When walking upright began to define the human species, running—with fleetness and determination—was the mode of action that signaled urgency, whether it was hunting an animal, eluding a tackler, catching a bus, or outrunning a cop. Running was the very next step after shouting, “Fire!”—the best physical evidence of leaving in a hurry. To run was to avoid crisis. Why else would anyone bother working up such a sweat?
In 1972, the running boom, as it was called, was still several years away. Of course, in 1972 many acts of locomotion that would later come to mean something else hardly existed at all. Jane Fonda was known as an Academy Award-winning actress and as “Hanoi Jane,” the anti-Vietnam War agitator; “aerobics” and “aerobics instructors,” as terms of art, and her bestselling workout tapes, were very much unknown quantities back then. “Pumping iron” was the province of a future California governor and foreign bodybuilder who mangled his English while deadlifting barbells. “Cardio” sounded more like a wristwatch than something that was actually good for you. Cardiologists were the boogeymen of the medical profession, so no one would have thought that cardio was anything but a fateful warning.
“Gym” was a dreaded class at school. The gym teacher at Biscayne Junior High, Coach Kesselman, was the epitome of physical fitness carried too far. The man’s chest arrived to every destination two minutes before the rest of him; his bullhorn, whistle, and other penal colony instruments served his ego to no end and cemented “gym” as a dirty...
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