Tag Archives: Queen

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the Amway River Bank Run

It’s time for me to make my annual moderately profound post about how I’m not fast or athletic but I am stronger than I think and yes, I really can run long distances (okay, not “ultra” distances. Give me a break.). You are probably tired of reading these posts, but in case you’re not, here and here are some examples to help you catch up. Although I know these things about myself, I am still awed almost to tears each time my hobbit body crosses a finish line. I crossed another one on Saturday, so I’m going to write about it, and if you don’t want to read it, you can skip it.

But this time, I’m going to focus mostly on the race itself, not on my performance or lack thereof, so this is also kind of an event review post–still not very exciting for most of you unless you live in the Grand Rapids area or enjoy shelling out money to travel to races. You know what? I’m writing this post for myself. There we go.

The 41st annual Amway River Bank Run, a 25K (that’s almost 16 miles) road race, took place this past Saturday. My two running buddies from Virginia flew in on Friday afternoon, we picked up our packets at the crowded DeVos Place (now I know how to get to DeVos Place! GR milestone), and we spent the evening in a low-grade panic while eating healthy food from Core Life Eatery and then cookies from Cookies and Cupcakes by Design across the street (where we would return the next day for our traditional post-race cupcakes). We got up early Saturday, now in a total fog combined of panic, tiredness, and cold, and drove downtown to park in the Pearl-Ionia Parking Ramp because we had seen on the website that it was going to close at 6:45 am, and we thought it made sense to beat the crowds and park there. It kind of made sense. We sat in the car for over 45 minutes, trying to stay warm (it was 38 outside), staring at Grand Rapids Community College’s Raleigh J. Finkelstein Hall (which looked pretty when the sun started coming up over it), talking about how much we hated running, and wondering why were were doing this. Then, shivering, we found the starting line, took a few pictures while we were still looking cute and–more to the point–alive, used the portable toilets, and huddled for warmth inside DeVos Place until it was time to start.

As we knew we would, we appreciated the cool weather once we got started. Although (spoiler alert) I still felt like I was going to die at the end of the race, this experience was much less horrible than the marathon I ran last year at this time in the blazing heat of Waco, Texas. The temperature was perfect, and the wind created a moderate challenge only near the end of the race. (Running against the wind always makes me smile a little anyway because I like that Bob Seger song.) The course, on the other hand, was not what I expected. I was picturing us running downtown the whole time, but instead, we left Grand Rapids proper fairly early on (by way of a really ripe-smelling sewage treatment plant–maybe they should rethink that leg of the route) and ran on the access road along 196 that I have seen people running along before–it seems to be a common route for race events. We crossed into Wyoming and then Grandville (where we glimpsed that bizarre apartment building that looks like a hulking castle) and briefly Walker before turning around and heading back toward GR through the Millennium Park area (which looks really cool! I want to go back and explore). Honestly, the route was kind of boring, but there were bands playing, volunteers cheering and handing out water and Gatorade, and mile marker signs with snarky and/or inspirational quotes. The quality of the event was on par with that of the Virginia Ten-Miler, which for me is the gold standard of races if only because I’m so used to it.

But this was the Ten-Miler plus a 10K. And it was hard. Around the half-marathon mark, my legs told me they weren’t going to run anymore, so I walked for a while and tried to do some dynamic stretching, which didn’t help. (N.B. There was a Coca-Cola bottling plant around this point in the race. You know what would have helped? An ice-cold Coke. Idea for next year, people.) So then I told my legs to shut up–we were going to run the rest of the race. And we did. Highlights of the last few miles included crossing the Grand River and running the last quarter-mile or so uphill, with people lining the street who didn’t have a clue who I was but were still cheering for me (or maybe for the woman who passed me on the curve by Madcap Coffee, but I’m going to believe it was for both of us). This is the part where I got a little teary. I had been listening to a Queen-based Pandora station for the whole race, but here I took my headphones out and listened to the crowd and my ragged breath. And I felt like Rocky, because I went the distance.

That’s as sentimental as I’m going to get this year.

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more musical observations

My posts have been taking a musical turn of late, not necessarily by design. Here are two more semi-profound musings I had about songs this past weekend.

  1. In a post several years ago, I grouped together three movies that came out in 1999 and summarized them all with the famous line from the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” (1998): “You bleed just to know you’re alive.” I found myself thinking about this lyric again while listening to a song from just two years later, “Pinch Me” by the Barenaked Ladies (2000). I realize now that I’ve typed it out that this is a really unfortunate convergence of song title and band name (well, let’s just say a really unfortunate band name, period), but the title simply refers to the song protagonist’s feeling that he is asleep and needs to be (but is not sure if he wants to be) awakened in order to face the real world. (By the way, you may know this song better as the one with the line, “I could hide out under there/I just made you say ‘underwear.’”) The song could be read as a plea from a depressed person who can’t muster the courage to even go outside his door. I have a feeling that many cultural critics read it, along with “Iris,” as an anthem of the malaise of late Gen X-ers and early Millennials—people my own age, who grew up hearing these songs as background music—and perhaps some of them connect this malaise with the sense of entitlement that they are so fond of attributing to people in that age range. I prefer to think of true interpretation of these songs as somewhere in between: they’re not only about people with diagnosable mental health conditions, but neither should they be dismissed as the whines of bored young people who have to manufacture problems in order to help themselves feel validated. I would submit that the world has gotten more overwhelming and that people my age and younger are less equipped to deal with it than those who came before us, and these songs are just evidence of that. I’ll leave you with that to ponder.
  2. Now, something more uplifting. While running on Saturday, I listened to one of my favorite songs of all time, Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” and maybe it was all the adrenaline or the fact that my institution has graduation in less than two weeks, but in any case, I came up with a brief commencement address on the theme of this song. Here it is: Have you ever wondered why we use the term “commencement” for something that we usually talk about as an ending? Also, have you ever wondered why the song says, “We are the champions,” implying that we’ve already won, but then goes on to say, “We’ll keep on fighting to the end?” The answer to both these questions is the same: it’s that the struggle is never over in this life, is it? You’re celebrating the end of college, and indeed you should. You are a champion. But you still face the fight of career, relationships, and just getting through life. You can “go the distance” like Rocky, but then you still have Rocky II, II, IV, IV, and Rocky Balboa and Creed and Creed II—you see what I mean. The Queen song goes on to include several more of these “already and not yet” constructions (to borrow a term from theology): for example, the speaker of the song talks about taking his bows and his curtain calls, but just a few lines later he uses future tense: “I consider it a challenge before the whole human race/And I ain’t gonna lose.” So remember, the fight goes on. But don’t let that discourage you. [And I teach at a Christian college, so this next part applies to my students and is crucial.] Remember that you serve a God who does have time for losers. He gave his life for losers like us, and he makes us champions. The End.
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the dig list

It’s time for one of my periodic lists of stuff I dig right now.

  1. Music with close vocal harmonies. Throughout the past week, I have been listening to two bands whose music showcases the capabilities of the male voice in harmony with others. One is Queen. Have you ever noticed–well, I’m sure you have; I’m stating the obvious here–that if you stripped away the wailing guitars, many of their songs would make wonderful barbershop quartet numbers? The other band is Lord Huron, whose moody music conjures the lowering darkness of an overcast autumn day–specifically, of clouds gathering over a lake, probably Lake Huron. (Some of their songs reference lakes too.) Their harmonies are tiiiiiight (in two senses of the word).
  2. The Pickwick Papers. I decided that while I’m reading Michael Slater’s biography of Charles Dickens, I’m going to watch, in order of novel publication, my collection of BBC Dickens adaptations. Saturday and Sunday, I watched the 1985 Pickwick Papers miniseries. I can’t put my finger on what’s so delightful about watching rotund middle-aged men act like adult children and get into the same tight spots (figuratively and sometimes literally) over and over again, but maybe it’s that in this novel and only this novel within Dickens’ repertoire, everyone is so genuinely good-hearted. Even the blood-sucking lawyers Dodson and Fogg are ultimately harmless. Pickwick and his friends triumph because they choose to believe the best about everyone. Maybe that’s not the way the world really works, but it’s something to strive for. Watching this mini-series is kind of like watching Parks and Recreation, which manages to be hilarious even while being refreshingly un-cynical. All the duels, lawsuits, and other confrontations in Pickwick are funny in the same way that it’s funny when the other characters make fun of Jerry on Parks and Rec. They’re like little kids trying to be mean but succeeding only in being cute.
  3. Fazoli’s. Okay, look. It may not be “authentic Italian food,” though I’m not sure that phrase really means much in America, where we’ve adopted Italian cuisine as one of our own and enacted tons of bizarrely creative, often successful variations on it. (I mean, just look at pizza.) But I ordered a Caesar side salad, baked ziti, breadsticks, and a blood orange Italian ice online, picked it up, and was back home within half an hour. It was faster than flying to Sicily. And it was good.
  4. Peer review day. One of my favorite things to do as a teacher is to walk around the classroom and briefly engage with pairs of students as they read and constructively critique each other’s papers. My short attention span appreciates the short interactions, and instead of standing in front of a classroom babbling until my throat hurts, I get to swoop in, answer questions and sound very knowledgeable, and move on to the next group. All kidding aside (not kidding about that stuff, though), peer review can be a great instructional strategy, teaching students the important life skills of reflection and of giving feedback without being vague or unkind. Fortunately, I’m teaching two writing classes and have lots of peer review days to look forward to this semester.

What are you digging right now? Let me know if the comments.