Art Zimmermann - Run for Your Life: One Runners Personal Journey

Cover photo: Art running in cold rain at mile 10 of the 2017 Red Rock Canyon Half Marathon in Nevada's Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Park

Charleston, SC
www.PalmettoPublishing.com

Run For You Life
Copyright 2020 by Art Zimmerman

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any
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ISBN-13: 978-1-64990-310-5
ISBN-10: 164-9-90310-3

For Kathy, my forever wingman

Everyone has his or her own personal life story. Running was mostly an afterthought in mine.

Until it wasnt.

As a lifelong nonathlete, I didnt even start running until 55, an age when many lifelong runners have already hit the sidelines to give their legs a well-deserved rest. So Im hardly qualified to give advice on who should run, what makes a runner, where to run, when to run, how to run, or why to run in the first place. Those are all subjects for other runners, coaches, and trainers much more experienced and qualified and younger (and faster) than me.

There are definitely no quick recipes for how to finish a marathon when someone is in his or her 70s, but Ill share my own experiences before the end of this book so at least youll have a few ideas, along with some lessons learned the hard way.

Much more importantly, running has enabled me to rediscover the universal life lesson that my dad showed me early and often. The impossible can become possible when we decide to fully commit ourselves to accomplishing something difficult and beyond our own expectations and self-imposed limits. My dad's favorite (and often annoying) saying was actually true.

Difficult things we do immediately; impossible tasks just take a little longer.

I feel like Ive just run a marathon is a familiar expression weve all heard when someone finally finishes an especially difficult challenge, physical or mental. The good news is that nobody needs to run an actual marathon to discover that the impossible really can become possible when anyone is 100 percent committed and motivated and dedicated to accomplishing the toughest goals.

Someone wiser than me once said, The joy of running is the journey, not the destination. This story is about my own personal journey that eventually led me to becoming an avid runner in my mid-fifties.

Hopefully, some readers of this book may even be inspired in their own life journey to challenge individual expectations and strive to reach past them. The results can change anyone's preconceived notions about what is possible.

After 20 years of running, with over 15,000 running miles, more than 140 races, and 40 full and half marathons (so far), my own joy of running and the lessons it still teaches me remains alive and well.

Just one more marathon.

As far as addictions go, running is one of the healthier ones. The thousands of miles Ive logged in the past twenty years have certainly been a net positive on my health, but unlike most runners, my running addiction didnt begin until the age of 55.

When I finished my thirteenth 26.2-mile marathon in April of 2015 at age 69, the beatdown I received from that race had me swearing off marathons for good. Im too old for this was my first thought as I dragged myself across the finish line.

But once a runner, always a runner. When the memory of the pain and exhaustion at that finish line faded, I became obsessed with finishing just one moreone final full marathon after tuning 70, just to test myself to see if I could do it.

My first attempt the following January ended in disaster. Several miles from the finish line, the knee I had injured as a teenager collapsed in the middle of the race. So much for one more marathon. The mantra returned: Im too old for this, followed later by just one more.

Over the years, the important lesson I had learned is that marathon running, especially at my age, is basically a test of wills between the mind and the body. The mind needs to force the issue, and the body needs to comply. So, two years later, at the age of 72, I decided to make one final attempt in the 2018 Charleston Marathon, right in my own backyard. This would be the last try for my elusive fourteenth full marathon no matter what the outcome.

The Charleston weather on race day in January of 2018 was cold but sunny. The stiff north wind that would be in the face of every runner for most of the race just added to the challenge. As I stood in my favorite spot on the right side of the starting area, I thought about my improbable journey, from growing up in rural Pennsylvania, to my first race almost two decades ago, to standing in the middle of thousands of runners in Charleston, South Carolina, each of us about to push the envelope of our physical and mental endurance in a marathon.

When the horn went off and I crossed the starting line, my last full marathon was underway.

***

Early childhood memories are funny things. A friend once asked me what was the earliest thing in my life that I remember. The year was 1950. I was four years old, lying on the top bunk of a strange bed and looking at cowboy boots on my feet. No idea where I was, how I got there, or why I was wearing cowboy boots in bed. There must have been some light from someplace for me to see them, but all I remember is those cowboy boots.

As I learned later, I had been on a train from Philadelphia to San Diego with my mother and younger sister, Mariann, to visit Skip and Sam Curlett, old friends of my mother and father. Skip and Sam had invited Mom to bring Mariann and me to California by train for a visit after my father had passed away on my second birthday from lupus while serving in the navy.

Skip and Sam lived in a small home near the beach in San Diego. Skip had served in the navy with my father, and Sam was a waitress at a local restaurant before they moved from the Philadelphia area, where I grew up, back to California when Skip got out of the navy. Mom said they were all best of friends back in the day, before I was born.

I dont remember much else about that trip or how long we stayed, but my next vivid memory was being in a car sometime later, on that same trip as it turned out. After our visit with Skip and Sam, we traveled from San Diego to Dallas, Texas, to visit my grandmother's brother Leo Williams, who was an FBI agent and had once been assigned to the president's security detail. My mom's uncle Leo was pretty famous around those parts.

During that visit with Uncle Leo, I was sitting in the back seat of a car wearing those same cowboy boots and playing with the car door handle, which I managed to open while the car was cruising down the highway. Fortunately for me, I held onto the handle as the car quickly came to a stop on the side of the road with everyone yelling and screaming. I wasnt sure what the big deal was; I was just holding onto that door handle so I wouldnt fall out. That turned out to be a good idea. No harm, no foul.