I wonder how the Madagascan Martin Dugard is doing?
There is a British Martin Dugard, a speedway legend from Eastbourne. There is also a Dugard Corporation, which engineers machine tools. Facebook shows a bunch of other Martin Dugards.
But it's been thirty-two years since I was in Madagascar, covering the Raid Gauloises adventure race along the desolate southwest coast. It was my first big journalistic adventure….
Woke up this morning feeling very good about The Long Run. Last Saturday I had lunch with a good friend who was a mover and shaker in the running business. He pointed me down a new line of inquiry for the book — one so novel and out of nowhere that I couldn't wait to weave it into the text. At last, after months laboring to separate fact from legend, a clear path forward.
Somewhere in a New York City recording studio, a team of professionals is recording the audio version of Taking Midway. I receive periodic updates, mostly about pronunciations, though I'm on the other side of the country. I'm spending the morning doom scrolling in the chemo ward, wondering if I should wander over to the cafeteria for a bold cup of coffee or just drink the ordinary stuff from the machine. The wifi isn't so good, so I use my phone as a hotspot. In typing that last sentence I learned that hot and spot make one word instead of two.
We held a neighborhood St. Patrick's Day party in the cul de sac on Saturday night. Everyone brought an entrée and a dessert. BYOB. It was nice catching up with everyone in person, rather than just waving as they drive by on their way to work. The evening sky was clear but it was California-cold, most of us wearing something down.
In light of the shit show in the Oval Office the other day, the historian in me is tempted to write at length about Ronald Reagan rolling over in his grave. But that line is as close as I'll come. Instead, I'm watching Black Labrador reels on Insta, among them a very cute story about a dog who looks very much like my Sadie on her way to Starbucks for a pup cup. Just can't get enough of Black Labs. The algorithm knows this. I get constant Springsteen and Lab reels as I scroll, which lifts my spirits in these uncertain times.
Yes, it's escapist.
I've been to New York dozens of times so I don't feel like I'm a tourist. But I don't actually live in New York so that means I am. That in mind, I did my own version of the tourist experience the past four days as I wandered the city.
I was in town for a number of very good reasons: lunch with my agent, speech at the Harvard Club, USATF Foundation Board meeting, Millrose Games track meet, and an after-party. There was a lot of downtime built in so I made this a vacation of sorts….
This author life is a wonderful thing, equal parts strangers writing to tell me how much they enjoy Taking London and others emailing to say their hands are shaking in rage about something I wrote in Confronting the Presidents and they'll never read a word of mine again. I listen intently to the nice words and reply with a thank you. The haters get nothing, not even the nasty response they're praying to re-post on X to show my spiteful nature.
What can I say? The check cashed just fine. My job is to be the best I can be. Working someone into a hot lather is far preferable to people not caring at all.
Got a new book deal last week. It's equal parts running and history, which is all I can say right now. This is the first time in my career I've combined my two passions. I'm very excited. As I've traveled deeper into my career, I'm happy to be taking on projects that really test my creativity and storytelling. This is one of those books. Frankly, I thought Taking Paris was a challenge. Then Berlin and London. Taking Midway was so over-the-top demanding there were days I would sit here at the writing desk and wonder how in the world I was going to pull all the disparate threads together. I'm really excited to share it with all of you when it hits stores in May.
