Category Archives: Running

july recap

So July is over and not to complain, but except for our beautiful Up North vacation, it just wasn’t the best month. Maybe my expectations were set too high by the rapturous astrological predictions of all planets finally out of retrograde and a full moon in Leo and whatnot.

Maybe those things were just offset by a variety of personal issues currently unraveling slowly toward some sort of resolution after many, many months, and not getting much easier along the way.

Whatever it was, for most of the month I felt a lot like that baby bunny that I snapped a pic of last night. (One of three currently using our yard as a buffet slash crash pad. Emmett hates them and I thought they were adorably cute until I started finding sheared-off coneflower stalks missing their big berry-colored flowers…)

I felt disconnected and listless. Lots of Travis McGee novels kept my mind occupied. I didn’t want to do anything except sleep and retreat, but when I indulged in those things, the lack of routine and accomplishment was depressing. Floors went unvacuumed and clutter crept back. Work was exasperating and joyless, the first ripe heirloom tomato off my JD Special C-Tex plant got chomped by an earwig, I wanted little to do with interpersonal relationships outside of my daughter and my cats, and my fitness went to hell.

During the now-infamous tubing trip, I strained a muscle in my back and missed about two weeks of running. Now, let’s be honest. I don’t tend to run much in the hot weeks of late June / most of July anyway. I am not a good hot weather runner and most of my favorite runs are in the late summer and fall. Also, my favorite running partner has been out of commission all year due to a knee injury, and I could always count on him to push me; without him yelling at me I just haven’t kept up.

But now that my needle has edged past the big 4-0, if I miss a couple of weeks of activity and still eat at my normal rate, things can get nasty. My workplace does a health incentive with our medical insurance and every summer we get screened – blood tests, weight, BMI, etc. It’s kinda neat because you can see how you measure up against past years. Now, over the past 2 years I was very active and last year I was quite underweight, but according to my health screening last week I have MORE THAN bounced back from that low point and then some and then some more, and now it is time for me to start getting serious about my running, not just running for a mile and getting winded and walking for two and running the last quarter mile in and calling that a run.

Emmett agrees and has signed on to be my personal coach.

Lastly, after a summer spent punishing my hair for my feelings of unrelated dissatisfaction, I finally had to admit that although I like to do things myself, doing my own hair is not something I can do well. My college roommate once said that spending money on your hair is a necessity, since, as she logically pointed out, you have to look at it every day.

I went to the salon, and put myself in the capable hands of a professional, and caught up on the celebrity gossip magazines. When I was released into the humid air of the summer evening, with the overly sprayed coif that the stylists are fond of, smelling expensive, I wandered across the parking lot and thought that August will be a much better month.

happy places

I’m enjoying my Sunday morning lie-in in my favorite way, propped up in bed with my computer, a cup of coffee, and the windows wide open to sunshine and birdsong. Also the Weather Channel, but that didn’t sound quite so lyrical. I’m sort of addicted to the Weather Channel. For some reason, I find the constant flow of information about weather in other parts of the country very soothing. It seems to remind me that I am not alone in my own little weather bubble. Emmett and Sarge are out playing dress-up with Miss L in her room and eyeballing Gaston – the fish – with evil intent. They are, I think, still recovering from the trauma of July 4. They spent most of the booming fireworks either hanging from the screens or hiding under the bed.

Southeast Michigan has been blessed with an amazing weather weekend, sunny and clear and warm without being uncomfortable. Miss L and I spent the day of the 4th in our happy place with a bag of birdseed and binoculars.

In addition to feeding the birds, we had a little chipmunk following us closely to pick up the dropped birdseed. He even came right up and took seed out of my hand, leaving a generous smear of chipmunk drool. Miss L knows better than to try to feed a rodent with her bare hand so she kept a safe distance and rolled her eyes at me.

We were so busy having fun that I didn’t get out to run until midday yesterday, and pulled out a pretty pathetic 4 miles with a lot of wheezing even though honestly, I had no reason for the hystrionics. There was a nice breeze and it wasn’t too hot. Yet still, I came home a bedraggled red-faced mess wondering why I call myself a runner. I sacked out in the backyard chaise for awhile while I finished ‘Attachments’ by Rainbow Rowell, which was a decent if somewhat fluffy romantic novel. I have little stomach these days for fluffy romantic novels but it was engaging and breezy and the right kind of read for a chaise, although there were constant interruptions by the wildlife in the yard. The hummingbirds are crazy pigfaces this year and can’t stay away from our feeder – their tiny motor noise is constant and they aren’t deterred by Emmett’s wild fishtail jumps at the screen window to get them, or our presence in the yard. And we even have a tiny brave baby bunny who came out from the shrubbery to sit a foot away from my sweat-reeking prone figure and nibble on clover.

The tomato plants that I bought from Michigan Heirlooms are booming and I have many little green tomatoes starting. The horrible Mr Stripeys that I detested last year appear to have reseeded themselves in one of the other beds and I’m waiting to see what they are going to do – if they seem like they are going to develop flowers, I’ll thin them and stake them and see if I can coax something out of them worth eating.

In front yard news, I worried that the pink Annabelle hydrangeas might have been irretrievably damaged by our harsh winter, but they are back and in better shape than ever. The day lilies need to be thinned and the knockout rose bush, which had grown to epic proportions, reminding me of the gnarled thorn hedges around castles in fairy tales, has bounced back as well even after my vicious pruning of it. I am full of plans for the backyard and feel like every plant and every tiny garden space that I invest in weaves a bit more protective magic around the house.

I’m hoping that this week is short and relatively painless, as Miss L and I leave for a nice weeklong northern Michigan vacation on Thursday afternoon, and I think we both really need the downtime. I, for one, am looking forward to long sleeps, no makeup, and some time spent outdoors and with my folks.

The sky has been like a watercolor painting this week, big blue with fast-moving voluminous clouds, green and gold and thick soft air. Some days it is too hot to run outside and even when the cool front moved through, it was extremely humid and I had to walk a few paces at every half-mile of my lunchtime run. I reflected that a couple of years ago, taking any walking steps during my run was distressing to me – an indication of a failed training opportunity. I wondered if I should be pushing myself harder. Then I remembered that I’m still setting personal bests in the short runs I’ve done this summer, and I’m enjoying running more than ever. I am not competing with myself or with anyone, I’m just enjoying being outside and the feeling that comes from regular activity.

I’m staying motivated by signing up for smaller events every 2-3 weeks. I found a 4-mile run for our local Founder’s Festival, and in August we have the annual Farmington Run for the Hills, which I will do as a 10k. I love these smaller runs in my hometown because they are usually community-oriented, for good causes, and have a very upbeat, grass-roots feel. (Plus, I can roll out of bed a half-hour before and ride my bike to the start.) Then in September I will do the Kensington Challenge 15k, and start ramping up training for October in Empire. I love the Sleeping Bear Half Marathon and although I don’t really expect to bust out a PR this year – last year the stars were totally in alignment – it’s such a nice event and the weather is terribly, excitingly unpredictable and it’s my favorite time of year to run.

I finally spent my birthday money on a couple new pairs of running shorts, tank tops, and some new socks. I’m slowly replacing my ragged old Athleta sports bras – which are like strapping on Viking breastplates – with a fabulous VS sports bra that I found – The Standout. It’s so comfortable and the racerback straps are cute, it’s been a great find and as someone who is slightly more top-heavy than the average runner girl, a good underpinning is almost as important as good shoes.

I like running and I like blogging so why is it that there are so few women’s running blogs that I enjoy reading? Most that I check out are too over the top for me. Instead of being motivational and inspiring, I find them to be a litany of accomplishments and selfies of their muscles and race photos. Don’t get me wrong – if you have the stones to be doing halfs and fulls and tris and Ironman events, you have put an inordinate amount of work into it and you deserve to feel very proud of yourself. I just don’t necessarily want to read about it, I guess. There are a few good running blogs that I like – but I feel as though I like them not because they’re running blogs, but rather they’re blogs by women who happen to run, and do a lot of other things too. They seem more balanced.

I know that nothing about this seems very well-structured, but it’s okay to me. When I started running a few years ago, I essentially stopped blogging. All the hobbies I’d enjoyed suddenly seemed sort of trivial compared with my split times, my aching muscles and minor injuries, my goals and gradual accomplishments. I felt as though I had nothing to say, and it was time to stop talking. Now, I’ve found my voice again, without losing my stride, and even if the things I want to say are trivial and unstructured, I like being able to say them.

one long digression

I had a couple of hours to kill while my bread dough rose (I am trying Jane Brocket’s bread recipe from ‘Simple Art of Domesticity’; I have tried it before but didn’t realize I had an uncorrected copy of the book with several recipe mistakes in it owing to the conversion between metric / standard measuring, and the bread came out like a dense salty rock. Loving Jane Brocket, I am giving it another go with the corrected recipe. Even if it doesn’t turn out, there isn’t much better than the smell of baking bread in the house).

I digress.

I decided to go running. I’m easing back into a more aggressive running schedule, wearing embarrassing calf sleeves to avoid my typical scourge of springtime shin splints. My running friends are all quite a bit ahead of me, already turning in fast times in events and sporting new running ensembles. This makes the competitive “what about me” part of my brain very anxious indeed. I like to think I am one of those people who feels good for my friends and proud of their accomplishments when they do better than me and that I can say graciously, “I’m only competing against myself” and to be fair, that is how I strive to be, and those are all the things I say OUT LOUD. Inside, though, I have to squash a feeling of dissatisfaction when I feel outdone, and it makes me not proud to say it about myself. But being competitive only makes me not want to run at all, oddly. I only run well when I run for love, and so I have to trick myself with encouraging words and the promise of photography to get my running shoes on when I am in this mode, otherwise I will stay inside and watch Netflix and feel gloomy and guilty whenever my gaze lands on my Mizunos.

I spend a lot of my time trying to outfox myself, it’s kind of exhausting.

I ran on the trails, which is Strictly Prohibited, and I got a lot of dirty looks from the casual ambling Sunday morning birders in their big hats and hiking boots, toting their enormous-lensed cameras; but I went along anyway, and didn’t feel very bad about it. I don’t think it hurts anyone, I’m a polite runner. Anyway, I thought, they can catch me if they want to stop me, and I put on a showoff bit of speed up a hill and then winded myself and had to walk for awhile, feeling slightly foolish.

Trail running is harder than normal street running, uneven ground and lots of elevation changes, so I didn’t care about my time, just being outside. We are a bit behind in our greenery, but it is there, the woods are coming alive with it. Red-winged blackbirds – my favorite springtime bird – sang their bubbling, burbling song in the reeds, the sun turning their black feathers glossy. The wind was up in the trees and clouds blowing a gale, it was one of those spring days when the sun comes out and is so warm that you feel like you could curl up in a warm patch of grass and fall asleep quite cozily; but then a dark cloud is driven across it and the world falls cold and chilly, and your nose starts to run. It was the kind of day where you run and walk and run and walk and you get back to your car and all you want is a hot shower and a hot cup of coffee and everything is happy, sunshine and shadow.

At the end of my run, I came across a couple of others to share the path with. The turkey, looking fat and brilliant in the nice light, edged past me and ran on frantically, no doubt sensing the word DRUMSTICK as it swirled through my brain. The sandhill crane, however, was unbothered; he groomed himself carefully and surveyed me with a blank golden eye, and caused ME to edge by, no longer sure that I couldn’t be caught if I tried to run.

in like a lion, out like a – well, a lion.

it’s april 5 and last night we had a fire in the fireplace and the wind howled around the eaves. there were two nice days last week and i got out and ran on one of them, 4 miles at lunchtime in a chill windy sun. i love the sound of the red-winged blackbirds swaying in the reeds. i run down and around and up, over thawing mud studded with deer prints, curious bones being churned up in the roadside thaw, past fallen trees and a tiny mirrored pond that in the summertime will have a turtle sunning itself. then i come back and see the office building and slink between all the polite cars in the parking lot, smelling like a wet dog, blowing and sweating and still half-wild. it’s like my alter-ego, and i come back and shower and put my work clothes back on and sneak back to my office, feeling rebellious and pleased and only slightly apologetic.

every day that we see the sun, i try to get us outside, especially on weekends. i like this teetering on the edge of the spring precipice, oddly, because i know once the balance tips over things will go fast, the warmth and green will come in fast forward and before i know it be full summer, blooming towards ripeness and rot.