Category

Running

• 06.28.08
  mapping my runs
  Running (0)

  I’m messing around with a online tool for mapping running routes. I missed my regional long run this morning because, ahem, I overslept. On the MapMyRun website there’s a growing database of routes from which to choose–or to which you may add your own. Helpful enough, for when one grows tired of the same old roads. It would be even better, however, if you could map trail runs as well…I thought maybe one of you readers might find this useful.
  (enjoy!)

  
  
• 06.11.08
  It’s not just a marathon.
  Daily, Running (5)

  

  There are some things we do because it seems possible, and then there are things we take on because we like the challenge, and then there are things that seem dreadfully hopeless and guaranteed to fail us yet we attempt these feats because to succeed makes us better than we were before.

  I’ve kept it quiet until now but I’d better put it out there now like undies on the clothesline: I’m running the Nike Women’s Marathon this fall and I’m going to running the entire 26.2 miles in honor of all the people in this world who are battling blood cancers. As a runner for Team in Training I’m standing here with my hands in my pockets, terrified, asking for you to make a tremendous difference to people who have, without discrimination, been diagnosed and are battling leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma. These are diseases that know no race, no religion, no commonality besides being HUMAN. And I’ve wept through too many cases already not to push through my insecurities and ask for your help.

  And, as with all efforts, every. little. bit. helps. I’ve been told that, at the rate we’re going with research, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society predict that we will have a cure for blood diseases by 2012. You can help make this happen.

  Please go visit my TNT fundraising page and read more about what every dollar will afford to a person who is undergoing treatment. It will clarify the ambiguities of your donation.

  Also, leave me a comment if you know someone who is either diagnosed with, in remission from or who has died from a blood cancer. I would like to mention that person to the world and honor him or her in my efforts.

  
  
• 04.21.08
  to the A*Hole who stole my twinner
  Daily, Please Bear with Me, Running (11)

  OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS for Teal Green 2004 Baby Jogger Deluxe Twinner

  Congratulations! You are the new owner of a four year-old piece of crap jogging stroller made by the Baby Jogger company, subsequently bought by the Bag Boy Company, bought later by Dynamic Brands, in the quest for monoply over the heavily sought-after niche of value priced men’s, women’s and junior golf and its associated running products. RANDOMBRANDING!

  You will notice the following improvements in your model that are unavailable in any other double jogger on the market:

  • the right tire has an incipient leak which not only adds to the uniqueness of the product but increases your average 5k time by approximately five minutes as you will need to refill this tire nearly every time you set out for your jog
  • the foam handlebar cover is now infused with the unmistakable tang of black mildew, which, on its own or in combination with the mildew recently added to the bottom basket, contributes significantly to seasonal allergy responses in most individuals
  • for your convenience, the sunshade has been removed permanently, as it is nothing more than a windsail when open and Black Widow spider collector when retracted
  • in the mesh baskets behind both seats, I have left one two-month old copy of the Saratoga Times, three miscellaneous advertisements for home improvement service providers in the area, five pieces of recyclable plastic bottles, an assortment of plastic candy wrappers and one Monterey pine cone.
  • both child seats are closer together in this model, fostering plenty of sibling rivalry, which means more fist fighting between siblings than ever before possible, and these fights will climax just before you hit a wall in your workout or race
  • for this reason, constant overstuffing has left ample room in the baskets behind each seat for baseball bats and clubs with which to pacify quarrels so that you may focus on your workout or race
  • in the basket under the carriage, you will find one (1) furry ball that was originally thought to be an owl pellet worth picking up on the sidewalk (to later dissect with the boys, duh), but which, after one month and several sideways glances, suggested itself as a hairy dog turd. I believe this only enhances the owner experience, but you may remove it if inclined. I was too intimidated to decide for you.
  • also intended to enhance user satisfaction is the puke-impregnated ballistic nylon seat fabric itself, on not one but both seats of the stroller

  I would like to personally commend your ballsy nature in managing to walk into our backyard in the middle of the day and rip off this sunbleached, haggard piece of rotten baby gear. In doing so, you have liberated me from having to push two screaming boys up and down our neighborhood hills while simultaneously whining to a husband who tunes me out to the drone of indie music on his iPod.

  Thank you!

  
  
• 04.11.08
  evening run
  Daily, Running, Seeing, Sketchbook (4)

  

  evening run, originally uploaded by young@art.

  I’ve switched to running in the evenings, now that they’re longer. 4.1 miles of solitude. This is my favorite part of the year, when I can run at evening twilight. The frogs are concentrated in huge creekside communities. To approach them is like coming to a college football game at fourth quarter; they are loud, gregarious and totally in the moment, ringing a million musical cheers at the moonrise.

  I love the dark silhouettes hugging the landscape, alive with busy little yellow kitchen windows and spiked with crow-topped tv antennaes and the sound of children playing on dewy grass.

  sumi ink on watercolor, Moleskine sketchbook.

  
  
• 03.04.07
  Squinting in the sunshine
  Daily, Running, Seeing, Thinking (1)

  I am traversing the eastern slope of Fremont Open space, and I’m walking along a terrace once trafficked perhaps by laborers on this former orchard as they roamed from tree to tree during harvest. What kinds of trees? I don’t know. Today their gnarled, leafless, stunted silhouettes stand arabesque upon the hill above me, black and static amid the flowing grasses, beneath the hovering falcon. Birdsong travels like a current over the terrain, bees are busy buzzing in the clover mats, hummingbirds fighting in the treelimbs. I stop along the trail while Seti sniffs the newspaper; it’s Sunday and the weeds hang with dog pee here and there along the worn trail. The entire hillside is tense with new life. You can almost feel the warm ground quake beneath you, a mycelium overtaking winter’s rot, aerating the bedrock, paving the way for shooting rhizomes and weeds. Little yellow wildflowers sway with glossy grass. If I were to try drawing three square inches of this space I might scream; beneath the mat of green urgency lies an even tinier world, a lilliputian army of plants and fungi working together to hold the soil firmly against the hillside. A linear delight, it reminds me of Dutch painting and discovering the architecture of dandelions and drawing for hours on end, without interruption. But today I’m plodding onwards, at times tugging the dog to urge him faster, so I might get back to unpack yet more boxes, and break down more boxes, making space in the mudroom for this naked and young morning light to pour into our house and penetrate the walls with its warm yawn.

  
  
• 10.16.06
  Elgin Sausage Stampede
  Daily, Ford, Photos, Running (0)

  

  On Saturday morning, we rediscovered our old college schedule of getting up early and hauling ass to class, except this time we went to Elgin for a Sausage Run. I loved the morning drive, creeping out of night across the hills, still blanketed in fog. It’s so breathtaking, this yawn of daybreak. I usually sleep through it, as do my children; we are a family that wakes up twenty minutes before school starts, and somehow this works for us. But to see what I’ve been missing makes me want to curb my nocturnal habits. Passing by our neighbors along the road, little glowing windows inside each shadowed house reminds me of forgotten habits: frosty morning jogs along Balckburn avenue in Providence, cats on the prowl in driveways that I pass, concert flyers waving on telephone poles, and showering before breakfast; the opposite sequence to my current routine, a thousand miles south.

  Ford, quietly pouting in the center of the universe, was disappointed that the race didn’t include him. So we pulled back, letting him sprint every now and then through the old town streets and across train tracks. I even gave him my number, and trailed behind him through the finish line. I want to be the family that runs together. It’s a lifelong sport. And my hip was killing me so this made good pretense. He ate it up.

  A proper fun run, this race divvied up a kegger at the finish line along with steaming pork sausage (note: the best in Texas) and while I dislike eating pork, I couldn’t resist pints of beer and hot sausage to follow the trail of woodsmoke that carried me from start to finish along the uninspired smalltown route. Even better: a bounce house for the squirts to decompress while we shotgunned refreshments.

  
  
• 05.24.06
  The Child Naps A Lot
  Austin, Chas, Daily, Running, Sketchbook (1)

  

  It’s not fair that Chas can nap like this without me. But Ford will have none of it. He meets my exhaustion sometimes with sandpaper to my nerves, and I could just cry. So I’ve started taking vitamins more regularly, and with exercise and a little more sleep I’ve built up a better defense against the afternoon slump. Damon has introduced me to blackberry sage iced tea in mason jars. And I’ve taken up painting the sleeping babe.

  I signed up for an encaustic painting class. A while back, I mentioned Amy Ruppel and her wonderful buttery paintings. I love this texture. It’s what I’m craving, more fat. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to learn for years, it’s just been hard to find an instructor. Lo and behold, they have one in Austin at the Laguna Gloria. So I cancelled our Vegas plans and am now sitting primly on the edge of my seat, waiting for two weeks to pass so I can start playing with oils and beeswax.

  There are no more caterpillars. I keep waiting for a second generation to spill out of the trees but they haven’t arrived. I jogged along the creek today. The white rocks are dry now and milk-green where water trickled down only weeks ago, runoff from uphill. The pools where the big fish swim are coated with pollen and dust and milkweed tufts. Every big patch of sunlight holds a surprise along the trail. I’ve learned to ignore the scattering spiny lizards and squirrels. At the last minute, before my foot falls on them, they dart into shadows, bark and leaves flying behind them. So I ford through the little forest community, knowing it will all unfold before me.

  Unless it doesn’t. My foot descends on a fat snake. Like the recoil of a shotgun, I yank back with so much force that I pull a muscle in my chest. But the snake is safe, motionless, and only as I bend down to study it does it slink into a rotten tree stump. Who knows what else I’ve narrowly missed?

  
  
• 04.21.06
  Over the Weather
  Austin, Daily, Exploring, Running, Seeing (2099)

  I watched the kid’s sunhats bob and spin in the Twinner this morning as I pushed them up and down the neighborhood hills. Left and right, the wildflowers! Everywhere, embroidering the landscape with color. Like butterflies, we stopped at every honeysuckle to sample the sugar; Ford wouldn’t let a single vine pass unplucked. Australian cowdogs bounded to greet us, licking sunscreen off our hands, as we walked under the arching necks of blooming yuccas, a mature hedge that bordered their yard.

  We spent another day at home, but mostly outdoors: pruning trees, training vines, repotting, chasing black bear caterpillars across pavement. In the middle of the day, we watched the storm pass in green darkness, spraying a horizontal rain and dropping hail between the boards of our patio the size of small grapes. Then the sky opened like a vault, and I got a wild hair to drive the kids down to the lake, where I waded into the water with a hand cultivator and a pickle jar, collecting aquatic plants.
  I thought it would make the betta happy.

  But we survived the last day of the flu: grimacing with every cough that blew my way; washing, washing, washing; spicy seafood soup with lemongrass and mushrooms from the Thai restaurant down the road; iced tea in mason jars with fresh spearmint; bundling up into the down comforter to watch Godzilla movies with Ford in blue twilight. His hair is thicker, no longer baby-like. I’m finding it difficult to snuggle with him, he has grown lean and long.

  I laid there, in the rain, remembering cocooning like this in the Airstream. With Ford I would snuggle up in the same comforter, womblike and warm, under the air-conditioning’s permafrost. We’d lay there, wrapped in down and encircled with window: we’d curl up and watch the water crash on the rugged Kennebunkport coastline, or tractors plow by, or passersby swoon at our silver bullet bling.

  I ran through the neighborhood again, backtracking alone. This time, to the stopwatch. I started out pounding but eventually glided, like I was pedalling up and down the hills. I have retrained my upper body to assist, my legs to reach higher. My eyes followed the powerlines, where birds were busy preening in peace: cardinals, mourning doves, Whitewing doves, Scrub jays, cowbirds. Above them swooped chimney swifts, and the whole lot of them were in song. A four-foot cedar stump jumped out at me from the bushes, black and damp. I never noticed it this morning, but I imagine it was bone dry and pale, then. But that’s the bunny in the magician’s hat, why I stayed to watch the show and left my gym bag in the car, only two inches further out the driveway.

  
  

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• It’s not just a marathon.
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