June 10th

“I gotta make a plan for myself
Can't look to you can't look to anybody else
Only this way am I truly free
I wasted time too long now it's up to me” (Pennywise)

I"ll admit that lazy people bug me. People that go on vacation and just sit around on a beach and do nothing, that bugs me too. Taking 2 hour naps is a waste of time. That’s what night is for. People that take zero initiative to see the wolrd, people that are complacent and passive...Ugh! None of this bugs me to the point that it affects me too much, but it is just  waste of life. As far as I know we only have one chance on this go-round. Why wouldn’t you want to see what you can accomplish? Why wouldn’t one want to see the world and feel alive every day? And sure, I have a crap job (that pays pretty ok with good benefits) so I am not happy at that, and a career person could say the same about me, and maybe they do. I just choose to put my energies in a different place.

Running down a trail in the middle of the mountains is a serene experience that brings peace to the soul. Or pedaling a mountain bike on single track. Or riding a bicycle at 50mph down a mountain.  Except for the running at the moment, these are the things that make up my life on a daily basis. But it doesn’t have to be “x” or “y” or even “z.” Find a passion, give it your all, and take it as far as you can go.  People not having a passion is such a waste of life - surely something must light a fire inside. And I think the last few weeks really drove this home for me to why I think like that.  A couple girls that I’m really good friends with both lost their brother, another friend of mine lost his good friend, and then another friend lost his Grandma. And sure, maybe grandma was old and maybe it was her time, but dammit to hell, for the other 3 it was NOT their time. These people had a life, a passion, were good people with people whom loved and looked up to them. And now they are not here anymore. But Sally fatass eating her gallon of ice cream sitting on the couch each day doing nothing but taking up space will live to be a 100. Life isn’t fair and I realize that. But still, get out and actually live and love life. No one is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow. And crap, I may not even survive the day to go to sleep tonight, so I am damn sure that I will do something in life today 100%.

Nothing is worse than an indecisive person either, or one that lives for others.  I know what I want out of life, and have goals and sure, right now some of them are just dreams, but I will do all I can to make them happen. And if I fail so what? I am giving it my all, and I can gurantee that failure won’t be lack of effort or because I hesitated or didn’t or wouldn’t make a decision. The journey and pursuit of the goal brings so much joy and accomplishment as I work toward the endpoint. It might not work out exactly how I planned it but it should be fairly clost to my vision, because really - it’s up to me.  And I won't let myself down.

That’s my rant for the day.

 

Randumb Tuesday thoughts....

Random thoughts running through my head…OK, it’s not all running related, but I’m sure I can get it there,  but running is really such a small part in my life, and the most meaningless in my hierarchy of needs – or at least to what’s really important in life.  It’s a good thing when I am able to think about running or training or racing, because that generally means everything else is going ok. But just because the opportunity is there, it doesn’t meaning the running is going to go smoothly. For something the human form is supposedly Born to Do  (see what I did there?) it is also the most frustrating at certain times.

I stopped and thought about this while at physical therapy one day. I have no less than 8 people that I work with keeping me running. I have numerous physical therapists, athletic trainers, massage therapists. That’s a lot of people’s talents and education and hard work all trying to keep me running and happy and healthy. And yet I am still broken. I have had 3 separate issues in the past 10 days which directly impacted my running. My ongoing knee, blah blah blah, that’s fine if I avoid the trails, my calf / Achilles – but that’s no big deal. And now my foot. Seriously! How the fudgsicle do I get a knot in the tendon of my foot? I am getting really close to just hanging up the running shoes for a while. I have lots of bicycles that are needing some love thrown their way. But man, bike riding is such a massive time suck. And I still tend to ride a bicycle like I’m 20 at times; meaning I’m not always smart enough to slow down to go faster, instead hucking myself into some precarious moments which include bouncing off the ground at 25 mph or more.  Dirt hurts. Pavements is worse.

Why do all these girls wear those tall boots? Nearly everywhere I look they all have them. This is perhaps the largest most blatant evidence of the term “group think” that I can ever remember seeing. Even cattle when out in the field stray from one another now and then. . Do they all shop together? Because one girl got some everyone has to have them? Sorry but they look stupid. Maybe it’s the old punk rocker in me or some innate individualistic gene I possess, but those things just look plain silly when everyone looks the same. Why do all these women want to look like everyone else does? Don’t these women know that tryouts for ZZ Tops video “Legs” already came out 30 years ago.   Move on….

A quote I came across the other day stuck in my head…”There are two kinds of people in the world, the ones who go into a room and turn the TV on, and one that enters a room and  turns the TV off.” I am definitely a turn the TV off person, although living (mostly) by myself it’s never really on. I generally cannot sit still long enough to watch a movie, nor do I care to for the most part. But I can sit still and read a book. Not really sure what the difference is although culturally it is more acceptable to read a book -   for whatever reason sitting on your ass reading is better than sitting on your ass watching a movie.  Am I making myself smarter? I don’t know about that.  But watching TV seems like a passive thing to do in life, and I tend to take a proactive approach to everything I do. Nothing ever got done just talking about it. Or watching it unfold in some electronic form. But reading tends to enlighten and inspire? I dunno about that. I’ll just go outside and do something hoping that will satiate whatever desire I have to feel like I did something with my day.

Teeter-tawtering




This is all the motivation I need



It’s a boring and conflicting time of year. Fog. Cold. Wet. Dark. Motivation sometimes rises and falls with the amount of sunshine, and then all of a sudden with no warning it is off the chart again.

One day I am in the middle of running 27 miles and feel completely burned out, then the following week I run 82 miles and just want to keep running.

Not sure what triggers this – but am just glad I am going all out again with seemingly unlimited (sometimes too much) motivation to run.

Lance has finally admitted the 30% truth, because really, with his arrogance and narcissism he must think we are all a bunch of idiots to believe he is telling us the complete story. I could write forever about this dude, and compare and contrast him with other people that I once knew, and that would be so much fun. I would love  to write it, but I won’t waste my time on him or anyone else that is either too dumb, too arrogant, or too callous to even get it. I wasted enough words on that, but did I mention how fun it would be? Go rot in obscurity after making amends with the lives your ruined – although that’s not really possible.

Call me pessimistic, but do people really honestly believe there is no PED use in ultrarunning? Really? Again. Really? And how long did it take you to understand that Lance was NOT clean. Or Marion Jones. Or Ben Johnson. Or...(the list goes on). I hate to pat myself on the back, but I think I had been a non believer since at least 2001. Add the facts up and sometimes things that are too good to be true are just that. I would never name a name without proof, but some of these times from 2013 are just plain crazy fast.  And the amount of improvement people make from year to year is astonishing. Hours improvement in a single year? I’ll remain skeptical about a lot of these runners and really just hope I’m wrong.

Back to my running. Mine mine mine. My running. Like it is a physical object that I can wrap my arms around or something.  The truth is far from anything like that – I have never been able to settle all my running riddles, and currently I am in a huge one. Patella Tendonitis…patella tracking issues…whatever. The only thing I know is that I CANNOT run downhill without pain. And it’s not a little bit either, it’s the stride altering kind where I run like I have a peg leg, but nope, it’s just my leg, no peg. Physical therapy gets me to cross train, I have always been such a slacker in that regard, and avoiding elevation does seem to help.  But gosh darn it, I miss the single track. If I was ever patient enough I would just go to Tiger Mountain and walk to the top of it, and gingerly walk down.  At least I’d get some single track back into my soul. But I know I would end up peg legging downhill – and of course the knee would be stressed.

Oh! Did I mention with this injury I am still able to run 80+ miles per week? Yep, I cannot understand this one either. Although I think someone should just permanently attach whatever kinesio tape job is always on my knee. Riddles. I like easier riddles. Like I’m hungry so I should eat. Or I need to be here so I need to leave at this time. This one is above my knowledge base, and I’m not quite sure the people I have been working with are entirely successful in decoding my knee dilemma.  I have eight weeks left to train for a 100K – I’m not worried about running 62 miles, I’m worried about the descending and climbing within that 62 miles. I could always powerwalk it, uphill no big deal but it would be so painful (mentally) to have to walk or run gingerly  downhill.

  Maybe I can find a run across Nebraska? Or Kansas?



 

The Waiting Game



Zion. Coming soon
 to a run near me.

 
 

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”

Rumi

Wait is defined as “to postpone or delay something or to be postponed or delayed” (Dictionary.com).

Someone once asked me to wait for them. A week turned into a month which turned into many months. Then a year. Then more months on top of that. All hiding behind lies and self fulfilling agendas. I was going through a lot of stuff in life at the time besides this. I became hugely depressed. Most days I didn’t even want to wake up, and there was no denying that I was at a point where that was a distinct possibility. It turns out that person is a liar. A user. And a piece of shit that I am thankful things didn’t work out with. I was at a point where I was no longer me, but I let that happen. Lesson learned though - so I take some positive from that.

Another person asked me to wait for something just recently also. I couldn’t get an answer to what in fact I was waiting for. So the answer is no – I’m not waiting. Life doesn't wait, and most often I won't either.

How does all this tie into running? Or life since for me the two are so closely intertwined? I don’t know if I can explain it clearly (or concisely) but I’ll try. I’ve had people ask me how I am going to feel when I’m crippled at 70 years old from all the running I do now. Again – am I supposed to wait for that to happen through natural causes or osteoporosis, old age, arthritis or atrophy? Am I supposed to save my knees, hips, ankles, and whatever else I’m supposedly wearing out so I can win the weekly mall walking lap race against the other old geezers? Would that entail sitting around doing nothing now? Only to save myself for that time? So I can be an able bodied old bastard I should let present life pass by? Where is the sense in that? I don't see it.

The only thing I have figured out for myself is that life is about now, today, in this moment which I am in control of - as I get out of each day I wake up and think how awesome each moment within this day will be. I am not going to live for anyone outside of my kids and people close to me.  I am going to be there for them from the moment they were born to the moment I die, and come hell or high water there is nothing that could ever stop me if needed. And in between I am going to experience life to the fullest extent I can. I am going to see all parts of the world that I always wanted to. I look back and think of all the places I have seen a sunrise or sunset, in all different mountain ranges and all time zones. My own picture book in my head could be it's own Ansel Adams gallery. And it is still growing because I am still living for now because tomorrow is not guaranteed. Sure, I have regrets and many wasted days in the past, but the fact is I have learned so much in living life so far it makes me realize that even the bad days weren’t completely wasted because they brought me to where I am now. In a good place, seeing so many new things and meeting so many interesting people from all parts of the world and life.  It’s a pretty amazing journey I’m on right now, and this ride is just getting good. I can’t wait for it to continue. And I’m not going to either. And I still have many miles left to run.

Grand Ridge 50K

There is no flat trail once on the single track.

Grand Ridge 50K – I ended up winning but didn’t feel as if I ran well. I saw little Megan back there (hi : ) and man, I didn’t want to get beat by a little girl, I’m sure that time is coming soon but not quite yet please. The rocks killed my wimpy feet too. It sure sucks getting older. But in all seriousness, I think it’s the fact that I really haven’t run many trails this year.  With so much going on all the time and running so many miles I didn’t always have time to drive and run 20 miles in a single day.  In hindsight it may have been better to run 15 miles on trails as opposed to 20 around town. The race started off as most 50K’s start off, 5-6 people going way way WAYYYYY too fast. I don’t know if they just wanted to lead a race, or they were feeling so well so early, or what it was. But I thought I had a 4:50 in me for this run, so I just ran the pace I thought I needed to which was 2:02 for each lap and then whatever on the short 5 mile loop. First lap easy – 2:02. Second lap I was actually pretty good, lost some time when I needed to pig out at the aid station, and drink a bunch. But I think it was maybe2:06 or 2:07. The last lap was pretty bad. I took a couple minutes trying to get food in me before I set off on the last lap, and also had to drink because the preceding aid station had a line for the fluids which I did NOT want to wait for.  Anyway, to make a long sob story short, I sucked on the last part of the 3.5 miles of climbing before the downhill. I was still “running” but it was pathetic. Shit hurt. Whenever I get like this I get a Phil Ligget quote in my head that he said one time about Jan Ullrich as Lance was dropping him in the mountains, “It’s like his brain told his legs, bridge to engine room more power, but there isn’t any.” The last 2 miles was a complete bonk. I dropped my last Clif Blok on the ground, and that was it. It fell in cinematic slow motion too, it was pretty  amazing. Or maybe I was just running in slow motion at that point, it was hard to tell. Luckily it was mostly downhill to finish so I shuffled my way there in a complete cement shoed bonk. It did down pour for the last ½ mile or so, but I was too hungry to care. Made it to the finish, stood under the EZ up, and then saw pizza and muffins and attempted to eat my weight in food. Yummy. I also won a choice of Rudy Project sunglasses and then a case of muscle milk for the win. Yum yum. Time to seriously get my old ass into shape though. OK, I do realize I’m in decent shape, but not exactly the race shape that I want to be in. But as always, it is so awesome to run in the woods and enjoy the solitude and clear thoughts of nothingness as the ground blurs beneath my feet. That’s a good happy place to be.