All Posts By

John Bingham

All posts by John Bingham

When to Say When

By | The Penguin Archives | One Comment

It isn’t always easy being a runner. It isn’t always easy being the Penguin. Sometimes it’s almost impossible to be both and to be true to either. One of the canons of the Penguin philosophy is that running – all running – is joyful in its own right. It’s the act of running, being in the moment of the motion, that brings satisfaction. And it’s the process that matters most, not the outcome. But some runners wrongly think that this focus on participation rather than competition means that performance doesn’t matter. Folks who routinely finish races before I reach halfway…

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Running With Friends

By | The Penguin Archives | One Comment

The “Penguin Chronicles” actually began in 1995 as a series of e-mails to a group called The Dead Runners Society. At that time the Internet was much smaller than it is now and most of the users were either academics or government workers. Marlene Cimons, a member of the DRS, sent several of the e-mail columns to the editors of “Runner’s World” and the rest is history. This column was one of the original e-mails, written in September 1995. Over the years, I’ve seen some really fast runners. I’ve actually known some pretty fast runners. And, I guess I’d say…

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The Art of Aging

By | The Penguin Chronicles 2.0 | 5 Comments

It’s funny how your perspective changes. When the best I could do was run a 12-minute mile I thought that a 10 minute mile was fast. As I improved and could run a 10-minute mile I thought an 8-minute mile was fast. When I realized that I would never be able to consistently run an 8-minute mile I gave up trying to decide what fast was. It’s the same with getting older. When you’re young you want to be older. You want to be 16 so you can drive, or 21 so you can drink [legally!] The age when you…

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Part 3: What’s It’s Like Now

By | The Penguin Chronicles 2.0 | No Comments

What’s it like now? This simple answer is: I don’t know. But, then again, neither does anyone else. The running participants, the running events, the running industry, and the running ethos continue to change like the colors and shapes in a kaleidoscope. Just look at the options in shoes. For years Nike was the dominant brand. There were other, less well known brands, like Brooks and Asics and – if you had wide feet – New Balance. And then, if you knew as little as I did when started running, you wore Saucony “Jazz” because you liked jazz. Now you…

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Part 2: What Happened

By | The Penguin Chronicles 2.0 | One Comment

What happened? Simply put: WE happened. There was a giant community of runners and walkers who felt ignored by, or worse yet disdained by, the running industry. Many of us felt ashamed by how we looked, how slowly we ran or walked, and by the huge gap between what we were capable of and what we wanted to do.  To be honest, I never really, truly enjoyed running. Or, at least, not in the way that I enjoyed making music, or riding a motorcycle, or even riding a bicycle. Running was a constant battle between the strength of my will…

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Part 1: What It Was Like

By | The Penguin Chronicles 2.0 | No Comments

A Brief History of the Second Running Boom. The late, great, running writer and philosopher Dr. George Sheehan wrote that true effort galvanized the body, mind, and spirit. I agree. There is that moment at the very edge of one’s ability and preparation in which there seems to be a unity of all that we are. Where I disagree is in defining who is eligible to find that unity. Before Frank Shorter won the Olympic gold medal in the marathon in 1972 running was almost a secret activity. There were runners, of course, and there were running events, but it…

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Penguin Chronicle #1

By | The Penguin Archives | One Comment

The Penguin Chronicles :: March 1995 :: You may be a Penguin I can see the finish line, and I feel an emotional rush that transforms me from a mere mortal into a mythical creature with winged feet. Well, OK, maybe not winged feet. How about a mythical creature with webbed feet? Forget eagles and sparrows, it’s time to celebrate the power of penguins.  The runner as Penguin? No way!! Gazelles, Cheetahs, thoroughbreds. The metaphors for runners always seem to conjure up images of fleet footed creatures moving swiftly across the landscape barely casting a shadow. What those metaphors miss…

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Starting Over

By | The Penguin Chronicles 2.0 | 4 Comments

It all began in the back seat of a Dodge mini-van coming back from a Half Ironman triathlon in Panama City, Florida. Somewhere in Alabama, while reflecting on my last place finish, the words “The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.” were written. And that, my friends, was the beginning of a 20 year journey of writing, speaking, and learning. [read the original column here] For those of you who don’t know the story: I posted my reflections on finishing last with an internet group called The Dead Runners Society, Marlene…

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A Truly Remarkable Year

By | The Penguin Archives | No Comments

No Need for Speed: December 2005 Everything I meant to tell you about Long-times readers of this column, especially those of you who have made the transition from “The Penguin Chronicles” to “The Chronicles” to “No Need for Speed” with me, already know that the December column is the annual wildcard. Eleven columns are year are for you. December is for me. This is because December has been the time of so many special events in my life. I was born in December, got my driver’s license, got drafted, got married, and celebrated a lifetime’s worth of holidays with friends…

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Relativity

By | The Penguin Archives | No Comments

When my twin grandchildren were first born, my son and daughter-in-law worried that they would never get past the constant care and feeding of the babies, the lack of sleep, and just the general chaos. I told them that, from my experience as a parent, the days were long but the years were short.  I was reflecting on this as I started to close the books on 2006. This is the end of my 15th year as a runner. 15 years! I can remember when I first started running I would hear people talk about running for 10 or 15…

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