Posts Tagged ‘richard strasbourg’

Reverse Psychology

In Wednesday’s carnival, I linked to an old post I wrote about Richard Strasbourg attempting to run the fastest half-marathon, backwards. As luck would have it, yesterday Honolulu television station KHON filed a report on Shadrack Anderson, who has been running backwards for 44 years. Shadrack is an interesting dude.

“I vibrate so high, it takes a hours and hours sometimes to come back down like a decompression. Sometimes days, sometimes days,” he said.

Then there’s R. Henry Thomas, who raised money for Hurrican Katrina victims by running backwards.

And of course, there is San Diego’s own Palm Avenue Backwards Runner, who is so admired, fans set up a Facebook page about him.

You’ll ask, of course, if this can be a true phenomenon if it doesn’t have web sites devoted to it. Well, it does.

This new way of running announces the beginning of a new civilization. To reverse the most basic and common act of man, walking or running, is tantamount to touching his essence. What could be more effective than this simple exercise which will modify our view of everything? It can change our human relationships, our relationship to money, our conception of time, and at the social level can alter the face of our cities, our transportation and exchange systems, etc. At a time when an unprecedented human mutation is taking place before our very eyes, if practised as an exercise conducive to a change in our perceptions, the advent of backward running can bring down the certainties that underlie the general escapist movement. More than words can, a backward motion of our bodies will provoke a fundamental questioning of our commonest attitudes and bring about the social change that the urgency and gravity of the problems of our day require.

Heavy. And leave it to the Brits to organize it.

Don’t forget the health benefits. It only remains for someone to discover an indigenous tribe of people who travel backwards for this to become a marketing sensation.

Gninnur

This Sunday, Richard Strasbourg will attempt to make the Guinness Book of World Records by running the fastest half-marathon ever… backwards.

So, as I was browsing through the Guinness Book of World Records (2007), looking for a skipping marathon record (my friend Wanda skips on long runs) I found other records. Some were truly funny, like juggling and other stunt running records, spectacular but circus-like. And then I found a female backward running record, but no male record (for the half-marathon anyway). I went to the Guinness Web site and asked if they had one. They did not. I went to the track and gave it a try.

Hmmm. I did a little research and discovered an entire page of world records for running backwards, including a male half-marathon record of 1:42 set in 1987. Indeed, I was amazed to learn that backwards running has a long and venerable history.

It seems to me that a true backwards running enthusiast would set his watch at the record time, then let it count down to zero while he raced from the finish line to the start. He would also hand fluids and GU to race volunteers, and play all the music on his iPod in reverse – no doubt leading to a host of Satanic messages and clues about how Paul is dead coming through his ear buds.