Sunday, April 01, 2012

Runner's Heights:Two Peas in a Podcast

Cumulate mileage: 25.2 (closing in on a cumulative marathon)
Resumed running after nearly five weeks following a bout of a nasty cold and a nagging calf sprain sustained during a racquetball ball. During these last five weeks, I delved into a lot of resources on injury-free running and came to the leitmotif of runner's injury-free mantra, yoga and flexibility. Every time that I read a book on yoga, I discover a new dimension to an ailment that I am having as a runner and this time it was the knee. I discovered that tight hamstrings can cause soreness in the knees. Over the last four weeks or so, I have observed a simple regimen of stretched my tourniquet-tight hamstrings and have obtained a degree of relief in my back and my buttocks. In addition, I have doing some knee and calf stretches and I have stayed injury free so far.

Two shocking and apparently race-related deaths happened in the February-March period of 2012 in two locations in the East and West coasts of the U.S. On Feb. 26, 2012 Trayvon Martin, an African-American, was shot and killed by a community-watch coordinator in Sanford, Florida and Martin's race is considered a factor in the fatal shooting. On March 21, 2012, Shaima Alawadi, a Muslim woman, was beaten to death in her home in El Cajon, California, and the murder apparently left a note, implying that it was a hate crime. Hate crimes are not uncommon in the U.S., a nation that has a chequered history in race relations. But, judging by the groundswell of protests relating to the killing of Trayvon Martin and a much sparser reaction to the Alawadi murder, it seems that their is an agenda-setting within hate crimes.

Martin's death has galvanized the nation and rightfully so. Even President Obama chimed in with his condolences adding to the voices of myriads of senators and public officials who excoriated the crime. But Alawadi's death was news for less than a week and except for some independent news sources, the media seems to have deserted Alawadi's cause. President Obama dare not commiserate with the Alawadi family lest he be labelled a Muslim in an election year. The dominant voice of the nation seems to send a message that the killing of an innocent black man is more important than that of an American Muslim. In a nearly a decade of atrocities against innocent Muslims in the U.S., following the events of 9/11 and the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, the leaders of the protests who cry and lament the death of Trayvon Martin should also acknowledge, in equal measure, the tragedy that has befallen the Alawadi family due to a hate crime.