Crunchy Running

Weather: 32 f, 6 mph wind (s) "feels like": 30 f
Miles: 5
Route: The "circle", 5:50 a.m. run
Afterward: Cloudy run...I think just tired overall from the 4-day weekend.
Listened to: John Grisham's The Broker (Chapters 7-9).
After the freezing melted snow, the path got crunchy and found myself running a lot on my toes.

Sunday and the first 5 miler

Weather: 30 f, 16 mph wind (ese) "feels like": 15 f
Miles: 5
Route: The "circle", 7 a.m. run
Afterward: Snow and a times a bit heavy. Felt good overall.
Listened to: John Grisham's The Broker (Chapters 5-7).

Fixing Saturday

Weather: 23 f, 9 mph wind (sw) "feels like": 13 f
Miles: 4
Route: usual, 8 a.m. run
Afterward: Slept in so Lori could run first. Run was fine, legs are feeling a bit tired.
Listened to: John Grisham's The Broker (Chapters 3-4).

Outgoing Presidental Pardons

Weather: 14 f, 3 mph wind (e) "feels like": 14 f; light snow
Miles: 4
Route: usual, a.m. run
Afterward: Day off from school, so I slept in and had to run later in the morning around 9 a.m. Nice run with a strong second half.
Listened to: John Grisham's The Broker (Chapters 1-2).

Thursday snow and Panera and iPods

Weather: 25 f, 13 mph wind (w) "feels like": 11 f; light snow
Miles: 4
Route: usual, a.m. run
Afterward: A bit tight, but I woke up later than I had wanted to, so I didn't leave more time to warm up. Overall, felt fine
Listened to: Songs on my new iPod Shuffle
Initially I was going to listen to The Daily Show's America: A listeners guide to Democratic Inaction, but I opted for the "Life is Random" Apple-Slogan approach and got a wide variety of songs. I listened to America in my last marathon (Lakefront) and finished it right before mile 26. This morning I got through the foreward by TJefferson, snort-laughed, and then thought: "Maybe another time."
The maiden voyage of the iPod Shuffle (Apple's flash-drive MP3ish player) went well and it fits my purposes.
O yeah, Panera opened in town and life is very good.

Tuesday frogs

Weather: 37 f, Misty and "feels like": 31 f
Miles: 4
Route: usual
Afterward: Slept in, but decided to run in the morning anyway. Legs a bit tight and overall a bit tired from the Thera-Flu from last night.
Listened to: "Wait, wait, don't tell me" (Feb 12 05).
Memorable moment: Guest, Morgan Spurlock of Supersize Me fame playing the "Not my job" portion of the show.

Mondays don't bother me...it's Tuesdays that bother me a bit. Sometimes I think the kids book appropriately named Tuesday (not to be confused with Tuesdays with Morrie).

Speaking of Young Love

I came across thes photos on my computer this morning: we're at the Japanese Tea Gardens in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. The first is from 1989, the second, 2001.

Let me not

With the occassion of today, I am reminded of what I recited to my love just over 15 years ago:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
S. 116; Shakespeare

Cake in the Rain (Sunday)

Weather: 36 f, 18 mph wind (ese) "feels like": 20 f
Miles: 4
Route: usual
Afterward: Strong: the 3 mile felt as though I could actually run a 10k again. Slushing, windy...2 miles into the wind, but the music made me smile.
Listened to: Songs

MacArthur Park (Richard Harris)
Drops of Jupiter (Train)
When I look to the Sky
I'm about to come alive
Cowboy take me home (Dixie Chicks)
Heart Break town
This Cowboy Song (Sting)
A Mighty Wind (from the soundtrack)
Free (Train)

"MacArthur Park" is only the second song I've downloaded from the internet without paying for it. I make use of the iTunes plan to pay for songs, but since I already purchased one copy of "MacArthur Park"---the wrong one as I was informed by a friend (apparently, Andy Williams is a copycat)--I figured that it okay, just this once to use Limewire to find this opus of the late 60's. In fact, I remember hearing it one night several years ago in Warsaw and really enjoying the lyrics:

MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

With any longer song stuffed with metaphors during this time (may I remind you of "American Pie"?), many people spend lots o' time "figuring it all out."

Saturday Slush

Weather: 44 f, little wind
Miles: 3
Route: usual
Afterward: solid run...though a bit slushy on the path--lots of melting snow. Traffic was low and talked to one runner who wanted to know if the path was muddy.
Listened to: "The Meaning of Faith" (Speaking of Faith). (2nd half)
Good quotes:

The following edited passage was excerpted from Anne Lamott's book Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith: A memory came to me then of our pastor, Veronica, telling us just the week before how she gets direction from God in prayer. She said that when she prays for direction, one spot of illumination always appears just beyond her feet, a circle of light into which she can step.

She moved away from the pulpit to demonstrate, stepping forward shyly, this big-boned African-American woman tramping like Charlie Chaplin into an imagined spotlight. And then after standing there looking puzzled, she moved another step forward to where the light had gone, two feet ahead of where she had been standing and then again. "We in our faith work," she said, "stumble along toward where we think we're supposed to go, bumbling along, and here is what's so amazing: We end up getting exactly where we were supposed to be."

And another about writing:

Lamott cites a 1985 article in The New York Times by E.L. Doctorow:

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing… Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

Friday coolness

Weather: 25 f, little wind
Miles: 3
Route: usual
Afterward: strongest run of the season. It feels like I got my lungs back after a 2 month layoff. Legs feel okay and this is really the first run (since I began to train this season) that I felt as though I could run a 10 k.
Listened to: "The Meaning of Faith" (Speaking of Faith).
Good quote:

One reason we find talking about God so difficult is we are part of what we are trying to understand. The thing about spiritual truth is that it wants to be spoken. It is too important, too transforming to be left alone in silence. It seems to have speakable content. The problem is that once you speak or show the words to someone else, then both of you are different. The words have changed both of you. And now you must start all over again. I believe that in one form or another this making of words is the touchstone for all spiritual traditions and of all spiritual renewal: To say what is just at the outermost edge of what can be spoken is to deal with words that are so primary and dazzling that they are infinitely personal and intimate.