Running Log: October 20th - October 26th

This week in training. . . 

October 20th:

No running. There were certain areas of my body that bore the brunt of my efforts on the long run the day before which required a day of tender care before returning to the road.

October 21st:

5 miles, 40 minutes: Back from the day off to the let the chafing heal. The human body is really something: Saturday I felt like death and had to waddle around for the rest of the day. Sunday I felt mostly fine. Monday I felt terrific. The legs were a little stiff but I opened up at the end.

October 22nd: 

4 miles, 30 minutes: Ran fast today. Mostly unplanned. I run at 5:30 and it is very dark and very unusual to see another person. But this morning I rounded the corner on to another street and there on the other side of the wide road was another runner who had been running straight. And he was running fast. So I beared down a little more than normal to put some distance between us. I felt great. The weather has turned back to gorgeous fall days. It was in the 40s when I ran this morning. Absolutely perfect running weather. I have always said that my favorite conditions require running in shorts, a t-shirt, and with gloves on my hands. I have had two of those days in a row now.

October 23rd:

5.5-6 miles, 45ish minutes: Boy, it will be nice when I have more accurate metrics on these runs. But part of me is convinced that going sans technology is a good thing for my running right now. I am not running to a distance or speed which is probably safer when you are building a base. In any event, today felt good again. Nothing new to report.

October 24th:

No run. Planned day off. My instinct is to run every day, but I need to pace myself. Plus, I got to sleep in until 6. Scandalous. 

October 25th:

4 miles, 32 minutes: Clara worked today which means I need to finish my run by 6:15 so I can shower before she leaves. Cold, crisp morning. Cold and uncomfortable for the first ten minutes or so but then the body adjusted nicely. Saw a gaggle of runners from the university doing some morning easy running. Some mornings the accountability of a partner would be nice. Ran fine, just not much pop.

October 26th:

4 miles running, 10 miles biking: Clara worked today which pushed off my long run for the week to Sunday. I went to the Y with the kids in the morning and tried to run on a treadmill. I forgot how terrible they are. Just awful. I would rather run in the coldest cold than on a treadmill. I ran four miles and then rode a stationary bike. I just can't bring myself to lift weights. People talk about running being boring, but all that weightlifters do is pick something up and put it right back down where they got it. I cranked up the resistance on the bike and let the quads burn.

Weekly Total: 22.5 miles

Ghosts Trying to Hold the World

Any parent in the world will easily relate to the following:

"Parents in love with their kids are all amnesiacs, trying to remember, trying to cherish moments, ghosts trying to hold the world. Being mortals, having a finite mind when surrounded by joy that is perpetually rolling back into the rear view is like always having something important on the tips of our tongues, something on the tips of our fingers, always slipping away, always ducking our embrace.

No matter how many pictures we take, no matter how many scrapbooks we make, no matter how many moments we invade with a rolling camera, we will die. We will vanish. We cannot grab and hold. We cannot smuggle things out with us through death. . .

But this shouldn’t inspire melancholy; it should only tinge the sweet with the bitter. Don’t resent the moments simply because they cannot be frozen. Taste them. Savor them. Give thanks for that daily bread. Manna doesn’t keep overnight. More will come in the morning."

N.D. Wilson, Death by Living (107)

I constantly find myself trying to capture moments with Owen and Eleanor. Trying to remember the first time they did this or that thing (the feeling is more intense with Owen since he is older and therefore more active). Yesterday in the afternoon I was putting my shoes on to go out to the backyard and play with him. He already had his shoes on so he ran out back without me. I was watching through the open back door and he took off running after our chickens who had escaped their enclosure. When we first moved into this house and took over care of the chickens he loved to chase them across the yard. He had this sort of manic glee in his laugh as he chased them up and down the yard. It was cute, but not good. Poor girls get flustered easily. I was about to holler at him to stop when I realized what he was doing. He wasn’t chasing them arbitrarily for some sort of sadistic pleasure; he was putting them back in their enclosure. Just like daddy does. He had his arms out to try and corral them and ran down each one and forced them back to the fenced-in area. He shut the gate and grabbed the brick that we prop against it to keep it shut. By the time I got outside the job was done and he was standing proudly asking to play football. He wanted us to have the yard to ourselves.

Even as I write this story, with the event barely 24 hours past I know I am missing things. I know I have lost some of the special grace of that moment. The way he moved, the way the sun slanted into our yard, the look of accomplishment, that perfect running stride.

Those moments proliferate when you are a parent. And you can’t keep hold of them. But you are constantly moving forward into a new moment. This morning he came downstairs and roared at me like a lion (a ferocious lion) because that scares me. Then he said “Hi, beautiful” to his sister and bent over and kissed her. 

"When the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell with it." 

His mercies are new every morning.

Running Log: October 13th-October 19th

I thought this would be a good idea as far as accountability goes. I feel like for the first time since we left El Paso my running is getting to a place where not only am I not ashamed of how I am running, but it has also regained some centrality to my life. To be a good runner you have to think of yourself as a runner. Otherwise you are just someone trying to keep the love handles at bay. So I thought I would post a weekly training schedule, including some brief thoughts on how I ran and what I can improve on moving forward. All of my distances are estimated at this point. Christmas money will bring a new GPS watch and more accurate data.

So, here it goes:

October 13th

No run today, though an eight hour car ride with two small children is an endurance event in its own right. We were in Fort Collins for a friend's wedding and the weekend included almost no exercise, save for the shock to my heart of the first (two or so) Rio margaritas in many years.

October 14th

5 miles, 40 minutes: Back at it on a Monday morning. So strange to be running in such pitch blackness all of the time. Felt rested and fresh after a weekend off. Springy stride, good even pace.

October 15th

4-1/2 miles, 35 minutes: No bathroom break, an anomaly in my early morning runs, allowed me to stretch out a bit farther away from the house. Beautiful weather.

October 16th

No run. Mama worked and I lost the willpower to get out of my comfortable bed at 5 a.m.

October 17th

5 miles, 40 minutes: Cold, cold, cold. First day wearing running tights. Tears in my eyes from the cold. And it wasn't even that cold. It is going to be a long winter.

October 18th

No run. Planned day off to rest for the Saturday long run.

October 19th

2-1/2 hours. 18-19 miles. This was easily the longest run I have done since the 50k I did in May of 2010 which, for those keeping track, was a long damn time ago. In short, I felt fantastic. I left the house at 7 and ran in the dark for nearly an hour until the sun came up. When it did I was several miles east of town and turned south down a dirt road. The sun was rising to my left and to my right was the full moon. It was perfect. Ecstatic. One of those running moments where you don't feel like you are running. I was just running and smiling and singing. Praising God and soaking in the beauty.

Which, unfortunately, didn't last forever. The following paragraph will relate in some anatomical detail the perils of long distance running. Proceed with caution. I haven't worn running tights very often and never for a long run. In El Paso I rarely ran before work because I didn't come home to kids so I would just go after work and it would be warm enough to wear shorts because, desert. On long run weekends it might be cold when I started, but it would be in the 60s by the time I finished. So I just had cold legs for the first hour or so and was comfortable the rest of the time. This past Saturday it was sub-freezing when I started (we got our first snow on Friday) and wouldn't warm up much as I trucked on. So I wore tights, which, again, I had never done for longer than 5 or 6 miles. Being a novice to tights I neglected to wear underwear beneath them, thinking that the elastic would work fine. Fifteen miles later it felt as if someone had taken sandpaper to my nether region. I was about to cry. I stopped on the side of the road in some trees and removed my tights and ran commando with my high school gym shorts the rest of the way. Which didn't help a great deal. The damage had been done. I ran until I was about a mile from home and then walked the rest of the way in awkward duck fashion.

But instead of dwelling on the negative, I will say that despite the third degree burns on my special parts this was the best run I have had in years. I felt great. Even when the injury was apparent I was still smiling. It felt so great to be out there. Before I about curled up in a ball on the trail I was thinking of extending my run to three hours. I never have done that in the past--made a long run longer. A wonderful feeling.

Weekly Totals: 33.5 miles, 265 minutes