Patience; the new endurance sport.

I just noticed I've been recording mileage under the wrong shoe.  When there is snow and ice on the trail, I use my brooks trail shoe for better stability.  It's a new year today for sure.  Ready to turn a whole new leaf in 2009.  I'm thinking moderation in all things is my new year's resolution.

The trail is crunchy with a newly frozen layer of snow.  The river is so black in contrast to the white snow banks, and the surface is a broad glossy sheen from running so deep.  I do love the winter running. And, nothing, I mean nothing is quite as refreshing as pulling your pants down in icy sub-freezing winds for a VPB pit stop :)  Men are so lucky, anatomically speaking.  Regardless, I adore running this this time of year, no races to train for, just me and the frigid silence of winter.  I always feel like a hero for running in sub-freezing temps.  But then I think of the surfers in the NE, surfing during snow and ice storms.  Then I look down to the tracks in the fresh snow below my feet, and realize at least 3 others hero runners got there some hours or minutes before me. 

Here's something you don't see everyday, much less a Sunday afternoon.  The snowy trail is silent, you've seen no one for 2 miles, when suddently from around the bend comes a 14-15 year old kid on a unicycle.  He was solemn and determined and passed me both coming and going.   I wondered if he was running away to the circus.

I cut the work out short due to the 1.5 hours I spent shoveling the driveway.  My upper arms and back ache!  Two days in a row shoveling 5 or more inches off the driveway and sidewalks. If I could just get a second away during the day to ski on it instead of just haveing to shovel it off my driveway I wouldn't be so mad.  But after all that hard work with the snow shovel, I realized that I really should live on a farm.  I'm much better cut out for manual labor than anything else. Today my friend Jim and I had an ongoing disucssion about PT vs. Cortisone.  I'll need to start running in earnest at the end of the month to get myself in gear for Moab --but my hip still bothers me.  So he's suggested better core work (remember, the problem with the hip started with my lower back which caused me to ruin my hamstring, which then ruined my hip.)  Core work....he's right. He sent me this link:  http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/Article-detail.asp?Articleid=486 and also the 100 push ups program: http://www.hundredpushups.com/  So, in addition to the stretching, I may be working on 100 push ups, and core.  Certainly couldn't hurt my hip any more--Althought, I'm not convinced I should keep avoiding the cortisone or the MRI.  It could be scar tissue to blame and I really didn't go through the whole process....I'm sick of doctors for this year.  I'll give PT one more round this week and next before I do the cortisone though.

Oh the treadmill at 6:00 a.m.  Yuck.  Is there anything worse when there are no exciting movies to watch?  I've been rationing Alias because I guess they only made 3 seasons and I only have a few more till the end (thank you Catherine!). I've ordered every James Bond movie ever made from Netflix and should have them soon.  I'd even maybe watch Vin Diesel at this point.  Or maybe I'll just go back and watch all 3 seasons of Arrested Development.  Anything to keep me awake on that freaking treadmill.  These mornings have been harsh.  Is there anything worse than running indoors?  Oh yeah, running at the gym while breathing everyone elses sweat and chlorine vapor. 

The hip, it's the hip again.  It's so slippery on the trail, I realize I'm not practicing the gait I was taught in PT.  It's all I can do to keep from slipping on the ice.  So on the treadmill, my focus is to retrain that gait with the good torque.  Boring.  I'm suplimenting the running with cross training at Sundance....:)

You can visit a place like Concord Mass and contemplate why it is the fecund birthplace of Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott, and Hawthorne. I'm always in awe, that some of our finest writers, minds sprung from the wooded areas around Concord. While I am on the Provo Rivertrail, I often find myself contemplating Walden Pond and how a place can be so filled with energy and inspiration to give birth to ideas and life-changing realizations, developments and philosophies. I have the great privilege of feeling a certain ownership of our Rivertrail. I've often commented that it is my own Walden Pond. I have been using the Rivertrail since 1991. I have seen every season repeatedly pass. But with each passing season I forget the splendor and the beauty of seasons before. I forget the inspiration it brings, until it sweeps through my mind, cleaning out dead ideas, like dry leaves from a tree, with a crisp January breeze blowing across the soft fields of snow. It is on Rivertrail I can most often find joy in the moment, allow it to occupy every cell of my body. It is here, I commune with loved ones passed on, understand the circle of life, take inventory of my life, commit myself to doing better, acknowledge the "cancer" in my daily living that must be cut away. Today each branch of each tree and shrub was covered in a thick layer of ice, giving a thick whiteness to every branch. Then, snowflakes crystalized and stuck to the icy fingered branches. In the sunlight, these crystals shone like millions of diamonds. Looking past the sparkling white branches across the sparkling white fields, I realized how often we believe we can shape nature when we are truly subject to and powerless to her will and beauty. I used to think I could change things, make history, save the world with my work. I realize now after being beaten down again and again, that I am not in charge of the Universe. If I can just learn to see the beauty in accepting what is; like the sparkling crystals on the tree branches in winter, rather than always hoping for some eternal Summer.

I know we are not supposed to be running in the smog. But Sat/Sun are my only days I can run outside in the daylight.

Treadmill running. See how moderate I'm doing now.  3-5 miles, and lots of stretching, core work, and sit ups, and push ups. 

Sweating rivulets on the treadmill. Boring as hell.

Every day I think I might get away to ski a few hours and I just can't.  Besides I'll be the snow is as hard and icy as on my driveway, now it's never going to snow again this winter. That's ok, I have not time to get out there anyway.

I'm just not alive until I have a really good outside run.  The air quality is so terrible, I actually felt like I was coming down with a cold when I came home (tightness in my breathing).  When will this crappy inversion end.?

I love running on Sundays.  It is so serene and quiet out there.  I"m not running as hard or fast, or trying very much--so it feels declicious.  That, plus, I want to see that kid on his unicycle again.  What was that kid doing, riding that unicycle down the trail, on a Sunday afternoon, in the snow.  Makes me wonder what else I've been missing on the trail on Sundays.

In the fall I took about 200 picutures of the trail where I run.  I took the camera with me today in the morning, just around 9:30 a.m.  The moisture on the branches had again formed crystals.  It was a winter wonderland.  Blue sky, white glittering tree branches, fields of soft snow. There must have been 10 other people out there with cameras.  The scenery along the river was breathtaking.  I wish I could post the pictures here.  I took about 266 more of the trail in winter, all covered with snowy crystals.  But man it was cold to stop and shoot pictures every few meters.  My fingers froze.  But what a gorgeous morning.  I've never seen anything like how every branch of every tree grew snow.  My pictures have given me quite a bit of pleasure since yesterday.  I'm so glad I have them.  Just 2 more seasons to go.  I plan on taking the same pictures from the same spots in every season.  I have one like that, that I've taken of Mt. Timanogos.  But this will be like taking a walk on the trail in every season of the year....like a slideshow.  They can bring it to me when I'm in the hospital having hip replacement surgery in 10 years.

I ran on the treadmill and watched the inauguration before I had to go to work.  My mother's family was from the South and in my opinion the most terribly racist people I know.  My mother grew up with sharecropper families skirting her father's property in S.C. She wrote a story once about how her little neighbor friend stopped going to school in the 3rd grade because her family needed her home to work the farm. My mother was told by her father that she could no longer be friends with that girl, and when my mother asked why, she told she was too old to have a 'nigger' for a playmate.  Her father told me when I was 19 that if I got married he'd give me a $100 bill, but that if I married a black man I could expect to never see the family again.  I have no idea how people get to be so mean and closed off to other humans.  I know, had my mother been alive today, regardless of political affiliation, she would have been happy to see the civil rights movement she was a part of in the 60's come full circle.  I was moved by President Obama's speech, his gratitude of those who have fought for and died for this country, made sacrifices, worked hard to make this country great.  Time will be the judge of whether or not his deeds are bigger than his words.  But it was something I'll never forget to have witnessed a moment significant in history for myself.

Treadmill, stretching, core, push ups. Yawn.

Inside, on the treadmill. The air quality is so bad; my lungs feel scratchy and tight like I have a cold.  I've avoided running outside now the air is this mucky.  It reminds me of how bad the air was in Riverside CA in the 1970's before CA implemented emissions standards (although it's still pretty bad). I used to spend summers with my grandma there, and my eyes would itch and my lungs would be so tight after swimming or playing outside.  When my Dad was a kid growing up in Riverside, in the winter they would drive up to Big Bear Lake in the mountains on the weekends just to let the kids breath clean air.  In those days people burned wood to stay warm and the smoke and muck would sit in the valley locked in by the San Bernardino Mountains.....what's our excuse now? I can not believe that in every single city in America, the air quality is BETTER than it was 20 years ago---in every city EXCEPT Salt Lake.  This is the worst air I've ever seen since 1979 in Riverside. Maybe I should just move back there.  Utah is getting just as crowded, and polluted, that plus kids are carrying guns and shooting each other here too - so much for all my 'clean living' arguments for staying here Utah.

It was totally foggy and rainy outside.  Felt just like San Diego in the winter.  All the rain has washed away the snow.  But at least it cleared the air?  Right? I had a weird run-in with a guy 'walking' his rotwiler/husky mix and golden retreiver.  He was riding in his truck with his elbow out of his window while he 'ran' his two dogs down Center Street and then around Boat Harbor Drive. On Boat Harbor Drive the rotwiler came running toward me growling, so I stuck out my foot like I was going to kick the dog in the head, and I yelled at the guy in the truck to call his dog away--to which he replied "Oh, she's ok, she's no problem."  Then when my dog came up from behind me, that rotweiler went after her, pinned her down to the ground and was ripping at her neck, so I kicked his rotweiler in the head and sprayed her face with mace.  I yelled again to the guy to call off his dog.  He then got out of his truck and started walking toward me, and it occurred to me breifely that he wasn't headed toward the dogs.  So I ran right past him, leaving my dog to be attacked by his dog until she finally got away and came after me.  I turned around and saw him grabbing his dog by the fur and tossing it into the back of his truck before he drove away.  I had a dream once a dog attacked my dog.  But it was years ago when I actually had a different dog.  It was a bizzare incident.  So if you see an early 1990's model teal green/brown stripped short bed ford pick up (rusty) out on the trail. Watch it. His dogs are mean.

Treadmill.

treadmill.

treadmill.

Ran all the way to the Lake.  It was so refreshing to be outside after all these days on the treadmill.  The only trouble is that it hurts my hip-- right on the outside.  I must not be doing my ham stretches consistantly.  I've got to do that better.  Nice to have some fresh air!