I do most of my running in Forest Park, which is great since it
happens also to be one of my favorite places in St. Louis. It is a
wonderful place to run: beautiful, well-maintained, and over 50%
larger than Central Park in NYC.

Another nice thing about it is that there's a locker room in the
basement of the Forest Park Visitor's Center, where I rent a locker
and change. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I always see the same group of
retired guys who run together. I say "hello" and "have a good one" to
them, and vice versa, but we never talked more than that, until today,
when two of them asked me my name and introduced themselves as Wylie
and Frank.

In the course of chatting about the weather--cold and windy--and where
they ran and where I ran, Frank told me that he and his friends had
been out running for about an hour and 20 minutes and that they'd
covered about 7 miles. That's pretty remarkable since Frank looks to
be in his late 60's or possibly early 70's.

I asked Frank how often they run, and he said four times a week, on
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.

I asked him how long they'd be running in Forest Park, and he told me
that some of them had been running together for *thirty* years.

Thirty years! I find that amazing.

Also, Frank was wearing a shirt from the 2009 St. Louis Half-Marathon
(the first race I ever ran, as it happens) as he told me this.

I sincerely hope that, 30 years from now, I will be running 7 miles, 4
times a week, and racing half-marathons.

So the next time someone tells me that all that running is going to
ruin my knees and give me arthritis, I may admit that it's a
possibility but I will also think of Frank and Wylie and say, "I'll
take my chances."

In my two years of running, however, I have experienced lots of suspense, in several forms.

With every run, there is the suspense of finding out how your body will respond when you force it to move fast: Will your legs feel heavy or light? Will your lungs burn or will you breath easy? Will your heart behave itself or will it threaten to explode? If you start off feeling good, will the feeling last? If you start off in pain, will it ever subside? Will you feel like quitting halfway through or never stopping?

Then, there is the minor suspense of finding out whether the little decisions you made before you even started to run were the right ones: Will I be too hot in what I'm wearing? Or too cold? Should I have brought water, or did I bring enough? Or should I have brought Gatorade instead? What about gel? And so on.

These types of suspense are heightened to a fever pitch on race day, which is, of course, when the long-term suspense that has been building over weeks and weeks of training reaches its peak: Did I train too hard or not hard enough? Can I finish? Can I PR? Can I BQ?

The run, of course, will not keep you in suspense. The run will answer all your questions. You may not like the answers you get, but the suspense will be over, at least, for a little while.

Sometimes, after the run, there comes a different kind of suspense, along the lines of: Will that little twinge in my calf (or foot or ankle or knee) disappear by morning? If it doesn't, you will ask: Can I run on it or should I rest? Is that pain just normal soreness or an injury?

Then, of course, when you do run--even though you're not absolutely sure it's a good idea--you feel fine ... until the run is over. The pain, which had faded almost (but not) completely, is back and worse than before, and the suspense builds anew: Will I be OK tomorrow? Or did I just set myself back another day, another week?

This is also the time of year when you may wake up with a lump in your throat, a clogged or dripping nose, or a sensation of thickness in your lungs, and you find yourself in yet more suspense: Should I take it easy or keep running? Are my symptoms above the neck, or below it, or both? What if they are smack dab in the middle of my neck? Can I run then? Will a run make me worse or better?

These are the types of suspense that have been most on my mind lately. I tweaked my left calf while running intervals last Thursday, re-tweaked it with a premature run on Monday, and then--just as my calf began to feel better--succumbed to a virus that gave me a sore throat on Tuesday, pink eye on Wednesday, and a full-blown chest cold on Thanksgiving.

The suspense I'm in now is the worst kind and can be summed up in one question:

When can I run again?

The Running Life is the new book from Donald at Running and Rambling. Enter the contest at: http://strengthrunning.com/2010/11/running-safety-book-giveaway/

(download)

Click here to download:

sunday-dinner-lasagne-bolognese-roasted-rapini-hjcxmqmCqcFqzhaygylB.zip (5.96 MB)

I used Bionaturae organic whole wheat lasagne, which tasted fantastic, indistinguishable from semolina pasta.

The recipe was featured yesterday on the How to Cook Everything app. If you buy only one app for your iPhone, buy HTCE. It is awesome: http://howtocookeverythingapp.com/

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(download)

Click here to download:

best-burger-in-st-louis-BisxcngjfDxnpEpjkJhv.zip (2.43 MB)

Ground brisket and short ribs, portabella mushroom, gruyere, and a fried egg on top, plus housemade fries, pickle, ketchup, mustard, and aioli!

A thing of beauty, both to look at and eat.

http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Robies-Buttermilk-Flapjacks

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I also boiled up some kale and dressed with olive oil, some rendered guanciale fat, some extra crispy cubes of guanciale from the carbonara, and white wine vinegar. I forgot to take pictures, but it was not what I could call a beautiful meal, so no big loss. Sent from my iPhone