not really hot, is all in the mind

As I ran, I was thinking that it was hot.  The mental picture of heat was all around me, in my peripherals.  I thought that people should/would be cheering my dedication.  I can remember one year at the U of I in Iowa City; the day after a grad student shot some people in one of the campus buildings, classes were called off.  The next day was about 0 degrees and I went for a run.  I was wearing a sweatshirt, hat, gloves, etc. and passed someone who said, “That’s dedication.”
Running is nothing if not psychological.  The mere forecast of warm weather is enough to slow me down.  I ran today at 5:00 pm when the temperature was 95 degrees.  The temp was supposed to be 98 degrees.  Yes, only a tiny difference, but I was thinking while I was working that it didn’t seem to be terribly hot.  We quit work at 2:00.
I wore a black t-shirt today—even as I put it on, I was thinking that it might not be a wise choice.  Black absorbs the sun’s energy, while white reflects it.  One person asked me about the black t-shirt and we agreed that it didn’t really make that much difference.  I said that it was like the cold here in Iowa.  When you have on all your clothes—the insulated coveralls, the flannel shirt, sweatshirt, insulated rubber boots, etc.—and you go out, you are just cold.
The temperature made me think of the pre-Italy bike trip in Albania.  I rode 50 miles in 106-degree heat.  I may not have attempted such a ride if I had known that it was so hot.  http://italianbikejob.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/52-miles-102-f/

farewell Panora

Today may have been my last run in Panora.  Sold the house…moving stuff out.  I was able to visit a couple people who I have gotten to know around the lake.  In the fall, I accosted one guy who was always watering his lawn; I asked him if he really needed to do all that watering.  I was implying that he was wasting water. He was the right person to talk to because he was not only NOT wasting water, but he has used geo-thermal heating for 30 years, he knows all about recycling, and he doesn’t believe humans are changing the climate because he actually KNOWS about it.  He schooled me in the waste of energy.
I stopped by his house during my run, his wife got him out of bed by telling him that James Martin has sold his house and he’s come by to say good-bye.  He’s one of the most interesting, knowledgeable, accomplished people I know.
About the running…I remember when I used to think that a 60-second sprint up the hill near our house might be out of reach.  Today, I think the two respites I enjoyed talking to people during the run may have super-charged me at the end.  I ran less than one second off the pace of my fastest time (of 54.80 on the 15th of May).  I didn’t feel like I was running fast.  I guess I am used to the speed now.

water-logged fields, no work

With 1.5 inches of rain yesterday, the boss called off work in the vegetable fields for today.  The boys were able to sleep late—until almost 9:00—and then they did a page of math practice before we went out to run/bike.  We ran to their day care center where they had left their books.  Then we ran to the high school track where I ran the quarter mile.  It was not a speedy time, but not a terribly slow time, either.  Then ran home—Maxim had to walk his bike because he had slid down a slide that had water at the bottom.  After I left him to change his clothes and Oskar to be cool, I went out and did my final sprint.  There was so much on my mind, I guess I didn’t run very quickly.

I was quite pleased.  With this time off, I will be able to run today so I don’t have to run tomorrow when we need to drive to Panora.  Not only would I have time to spend with the boys, but I would be able to get some sleep in preparation for the interview I have tomorrow morning.  I will be interviewed by a person in Moscow.  This person will determine if I am capable of successfully completing a course on teaching English to speakers of other languages.

slog

Ran by myself again this morning.  I felt a bit sluggish, and my time in the 1/4-mile shows it.  I am trying to get the boys to bed earlier so they will get enough sleep.  Yesterday, the wind was blowing as strongly against me as any time I can remember on the way back from the farm.  Today, I drove…and gave the two Mexican agricultural experts a ride to the farm.  In the morning and early afternoon, I was wishing I had ridden the bike: I would’ve been riding with the wind in the morning, and by afternoon, the weather had become much cooler. After a day of threatened rain, however, the sky opened up and dumped .8 inches in 30 minutes.  Good thing I didn’t ride.


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hot and humid

Ran by myself today beginning at 5:30 while boys slept.  The quarter mile in the middle was a bit disappointing, as was the final sprint.  Oh, well, I didn’t feel like I was running very fast; unlike the last time I felt this way, I truly wasn’t running fast.  The weather is terribly hot.  Working in the field is sweaty, sticky, hot, and windy.  The boys like to ride their bikes to day care, so I ride with them, and then I ride out to the field.  Yesterday, the ride was not too bad because the wind was not strong.  Today, the forecast is for stronger wind.

RAGBRAI

Ran with the boys again today.  The time is pretty much a mystery because we stopped a few times to play on swing sets or play on slides.  We also went over to my co-workers house to visit her rabbit.  She was not there, we found the rabbit UNDER his hutch twitching his nose.
One interesting this about today is that I beat my record for the ¼ mile--.19% faster.  (I figured the percentage for the final sprint record incorrectly.  I should be .05% instead of .0005% It may be a laughable ‘record’ for those who can really run, but I’m satisfied with it.  I remembered to run on my toes from the beginning.  That may be the difference.
We were putting up the trampoline and we needed to get some bolts.  Oskar said, “We can ride our bikes, can’t we?”
At first I said we needed to drive because we were going to the grocery store, too.  Then I figured that we could put stuff in the bike bags, so we did ride.  As we entered the street, Oskar asked rhetorically, “Don’t you understand that I love to ride my bike?  That’s why I am so excited about RAGBRAI.”  I’m thrilled.

The dream continues

The dream continues. Within the first hour of us arriving back in town, the boys and I went out—me for a jog, them for a bike ride.  It was deliciously wonderful.  This is exactly what I always wanted when I would imagine raising kids.  AND I’ve always wanted someone to run with.  Oskar is still learning everything so sometimes I would need to jog pretty slowly but he will come along.  I am doing my best to train him to ride further to the outside of the road than I’m running; it’s a learning environment when one discovers how little kids comprehend about the workings of the world

Maxim was having fun making skid marks and predictably had a mishap. I came up to him, brushed off the knee—“A little ground in dirt.  No problem.  A milestone of life.” 
 “Do you know what milestone means, Maxim?”
 “No.”
 “It means this is a hallmark—something that is a signpost, a major event that everyone goes through.”  I could see out of the corner of my eye that he wasn’t impressed.  “Doesn’t make it hurt any less when I say that though, huh?”
 “No.”  He got back on the bike and it must have been a bit of genuine hurt—5 minutes later he was limping.  Six minutes, no.

We ran through some minor streets, not hard to find in a town of 4000, and near a softball field where girls were warming up for a game.  This is where I did my pull-ups.  Maxim was enthralled by the softball practice.  Would you like to do that someday, Maxim?  Would you like to come down and watch a game someday?  He’s ready for everything.  Imagine, a couple Iowa boys who have never played a moment of baseball.  There are ball fields littering the town like gemstones. The location of our house is fantastic…right in the middle of them all. 

I was running mostly slowly with the boys, I stopped a few times, but I did do a 6 minute run in the middle with a 60-second sprint.  When we got around to home, I arranged it so I would be running the final sprint.  I must have had some energy built up because I beat the record—completely unexpectedly—by .05%.  I didn’t feel like I was going that fast.  My mind wasn’t on the run—but on a myriad of other distractions from the whether the boys were keeping to the side of the road to the black clouds overhead.  I didn’t do badly, though.  Oskar said, “You were running so fast, Papa!  I was pedaling and zooming!  So much I didn’t even have to pedal! (his first experience with momentum and coasting, I guess)  But I still couldn’t reach you.”

Afterwards, we all road our bikes over to a co-worker’s house to see her rabbit; then to see their day-care place, then to see the cats and the garden.  Small towns are great.

a crowd; breezy toes

 The last run in Albania for 2 months.  We are leaving today for the US.  The run this morning was fun.  I was a bit later than usual so the park was more populated.  I had to gently move around elderly ladies doing their morning walks and middle-aged men engaged in the wholly worthy pursuit of trying to run off their rotund bellies.  As I ran up to the new pull-up bars, there were half a dozen people in sport clothes jumping up and down, wiggling their legs and rotating their shoulders.  As I approached, one man finished on the bar and I moved forward.  I was a bit worried that I would have to wait.  I thought to myself that I was showing some real seriousness in the fact that I simply run up in the middle of the run and do the exercises.  I didn’t need to, or have time to, set aside time for rest in the middle of pull-ups. I fell like efficient as I simply fill up all my allotted work-out time with actual work.  I know that rest between sets of exercises is necessary at times—simply another form of work-out.  The fact that I choose to go full-out all the time is certainly a symptom of my general mode of behavior—when I am in a good mood.  This tells me that I am feeling fine.
 When I came to the earlier-mentioned bars after the turn around, someone had draped their shirt over the bar.  As another man was engaged in pull-ups on the unclogged part of the bar, I imagined sliding the shirt and working at the same time. This move would have been in keeping with my ‘work out constantly’ attitude.  Mr. Pull-ups finished about then, so I didn’t have to. 
 After the 100-meter flat that begins my final sprint, I realized that I was not running on my toes.  This is a method that makes me feel a bit like I’m ‘floating’ or ‘breezing’ over the pavement.  I guess I simply need to practice more often and then I won’t have to remember to do those little bits that are the key to making the sprint just a bit faster.  Today was about a second off my record pace.

scaring people on Y2K

 We are in the Oceania Hotel north of Rennes.  The area surrounding the place is beautiful.  The streets are wide and clean and some are brand new.  When I ran, at 6:30 am, the traffic was light.  I ran straight down one road for some minutes and straight back so as not to lose myself.  Then, down another road and onto a walking path/bike trail that went under a road through a metal pipe surrounded by concrete that reminded me of something from a Terminator movie—the surrounding area was, of course, not reminiscent of a nuclear holocaust.
 The most remarkable bit of this run was my listening selection on my iPod.  It was a Mosaic sermon. Mosaic is an interesting church Los Angeles.  The man, Hank, this morning talked about people’s passions.  He described one of his passions and destructive and terrible; he has been struggling with it for 15 years.  He likes to scare people.  On December 31, 1999, he was at a New Year’s Party.  As the party progressed, he got the sense that people were trying to have fun, but there was an undeniable undercurrent of worry throughout the crowd.  People were not sure if they needed to believe the predictions of catastrophe that would wreck havoc in the computer world, and thereby everything else, when the date became unrecognizable to computers.  Hank asked the owner of the party venue where the master electric switch was located.  At 11:50, he quietly made his way to the master breaker box.  He was jumping up and down with anticipation.  As the crowd counted down to midnight—5…4…3…  As they reached zero, he cut the power to the building.  Instead of singing a cheering, the crowd was silent—you could have heard a mouse cough. When Hank heard people start to scream, Hank decided he should turn on the power before people started to eat each other.

Carteret, France

     I am Carteret, France.  It is on the Coretin Peninsula that juts northward toward England.  We are on the opposite side from where the Allies landed on D-Day, 6 June 1944.  I hadn’t run since Monday—today is Thursday.  I ran largely to keep up the habit.  Sometimes when I don’t run, I start to feel listless or anxious.  Not so today.  We are in the middle of a short vacation—yesterday, we saw site of the landings and all three of us immensely enjoyed the museum, books, and movies.  What’s more today I had an interview with a school in Moscow that sent me a sample contract to read.  Ooo-rah!
       Anyway, I ran down toward the beach on a route that we walked the other day, starting at about 6 am.  I didn’t take my iPod so I was hearing everything.  As I ran, I thought about the fact that every part of my body is running well and feeling well.  My gratitude is limitless.  We are supposed to be working here at this cottage in exchange for room and board.  It has been raining quite a lot.  We have been working in the rain—picking strawberries, digging, trimming hedges and gathering the clippings.  The boys have been helping very well.  This a.m., I thought, “Well, it’s not raining.  Maybe I should start trimming rather than run.”  I ran and then showered and got ready.  I got out the electric trimmer, stood up on the ladder—not plugged in.  I went around the house, took off my boots, went into the house, plugged in the trimmer.  Went outside, up the ladder—still not plugged in.  I went around the house, took off my boots, went into the house, plugged in the extension cord for the extension cord or the trimmer.  Went outside, up the ladder, made two movements with the now working trimmer…and it started to rain.  I carried on trimming, the boys came out and we all worked in the light rain for an hour. 

Romantics--What I Like About You

 The final sprint was nearly as fast as I can ever remember.  47.39.  After the last pull-up set, at the new bars, I turned my iPod to a playlist called “__running”.  I put the underscores before the word so it will show up at the top of the list of playlists.  I do this because I cannot see without my glasses, and I don’t wear my glasses when I’m running.  In the playlist, I skipped Adele, Rubberband Man, Roy G. Biv, and a couple others, down to What I Like About You  by the Romantics.  Immediately upon hearing the first notes, my feet grew jets.  I could hardly control their exuberance.  I ran as far as the light pole, scrambling to find for solid placement for my steps before the next one demanded to fall.  During the sprint, even though it was less than a minute and I charged out of the gate like a thoroughbred, I still had time to recognize that I could push myself faster.  When I am getting results that are so close to the limits of my ability, the differences are surely all in the mind.  What is keeping me from running faster?  Is it just my perceived tiredness?  There are surely times when I finish and I am more tired.  What does it feel like to be at the limit of one’s tiredness? 
 This morning, my watch reminded me to get up at 6:00.  This was an hour after the cat had let itself in by opening the screen to snuggle and sleep with me.  After waking, I went over to the computer in an effort to see if I had been offered a job in the last 5 hours while everyone in my part of the world was sleeping (fat chance).  Then I noticed that instead of 6:05, the time was 7:05.  I must have drifted off to sleep again.  This little hiccup was the first wrench in my morning that MAY have influenced my speed.  I went immediately to the door and congratulated myself for having the forethought to wear running clothes to bed.  Then the second potential spoiler in the day arrived when my wife came back from her run and said, “You’re going NOW?!?”  I guess she forgot her request to me the night before that I not go until she came back.  She got over it quickly when I said that I would be back in 30 minutes or so.

.47% slower

The final sprint captures the most interest again today.  I wrote in the last post that I felt I could have run faster.  Today, I didn’t consciously hold anything back.  I felt my legs flying, I was on my toes, I again didn’t feel like I was running UPhill. Before I finished, I even thought I might set the record.  As a matter of fact, I didn’t even best the time I made the last time when my mind took control of my physical body and wouldn’t let me hurt myself.  I was 23 hundreds of a second slower, .23.  That is the amount of time it takes to start, and then immediately stop a stop watch.  The amount of time it takes for its life to flash through the mind of a mosquito as it collides with a windshield.  That’s .47% slower—certainly not a lot, but still slower.  It’s hard to conceptualize the distance a person can run in .23 seconds.  Whatever it is, I must be near the limit of my capability to run quickly—I must be running near to the fastest possible time.  The gasping for air after the run cannot be denied.


I usually run every other day.  Today, however, is a day when I am home with nothing pressing early today.  I started just before 6 am and ran for almost an hour.  Ran through the park to the end of the walking path.  There were scads of people walking, running, a few biking, all taking advantage of the beautiful spring weather.

Speedy Gonzales

I took off today just after 5 am.  I wanted to get done quickly because I knew that the boys needed showers, we needed to frost the cupcakes, and Maxim and I needed to get downtown early so he wouldn’t miss much school.  I spent no time thinking about the run or the pull-ups, just did them.  I was running at a faster pace, too.  By the time I got to the final sprint, I was feeling great.  The result, 48.49 seconds, was quite good.  For most of the year last year, it would have been the quickest result.  Now, while it is a fine accomplishment, I think I could have done better.  The run this morning tells me again how running is very much influenced by the mind.
When I put on my shoes, I was not expecting anything great.  I was eager to get out there, get my heart beat up, feel the wind and cool air, and prance around a bit.  As I ran, I felt none of the sluggish leaden feeling of two days ago.  I was in the business mindset of ‘get it done’ and move on with the rest of the day—I was Mr. Efficiency all the way to the bottom of the final hill.  Reaching the light pole, I pushed the button on my watch and charged away. Although I put all my effort into my legs, I was subconsciously holding back.  There was something in me that told me, “Don’t hurt yourself.”  I sprinted a hundred yards or so and I actually thought about the fact that I could run harder; so I sped up.  As I came to the meat of the hill, I felt the power surge through me, and I remarked to myself how it didn’t feel difficult.  I wrote in this blog a couple days ago how I imagined seeing myself at the end, feeling that I would be seen to be running like a snail, pulling my ten-ton lower extremities along with their concrete encrusted shoes.  Today, however, as I got to the final 100 yards, I felt like I was burning the pavement; much like Speedy Gonzales used to do as he sped away Bugs Bunny.  Such a feeling makes me consider going out to run again.  But then, of course, my body would be weary and it would interfere with the rest of the day.  Yes…morning runs are suitable like caramel on pizza.