Tax law and training bras ...

My wife called him “your little running buddy” and we did go out jogging almost every morning the weather allowed. Now that he had talked me into training for a marathon, we became serious about it. It was in the fall of 1979 that we began our quest, so we would meet mornings way before sunrise and head off north from South Broadway. Sometimes we would drift over and make a circle into North Little Rock and sometimes we would turn west and head out Markham Street and back.

In addition to tacking on distance, I found that he had quietly increased the pace. He was just a tad shorter than I, and probably weighted less than 160 pounds. It was pure torture and I would complain if he got too aggressive. Saturdays and Sundays, we began to extend our routes, mostly pushing our distances to the ten-mile range. "Be a man," he would say when I whined, as if manhood were a choice.

Why I was doing this, I had no idea. I guess the most obvious plea would be insanity.

In inclement weather, we would meet at the reliable old Downtown YMCA. There, we carried out our daily mission on an indoor track that measured at 16 laps per mile. Mornings usually weren’t crowded, so it allowed for collegial conversation as we circled for what seemed like days. We talked of history, literature, politics, art, and sometimes tax law. Oh yes, tax law. That’s what he taught at the law school and he enjoyed pontificating about it. It eased the boredom of the incessant circulation, so I listened. I always felt they should have given me credit for taking his class had I entered law school. On practical matters involving litigation, he remained reticent, fearing, I think, that he might unknowingly give legal advice.

I’ll leave us there, spinning around that little track like specks on a phonograph record. These days we walk, my wife and I, around a similar track at a local gym. We manage a mile or two a day, which at our age might be considered respectable.

We don’t talk about history or literature now as we circle the track. I can’t keep up with her, so we each walk alone with our separate thoughts. I recently read somewhere that enjoying quiet time alone with those thoughts each day improves your memory. I hope so for our sakes, though I feel for the youth of today, whose greatest fear seems to be having a quiet, lonely moment, sans cell phone, forced upon them.

Oh well, it’s time to don my gym attire and head for a walk. Today I think I’ll try and see if I can remember anything about tax law while I stroll.

Nah. Who am I kidding? I'll probably see if I can remember anything about Betty Anne Bohanon, the only girl in Junior High who, they said, never bothered with a training bra. For the life of me, I can't recall why I ever found that to be interesting.

Now that I concentrate,
it's coming back to me.

Cold

Can weather conditions induce memories? Oh yes. The chilly weather of the past week incited a flood of remembrances of things past to course through my mind. None, however, topped my recalling of the winter of 1980. Here’s what happened.

I had gotten into a fitness program at the Downtown YMCA in Little Rock, AR in 1975. Excessive body fat and high blood pressure limited me to one waddle followed by one walk nine times around a 30-laps per mile indoor track. I followed the program, and by 1979 I was up to jogging several miles a day. Then, a new neighbor moved next door. As fate would have it, we hit it off and began running together.

That’s when it happened.

One morning, from out of the blue, he said, “The Arkansas Marathon in Booneville is March First, why don’t we train and run it?”

“Okay,” I said, thinking more about negotiation the coming hill than forming any soundly logical reply. But train we did, getting up to nearly ten miles a day as the day approached. Then we did a couple of 20-mile Sundays. Things seemed good.

The day before the race, a winter storm moved in and two of the TV stations predicted a blanket of snow and freezing temps overnight. The third station allowed a slight possibility of simply freezing weather. We decided to take I-40 to Little Rock and spend the night in Russellville, AR. That way, if the snow stayed away, we could cross the river and make Booneville by race time. Otherwise, we trusted the interstate to get us home. Okay. We kissed our wives goodbye. No, we didn’t. I made that part up. We actually tried one last time to convince them we weren’t totally crazy, but long-held beliefs aren’t easily displaced, particularly with counter-evidence staring them in the face.

We just left them shaking their heads.

As a precaution, we stopped at a big-box and purchased headgear, gloves, and pantyhose. Yes, pantyhose, not uncommon for runners in those more innocent times. He bought the regular kind. I bought “Big Momma” heavyweights. Later, in the motel, we tried them on. In the middle of that exercise, I suddenly imagined a police raid and statewide headlines announcing that two prominent Little Rock professionals (he was at least) had been apprehended in a central Arkansas motel up to some big-time mischief.

Well, to put a point on it, we made the race. The temperature was 15 degrees above zero and the wind was strong enough to shred the edges of flags along the route. By midway, when the wind was at our backs, I felt good. By this time, my friend had left me behind and I was in the company of another running pal, the late John Woodruff, then a reporter for the Arkansas Gazette. We laughed, joked, and observed that we had met the marathon standard that one should feel pretty strong at the ten-mile mark. We met the man who had led me into the fun already coming back and he looked good as well, except for a couple of runs in his pantyhose.

Then we started back. I can only describe that portion of the race as having an automatic cannon firing ice into you at each step. Runners with beards passed us with them totally encased in ice, looking more like Yeti than humans. Totally exhausted, I finally settled on running to one light pole and waddling to the next. I cursed my friend, the YMCA, Bill Rogers, the day I was born, and fate in general.

After a century or so, I heard the sound of a loud speaker. It came from the finish line in downtown Booneville. Suddenly, I was beautiful again. Pulling my face into a smile required the very last of my strength, but I, in my Big Mommas, crossed the finish line to the applause of the crowd of maybe 20 that were still there. My time? Four hours and six minutes. I still have the proof if anyone should disbelieve me.

I never ran another. There are some bucket list things that don’t bear repeating.

I've seen lots of down towns, but
not one ever looked better than this.