Mandelbaum's Apothecary

West Bank 3.6mi

I’m a minimalist at heart. Unfortunately I’m also a lazy slob. The minimalism of running appeals to my purist aesthetic, and its immediacy meshes well with my penchant for procrastination. A run can be squeezed in at almost any time of the day without any planning, and with very little preparation.
Tonight I step out into the twilight again to run the West Bank route before dinner. I’m thinking about running as a low-tech undertaking which harkens back, in some ways, to another concept of fitness. Charles Atlas and the strongmen of yesteryear were positively fat by today’s standards, but they could teach you how to deal with those bullies when they kicked sand in your face at the beach. The pursuit of six-pack abs and single digit body fat was thought of as a ridiculous and somewhat effete pursuit engaged in by a few isolated weirdos. Getting “cut” was something that you defended yourself against.
I have a vision of a gym designed by Mister Jalopy; where the smell of sweat is mixed with leather and cigar smoke, where everyone wears Chuck Taylors, wife-beaters, and shorts pulled up past their bellybuttons.