Month: September 2019

I’m reading The Happy Runner and part of the book is about gaining some clarity on your personal running Why’s. This is what I came up with in 30 minutes. I reserve the right to edit at any point in the future.

Why do I run at all? I run because I like to get out into the forest on the trails. I like being close to the trees and to nature. The air is cleaner, it’s quiet, there usually aren’t many people. I like running to explore new places. I like running when I travel – I can see more of a new place on my feet. I like to learn routes in new cities. There’s some discovery appeal. The idea of serendipity. I’m open to the unexpected. I like to run uphill a lot. Mostly in the mountains. I don’t like running downhill fast because I’m scared I’m going to get hurt. When I was a kid I was running into our apartment in Berlin and slipped on a metal grate and fractured my ankle, then I used a pair of my sister’s crutches and proceeded to fall down a flight of stairs, fracturing the other ankle. I wheeled around in a wheelchair before I could hobble and scoot across the floor to get around. The final reason that I run is because my mom has multiple sclerosis. I’m terrified that some day I won’t be able to be active and so it’s a reminder of my own fragility and mortality. Running is freedom. I feel great after I run, like the world is full of possibilities and that thing that was so heavy on my mind before I went running is just a mild annoyance.

Why do I run each day? I’m mostly constrained by work and family obligations. If I have the time, I’ll typically seize the opportunity to go for a run. If I’ve been on my feet all day working (physical work, like in the shop or in the garden) I may not go for a run – on those days I get nearly as many steps as a 10K or longer just walking up and down stairs and around the house. I find it relatively easy to get out the door, I don’t ever dread going for a run. More often I’ll get to the farthest point out on my run and maybe take a brief pause to recognize that I’ve come halfway and savor the way home. If I had the time, I would run every day, but some days I have meetings or just a short window between responsibilities. In my 20’s I made a vow to myself to never run for less than 45 minutes. I’ve only broken that when I’ve gone running with my children or racing a 5k… wait… or a 10k 🙂

Why am I racing at all? I’m not right now. Ultra running events feel more like group runs, which I can muster only occasionally. I’m concentrating really hard when I’m trail running – it’s meditative. I’ve raced shorter trail races in the past and really enjoyed the tight pack running through the forest at high speed. It’s exhilarating. But I don’t enjoy it more than going for a long run in the woods by myself. In order to race longer, 50k – 100 miler, it takes more time and planning. I would rather listen to my body and run when, where and how I feel than following a training regimen. I planned to race a marathon in July 2019, but overtrained between cycling and increasing my running mileage. I didn’t have the foundation to do a hard 30 mile ride followed by a hard 20 mile run the next day.

Why do I have long term goals? This one is super tough. I’m sorry to say that I don’t right now. The past 3 years after running my first and only 100 miler I have only tried to be consistent – consistently balancing 20-30 miles / week + family obligations. I’ve tried to be overall mountain strong by lifting weights in addition to cycling about 40 miles per week. I feel as if I’ve been in maintenance mode. I climbed a bit more, Mt. Rainier in July 2018 and a few days ice climbing in Ouray in February 2019. I completed (partially) my goal of riding my bike from Portland to Mt Hood, then climbing and skiing it. This one may warrant a do over, but it was my second attempt and I got much further than the first attempt (I climbed and skied from Illumination Rock). Overall, the future plan is the problem I’m working on. I’d like to race a 100 miler (now that I know I can go the distance). And I’d like to do some multi-day linkups in the PNW. I also have climbing goals for the coming season for which a strong aerobic base and strength training will help. There’s one goal I can think of that’s been rattling around my brain for a while. I want to run the Zane Gray 100K in Arizona.

The book is great. First part is all about getting into the right mindset to have a long running career. It’s good. I just set a calendar reminder to register for Zane Gray 😉

I just finished reading Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography. It resonated on so many levels: his East Coast Catholic school upbringing, blue collar family life among others. When I was in college I took an American Literature course that included a reading of The Grapes of Wrath.

Springsteen’s album, The Ghost of Tom Joad is the soundtrack to the novel. As powerful as Steinbeck’s writing is about the American experience during the dust bowl 1930’s, Springsteen’s modern take in songs like Sinaloa Cowboys and Across the Border bring it straight to present (late 90’s anyway) and draw the parallels to Mexican immigration of today. That album is one of his best. He writes quite a bit about his move to more social justice topics. I have a whole new respect for him as a writer.

Here are a few passages from the book that moved me.

Back east we usually experience the freedom that comes with a good snowstorm. No work, no school, the world shutting its big mouth for a while, the dirty streets covered over in virgin white, like all the missteps you’ve taken have been erased by nature. You can’t run; you can only sit. You open your door on a trackless world, your old path, your history, momentarily covered over by a landscape of forgiveness, a place where something new might happen.

In this life (and there is only one), you make your choices, you take your stand and you awaken from the youthful spell of “immortality” and its eternal present. You walk away from the nether land of adolescence. You name the things beyond your work that will give your life its context, meaning . . . and the clock starts. You walk, now, not just at your partner’s side, but alongside your own mortal self. You fight to hold on to your newfound blessings while confronting your nihilism, your destructive desire to leave it all in ruins.

In all psychological wars, it’s never over, there’s just this day, this time, and a hesitant belief in your own ability to change. It is not an arena where the unsure should go looking for absolutes and there are no permanent victories. It is about a living change, filled with the insecurities, the chaos, of our own personalities, and is always one step up, two steps back.

You simply can’t stop imagining other worlds, other loves, other places than the one you are comfortably settled in at any given moment, the one holding all your treasures. Those treasures can seem so easily made gray by the vast, open and barren spaces of the creative mind. Of course, there is but one life. Nobody likes that . . . but there’s just one. And we’re lucky to have it. God bless us and have mercy on us that we may have the understanding and the abilities to live it . . . and know that “possibility of everything” . . . is just “nothing” dressed up in a monkey suit . . . and I’d had the best monkey suit in town.

Those whose love we wanted but could not get, we emulate. It is dangerous but it makes us feel closer, gives us an illusion of the intimacy we never had. It stakes our claim upon that which was rightfully ours but denied.

The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways
Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that’s me and I want you only
Don’t turn me home again
I just can’t face myself alone again
Don’t you run back inside, darling you know just what I’m here for
So you’re scared and you’re thinking that maybe we ain’t that young anymore
Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night
You ain’t a beauty, but hey you’re alright
And it’s alright with me

B. Springsteen, Thunder Road, 1975

Through the open window the cicadas reached a crescendo, crashed, and slowly began their chorus again. The drapes billowed and waved, the humid air rustling the pages of a calendar pinned to the wall in the kitchen.

He sat on the couch in silence studying the texture of the wall, leaning back into the armrest.

“I should go.” he said. The truth as a tangible, concrete idea, existing as a platform upon which all things in the universe reside, waiting for words to be layered upon it. 

He thought of a summer long ago when he was a boy, fireflies blinking on and off at tree line. The smell of fresh cut grass and the cool wash cool of air sailing down the mountains at dusk. The world was magic and inexplicable.

Suddenly he felt his toes in his shoes, glanced down at the floor, then to the clock.  He had already stood up to leave, then felt the gravity of the furniture holding him down. Versions of ourselves have embarked on infinite timelines, consciousness is choosing which story to tell.