Contemplation

Today was a Pink Floyd kind of day.  Got a lot rattling around in my head and needed to clear things up.  A couple of hours on the trail is good for that.  Jax and I went to the Long Trail and headed north from Pico.  It's a fairly mellow stretch, maybe only 1000 feet of climbing over the entire 10 miles we did.  It's a good thinking kind of run.  There's something about the lonely guitar the resonates with me when I'm out there.

Jax was in his glory.  We managed to do sub-14 minute miles the whole way.  I know that's snail slow to a lot of folks (Rick, you bastard), but for me it was a big jump.   Maybe 2 min per mile faster than the last time we hit the same stretch.  Kind of weird when I think about the 10 minute trails I used to do in residency.  Of course, the terrain up here in VT is ridiculous, especially relative to what I was doing in Mass.  Everything is rocky and rooted and steeper than all get out.  When I hit a stretch of just dirt or pine needles it's like a breath of fresh air.  In the Berkshires, big climbs were 500 ft.  Here, big climbs are 2500 ft.  On the other hand, I know the nastier the terrain, the better workout I'll get from it in the end.  So time isn't the focus, other than racing against myself.

Things seem to be going really well this summer as far as my running, and I'm very pleased.  In a week, I'll be in Haiti, and running in the mountains there.  I'm excited.  It's great fun to run the trails there, cruising past the little huts and plots of corn.  The children start to follow, and some run along, reinforcing that I'm fat and slow.  But they laugh and sing and yell and want to hold hands.  My runs there become a mini traveling circus.  I used to marvel at how those kids ran along barefoot.  Not so much anymore.  The minimalist shoe movement has markedly changed my attitude.  Big thick padded soles are for suckers, and now I don't run in them at all.  

A couple of weeks ago Kim and I hit the EMS up in Burlington.  I picked up some NB Minimalists and the Merrell Trail Gloves.  Both seem to be good shoes, but I'm really digging the Trail Gloves.  Something about 'em just feels right.  They have this great big toe box that feels weird at first.  I was concerned that I might end up slamming my toes against the front of the shoe, but it doesn't happen.  The guy who hooked me up had the good sense to talk me out of going half a size down.  I need to do more time in the Minimalists and do a better evaluation, however.  I've had only one significant run with them.  So there's insight to be gained and I need to get away from narrow thinking when I find something I like and tend to forget about all else.

Time to include a shot of Jax.  This was a bit ago when we did Pico to Killington and you can see him in his ever-patient position ... waiting for me.  It almost makes me not want to sign up for races, as I can't run with him ....

Thanks Jax.  You make my life better.  I hope that I do the same for you.

Running in the Dark

Jax and I hit our standard loop on the Green Mountain Stock Farm trails.  Just 3 miles, but pretty nasty terrain.  Lots of wet, swampy areas, very narrow single-track, often overgrown, and lots of deadfall to pick around.  Several big, steep hills are there just to keep it from getting boring.

3 days since my last run and I was itching to get out.  So despite the fact that it was dark and raining, out the door we went.  It's funny ... maybe scary ... that things like this don't surprise my wife anymore.  Dark night.  Like Sarah Palin's soul kind of dark.  And raining.  Ultimately, however, it was the most fun I've had in a long time without intoxicants or nudity.  *shrug*

This loop is old hat in the daytime.  It typically takes Jax just once over to memorize a trail, so this is dialed.  The darkness didn't seem to make the slightest bit of difference .  I haven't done a night run on trails for maybe 7-8 years, and never with a dog.  Tonight was an entirely different run than I've experienced, and a great deal more fun than expected.

Night runs on the trail are slow ... usually.  There's the constant effort to avoid tripping and the subsequent wrist and facial bone fractures.  Then there's navigation.  In the woods, in the dark, the world melts.  Nothing looks the same.  Distances feel different.  Self-doubt whispers between trees.  It's not difficult to understand, as missing a turn-off in the deep woods at night has a fairly obvious downside.  So these runs creep along at the speed in which we second-guess ourselves.  Not tonight.  Tonight we finished just 3 minutes behind our personal best.

Within 100 meters of starting off, my faithful sidekick had everything under control.  He stayed about 3-5 meters in front of me, minus the occasional dash into the underbrush to investigate the incredibly compelling and mysterious things dogs are want to find in the forest.  And of course, he must piss on everything.  For my part, I simply kept my headlamp trained behind him and tried to keep up.  Paying almost no attention to navigation, I let him lead.  It's difficult to describe the sensation.  Our route has more than a dozen turn-offs over the three miles and is rather complex.  Running it blind is like driving a sports car too fast on mountain roads ... really fun, if perhaps a bit unsafe.  We bombed through deep woods in the rain and dark, and I actually found myself laughing out loud periodically.  How had I forgotten these kinds of joys?  How had I lost sight of myself so badly for so long?  Almost a decade now ...

So obviously, things are going well with the running.  I don't know why.  I've changed a lot of things.  Minimalist shoes, largely vegetarian diet, Udo's oil, compression sleeves on my calves, glucosamine ... too many variables.  But it's working.  Lots to think about and maybe tinker with ...

Running in Vermont

It was nearly a year ago that I moved to the Green Mountains.  I don't say we, and include my family, as my wife Kim and my daughter Corinne beat me here by over a month.  I had to spend 6 weeks couch surfing in Minnesota before I was able to corral my dogs Asha and Jax and make that horrible, horrible drive half-way across this country.

Regardless, being here in Vermont has changed me for the better.  I imagine in time some of those reasons might hit the blog.  And I suppose I'll ramble on at times about topics ranging from family to medicine to politics to my work in Haiti to whatever.  For now, this is an opportunity to focus on my running and the process by which I'm trying to get myself back.  It's an opportunity to track my efforts.  I'm not certain that anybody else will actually ever read this, nor am I certain that anybody would want to.  That's all right.  I figure that the more time I spend obsessing over my running, the more it'll happen, and the better it'll get.

7 years ago I left Western Mass and moved to Minneapolis.  Minneapolis is a great town, and I love it, but prior to that I'd been running in the Berkshires.  I'd been in the best physical shape of my life, and now, looking back, perhaps the best spiritual shape as well.  Living in the Twin Cities metro area was advantageous for a lot of reasons, but I lost something that until now, I didn't realize the significance of.

The first few months in Vermont were all about settling in.  Shocking.  In some ways, the settling will take a lot longer.  I'm not sure how many decades before I can respectably call myself a "Vermonter".  But I started running again this winter.  This is the first time I've done so on any kind of long-term basis since residency.  Not that you can't run in the Twin Cities.  As a matter of fact, I would have to say it's probably one of the better metro areas in which to do so.  But I didn't.  Partly because I was building a career, and I spent much too much time doing so.  Partly because Kim and I were building a new family.  Marriage and babies are a considerable time-suck.  Not in a bad way, mind you, but it requires rebalancing to do it correctly.  I didn't.  When I was a resident, my time fell into 3 general categories: residency, running, and goofing off.  With only those 3 categories, it wasn't that hard to balance.  Now I have a wife, 2 children, a job, 2 part time jobs, and a good deal of non-profit work that I do in Haiti.  The day still only has 24 hours.  I'm still prone to goofing off.  So my balance got out of whack, and it was my running that suffered.  Contributing to this was a nagging IT band syndrome, and a lack of "great" trail running.  I ran trails in Minnesota, but never found anything that I really loved that was close enough to home to do regularly.

I'm now surrounded by trails.  Amazing trails.  And it's become more and more apparent that I needed them in a lot of different ways.  Just any trail doesn't cut it.  I need trails where I can't hear or smell cars.  I need trails that go and go and go and go.  I'm sorry, but 2.3 miles around a metro area lake sucks.  I need trails that might include encounters with wildlife beyond deer and squirrels and homeless people.  I need trails that are steep and rocky and demand respect.  I need trails where 90% of the time, I don't encounter another human being.  And so I run ... mostly with my ever faithful companion Jax.  Shiba Inu's are not supposed to be off-leash dogs, nor are they supposed to be long-distance runners.  I'm glad nobody ever told Jax this.  Running with him is truly an opportunity to be able to observe joy in a physical manifestation.  Just thinking about running with Jax makes me grin.

And I'm getting better.  I'm happier.  I'm a better person.  I'm not as fat as I was.  I'm more self-aware.  I can't believe I hadn't recognize what I'd lost, but I did.  Ironically, I've had conversations with Kim and stood on my soap-box about prioritizing, but the fact of the matter is that I've been bad at it as well.  I'm sure Kim wouldn't classify it as ironic.  Stupid maybe.

So here goes my blog.  Here goes my re-prioritization in a form that I can come back to and look at later ...