On This Day: November 10, 2017, 2020, 2022

november 10, 2017 / 5 miles / 15 degrees, feels like 3

In this entry, I mention ice and how it’s already snowed 2 or 3 times. I also post a draft of a poem I’m working on about my running shoes. I think a version of this made it into my first chapbook. I like this line:

Cheap Dependable Sauconys
pronounced sock-a-knee
not sah cone ee or saw co knee or nike

I’d like to bring back some of these physical/boring/material things about my running experience. Could I make them fit in my haunt poems? I feel like it’s important to remember and write about the running aspect of this — the sport, physical activity.

november 10, 2020 / 3.2 miles / 31 degrees

Here’s a question I consider a lot in these entries:

Why can’t I remember what the river looked like?

Also: How could I forget to look at the river today? Or, I know I looked at the river today, but I can’t remember what it looked like. Was it blue or gray?

In many of my entries throughout the year, I find it fascinating how I can be so focused on the running or lost in thought or fixated on my sore hip or sliding kneecap that I forget to notice the river. But, it’s usually not true that I ignored the river. Often, after taking a few minutes to remember, some image of it appears.

november 10, 2022 / 5 miles / 64 degrees

I love how reading back through this log, my descriptions can bring me back to the place and moment and feelings of past runs. Like this one about feeling both cold and warm air. I read this description and I remember that run, near the top of the franklin hill, starting my long descent o the bottom. Such a strange feeling to have both cold and warm air hitting me at once!

Running north above the gorge, from the left (closer to the road) the wind was blasting very warm air, from the right (near the gorge) the wind was blasting cold air. Overdressed in long sleeves, I preferred the cold.