Category: Running Log

august 22/SWIM

2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
100 degrees

So hot! So windy! Such choppy water! There was a lifeguard shortage so the course was a line instead of triangle — to the little beach and back again. When I started, the water was so choppy that I thought I would only do one loop, but I managed to do another. 2 was enough. I had to breathe on my right side the whole time and watch out for swimmers swimming way off course. One was heading straight toward me and only stopped just before ramming into me. Yikes. I noticed a lot of other swimmings swimming a few strokes of breaststroke then a few of freestyle.

The water was rough; I was jostled around a lot. Mostly I didn’t mind it. Not sure I’d call it fun, but it wasn’t too bad.

For most of the season, I haven’t encountered many vines. Today I did. They wrapped around my shoulder, my head, my wrist. I think I swallowed a bit too. Bleh.

The air was hot, but the water was cool — 74 degrees. No ducks or seagulls or swans. No fish. No airplanes. No dragonflies. Probably some of these things were there, but I didn’t or couldn’t notice them.

seen and heard

Today’s view outside my window is of a giant spider web, stretching from one side of the house to somewhere I can’t quite see — the top of the hydrangea bush? the pussy willow tree? Several threads of the web are illuminated in the sun, something or somethings are wrapped up in the center, bobbing in the breeze. How long will this web stay intact? What’s going to happen to the somethings? Where is the spider, and how big are they?

I called Scott over to look and we realized that the somethings in the center was actually the spider — Holy Shit! That’s a big spider! I’m glad it’s outside and not in here with me.

Listening to the third Peter Wimsy mystery from Dorothy L. Sayers, which is delightful (minus the anti-semitism which plagues Agatha Christie’s mysteries too), this line struck me:

Now it is easy to be mistaken in faces, but almost impossible not to recognize a back.

from Unnatural Death/ Dorothy L. Sayers

Yes. For me this is especially true. Usually I struggle to recognize faces (or even see them), but I can often see gestures and how forms move — the distinctive way a person walks, holds their shoulders, swings their arms. And it’s easier to stare at someone’s back, when they can’t see you staring then it is to stare at their face. I’m not sure if it’s always true, but I worry that people think I’m rude if I stare at them as long as I need to in order to recognize them.

august 21/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
degrees: 71/75

Gloomy this morning, not gray but white. White skies are the worst. Gray, blue, even green skies are interesting, but white skies are flat and empty and no fun. They’re strange, but in a way that feels oppressive instead of mysterious. One good thing about this overly white light: unlike gray skies, the white doesn’t make it a lot harder to see and make sense of things.

A good bike ride. Didn’t need to pass anyone. No asshole bikers yelled at me. I’ve memorized all the cracks and curves on the path, so I knew where I was going.

The bike ride to Nokomis is only 20 minutes, but it feels longer because you bike through so many different areas — the tight, winding river road, the edge of the crowded and hectic minnehaha park, beside minnehaha parkway then near minnehaha creek, past lake hiawatha and up a big hill, over minnehaha parkway, around a stretch of lake nokomis. As I biked, I tried to remember how grateful I am to still be able to bike — to have this independence — and tried to forget all the places I had to bike through before I reached the beach.

swim: 2 loops (9 little loops)
lake nokomis main beach
71 degrees

Because it’s the last week of open swim and because of sore IT bands, I’m doing more swimming and less running this week. Today’s swim was wonderful. Even though it was windy, the water wasn’t too choppy. No other swimmers or ducks or geese, one seagull, 2 or 3 kids, a boat. Every so often the arm that was that pulling through the water would touch a vine reaching up from the bottom of the lake. I had a brief flash of imagining the vine was evil and wanted to wrap itself around my wrist to drag me under. I didn’t feel freaked out by this thought, just curious.

10 Things

  1. watching my air bubbles underwater — We calmly trailed over them/and under them, shedding/air bubbles, little white/ balloons
  2. pinkish orangish buoys, faded from years of use, bobbing in the water — lining up my path to swim-while-barely-seeing through the small gap between them
  3. looking at the white buoy under water — its lower end covered in greenish brownish muck, the rope tethering it to the bottom of the lake barely there in the cloudy water
  4. one seagull standing in the sand at the edge of the water
  5. hearing only a steady slosh as I swam, then stopping to hear the almost of the world above the water
  6. that quiet being occasionally disrupted by a kid’s voice
  7. buzzzz — someone’s constructing/reparing? something at painted turtle, I think. Are they building the structure they need to be able to serve beer?!
  8. the water is shallow almost all the way to the edge of the swimming area
  9. my yellow backpack, sitting alone, propped against the lifeguard stand
  10. opaque water out by the white buoys, clear water near the shore

Came across this poem by Robert Frost this morning. I’d like to put it beside May Swenson’s bird deep in the woods in “October” and Emily Dickinson’s purple woods in “A lane of yellow led the eye” and darkness in “A murmur in the trees to note”:

Come In/ Robert Frost

As I came to the edge of the woods, 
Thrush music — hark! 
Now if it was dusk outside, 
Inside it was dark. 

Too dark in the woods for a bird 
By sleight of wing 
To better its perch for the night, 
Though it still could sing. 

The last of the light of the sun 
That had died in the west 
Still lived for one song more 
In a thrush’s breast. 

Far in the pillared dark 
Thrush music went — 
Almost like a call to come in 
To the dark and lament. 

But no, I was out for stars; 
I would not come in. 
I meant not even if asked; 
And I hadn’t been. 

a few more things I forgot (added hours later)

First, I forgot to mention how I recited 2 poems in my head as I swam loops 5-7. During lap 5, I recited “I measure every grief I meet.” It was a little awkward trying to match the rhythms of Dickinson’s words with my breathing every 5 strokes. In loops 6 and 7, I recited, “The Social Life of Water.” I get hung up a little on the line, Thunder throws itself on estuary. At first I forgot it altogether, jumping straight to Waterspout laughs at joke of frog pond. Then I couldn’t remember what thunder did to the estuary. Finally I got it sorted out and made it to the end — not able even to guess what you are excluded — by the end of loop 7.

Second, on Sunday I decided I was too tired and sore to swim. Instead, Scott and I took Delia on a walk. We let her off her leash in the field at Howe School and as she ran I noticed wings all around. Monarchs? No, Scott said, dragonflies. A dozen dragonflies! I’ve never seen so many at once. Whenever I see a dragonfly, I think of my mom, who loved them. What a gift to be reminded of her so much! And how cool to see so many wings zooming about!


august 19/RUN

3.5 miles
marshall loop (cleveland)
71 degrees / 71% humidity

The Saturday tradition continues. Running up the Marshall hill with Scott. Today we barely stopped. The goal for next month: adding a few more blocks at the top and turning at Fairview instead of Cleveland. We talked about Spirit Island and visiting dying grandfathers, maybe for the last time, and old lady assassins and doing a survey of how many people greet with morning vs. good morning.

10 Things

  1. half a dozen thin white streaks on the water under the bridge left by rowing shells
  2. a single rower
  3. the coxswain’s bright white boat, first below the bridge, then parked at the dock (moored?)
  4. red — a passing runner in red shoes and red shorts, no shirt
  5. DING dong DING dong DING dong — 8:45 from the St. Thomas bells
  6. a woman walking with 2, or was it 3?, white dogs
  7. thump thwack falling acorns
  8. green — all the traffic lights we encountered — no need to stop!
  9. the light on the bridge steps was off today
  10. no sprinklers on Summit to dodge

august 18/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
63/70 degrees
air quality: 127

A little cool this morning biking to the lake. Canadian wildfires have made the air quality index rise to the “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” Not sure if it was that or something else, but my nose started closing up mid-bike and I had to breathe mostly through my mouth.

The ride was fine. I had some difficulty making sense of what I was seeing but because I’m always cautious — biking relatively slowly (11-12 mph) and making sure I stay far to the right in my lane, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t totally see what the bikers approaching me were doing.

Some rodent — probably a squirrel but maybe something else? — darted out of the bushes as I biked by and crossed the path just in front of me. Jesus! I exclaimed. Then I stewed over why squirrels seem to have a death wish. Or, do they like messing with humans?

On my bike ride back I had to go around 3 bikers (possibly kids) who had stopped and were spread out on the bridge at the bottom of the hill. They were looking over the side at something in Lake Hiawatha. At first, I wondered why they were stopped at such a dangerous spot. Then I wondered what they were looking at down there? Was it something strange?

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
68 degrees

All the buoys were up this morning. Hooray! Bright sun, some wind. By the third loop the wind had picked up quite a bit and there were more waves then I’d like in the water. Hard to be buoyant, to breathe. Today is the last Friday swim of the season. I’m sad that it’s almost over, but I’m also tired and sore and my body — my back and right shoulder in particular — are ready for a break.

10 Things

  1. passing over the rope that tethers the green buoy to the lake floor, looking pale and dim in the opaque water
  2. more flashes, some might be fish, but others might be rays of light
  3. my favorite part of the swim: the stretch between the last green buoy and the first orange buoy
  4. a plane hovering in the sky
  5. reciting the line, It is time now, I said, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit among the flux of happenings, and feeling a deepness and sense of quiet briefly before losing it in the effort to stay high in the wavy water
  6. seeing the first green buoy without any problems — steady and bright
  7. not seeing the orange buoy — just water and sky in front of me — then briefly seeing it in that same spot, then having it disappear again
  8. instead of lining up their backpacks around the safety boat, most of today’s swimmers put their backpacks in the boat
  9. 2 kids swimming and playing near me at the end of my swim. One was obnoxious and was irritating the other
  10. a taller tree in the tree line on the far shore loomed in my periphery. I kept thinking it was a person on a paddle board

overheard: 2 swimmers near the shore, one coaching the other
coach: saying a bunch of stuff about streamlining and force and pushing through the water, then kick kick kick! Now swim to the orange buoy!
coached: I can’t do it! You’re pushing me too hard!
coach: Okay, swim to the white buoy instead

Did he swim to the white buoy? I’m not sure; I started swimming again before I could find it.

august 17/RUNSWIM

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
65 degrees
wind: 17 mph

Another windy day. I recited a few of my favorite wind lines while I ran — I am the wind and the wind is invisible and Who can see the wind?/Neither I nor you:/but when the leaves hang trembling,/the wind is passing through. Cool, fall-ish. Today the wind sounded like water. It made the leaves fizz and sprinkle and gush like a waterfall, the acorns sounding like a raindrops on a roof

I listened to the wind and the gentle whoosh of the cars on the road as I ran south, stopped at my favorite spot to admire the falls, then put in my headphones and listened to an audio book, Killers of a Certain Age as I ran back north.

Anything else? Gushing falls, a runner in a bright orange shirt, the dirt trail littered with acorn shells, the briefest flash of the river through the thick trees. No roller skiers or big groups of runners or regulars. No frantic squirrels or noticeable bird calls. No geese (yet). No overheard conversations or songs blasting from car radios. No rowers.

In theory (and from a distance), I love bats. Here’s another poem to add to my

collection of bat poems — bats:

Exodus/ Joseph Fasano

I don’t know why I should have woken today
remembering it, but I did:
1989, the lights turned down,
and we’d locked ourselves in a closet
in Goshen, New York,
my mother and I,
because a bat was trapped in the house.
This was before
everything—before
life before alcohol before madness—
and you can imagine
what happened next,
you can hear her
squealing when something touches her shoulder
and she realizes it is not
my hand, or the hand of my father,
and the door bursts open and
a woman stumbles through a house
praying and thrashing her hands,
her nightgown catching on the furniture,
and a small thing
crouched in a closet,
dark and wild and
hearing it all,
wondering how the hell to get out of there.

this class sounds great!

Found this wonderful course description (I wish I could take the class!) via twitter. It shares some similarities with the course I teach at The Loft:

The Outside World in Words (Poetry) / Suzannah V. Evans

Delve into the outside world in this six-week course, where we will experiment with mapping the local environment in a variety of poetic forms. From rivers and trees to streets and weather, we will turn our attention to the rhythms of the human and more-than-human world, exploring the role of observation in poetry. Sticks, leaves, crows, graffiti, mud, and cycle paths will all form a part of our poetic investigation. Creative exercises, prompts, and constructive feedback will jolt you into new ways of thinking and writing about your surroundings.

3 big loops*
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees

After yesterday’s choppy swim, I decided to wear a wetsuit. I didn’t really need it, but I liked swimming with the wetsuit. So much higher on the water! Faster. The little bit of chop not bothering me. This was my first wetsuit swim since last summer.

*They must have had a shortage of lifeguards — college kids heading back to school? — because they only had the orange buoys up. The course was a lot shorter. I swam 4 loops, but the distance time number of strokes matched up with a 3 loop swim.

At least 2 menacing swans, nearing from the side. Do they see me? Not sure, but they didn’t hit me. A few wandering canoes and several swimmers deciding to swim this lake like Cedar: going which ever way they wanted.

overheard:
a little kid to an open swimmer: hey, do you have a spare pair of googles?
the swimmer: sorry, no

Anything else? I think I actually saw a fish — and not just a silver flash — below me. It happened too fast to be freaked out by it.

A great swim. I stopped at 4, thinking that would be enough since Scott was waiting and I’m swimming again tomorrow morning. Should I have done one more loop? Maybe.

august 16/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
75 degrees

Just checked and this is the first bike ride that I’ve done in over a month! I’m not riding my bike much this summer. Hopefully I can change that for the last weeks of lake swimming. The theme for today’s ride (and swim): WIND! So much wind. According to the weather app: 15 mph. I think the gusts were more. Every direction I rode: wind rushing past my ears, shrieking. It made the bike ride harder, but I didn’t mind that much. The trail was not crowded and I didn’t have to try and pass anyone on the way there. Only 3 people on the way back.

overheard

Just as I was about to hop on my bike and leave the lake I heard the following exchange between a Dad, his two kids, and Sarah (on the phone) as they stood by their bikes:

Dad: This is Sea Salt, right?
Kid: No, Sea Salt is at Minnehaha Falls.
Dad: Oh no!
Kid: Yeah, I was wondering why we were going this way.
Dad: What’s this place? Oh shoot! Sarah (he talks into his phone), you told us the wrong place. I heard you say Nokomis.

A few things to note: The distance between the falls and nokomis is probably about 3 miles on bike trails, which isn’t that far but would still suck. Also, I’m impressed that this dad didn’t yell or swear or lose it on Sarah. I’m not sure if this Sarah has an h or not, but I assumed she did because Saras without hs would most likely not make this mistake. It seems like the kids probably knew something was messed up, but I doubt they deliberately didn’t mention it to their Dad. Probably they were doing that thing where you know something’s wrong but you can’t put it into words until much later. What’s that phenomenon called? I bet there’s a name for it.

swim: 1 big loop (4 little, super choppy loops)
lake nokomis main beach
75 degrees
whitecaps, big swells

Ugh! So much wind. Swimming north wasn’t too bad. The waves were pushing me from behind. The biggest problem: big waves pulling me down lower in the water, making it harder to stroke. In the last loop I realized what to do: kick harder. It worked! I really don’t use my legs that much when I’m swimming. Swimming south was very hard — straight into whitecaps. I could only breathe on my right side. Difficult to sight anything or to swim fast. Now my shoulder is sore. Still glad I got out there. I like swimming in the morning when hardly anyone else is here.

I thought I saw a pink safety buoy in the water. Yes! Another swimmer: an older woman. She called out, this is fun! isn’t this fun? It was, even if I didn’t quite feel it at the time.

august 15/RUNSWIM

4.35 miles
marshall loop (cleveland)
60 degrees

Started re-memorizing “Babel” by Kimberly Johnson and was reminded of the first sentence, My God, it’s loud down here, so loud the air/is rattled, as I ran. So loud! The air buzzing, my footsteps amplified. Ran north through the neighborhood, across the lake street bridge, up Marshall hill. I enjoyed passing all the cars waiting for the light to change, wondering if they wished they were me, out in the air, not stuck in a car. Lots of sun, some shade, no shadow. My left hip is a little tight — I think it’s my IT band, which is irritating but not a cause for alarm.

My God, it’s loud: 10 Gorge Things

  1. the electric hiss of cicadas
  2. my footsteps on the asphalt — not a soft strike or a hard thud but something in-between, something loud, almost echoing
  3. deeper breaths
  4. a black-capped chickadee — fee bee fee bee, a blue jay trying to answer back screech screech
  5. water rushing or gushing or just falling at shadow falls
  6. dong dong dong dong dong dong dong dong dong (the bells at St. Thomas)
  7. crunch thwak — an acorn popping then flying out from under a car’s wheel
  8. walk walk walk walk — the crosswalk sign at summit and cretin letting me know that I could walk
  9. we’re almost to the bike trail! — a woman biker to the passenger in her bike trailer
  10. He’s the Wiz and he lives in Oz — the refrain from the first song I listened to when my put my headphones in on the bridge

Since I mentioned my IT band, it’s time for another round of fun with injury terms:

I T stands for iliotibial band, but why couldn’t it stand for…

  • ink tents
  • impish tattlers
  • iffy tables
  • incomplete tarantulas
  • illuminated truths
  • ill turtles
  • Icarus trend
  • implied tantrum
  • itemized tally
  • Italian treat
  • implacable tree
  • idiotic toadstool

3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
79 degrees

A somewhat chaotic swim. Choppy water with swells. On the way to the little beach, it felt like the water was both pulling me down and washing over me, making it hard to stroke and to breathe. On the way back to the big beach, the swells were bigger — more punching walls of water — and with the sun, it was almost impossible to see any of my landmarks. Also, several kayaks and one swan boat got pretty close to me. And the first green buoy was placed so far to the right that it wasn’t until the third loop that I figured out the right trajectory for swimming past it without needing to correct my course. Even with all that, I enjoyed the swim. It’s always great to be out in the middle of the lake!

My God, it’s loud: 9 lake things

  1. a woman near the lifeguard stand where swimmers leave their bags, talking VERY loudly about her kid and what they were doing at the playground
  2. 3 loops and an hour later, that same women still talking VERY loudly near the lifeguard stand
  3. a flock of seagulls, calling out as they flew above the water
  4. a flock of teenage boys, yelling as they played some game at the edge of the swimming area that involved touching something gross at the bottom of the lake
  5. kids playing in the water near the little beach
  6. water sloshing over my head as a wave hit me
  7. water spraying as my hand entered the water and I hit the wave
  8. the lifeguard to the flock of boys: please do not play on the rope!
  9. a general din on the beach from people talking, eating, playing music, laughing

august 12/RUN

3.5 miles
marshall loop (cleveland)
66 degrees

Continued the Saturday tradition of running the Marshall loop with Scott. This morning we ran up the hill between the river road and cretin without stopping. We talked about hospice and last stages of life and Project Runway and band board meetings. Hospice is amazing, by the way. Passed other runners and walkers, tried unsuccessfully to avoid acorns and mud from yesterday’s storm. We weren’t home when it hit, but according to FWA (and many other people on facebook) we got hail the size of quarters. No major damage, but tons of leaves strewn all over the deck, the sidewalk, the road.

10 Things

  1. so many acorns on the sidewalk and the trail! some crushed, some whole — dangerous. Already I’ve rolled a few times on them
  2. a weird whiny bird near shadow falls. Scott wondered if it was a grouse. It might be. I looked it up and listened and the Ontario, 1963 call sounds similar to what we heard today
  3. bright sun, broad daylight, yet the street lamps on the trail are on and so is the lamp on the bridge steps that neither of us have ever noticed before
  4. avoiding sprinklers on Summit
  5. the warning beep from the crosswalk sign in sync with the beat of a song coming out of a car’s radio
  6. on marshall between cretin and cleveland: more shade than sun
  7. the unpleasant whiff of the sewer as we passed near shadow falls
  8. a shell with a single rower in it — watching the oars gently enter the water and leave a trail
  9. getting dripped on once when the wind shook the tree we were running under
  10. crossing the bridge, looking down at the river, seeing a part of the old meeker locks and dam poking through the water