4 miles
trestle turn around
60 degrees
4 miles without stopping to walk and negative splits on each mile. A mental victory! That’s good because marathon training is getting serious now. A 12 mile long run this week.
A beautiful, cooler morning. Sunny and still. Quiet and calm. I tried to see the river, but the trees were too thick with leaves and the railing at the trestle was just slightly too high to see anything but sky. Heard 2 different coxswain’s voices and tried to imagine the rowers slapping their oars on the water. One of the coxswains called out, 22 — 22 strokes? 22 seconds? Greeted Mr. Morning! who seemed a little subdued today — not morning! but morning. Noticed an empty blue sky, a black sweatshirt tossed behind a bush in a neighbor’s yard, and a black baseball cap with an Addias logo on a retaining wall. Wondered why there weren’t any stones stacked on the ancient boulder — did a wind blow them off?
overheard
1: one runner to another after running up Franklin hill — I think my quads are okay
2: someone coming out of the portapotty to their companion — I’m glad it was clean!
3: a kid on a bike to an adult walking while looking at their phone — do you like walking 20 miles?
sharks
There is no such thing as shark-infested waters, in the same way that there is no such thing as a child-infested school. You cannot infest your own home. Fear is, of course, a great good. It can be a form of wisdom. But if we could reorient the sentiment–and direct it, for instance, toward those humas whoese vested interests lie in persuading us to acquiesce in the living world’s destruction–we would fare better. Beward an ExxonMobil-infested State Department; beware a fossil-fuel-infested politics. These are dark times, and there are many things to fear. But none of them are found swimming udner a vast sky as the waters around us warn and empty.
The Fin and the Fury / Katherine Rundell
swim: 6 little loops / 3 big loops
cedar lake
82 degrees
Finally, a chance to swim at cedar lake again! Perfect weather: calm lake, warm air, sun. The surface of the water was smooth. Below, the water was opaque. I couldn’t even see my hand. Got tangled up in some sharp and scratchy vines. Noticed some birds soaring high in the sky, some canoes crossing the path. Before the swim, I smelled cigarette smoke. After the swim, weed. The water was more than one temperature: almost bathwater warm, then freezing, then no temperature at all.