run: 5.5 miles
ford loop
57! degrees
8:15 am
What a wonderful morning for a run! I love when it’s cooler. So much easier. Ran the ford loop without stopping. Slow and steady. Only a few thoughts that I can remember, an overheard conversation, and foot strikes, breaths, a few things noticed.
thought: my desire for a view to the other side is not about seeing it, but feeling it, being aware of it.
overheard conversation: 1 male role skier to another, while climbing a hill ahead of me: She’s only waterskiied once! I told her, you can’t say you almost died waterskiing when you’ve only tried it once!
10 Things I Noticed
- gushing water out of the sewer pipe below 42nd st
- the voices of kids playing on the playgrouds at the church daycare and Dowling Elementary
- dripping water from the bluff on the east side of the river
- rowers! the coxswain’s voice, 2 shells with 4 rowers each on the river + the boat with the coxswain
- climbing the hill near Summit Avenue, almost catching up to the biker ahead of me who seemed to be struggling
- beautiful flowers near the monument — can’t remember what kinds or what colors
- more views of the blue river on the east side (as opposed to the west side, where I regularly run)
- screeching blue jays and squirrels
- the small hill just off the ford bridge and down to the river road was dark green and looked mysterious
- at the top of the Summit hill on the east side, everything was darker, greener. So dark that the street lamps lining the path were on
Love this poem by Alice Oswald. It would be a great one to memorize — maybe as part of a group on listening?
Birdsong for Two Voices/ Alice Oswald
A spiral ascending the morning,
climbing by means of a song into the sun,
to be sung reciprocally by two birds at intervals
in the same tree but not quite in time.
A song that assembles the earth
out of nine notes and silence.
out of the unformed gloom before dawn
where every tree is a problem to be solved by birdsong.
Crex Crex Corcorovado,
letting their pieces fall where they may,
every dawn divides into the distinct
misgiving between alternate voices
sung repeatedly by two birds at intervals
out of nine notes and silence.
while the sun, with its fingers to the earth,
as the sun proceeds so it gathers instruments:
it gathers the yard with its echoes and scaffolding sounds,
it gathers the swerving away sound of the road,
it gathers the river shivering in a wet field,
it gathers the three small bones in the dark of the eardrum;
it gathers the big bass silence of clouds
and the mind whispering in its shell
and all trees, with their ears to the air,
seeking a steady state and singing it over till it settles.
swim: 5 little loops = 3 big loops
cedar lake open swim
73 degrees
5:30 pm
Wow, what an evening! Sunny, no wind, cooler. The water was clear (visibility at cedar lake = 15.5 feet vs. Nokomis at 1.5 feet). I didn’t worry about getting off course. Not a single swimmer routed me. I swam 4 loops without stopping, then took a quick 30 seconds break before doing the last loop.
Anything I remember? I knew where I was going so it didn’t matter, but I couldn’t see the orange buoy closest to the start until I was almost on top of it. The cause? My vision + a strange placement of the buoy + bright sun in my eyes
One other thing I remembered: as I swam toward hidden beach, I kept thinking someone was next to me, on the left. Almost like a black shadow. Whenever I looked, nothing. Later, swimming back to east point beach, I kept thinking there was a kayak or paddleboard or something off to my left (again, to the left). Nothing and no one. Strange.