Good question: why name my blog "Mad Dog 40/40"? Well, it's not because of a deep love for fortified wine (although perhaps that would help me make it through the next few months). It's actually a combination of my age this year (40), and my decided goal to walk 40 miles in commemoration of said birthday. In one day. In Los Angeles. Yes, 40 miles in one day in L.A. I came up with the idea on New Year's Eve 2010, and have spent the months since then training up to my goal. But why, you ask? It seems like most times that you hear about someone undertaking an endeavor like this, it is to raise money for some charity. Not in my case. It's not that I'm not a charitable person, I really am. It's just that I decided this goal was geared toward some different "-ty" other than charity. I think they can be distilled down to four: morality, vanity, clarity and insanity.
Mortality: Yes, 40 is the new 20, or 30, or whatever it is supposed to be now, but 40 is still 40. 40 is still to me that age when friend's moms had those "Lordy, Lordy, look who's 40" keyrings. It seemed like such an advanced age when I was in grade school (my mom and dad turned 40 in 1979 and 1980, respectively). My dad is now 71; my mom died shortly before her 45th birthday from multiple sclerosis. Now that I am on the edge of my 40's, I suddenly feel the need to prove to myself that I won't suffer the same fate. I won't-I'm in perfect health, as far as I know, and MS is not hereditary. But somehow being on the edge of my 40's, the age where my mom died, I feel compelled to push my body to physical limits that my mom never could at my age. At an age where my mom could not take more than a few steps without a walker, I want to take thousands, both for her and for me.
Vanity: Yes, vanity is part of it. On the verge of 40, I feel like I am suddenly entering uncharted territory. Everything is going to start going down (except for my weight, of course). But I would really like to enter my 40's looking fabulous, and want to stay that way. I refuse to turn to the evils of the scalpel at this age. I see so many women in L.A. who started with the plastic surgeon early and often, and the results are not desireable. I haven't lied about my age since I was 17 and buying beer underage, and I don't want to start now. When someone asks my age I want to be greeted with a "no way!" rather than a long, awkward, "ohhh," then silence.
Clarity: I find that I do some of my best thinking while walking. Walking is an activity that is, to me, meditative. Although a lot of times I listen to music, or NPR Saturday mornings (Car Talk and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me make the two hours go quickly), sometimes I just tune it out and have some good time to think and reflect. A lot of thinking has gone into facing the milestone of 40. My friend Kate suggested that I make this 40 mile odyssey into something like the Camino de Santiago in Spain, the pilgrim's route in Spain. So my walk will be my Camino, my pilgrimage to 40, walked through the City of Los Angeles.
Insanity: Yes, of course insanity had to be involved. And it is of course, a combination of several types of insanity. First, I am motivated by a challenge. I want to see if I can do this. It seemed so unachievable when I came up with it three months ago, which makes me want to do it more. Second, I am still motivated by sibling rivalry with my sibling at the age of 39. I do blame my sister for starting this whole thing. She commemorated her 40th birthday by swimming from Alcatraz to San Francisco, so with a gauntlet like that thrown down, of course I had to come up with something equally challenging.
So that's the story. Mortality, Vanity, Clarity, Insanity.
