Flashes of Panic

The coach we’ve been running for on Tuesdays has a sufficiently long history in the sport that he has a lot of stories. He seldom remembers the names to go with them, but A and I are pretty good (perhaps better than most) at filling them in.

The problem is that once he’s sidetracked on a story, the digression can really set back the workout. The stories are almost recursive, since he follows a number of sub-stories within whichever story he’s telling; last night, for example, to tell a story about Joe Kleinerman playing a prank on him, we heard about his history with the Boston Marathon, how he lost his “card” to compete as an amateur athlete (ironically, for being paid as a coach,) some details about the AAU and the 1936 Olympic, and a more contemporary agent and his family. It wound up taking half an hour to get from “Joe Kleinerman got me good” to “…cup of coffee!”

As we finally started our warmup, we reflected that one of his saving graces was that no matter how far he digressed, he always managed to get back to where he started.

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