How to take a day off without kidding yourself
Also, some preparedness tips for bozo-dense paths you didn't hear from me
First, a couple of housekeeping notes:
I have unlocked the post below, meaning that non-subscribers can now read past the paywall line. If I choose to write subs-only posts or split posts into “private” and “public” parts as I did this one, this two-day-or-so delay is likely to be my standing policy. In this case, I mostly wanted to see if I could do this without screwing it up, and created a plausible reason for trying.
Also, a spate of people have signed up for the newsletter lately, and when that happens I like to remind people that they can elect to receive posts only in certain categories. Some people are here only for the running content, while others focus solely on the culture-wars posts.
It’s been edging toward shirtless running weather here in Boulder, as it should be doing exactly 40 degrees north of the equator on the cusp of May. The skies have also delivered snow within recent days, as they usually do a few times in April and at least once in May. The Colorado High-School Track and Field Championships, which start on the third Thursday in May outside Denver, have been interrupted by snowstorms in two of the past five springs (2018 and last year).
Rosie likes being outside for longer periods when the weather is warm—say, 60 degrees American—and sunny, even though her exercise tolerance should be lower in such conditions. Since most humans also prefer to use paths and trails in this kind of weather, and I myself prefer uncrowded romps, my preferences and Rosie’s clash on really pleasant days. But hers always win out.
On one nice day last week, Rosie and I did a lollygagging 20-minute jog, drove five minutes to a different haunt, did another very slow 20 minutes, and headed home. It was time well spent, but less exercise for me than a fast 40-minute walk up a modest grade would have been. So I decided to head out that night and get in an honest, if still easy, run.
Less than two minutes in, I wasn’t feeling it. My headlamp seemed to be flinging light every which way even though I was barely shuffling. I had no specific reason for wanting to pack it in, but the wind had picked up since sunset—as it reliably does here, almost always fluting out of the west-northwest—and this was just going to be a trudge.
“If I feel this shitty in a half hour,” I told myself, “I’m packing it in and finding a way to live with that.”
Around five thousand desultory running strides later, although I might have been moving a little faster, my trial had run its course and I felt like ass warmed over. No special reason; it was just one of those nights when, had I done a standard run at 7:30 or 8:00 pace, I could have lasted a while, but a single mile in six minutes would have proven embarrassingly taxing.
So, true to my word, I packed it in—I was just looping through my neighborhood anyway—right at thirty minutes and accepted the “loss.” Sometimes your mind tells you when it’s time to rest even when your body is willing to cooperate, however clumsily, with your compulsions. And I have no problem admitting that, despite not having covid or long monkeypox or tinnitus or scabies or any of that shit, or even a sore hamstring, I sat on my ass and ate from a jar of peanut butter well into the night.
Despite this semi-programmed lapse in activity, I was a little tired the next morning, when I got the bright idea to start a run from a combined dog park-bike park in the northeast part of town, nestled between the county jail and a large, radon-heavy mound of dirt called the Valmont Butte. South of that is the Xcel Energy power plant’s smokestacks rising elegantly above everything in eastern Boulder, a feature that will never go away now that Boulder and Xcel have been locking horns in court for years over the city’s incompetent and grifty push for municipalization (i.e., creating and maintaining its own power grid). If Xcel could be bothered and had the permits, it would extend those stacks a hundred feet higher into the sky like a symbolic middle finger to the area’s decision-making apparatus.
The morning was again sunny, and the Wonderland Creek Path was crowded. Rosie led me there through the disc-gold course, which is basically a loose cluster of 24-year-olds playing frisbee in a fogbank of potsmoke (bank of potfog?) heavy enough to make a jogger or even a top U.S. sprinter swoon.
This is a windy path, and I saw some teenagers doing some things I hadn’t seen before. One kid was having a video chat while riding his bike, holding his phone out like a movie screen with one hand and steering with the other. He was doing at least 15 miles an hour, some proud mother’s knight in shining acne. This is just a dumb thing to do.
I also saw something I’m observing with increasing frequency, and that’s birthing people rolling birthed people along in strollers while focusing all of their attention on their phones. I’ve mentioned the issue of people standing paths and staring down at their phones while their dogs stand on their other side of the path so the leash blocks the whole thing. It seems worse to me that people can stand there with a stroller paying no attention to its contents. I could swipe one of these babies with stunning ease if I wanted to.
Granted, I could overpower close to 100 percent of mothers and skedaddle off with their babies even if they were all prepared to fight me off, but with so many of them absorbed in their mobile devices, I could be 50 meters up the road before the mom even comprehended what had happened and would have a very hard time even identifying, never mind battling, the kidnapper.
I continue to see more motorized devices on the path, because the number and range of calorie-sparing conveyances is also increasing. And, as I’m sure is universal, the wrong kinds of people are using them. It’s depressing to see 19-year-olds who are not only already fat but also already dialed into a lifestyle ensured of keeping them that way. Scooters, e-skateboards, e-bikes, and these fucking things that are basically billiard balls with a short axle leaving little pegs for footholds; all are surely fun, but when their owners are inattentive, all are in the realm of things that any sane and capable observer would feel compelled to eliminate by force.
I’ve decided I may start running with a kayak paddle for self-defense and occasional unprovoked-but-justifiable offensive maneuvers. This would be purely in the interest of containing misinformation and ensuring America’s national security, so I don’t expect anyone to contest the ideas I’ve cooked up around this.
A kayak paddle—in this case one made of foam, perhaps by Nerf, so as to not actually hurt anyone that badly—can be used as a self-defense weapon in three basic ways: As a joust, as a literal paddle, and as a double knife-edge.
If you happen upon two path users who see you coming but insist on taking up 80 percent of the width of the path anyway, you can take them both out by holding the paddle in front of you like the handle of a shopping cart1 and running between them and letting the paddle portions do their work. And depending on the perceived degree of the offense, you can choose to either “slap” both people or basically cut them, the difference being ninety degrees of paddle-handle rotation. You might want to avoid catching anyone right in the throat, unless you think you have the resources to disappear for a little while without anyone asking too many rude questions, like John Fetterman.
When choosing instead to use the paddle as a lance to pole-axe people who seem like they could pose a threat, especially in low light, you can deliver a mighty poke to the forehead or jab them in the sternum, the latter likely to leading to commotio cordis and sudden cardiac death if the person attacking you is unvaccinated. So be careful how you respond to inconsiderate people, whatever dark thoughts they’re probably harboring about you.
You can also just use a shopping cart as your primary self-defense equipment, with a kayak handle, a dog, or both riding in the basket.