This delightful passage from "The Dreadful Lemon Sky", a Travis McGee novel by John D. MacDonald, illustrates perfectly why it's probably not a good idea for me to jog on the roadside..... Thus I will stick to the machines at the gym, for the greater good!
The person speaking is Meyer, the best friend of Travis (who is quite athletic); Meyer is a hairy economist whose physical gifts are of a more cerebral nature....
[Travis]: "You ought to run a little," I told him.
[Meyer]: "Would that I could. When the beach people see you running, they know at a glance that it is exercise. There you are, all sinew and brown hide, and you wear that earnest, dumb, strained expression of the old jock keeping in shape. You have the style. Knees high, arms swinging just right, head up. But suppose I came running down this beach? They would look at me, and then look again. I look so little like a runner or a jock that the only possible guess as to what would make me run is terror. So they look way down the beach to see what is chasing me. They can't see anything, but to be on the safe side, they start walking swiftly in the same direction I'm running. First just a few, then a dozen, then a score. All going faster and faster. Looking back. Breaking into a run. And soon you would have two or three thousand people thundering along the beach, eyes popping out of the sockets, cords in their necks standing out. A huge stampede, stomping everything and everybody in their path into the sand. You wouldn't want me to cause a catastrophe like that, would you?"
About a year ago, I came to terms with the fact that I probably will never be a "runner". Oh, running will be part of my attempt to get in shape, but only one form of exercise, and I have no delusions about becoming a runner of any serious skill or aptitude. Burst speed and reactionary quickness are pretty good, but if you want to time me at general running, you will need to bring a calendar, not a stopwatch.
No matter how good a shape I obtain... I have always been and will always be the guy they look at and say "You! You carry the big machine gun. Let's go" :D
The person speaking is Meyer, the best friend of Travis (who is quite athletic); Meyer is a hairy economist whose physical gifts are of a more cerebral nature....
[Travis]: "You ought to run a little," I told him.
[Meyer]: "Would that I could. When the beach people see you running, they know at a glance that it is exercise. There you are, all sinew and brown hide, and you wear that earnest, dumb, strained expression of the old jock keeping in shape. You have the style. Knees high, arms swinging just right, head up. But suppose I came running down this beach? They would look at me, and then look again. I look so little like a runner or a jock that the only possible guess as to what would make me run is terror. So they look way down the beach to see what is chasing me. They can't see anything, but to be on the safe side, they start walking swiftly in the same direction I'm running. First just a few, then a dozen, then a score. All going faster and faster. Looking back. Breaking into a run. And soon you would have two or three thousand people thundering along the beach, eyes popping out of the sockets, cords in their necks standing out. A huge stampede, stomping everything and everybody in their path into the sand. You wouldn't want me to cause a catastrophe like that, would you?"
About a year ago, I came to terms with the fact that I probably will never be a "runner". Oh, running will be part of my attempt to get in shape, but only one form of exercise, and I have no delusions about becoming a runner of any serious skill or aptitude. Burst speed and reactionary quickness are pretty good, but if you want to time me at general running, you will need to bring a calendar, not a stopwatch.
No matter how good a shape I obtain... I have always been and will always be the guy they look at and say "You! You carry the big machine gun. Let's go" :D
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