The Memorial Run Oklahoma City: Second Race

Remember This Run; OKC 2024

I finished my first race of the year this past weekend. Another 26.2 miles in the win column. Well not exactly “Win” like first place, but “win” as in everyone wins a trophy. It’s the medal around my neck in the picture by the way. I’m half kidding about everyone getting a trophy. The medallion is a race tradition that everyone walks away with for paying the race fee. No one equates it to winning. We compete against ourselves and try to improve on the last race time. We strive for the ever-shifting PR (Personal Record) and tweak our routines for efficiency. It can feel a bit like solving a problem. The inputs change, weather, health and weight. Course conditions like hills will break down your stamina.

Don’t get me started on food. Finding the right balance of carbs and fats for endurance running is harder than finding a good pizza joint in Oklahoma. I guess it’s a relief that pizza’s not a great option.

Race Gimmicks

Fortunately, Oklahoma City isn’t crazy hilly. Where there are hills, they are front loaded into the course. The second portion is mercifully flat. Heavy rain and thunderstorms the night before made the roads wet. I didn’t encounter any ankle deep puddles but a light drizzle here and there made for slick shoes. I saw one man in a shirt and tie combo and a pair of tan dress slacks keeping a steady pace. I’m not sure what that was about, some gimmick I guess. Usually where there is one there are others. But I didn't see any others dressed like that.

As I neared the finish I saw a teenager jog quickly ahead of me in loose crew socks and camouflage crocs. I’ve seen super fit guys run in those hiking, strappy type sandals that wrap around your ankle before but never crocs. I had to laugh despite my exhaustion.  

Past Regrets

 This was my second effort at the Run to Remember. Last year didn’t go well. I was sick and nearly dropped out of the race. I popped a few Pepto Bismol tablets at one of the medical tents. I felt better enough to continue tottering toward the finish. I did a lot of tottering last year—painful and pathetic though it was. It’s a cross between a walk and stagger, like a pirate with a wooden leg hustling across a busy street.  

This year I prepared better with the food. I started eating a spaghetti meal the night before every big practice run. I like Italian food, so fuhgeddaboudit! In order to keep the same routine, I ate a banana and had a gel pack every 50 minutes or so. In the last couple of weeks I started taking electrolyte tablets. I could drink Gatorade along the route instead, but I despise the sweet powdery taste on my weak stomach. It’s nearly always mixed by hand and served in a large thermos. The mix is frequently too strong. I imagine they double up on the required measurements and then serve it lukewarm.

Summer Lesson

For some reason, I get very nervous about these marathons. This might explain the weak stomach. It’s like I anticipate the struggle before it happens and naturally shrink away. It’s not fear. It’s more of a reluctance to embrace the pain that’s coming. I had a job one summer helping a contractor put on roofs. The thought of getting up early and working my body raw made me reluctant to leave the comfort of my sheets. I’d worked grocery for a lot of years and even helped my Dad with landscaping on Saturdays. But I’ve never had such a hot, dirty job that demanded so much effort from sunup till sundown. I knew it would involve carrying shingle bundles (half packs) up the ladder multiple times.  Before that we ripped off about 5 layers of old shingles on this ancient Victorian and hurled them into the dumpster. Apparently, the last roofers didn’t bother to rip the old layer off. That meant more grueling work for us.

I remember the feeling I’d get after working a hard day in the heat, wrung out. The pain in my shoulders and arms gave way to a new satisfaction after a long shower. Not the kind of satisfaction that comes from getting that Jeopardy question right that no one else knew, but of a strenuous task done right. The pain, a reminder of a kind of success I hadn’t known before.  

Conclusion

I’ve run 4 marathons now, each slightly different. My time hasn’t improved from the first. It does bother me, but I refuse to make the timing the whole of the event. I'm still hovering over the 5 hour mark. Just finishing the race is an achievement I’m proud of. When you know what it takes to finish, you can’t get too hard on yourself. No matter what the clock says at the end of race, the feeling in my legs is a satisfying pain. I know what I overcame. Plus I got the same trophy that everyone gets.  

 

 

Trump In NYC: What is Bragg Thinking?

 

Trump's PR Machine Makes Fools of the District Attorney's Office

The incident at the Harlem Bodega on Tuesday was a genius move. 

After this ridiculous show trial over payments to Stormy Daniels, Donald Trump popped in at a shop that made news a few years ago when the owner killed a man who tried to rob him. It was an obvious case of self defense, caught on video. If you never heard about the incident it goes like this. A woman comes into the bodega to buy a bag of chips.

Her card gets declined. She storms out and comes back later with this Austin Simon. Simon walks behind the counter and gets in the owner’s (Jose Alba) face. Alba grabs a knife at some point. It’s not clear when but it must have been within reach. He stabs Simon off camera and after a few seconds comes back into the frame holding a bloody knife.

The hospital pronounced Simon dead shortly after the ambulance picks him up. Because New York City is lawless, Alba gets slapped with a 2^nd degree murder charge. Thankfully the video made an impression and forced the DA to drop the charges less than a month later. That lazy, useless District Attorney is the same one charging Trump in this current payment case--Alvin Bragg. Someone on team Trump had the brilliant idea to arrange a photo op with the current owner of the bodega and Trump. It’s not Alba anymore. He left the ‘land of the free’ (don’t laugh) for the Dominican Republic after his incident. But the spectacle of Trump, shaking hands and talking to the people of New York is a savvy PR move.  

It also means that Trump has some good people who understand media and marketing. Then again, New York is making it easy for Trump to show off. The judge in the payment case (the reason DJT is in New York) has insisted the former president stay in the city for the duration of the trial. This will give Trump an opening to make an even bigger circus out of the court, the city and the mayor.

He already made Biden look bad by attending officer Jonathan Diller’s wake. This, during the same week of a big DNC fundraiser for Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. Clinton and Obama were at the fundraiser with celebrities, all hamming it up. The contrast was striking. A law and order president against a Hollywood/Big Tech president. The Diller family even told the governor, Kathy Hochul, to leave the funeral.

We’re told by quite a few people who grew up in New York City that the streets were rougher in the 70’s and 80’s. Nearly everyone got mugged at least once. It should be clear that the city isn’t serious about solving crime anymore. District Attorney’s like Alvin Bragg aren’t just soft on crime, they practically encourage it. When you’re more likely to charge citizens who defend themselves, like Mr. Alba and Daniel Penny, word also gets around. In an environment like this a guy running for president could do a lot of damage around town from a PR standpoint. Especially if he finally has a team that knows how to manage his moves. 

Gavin Wax is one such leader. I heard him do an interview with Jack Posobiec shortly after Trump’s Bodega stop. He’s clearly behind a lot of these decisions to get Trump in front of cameras and look like an effective leader. He promised more of the same.

The DA’s office is going to regret making Trump stay in the city. The old GOP would never do this. Can you imagine Mike Pence throwing support to a bodega where a black man was stabbed to death? It’s not that Pence and others don’t care about crime, but their instincts are to not offend or court controversy. If they criticize it’s only in the most generic way. My dear friend from the great state of New York, and all that nonsense. In happier times I’d prefer a genteel, statesman-like approach to conflict. But we’re in put up or shut up times. Effectiveness is all that matters. I don’t want to hear what a decent, honest and Christian man you are. I’m not excusing weakness anymore because of your firm principles.

To be fair though, Trump was a star before he ran for president and always loved the attention. No one else could have this kind of popular success. I’ve never thought of Donald Trump as a crusader for truth and justice. But he is risking everything and taking a lot of arrows in the process. A cynic will say that he is only doing it for fame. He’s never been more popular after all. But he’s literally gambling with his life and risking a serious loss to his fortune which affects his family when he’s gone. Whatever his motivations are in going through this legal gauntlet I hope he sees it through and gets back to the White House. Hopefully he has better people around him this time. 

How to Think About the Times and See the Big Picture

 

The First Principles Method of Evaluation

I listened to Mark Steyn’s weekly Q&A just an hour ago. Subscribers write in and ask him questions about anything in the news. The subject of countless lawsuits, Mark often finds himself in the news. A lot of listener (and reader) questions are directed to him. Since he’s covered the English speaking world, his range of knowledge is quite broad. He doesn’t just feed information to his listeners like he’s reading from an encyclopedia. He’s a bit like Rush Limbaugh, his focus is always toward larger trends that can be seen in smaller ones. He calls this philosophy, First Principles. It’s the same idea I had when naming my blog. Here's how I defined it few years ago.

Thinkers Philosophy

I’ll sum it up like this, you have to understand the underlying philosophy of current issues or you won’t know how to think about them. For instance, free speech is fundamental to life in a democratic system. Laws designed to curb speech are unjust. I wouldn’t want a communist in America not to have the right to voice his opinion, even though I loathe communism and find it evil. But I don’t get to decide who can speak and who can’t.  

 In the same way, Mark always focuses on the big picture in the world. In this case, a mafia like federal government that’s trampling citizen rights. He’s tough on the Constitution ‘wavers’ who think our founding document protects them from assault. The whole apparatus of government, the deep state, is playing by its own rules and going around the official process.

Chaos and Disorder

The Constitution doesn’t mean anything if whole departments operate with impunity. The justice department comes to mind as the most egregious one. But you could make a case that any one of the official departments use ‘work arounds’ for their immediate needs. Matt Taibbi exposed a lot of these ‘work around’ tactics when Elon Musk gave him access to Twitter’s email database. The FBI (primarily) was using Twitter like its own digital secret police. That’s the larger point of what the civilized world is facing. “Enemies” like the J6ers or Covid skeptics get treated like domestic terrorists. Many are being locked up for years, after being held without a trial for years, over “trespassing”. While in blue cities the district attorneys refuse to charge violent offenders. Presumably to create chaos and control people who want to live free.

With this idea of looking at the larger picture, Steyn doesn’t get wrapped up in the minutiae of legalisms.

Because the legal rationale is beside the point. Soviet police chief Lavrentiy Beria famously said “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”. Legal arguments become silly in a world where citizens are locked up for years for entering the Capital to take pictures.

 The West is committing suicide by allowing corruption to fester for too long. Legitimate voices are being silenced in this era of widespread censorship. It’s the so-called liberal West that’s doing it too. That’s maybe the biggest change in my lifetime. The Soviet bloc countries were supposedly basket cases led by tyrants. The West, and mostly America was the land of the free. But the important thing to remember is, without a fight we’ll lose our way of life. Mark is a pessimist but sees the issues clearly. I refuse to be without hope. I might not know the status of the future, but I believe in God and His plan for me. I do think dark days are coming for America in the near term.

Conclusion

But it will also be a wonderful time of hope and restoration. New souls with find the Kingdom, wayward Christians will return to God. In the same way that First Principles types (like Steyn) can draw on small incidents to find a larger context, Christ draws on the impersonal to focus on the personal. Financial trouble can force you to evaluate your life the same way a health event can. Suddenly, spiritual things can be seen in stark relief again the world’s system. The world a lot of us grew up in isn’t coming back. The future seems bleak right now because we’ve come through a very wealthy period in history. We mostly had a strong legal system that respected private property, speech and religion. The federal government was smaller relative to what it’s become. I don’t mean in the number of employees who drew a paycheck either. I’m talking about reach. Here is why I’m not worried long term. God is just. Those who fear Him live according to His ways. It stands to reason those who don’t fear Him don’t live according to His ways. They’ll answer to God eventually. Now that’s a First Principle.

When we surrender to Christ we can never lose. Even if we don’t know where we’re going, we get to find out. In a way that’s kind of exciting.