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The Penguin Archives

Category Archives: The Penguin Archives

May 30 2015
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A Change of Course

By | The Penguin Archives | No Comments

Sometimes we need to rethink what it means to succeed. Sometimes you meet a person and you just know that he or she has a life lesson to share. That’s what happened when I met Mike in March. We and about 80 other runners were aboard the Ocean Nova, bound for Antarctica where we would run the Antarctica Marathon or Half-Marathon. At first glance, there was nothing remarkable about Mike. He seemed to be just another middle-aged man, carrying a few extra pounds, whose glory days as a runner were back in the nylon shorts era. As often happens when…

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May 30 2015
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A league of Their Own

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One man’s experience at an all-women’s marathon. Even though I’m an xy-chromosome-carrying member of our species, I ran the inaugural Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco in 2004 because: (a) I like running in San Francisco; (b) it sounded like a cool event; and (c) I am a man and, therefore, fairly dense. Actually, when it comes to some important male/female dynamics, I’m an idiot. And it goes beyond the “seat up/seat down” controversy. Who decided that the floor isn’t a perfectly acceptable place to keep clothes between wearings? And why can’t I dry my wet winter running gloves in…

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May 30 2015
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An Afternoon with Larry

By | 100 Days Challenge, John "the Penguin" Bingham, Personal, The Penguin Archives, The Penguin Chronicles 2.0 | No Comments

The long road back starts with a single step. I’ll call him Larry to spare him any embarrassment. Those who know who he is – know. Those who don’t need only know this: in his prime, he ran a marathon in 2:48. That was many years ago and nearly 200 pounds ago. And yet, there we were, on a marathon course, making our way to the finish line. A year earlier, a mutual friend threw down the gauntlet and asked Larry to confront his weight, which had reached an alarming 330 pounds or more. I promised Larry that if he…

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May 30 2015
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A Walk in the Park

By | The Penguin Archives | No Comments

One of my favorite runs in London is through Hyde Park. No big surprise. There may not be a more beautiful inner city run anywhere in the world. What may be a surprise to those who simply put on their trainers and run their workout is the full complement of activities going on simultaneously. The park is a smorgasbord of people enjoying their own versions of sport and leisure. To focus on only our own activity is to miss the richness of the mix. In a single hour of a single day in Hyde Park, I’ve seen horses and bicycles,…

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Apr 06 2015
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When to Say When

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Okay, it was the right thing to do. So why does it hurt so much? 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…

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Mar 30 2015
1

Going With the Flow

By | The Penguin Archives | One Comment

Why runners should set their sights on their next steps, instead of where they’ve already been. It’s been said that you can never put your foot in the same river twice. Rivers are alive, flowing, and in constant motion. The river that was there a moment ago is long gone. The same is true for music, art, and movies. We never really hear the same song twice or see the same piece of art twice. What we bring to a second or third or hundredth exposure to a song or a painting is always different than the time before. We…

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Oct 24 2014
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Monumental Running

By | The Penguin Archives | 2 Comments

Penguin Chronicle :: August 1996 :: Monumental Running We all have favorite places to run. Sometimes a route is so familiar that we can run it on autopilot, allowing our minds to rummage through stored thoughts and feelings. Other routes are new and require our full attention, thus distracting us from the physical act of running. Still others contain remnants of past runs and promises of future ones. These routes become special not so much because of what or where they are, but because of the events that occur while running them. Running on and around the Mall in Washington,…

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Aug 15 2014
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The Penguin Mind: Unpublished

By | The Penguin Archives | 3 Comments

The Penguin Mind :: The Penguin Chronicles :: April 1995 Standing at the starting line–no, actually standing well away from the starting line, the nervous energy begins to build. I find myself trying to hide in the crowd, afraid that the race director will spot me and ask me to leave. “Hey you!” he calls out in my nightmare. “What are you doing here? This is a race for runners!” We penguins have different things on our mind at the beginning of races than you eagles and sparrows. In the front row, the talk is always the same. This is…

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Jun 11 2014
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The Era of My Ways

By | The Penguin Archives | 3 Comments

I never thought much about eras. I understand that time moves on and things change. I don’t use a rotary phone anymore – or even a “Princess” phone for that matter. I don’t have to check my oil every time I stop for gas – heck – I’m not even sure my car has a dipstick. And I don’t have tin foil on my TV antenna so that the picture is clearer. So, yes, I get it. But I never thought of myself as having lived in – and through – an era until I was interviewing my friend and…

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Jun 04 2014
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The Final Countdown

By | The Penguin Archives | 7 Comments

They say a photo is worth a thousand words. This photo is actually worth over 160,000 words. 18 years. 12 columns a year. 750 words per column – give or take. And that’s just the written words. There’s no way to calculate the number of spoken words over the course of the past 18 years. From small gatherings in running specialty stores to hundreds of people at race expos to thousands of Team in Training participants at inspiration dinners I’ve talked to, tried to inspire and motivate, and made giggle more people than I could possible count. This December that…

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