runtothere

The days are finally long enough to go longer but it just doesn't feel like I am going that far despite the miles that are racking up. As a dogged distance 'jogger', I still don't understand how I continue to build muscle and efficiency on this regime. "It is better to be wrong than to simply follow convention," is advice given to the protagonist of The Power of One . When it comes to running, I flout contemporary customs involving speedwork and run my own runs, all of the time. Five years into my return to running I remain uninjured, running probably an average of 55+ miles a week (some are less, some are more). This was not a strategy, but the way to keep myself keeping on, getting out the door.* When I plan smaller mileage days, I find I want to skip them. And I have learned that I can manage going long even when cramming back to back (to back to back) long runs. Though not a strategy, it is demonstrative of the behavior of a type : the "endurance mo...

The idea of speeding up is less appealing to me than stretching runs into the far distance. Sometimes I look at the gathering of trees in the hills that I run to and recognize where I'd once stored thoughts of what had been ailing me and am reminded of how enormous nature is, capable of absorbing so much thought and still go far beyond it, when those same thoughts, when trapped inside my mind, become unwieldy. Once in the forest, they blend in and gradually disappear: replaced with an almost inert snail on the path, syrupy summer air, the call of fighting jays. They beckon the mind out of itself and into the intricacies of creatures, plants, wind, weather. A unity is achieved, a balance restored. I occasionally speed up when I feel like it though, like to chase or pass the occasional other runner I encounter. But this month, I got a new training partner. It was after the rain. I was slogging up the steep, barely-a-trail that cuts straight up through the more tangled trees to the ...

cuddlie kittehs @ brushy mount? to go there expressly past  ersatz awards for arbitrary stopping points and Daily Planners forgetting what it means to try together but to be alone up there with the gorges, bluffs, and Platonic caves even a headlamp becomes a shadow so beyond things as to lose is to find the self, or the terrain, a breathing underworld what life is like underwater for years now all this grey coming down in strokes for traction, where’s the gravitude on this bed of ocean, where do I lie, or do I stand among wet sand a conch, and then the sleet in lines to fall while yet inclining to take that leg out of that swamp to feel the briars scratching the sound of a mind on doubt puffs white smoke, an effusion from the psychosomatic nature of feet for the underbrush that tears at this amusement of the motion to persist too easily slips out from under even the one who has done it. what is capable. no one has ever been here before, ever in reverse, t...

A great song featured on episode 60 of The Trail Show has a guy singing in falsetto: Back on the trail, back on the trail, we won't stop 'til we get up that hill . It has that same talismanic motivational power for me as the phrase: I eat hills for breakfast . When I think of these phrases on long runs, they make me laugh " which is nice " (link takes you to the almost eponymous Fast Show sketch) except that chortling internally makes me run slower. I love so much the 'mini training' that distance running gives; I do not know if it is because this was instilled in me through the Outward Bound camps that removed me from my otherwise asthmatic and, also, relatively inert childhood. But even on days when I am less motivated to get out, I know that once I get to the hilly forest, I will not regret the views, and also, that the fitness I build by getting out consistently will reward me on days when I really need to puff my way to an uphill panorama. And then, al...

Life got steeper in previous months: I no longer had time for blogging, or sleep. But then, I found myself two weeks ago on a literally steep mountain. For the first time in over a decade, I was running on a trail absorbed with boulders, stones, tree roots that wound around a coast, getting higher and higher - until I suddenly happened upon a large Indian family, whose little son blurted: you are going so fast! And I took their photo for them as they laughed on New Year's Eve, and I regret now that I was so deep in thought on that run that I did not ask them if they would mind sending me photos of that view, care of altitude. It is supposed to be marathon-training season for me, but after those mountains, the very ones from my childhood, I don't see the point. I signed up for the marathon in the past two years to make sure I would train through the winter where I live now, replete as it is with winds that freeze hair. But I have come to love the days of inclement weather j...

Ten days ago, I got a gift of a bottle of Pocari Sweat from a really nice person, which I took on the only training run I got done at that time. A little gesture can cultivate courage, as in, a wish again to find that ever-surprising abundance that nourishes but only in the everyday, which doesn't last forever, and can only be accessed by making something anew, investing effort yet again, something like the sign of being alive, day after day, this thing that we create that doesn't begin as something material but can materialise. The opposite of doubt. Doubt, that poison that comes from others through a look, through incomprehensibility over why something is to be pursued just for the sake of it; doubt from the internalised reason behind such thoughts: because who wants to find themselves astray, alone in a land of pipe dreams (where such are produced by opiates, so tragic)? Who, with a rational mind, can explain "for the sake of it"? Have courage, man! This is what I...

Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, in "The Old Fisherman", addresses the hopes of enhancing one's merit and fame. What runner doesn't relate to that first part? (Some say the second, too?!) The illustration he gives of the vices that can ensue from the incorrect way of pursuing these goals is of a man so afraid of his own shadow that he runs to escape it: of course, to no avail ( 4 ). The lesson is that any man who neglects to improve himself will be bound to expend energy in such a doomed, needless way. But what is this elusive "right way", I wonder, if improvement functions on several levels (physical, mental, dispositional, etc). I think sometimes I live my life in such a way that I do everything wrong the first time round, throwing myself into something, learning along the way. I am not like Murakami, who, before taking up running, read about it. To my mind, my "right way" was more complex: I was first running to keep running, because I was going t...

When it was 10F last week, I was really careful to avoid the ice. My hair froze. I could not feel my face. But just as I was almost home, I fell, and not because I wasn't looking but because I was tripped. At first, it seemed too bizarre to be true, but what can I say. Moving on. Though my knees are still oozing, one still swelling up at will; though there's nothing like being seen by colleagues limping down a set of stairs, or managing the scab-related litany (it's no longer Halloween to parade it!), it seems like I am beginning to get something out of this experience. Like, use out of my Mueller jumper's knee strap as of my return to running yesterday. But, seriously: I gained some time. And now I sit at this computer and write, as fireworks are already going off - and will do so through the second new year in January. I am rarely a fan, but with my newly found time as I read a poem by Pindar, I found the fireworks perfect accompaniment to his paeans of physical glo...

Could I but ride indefinite  (...) And dwell a little everywhere, (...) Or better run away With no police to follow, Or chase me if they do, Till I should jump peninsulas — Emily Dickinson, XX Today it snowed. Tomorrow I begin marathon training, and thanks to help from kind folks at the Runner's World forum, picked a plan. It sounds so competent to write that: "pick a plan". I remember this time last year, jumping into a Higdon plan late, amping up its miles, and all the winter runs with the funny encounters typical of where I live now: the most frequent being misted greetings exchanged with a certain kind of pensioner who goes out in inclement weather, usually so glad to see someone else outside. Then, at the tip of spring, the marathon came, and although no Pheidippides, on completing it I felt like all those miles actually built a distance between me and what was ailing me. Like I'd loosened a noose. All those constricting, suffocating situa...

He can never set foot in the bronze heavens; but whatever splendor we mortals can attain, he reaches the limit of that voyage. Neither by ship nor on foot could you find the marvellous road to the meeting-place of the Hyperboreans   (Pindar Pythian 10 ) The Hyperboreans lived beyond the north wind. Pindar's lines seem to take us to that mythical place: the "limit of the voyage" that can be reached "neither by ship nor foot" is the road that reaches the meeting place of the Hyperboreans - a road through words that follows the wind. I felt like I was on one such road on yesterday's run. It is really quite something to have a meaningful interaction with something for two hours that is invisible ! It was so exhausting, I could not run all the way home, which is a foreign experience. So I read up about that wind that exerted my breath, aided by the Beaufort Scale that describes winds in words of their effects - and realised I had been out in gale force gusts ...

If I had been running like a gazelle, I would not have been told to run on my toes (forefoot strike). With a blow to the ego, I found out that I run like a marionette. Actually, the coach lacked the poetic turn of phrase, I offer it now. As I ran off after seeing his expression - the brave man having volunteered to watch me run a portion of the track - the words that came to me were actually less forgiving: "runs like a handicapped chicken" would perhaps be the most apt description. He trains national teams, and then there are runners like me. He told me to run on my toes. I live to tell that experience. My quads hurt so much now that I cannot walk down stairs without hanging on the banister. This evening  a friend recommended not turmeric but Mg tablets - and I am now singing the praises of minerals. This is the first time in 15 months of running that I question what on earth I am doing. The pain I felt at the beginning was very real, there were actually weeks I could not ...

I have only been running for a year, fifteen months to be exact. Ten months into it, I ran a marathon, because I hate sprinting and love running far. Before that, I ran during three separate phases of life: as a journalist in Asia; when I worked my way through college; during high school to escape from campus. Back then, I tried to play soccer, and the coach would point to me and say to my team mates: Look at her, she is a terrible player, but tries harder than all of you. I am pretty sure I run as terribly. Sometimes I feel shy when I run through the part of the city that needs crossing to get to a beautiful, very long stretch of park. There were days this summer when I felt like - probably due to overtraining - I was flapping my arms a little, or doing the Snoopy happy dance. But something draws me to those longer distances: sometimes, so much frustration with life that it takes that long to unwind those inarticulate scribbles behind me; sometimes, a wish to see certain of those vie...