32 degrees
minnehaha parkway/ford bridge/mississippi river road path (st. paul side)/lake street bridge/mississippi river road path (minneapolis side)
I am supposed to run 4 miles today but a small section of my route is closed for construction, so I mixed it up a little. Even though I just ran 8 miles yesterday, 5+ miles again today wasn’t too bad.
I spent all morning doing research on running and trying to figure out my running syllabus. There’s a lot of things to think/read/talk about with running that don’t just involve training or equipment/products or how you feel when you run. I’ve been thinking of focusing on studying and practicing different forms of writing and storytelling about running, like: memoirs, race reports, my running stories, personal essays. I tried looking for syllabi that studied the writing of runners, but I can’t seem to find anything. I guess I’ll have to dig a bit deeper.
In the meantime, here’s a quotation I found in my research that resonates with me and how my thinking/writing and running often work:
Australian writer Benjamin Law said in an interview in 2013: “Writing involves you being completely, revoltingly sedentary while your brain works overtime. But when you exercise, it’s the complete reverse – you more or less become brain dead while your body works like a bastard to not drown/collapse on the treadmill/die. Then after I exercise, I always come back to my laptop and it’s like I’m seeing the story for the first time. I know what I need to do.”
addendum: after re-reading this passage, I realize that I don’t agree with it. Writing doesn’t have to be completely sedentary and running isn’t about being brain dead or “working like a bastard to not collapse.” Part of my project is about rethinking my running as more than physical (over)exertion and rethinking my writing as more than mental (over)stimulation.