First draft.

If there is a distinct sound that reminds me of my neighborhood, it is the jingling sound of bottles  being pushed in a shopping cart down the narrow concrete streets.

I was walking my dogs on Belmont and passed a indigent man tending to his cart and just as one of my dogs (whose nickname is Low-4 because he can overcome any terrain, but only has one speed), stopped to sniff a juniper the cart and man pulled up beside us on the sidewalk.

“Nice dogs”, he starts, the stub of a cigarette smoldering in one hand, the other firmly grasping the handle of his cart. He’s bent slightly and he moves his head and neck together with a stiffness earned from years of keeping his head down and his eyes averted.

He then recounts to me a story of a woman whose husband has died and left her with 5 pugs. She walks them up and down Hawthorne Boulevard every day, no matter the weather. During the snowstorm last week he saw her walking on the snow and ice covered sidewalks and she stopped to tell him about her oldest pug.  This particular pug reminded her of her dead husband.

“Why’s that?” I asked, taking the bait.
“Because he just lies around the house and only comes around when he wants something.”

The story went on for a few minutes, but the story wasn’t the interesting part. More interesting was the man telling it. The way he looked past me as if we were two drunks perched atop barstools at Sewickley’s Addition; faces pointed forward and slightly down staring ahead for a thousand yards. He was living entirely in his head. I didn’t really need to be standing there at all and the story would have gone on.

My dogs were busy sniffing around. The man had nowhere to go.
So we just stood there for a few more minutes and I enjoyed his story.

http://www.strava.com/activities/115271772

When I was a little kid we used to drive the Mohawk Trail between grandparent visits from Pittsfield to Greenfield (MA). There was always a big debate because while it was more scenic, it was longer. I loved that drive. I took the scenic route today and linked up a few of my favorite runs in Forest Park. Pretty much all of them.

In running there is a continuum between two poles. At one end is “keeping it together” and at the other end is “losing your shit”.  Everyone can keep it together in the beginning, it’s relatively easy. But it becomes more difficult to hold after a few hours. Given a long  period of time (different for everyone), everything falls apart and no matter who you are, you’ll lose your shit.

When I got down from Council Crest ( the biggest vertical drop on this run), where the trail changes from muddy singletrack to tarmac,  I let loose my loudest Mohawk war cry. There were some people at Marquam Shelter that I scared, but I was gone and down the road before they even saw me.

It felt *great*; and at that point with about 4 miles to go until home, I knew today was a “keep it together” day.

 

Nutrition notes:

• 45 mins: 1 whole wheat fig newton+ some diluted gatorade (still too strong). Lower Macleay trailhead. Mile 7.
• 1:20: Vanilla Clif shot. Pittock Mansion. Water. Mile 9.
• 1:55: Vanilla Clif shot. Lookout at the Arboretum. Water. Mile 12.
• 2:35: Gatorade and water. Mile 15.

I should have had something at mile 14 but I couldn’t find anything within reach with my vest on and didn’t want to take it off b/c it was cold and I was wet. Need to put more food in more accessible places next time.

Overall, pretty dialed. I probably would have had a faster closing pace with better nutrition between miles 14 – 17.

Slow thinking has the feeling of something you do. It’s deliberate. – Kahneman

If you want to do something well, you need to do it often. If you want to run fast, you have to run really fast. It’s really quite simple. I try to be very deliberate about pace and effort. And easy day means *really* easy – conversational pace, rpms low. A hard day means you might puke from the effort. Either way it’s a deliberate choice. If you want to be neither fast nor slow, just mediocre… then that’s how you train. My schedule is so busy right now that I’m having trouble getting the harder efforts in the plan, so things are feeling very comme ci comme ça. Meh.

I spent some quality time with the foam roller last night and massage stick before I went to bed and my legs felt good this morning. Lunch run today was the standard Washington Park / Wildwood / Japanese Garden loop. I felt great, but my times were meh.

Temps today were in the low 40s with a light drizzle. I was in shorts, long sleeve zip t and hat. Running  trails in those conditions is very nice. Muddy fun jumping logs and splashing in the big  puddles.

The clouds settled low in the trees and a thick fog sat about 50 feet above the forest floor. One of the unique qualities of the PNW rainforest is how fast things grow and decompose. The understory is a bed of moss and ferns, new saplings growing from the decomposing trunks of massive Doug firs.  It’s such a stark contrast to the New Mexico desert and the relentless sun and wind that bake and scour the landscape. I’m not sure which I prefer. In a place like New Mexico, one could never get lost in the landscape – all you had to do was look to the direction of the sun, or use the mountains as a guide.  The mountains are in the East, the sun will set to the West, Santa Fe is North, Socorro is South. Simple. Friends from New Mexico who moved to the PNW would return with the complaint that they lost their sense of direction because they couldn’t see the horizon.

Maybe I just don’t mind being lost.

Closing in on my threshold of work/running/sleep/nutrition capacity this week. It’s as if a soccer ball were balanced on a table and the above 4 are the legs of the table. In order for the ball to stay balanced, the 4 legs must remain the same length.

Stress is like a big, soft, furry puppy running around the room — ready to bump the table at any moment (just play along dear reader)… More work + more running and I need good nutrition and lots of sleep in order to flush the system clean.

The easiest to manage is actually sleep… without it the ball tumbles… and I get sick. I’m trying to bump my running mileage this week as I’m racing in 4 weeks. The plan is to periodize high, and then taper down to a low mileage week before the race. This week is crucial.

Exercise has amazing stress relieving benefits … up to a certain point. Beyond that point, the recovery from the exercise smashes into the stress and the benefits plummet. This is bad.

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And they sat in the car with the ignition off and both doors open on that warm June night as the sun faded and the insect crescendo of the meadow slowly rose. Exhausted after a day of climbing in the Valley they turned up the volume on the stereo, reclined their seats and closed their eyes. The music started and it was beautiful.

Ahhh… to be immortalized on the internets.

Read something recently about how sloppy dressers ultimately develop sloppy thinking. It was about entrepreneurs sitting in the back of the room playing on their mobiles and then swooping in to say something off topic and then leaving. Lay-errs!

As I was pressing my shirt this morning I was thinking:

Crisp shirt, crisp thinking.

#1

And reviewing some design documents later in the day:

Better the design to be simple than clever.

#2

And it was very clever.

It’s quiet and there is nothing else to do but talk.

http://www.strava.com/activities/113481878

A pellet stove starts when the auger in the hopper turns a quarter turn and drops a few pellets into the fire pot.

Most pellet stoves have an electric heating element in the bottom of the fire pot that begins to warm the pellets. They soon begin to smolder and after about 2 minutes, they combust.

The auger then makes a full turn and drops more pellets into the pot. Once the fire is blazing in the fire pot, the blower turns on pushes the warm air out into the room.

They’re extremely efficient and can typically burn wood pellets or corn kernels (acquired from feed store) if pellets are in short supply. Corn is more difficult to clean out as a result of the sugars burning which results in the formation of clinkers. They’re really the only waste that is generated. Very efficient.

When you’re outside exercising in the cold you warm up the same way a pellet stove warms up. From the inside.

Heavy rain today and temps around 40 degrees. I didn’t want to run.

I procrastinated and procrastinated and milled around and drank more coffee and read the paper front to back.

And I went through my list of excuses for why I shouldn’t run:

• hard run yesterday
• tired legs
• tired heart
• bruised heal
• didn’t get enough sleep
• want to be fresh tomorrow
• it’s raining
• it’s cold
• it’s windy
• there isn’t enough time

Once I went through the list (a few times) there were no more excuses. I’m not very good at fooling myself. I thought about the small amount of time I would be outside in the cold and rain. And about the hot green chai I would drink when I got home, stripping off my wet clothes and putting on my puffy, more tea, a hot shower, a bagel with almond butter and honey. Walking around the house in bare feet.  It was a cozy picture. And  it worked.

I packed up the UD vest, put my phone in a plastic ziploc, tied my shoes, put on some music and went outside to get to work. No expectations, no self-apologies necessary, past the excuses. Opening my mind to whatever experience was to come.

Everyone goes through the same thing … in work or exercise or really just taking action and moving forward. In sports, in racing … I learned a secret a long time ago, everyone hurts the same when things are difficult. Who can move past it? How do you manage it?

Yesterday I was in flow state numerous times on my trail run (3 to be exact) . In fact, I said aloud to myself, “This feels sooo good right now”. The universe was in alignment. I was centered, focused, relaxed. I could modulate my effort at a micro scale… speed up, slow down – jump some rocks, fly. Difficult to explain,  but that’s what flow feels like.

People are fallible – they’re frightened, unsure of themselves. I think of it like an idea. Everyone has them, they exist inside. But you have to nurture them and grow them. They need to be cared for and cultivated. Be nice to yourself. Be patient.

There is always a reason not to do something – they typically all stem from fear. Fear of failing, fear of disappointing someone, fear of being wrong (sometimes fear of being right).

And the funny thing is – if this all sounds cliché – it’s because there is always the kernel of truth in a cliché (that’s why it’s cliché).

As I was running over the Hawthorne Bridge into downtown today – I remembered something I read on Stevie Haston’s blog last year… think of the work as your treat.

If instead of saying:
“I can’t do this today. I’m frightened.”… say instead:
“This is my treat today.” Enjoy it. And I did.