Road Hard

Daddy needs a new pair of shoes!

Or does he?

At what point do you know it's time to hang up your old running shoes and get a new pair? Do you wait until the tread is worn down to nothing? Do you chuck them when the foamy cushion has lost its snap and is squashed to the thinness of an 80-year-old's lumbar disk? Or do you keep running in them until the odor becomes absolutely unbearable, so foul even your dog won't sniff it anymore?

I've had these Brooks Adrenalines for over a year, bought at the Running Zone in Melbourne. Truthfully, ever since I injured myself during the Tupelo Marathon last Labor Day Weekend, they haven't seen a lot of mileage until lately.

But I have noticed the tread wearing down. And the heels are wearing down evenly. That's good. That means this must be the right model for me. Other brands I've worn -- the popular ASICS 2105 and the Mizuno Wave -- tended to wear unevenly, decomposing more quickly on the outer strike zone of the heel.

And they wore out more quickly than the  Brooks. So I guess I'm stuck with the Brooks Adrenaline.

That brings me back to the original question. Is it time to replace them? Or is there still plenty of life in them yet? Can I bear the smell for another week, two weeks or even a month?

While I ponder these questions, I think I'll listen to "Bad Sneakers" by Steely Dan. I never quite figured out what the song means, but I love the line, "I'm going insane, laughing in the pouring rain."

Blue Light Special

Living on the east coast of Florida poses two serious challenges for long-distances runners: terrain and climate. It's flatter than a surfboard, and the heat index is off the scales.

Training for a marathon in the subtropics is downright crazy.

No escaping the heat. You just have to run before the sun gets up, because as soon as the sun crests the first yardarm, it's already into the high 80s with the humidity ratcheting up the heat index several more degrees. We have two temps: what it says on the bank thermometer, and what it feels like. There ought to be a third category: what it feels like running.

Finding a place to get in some decent hill work isn't easy, but if you live along the Intracoastal Waterway like I do, you go for the next best thing: a causeway.

The one I run is the US 192 Causeway, or the Melbourne Causeway. The official name for the span is the Ernest Kouwen-Hoven Bridge, named after a Dutch man who emigrated to Florida, and liked to build bridges and grow timber. He built the original Melbourne Causeway in 1919, and the Florida Legislature named a subsequent bridge after him in 1977. Nobody locally calls it by its proper name, and very few people who grew up here even heard of Kouwen-Hoven. My friends who grew up here call jokingly call it Mt. Melbourne.

Yesterday I ran to the blue light at the top of old Ernie's bridge, stopped and turned around, making a nice 5.5 mile run on a hot-as-balls Saturday morning. Here's the song, "Blue Light," by the band Bloc Party.

That's a big milestone for me, because it's the first time since injuring myself in the Tupelo Marathon that I was able to exceed 15 miles in one week. Not that I'm setting any land speed records yet.

Also, it marks the second time I tackled the causeway since I began running again three weeks ago, after a year of suffering from a back injury I got running the Tupelo Marathon. I call this route The Blue Light Special because of the blue navigational signal at the crest of the causeway, which I suppose serves a two-fold purpose: it lets boaters know where the channel is at night, and keeps planes from flying into it.

But it doesn't keep people from jumping from the top of the span, 55 feet above the Indian River Lagoon. People have died doing it, and a brass plaque right near the blue light serves as a reminder of what happens to fools who dare to dive off the bridge at their own peril. Don't wind up like "Doug Bob" commemorated here -- born in 1986, died 2002 -- you do the math.

Anyway, I think I hit another milestone that comes with old age -- erm, make that wisdom. When it hurts, stop. Which is why I stopped at the blue light and turned around. I could have kept going across the two-mile causeway, and done an eight-mile run instead of 5.5. But the heat was getting to me, I'd run all out and was pretty spent by the time I hit the top of the causeway.

And my SI joint was pinging something fierce, along with a little pain tickling the piriformis muscle. I knew it was time to quit, that my body had had enough for the week and I should be happy with what I'd accomplished reaching that 17-mile mark in one week, without dying of heat stroke.

Maybe I'll double-down and hit the Blue Light Special twice tomorrow, the day before I go in for my steroid injection.

OK. Now for a cool running song, the one that was pounding in my head while bopping down the causeway: Step On, by Happy Mondays:

Back from the dead

It has been a year since I ran the Tupelo Marathon, which has the intimidating motto: "Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead." As the motto implies, Tupelo is a grueling run in searing heat, and can tackle the best trained athletes.

I hadn't run a marathon since the previous November, and had not been training as rigorously as I should have. I also had driven 14 hours from Florida to get to the race, and probably was not in any shape to run a marathon. But I'd driven all that way to make the cut-off, paid my fee and got my shirt. And I was determined to finish this marathon, to get that medallion, if nothing else.

I ran the first half nice and easy, at a slower pace than I've started out in previous marathons. I was heading into the second half at a comfortable pace I hoped to maintain and finish at around the four-hour mark.

Well, right around mile 20 I threw a major brick. I seized up, my right hip socket seemed to go out of place. The pain shot up and down my legs. I couldn't move.

But I finished the race, with a personal worst of 5 hours, 35 minutes or something abysmally close to that. And I got my damned finisher's medallion.

I spent the next day hobbling around Tupelo, checking out where Elvis was born and looking for some good BBQ. Next day, I drove to Memphis, where I found the best BBQ in my life: Interstate BBQ. Even got to meet the BBQ god himself, Jim Neely.

And for a year since I have suffered for my sins, with unimaginable sacro-iliac pain. My inept doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, and I couldn't run. I gained 20 pounds. I felt miserable.

Finally, an MRI revealed I had disk protrusion at L4-L5, where I'd had back surgery 13 years previously. I'm fortunate that I bounced back from the microdiskectomy and was able to run and bike and stay active all these years.

But now I face the specter of never running again. My new doc (a former team doc for a big midwestern college) says no more marathons. Hang those medallions on the wall and take it easy. Sounds reasonable.

But if I give in, won't I become one of the trampled over? I've been on anti-inflammatories for a month, and been stretching and strengthening with ashtanga yoga. Yes, the right leg tingles, and the pain is still there in the lower back, but I've been slowly able to run again little by little. Four miles a day, every other day for the last few weeks, and today I ran my first 7.5, with causeways!

I feel better than ever, and plan to run at least one more marathon before I hang up my shoes for good.

Am I crazy, or is this just the exhilaration one feels bouncing back from the dead?