Month: December 2013

Rule #1: it’s my movie

Wide angle showing the beach and Diamond Head … zooming above the water into Oahu … Waikiki Shopping Plaza… Armani Exchange.

It’s 3 days before Christmas and all the shoppers are out… Happy.Shopping.

Cut to the little elves working in their elven mine deep under an arctic ice sheet… digging up presents in the ice *Rule #1*)… uh oh… they found something…

Quick (shaky) zoom into Santa… and wuh-oh. It’s a Kaiju dressed up like Santa. WHAAAATTT!!!  And he wants some Armani t-shirts. (*Rule #1*)

Time to call…

What do you think? Holiday Blockbuster? Kickstart it?

http://www.strava.com/activities/99283575

I’ve done this run so many times that I have it dialed. I thought yesterday afternoon about today’s run… trying to think of a new loop. Not the downtown loop again.

I know exactly how to run it – drop to the river, run the flats and then climb back out of a hole to get home. Strategically it suits me with a fast descending start. I can race the descent and bank my average for the suck that comes at mile 6. Up up. I’ve had the wheels come off on the flats on certain days… my form starts to waiver… if I’m listening to music – nothing sounds good. My stomach hurts… my hamstring feels weird… is that pain in my ankle there… or no? The demons start to creep in… “slow your roll man. Big ups are coming… conserve… the doubt… the fear”.  Fighting the demons and digging deep… a topic for another post.

If I want to go longer than 5 miles I either need to drop down the backside of Mt. Tabor and out and back on the 205 trail… keeping an eye out for meth heads or human misery jingling along the trail – bottles and cans in a shopping cart, or run through downtown into the west hills – combining my work lunch run with my commute run. I find it easier to link 2 familiar routes together than to run an entirely new route. The 16 mile enchainment earlier in the year that included going up and over council crest was just a linkup of 3 lunch runs plus my run commute. I’ll do that one again once the weather gets a little better. It was 17 degrees when I left this morning. How much to I want to suffer this morning?  A little or a lot?

I procrastinated for as long as I could this morning. I sat around reading the paper, sipping coffee… some water… at a certain point it becomes quite ridiculous – there is no rational way to convince myself to keep procrastinating. It becomes unbearable. I always seem to misplace my keys when I’m in this state – it’s a subconscious hijack. Who hid my keys? I did.

I was thinking.. it’s really cold… this is going to suck. And then realized that’s not a helpful way to think about the task soon to be underway. A quote I always return to is from Alex Lowe, whom I had the pleasure of meeting on two occasions. To paraphrase… “at a certain point – there is nothing left to do but get after it”. Then there is the switch. The decision is made and I buckle up. Flow control has been handed over. Did I make that decision… or was it someone else? Does it even matter?

When I was in high school, I used to run looking down at my feet – I have this memory of running before the sun came up through the nice neighborhood next to ours, the sodium street lights glowing yellow and there I am…staring down at my shoes. That thought creeps in when my form starts to fall apart. There was just a hint of it today,  right at the end of the run – I sensed it more than felt it. I was close to home and just as an mental exercise redoubled my focus on form – lengthened my stride, swung my arms more than felt normal.

I think this is the greatest lesson from running.  After a certain period of time things always fall apart. With practice and experience, you get better at noticing the subtle indicators. And you deal. And each time you get better.

Drivin’ N’  Cryin’ – Straight to Hell

[vimeo 77974618 w=500 h=281]

Lets Go Get Small – Official Movie from Peak Performance on Vimeo.

Back to my home trails today.

http://www.strava.com/activities/98821658

St. Helens looked especially fetching from the turnaround. I could just make out the silhouettes of Adams and Rainier.  With the cloud level, anyone up top would have been treated to a lovely undercast and seen the other stratovolcanoes peeking out like islands north to south.

It’s quite simple really – spin a 360 from where you’re standing (helps to be outside). Over there! That looks like the highest point, right? Now run up it. YES!

One of my favorite runs in Albuquerque is the La Luz trail race. 9 miles from about 1,900m up to 3,200m. The race starts on tarmac for the culling before you enter the Cibola National Forest and hit the singletrack, then it’s a knife fight to pass people – you pretty much have to run them over (best to gain pole position on the road).  Good fun.

I saw one other runner this afternoon, about 2 miles past the MAC trail intersection. In those conditions (it was just under 30 degrees) the only thing to do is a nod and throw a low Harley wave. It’s the brotherhood (and the sisterhood). The further out you go, the smaller the tribe becomes. And the closer.

No matter how difficult it is to make it happen (whatever it is for you), if you take the first step – make it happen, you’ll find your tribe. I’ve found this to be true nearly every time with few exceptions. You’ll never find them sitting on your sofa reading the Twitters. Never.

Anyone who ever did anything worth doing  never felt the best course of action was follow the herd. Embrace your inner snowflake.  And…

DFW: “Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.”
Me: But it’s just not fai….. sigh.

http://www.strava.com/activities/98464596

Great run this morning in Palo Alto. There are times when I’m unsure that I’ll be able to do a route. I have it in my mind and all I can do is start… and fall … and catch myself again. After all,  what is running other than falling and catching yourself – over and over again? Then I notice my watch beep and vibrate and I look down – 5 miles have gone by and I’m far from home.

Sometimes I feel gravity more than other days – it’s a similar feeling to riding a bicycle when perhaps the tire is flat – it feels flat – but no, the tire is fine, it’s just my legs that are flat.

This morning it was quite windy,  running up the steep hills (one is called the ‘Hill of Death’) I was blocked from the wind, but it was so steep and I swung my arms to propel myself upwards. Never look down at your feet –  always look up to the crest of the hill and imagine an invisible cord connecting your head to the top of the hill…pulling you upwards. It’s a trick learned long ago. After cresting the hill, I anticipated rolling like water down the other side giving me a chance to catch my breath. But it wasn’t so. I was met by a strong headwind that forced me to work just as hard as running uphill.  The beauty came when I turned toward the the rising sun (wave hello), followed the trail around a bend and then the wind was at my back. Yes!

For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say “I’m going to sleep.” And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed.

-Marcel Proust,  Remembrance of Things Past

For me to read later (when I have time):
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2004/01/hitchens.htm

As always, a solid obit from The Economist.

“She hated expectation: that burden that made you a prisoner of circumstances and dragged you along like a fish on a line.”

2 days at the mothership this week. This should be it for travel for the rest of the year. Maybe.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdizL4on-Rc&w=560&h=315]

Was reading Alpinist 33 this morning and found this great quote by Mark Newcomb retelling his first ski decent of Polarity on the Hossack-MacGowan route on Grand Teton’s North Face:

Success in ski mountaineering rests on the polarity of a molecule of water. If the difference in charge were any stronger, we wouldn’t have vapor and clouds; any weaker and we wouldn’t have ice crystals and snow. As it is, H2O morphs with a freedom that few other common molecules have, and its ephemeral nature creates a staggering array of ever-changing crystalline shapes. These varied forms in turn lead to a continuum of snow conditions from blower powder to glit (half glue, half shit). Within that immense spectrum, there’s a window of firm yet forgiving snow that engages a ski edge and enables a secure turn.