DFL Runner: Blog

Several years ago, I supervised a team that responded to a fire drill by taking almost five minutes to assemble at the meeting point outside.

When I asked about it, I learned that one person had gone back to her desk to retrieve her purse. Another took a minute to wrap up a phone call. A third one walked outside, then walked back in to grab her coat.

It was the only time I ever yelled at them. Then I e-mailed them an excerpt from the NIST report of the Station Nightclub fire, which is one of the subjects of Chapter 8. The fire alarm didn't even go off until 41 seconds after the fire started. Roughly a minute after that, toxic smoke had reached the floor, the main entrance was blocked by a veritable logjam of bodies, and the fire department was still 2-3 minutes away. Almost no one still in the building at that point got out unscathed, if they got out at all.

A purse, a coat, a phone call are not worth your life, health, and well-being.

My public service announcement for the day is this: if you don't already, any time you go into a public building, be it a nightclub, a restaurant, a movie theater, whatever ... make it a habit to find at least two ways out so that you know where they are if need be.

And if the fire alarm goes off, run first and ask questions later.

Chapter 7 is in the queue. Also, as promised, updates have finally been posted for Chapters 1 and 2 to match the tense of the rest of the story.

Chapter 7 is the story of Lisa's first 5K and is, in some respects, the story of my own first 5K, complete with my eyeballs starting to sweat severely as the finisher medal was draped around my neck.

It is, in a way, my hope that this story will demystify running a bit. You don't have to be a size 3 with legs the size of a tree trunk. You don't have to be able to run a seven-minute mile. You just have to be willing to get out and put one foot in front of the other, be willing to train regularly and properly, be willing to challenge yourself, and be willing to commit to finding your best performance - whatever it is - and bringing it to the start line.

The discussion about the music playing before and during the race is completely real-life. In fact, if you're curious, here are my playlists for the 5K I am doing tomorrow morning:

Warmup:

"Come Worship the Lord" - John Michael Talbot

"I Am the Bread of Life" - Collin Raye

"Homeland" - Kenny Rogers

"This Is Me" - Keala Settle

"Home" - Philip Phillips.

Main race:

"Come Early Morning" - Don Williams

"I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" - The Proclaimers

"Ride Like the Wind" - Christopher Cross

"Walk of Life" - Dire Straits

"Fame" - Irene Cara

"Born To Run" - Bruce Springsteen

"Camouflage" - Brad Paisley

"Pass My Hat" - Chris LeDoux (yes, this part of Ch. 7 is real)

"Invincible" - Pat Benatar

"The Climb" - Miley Cyrus

"Don't Stop Believing" - Journey

"Are You Gonna Go My Way" - Lenny Kravitz

"If You're Going Through Hell" - Rodney Atkins

"Roar" - Katy Perry

Enjoy, and I will see you all next week as we journey to the land where flight attendants lie to you on arrival.

The wonderful jetson63 has returned chapters 5 and 6, while giving me the requisite smack upside the head for some of my literary and stylistic choices. As promised, both chapters have been added to the queue.

The writing, rewriting, and editing of these two chapters (to say nothing of letting my mind drift as I laid on the couch watching mindless daytime television while recuperating from whatever bug I picked up last week) gave rise to a little voice in my head wondering whether I might need a reality check in terms of the way I wrote Lisa's actions and reactions in these chapters.

As such, I am looking to add a female voice on my editorial team, to provide some balance to both sides of this literary relationship. If you are interested, please send me a message.

And, to all my readers, thank you for continuing to read and thank you for your kind words of encouragement and support. I wish you all a safe and happy holiday week.

Authors who advertise a posting schedule and then don't follow it drive me up the wall. And now here I am doing it. I promised to adhere to a Saturday posting schedule and have missed two in a row, first last week because I was traveling out of town for a medical evaluation, and now this week because some manner of stomach bug hitched a ride home with me and I've spent the better part of the past 3+ days ... well ... being sick. I'll spare you details beyond that, except to say that I feel exponentially better today than I did on Friday.

The word from the doctors I saw last week were - relatively - good. I am not in any urgent need of back surgery, although I was taken to task for not being more diligent about sticking to the treatment plan I was previously given (read: physical therapy, which I've always hated doing).

In appreciation for your patience and as atonement for not sticking to my promise, this week be on the lookout for two chapters! Stay tuned.

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it ...

Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield

Last week was National Running Day and the local shoe store sponsored a free 5K to celebrate, except they had to cancel due to lightning. (Rain will not cancel your typical running event, nor will snow, wind, plagues of locusts, etc. Lightning, however, different matter.) It was rescheduled to this evening.

If you're not a runner, you may not be familiar with the meaning of my pen name. DFL is the informal name given to the person who finishes a race dead (channel David Ortiz here) last, and I'm usually that person. But, as the real-life Leanna has said to me, "you still finished ahead of everyone on the couch in front of the television."

Tonight was my first "event" run since last August, courtesy of some serious back problems. It took me slightly over an hour, and I'm in some pain right now ... but I finished. I didn't even DFL, although it was close.

I am hoping to get some time to review my editor's email tomorrow evening and get the next chapter posted before I head out of town on Saturday. If not, however, tune in next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel.