Long Run. Two Hours and Forty-Minutes. Boise Green Belt.

 The distance is now becoming more than is natural for my body to go.  In total, I ran a little over sixteen Miles on this run and the first eight was a romantic wandering through the all the beauty that this crisp, colorful Autumn has to offer.  I set out latter in the afternoon and followed a popular dirt path along the river that was canopied by turning leaves of amber, red, and gold. There were dogs and lovers (both young and old) I saw old friends in green waders, fly poles crossed over their shoulders, taking a break from the serene river and the fish to catch up on their weekly affairs.  Life seems to continue on pace regardless of time.  These old man concerned with the mundane, needing to share the unexceptional, just like me at ten, twenty, and thirty.  We all just want to know that the things we do that do not matter (least of all to the greater cosmos), can hold captive a friend so be we return the friendly ear.  There were fathers with sons teaching them the principles of buoyancy, the importance of movement and the skill of disregarding time.  This is what the Autumn has to offer.  A place to step out of time.  We learn here that it is okay to not take ourselves so desperately seriously.  How could we, coming from the summer where all things peak and the best we have to offer seems to sever ourselves from this earth.  Now we see the haughty
fall.  We see the crowned greens shrivel with dehydration and give all it's glory to a dying gasp of light.  But, it doesn't leave us nothing.  It leaves us a subtle warmth on our skin, it gives us the colors of bounty, the remembrance of harvest.  It whispers as a friend that winter is coming and all those gourds need be stored and the wood staked and that soon these colors will be only memories once even the rivers feel too cold to freeze.  But, for now, I don't need to focus on those things.  I Just need to run, to take in this precious place.  To internalize all the love that abounds.  With these things behind me I can continue to run.  To run through the muscle pains and and the tweaked knees.  To push past the hardened achilles and the bruised tarsals. Kinetics are the key to happiness.

Pre-Race Run. Thirty Minutes. West Kootenai St.

Tomorrow is the City of Trees Half Marathon.  I'm feeling quite apprehensive about the event today.  I worry about my pace and my health.  I worry that I won't run as fast this year as I did last year.  I worry that my knees will shift laterally and my stability will fail and each mile will be worse than the one before.  But that all being said, I know I've done the work.  I've trained intelligently.  I've already completed three half marathons in the past three weeks.  I know my limits of pain and pace and know that regardless of time, tomorrow I will have fun.

I've tapered my miles this week and my body is thankful for it.  I felt stronger on my short run today than I have in weeks.  I've also been eating pretty smart too.   Less candy and crap and more complex carbohydrates.  A few nights ago I baked five pounds of sweet potato souffle and have been joylessly plugging away at it. My glycogen is up, my muscles recovered.  Despite my pre-race anxieties, I really ought to run pretty well.

And now some Arts:

It's nice to know that I'm not the only thing changing. The sky wanted to keep his arboreal friends naive and believing the days of regimented watering cycles were the best they'd ever see.   But, who could stand and contradict the delight of diversity.  Sure, laws of man and nature state that we all must move at a contestant rate.  Here, twenty-five is the law.  Later we learn of Einstein's short sightedness and that when approaching the theoretical limits, great burst of autumn's reds give fuel to the consuming pyre.

Tempo Run. One Hour. Boise Greenbelt.

I lost a week among the hustle.  It's not that I haven't run.  I have.  I've even taken some photos and edited them as well.  But nothing has stuck and the light was never very fair. Drab fall photos forced between shifts at work.  Training has been going well though.  My recent long run was just under sixteen miles and it took me two hours and twenty minutes to complete it. That's a pretty dainty pace, but the sun was warmer than i had thought, I had less water than i needed and far to few calories to keep my strength high. My next long run will have to be altered.  I'll need to drop food at some point.  Take a break and ingest some tortillas or a ball of quinoa.  My overall  pace is improving as well.  I've been pushing myself to hold faster paces for long distances.  I've gone to the parks and done some Fartlek training--run, sprint, walk, repeat.  These days are some of the hardest, but they do so much for lung and leg strength that the pain is clearly worth the effort.

Today I ran seven miles in an hour break between my shifts at work.  This is why i don't have photos.  I've been working these twelve hour days for a few weeks now and running on my breaks has really been a delightful break.  It boosts my energy, gives me a lapse from the normal daily routine, and is a productive way to blow off any stress associated with the job.  The first half of my run was conservative.  I paced along at nine minute mile feeling my body's pains, noting where the evenings stretches would have to focus.  At the half way point I turned about and pushed the run as fast as I could.  At peaks in pace I was running sub seven minute miles (really very fast for me), and my average pace on the way home was a seven twenty mile. 

So, training advances.  This Sunday I will be running the City of Trees Half Marathon.  I'm feeling pretty stoked on the event and expect to run the event quickly.  My official PR for a Half Marathon is one hour and forty seven minutes.  I'm sure I'll destroy it this Sunday.   

Long Run. Two Hours and Fifteen Minutes. Three Bears Trail and Beyond.

 I can't say that I knew what I was getting into.  I followed Three Bears Trail and most of it looked a lot like this.  In total I climbed 2,313 feet.  Nearly half a mile of going up.  But the air was clean today and the wind had a pleasant bite that reminded me that autumn creeps up regardless of personal concern. I could have used something to block the wind. Instead I embraced the climbs, walked seldom but with my pride intact.  Today's long run assayed my abilities.  And I feel I passed well.  My legs don't ache more than they should, my back even less.  My breath was collected for most of this run as well.  Training certainly is advancing well, and with it confidence in myself.

Somethings understand what it means to be out of place.  For all his romantic legacy, Thoreau believed man had no spot this high in nature.  But, me and that ball, we see things a bit more liberally, understand that height is merely correlated with time.

I had to take the color out.  The light was too cruel, too bleak and too flat to allow the boldness of offering relief to the ocular palate.  Imagine a dream where falling incites not only fear but curiosity and this well received meadow is where you learn to trust.













Here's a Link To Today's Garmin Connect

HIll Training. Fifty-Five Minutes. Fort Boise.

 It was a good day to judge the worst Seattle could offer.  At five the temperature peaked in the low 50's and the rain fell diagonally from the sky.  I gained some confidence knowing that the cold and wet are surmountable.  But, the path was far from easy.  The earth turned slick and my feet slipped from beneath me as I worked calmly up the ascending hills.  Only once did I come to my knees.  From the top, light broke through clouds and the city was washed of all its ashen thoughts.  I fear my own will linger a tad longer, though I do have greater control of my lungs and the path from where I came seems  less to do with the dry heat of summer.

One is where I enter; the other is where I leave.  Both potted and protected by the cold sting of the mother herself.  It not for the weak those in power would not bother to wake each morning.  But, the night is when the forgotten belong to the earth. The most of us; the ones who could have become anything if not for all those other things, all those other people, feeding themselves from inherited limbs numbed by the repetition of time.

Pace Run. Forty-Five Minutes. Boise Greenbelt.

Another run jammed into an hour break from work.  Lately, I've been reading marathon training tips from my subscription to Runner's World.  The publication as a whole I find fairly commercial.  I get this feeling that most of the articles are either directly or indirectly pushing me to buy some product in order to improve my splits, run healthier, or dress more appropriately.  I don't really care for any of these tips as mostly I like to run in only my shorts and don't really care about personal records.  However, one article on the many variant marathon training plans available guided me to a single conclusions:  It is very important to run very fast about once a week.  Today I ran faster than I have in a long time.  While my pace was not the fastest pace I've ever been physically capable of (spring 2012 I was in crazy good condition), for my current fitness level, I ran like the proverbial wind.  Running very fast is interesting psychologically.  Every stride away from my work, every step toward the turn around point, is one I know I'll have to take to get back.  I find myself thinking that I'm too far down the greenbelt to be able to turn around and head back.  But, as soon as I hit the half way point and turn around, my mentality changes.  Each step is easier to push myself harder, because I know that the faster I run, the sooner I'll make it home.  Feeling gains in my confidence, I become comfortable with the pace, take joy in running my fastest, and appreciate that the way back home is easier than the road leading from it.

Long Run. One Hour and Thirty Minutes. Boise Greenbelt.

The thing about training for a marathon is that you have to run.  Regardless of how much sleep you got or what you have to do with your day, you have to get out there and run. My schedule at work has shifted to pandemonium and has had me working ten to thirteen hour days for five days in a row now.  Thus, I've had to squeeze my runs into breaks at work.  This certainly isn't ideal for a long run, because...tired.  Last Sunday I had a two hour break from work, so I went out, without my camera, and logged a shorter long run just so I could stay active.  The run was pleasant but seemed much more like work, due to not being able to stop and take photos.  The run was pressured and I had to continually check my watch to make sure I'd make it back to work in time to work my second shift.  This was not a glamorous run.  There was very little romantic about it.  But, that's the nature of Marathon training.  I have to run, whether I have time or not.