You know, blogging is a pretty interesting rhetorical exercise. Perhaps I’m overly self-conscious about all this; perhaps I analyze things a bit too much; perhaps normal people don’t use the word perhaps quite so much – but it’s been an interesting struggle to find an appropriate voice (or ethos) to suit the blogging environment. I have a feeling that most bloggers don’t pay much attention to this sort of thing – they just write, just say what they want to say, and the results are great. But I don’t feel like I have a singular voice or even a default voice – for me, tone is a conscious choice.
In fact, part of the reason I wanted to start blogging was to explore different writing voices and to find a more honest and less formal voice. My problem is that I spent well over a decade doing undergraduate and graduate degrees in English Lit. This is partly a blessing because I got a lot of practice writing and thinking and following clear lines of argument like highway lines in the night. But it was also partly a curse: much of the writing I did was rigid and formal. Over time, that structured formality became my voice. There have always been other voices in me waiting to speak (no, I don’t “hear voices”), but I never gave them a chance.
It seems to me, though, that the academic voice, while great for expository essays, doesn’t really fit with the ethos of the blogosphere – it’s as uncomfortable as showing up in a suit and tie to a surfer beach party: you can do it, and it’s okay, but you might be more comfortable in something a little less formal.
So each time I sit down to write a blog entry, I worry about voice. Part of the problem is that I don’t have a clear idea of audience – and if you don’t know who you’re writing to, then it’s difficult to settle into your writing self. Just as the tone you adopt when you talk to your friends is different from the tone you use with a stranger on the street, writing tone changes with audience. So who am I talking to in this blog? Is it friends and family, other runners, the general public? Each choice would make me write differently.
Part of me (the part that is sick of things like rhetorical theory) wants nothing to do with all of this analyzing – part of me just wants to write honestly and straightforwardly, without pretence, without scheming – to write long uninhibited honest sentences that unfold without hesitation across the empty potential of the screen like the sentences Kerouac wrote while criss-crossing the continent in the sad American night. But what’s so “honest” about that? Isn’t that just another writer’s mask? Mask after mask – is there anything but masks?
Wouldn’t it be crazy if qualities like “honesty” and “straightforwardness” and “candor” in writing were nothing more than rhetorical devices? Maybe there’s no essential self to find underneath all those masks, just various patterns of speech and behaviour. Hmmm. I’m not sure I want to think about that right now.
One of the things I love about some other running blogs is that they seem so unselfconscious. Bloggers will post the most mundane and banal things about their running without apology. And why not? After all, most of our lives are made up of the mundane and the everyday – if we can’t find meaning and value in those moments, then the bulk of our lives is just dead air.
It’s kind of like those French still-life paintings you see of bowls of fruit or a kitchen table strewn with crumbs and cheese and a cutting board, all lit with a faded afternoon light. At first, these paintings seem dull – where is the heroic action or the beautiful sweeping landscape or the sublime abstraction? But what they say to me is that the casual, the mundane, the trivial moments of life are infused with a quiet beauty if you take the time to look. Or even if the moments don’t hold any of their own beauty, they have the potential to be perceived as beautiful and meaningful in a subtle way.
So when I read that some runner in Minnesota had a pretty good long run on the weekend but her calves are a bit sore, I don’t click away from the page in disdain – instead, I find myself fascinated with the details. Part of the reason is that I too have had sore calves after certain long runs, so I can relate and sympathize. But that’s not the whole story. To me, that mundane blog detail is a little hint that someone out there is making choices about how best to live day-to-day in this bewildering world. Without all this philosophizing and analyzing and brooding, someone has gone out for a long run and now her calves are sore. It’s wonderful.
For me, though, it would be denying a big part of who I am to ignore all the crazy philosophizing (even if it makes people’s eyes roll). Maybe my writing is a bit stiff and formal and overly self-conscious, but why not? As long as it feels honest, then I’m okay with it. My voice may change over time as my ideas about audience and purpose change, but for now, I’ll just write what I feel like writing and try not to worry too much about it. (I’m lying, of course – I’ll always worry!)
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Lark Runners
When I meet people and they find out that I’m a runner, almost invariably they have a story about their sibling / friend / parent / relative / friend of friend or whoever who ran some race as a lark without training and in clown shoes and did incredibly well considering that they didn’t work at it. They tell this story with enthusiasm, focussing on what great athletes their sibling / friend / parent / relative / friend of friend must be in order to run and beat others who have trained so hard. The story sucks – and I always find my plastic smile faltering as they try to get me to validate what a wonderful accomplishment that lark of a run was. Sometimes they include an ode to how fast their sibling / friend / parent / relative / friend of friend would be if they ever deigned to try.
Sometimes I wish I weren’t so polite.
Yes, sure, it’s nice that someone ran a half or a full without the usual investment of training – and yes, it must take a certain level of athleticism to do that – but to me, it’s singularly unimpressive. To me, an athlete is someone who commits to what she's doing, someone who sets challenging goals and then works like stink to achieve them – no matter how fast or slow. Athletes take risks. Someone who tells everyone they haven’t trained a bit and are lacing up their shoes for a race risks virtually nothing. If they don’t finish – well, it’s because they didn’t train. If they finish – whooee what an accomplishment… and look at all those suckers who were slower than I was. And those who finished faster? Well, those losers spend so much time training, of course they were faster. If I trained…
It’s a whole dump truck loaded with garbage.
I know the people telling me these heroic stories are probably just trying to relate; they probably don’t mean to be insulting – but celebrating a half-assed performance is just not something I can stomach. Perhaps the half-assed runner does have potential, but potential don’t mean diddly. One of the beauties of running is working hard to discover just what your potential really is – simply talking about potential and feeling good about it without actually doing it is just… sad. Why is this something to celebrate with a heroic tale?
I like running stories where somebody’s sibling / friend / parent / relative / friend of friend worked for years to qualify for Boston and finally did – like my physiotherapist – not where someone qualified on a lark. Or like my sister-in-law’s sister who trained hard after having a baby with the goal of running a sub-1:40 half – and she did it. Or like a friend here in Halifax who trained hard but missed his marathon goal this weekend after hitting the wall. In these stories there is reward, but there is also risk. All of them run at different paces, but they are all athletes – all runners.
I think the test of a good running tale is what the tale implies about other runners. In the tale of the lark run, the implication is that other runners are chumps for taking running seriously. As a result, the story becomes one of those ego stuffers that puffs one person up by deflating others. But a good running tale, while it usually focuses on only one runner, takes the whole process of setting goals and working to achieve them seriously. This implies that all those others in the race ahead or behind are also engaged in a meaningful pursuit. The story is told with understanding and sympathy. Runners passed in the final kilometres are not perceived as chumps; rather, they’re perceived with a sympathetic “I’ve been there” grimace. A good running tale communicates a sense of camaraderie, a sense of community surrounding individual pursuits – from other runners to the volunteers who make the racing stories possible. A lark runner never even notices the volunteers.
I imagine there will be no end to the triumphant telling of lark runner heroics, and I will probably continue to bite my tongue and smile through each exuberantly told story, but I think I’m going to resolve not to celebrate the “accomplishment” with the person telling the tale – I’ll change the subject instead.
Secretly, though, I hope all those lark runners drop the lark and become runners. I hope they come to realize that running is much more than finishing a race. And if running is not for them, no problem – I just hope they gain more respect for the whole pursuit than their chroniclers seem to have.
Sometimes I wish I weren’t so polite.
Yes, sure, it’s nice that someone ran a half or a full without the usual investment of training – and yes, it must take a certain level of athleticism to do that – but to me, it’s singularly unimpressive. To me, an athlete is someone who commits to what she's doing, someone who sets challenging goals and then works like stink to achieve them – no matter how fast or slow. Athletes take risks. Someone who tells everyone they haven’t trained a bit and are lacing up their shoes for a race risks virtually nothing. If they don’t finish – well, it’s because they didn’t train. If they finish – whooee what an accomplishment… and look at all those suckers who were slower than I was. And those who finished faster? Well, those losers spend so much time training, of course they were faster. If I trained…
It’s a whole dump truck loaded with garbage.
I know the people telling me these heroic stories are probably just trying to relate; they probably don’t mean to be insulting – but celebrating a half-assed performance is just not something I can stomach. Perhaps the half-assed runner does have potential, but potential don’t mean diddly. One of the beauties of running is working hard to discover just what your potential really is – simply talking about potential and feeling good about it without actually doing it is just… sad. Why is this something to celebrate with a heroic tale?
I like running stories where somebody’s sibling / friend / parent / relative / friend of friend worked for years to qualify for Boston and finally did – like my physiotherapist – not where someone qualified on a lark. Or like my sister-in-law’s sister who trained hard after having a baby with the goal of running a sub-1:40 half – and she did it. Or like a friend here in Halifax who trained hard but missed his marathon goal this weekend after hitting the wall. In these stories there is reward, but there is also risk. All of them run at different paces, but they are all athletes – all runners.
I think the test of a good running tale is what the tale implies about other runners. In the tale of the lark run, the implication is that other runners are chumps for taking running seriously. As a result, the story becomes one of those ego stuffers that puffs one person up by deflating others. But a good running tale, while it usually focuses on only one runner, takes the whole process of setting goals and working to achieve them seriously. This implies that all those others in the race ahead or behind are also engaged in a meaningful pursuit. The story is told with understanding and sympathy. Runners passed in the final kilometres are not perceived as chumps; rather, they’re perceived with a sympathetic “I’ve been there” grimace. A good running tale communicates a sense of camaraderie, a sense of community surrounding individual pursuits – from other runners to the volunteers who make the racing stories possible. A lark runner never even notices the volunteers.
I imagine there will be no end to the triumphant telling of lark runner heroics, and I will probably continue to bite my tongue and smile through each exuberantly told story, but I think I’m going to resolve not to celebrate the “accomplishment” with the person telling the tale – I’ll change the subject instead.
Secretly, though, I hope all those lark runners drop the lark and become runners. I hope they come to realize that running is much more than finishing a race. And if running is not for them, no problem – I just hope they gain more respect for the whole pursuit than their chroniclers seem to have.
Monday, October 19, 2009
National 10k Championships
Denise Robson went to Toronto to compete as Nova Scotia’s female Timex champion – she came home as the third fastest female 10k runner in Canada. Not bad for a weekend trip to the zoo. In a road-searing time of 34:58, Denise not only bagged a personal best but also the bronze medal in Athletics Canada’s National 10k Championship, run this year as part of the 2009 Oasis Zoo Run.
But she wasn’t the only Nova Scotian to dazzle. While Denise was the top female Masters runner, Linda Macdonald, who the Sunday before the Zoo Run captured the Valley Harvest Marathon title, was the third-fastest female Masters runner in Canada with a time of 39:08.
On the men’s side, Rami Bardeesy may not have netted a PB on the very challenging course, but he was still fast enough to be the top Masters runner in the country with a time of 33:20. The top male Nova Scotian, Toby Hennigar, finished a respectable 26th overall in a race that featured the deepest field of world-class 10k runners and Olympians this country has seen in a long time. His 32:33 was good enough to place him third in his age category (20-24).
But the notable performances don’t stop there. Robert Jewer, who finished just behind Hennigar, placed 5th in his age category (30-34) with a 32:44. Dave Nevitt, who cruised across the line in 39:56, finished 2nd in his age category (50-54). And in the 55-59 age category, Robin Meister came a convincing 2nd overall with a very fast 39:34.
On the women’s side, Nova Scotians 50 and over owned the podium. Susan MacDonald’s 43:24 was fastest among 50-54 year olds while Connie Meister’s 51:06 was enough to hold onto first place for 55-59 year olds. Some younger women Bluenosers also did the province proud: Caroline McInnes finished 4th among 25-29 year olds with a 39:08, while Rayleen Hill burned up the course in 38:55 and earned a 3rd place finish in her age category (35-39).
Although not every Nova Scotian on the Timex team was forced to sneak new hardware through the airport metal detectors, they all represented the province well. Nick McBride just missed his goal for the race, but he still ran a strong 35:10 on a very technical and challenging course. Laura Kenney also competed well and crossed the line in 53:57.
All in all, each runner was worthy of all the Loonies RNS members spent on Timex tickets… and then some. Team Nova Scotia signalled to the rest of Canada (perhaps like a gloomy lighthouse on a rocky coast) that we are a province to be reckoned with on the national running scene.
But she wasn’t the only Nova Scotian to dazzle. While Denise was the top female Masters runner, Linda Macdonald, who the Sunday before the Zoo Run captured the Valley Harvest Marathon title, was the third-fastest female Masters runner in Canada with a time of 39:08.
On the men’s side, Rami Bardeesy may not have netted a PB on the very challenging course, but he was still fast enough to be the top Masters runner in the country with a time of 33:20. The top male Nova Scotian, Toby Hennigar, finished a respectable 26th overall in a race that featured the deepest field of world-class 10k runners and Olympians this country has seen in a long time. His 32:33 was good enough to place him third in his age category (20-24).
But the notable performances don’t stop there. Robert Jewer, who finished just behind Hennigar, placed 5th in his age category (30-34) with a 32:44. Dave Nevitt, who cruised across the line in 39:56, finished 2nd in his age category (50-54). And in the 55-59 age category, Robin Meister came a convincing 2nd overall with a very fast 39:34.
On the women’s side, Nova Scotians 50 and over owned the podium. Susan MacDonald’s 43:24 was fastest among 50-54 year olds while Connie Meister’s 51:06 was enough to hold onto first place for 55-59 year olds. Some younger women Bluenosers also did the province proud: Caroline McInnes finished 4th among 25-29 year olds with a 39:08, while Rayleen Hill burned up the course in 38:55 and earned a 3rd place finish in her age category (35-39).
Although not every Nova Scotian on the Timex team was forced to sneak new hardware through the airport metal detectors, they all represented the province well. Nick McBride just missed his goal for the race, but he still ran a strong 35:10 on a very technical and challenging course. Laura Kenney also competed well and crossed the line in 53:57.
All in all, each runner was worthy of all the Loonies RNS members spent on Timex tickets… and then some. Team Nova Scotia signalled to the rest of Canada (perhaps like a gloomy lighthouse on a rocky coast) that we are a province to be reckoned with on the national running scene.
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