RUNNING BEHIND
Calgary native and Simpsons writer Joel H. Cohen pens marathon memoir
Joel H. Cohen wasn’t being creative or bold when he decided to fill his memoir with illustrations that he drew himself.
He was being lazy.
This is ironic considering it’s a book about Cohen’s journey from a self-described “out-of-shape slob” to marathon runner. But while the Calgary-born writer has been writing scripts for the Simpsons for years, he had never attempted writing a book before.
He was in for a surprise when he proudly submitted his first draft to his agent.
“I just cranked out this book and was like, ‘Hey, I got a book!’” says Cohen, in an interview from Los Angeles. “I showed it to my agent and she said, ‘ You know, it’s only half the length that it needs to be.’ It was 20,000 (words) and my agent said it has to be 40,000 words to sell it. That’s where the pictures came from.”
His agent said there was a “new genre of books” in publishing where the author includes pictures they draw themselves. Cohen decided this approach was far easier than writing another 20,000 words.
So the tale about how he transformed from out-of-shape slob to slightly-out-of-shape slob soon benefited from his own charmingly crude illustrations, including a number of self-portraits that seem to greatly exaggerate the roundness of his form.
“I’m always getting recognized on the street for that self-portrait,” Cohen says. “‘Hey, you’re the guy from that book no one read!’”
As should be obvious by now, Cohen’s How to Lose a Marathon: A Starter’s Guide to Finishing in 26.2 Chapters, is not exactly a how-to book for hardcore runners. For one, he dedicates a good part of the first chapter to describing his laziness. From there, How to Lose a Marathon is filled with selfdeprecating humour and chapters such as “Overthink and underrun,” “Eat disgusting things” and “Come to terms with your failure.” Clearly, his personal story about training for and eventually participating in the New York Marathon is far from a triumphant underdog tale.
But Cohen does think it could motivate those who are not naturally gifted athletes.
“I did the marathon and along the way I found that there was never a book that told people it was OK to do it slow and that it is something that any loser like myself can do,” Cohen says.
“I guess in some sense of public service I thought I’d make fun of my own process and maybe that enables or inspires someone else to try and do the same thing.”
Cohen takes readers back to his early relationship with the sport, which began at Calgary’s I.L. Peretz School. He was the fastest kid in his class at the Yiddish-speaking school. Even if his class only had six students, this distinction boosted his confidence. But when he graduated to John Ware Junior High and into a much bigger population, he realized he wasn’t fast at all and gave up the pursuit.
After the death of his father, who Cohen says was even less athletic than him, he began thinking about running as a way to get healthy.
A comedy writer and producer, Cohen followed older brother Robert into the profession; he was already a 10-year veteran of The Simpsons when Joel joined the writing team. Cohen has since won two Emmys and developed the animated sitcom Crash Canyon. But as a profession, comedy writer is not one that promotes a healthy lifestyle. Cohen describes it as “Sitting all day, taking in high-fat foods and churning out low-quality jokes.”
A turning point came when he read Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, journalist Christopher McDougall’s bestselling ethnography that examines the Tarahumara Native Mexican tribe and its members’ uncanny ability to run vast distances at high speeds.
“For the first time in my life (I discovered) there are actually people out there that enjoy running,” Cohen says.
“I tried it and I hated it. So I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to try this,’ and I did it. I never really loved it, but I got competitive with myself about it. I was like, ‘Can I go little further? Can I go a little faster?’ Then I did a 5K and thought, ‘Can I push myself and do a marathon?’ It was more a challenge to myself to see if I can do it.”
Cohen covers his decision to begin running, his modest training schedule and, eventually, his experiences running the New York Marathon in 2013. Through it all, he offers illustrations and graphs and running tips that include everything from the best time of day to run, what to wear and how much money to spend on what you wear.
He also points to Oprah Winfrey as the celebrity marathoner whose running achievements he aspires to. Winfrey ran the 1994 Marine Corps Marathon in 4:29:20. This is called the “Oprah line” and has become the time to beat for less-ambitious marathon runners.
Cohen finished the 42-kilometre New York Marathon (spoiler alert!) in 4:26:03 and placed 26,782nd out of the 50,304 runners who crossed the finish line. After this triumph, not to mention all the training and psychological preparations that came before, Cohen discovered something profound about himself: He still hates running.
“I still don’t love it and it doesn’t love me,” he says. “Like every relationship I have, it’s a poor one.”
Cohen says he still feels no more a part of the running community, a rather intense subculture, than when he started. But that was kind of the point.
“People, perhaps rightfully so, take a lot of pride in their times and their equipment,” Cohen says. “On the other side of that, there is a real judgment that settles in among runners. When you read about what a good time is for a marathon, there’s all this stuff out there about how anything under four hours is respectable and anything over is a horrible thing to do.
“Another motivation for the book is just to point out that this is just a challenge against yourself as opposed to a chance to be judged for your performance. I did discover this running community and realized I was not a part of it.”