Glenn Kubish

I really should have bought the photo. But I was a little embarrassed. Which is all the more reason why I should have bought the photo. Somehow we want to preserve our image only if it matches the innerinaccurate image we have of ourselves. Otherwise it's get rid of that photo! or, as in this case, I'm not going to spend money on that photo! It showed me running along Cannery Row in last year's Big Sur Half Marathon. If there is a pic of a more perfect heel strike, I have not seen it. Heel on ground, toe angled up, aarrghh. Of course, the photo, which I didn't order online, is the epitome of frozen ugliness only if you accept the argument contained in the popular Nature of Things documentary, The Perfect Runner . In that doc, narratorrrunneranthropologist Niobe Thompson introduces us to Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman, whose thesis is that we have been coaxed and persuaded and marketed out of our nature of being barefoot runners. Thompson shoes the differ...

River Valley,  June 13 If you look closely down the path in this photo, you will see the runner that  I would like to be but I am not. Way in the distance, that little speck? That's the woman who caught me, passed me and then left me to consider the meaning of it all. I run in part to substitute the pain of running for the pain of not running, having come to the conclusion that there is no equation free of pain. Either I sit at work and sit doing my school work and sit in front of the TV and sit in the car and develop the hip and back and knee pain that turns good moods to bad, or I run on the treadmill and run on the jogging paths and take the stairs and develop the hip and back and knee pain that feels better. But I also run because thoughts drop in when I am in motion. There is probably some ancient basis for this. I remember from somewhere that Aristotle was known as a peripatetic lecturer, because he walked or moved around as he spoke. It's an attractive lesson, ...

One of the most interesting aspects of writing a communication plan is imagining the answer to the question, what does success look like? It's a question good enough to help frame all sorts of projects and efforts in real life. Including the Big Sur half marathon in Monterey in November. Somewhere along the way, Shelagh and I have somehow made that 13-mile run a possibility. I have never run a half marathon. I have run a half half marathon twice. Once, really. The first time, I finished, but came away with a sore left knee. What I remember most keenly from that race is the message I sent to my legs with the finish line in view. "Okay, let's kick it up a gear and sprint to the finish line," I said. "Forget you," my legs said. It was bewildering. I ordered my legs to move faster, and they simply rebelled. I could not run faster. The second time I ran that distance, I couldn't finish. The pain in my knee forced me to stop. By the time I walked the ...

For a long time now, I have found the riddle of internal communication at least as intriguing as how and why and what happens when we communicate with each other. It's a different game for a lot of reasons, and none more compelling than the possibility that the divisions (the military language creeps in, almost unnoticed) within us, are just that, and that they do not agree amongst themselves which should be in charge. It's a drama that I am again watching, taking part in, analyzing as I try to get in shape to run a half marathon with Shelagh in November in Monterey. It's a nice view. But it has become complicated. My spirit and emotion ally to compel me to train as hard as I can. Not overtrain, says my reason. So, I go slow, building up over the last five months to get to the point I am now. Sore. The interior dialogue is quite amazing. I can actually imagine myself in November running sore, finishing in three hours, or not finishing at all and looking back t...

There is an old saying that you can't walk before running with pain. Maybe it's not an old saying. Okay, maybe it's not a saying, at all. But, it's the truth. Today was a remarkable day. I took my sore left knee and my bruised spirit to an Edmonton physiotherapist called Robert Syndenham on a recommendation from Shelagh. I have had pain and doubt since running in a 5k race on April 29. The course had a long, slow hill, but nothing that should have crushed me. But with a couple of hundred meters to go, that gnawing pain showed up on the outside of my knee. I ran longer with the pain than I should have, and have had trouble since that moment running more than 3 minutes without pain. Syndenham conducted a few tests that left me dismayed. I couldn't resist the simplest of pressure applied to my left hand, I couldn't hold myself up on my left side. My left big toe collapsed when he pushed it. Gotta say, it was as humiliating as it was educational. This was t...

Part of the challenge of effective communication is in deciding the status of the voices in the conversation. And I'm talking only about communication with myself! Now that I can actually run for more than 40 minutes at a time, it's a bit of a lark to note how quickly into a run the voice sharing some version of "I am tired," or  "I am sore," or "I haven't felt that pain in my foot before," or "Maybe, let's just walk today" makes itself heard.  Sometimes it's about 17 seconds in, sometimes the voice morphs its message and haunts me for up to 10 minutes.  What is that voice? Where does the laziness come from and how did it develop its rhetorical skills? Given that we agree that keeping running is a worthwhile goal, how should that voice counselling the alternative be dealt with? Persuaded? Ignored? Crushed?  When I do push through and quiet that voice, what happened to it? Was it convinced or shamed or did it simply...