Today is Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts, the day of The Boston Marathon.
The runners began their 26 mile journey about 5 miles up the road in Hopkinton, Mass. In their honor I took a picture of a bird outside my door, painted some highlights, added a Photoshop filter, then slapped a bib number from a a real participant, Maria Olson, age 44, running with her daughter, Amy, 22, on the bird’s back. (The whole picture is at the bottom of this post.)
I like the Marathon and I look at it every year from my couch. I view these people, and there are thousands of them, as people from another planet. There is simply no way I’m running anywhere for fun. But, I admire them. Their personal stories of why they are running inevitably touch a chord that runs through me and I recognize the desire, if not the method, to set a goal and to do it.
The New York Times had an article several weeks ago stating that they have finally scientifically tested a runner’s high. Dr. Henning Boecker of the University of Bonn, Germany is quoted as saying that the high occurs in the limbic, prefrontal areas of the brain, the same place that is activated when people have romantic love affairs or “when people hear music that gives you a chill of euphoria like Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3.”
So, around 2 PM, I’m downloading from ITUNES the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 and will listen to it while I’m eating my egg salad sandwich with fresh dill, scallions, and a touch of Dijon mustard on rye as the first runners cross the finish line.
Running 26 miles or arranging a romantic love affair would simply be– too much trouble in the case of the former, and damn near impossible for the latter. So, I set my goals more realistically these days. I get my Patriot’s Day Boston Marathon sympathetic “high” with the music method and Photoshop.
Good Luck, Mama Maria Olson and daughter, Amy!
