Running In Place

I’m not sure where to begin, I have had a weird couple of weeks - not because of any specific external occurrences, just some internal wheels turning and I’m not quite sure what set them in motion.

It kind of started with me just suddenly getting very down and emotionally overwhelmed about my work with hospice. On the whole, I find it very gratifying and feel pretty honored that people would allow me into their homes and into their lives at this precious time. I can very often find renewal in the most unexpected things and can laugh with people in what seem to be the most dire times. But lest I sound too romantic about the whole affair, the truth is that dying is hard work, and my work - which is to alleviate suffering to the best of my abilities - sometimes fails. And sometimes that gets the better of me.
So anyway, this is not a “poor me” post, just a precursor to all the other (good) stuff.

1) Good Stuff # 1 - After half seriously considering resuming my former career as a bartender, things started to shift back into alignment and I came out of my funk. One super-cool thing was (and this is total ego parading by sharing this) that I ran into a lady I used to work with prior to nursing school - at a job that I left to attend nursing school. She, herself just graduated from the same nursing school this past May and she told me that I was her inspiration for pursuing nursing at all, and that she’s so happy she did. I mean, c’mon, I’m in crisis, I’m questioning my career if not my sanity, and I trip over this person who I haven’t seen in 3+ years and she lays this on me. This wasn’t the only thing that put me back in one piece but it was probably the most overtly “so wildly coincidental that it borders on divine intervention” episode. So the moral of this is Dude, show your gratitude! If there’s someone you are thankful to for something, anything - tell ‘em. You might be the hand of god at just the right moment. Ok, I’m waxing a little dramatic - next topic….

Good Stuff #2 - For a little while now I have been percolating this return to an awareness of my sense of the world and my impact on it. I grew up in an ethically vegetarian household (a ?farm? actually, where all the goats, sheep, cows, chickens, ducks, geese, etc. were pets and not food). My mom was a closet hippie and my little sister is a total granola girl. I moved to the big city (of 60,000 ) and just managed to move farther and farther away from that mindset. Maybe it?s running ? honestly, I suspect it is ? that somewhere along the way made me care what I put in my body. Not just in terms of avoiding junk food, which was the first incarnation, but now in terms of avoiding pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, adrenaline, preservatives, chemicals, etc, etc, etc ? which is the current incarnation. Taking that further still, I start to think about my cosmetics and animal testing, my cleaning products and their effect on ground water, my coffee and fair trade farming, ?walmart culture? and the effects on local businesses and foreign laborers. Yikes!! What the hell is wrong with me??!?! Well, so be it. Running bit my ass out of nowhere ? all of sudden it just mattered, now this. Unexplained, but here on my doorstep so I guess I will let it in.

Good Stuff #3 ? Indeed I did save the actual running stuff till last just to keep the fair reader hooked. Throughout all my wild ponderings and machinations I have been running. Have been building up the minutes running and fretting over the soon-to-be-lost minute walking - pretty much until today. Today was one of those days ? when you?re la machine ! 15 minutes running and 1 minute walking x 2 for the 3rd time this week ? and this time I knew that I would be ok when the time came to just run. I was strong throughout, not necessarily fast, but consistent - and finishing strong, and I got one of those renewing moments when I can clearly see my progress (which is always there but oft overlooked). As the time and distance I run increases, and as I call on my body to continually go a little more beyond its comfort zone each time, and consequently have the internal war as I jog down the path - stop or keep going - I have tried on different mantras for size. Onward and After are of course the 2 most notable that come to mind, but - for my own self - I was having some trouble making them work for me. For me, I was finding that anticipating the future (the next minute, the next tree, the 1/2 mile mark, etc) was taking alot of my focus away from the moment and I would really begin to struggle. A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across a quote from Eido T. Shimano Roshi whom a friend of mine studied under, and it has really seemed to work for me.
Eido Roshi says: “The essence of Zen is so simple that it can be described in one short word: JUST. Just! Just this! Right here, right now!” So for me, when I am sapping my energy by anticipating how far I have to go - I try to come back to where I am and keep repeating - Just. Just Now. This has helped me tremendously.

Now, to completely negate that train of thought - here’s my plan for the future: Next week I run 30 minutes, the week after that I start my 5k training for the Jan. 1 Resolution Run. I’m even going to go to the stupid gym and do the stupid weights. Believe it or not, I’m trying to keep a positive attitude about what I guess I’m considering a necessary evil (weight training, which is not running and no fun!!).

Ok, this concludes a moderately non-running, somewhat angst-ridden, annoyingly existential post. I am so not kidding when I say Thanks for listening

Yup I am! It only takes me a minute of thinking back over how I spent my summer not running to get that big ol’ stupid happy feeling about running. Especially since it’s so nice and cool now (40’s - 50’s), especially since I alway seem to have my beautiful little trail to myself now and I love the solitude, and especially since I’m running a whole darn mile without stopping!! Actually a little more than a mile - woo hoo! What happened was I boosted my running time from 8 minutes to 12 minutes and the mile came and went - I didn’t even think about it at first until I saw the mile marker and I was like, “oh shit - look what I did!” So I took a 2 minute walk break after the first 12 minutes and turned around and did it again!

I have done that for the past 2 days and my paces have been between 10:33 - 10:55 for each mile. I know because garmin told me so. That’s fun too! (though I keep thinking “is that possible????).

So I’m (probably annoyingly) happy. In August I was running 15 seconds to 1 minute walking (and grateful to do that!). Now I’m thinking this running thing just might work out after all and I’m thinking this is going to be a great winter, and I’m thinking I’m going to rock the Boilermaker next year, and and and! The universe is good.

It’s been a good week. I got out there 4 days and did the 8 min/1 min gig without much at all in the way of discomfort. Really only one day with a slight achilles twinge and it was brief. I think I am fortunate that I don’t (and really didn’t before injury) have trouble with sore muscles or joints during or after running though that may change when I am running actual distances for actual uninterupted periods of time. Right now it’s kind of like me telling a triathelete that I don’t get sore from laying on the couch

So that brings me to why I’m silly. If all goes according to my schedule, next week I will go 12 minutes running /1 minute walking, the following week 15/1 and the next week 30 minutes continuous running. For some reason, last night while running I started to fret about losing my 1 minute walk break. I didn’t realize what a security blanket it had become. Pre-injury, while I was going through the beginners schedule - increasing run time/decreasing walk time, that walk break really bothered me. I convinced myself that it was what was keeping me from being the famous, elusive “real runner” that we beginners keep waiting for like an epiphany from above. This time around I think that I equate losing the walk break with getting injured and I am reluctant to let it go, even though at that point I imagine I’ll be physically ready and I will logically know that I in no way rushed this training. Ultimately, I’ll just do it, just run and get accustomed to it (and yes I can walk any time I please, though that’s not the goal), and all this worry will have been wasted energy.

Not going mountain climbing after all this weekend. Wind gusts of up to 50 mph are expected and the last thing we need is a bunch of little girl scouts fluttering down the mountain like leaves from trees. I got some super-cool books the other day:

50 Hikes in the Adirondacks: Short Walks, Day Trips, and Backpacks Throughout the Park

Fifty Hikes in Central New York: Hikes and Backpacking Trips from the Western Adirondacks to the Finger Lakes

Longstreet Highroad Guide To The New York Adirondacks

I’m also reading:

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

but that’s for another post.

Good week so far! Increased my running time from 5 to 8 minutes without too much difficulty. The beginner’s schedule I’ve been following suggested a 2 minute walk break but I thought I’d like to stick to 1 minute if possible and that worked out fine. Doing that for 3 reps has gotten me about 2.2 - 2.5 miles - and (knocking wood here) no ankle or achilles pain. Well, a slight achilles twinge here and there but negligible. The way the rest of this schedule plays out, I hope to be running a continuous 30 minutes by the first week in November. I had pretty much planned on the American Heart Assoc. Heart Run 5k in early March but then I was thinking “why wait that long??” Now winters around here can be somwhat extreme so it’s hard to find too many races during that season, but they’re there - particularly around the holidays. So I found a Resolution Run 5k on 1/1/2005 in Syracuse, which is about an hour west of me, and I thought that would be a very fitting first race. Brian and I were never much for going out or partying on New Year’s Eve so no hangover danger to be had (maybe that will give me an edge over some of the other runners ). Anyway, that’s the plan!

I do so love this season! The air is cool and dry, the colors are beautiful, the deer come around to eat off our apple tree, Tom Turkey and his harem are hanging out in the front yard again. Here in the foothills of the Adirondacks, where we already have 50 degree days and 30 degree nights, where the beautiful red, yellow, and orange leaves will be gone in 2 weeks tops, and where by the end of the month we may well have snow cover, I am reminded again how overwhelmingly beautiful I find this area. The only thing I’m sad about is that the hummingbirds are gone.

My sister and I will do a little mountain climbing while we can this month, starting with ushering her Girl Scout troop up Bald Mountain . Then, when the snow comes it will be time for x-country and downhill skiing. Not that I’m very good at either of these but for some reason I feel much more alive and wanting to be active in the cold weather months than in the summer. I’m hoping to make alot of progress with running during this time as well. I’m feeling happy.

So, running - well today I felt a great deal better than I have and since my congestion had decreased so considerably I thought “why not, if I can’t breath I’ll walk it.” It was a beautiful day - sunny, mid-50’s, breeze - so perfect. Doing the 5:1’s x 5 reps went fine. I was feeling kind of fatigued but I just kept it slow and felt great for having gotten out and moving after a few days on the couch. As I was heading back and about a mile and a half from the parking area, a group of 15 or 20 guys were accumulating at the access road that crosses the trail. They looked military and all had on matching t-shirts that said C.E.R.T. Team. I kept chugging along and when I was near the end of the trail, doing my cool down walking, along they came charging. I beat feet over to the grass and stayed out of the way. At the end there was a guy calling out times, though I didn’t catch any of them. Turns out they were the Corrections Emergency Response Team from one of the 4 prisions in our area. They handle prisoner unrest and uprisings, and also transport prisoners. They are periodically required to demonstrate their physical fitness to stay on the team. One guy was over on the grass throwing up and the guy I briefly talked to said “I hate running.” Well sure, if running a mile as fast as you can once a year is your only exposure. He said “do you like it??” To which I responded with a big ol’ smile and said “I love it!!!”