A Fierce Joy

By Alan Joscelyn

The writer, Montana lawyer Alan Joscelyn, says he does his best thinking while running.
Something to do with the rhythm, the breathing, the coursing of the blood through the body, including the brain.
He credits running with getting him through the stresses of four decades in a career that tends towards the rough and tumble.
Take a lope with Alan through a lifetime of running memories and musings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387574605

Book preview

A Fierce Joy

A FIERCE JOY

Reminiscences and Wonderings of a Runner

Alan Joscelyn

For John Hewitt

And

All the Other Great Runners I’ve known

Chapter 1 Running

Barefoot Boy

Turns out, running never gets better than it was at six.

No shoes, just a T shirt and shorts, a July morning and a new white sidewalk stretching for a solid block.

The chimes of the ice cream truck in the next street.

No threshold between walking and running, just the impulse and I’m running, no effort, legs flashing in the sun.

Faster, faster until everything to the sides blurs, the broomed finish of the concrete touching only the balls of my bare feet, and faster still until nobody could ever go any faster, and the block ends and I swerve around the corner and walk.

Blood on my big toe from scraping it on the hard, rough cement.

Doesn’t matter.  

Nobody could run that fast and nobody will until I do it again, whenever I want.

Ribbons

Sixth grade, my fourth school in six years, so I didn’t know about the Spring Games.

Ribbons.  Blue, red, green, white.  Just run and win ‘em.  Forty-yard dash, 75-yard dash, 100-yard dash. 

On the paved playground, anybody that wants to run can.

We step up and form a ragged line and wait for the teacher to give the signal. 

Every kid in their street shoes and jeans.  The sporting girls wearing their jeans beneath their skirts.

Our eyes alight.

On your marks, get set, GO.

I go home that day clutching a handful of ribbons, limping, my heels separating from their Achilles tendons.  I don’t remember the pain.

I remember the heavenly touch of the podiatrist’s matronly nurse using alcohol-infused gauze pads to gently remove the adhesive residue from my feet before my bi-weekly tapings for the next couple years.

Coach Nash

My first coach, J.G. Nash, Hellgate High School.

That first day of cross country practice, inside in the gym, a bunch of boys who had never run a whole mile before.

You’ll feel like you’re going to die, but you won’t.

Said with enough confidence we believed him.

So then and for the next four years we did whatever workout he posted for us, handwritten on lined yellow tablet paper and pinned to the bulletin board in the locker room.

If it was roadwork we’d see his white Chevy pickup parked somewhere along the route, checking.

If it was trackwork he’d be there, baseball cap, stopwatch and clipboard, yells of encouragement when needed, atta boys when they were earned.

We idolized him.

When John Hewitt and I asked if he would put together a training