All posts by takingmulligans

Mulligan, Take Your Mark. Part I of many to follow…

August 9, 2013 takingmulligans Leave a comment

If you had another shot at something, what would it be?

Below is a piece of the first private blog post I did in preparation for The Mulligan Mile, prompted by my trip back to my high school track to run with the current team. My first time on that track in more than 30 years. What was I thinking???

Today, as the high school track team practiced, I asked the coach’s assistant, and self-proclaimed “Math Girl” to take my picture with my iPhone. And instead of a clueless but carefree teenager with the pleasures and pains of college and jobs and wife and kids ahead of him, she digitally captured a grey-haired, paunchy, weathered, ordinary off-the-shelf old guy. If we had met in the mall, she’d probably thought it more likely that I was an off-season Santa Claus than what I really felt like inside: a soul-searching runner toeing the line for a fresh start to a midlife that had suddenly gotten very complicated.

While the reasons behind my trip back in time may have been cloudy and complicated, I kept most of that to myself. My task here was simple. I was here to run like hell and see what happened. Cotton-free, orthotic-propelled and grateful for the chance to test myself against the same cinder track that had been the foundation for every racing step I’ve taken over the past 32 years. I was here to claim what was taken from me back then. I was here for a mulligan on a race that never happened.

Taking a mulligan on a race that never happened may sound like a quixotic quest. It’s all that and more– and I’m glad you are here to share your thoughts on what it means to live your own mulligans.

You may have read about The Mulligan Mile in Runners World. It’s my personal account of trying to recapture a little bit of the juice of my early years by training to see how fast I could go in the 2012 edition of the The Fifth Avenue Mile. It was both the hardest I’ve trained since high school and the most fun and rewarding. What I went through helped me focus on making every moment count– and I believe that made all the difference in the race and in my life.

If you had another shot at something, what would it be? What would it mean to your life today to pursue it?

Running On Emotion

Alone.

August 3, 2013 takingmulligans Leave a comment

Training for any kind of race is a lonely endeavor. Even when you surround yourself with other runners or have the encouraging support of a friend or the loyalty of a coach, at some point we all realize the sad truth: no one really gives a flying fig about our training except us. And every step we take is ours alone. It’s both scary and the entire point of running.

Here’s some thoughts I had last year during my training for The Fifth Avenue Mile, the first competitive mile I would run in over 30 years:

Being on my own is a scary thing to face every morning when I wake up. I start each morning with the same thoughts that hit me as I wake:

1. Where am I?

2. Am I alone?

3. What’s about to go wrong next?

Because of running, being alone is not something new for me, but it is something that is still taking getting used to. It’s of course, a perfect place for a runner to be. Alone is a place I’ve sought, possibly even what brought me to running in the first place. The lonely romantic struggle of the long distance runner. Alone against all odds, persevering against the body’s will, to endure nature’s elements and fight off gravity with every raised leg. There was a freedom in running away from the raised eyebrows of the townspeople when I was a teenager– why would a kid want to run by himself on the side of the road leading out of town, then just turn around and run back?

Now, it’s the liberty to run toward something unknown– a new, perhaps even better, life.

Taking Mulligans blue sky — Do you like to run alone?

Back then, I conformed to get good grades and positive attention on the outside, but inside I was happiest when I could be apart, be different. To be alone on the shoulder of that road from time-to-time. No running partners. No coach. No plan. No intervals. No watch. No GPS. No electrolytes or recovery bars. No wicking fabrics. For some years, not even running shoes, just sneaks. This was pre-iPod, pre-waffle shoe, pre-Pre.

Alone. The good kind of alone.

Do you like to run alone? Has that changed as you’ve gotten older?

Mulligan Moments

Teeing It Up

July 30, 2013 takingmulligans Leave a comment

Over the past two years or so, I’ve had the chance to take a closer look at life, love and how fast I was running. And I was startled at what I found. The faster I ran, the more my life slowed down– and the better it tasted.

Now I’ve never been one to spill the beans about what’s really cooking inside my kettle, no matter how much pressure was building. I just kept the lid on tight and carried on with a half-smile dotted by sighs and eye rolls at life’s frustrations. I’d open the lid to peek inside occasionally and stir the pot, then go back to work and leave it unattended. Which is fine for awhile as life simmers, but long term, the unexamined pot of chili is not worth eating.

Predictably, as my life became more complicated, and the heat got turned up, the beans boiled. I woke up to find a hot mess all over my kitchen. So I did what came naturally– went for a run and wrote about it.

The untidiness of my life became quite beautiful in its own way. The more I wrote and talked about what I was going through and the training I was doing, the more I learned, the better I felt, the better I trained, and the faster I ran.

taking mulligans journal — Have you noticed how things change when you start writing it down?

Writing helped me notice and remember the details of what was happening in my life– and became not just a healing force in my life but a way to connect to others who were experiencing their own ups and downs.

So I just kept writing and writing. In spiral notebooks, in fancy journals, in dime store tablets and legal pads — with old fashioned ink smeared dead trees.

I also started a secret blog, the legacy of which you are reading now. Here I kept my training history and observations as I prepared for a midlife lark: running as fast as I could in the 2012 Fifth Avenue Mile. The work from those secret blog entries became the foundation of a major feature article in Runners World in September 2013 titled “The Mulligan Mile” and gave me the courage to take parts of this secret blog public.

The reaction to the article — and the idea that we can all use some mulligans in our life — has also encouraged me to further develop the story into a book, which is currently being developed. The book is about how running, and a healthy dose of mulligans, can get you through almost anything in life.

In Taking Mulligans: The Blog, you can share thoughts and see if my observations and stories ring true to you. Together, we will build an understanding of what it means to run like there’s no tomorrow– and live today like there’s no yesterday.

Now we begin.