Life has been less than kind of late.  It mandates stress reduction.  This takes the form of finding solo activities that will release endorphins to soothe the savaged beast.  That’s right.  It’s not a typo.  To soothe the savaged beast, because, as Norm on Cheers has said, “It’s a dog eat dog world out there, and I have milk bone underwear on.”

The stress and anxiety resulted in much needed weight loss. Kayaking, as regular readers know, has been a passionate pursuit. 

But it takes too long to get the endorphin hit.  It’s a slow acting delivery mechanism that can take upwards of half an hour to forty five minutes to kick in.  Today I needed the zero-to-sixty delivery mechanism.

Today I ran.

Running was once a Boomer fad.  As we aged, we have had to forego such punishing pursuits.  I first picked it up my senior year in high school on a dare.  A mediocre football player with no chance of starting my senior year, some friends sitting in the woods passing a bong back and forth suggested I try running and then burst out laughing.

Doing that to me is akin to waving a red flag at a bull.

So I picked up the sport.  Me and my 30” inseam, two pack-of-Newports-a-day lineman's body ran cross country.  I got busted before the New England Regionals by the coach smoking a cigarette in the bathroom.  I could never see the field after the first two minutes as gazelles leaped ahead of me. 

On the home course, however, I always made up ground like a rock crawling Jeep Wrangler in 4 wheel low, 2nd gear on a very long uphill  that went from about 2.3 miles until 2.5 miles into the course before a turn and a downhill sprint to the 2.65 finish line.  Best I ever did was 16 minutes and 25 seconds on that thing or about a 6 minute and 10 second mile.  I puked at the end, realizing I would never break that mark.  Eleven seconds away from breaking the six minute mile mark.  Fuck.

I gave it up for college, opting for rugby, beer drinking, and whatever sexual pursuits I could obtain in spite of myself.  In my early 30s I picked it up again working a 4 mile loop around my home that later became a sponsored road race track.  Best I ever did on that was 32 minutes flat.

But I had two things working against me.  I had a knee that I blew out in college that was operated on again in 1992, and I became obese as my metabolism slowed around the same time my alcohol intake really took off.  Shortly after the 1992 operation when I weighed in around 230 or 235, I simply had to give it up.  The pain was excruciating from a bone on bone spot I knew well based on my then toddlers’ fascination with the video showing them scraping away calcium deposits from it.  It would take a good 10 to 12 minutes before the brain would finally figure out I was not going to stop and ceased with the pain signals.

So I could not remember the last time I ran.  I remember the difficulty I had picking it up in the late 1980s.  I ran ever so slowly around a cemetery not sure how long I could last.  I picked it up then in small increments.  Taking weeks to build up to a mile and a half.

But I was huffing butts to the tune of two packs a day at that time, and I had not done a thing.  Now, I figured I had been Kayaking, chopping wood, and generally staying active while not smoking any cigarettes at all for over a year.  I figured I could take to the open road.

Where I am now I have a familiar route.  Exactly one mile to a turn that  leads to a dirt road loop that was once a harness racing training track of exactly a half a mile.  So you know the run out and back is two miles, plus a ½ mile extra for every lap.

The first time I did this in the early 1990s, I thought the track was a ¼ mile and damn near killed myself trying to pick up the pace, wondering why my time was so slow.

So that was my mindset.  The rest of this is a travelogue through my brain as I went out for a jog for the first time in at least 15 years.

I look for my jogging shoes.  They really are lawn mowing sneakers, but I still buy Gel Asics for pronaters just in case.   Well, it is "in case" today, damn it.

I do not own running gear anymore, but I do have what my kids call a “nipple shirt” that works.  I find an old pair of Columbia yuppie swim trunks to serve as jogging shorts and figure a trip to Wal*Mart is in the offing for something a little more appropriate.

I start looking for iPod songs.  I think of making a play list but am too wound up and have to get running.  I pick a Springsteen greatest hits album.  I fire it up and then I grab my ankle and have it touch my back.  I do it to the other side, and decide that is enough stretching, or I will pull something and not be able to run, thereby depressing myself further.

As I head out the door I laugh to myself that my stretching exercise sounds as though it was as rigorous as Zero Mostel’s vocal preparation before entering the stage to sing a musical number.  Allegedly he just muttered under his breath, “Me, my, moe” and walked on stage to belt it out. 

I figure if I am going to look like Zero Mostel, I might as well fucking train like him.

I am pleased with my gait out of the box.  I think to myself that I am fairly light and this is going to be ok.  I figure I can go and do one, maybe two race track laps for 2 ½ or 3 miles.

About a quarter mile into it I wonder why I cannot hear my footsteps for the purpose of checking my rhythm.  iPods were not around when last I jogged.  I used to have a Yellow Sony FM radio headset that made you look like Princess Leia and weighed about three pounds and was a pain in the ass to keep on your head once you sweat.

I can start to feel my knee shortly thereafter.  It is not, however, in the place I remember hurting so terribly much back before the turn of the century when last I did this.  I begin wondering what Rip Van Winkle might have felt like had he done this.

A quarter mile or so into this I start developing a pain on the left side of my chest.  My dad having died of a heart attack when he was 5 years younger than I am now always gives me a case of the yips over these things.  I monitor it closely while realizing I have yet to begin to sweat, so it is likely my body over heating a little bit.

By a half mile in, both sides of my chest ache, which gives me consolation.  I realize it is not heart related.  The pain appears to be emanating from where, in the chest pictures, you see the lung stems meeting.  Sounds to me like it is just my lungs’ way of saying to me, “are you fucking insane you old fat bastard?”

For the next half mile I devolve into gait that is likely a cross between Walter Brennan’s from the old TV show The Real McCoy’s and something a grade school kid might affect to play one of the drum and fife guys in a Yankee Doodle Revolutionary War marching band of the walking wounded.  I laugh to myself that I am one stupid bastard thinking this was a good idea.

I reach the mile mark and think maybe I will do one lap around the track.  When I get there, I laugh to myself in my head – the lungs cannot spare the oxygen – and think, “No fucking way, fatso.  Try to get home without stopping.”

The next half mile is somewhat of a blur.  I have my odd gait, and there’s not a lot of pain.  My lungs, however, feel as if I am some bloated Carp laying on a pier in South Florida somewhere gasping for my last breaths.  I remember this aspect and remember my breathing exercises that are a lot like the “Who, who, hee” things through which I tried coaching my wife lo those many years ago when spitting out our children.

I make the small hill that seems like Everest right before the last quarter mile.  I want to stop there and walk.  I do not let myself.  I gave up the track lap.  I can bring two miles home, damn it all to hell.

I make the last turn before a straightaway to my home.  In the old days I sprinted it to make sure I felt the burn before shutting down.  Now I am grunting and groaning like some dying old man shunted in the corner of a nursing home.  Children clear a path before me.  My sight declines.  While my eyes are open, it is getting black around the edges.

I push myself to the finish by gasping, “come on you fat fuck” over and over again in an effort to shame my legs into moving.

I then walk, hands on hips gasping for air.  I realize I didn’t focus on the music the way I do when Kayaking.  I had needed my A game, such as it was, to get through this.  I can feel the endorphins, though, and the sweat starts to leak from me.  My recovery rate is very, very short from this very short jaunt.

And I sit here, several hours later, and I cannot wait to go out there and push myself on to 2 ½ miles as soon as possible.

Chasing endorphins happens to be much, much easier than chasing love.  It's all in your control.