The Fitness Flâneur

Recently, an unnamed European and I were discussing how it used to be the case that Americans looked upon Europeans as the epitome of unhealthiness - favoring cigarettes over advances in dentistry, wine over Aspartame, meandering from café to café rather than jogging in place in treadmill... and yet now, Americans look to Europe (and not only France, with its famous Paradox) as the health capital of the developed world. Europe! Where food is always local (except when it isn't), and where no one ever has to worry about weight.

While I mock Europhilia, I share in it to some extent. The great flaw of the American approach to health-consciousness is that it is all-or-nothing: you either Care, or you've Given Up. Once an American admits that he does drink/smoke/eat sugar-coated fried dough, these activities might as well be engaged in as continuously as one's job and need for sleep allow. If we Americans don't go for moderation, it's not because we're gleeful, guiltless over-consumers, but because we believe once the line has been crossed, there's no difference between one glass of wine and eight. That is, until New Years, the unofficial start of a Gwyneth Paltrow-inspired regimen of soy-kale smoothies and over-exercising, one that will last for a week at most, except when it succeeds, culminating in one or another of the various eating disorders. But in most cases, it's back to the couch and the sleeve-having blanket.

This is what struck me about Tara Parker-Pope's "Well" post, which reads like just that sort of New Years Resolution. She intends to get herself from completely out-of-shape to running a marathon in under five months. Although her goal is no doubt realistic, in the sense that someone with legs or equivalent can, history has shown, make it 26-plus miles without vehicular assistance, it's unclear what about the plan is a good idea. (Obviously, people should do what they want, but she's explicitly offering her own choice as a model for others looking to get in shape.) If Parker-Pope's goal is fitness, not a tearful 'I did it!' followed by decades on the couch (a bit like 'training' for one's wedding photos), wouldn't a better approach be to, say, run 2 miles at a time, several times a week, and, if this seems to easy, to keep increasing mileage until reaching a reasonable distance for a near-daily run?

While 'marathon' sounds more noble as a goal than 'Gwyneth Paltrow's thighs', both amount to the same thing: possible with sufficient time/money/obsessiveness, but not worth the bother, and detrimental to the goal of getting from where you're at to a similar but improved place. Which is what I like about Mark Bittman's approach to veganism. (Yes, still starstruck.) He acknowledges that for most of us, swearing off animal products is too radical a move, and so suggests simply cutting back on meat and the like. Along those lines, why not run rather than sit, without claiming that that run will take you some epic length we've arbitrarily decided is worthwhile?

All of this interests me as an on-again, off-again runner myself, a former member in good-enough standing of my high school and middle school track teams, who's in an on-again phase since the end of the semester and of an endless winter, and whose longest run ever was 8 or 9 miles, ending where all runs of that length should. It doesn't exactly qualify me to give fitness advice, but they say anything's better than our current national fitness level, so now, without further ado, the tips! (Not medical advice, obvs, lest some poor soul think an MA in French Studies has anything remotely in common with an MD, or confuses me with one of the many Drs. Maltz.)

-A big iced coffee before, a big iced coffee (pastry optional) after. This is key.

-All that advice to run on soft surfaces? Forget it. Soft surfaces are more tiring to run on, and, more importantly, tend to be more boring to run on, because they tend not to correlate with window-shopping, people-watching, and other activities cherished by the fitness flâneur. Whatever marginal benefit on your knees running through a great open field might have, the boredom of running through a great open field surely cancels out.

-However interesting your surroundings (and you want interesting, but not, as I learned today the hard way, a Canal Street level of congestion), you will need a good podcast, preferably one that goes a good hour, but if you're not one of those crazed runners who refuses to stop for two seconds because that will ruin who knows what, you can always stop or slow down a moment to move to a new one. I highly recommend the Savage Love podcast, and guarantee that you will not be thinking about running while a caller is defending pig fetishes or whatever the one I just listened to was about.

-For those who think of running as a time for quiet contemplation in nature, not cable TV if at the gym or podcasts and urban life if outside, you are people I fundamentally don't understand, at least on this issue. Quiet contemplation of paper topics and whatnot is for the shower after the run. The run itself is about not thinking about the run, which is what you will be thinking about if running alone, podcast-free, through an open field.

-Accept that running will not make you lose weight, and may well do the opposite. Just as they say that living in France makes Americans lose weight, yet I spent three months in Paris and left the heaviest I'd ever been thanks to flan with a side order of flan, I have found that running makes food more appealing, and causes me to eat more of it. Running will get your body more 'fit' (whatever that means - varies person to person), and is, within reason, good for your health, but it is primarily a socially-acceptable way to take time off from more productive activities. Accept that, and enjoy.