Books |
Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously
Bill McKibben
By
Published: Jan 01, 2004
Category:
Health and Fitness
Every fall, I watch the New York Marathon. Each fall, I think: I must work out more.
Bill McKibben, the noted environmental writer, had this same feeling in 1998. He was then 37. But his commitment went a bit deeper than Butler’s: "I decided to spend a year training pretty much full-time to be a cross-country ski racer — I knew I wouldn’t win any races, but I wanted to understand my mind and body in new ways, before age closed certain doors."
So he found a coach. Who created a yearlong program with 600 hours of training. But he could not stop Life from happening; soon after McKibben starts training in earnest, his 68-year-old father is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Prognosis: 12 months, tops. "For me," McKibben thought, "12 months was a ‘training cycle.’"
McKibben is a clean, elegant writer on both training and mortality. Here’s a sample:
I’d started this exercise of exercising in an effort to try on a new identity, the way a high school boy might try on meanness, or a college boy might grow a goatee. But now, watching Dad, I realized what a solid thing an identity is. He was unchanged even by this catastrophe — he remained as decent and egoless a man as I’d ever met. As for me, I’d examined my core from a different side, or placed it under light of a different wavelength, and found it to be much as I’d always known it: curious, eager, tempted by deep commitment but afraid of the effort and pain.
I won’t summarize the elder McKibben’s death scene; read it once, you’ll be enriched all your days. But I can say that the amateur athlete becomes a decent cross-country skier. No Olympian. But no slouch. In McKibben’s final race, it all comes together:
The course was brutal as advertised, and I was in no danger of letting loose another epic performance. But never mind. I went deep inside, kept track of my weakening calves and my tightening chest, measured my resources against the distance left to go. And it all came out just fine — a little over four hours of hard skiing, ending with a series of sharp downhills into the Olympic stadium filled with brass bands and cheering crowds. I finished just above the middle of my age group, which I declared a great victory, considering they were all Norwegians.
I’ve read these 199 pages several times. I’m still no winter (or summer) warrior. Three times a week in the gym remains my idea of a physical challenge. But you don’t have to care about sports or conditioning to cherish this book — it’s a manual for life, an attempt to work out a philosophy that can be tested and applied.
I give this book to friends who are having trouble understanding that life is precious and consistent effort matters. No one has ever not thanked me.
To buy "Long Distance" from Amazon.com, click here.
