MacKenzie's Laws

(subtitle:) "Stronger as you go along"
(Warning: Inspirational anecdote ahead, reader discretion advised)

I'm jogging up the bike trail at the end of a long workday, the weather is balmy, and it feels good just to be outside and moving. My usual slow pace is relatively pain-free, and after a warmup mile I actually feel something positive happening in my skinny old bow-legs. The muscles above the knee are more resilient than yesterday, and there's more spring in each stride than there was last week. Running three days in a row, even if it's snail-like ten-minute miles, seems to make a difference.

I pick up the pace, slow it down again in order to make it home, and let the subjective sensation, not the clock, determine my pace. They used to call that a fartlek workout (after some innovative German coach?) when you gradually speed up and slow down whenever the spirit moves you. So I make the turn at Maxtown Road and head south feeling noticeably stronger in mile 3 than mile 2, stronger today than Saturday, thus proving Coach Cercone right.

Leonard Cercone (pronounced Sir Coney) was the track coach at Birmingham Groves high school, an old-school athlete who believed in training hard all the time, winning all your intervals, never letting up. I'll save his opinions about spoiled Birmingham cake-eaters for another entry. I was a sophomore, a new kid at the school, hadn't learned how to train, and hadn't discovered my forte in track, so I was "coachable" (raw, clueless, undisciplined). Lacking the speed to run sprints, I ran a time-trial with the half-milers one day and started passing people on the second lap, prompting Coach Cercone to yell out, "Dunc, you're stronger as you go along." He was hard-core, but he knew the value of positive reinforcement.

I didn't become a great or even good half-miler, and I even skipped my junior year of track to distract myself with other things - girls, basketball, working at a movie theater, sportswriting, growing into my body. Being a late-bloomer by nature, though, I heeded Cercone's dictum and remembered it years later when learning to cross-country ski with the natives in the Upper Peninsula, trying out tai chi in Chicago, training for a marathon in Columbus.

Which brings me to my running partner on many a Sunday morning and his researched and tested rules of engagement - corollaries, in a way, to Cercone's dictum - that increase the probability of actually getting stronger as you go along. To wit:

MacKenzie's First Law - Run against the wind going out and with the wind coming back. Avoid the hubris of enjoying the ease of the first half of an out-and-back, only to be humiliated on the return trip.

MacKenzie's Second Law - Never run the same workout two days in a row. Increase or decrease your mileage, drop down or pick up the pace, change from a flat course to hills, switch from roads to the track. Just change something so you don't get stale, and you'll adapt daily to different conditions.

MacKenzie's Third Law - Make an attempt to look good. Wear shorts that fit and colors that don't clash. Leave the headphones at home. Consider a hat. When meeting a runner of the opposite sex, check your form: head up, shoulders down, arms relaxed, knees raised, breathing steady, look but don't ogle. Enjoy the scenery; be a part of it.

MacKenzie's Fourth Law - Identify a rabbit. When meeting a runner of the same sex (competitor) size up your rival and maintain your self-respect. If running in the same direction, this becomes a test. If they pass you, you have failed as a human being, and you can only redeem yourself by staying close enough to let their faster pace pull your sorry butt along, then pass the unwitting rival when they least expect it, but refrain from laughing maniacally as you do so. That would be bad form, and payback is hell (see First Law).