Tag Archives: McBurney Ymca

Breaking Hills Redux

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Back in 2003 I began training for my first lengthy bicycle ride, a 175-mile trek from where I was shot in Brooklyn to Albany. I live in a very hilly area so I began thinking of a motivational term I could link to the challenge of reaching the top of a steep and, at times, lengthy climbs.  Finally I decided on breaking hills. Breaking the hill meant defeating the climb, taking the challenge and pushing through it no matter how grueling.

For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, I am back on the bike breaking hills and loving every minute of it. Perhaps a recent reduction in coffee intake,  which brought about a nice drop in anxiety levels, helped me rediscover the joy of getting back on a bike and going for it. Then too, there has always been something about taking on a physical challenge, getting back in touch with my body, that I’ve found emotionally and spiritually healing.

Many years ago, around 1986 I’d guess, after nearly a year in seclusion, I began  going to the 23rd Street YMCA actually named the McBurney YMCA with my friend Dane.  The nine-story McBurney YMCA was built in 1869. When Dane and I went I’d play racquet ball, diving all over the court with a somewhat manic little boy joy. I was genuinely saddened when I learned the YMCA closed its doors there and reopened on 14th Street. I find it hard to believe that the Michael Bloomberg era of money first tradition last had nothing to do with creating the atmosphere that led to the building conversion to a bunch of condominiums in 2004. 

Later, in 1991 I ran my first marathon and from 1991 to 1995 tacked on five more.

At any rate, the spiritual glory of breaking hills is on me again. Recently a man in Long Island asked me if I was planning to do any more lengthy bike rides. I did the 175 mile ride  in 2003 and a 1,000 mile ride in 2004. I surprised myself when, without pausing, I said, “Yeah, why not?”

And I meant it.

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Breaking Mountains

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It is time to come alive again and break me some mountains.

It has been my history to take on what for me are formidable physical challenges in response to life’s meaner blows.

Many years ago for example I joined and went to the McBurney YMCA on 23rd Street between 7th and 8th avenues in New York City almost daily as a way of breaking free of a year’s seclusion. A seclusion I’d gone into after being shot up and held-up at gunpoint in a matter of months.

Years later I would run two marathons in two weeks as a response to my mother’s 1992 suicide. I am a slow poke and with six marathons under my belt I’ve never run one under five hours.

And then there was the 175-mile bicycle ride in 2003 and the 1,000-mile bicycle ride in 2004 to strike back at my own brain injury and give hope to any and all who’ve sustained brain injuries or been beaten-down in any way by life. I did those rides while working for the Belvedere Brain Injury Program based in Albany, New York. I am not linked to Belvedere anymore for reasons I won’t go into – for now – bit I can tell you I wouldn’t recommend the program to a cadaver, much less a living being.

The year 2008 was in many way one of the most brutal I’ve been through in a life that by any standard has had its fair share of brutal years. As I’m sure you, my dear reader know, when life knocks you down you find out quick and certain who your friends are and who are, well, full of shit.

For me 2008 and some of 2009 was cement-thick with depression. A kind of physical immobility took place, I had been frozen still by life, largely as a result of treatment inflicted on me by the above mentioned Belvedere, more specifically, its owner, John Mccooey. My days would consist of staying tucked under blankets, sitting at the computer trying to write, reading, watching movie after movie, and, other than a weekly workshop I would facilitate with some extraordinary people, and attendance at meetings linked to a 12-step program I belong to, that was a out it. The all of me had grown still.

Like a slave breaking free of chains and shackles, I have begun to break free in the past few months, so much so I plan on breaking mountains. Let me explain. Back when I was getting into the intense bicycle riding I named the task of reaching the top of a steep climb, breaking hills. I’d see a steep climb coming up and say, I’m breaking that hill.

And so it is with mountains. There is the 3500 Club in the Catskills, a club you become a member of when you climb all 35 of the 3,500 foot or more mountains in the Catskills. Four of them you have to climb twice, once in warm weather, once in winter. I began this quest a few years ago and plan on resuming it in three weeks.

Next, or maybe even along with, I will take a run at being a 46er, someone who has climbed the 46 highest peaks in the Adirondack Mountains.

I will call the task of reach summits, breaking mountains. Like I said, it is time to come alive again, and break me some mountains.

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