A Fundamental Truth

Yesterday, my great friend Mike Frazier married Annie Parker.  Their wedding was held in a renovated barn out at Mike's uncle's farm near Harrisonburg, Virginia.  Out in the Shenandoah Valley with the moist, gray clouds capping the mountains, fields of blue-green hay stretching out from the barn, Annie arrived in a horse-drawn carriage looking positively stunning in her white wedding gown.  Honestly, I was all but moved to tears by the sheer beauty of the moment.  I was a groomsman in the wedding party and so standing up front I was able to see the moving expressions of joy on the many people's faces in attendance as Annie gracefully came down the aisle upon departing the carriage.  What a captivating moment, one etched indelibly in my mind never to be forgotten.  Congratulations, you two!            

Waiting for the start ... T-minus-20 minutes to marriage.  

I have always felt so comfortable in Harrisonburg, or elsewhere, hanging out with various members of the Frazier family, be it Mike and Annie, Dave and Erin, Robert and Lisa and their daughter Claire, and as of late, Robert Sr., Bibb, and Cy.  As time has gone by and I've been able to build unique shared histories with each and every one of them (and their families), my life has been greatly enriched.  All day Friday and Saturday, I was just so genuinely impressed with the sincere admiration and respect I observed not only among the family members, but also among the Frazier clan and their many friends that were participating in the grand affair.

Once again, one of the greatest lessons I have learned in my life was reinforced the past couple of days.  I say this so much to myself or to others as I consider it to be one of the most important fundamental truths I have ever learned in my life.  Here it is:

The amount of happiness in your life is strongly associated with 

the quality of the company that you keep.

People like the Fraziers are "accelerators" in your life.  They push you forward, make you feel good about yourself, make you better with hardly any effort, almost by accident, because they are unceasingly wrapping their arms around the world pushing humanity forward.  They listen to what you have to say, ask questions, share in your pleasure and feel your pain, they open their hearts, minds, and souls to you, and when trouble comes, they have your back without stepping over the line from evaluation to judgment.  If you are so lucky as to have several people like this in your life, those possessing great quality and values, then consider yourself really blessed.  

To this end, one wall of my living room is covered with canvas pictures I have taken the past several years from various trips with many friends.  I call it my "Happiness Wall".  Front and center is the picture that started it, a picture Mike gave to me of him and I standing on top of Pico de Orizaba, the tallest mountain in Mexico.  When the day has been rough and I am feeling down, and life has thrown things at me over which I have no control, I will often sit on the couch and look at the pictures on the wall and realize how luck I am to have had these experiences.  Best of all, and most importantly, I am filled with gratitude to have had the pleasure of sharing so many of these experiences with people like Mike.  The light always turns back the darkness.  Always.       

Living big ... myself, Mike, and Annie's scarf.

The Past and the Future

" ... and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us ..." -- Hebrews 12:1 ESV

I had a chance to take a drive a few days ago to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.  It seems like many years ago, forever ago, that I went to school there to get my BS in Zoology.  Pulling into town on a gorgeous Friday afternoon brought up many feelings for me.  I am not the type of person that hangs onto the past and engages in lots of reminiscing but this rare day was different, and was haunting.  My mind is wired in such a way as to remember lots of color and detail, sometimes to the point where I can literally lose myself and am mentally taxed.

The sun was out, redbud and dogwood were in full-bloom, as I strolled across the college green, with brick pathways weaving their way through the tall sycamores.  It was chilly, but pleasant outside, and students were playing hacky sack, or reading and chatting stretched out on the grass.

After dinner uptown, I walked by the entrance to the college green where I remember getting dropped off as an 18-year-old kid, along the roadside, by my parents, scared to absolute death about what the future held in store for me.  Everything was as it was before, a snapshot frozen in time.

One of my favorite places of solitude when I went to Ohio University was on the side of Memorial Auditorium.  There were bronze plaques all along the wall of a portico corresponding to visits from famous people of the times.  My favorite was a quote from Carl Sandburg that rings true to my heart to this very day.  It was true then, and it is true now.  Somewhere in a box in my storage unit is a picture of me alongside the plaque from long ago, with my spiked hair, thick glasses, with a grin of innocence.      

In the evening, I walked by the dorm I lived in and stood outside looking up at the window of my former room.  Several students from the dorm walked up to me, asked me if I was lost, and after I responded "no", we had a fantastic conversation.  Listening, I embraced their hopes, their dreams, their energy, unjaded and undeterred by the hard knocks of life.  Looking up at the window, they asked what I was thinking.  I responded, "There is where I studied and toiled over textbooks, spent time with my girlfriend, learned to play guitar, drank too much on occasion, and quite simply ... grew up."    

The real object of the trip was not the past, but a reforging, a look ahead to the future and new adventures.  I had come to do a sprint triathlon after a chance meeting with a young lady in a restaurant alerted me to the event.  What a homecoming for me!  And I do best when I have goals in my life, and am training for "something", either goals or just life in general.  My friend Sarah, seasoned triathlete, skillfully dialed me up a short training plan in the space of two months, reflecting the fact that my hip simply can't stand the rigors of lots of running.  I bought a new, spiffy road bike.  I enrolled in USA Triathlon in order to sign up for the race.  I learned about "brick" workouts, triathlon shorts and shirts, and did mock transition drills on Sarah's back porch.  Quietly, I followed the plan and felt like I was in fairly decent shape to be able to finish my first triathlon.

The swim was in the Ohio University Aquatic Center and was a serpentine 500 meter course.  At the end of each 50 meter length, one had to tuck under the lane line in order to get into the other lane to swim the other way.  It wasn't long into the swim at all before things became quite congested.  I never lost my cool with all the elbows and kicks I received but just kept slowly plowing forward.  There was a couple hundred yards of running to get into the transition area.  I felt for my first time, I did a decent job getting out of there and mounting my bike.

Once on the bike, there was a hilly 25 kilometer out-and-back course awaiting me.  Fortunately, my training had incorporated lots of cycling on those sweet West Virginia hills so I was more than ready!  While for others, my speed would have hardly raised an eyebrow, and I still am learning how to "climb" hills, I pedaled as hard and as fast, sometimes dangerously fast, as I could down the long descents, passing many people in the process.  Here, I felt I made up lots of time.

Next, my legs were wobbly as I dismounted the bike and prepared for the 5 kilometer run through the dorms and along the Hocking River.  The first mile was rough but I soon hit a nice pace and settled in.  The sun was shining and the temperature had noticeably increased after a chilly morning.  Life was good and I felt good :-)  The last mile I was able to pick it up and again passed many people as I hit the tape with a 2nd place age-group finish.  This was a lot of fun for me and I have no intention of getting all serious into the sport of triathlon; that is, I intend to keep it fun.  Hence, I have no plan for the immediate future other than to kick back, relax, and enjoy the moment ...  


          

  

A Letter to the NRA

National Rifle Association
11250 Waples Mill Road
Fairfax, VA 22030

To whom it may concern:


My name is Philip Turk and my membership number is ###.  I have a regular annual membership slated to expire 1/31/2015.  Effective immediately, I ask that you cancel my membership and remove my name from your rolls and any mailing lists.

Yesterday, I was profoundly disturbed to see efforts to pass common-sense gun control legislation scuttled despite an overwhelming majority of American citizens being in favor of it.  Let's not beat around the bush.  We know why this happened.  It happened because of your lobbying efforts and pandering to the fears of your constituents.  My mailbox is routinely stuffed with letters from you that have little to do with truth and higher morality, and have much more to do with requests for money and your own special blend of yellow journalism.

I can no longer live in a culture prefaced on violence and a thirst for guns and there comes a point in one's life where you have to search your soul, toughen up, and take a stand.  While it may very well be cliched, Eldridge Cleaver had it right when he said you're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.  By contributing annual dues to the National Rifle Association, I have made the determination, after what happened yesterday, that I am part of the problem and I do not wish for this to be my shining contribution to the planet in my brief stay here.  Furthermore, I am going to encourage others to think about their values and beliefs in order to make their own determination if belonging to your organization does no harm unto others.

Undoubtedly you will dismiss this letter and it will be attributed to the rantings of a liberal academician.  Let me say in closing that my family has a long tradition in the military with my father, uncles, and distant relatives having served during several major wars in the past two centuries; go to Arlington Cemetery and see for yourself.  Furthermore, I have done a large amount of hunting in my life from Alaska to Pennsylvania and many states in between; my fall Arizona elk tag is in the mail as I write this.  My decision to end my membership with the National Rifle Association is my own and has been well thought out.


-- Phil

A Whole New World

I slowly swam a mile up at a pool in Pittsburgh recently.  One piddly mile that any youngster could do earning a Boy Scout badge. 

Myself and Field Marshall Sarah Quesen :)

I was never taught as a kid to swim.  There is a distant childhood memory of my sister jokingly pulling me into a Holiday Inn swimming pool when I was 4 or 5 and my Dad racing over to pull me out.  And maybe that is how the die was cast ... my petrifying fear of the water.  From this point forward, I always found an excuse to avoid water of any sort; I simply had no inclination to jump that chasm of fear and learn to swim.  Why would I ever need to?

Fast forward, way forward to 12/31/1999.  Out on a distant stretch of the East Gallatin River in southwestern Montana, my dear friend Ross Bricklemyer and I were floating along in a canoe and ended up capsizing it in an accident that literally almost cost me my life had Ross not been there to yank me out of the icy waters.  Truly.  But ... that is a story I will reserve for the next post or two.

After that accident, I tried to confront my now-monumental fear of water by tackling my fear directly.  In 2002, I embarked on quite a long solo canoe trip across the breadth of Quetico Provincial Park in northern Ontario.  This strategy simply didn't work.  While it would have hardly mattered if I knew how to swim, what with the freezing water temperature at that time of the year and the certain quick hypothermia had I tipped over the canoe, I was so worried about drowning in any of the numerous lakes I crossed every day, that the trip was much less the mental release than I planned it to be.  After this odyssey, I had pretty much given up any hope of swimming.

As has been chronicled at length in this blog, in 2010, I blew out my ACL in an ultra.  After the surgery, my friend Sarah Quesen urged me to consider taking swimming lessons to stay fit and in shape while I rehabbed the knee.  As a competitive runner, there were not many other exercise options for the following months of recovery.  At first, I was dead-set against the idea because of my stormy past relationship with the water but as I thought about it more, the idea had merit and so I agreed.  Sarah was able to locate a swimming coach Beth Byron willing to teach me from below ground zero and I will never forget the first day Beth and I met that spring at the WVU Student Rec Center.  We spent an hour that day in the kid's pool learning to put my head underwater and even that was considered a sweeping victory!  Here is a typical post from that time period; too funny!  

Swimming lessons went by for weeks, and then months.  Several things come to my mind.  I have never tried to learn something so difficult, ever.   Progress was painfully, imperceptibly slow.  I discovered swimming has less to do with fitness and much more to do with technique.  As I have previously recounted, I quit it one hundred mornings at least, filling the natatorium air with F-bombs and storming into the showers in a huff.  One unpleasant morning, I swam to the side of the pool and told Beth I was very discouraged and it was a wonder she didn't fire me.  I'll never forget her saying, "I wouldn't fire you, Phil.  You would fire yourself."

Getting ready for my first "swim meet" ever!

In any event, suffice it to say there was something inside of me (stubbornness?) that kept me moving forward and, to my credit, I never gave up.  What was once an exhausting journey of a mere 25 meters down from one end of the pool to the other end eventually became easier and easier.  Than I was able to swim 50 yards.  Then 100 yards.  You get the picture.  Even throughout 2011, when my knee was better and I was back to running ultras, I decided to get in a couple of swim practices a week, each consisting of 500-to-1000 meters tops.  This is chump change for any dedicated swimmer, but it was a big deal for me!          

Now isn't life so strange and isn't it the case that truth is stranger than fiction?  Last spring, and as I have also chronicled in this blog, I was diagnosed with FAI in my right hip and told I was to give up running races.  So I turned to swimming as a primary source of exercise, almost out of necessity mixed with desperation.  Yes, the very swimming I cursed, despised, and quit one hundred times ...  

It wasn't too long into 2012 before I started to build up on the swim practices, both in distance and in difficulty.  I discovered you can take the runner out of the race but you can never take the desire to train and compete out of their soul.  Hence, enter Sarah Quesen once again.  For a few years prior, I had watched Sarah swim the Annual 1650 Yard Challenge held every March at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.  Not surprisingly, she started getting on my case last year about swimming it in 2013.  A few months ago, I decided to go for it, and so it was that I ended up in Lane 7, Wave 8 in said Challenge, getting ready to do something that in a million years I would have previously never thought I could have done.   

If you have made it this far into this post, I will not bore you with a race report here.  Sarah had a very good swim and seemed quite pleased with the results particularly on the heels of her own health issues.  I will say this regarding my swim.  There is no amount of training I could have done to prepare myself for losing my swim meet virginity, so to speak.  All the swimmers and spectators, the adrenaline, the words "Swimmers, take your mark" emanating from the loudspeaker.  The entire mile was one where I felt like I was hyperventilating.  But I will confess I was a bit choked up when I touched that wall at the end of lap 66.            

Thank you, Sarah and Beth.  Thank you for being accelerators in my life.  While one door has closed, another one has opened.  You have given me a great gift ... a whole new world.

My 2011 Leadville 100-mile Ultramarathon Training Plan

For what it is worth, I have revised my training plan for the Leadville 100 ultramarathon based on feedback and questions I have received over the past year or so from a previous post on this blog.  As I stated then, several friends had asked about how I trained for the race.  Thus, I have posted my training plan here if you care to take a look.

If you have any questions, then please post a comment or email me and I will continue to update the plan accordingly.  Best of luck to anyone taking on the challenge of running a 100-mile ultramarathon!

A Birthday Song for my Friend Sarah

The Finish Line

We stood out in the darkness, I remember what you said
``Don't you know, there's just a few miles left to go?"
You gave so selflessly, I knew you believed in me

Chorus
Everyone deserves to have a song
To know that they belong
Well we ran across the mountains
We went out on the sea
I hear your voice calling out to me ... finish line ... finish line
You pushed me on to the finish line

Your passion is a beacon, that always lights the way
Don't you know, we all draw on your strength?
Below your still surface, is a depth to your purpose

Chorus
Everyone deserves to have a song
To know that they belong
Well we ran across the mountains
We went out on the sea
I hear your voice calling out to me ... finish line ... finish line
You pushed me on to the finish line

Storms will come and fears will grow
Take these thoughts and let them go
As we build a history
What's ahead is a mystery

Chorus
Everyone deserves to have a song
To know that they belong
Well we ran across the mountains
We went out on the sea
I hear your voice calling out to me ... finish line ... finish line
You pushed me on to the finish line
Drove me on to the finish line
Waited for me at the finish line

-- Philip Turk, ©

A Dogwood Tree and a Lesson

Yesterday marked 20 years since my mother died and, of course, my day was punctuated by moments of reflection.  I had never told a single soul about what I speak of here until I confided in a friend last summer.  In thinking about it, one lesson to be learned is so powerful, yet so easily ignored, I am compelled not only by my commitment to openness to share it, but by some sort of internal imperative.

At the start of 1993, when I was a mixed-up, young adult, I lived in downtown Chicago.  I worked at a pharmaceutical company by day and played and practiced with a rock band during the night with the dream of being able to play music full-time.  My mother, who lived near Cleveland, had been battling breast cancer and at this time things took a turn for the worse.  She was pronounced terminal and we prepared for her imminent death.  My father, locked in the downward spiral of alcoholism, washed his hands of the whole thing, leaving my mother's palliative care in my sister's hands and mine.  My sister and I were overwhelmed by the immediacy of the situation and how we could best provide for her in these final days.  Since my sister lived nearby my parents, by far the brunt of my mother's care fell squarely on her shoulders, and while she never once complained about it, the point was reached where my sister simply needed a lengthy break and so it was decided I would take a leave from work for a week to spell her.    

Those memories of being with my mother for that week still haunt me from time-to-time.  She was in such pain that she had to sleep on a soft couch in the guest room.  I would curl up on the floor with an afghan at night in order to easily administer to her needs.  I would have to roll her over, change her bed pan, give her a sponge bath, give her fresh morphine patches and pills, feed her, etc.  Because the cancer was so rampant through her body, any of these activities would be a long process because of the sheer pain they caused.  One time, I remember looking down on my mother as she was sitting on the couch, her chest a flat plate with two gaping scars where her breasts used to be, crying hysterically because her son was having to bathe her.  I reassured her that she wasn't the first naked woman I had ever seen and tried my best to use smiles and humor to lift her spirits and mood.  At times, she would wake me up in the middle of the night to have me tell her my favorite childhood memory, or to warn me about how quickly life goes by.  One night in particular stands out.  She woke me up and had me promise to plant a dogwood tree in her memory if I ever got a house or a farm someday.

Now, here comes the aforementioned lesson and the stark truth of something else I observed in that final week and I'll pull no punches here.  While my mother had many wonderful attributes, unfortunately she could stubbornly hold a grudge like no other.  In looking back on it, this was perfect fuel for the narcissistic-codependent relationship my parents never extricated themselves from, going round and round their Karpman drama triangle.  Once my mother felt she was "wronged", there was just no forgiveness.  It could be that she was unconsciously reenacting some unhealthy childhood dynamic she was taught; it could be that in being "wronged", this allowed her to be a victim and to attain some twisted sense of moral superiority.  Who definitively knows and does it matter now?  The point is that even on the verge of death my mother went on and on about transgressions and slights persons X, Y, and Z had committed against her, rather than spending precious, dwindling time connecting with her son or looking back to savor moments of her life.  To me, this is tragic and chilling, is it not?

Nelson Mandela once said, "Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies."  Holding grudges evokes a steep, dreadful cost and that cost is wasted life.  Holding grudges, believing as true our own dark, subjective, and carefully edited narratives of past and present events, is itself, a cancer, fed from the inside out by a consuming anger and hatred not just of others, but oftentimes of ourselves.  How do we want our lives to be remembered?  Hanging on to a misunderstanding in order to "be right"?  Engaged in silent treatments?  Partaking in petty gossip?  Going to the grave squabbling over a few dollars?  

No, not me.  I prefer morning walks down along the river.  Making a good loaf of banana bread.  Reading a good book.  The look on a student's face when they understand a topic in lecture.  And now there is a dogwood tree to be planted.  I want my life to be founded on choosing and receiving forgiveness, a "constant attitude" per Martin Luther King Jr.  I want it to be a forward-moving, far-reaching trajectory of peace and spirituality in accordance with my values, that moves humanity forward.  And even though I will stumble, toil, and struggle along the way in the constant work synonymous with any relationship, isn't that why they call it unconditional love?