|
|
Did you know that the red fox can hide his tracks and numbers – like the bantha of Tatooine – by stepping in his own prints? He “ambles” and his hind paws land inside the print of the fore paws. And when he comes around again in a couple days he places his paws in the exact same previous prints. Look for it in the snow or mud: a ballerina’s prints staggered left to right about 7 to 9 inches apart.
We walk the road. Monday the road was an ice sheet and we walked very carefully then went to the very shoulder where the snowplow had met the grass, so that we could walk on the frozen grass along the road like treads.
Wednesday the road was slushy.
Friday the road was saturated mud.
I say we walked but of course generally my pups aren’t just simply walking. I’m not running with them though. I’m power walking, as fast as I can walk, with my arms pumping, to lose some winter weight. Some middle-aged weight. Maybe someday I’ll run again. I never was much of a runner.
Our track coach was a little old wiry runner and geography teacher with bushy eyebrows. When I was a sophomore he sidled up to me one day during vaulting practice. He stood there kinda cock-headed looking me up and down, kinda uncomfortable, because I was a pretty fit physical specimen in those days.
“Who is this?” he says.
“Egan,” I says.
He cocks an eye, thinking, “I know that name.”
“You coached my father. 30 years ago.”
“We gotta get you to run,” he says.
So, the very first opportunity – the very next meet – he puts my name in for the 800 meters. I didn’t even know how far that was.
We line up at the line, all the runners, the skinny track guys that I’m a little too cool for. And the .38 goes off, and they start sprinting, literally sprinting, and I sprint after them. Not sure if you know the 800 meters. Come to find out it’s the hardest race of all. It’s an all-out sprint twice around the track. Meaning a sprint – like Evelyn Ashford in the 100 meters anchor – two times around.
Well, I finished. Although I died about halfway in and walked some of the way. So that was the end of any interest I took in running. I never really had the lungs or legs or drive for running. But I always wanted to.
My powerwalk dies too a little now after a mile. My arms drop to the side and swing naturally. I slow up without thinking. Because I’m in awe of my pups running free. There isn’t much else to see this time of year. Just the muddy road, the white snow of the shoulders and powerline, the dark forest. So, I watch the dogs in motion, in locomotion, to use the technical term. Running, I apologize, isn’t a very accurate or technical term for dogs, as it isn’t for horses either.
The average thoroughbred racehorse has a stride of something like 24.6 feet. Secretariat supposedly had a stride of 24.8 feet. The argument could be made that that was one important reason for his greatness. With that extra one-fifth in his stride, my rough calculation has Secretariat two lengths ahead of the average thoroughbred after a mile, three and more lengths ahead after a mile and a half (the Belmont Stakes distance).
Of course, that’s the equivalent of the sprint for a horse. Called the “canter” or “gallop,” depending on how the race is playing out, whether or not he’s under a whip, if they’re down the stretch. Secretariat never needed the whip to win.
When we start out on our walk the dogs are at a gallop (the word also used for dogs). The gallop is the four-beat run, most characteristically in which for a split second none of the animal’s feet touch the ground. It’s called the suspension (there are actually single and double suspension gallops) as in “suspended in air.”
The gallop has the full extension and full contraction. You can see very famously from the June 4th, 1921 cover of the Saturday Evening Post by our beloved Norman Rockwell: In the background is a hand painted white sign, “NO SWIMMING”. In the foreground are three boys, wet, in various stages of undress, running to beat hell right to left, looking backwards scared. And their wet dog with them, in the gallop, galloping hell-bent, his legs gathered under him mid-air, him suspended and contracted fully.
Look for a long galloping track in the mud or snow.
Look also for the shorter stride of the canter prints: two hind prints pretty near each other, and the fore prints staggered up ahead. Foxy and Daphne will ease into this on our walks. It’s a similar pace to my powerwalk. A longer distance locomotion. The word coming from the title Canterbury Tales by Chaucer: distance traveling.
After a mile even Foxy slows down fully into a true walk. Think about this: Homo sapiens is the fastest land mammal over long distances. Eventually for all of us though it’s basically, “I’m putting my feet wherever I want, because I’m dying here.”
If I ever run again, it will be me at a jog, and Daphne and Foxy in an amble (or “pace”). When it was Peppy and all four of us, then it was four of us like on the cover of “Abbey Road” in perfect diagonal strides, and it was me, McCartney, power walkin’ barefoot in black with a cigarette.
Leave a Reply