Table of Marathons

11 MCM (not for time) 11 Wineglass (950/1442)
10 MCM (not for time) 09 MCM (348/1076)
09 Washington's Birthday Marathon (22/44) 08 MC Historic Half (51/210)
07 Frederick Marathon (32/60) 06 MCM (394/1076)
05 MCM (547/1047)

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Season's First Ice Puddle

Running under the waning moon, we came across a puddle on the road. Denise squealed with delight when she realized it was iced over. Stepping on it, it was as if she had forgotten how slippery ice could be.

I thought the bright dot next to the moon was Venus. http://earthsky.org/tonight tells me it is Jupiter. Note as romantic, but just as beautiful. Jupiter is so large, it could be the much closer, albeit small, Venus.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Choose

In my mind, to run is to chose who you are. By running my nine miles, I chose to eschew the indolent self-indulgence that Wall Street and Madison Avenue always tell me I deserve. The Maryland weather was chilly today, 37 F, but breezy. This yielded a wind chill of 25F. My miles came and went easily. I saw a hawk high above, patrolling our neighborhood like a fighter plane from 1944.

To run is to embrace Sparta over Madison Avenue's Gomorrah.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Set

I ran the sun down today. Running the sun up is a completely different experience. Your body wakes slowly with the world around you as you click off the morning's miles. Morning is beginning, it is potential and possibility. The world of bats and foxes turns to one of robins, hawks, and mocking birds. The wind picks up as the warming sun disturbs the air. The sun rise braces me for the day.

I watch the sun, low on the horizon, preparing for its final drop to the earth. The day is closing; my mind always wants to close at sunset. For 37 years, the day's pall has curtained the world and my mind. I continue to run under the blustery blue fall sky. The sun offers no warmth. My run comes easily. Nine miles tick by. My legs feel fresh, effort is the only warmth at this sunset.

The stresses of the summer reduced my weekly mileage to 10 to 20 miles per week. I don't know if I was right or wrong, or weak, or unfocused to let it happen. But now is the time to re-balance my life. It is ironic that I find success more stressful than failure. That life continues to give me everything I shoot for startles me. I feel indebted at my good look and beholden to make the best of this fleeting chance. I strive harder to take advantage of this one break of good luck. But the good luck always comes.

9 miles today on this first return to standard time. What I run in the next 7 days is all that matters.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Trail Running Season

Its appropriately the Saturday after the autumnal equinox. The morning's temperature was in the low 50's and we decided that deer tick activity would be suppressed. So we ran the first trail run of the season in Green Belt National Park, 3.5 miles along perimeter trail. Denise loves the trails and hurled herself on the downhill sections. She easily out-ran my comfortable pace. I worried that she wasn't wearing gloves, fearing she might have a close encounter with mud, rocks, and roots.

She exclaimed that she felt 12 again. I couldn't help ponder the remark. Just weeks after her 54th birthday, she's racing down rough, single-track, woodland trails feeling like an adolescent. With her commitment to exercise and healthy living, each year underscores how different her path in life had become when compared to her peers.

I know that endurance exercise is not pill for eternal youth. By comparison with it, though, what is passed off as normal life to the rest of us is actually suicidal. 

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

New Starts

I had gastroenteritis over the weekend and missed my long run. It has been a challenge to work up to that distance this month.

I began my run this morning in the darkness of the new moon of February. As I clicked off miles in anticipation of my 1200 meter repeats at mile 5, I realized Mars was hanging large, low, and red in the West. It was all the brighter due to the lack of the moon and Venus. I thought that it was somehow fitting to run intense repeats under the light of Mars.

By mile 5, Mars was waning in the gathering light of the dawn. The repeats went well, my pace was fast and easier than expected, despite the food losses of the weekend. As I finished my run, the sun was cresting the hills in the east, but not yet above the trees. Long fingers of light reached up into the dwindling mists of the pre-dawn morning.

It was a good run.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Mind

This is a "down" week for me. Only 3.7 miles in a light 50 F pre-dawn drizzle. On reduced mileage weeks, I get into that "its only 4-5 miles, so why do it at all" mentality. With the rain compounding it, I had an unusual struggle to get my behind out there.


The running is self-defining. Running in the rain is more so. I don't know why this has come to be. In the end, we have nothing but what we have produced in ourselves. Even that is transient.


But its done. Through in a mile above anaerobic threshold pace for good measure.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Its almost 60 F out there this morning. I could hear frogs chirping in the wetlands in our subdivision as I ran by.

I did 8 miles in the warm, wet, windy weather. 2 miles at tempo pace. I could have been without a shirt and comfortable.

I almost didn't go out this morning, having awaken sluggish and really tired. Three 8 milers in the workweek combined with standing all day at work is really taxing my system. As a plus, I've been good at holding to my weight training schedule, something I've not achieved over the past few years. The total effect, however, is to be fairly tired on Friday morning.

One has to apply stress to get the adaptation.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Athletainment

I work in a casual environment, more like a college campus than corporate America. On Fridays, many come to work in NFL jerseys celebrating the entertainment and athletic achievements of their respective football teams. During the playoffs, troops of highly specialized entertainers compete to play in a final performance held in February. This annual rite of passage costs its spectators millions of hours and dollars. Fans of the final winner come away bloated with pride and ego, though, in fact, the only thing they have achieved is an extra pound or two from the over-eating and drinking that usually occurs while watching the games. In twelves months most will not remember the final score.

I have five MCM competitor jerseys now. Each Friday, I wear an MCM jersey to work to celebrate my own athletic achievements. They were earned on runs like this Sunday's: 15 miles in quiet, under a cloudy, gray sky, with 29 F. and 22 F. wind chill.

Bragging rights are something you personally earn. They do not result from the accidents of being a fan.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

New Beginnings

After my last marathon of the year, I go into aimless running. It is both good and bad. I run because it has become part of my nature, but I don't run the hard runs that result from goal-setting. It is a hiatus from ambition, where I just express the nature I have created for myself.

New Year's day the weather was magnificent, nearly 50 F. and sunny. Denise and I ran, reveling in the spirit of the beginning of a new year. My aches from October's marathon efforts were gone. Like in previous years, I felt that need to train myself to go longer and faster once again.

I failed to achieve a PR in 2011. Now I feel set against my 2011 self: I feel the need to overcome what I was and produce a new state of being.

I have to wonder how many 56 year old males still look forward to their next lifetime personal records (PRs).

Life is an act of self-creation. You are what you have the will to be. In the end, what you have created is all you have.