Flashes of Panic

I’ve alluded before to my spot in a sixteen-writer rotation contributing “Bell Lap” columns to the Runner’s World Daily News. Some of the contributers are big wheels in the sport (race directors of the NYC Marathon and the 1996 Olympic marathon, the IAAF’s press secretary) and others are professional writers with newsletters, books, and senior writer contracts. And there’s Don Kardong, who is all those things.

Then there’s me.

Yesterday, one of the book authors, Chris Lear, delivered one of those passages that makes me wonder why I’m still in the rotation:

Like most of us, [Tim Broe’s mother had] become accustomed to the sappy profiles that dominate our Olympic coverage. You know, the ones that begin, “Ever since she recovered from the agony of teething, Suzy Q. has been in training for this moment. She burst forth from her altitude-bubble a week ago, and her spirulina-wheat grass diet has her mineral levels perfectly optimized for this very minute…”

And then she thought of Tim, whose idea of cross-training during his convalescence consisted of golf, fishing, bowling, and plenty of twelve-ounce curls, whose weight in January coincided with his bowling average (about two bills), and whose idea of altitude training consisted of sleeping on the top bunk.

Update: Oh, hey, I’ve got a picture of me with Tim. It’s in the extended entry.

Now playing: Almost Grown from The Fine Art Of Self Destruction by Jesse Malin