by showing up at Three Rivers Stadium in a Pirates jersey, but when did little boys stop growing out of that?

Again, I think he's focusing on the wrong thing. Is it dorky for adult fans to wear jerseys with the names of other men who are the same age or younger than them? Yeah, probably. (This is coming from a 34 year old who wears a DeSean Jackson jersey for every Eagles game and proudly sports a black-and-orange hat with a cartoon Oriole Bird on it.) But that's what he identifies as a contributing factor to the increasing culture of fan violence? I think there's some bigger at work.

I think that for a lot of fans (and again, I'll point the finger at myself here) sports have become more meaningful than they really should be, and fandom today for a lot of people seems to be just as much if not more about taunting opposing fans as it does cheering on your own team's successes.

To me, it appears that a lot of sports fans' senses of identity are too tied up in what color uniform they root for on the field. Hence, the guy in the Giants jersey is seen as "the enemy" and not just a guy who happens to root for the other team.

I've probably already gone much too far in playing amateur social psychologist here, but I wonder if people in general in Western society perceive their lives as being more disappointing or difficult than they did in previous generations. I absolutely don't think they are -- look at what the life of a serf in feudal Europe would have been like -- but it's so easy to turn on the TV and see someone who's got it better. Maybe greater disillusionment with country, work etc. have contributed to a lack of a sense of community or meaning that previous generations had, and sports has filled this void and/or became outlet for frustration that would have been expressed in different ways, both positive and negative, in previous generations.

Or, maybe sports fans in Imperial Rome were beating up guys in "Pompeii" togas in the parking lot after the big gladiator games, and there just wasn't media coverage of it.

So what does any of this have to with this blog?

This story jumped out at me because I'm definitely a person that takes his sports fandom too seriously. I'm never going to pick a fight with anyone (and if I did, I would lose), but I've been known to sulk my way through the week (or offseason) following an Eagles playoff loss. Likewise, I sometimes irrationally feel like the Orioles never-ending losing streak has come to reflect poorly on me. To a large degree, my sports fandom had become stressful and not fun or relaxing.

This is a big reason that I started running longer races --- I needed something that I could take pride in about myself that wasn't dependent on others. It was in the wake of an Eagles playoff loss in January 2009 that I first considered signing up for my first half marathon, and a great run the day after freezing my butt off at this past season's miserable playoff loss helped me bounce back.

I'm not cured, but I think it's helped. I still get too excited or negative during the game, but I think having an event of my own to compete in has helped me to obsess less once the game is over. I've also cut down a bit on constantly decking myself out in bird-themed gear because I think in my case that did contribute to my too closely identifying myself with these teams. Instead, I'd rather wear something I can take pride in not because someone won a championship in 1983 or (ouch) 1960, but because of something I accomplished.

For me, maybe it should be less of this:

(You do have to admit, though, that it's the coolest hat ever.)

And more of this:

(And yes, the Shamrock Marathon hat, on the left,
is really, really ugly. How am I supposed to wear it all the time
if it matches nothing?)

In general, though, I think people should go on wearing their jerseys, rooting for their teams, celebrating the wins, and being disappointed in the losses. But, if you're still feeling depressed three days after the game or if you're really feeling anger toward someone just for wearing a different jersey, maybe it might help you too to get out on the road.

You don't need to bask in the reflected glory of Donovan McNabb, Andre Iguodala, or Brian Roberts (sorry, guys). Get out there and be your own hero.