Tag: running partner

august 3/RUN

3.1 miles
porcupine mountains, michigan
68 degrees

On vacation with Scott, FWA, and RJP. Scott and I ran from our hotel in Silver City towards the Lake of the Clouds entrance to the Porcupine Mountains. For much of the run, we could glimpse slivers of Lake Superior through the trees. At the half way point we reached a sandy beach. What a lake! I love this remote spot in the UP. Yesterday, RJP and I took a quick dip in completely calm water. Today, waves, whitecaps.

10 Things

  1. avoiding scat on the side of the road, loaded with berries — too small for a bear, too big for deer — coyote? fox? wolf?
  2. wind through the aspens, shimmering or simmering
  3. soft, sandy grit at the edge of the road
  4. a few big trucks barreling by
  5. a landscape dotted with septic tanks
  6. rolling hills — a constant running up then down then up again
  7. a hot sun, beating down
  8. still, then wind from every direction near the water
  9. queen anne’s lace
  10. a screeching blue jay

july 29/RUN

4 miles
marshall loop (to cleveland)
67 degrees

Ran with Scott on the Marshall loop, our new Saturday morning tradition. Passed by a chatting toddler with their parents — Hi! We’re taking a walk with our dog today! Half walked, half ran up the Marshall Hill. Talked about RAGBRAI and a few other things I can’t remember now.

10 Surfaces Run Over

  1. plywood (little bridges covering the water pipes on the sidewalk for the city construction project)
  2. grass
  3. mud
  4. a big squishy pile of muck on the sidewalk — yuck!
  5. cracked concrete
  6. asphalt
  7. dirt
  8. long, slender, brittle branches
  9. leaves
  10. acorns

Speaking of acorns, as Scott and I ran down the hill above Shadow Falls I heard 2 distinctive cracks on the pavement — crack crack. It was 2 acorns falling from the tree. Yep, the first signs of fall always come at the end of July and early August.

No rowers on the river, just little waves. Lots of runners, walkers, and one biking who sped by very close without warning us and another who was much slower and kind, gently calling out on your left as they approached. Oh — and someone hauling ass on an eliptigo. Excellent.

watched / read / said

Watched a replay of Katie Ledecky winning her 6th straight gold in the 800 at the World Championships in Fukuoka. She hasn’t lost this race in 13 years. Wow.

Read (with my eyes) the first few pages of Andrew Leland’s The Country of the Blind. He’s talking about how strange it feels to know that you will go blind. I can relate, even though his condition — retinis pigmentosa — is different than mine. I look forward to reading more of this memoir today.

Also read, this time with my ears: I’m finishing up the wonderful audio book, Symphony of Secrets. A bad title, but an excellent book.

Yesterday, Scott said something that I’ve heard before, but that I found particularly funny. Talking about how some program he was using broke or stopped working or something like that he said: it shit the bed. Then he said, who shits the bed? wetting the bed, I can see, but shitting in it?

Also said: Talking about how frazzled I would be if I listened to audio books at twice the speed, I hesitated and then said, I would be a basket case. As I used it, I knew there must be some bad origin story for this phrase. Yep. It involves WWI soldiers and lost limbs, and that’s all I’ll say.

july 22/RUN

3.8 miles
marshall loop
70 degrees

Ran with Scott up to Cleveland, over to Summit, beside St. Thomas, down to the river. Stopped and hiked around the Monument before starting to run again. A nice, relaxed run — we talked about the difficulties of taking care of aging parents, terrible comments online, being able to still smell bland smells but not intense ones, swift carrots in Zelda, and whether or not a person who is completely blind (seeing no light) could run if they were tethered to a guide (pacer).

10 Things

  1. dodging sprinklers
  2. the sound of falling water
  3. wooden ramps covering temporary water pipes on the sidewalk making a dull thud when I ran over them
  4. rowers on the river — 2 8 person shells lined up like they might race
  5. a new favorite view of the river from the east side — under the monument on some jutting rocks, a wide view of the lake street bridge, the blue river, longfellow flats on the west side
  6. roots as makeshift steps
  7. mud on some limestone, small gravel and dry dirt on other limestone
  8. the shshshshuffle of a runner’s striking feet from behind
  9. a woman talking on a phone outside — I support all sorts of things in Minneapolis and I’m a SENIOR!
  10. small decals on the lower corner of an out-of-business restaurant: wine glasses and plates and beer mugs? — I can’t quite remember

While I drank my coffee this morning, I memorized a delightful water poem by Tony Hoaglund — The Social Life of Water.

july 15/RUN

2.5 miles
mini marshall loop
70 degrees

Ran with Scott up the marshall hill to cleveland, then over to St. Thomas and back down to Cretin. We were planning to get some coffee at Black, but it looked very crowded. Instead we walked down the hill to Loons and got it there instead. We ran most of it, except for the stretch of hill from the bottom to cretin. We walked that section.

10 Things

  1. bad air quality from the canadian wildfires, 1: a strange orangish pinkish light
  2. bad air quality, 2: hazy over the river — the river was sparkling in the sun, but dulled, not sharp
  3. bad air quality, 3: a haze over the St. Thomas campus, like a strange fog, not thick but fuzzy
  4. interesting patterns on the water’s surface — little grids of waves from the wind
  5. crossing over to st. paul, the river was empty of rowers
  6. crossing back over to minneapolis, Scott mentioned there were rowers. At first, I didn’t see them, but a few minutes later, I noticed a bump in the water in my periphery. Rowers! Suddenly I saw them: 2 small shells with 2 people each off in the hazy distance — this is the strange way my vision works
  7. no bells at St. Thomas
  8. a woman, possibly drunk, singing dude looks like a lady and then yelling out (to us?), I paid for my kids to go to this school! I wanted to speculate on what she meant, Scott did not
  9. an irritating crosswalk that kept barking (in a low voice) wait wait wait but then, when the light changed, didn’t reciprocate go go go, but emitted a rapid series of sounds, making me imagine a round of bullets being fired but not think, Oh, I can walk now
  10. a grand house on cleveland being gutted but not torn down and replaced with an ugly, over-sized new house (nice!, we both agreed)

a life update for future Sara to remember

On Thursday and Friday, Scott and I were in Rochester cleaning out and giving away the last bit of stuff from his parent’s apartment: lamps, chairs, a desk, cleaning supplies, a couch. The end of an era, his mom dead, his dad now in assisted living in the twin cities. Strange to say good-bye to all of this and to be reminded of how little much of your stuff matters to others once you die.

june 29/RUNSWIM

2 miles
to falls coffee
70 degrees

49 today. A very nice birthday run to minnehaha falls then to the new coffee place called the falls with Scott. Walked back through the neighborhood with an iced vanilla latte. Fun to see all the new apartments being built on Minnehaha and to walk down some streets that I’ve never walked down before. The air quality is still not very good (140) with smoke in the air, but it wasn’t hard for me to breathe.

Hours later…My throat started to hurt like I was sick and I was feeling run down. I think it might be the smoke/air quality.

days later…No bad air. Somehow, even though I was barely inside anywhere or close to other people for the last five days, I got COVID.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
88 degrees

A beautiful night. The air quality is much better, the water is less choppy. What I remember most about this swim was: wearing a new suit that I just got and saying to Scott and the kids, want to see my birthday suit?, like I did when I was a little kid; barely ever being able to see any of the buoys and still staying (mostly) on course except for the first loop when I realized how far to the left the first green buoy was; feeling sore but still happy to be out in the water with the fish and the swan boats, the other swimmers and the planes up in the sky; and noticing a flash of the orange and yellow sail that is often out on the lake in the evenings.

Kept up the “one more loop” habit. Stopped for a break after 2, then did one more loop.

wordle challenge

5 tries:

feast
where
money
lined
DINER

I struggled to find inspiration with these words.

Today we feast with Diane Wiest.
Where‘d you go Bernadette? (a favorite book)
Money makes the world go around. (a song lyric that often gets stuck in my head)
You’re telling me the kids are lined up for a slaughterhouse? (a line from my favorite horror movie)
Tom’s diner — (one of my favorite songs to sing in order to irritate others)

I am sitting
In the morning
At the diner
On the corner

I am waiting
At the counter
For the man
To pour the coffee

june 24/RUN

3.1 miles
marshall loop
72 degrees / dew point: 59

It seemed warmer than 72 out there this morning. Ran with Scott. First Scott talked about Russia and Wagner, then I talked about the You and I and how we start as one and become the other as we acknowledge each other. This discussion was partly inspired by encountering one walker who called out good morning! and another who instead of offering a greeting ignored us and almost ran into me. What else do I remember? Rowers! Scott counted at least 6 shells on the river. Mostly I only saw them, but for one brief moment I heard the coxswain’s voice.

wordle challenge

4 tries: handy / drain / brand / grand
For the third day in the row I had to choose between equally fitting options. This time, brand or grand? I chose incorrectly.

a refreshing shandy
the pro cyclist Indurain
Rembrandt teeth whitening (brand)
Grand Old Days — the start of summer in St. Paul

She defeated him handily.

Yesterday I came across Annie Proloux’s book, Fen, Bog, and Swamp, and I’m certain that she disagrees with the phrase/metaphor, drain the swamp.

Mostly I don’t care, but I have 2 brands that I especially like. For swimming, TYR, and for running, Saucony. I used to mispronounce both of them. It’s tear (cry) not tire, and sock-a-knee not something that rhymes with Marconi.

Before I got into watching pro cycling or running and before my vision made it almost impossible to track the ball, I loved watching Grand Slam tennis. My favorite was always Wimbledon — Jennifer Capriati, Monica Seles, Steffi Graf, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, and Roger Federer.

handy dandy notebook
down the drain
brand spanking new
you’re a grand old flag, you’re a high flying flag

Somewhere along the way, what is marketed as handy and convenient is not always user-friendly.

a drain, a sewer, a causeway, a sluice

I hate shopping at Target. Endless aisles, filled with only 1 or 2 brands. The illusion of choice.

In 2008, we almost moved to Grand Rapids, MI. We had already picked out a house to rent, almost signed a lease, told neighbors we were leaving. Then I was told I might be able to have a full-time position at the U. Scott and I walked along Lake Michigan and had a gut-wrenching talk. I decided to turn down a guaranteed job for the possibility of a preferable one.

Crossing Water/ Tony Hoaglund

In late summer I swim across the lake to the stand of reeds
that grows calmly in the foot-deep water on the other side.

It is like going to a florist’s shop
you have to take your clothes off to get to,

where nothing is for sale
and nothing on display

but some tall, vertical green spears,

and the small, already half-shriveled pale-purple blossoms
sprouted halfway up the sides of them.

Squatting softly in the cool, tea-colored water,
hearing my own breath move in and out,

leaning close to see the tattered, soft-edged
purses of the flowers,
with their downward hanging cones and coppery antennae.

—This is more tenderness than I had reason to expect
from this rude life in which I built

a wall around myself, in which I couldn’t manage to repair
my cracked-up little heart.

Each time I make the trip, I get the strange idea that this
is what is waiting at the end of life–

long stalks slanting in teh breeze, then straightening—
flowers, loose-petaled as memory, gray
as the aftertaste of grief.

Tonight, I’ll lie in bed and feel the day exhaling me
as part of its long sigh into the dark,

knowing that I have no plan,
knowing that I have no chance of getting there.

I will remember how those flowers swayed and then held still
for me to look at them.

Oh, I love this poem! And I love Tony Hoaglund. I know that he died several years ago (in 2018), but I didn’t know the cause. Looked it up: pancreatic cancer. Just like my mom.

june 11/RUN

1 mile
edmund, south
54 degrees

A very short run with Scott. Didn’t really need to run to reach my weekly goal of 20 miles, but had to get out there to enjoy the cool, almost perfect conditions. Beautiful. At the start of the run I asked Scott about a story he had posted on facebook about a feud over a gravel road in rural northern Minnesota. It was fascinating and distracting. Did I notice anything as we ran? Not really. At the end of the mile we crossed over to the river road and walked down to the Winchell trail. The thing I remember most about the walk was the mulch — soft, soggy, ground up dead leaves — covering half the trail.

wordle challenge

3 tries: wrist/found/guard

The guard found a wrist bone buried in the courtyard of the hospital.

the twist of a wrist
a found sound
a guard in the yard

a wrist or a fist
a found pound
cards with the guards

a listless wrist
found near town
a disregarding guard

through mist, a wrist
found in the ground
a scarred guard

the wrist of a fish doesn’t exist
what’s found in a pound is of no great renown
the guard was a bard who only ate lard

cease and desist
safe and sound
hard to handle

This was fun! I could probably keep going for much longer, but I’ll stop now.

june 6/RUN

3.1 miles
trestle turn around
72 degrees
dew point: 61

Ran with Scott this morning. Another warm, thick, still morning. We followed Scott’s getting-back-into-running training plan: run 15 minutes, walk 2, run 15 minutes. Our walk started right by the trestle. My left hip felt a little stiff, my left knee harder to lift at the beginning, but I mostly felt fine. My big right toe isn’t hurting anymore.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. birds, 1: several little birds on the path, reluctant to fly away, forcing a biker to slow down
  2. birds, 2: more of these little birds — sparrows? finches? — stopped right in front of me a few minutes later
  3. the white bike — a memorial for some biker killed by a car years ago — hanging upsdie down under the trestle
  4. green green green
  5. cottonwood fuzz lining the sides of the path, a pale green, looking like corroded copper to me
  6. a few puddles of water near the sidewalk edges — did it rain last night, or had nearby grass been watered?
  7. hi dave! hi sara! hi scott! I was impressed that Dave the Daily Walker remembered Scott’s name, so was he
  8. only 1 or 2 small rocks stacked on the ancient boulder
  9. the cracks in the paved trail that they just redid 2 years ago are spreading and deepening, splitting the trail in two. I made note of a small hole that I’ll need to remember to avoid next time I run this way
  10. a woman in a BRIGHT pink shirt and BRIGHT green pants — wow! I wonder if this is the same woman in the BRIGHT pink pants the other day?

No bugs, no roller skiers, no view of the river. No music, no packs of runners, no irritating encounters. No rowers, no overheard conversations, no drumming woodpeckers.

today’s wordle challenge

3 tries / wrong place SCOUT

Here a few “poems” with these words:

They call her wrong place scout
because she always seems to find the place
no one was looking for (or wanted).

wrong place scout

I was in the wrong place
but it must have been the right time
I had found the wrong camp
but stumbled on the right line
I was near the wrong guy
but he must have said the right words
He led me through the wrong door
but out into the right world.

There is no wrong
place to be when
you are scouting mystery.

I forgot about the dark
bird I saw rooting
in the hydrangeas looking
like it landed in the wrong
place until today
when I learned
about the purple martin scout
and decided that that was what it was.

Even though the finished products of this wordle challenge aren’t the greatest, the experiment was fun to do. I thought about different meanings of scout and listened to/studied the lyrics of Dr. John’s “Right Place, Wrong Time.” I also learned about purple martins and remembered a strange bird I watched in my back yard the other day. Bonus: I became aware of the existence of “Minnesota’s Largest Purple Martin House” in Audubon, Minnesota. Wow.

Here’s a water poem that is by one of my favorite poets and will be etched on NASA’s Europa clipper as it travels to study one of Jupiter’s moons:

In Praise of Mystery/ Ada Limón

Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we

pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.

Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.

We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.

And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,

each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.