Michael takes a contemplative early morning run through the mist, beneath familiar constellations.

October 31, 2010

Ran again today. A little longer. Stronger at the start and finish. I made the turn at 13th and headed up past the Coliseum with its gun show and ski swap (a biathlon kind of Sunday, I guess). I had a small digestive issue, familiar to all long distance runners, which required a quick stop in the trees.

I started up slowly, just to be sure of things. I noticed that the clouds had separated and Orion was bright in the night sky. My friend M often points out Orion when we run the track, and it is usually followed by a wide arcing movement to the Dipper. As did I this morning.

The last quarter moon was shadowed with a misty ring of subtle color. I crossed the bridge behind the power station. The radio towers are ghostlike riders in the mist. There was thick ground fog rising from the open fields behind the fairgrounds, with haloed lamp post lights in the distance, a bright moon overhead and dark grey clouds above the ridge line to the south.

The mist rising and clouds lowering left a sightline to the top of the hills, bathed in moonlight, rising sentinel over the valley. I nodded to no one in particular and turned for home. Finished with a little old time miler’s stride and did the requisite push ups and crunches. Time to take some pictures, put unsettled feelings away and get on with my Sunday.

Photo Credit

“Orion and Sirius”  David DeHetre @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Michael decides he is no softie and no Kenyan either, but he is a runner with marathon dreams.

October 25, 2010

Raining like hell. Had a bad night after a long and unsatisfying conversation with a friend. I’m at a loss as how to help this friend or myself. Only thing that will help after a big cup of dark roast is to lace up and light out. I have to go shoot some runners later (shoot as in photograph). So now is the time. But the rain is hard and cold, and I have a meeting to go to, as well as words coming.

On the back of my tech shirt from Run in the Country, it says in big white letters: “There is no such thing as bad weather, only soft people.” Bill Bowerman of Oregon Track fame said that. And he should know — he coached some of the best to their best.

Oh look, the rain has slackened and I ain’t no softie (sometimes). Time to go.

October 26, 2010

I went out this morning before daylight. My friend Joe said, “Run a mile, see how it goes.” So I did. Didn’t go all that well. Then I ran another mile on account of the fact that if you’re going to run a test mile, it’s better not to do it all in one direction away from home. It’s important to calculate that getting back will be yet another mile. Also, it’s probably not a good idea to run downhill for the first mile on account of…well, you see where this is going.

Kenyan runners start out very slowly to see how they are feeling — if it’s not good, they stop. Generally, though, they finish up at a five-minute-per-mile pace. It occurs to me, after years of careful study, that I am not a Kenyan runner and even my inner Kenyan doesn’t really understand the five-minute pace.

All told, I ran a couple of miles plus this morning, and lifted weights later today.

I’m starting to dream Comrades Marathon dreams again. Comrades is 56 miles from Pietermaritzburg to Durban in South Africa, or the other way round, depending on the year. In its iconic value to runners worldwide, Comrades is the rough international equivalent to the Boston Marathon.

Or maybe I’ll just run the local mountain series — trails mostly — up and down and quiet in the big trees. These are dreams you understand. Tomorrow is another day.

Photo Credit

“Comrades Marathon, South Africa”

Running takes more than physical energy. It’s also a mental pursuit.

October 22, 2010

Apparently, I am writing a running journal for a guy who doesn’t run — not running every day and not training for races either. WTH? On one side, at least I write something everyday. On the other, in addition to my typing skills improving, I don’t have to buy $80 gloves with waffle treads and neutral posting for my fingers, or faux Olympic training jackets for my hands, to which my speedy fingers are attached. I type in my fingers’ aerobic zone; sometimes I do anaerobic interval-like sprints with the necessary repeats involved. Correcting errors is just like doing running intervals too fast — it’s a typist’s version of pulling a hammy or tweaking that Achilles).

Is there a point to this? Not likely.

I’m hungry. I didn’t run early so I’m not likely to run later. I will run tomorrow— and now, I’ll have lunch highlighted by two ibuprofen, a Diet Pepsi and a handful of unshelled organic salted peanuts (how do you salt a peanut with the shell on and then take the shell off and still have a salty peanut to eat?). Don’t ask, don’t know.

October 23, 2010

Whenever I stop running everyday, for whatever reason, I find it difficult to start up again. My bent is to make it into some grand scheme in need of complex strategies and tactics. My friend Bob told me something that made sense: Get your ass out and run! In the end, that’s the deal.

Ran today for an hour. Come tomorrow, I will get up and do it again (Jackson Browne reference?). I have the idea to think about base building, i.e. just running for the next two months and letting my body readjust to all the surgeries, both medical and age related. Getting older and slower means re-adjusting what you can do and how fast you can get to a certain point.

Come the new year, if the running has happened, when the running happens, I will pick an event to aim for, maybe Napa, maybe Austin, maybe New Zealand. Then, in celebration, I will eat ice cream and put an end to the darkness and chaos in my life that ice cream’s absence brings (to paraphrase Don Kardong).

Photo Credit

“Untitled” desbyrnephotos @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Deciding to go for a run is one thing, but when it comes to doing it, so many things conspire to get in the way.

October 20, 2010

I ran 2 x 800 metres and a 1/4 mile at “speed” plus a couple of straightaways. No hamstring issues, no back spasms, no medals. A perfect workout on a mist-rising-into-the-full-moon-sky kind of morning. Like the mornings from way back when football practice or track practice was coming and the cheerleaders were gathered on the steps, doing their stuff. Never went out with a cheerleader though. In high school I don’t remember going out with anybody.

Years later, I went out with a professional figure skater who had been a cheerleader in high school for her older brother’s baseball team. He went on to pitch for the Cleveland Indians. As I remember it now, our relationship, if that’s what it was, lasted as long as his pitching stint in the “bigs”. You might say that it — his career — lasted long enough to have a cup of coffee and a shower. You might not.

October 21, 2010

Gonna run later. “Famous last words” as my father used to quietly say accompanied by a small “not again” shake of his head, much to my constant irritation — up to and including this morning. Of course, he wasn’t here but the words, oh my, those words.

It was a morning after not much sleep, a kitchen calamity involving both the automatic coffee machine and the fuzzy-headed coffee maker along with the added benefit of a shower of muesli from the not-properly-closed cereal bin, and a small clean up of the spilled coffee. (It’s not really possible to spill coffee when it’s being made in a closed container that requires only that the water in the tank; the coffee is ground and in the filter which is in the filter holder, and the cover is closed…except that it is…it has…something to do with not putting the carafe under the drip spout, which doesn’t drip until the carafe top compresses it and then, voila, there’s coffee on the counter top.)

After a “good vacuuming” of the kitchen at 4:22 a.m., it was time to run, said he (me, that is). Gonna run in a few minutes, gonna check my email. Not much there so I thought to get on top of the photo editing that needed doing, and so I did. Well, I did get to the editing after I straightened up the bookshelf behind the desk. Then I got a phone message in my email from the cell phone I left upstairs when I came down to my office to edit. It reported to me (no shaking head here except mine) that I had blown a 7:00 a.m. — a meeting which I was supposed to lead. Not running yet, as you can see.

I went to the meeting, made apologies, came back and finished the editing. It’s now later and there is still no running. Gonna lift WEIGHTS instead and run twice as long tomorrow. Except for the tomorrow part, it is a good plan. You can’t make up “missed” miles”; you can only run the miles you run which means instead of a rest day this weekend there will be consecutive running days. And so it goes…

Photo Credit

“Clock” 19mm@Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.