bananas

I knew it was not going to be my best race. Diane really wanted to do this 5K with a buddy though, and how could I say no? I laced up and tried to get my head in the game. 

Just like that, we were off. After the initial rush of the start, Diane pointed out a runner ahead of us, and we silently agreed to overtake them. Once that was done, she picked another one.

Before I knew it, we could see the finish line ahead at the top of a rise. We knew what we had to do. Diane and I had a longstanding pact that we must pick up our pace for any hill. We grimly glanced at each other, then laid on the coal.

Breathless, we sailed across the finish line. Panting and sweating, we gratefully grabbed the bottles of water held out to us. As we walked off the race, we each snagged a banana, too.

Finally, we tumbled down onto the cool grass in the shade of a big tree. We looked at each other with goofy smiles. 

Diane held her banana up in the air.

“To your best personal time ever!” she proclaimed.

I held my banana up, too. “And to yours!” 

We clinked our bananas together in happy celebration.

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Many thanks to Eugi’s Causerie for another great prompt!

the transformative power of a run

A to Z challenge, theme: anatomy, day 12: L
Flash essay, 100 words 

I linger over my coffee, brooding. I’m sluggish, resistant. I sit half-heartedly fighting the ennui that keeps me in the chair with my melancholy thoughts. It would be so easy to just … not.

Somehow, I manage to make myself lace up, get up and out the door. I walk fast. Finally, I’m running. 

Legs pumping. Feet feeling the ground. Air in my lungs. Eyes soaking in the trees, the sky, the path ahead. I feel my aliveness with joy and gratitude, aware of my heart of compassion, my kinship with all of life. Creativity blooms. It’s a beautiful day.

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earth and me

I keep a wary eye on the darkening clouds as I head out for my run. I know it can’t be too long before the weather unleashes, but, damn, I need to run. So, off I go.

At first, it’s just a few drops of spattered rain. Big deal. Maybe the whole thing will just skirt past. I’ve got my phone in a baggie.

I keep going until all of a sudden the wind whips up, and there’s a rush of rain, a clap of thunder. I duck into the high school baseball team dugout as the weather moves through, just a few minutes. We’re right on the edge of it.

When I step out of the dugout, and onto the asphalt trail, I notice the bright green sprig that’s fallen there. The wind whips it, but it remains in place. It looks so fresh and so beautiful, so alive against the asphalt.

I pick up my pace because I can see the clouds amassing, not thinning. They are angrily piling up and darkening, and I head homeward, disappointed that I won’t get more miles in.

I’m not all that far from home when the skies break loose, exploding with a sudden violence.  Wind, rain, lightening. I dash toward a school building. There’s an awning reaching out from the entrance doors. I head there and find just a little shelter. The wind is driving rain everywhere.

I feel so exposed, so defenseless as nature lets go. All I can do is stand and watch as lightening strikes and thunder claps, over and over.  The wind pushes the rain into unexpected places. There is nothing to do but watch, and be amazed.

It’s bigger than me. And yet, I feel connected right through my feet as the thunder rolls. I am soaked with the rains. I am awed and humbled, scared and honored.

When the fury subsides, I trot home, thankful, taking nothing for granted. 

the long month of february

Contrary to the simplistic assertions of the calendar, February is, in fact, the longest month of the year. Ask any Michigander.

The cold, the snow, and the dearth of sunshine conspire to thwart our typical notion of time. Where once life carried on with abandon, now the terrain is silent, stark, and foreboding. The snow is piled up into formidable mountains under heavy, grey skies. The short days of winter are long and wearying.

Rarely does the sun emerge from behind those walls of gray clouds to beckon us to venture forth. It’s cold. Really cold. All the time.

Precious few dare a walk or run. It’s a lonely endeavor. Still, for some of us, there’s an instinct that compels us get out, to move one’s limbs, to feel the whole arc of our selves.

Sidewalks are generally a thing of the past, of course. Where folks made the effort and actually did clear their sidewalks, those turn out to be the most treacherous stretches for walking anyway – they have turned into unmaintainable ice sheets.

As a result, one walks or runs in the road, and at their peril. The roads themselves leave little space for a pedestrian. The snow and the ice encroach on the traveled portion of the pavement, forcing one to be wary and nimble, always prepared to negotiate oncoming traffic. It’s a sketchy endeavor.

It’s actually not strange to be forced to stop now and then just to figure out how to get from one point to another, like across a street. There may be such an amalgamation of dicey ice and snow mountains and traffic that it demands to be puzzled out in advance. Sometimes, the best course of action is actually to turn around and go back.

Nevertheless, those of us committed to walking or running persist. It remains, always, uplifting to get out into the air, if frigid. To see the trees, to hear the birds and be amazed by them. To spy the squirrels, still about their business somehow. To observe the dark river push its way through the stark landscape, sometimes carrying icy chunks. To feel the freedom of movement in space. To simply allow one’s mind to relax and expand beyond the confines of indoors.

I admit to feeling restricted to walking. The roadways are just too unpredictable and hazardous for me to feel safe running. And I am anxious to run. I need to run. I have considered an indoor track, but I yearn for the outdoor one. It’s how I feel whole.

Regardless of my petty needs, the reality is that February just carries on. And on, and on, and on.

I know, however, how these long, bleak days finally transform, making the wait somehow worth it. The little clues begin to show themselves before spring arrives and revives all of the life of this strange, harsh, sleeping world. Then, the long month of February becomes a fleeting illusion, a dream half-forgotten on waking.

It won’t be long. The calendar is proof of that.

feeling the slow

I recently got to do a few miles on the Fred Meijer Heartland Trail. This time of year, it’s rather a lonely place, but I did spy shoe prints, bicycle tracks, and both dog and deer prints in the places where snow still covered the trail.

The day was not actually terribly cold, but it felt like it, with the biting wind. My hands felt frozen inside my gloves, and I dearly wished I had brought a scarf. Nevertheless, as always, it felt so good to be in motion and close to nature.

I wished I could just keep going. When the warm days come, I would love to take my bicycle and do the length of the thing. It traverses the country fields and woods, and a number of small towns. In all, this particular trail extends some 42 miles.

I love the little ghosty things you notice along some of these trails – artifacts of their previous life as a railroad. It’s always delightful to spot an old mile post marker, or to see pieces of the old ties off in the brush. Sometimes there are the empty buildings that obviously stood where they did precisely because of access to the railroad. They had a life, once, and held lives.

I love all that ghosty stuff.

There’s less and less of it, I notice. Progress seems to mean getting rid of things, or updating them to look like something else.

As everything seems to go faster and deeper into all things technology and capitalized, there is something about feeling the slow. When you stand still in those places, it’s the life, the people, you feel. It’s the evidence of personal things, hands-on stuff, the actual relationships that played out in those places that somehow strike one.

As the trail comes into a busier town, it makes me feel more absent, more anonymous, more unseen. Here, there are actual people, not just evidence of them, but there’s a kind of disconnect. They are coming and going, looking at their phones, and hurrying along to the next… what? But I suppose that’s just the way it was, at least in some respects, way back when.

I can’t help but wonder what will we see along the trail some day when we look back.

hey, it’s a start anyway

New Year’s Eve day we had reports of a snowstorm moving in. So, that morning, I am happy to say that I did get out and on the move, hoping to beat the storm. During the first mile, I began to feel the cold pings of sleet, but forged on. It picked up, but never got overwhelming. It turned out to be a great, invigorating run.

The snow didn’t materialize according to schedule. First, there was the long, steady sleet, and eventually it was rain. At a couple of points, it was actually raining pretty hard, with puddles and all. It wasn’t until late in the evening when the rain finally turned to snow. That, of course, meant ice.

I had originally planned to participate in an organized hike on New Year’s morning, one of those First Day Hikes, at a place I had never before visited.  When morning actually arrived, however, it was pretty clear the roads were really too treacherous to get to the starting point. 

Nevertheless, I still made myself venture out on foot. It was a tentative, careful exploration. It was indeed very icy everywhere.

I slowly headed for one of my familiar routes nearby and I just walked, rather mincingly. I knew running was out of the question, but I carefully and gradually picked up a little speed. Most of the time, I crunched my way through the grass since the sidewalks and the roads were really not safe.

I crossed paths with a couple of teens who were delighted to discover just how slippery it was out. They weren’t making much headway, and one took a tumble, but they were getting a good laugh out of it.

All in all, I covered about five miles, albeit with much retracing of steps – happily meditative. I noticed my own footprints as I came upon them, and felt that apparently I actually had made my mark, if ephemeral, on the world.

My New Year’s outing wasn’t fast, but it was good. It made a cheerful compromise, in keeping with my plans for the new year. Staying in motion is so important for my physical and mental/emotional health.

I consider it a good start to 2019.

winter challenges: food and running

All summer long, salad sat at the center of my eating patterns. I mean, you can pretty much throw anything in a salad, after all, and it works. It’s nutritious and tastes great.

Summer did not involve a whole lot of effort going into cooking anything, except for pasta, grains, and the occasional veggie burger.

Then, snow and ice arrived, and it seemed that my whole palate changed.

When I came in from outside, all bundled up and still cold, the thought of making a salad made me shiver. I just wanted to warm up.

The greens began to wither in the fridge as my food thoughts ranged to all things warm, like the vegan meatloaf  I wrote about here – the perfect winter comfort fix.

Chili quickly became a go-to meal. Vegan mac and cheese became an imperative. Lasagne became compelling.

Comforting, filling food took center stage. I wanted stuff I could cook ahead, too, since all I wanted to do at the close of the shockingly short daylight hours was curl up in a blanket.

That whole shorter day thing turned out to be problematic in other ways, too. Along with the snow and ice, it quickly became harder to make myself get out there for my runs. After breaking my shoulder a couple of years ago, I found myself very reluctant to run in the dark, and it’s pretty hard to find time during the day.

So I was into this winter mode of operation – slowing down and filling up – just long enough to notice how it makes me feel different. I don’t like it, either.

I’ve been feeling kind of sluggish and full and sleepy and uncomfortable and like being a couch potato. This is not my style.

Worse, this whole winter thing is just barely getting started. We’ve got months to go.

As I sat and listened to an acquaintance the other day discussing his two heart attacks, diabetes, and various hospitalizations, it occurred to me that I need to be proactive about my unhealthy winter stagnation and feeding tendencies.

The first thing I did was bring salad back. I need my salads. I missed my salads. Comfort food is great in small doses, but salad has to be the main dish for me.

I also did a reset on my hydration, which I realized had become reduced to pretty much anything warm – coffee, tea. I’m back to drinking water in more summerish quantities.

Running is more problematic. I am an outside runner – that is how I get zen. Nevertheless, I may have to resort to using the local indoor track if it’s too frickin’ cold or messy or dark out. This is hard for me to do.

On the weekends, I can make my outdoor runs work – or at least walks or hikes, which is fine if that’s all I manage. The point is to keep moving all through the winter.

I’d like to remain on the move at least five days a week, even if it’s shorter distances than I’m used to.

Since my running is hampered, I can give more love to core and strength exercises. Something to shoot for anyway. Maybe even break down and return to yoga.

Given my current couch potato frame of mind, this is actually a pretty challenging agenda. It’s so important, though, for my physical as well as my mental/emotional well-being.

Wish me luck. Brrrr.

slow motion

Wasn’t feeling the greatest this weekend, so my runs ended up being walks. Yesterday, in an effort to feel better, I tried mixing it up by walking more in the business area of town, but it kind of backfired on me.

The businesses, mostly closed, looked sort of dreary to me. Even the Christmas decorations looked depressing. I ended up just feeling cold and kind of unhappy. I dejectedly gave up and headed back home.

This was a complete surprise to me because, normally, getting myself in motion improves everything in my world. I couldn’t quite believe it.

As I got near home, I decided to give it one more shot by doing one of my routine routes – a route where I know every tree and bump in the road.

That did the trick. I was into it for just a few minutes when everything started clicking again. Yay!

I ended up feeling a lot better, both physically and mentally. My spirits perked up and I felt a little energized for the first time all weekend.

I think perhaps that the key was feeling a little more connected to nature. The more urban environment I tried at the start just didn’t speak to me like the trees on my regular route.  

I had a heck of a time making myself get outside at all in the first place. Feeling fatigued and just a little under the weather were great excuses to stay inside and lounge around. Nevertheless, experience has shown, time and time again, that getting in motion just plain makes me feel better – and it’s good for the soul, too.

hopeful

I head out into a very grey, cold morning. At the start, I’m feeling kind of alert and crisp and on. I make myself go a different way, just to mix things up.

Patches of dark on the pavement make me nervous. I mince along carefully, stopping and testing a few times to see if it’s ice or what. Because it’s all over the place. Never quite convinced, I spend the entire run mincing.

Everything’s quiet. Hardly any traffic. I watch another pair of runners leave me in the dust. That’s okay.

Up a long boulevard with bigger houses, silence. I see a man ahead, also in the road, walking in my direction. I skirt huge piles of icy leaves.

As I near the man, I begin to hear him. He looks at me angrily, daring me, and keeps on walking and talking loudly to the air.

I turn the corner.

Head down another silent street. Notice the smashed, frozen pumpkins. The bicycles sitting forlornly out in the cold. The rake left in the yard amongst the unraked leaves. Various yard decorations, straggling campaign signs, and lawn chairs sit forgotten and sad in this cold.

The flurries pick up, and gently sting my face.

Car comes along, and I swing up onto the sidewalk. A man approaches on a bicycle and makes no room and no comment. I move out of his way.

I notice I am slow this morning. I check my pace, and sure enough, even for me, I am slow.

That’s pretty slow.

I decide to be okay today with being slow. Part of it, I realize, is because of my very careful steps, wary of ice and the many obstructions along my path.

It’s also this world I am traversing, strange and frozen this morning. It feels lost and hostile.

In this moment, I am a reluctant traveler. Still, I am out there, making my way.

I pass a person walking, all bundled up, face hidden underneath a hat and scarf. I smile and raise my hand in a gesture of hello.

For just a moment, I see their eyes. They silently raise their hand in recognition.

I take a breath, noticing it, and head for home.

chilly run

I admit it. I really kind of had to fight with myself today to get outside and run. But, hey, it was so worth it!

At issue was the temperature. It was below freezing.

Even though I fully expect to run through at least most of the winter with lower temperatures than this, I looked at the temp this morning and was just. not. feeling. it.

I put my running gear on anyway. Laced up.

Then, I proceeded to mill around my place, finding a variety of tasks to facilitate my procrastination.

I eventually noticed it, bucked up, and headed out.

Even though we had quite a snow yesterday, the sidewalks and streets were clear. Yay! 

My gear was just right, and I didn’t even go through that awful frozen-at-the-start phase. I felt pretty good.

First thing I noticed was a snow fort. Haven’t seen one of those in years, and it was awesome to see that some kids were inspired by the snow to build one yesterday. Totally cool.

As I passed the snow fort and headed along, a man approached me rather deliberately. He wanted to know how to find the soup kitchen.

Made me thoughtful about other folks’ struggles, especially in this cold season.

Even though the sidewalks seemed clear, I studied the pavement as I trotted along, checking for ice or slippery patches where the leaves were still piled up. I broke my shoulder a couple of years ago, and really don’t want to repeat that experience!

For all my resistance, the weather actually felt good. It went from cloudy to flurries to sunshine and back to cloudy while I ran. The cold made me keep on at a decent clip. It was invigorating.

I was having so much fun that I spontaneously broke out into song. Funny part was that it was my count I was singing. One thousand one, one thousand two, etc. up and down and all around the scale. Go figure.

Four miles down and I headed for home, feeling awesome.

Chilly? Bah!