11 weeks to go before reaching the next major beacon on this path to nowhere, to everywhere. I've gone over two hours twice now and will another six times before race day. I have raced one time, a 5k for race prep mostly, and will race again this weekend, another 5k. There are also two longer races planned in the next six weeks, 10k and 10 miles.
The previous week has been long as I found myself hobbled with extreme tightness in my right calf, I ran through that, an 18 miler which was surprisingly simple to complete... I just kept running patiently and the miles melted me. When I was finished I wanted more but knew better. The next day I ran too hard... especially since I had raced the day before the long run. Now my right calf was painful but not worse as the run progressed. Tuesday I thought I should rest but lost sight of the big picture. I ran.
Two miles in I felt an acute pain in my right hip. Tightness there too. No doubt this was stemming from a small change in stride pattern after the tight calf... and the intensity increase. So, I could hardly walk for two days. I took some short walks and stretched a lot, hydrated a lot and peed a lot. Friday I went out for an easy 4+. This went well though I was hesitant about some lingering stiffness in the lower right leg. I played it safe and did some walking for a couple more days.
Monday I was back to it and got in a really nice 8 miler. I felt fresh, of course, and my legs were thankful for the break though it required a little patience to allow them to get back into the swing of things. After a few miles I felt smooth and just enjoyed a beautiful day. Sunny and 55 degrees with a light crisp breeze. Just enough to break a small sweat and stay cool.
Today it is cloudy and raining, a perfect world for a relaxed trail run. I will head out in a few for some steps on the dragon trail. The sum of this will be about 45 minutes of time and who knows what in experience. The sections of the Earth we traverse as runners remain mostly the same yet seem changed as time moves ahead. All things change, though it seems perspective is the most dynamic thing we have. It is dangerously fragile and needs constant attention to grow and thrive. To paraphrase, get busy bein' born 'fore you start a dyin'.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Vulnerability is the realm of the Warrior
One month into preparation for the Chattooga 50k.
I have barely scratched the surface. My longest run to this point has been 90 minutes of trail running and during this recovery week I almost feel that I have not done anything yet. This of course is not the case but rather a steady indication that I am going about this lifestyle in the right way... that is gradually with a long term approach to lifestyle and with challenges as beacons rather than consequences.
Being that this will be my longest race to date I am a bit nervous about the unknown... which is a big reason why I am choosing this distance. I look forward to seeing what lies beyond the comfort of a road marathon. The Chattooga is where I met my wife. It has been the scene for many life changing events in my past. I spent a summer guiding rafts at the magical river. Now I will go beyond my perceived limits and enter a world of discovery.
The training has been physical of course, but mental mainly. Each day I enter with renewed spirit to face the challenge of remaining patient step by step, balancing this reserved perseverance is simple and fragile. At this point it serves me well to know that this race will not be one of speed but a test of staying power... it will be nothing but a continuation of days and hours. In this spirit I run modestly and on most days cover less linear ground than in the past. My ego certainly rebels, and so my self must police and send reminders of the goal glowing down the path. This is running wider while running longer.
This goal is not yet visible. This goal is only a distant concept full of ideals and lacking any concrete reality. However, there is reality in the steps I take in each moment, in the thoughts that flow through me. These things are the path to eventuality. And these things are reality as it morphs through time leading toward that arbitrary moment I have chosen to test for one day what I have amounted to as a runner, as a spirit and as a warrior. This is a way I have chosen from many. The promise glows ever so faintly as if the first glimpse of winter's sun. Barely warming, negligible for now but serving as a reminder of what this soul is here to do.
Now open your mind. Now open your heart. Now open the door... and run.
I have barely scratched the surface. My longest run to this point has been 90 minutes of trail running and during this recovery week I almost feel that I have not done anything yet. This of course is not the case but rather a steady indication that I am going about this lifestyle in the right way... that is gradually with a long term approach to lifestyle and with challenges as beacons rather than consequences.
Being that this will be my longest race to date I am a bit nervous about the unknown... which is a big reason why I am choosing this distance. I look forward to seeing what lies beyond the comfort of a road marathon. The Chattooga is where I met my wife. It has been the scene for many life changing events in my past. I spent a summer guiding rafts at the magical river. Now I will go beyond my perceived limits and enter a world of discovery.
The training has been physical of course, but mental mainly. Each day I enter with renewed spirit to face the challenge of remaining patient step by step, balancing this reserved perseverance is simple and fragile. At this point it serves me well to know that this race will not be one of speed but a test of staying power... it will be nothing but a continuation of days and hours. In this spirit I run modestly and on most days cover less linear ground than in the past. My ego certainly rebels, and so my self must police and send reminders of the goal glowing down the path. This is running wider while running longer.
This goal is not yet visible. This goal is only a distant concept full of ideals and lacking any concrete reality. However, there is reality in the steps I take in each moment, in the thoughts that flow through me. These things are the path to eventuality. And these things are reality as it morphs through time leading toward that arbitrary moment I have chosen to test for one day what I have amounted to as a runner, as a spirit and as a warrior. This is a way I have chosen from many. The promise glows ever so faintly as if the first glimpse of winter's sun. Barely warming, negligible for now but serving as a reminder of what this soul is here to do.
Now open your mind. Now open your heart. Now open the door... and run.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Down to the river and through the woods
I woke up to below zero windchills... the dogs needed outside and I needed 6 miles. I am thankful that a long run is not on the schedule today. I see the gentle blanket of white and search for skin covering accessories.
Dogs put up, me zipped up and shoes laced up, I head to the hills.
The plan is to get out on the trail network in the backyard. I have been feeling a little run down the last few days but have not adjusted my training. This is a new cycle and the fatigue is to be expected. General soreness is there too, but nothing acute or chronic to raise worry.
My feet land softly, silenty on the Earth. A stride that is determined to move forward in concert with the terrain, forcing nothing. Across the christmas tree farm and beyond the tree where my wife and I were married. Down through a cow pasture and into a thick grove of old pine. I see an adolescent deer bound away. She is the only living creature I will see for these fifty minutes. After a small hill and a slalom through the pines I am descending into an old homestead. All that remains today is the home's chimney and the barn. This was comfort to some family long ago. I am running along their private road, wide enough for two horses and a small wagon. Cresting into a snowy field I can hear the river roaring a half mile away. I set my mind to the turning point and reach it soon enough. The path was riddled with paw prints from Jack out neighbor dog. He must have beat me out here this morning. I pause at the river for a short time. Ice is everywhere. Large sheets have been cracked and floated ashore. The swell and retreat of the river's volume has created this scene of beauty and danger. This is the edge.
I turn for home. It is all uphill back up the river valley and I am catching my footfalls from minutes earlier. My breathe finds its cadence and my stride is efficient. This time spent so strangely makes perfect sense. Not long ago I wondered why. The dreams of setting world records for land speed have long faded and this idea got into me that without competing for a team there was really no need for all this time and energy to be put into this activity. I could be home. I could be with my wife. So, 25 pounds later I had done just that. What I learned is that this is what I do. 20 miles a week, 40 miles a week or 80... this is what I do. The time spent running has great value now and for the future. Balance includes time for our own self.
I reach the front yard via the Dragon Trail. Aster and Lilly are wagging away, bellowing to be let into the warmth... and probably for breakfast. I greet them. Goliath runs around the corner and bumps into me. He dives into the fresh snow and rolls around on his back. He is making Goliath- Angels... all 95 punds of him. I open the front door and the pups dash inside. While they eat their breakfast I drink a hot pot of coffee and think about how simple happiness is.
Dogs put up, me zipped up and shoes laced up, I head to the hills.
The plan is to get out on the trail network in the backyard. I have been feeling a little run down the last few days but have not adjusted my training. This is a new cycle and the fatigue is to be expected. General soreness is there too, but nothing acute or chronic to raise worry.
My feet land softly, silenty on the Earth. A stride that is determined to move forward in concert with the terrain, forcing nothing. Across the christmas tree farm and beyond the tree where my wife and I were married. Down through a cow pasture and into a thick grove of old pine. I see an adolescent deer bound away. She is the only living creature I will see for these fifty minutes. After a small hill and a slalom through the pines I am descending into an old homestead. All that remains today is the home's chimney and the barn. This was comfort to some family long ago. I am running along their private road, wide enough for two horses and a small wagon. Cresting into a snowy field I can hear the river roaring a half mile away. I set my mind to the turning point and reach it soon enough. The path was riddled with paw prints from Jack out neighbor dog. He must have beat me out here this morning. I pause at the river for a short time. Ice is everywhere. Large sheets have been cracked and floated ashore. The swell and retreat of the river's volume has created this scene of beauty and danger. This is the edge.
I turn for home. It is all uphill back up the river valley and I am catching my footfalls from minutes earlier. My breathe finds its cadence and my stride is efficient. This time spent so strangely makes perfect sense. Not long ago I wondered why. The dreams of setting world records for land speed have long faded and this idea got into me that without competing for a team there was really no need for all this time and energy to be put into this activity. I could be home. I could be with my wife. So, 25 pounds later I had done just that. What I learned is that this is what I do. 20 miles a week, 40 miles a week or 80... this is what I do. The time spent running has great value now and for the future. Balance includes time for our own self.
I reach the front yard via the Dragon Trail. Aster and Lilly are wagging away, bellowing to be let into the warmth... and probably for breakfast. I greet them. Goliath runs around the corner and bumps into me. He dives into the fresh snow and rolls around on his back. He is making Goliath- Angels... all 95 punds of him. I open the front door and the pups dash inside. While they eat their breakfast I drink a hot pot of coffee and think about how simple happiness is.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
The Air Seems Cleaner up Here
The focus from speed to distance has occured. These days surrounding me have brought musings of the future and what could be possible in terms of endurance. 26.2... I've done this, 5 times but not for a long time. So here I sit and think about this fall and the diligence required to reach that period and not be wondering, but rather realizing.
The future surely arrives. What will we do with the moments leading up to it? Will we rest, always being ready to preapare for something? OR will we be doing that something, actualizing life. Creating ourselves, step by step, each mile piling gently or fiercely. Moment by moment is how a life is passed or lived or loved. Discovery is not concrete or quantified. Adventure is in the mind. Achievement is of the soul.
The future surely arrives. What will we do with the moments leading up to it? Will we rest, always being ready to preapare for something? OR will we be doing that something, actualizing life. Creating ourselves, step by step, each mile piling gently or fiercely. Moment by moment is how a life is passed or lived or loved. Discovery is not concrete or quantified. Adventure is in the mind. Achievement is of the soul.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Chemical Soup
It has been nearly a year since the initial post on this page. That day written of was somehow disappointing and seemed to be the culmination of the life I had in Colorado. High expectations and sabotage leading to self-pity and frustration. But that was my choice... my stringent expectations of idealism and the failure to accept change for what it is and adapt to life. A tip of an iceberg, foolishness learned intimately.
Now the fitness level I wrote of is far in the past. I am running only a few days a week and physically my threshold for this type of performance is far diminished. On another front I am much improved today. Spiritually you could call it... but it is really just a derivative of hope. Hope is just a word. But in the faith of this word we find a certain uplifting of the spirit. We can choose cynicism as a blanket but is will keep us cold and isolated.
At the time I was having problems consolidating this dread of the everyday with my underlying knowledge that the world as we see it really is just a decision of which perception to choose as our reality. Surely life is easier when the only thoughts we can conjure are naive and positive. I went through a darkness of my choosing, from mountain top to burning pit and having seen all of this I had trouble placing the negative and positive side by side.
Taoism tackles this issue, accepting both. I never mindfully rejected that all parts of the world are equal. I did have issues with dualism and still have not made up my mind whether dualism is an ideal convenience or a concrete reality. I am leaning away from the hard and fast approach and it seems most everything is a degree of grey. Absolutions are out there as exceptions.
Ultimately I had a choice between negativity and happiness. I decided that since our minds are a chemical soup and any emotion in this sense, could be chalked up to magic of some kind or really just a trick we are playing on ourselves that I could simply choose to trick myself in a more beneficial manner. Instead of drowning myself in the darkness of illusion I could step across that line and peak back into the sunrise and sunset. Perhaps I was not and am not ready for a life of noonday light, but I know I do not choose a life lived at 2am, either.
This has afforded me the ability to freely recognize where I am and to move through the varying degrees of perception. To understand life a little more deeply and when happiness is warming me to not take this for granted as a permanence but as a passing fortune which comes and goes as the sun exposed from behind a passing cloud on a cool, breezy day.
I find myself richer for this experience while not having a penny more. I have expanded in some way and now must begin to learn these new parameters. The explorations will never end but this should not arouse fear and stillness as its result but rather eagerness and calm as we know that these are things preferred to foster and that the one greatness all beings crave is Love.
Now the fitness level I wrote of is far in the past. I am running only a few days a week and physically my threshold for this type of performance is far diminished. On another front I am much improved today. Spiritually you could call it... but it is really just a derivative of hope. Hope is just a word. But in the faith of this word we find a certain uplifting of the spirit. We can choose cynicism as a blanket but is will keep us cold and isolated.
At the time I was having problems consolidating this dread of the everyday with my underlying knowledge that the world as we see it really is just a decision of which perception to choose as our reality. Surely life is easier when the only thoughts we can conjure are naive and positive. I went through a darkness of my choosing, from mountain top to burning pit and having seen all of this I had trouble placing the negative and positive side by side.
Taoism tackles this issue, accepting both. I never mindfully rejected that all parts of the world are equal. I did have issues with dualism and still have not made up my mind whether dualism is an ideal convenience or a concrete reality. I am leaning away from the hard and fast approach and it seems most everything is a degree of grey. Absolutions are out there as exceptions.
Ultimately I had a choice between negativity and happiness. I decided that since our minds are a chemical soup and any emotion in this sense, could be chalked up to magic of some kind or really just a trick we are playing on ourselves that I could simply choose to trick myself in a more beneficial manner. Instead of drowning myself in the darkness of illusion I could step across that line and peak back into the sunrise and sunset. Perhaps I was not and am not ready for a life of noonday light, but I know I do not choose a life lived at 2am, either.
This has afforded me the ability to freely recognize where I am and to move through the varying degrees of perception. To understand life a little more deeply and when happiness is warming me to not take this for granted as a permanence but as a passing fortune which comes and goes as the sun exposed from behind a passing cloud on a cool, breezy day.
I find myself richer for this experience while not having a penny more. I have expanded in some way and now must begin to learn these new parameters. The explorations will never end but this should not arouse fear and stillness as its result but rather eagerness and calm as we know that these are things preferred to foster and that the one greatness all beings crave is Love.
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