50-mile reboot
Coming back to Substack after such a long hiatus feels a bit like the sheepish return to a long-neglected diary (only perhaps even more embarrassing, since others can read what I’m writing).
My excuses for the radio silence are many: farm projects… a new full-time job… plus the everyday demands of raising three young kids. But I’ve come to realize that much like with prayer, when my writing habit is strong, everything else tends to fall into place. Writing is thinking. And a daily writing routine is like sharpening the axe so you can cut the tree down faster.
How much time should we spend sharpening compared with actually swinging the axe? I don’t have the magic ratio, but I’m sure that the optimal sharpening time is greater than zero.
My personal writing rut has also led me to reflect on the nature of momentum, and how having too many simultaneous projects can feel productive while in fact distancing you from the goals you set out to achieve in the first place. I justify my scattered focus with elaborate mental maps, convincing myself that the side quests are essential to the main quest. But most of the really big rocks are still there – the same writing projects I’d meant to move months or even years ago remain unbudged. I've tinkered with outlines and drafted chapters I'm slightly ashamed of, but I'm no closer to finishing them.
Part of the problem, I suspect, is a deeper discomfort with the subject, or my stance on it. My concept and rough draft manuscript for a 50-mile march training manual (working title: The JFK50), for example, stalled out around the same time that I fell off the bandwagon of my own training protocol. Not only did I stop running, I cancelled the march due to extreme heat. On one level, this was prudent and practical. I was unlikely to make it 25 miles in 95 degree heat, let alone 50. But since then I’ve remained hampered by the non-stop summer heat of Bangor, California, along with a series of minor injuries (more excuses, I know).
Suffice it to say, my mood hasn't matched the often lofty tone I employ when writing about subjects like the JFK 50 Miler – the Presidential Fitness Challenge par excellence, on which our nation's vitality supposedly depends! (See? there I go again with the loftiness.)
This tone is at odds with my actual experience of half-starts, hobbled attempts, and limping across the finish line (last year, literally).
My working draft of the introduction mixed the historical backdrop of the Cold War and Kennedy administration with the stories of early marchers who kickstarted the nation-wide craze.
Upon rereading it, two things stood out to me.
First, it felt odd to be writing about historical events as if I had witnessed or understood them. I’m not a historian, and information about the 50-mile march is surprisingly scant. Much of what I wrote was conjecture, using too broad of strokes to argue for a return to American Optimism.
But second, the remedy for both the narrative flaws and my discomfort with my tone was staring me in the face. The real lesson from this understudied chapter of American history has less to do with Cold War politics or Presidential directives and more to do with the positive potential of social contagion. For a brief period, marching 50 miles in one go wasn’t considered abnormal or extreme. It was noble, respectable, and even hip.
In this drama, several supporting roles beneath JFK deserve highlighting in the revised final draft. There’s RJK, of course, who very publicly completed the challenge (in Oxford shoes, in the middle of Boston winter).
But there’s also Lt. Col. James W. Tuma, the 48-year-old marine, who read the initial Associated Press article about the marching order and “decided within minutes to start a 50-mile hike through the Sonoran Desert.” The most detailed source on the events, authored by an apparently pseudonymous “Davy Crockett” on Ultrarunninghistory.com, reports that “Tuma used a 5-m.p.h. run/walk approach he called the “Apache Shuffle” for the first half and later settled into pace of about 4 m.p.h.” Now there’s an idea!
And then there’s the 16-year-old Jim Troppman – student body president at Redwood High (my alma mater) in Larkspur, who organized the Great Marin County Hike. This was the first large group hike of its kind, which spawned countless knock-offs around the country and then around the world.
Some might look back and label this an instance of “mass formation psychosis” – a term popularized by Dr. Robert Malone during the COVID-19 pandemic to describe the contagious hysteria around masks, etc… but I see it as the positive, inverse version: A collective enthusiasm and espirit de corps that builds up rather than tearing down, and that promotes healthy muscular bonding rather than divisive suspicion and social distancing.
Is it possible for such a revival to take place in America in 2024?
Probably not. But my overly lofty alter ego still thinks it’s worth a shot. I remain determined to finish the manuscript, while also training for this year’s belated march (details to come) on October 23-24.
I find myself hesitating to overcommit, but this time around I’m setting more realistic goals for myself – starting with a weekly post, and a maximally efficient training regime that fits in with rather than subtracts from my existing obligations.
A vigorous life is always the best training for a 50-mile march! And a 50-mile march, the best training for a vigorous life.
Today was Day 1. My phone tells me I hit 10k steps (but who’s counting?).
Time to sharpen the axe and start swinging.