5.3 miles
bottom of franklin hill turn around
66 degrees / dew point: 61
A great run. Was scheduled to do 9 miles this morning, but since I’m also doing my final open swim tonight, thought I’d break it up over 2 days instead. Felt strong. I’m figuring out how to keep my heart rate lower and I can feel it helping. Everything’s easier (or, not quite as difficult) — breathing, lifting my knees, moving forward, staying upright for almost an hour.
10 Things
- stacked stones
- a loose slab on concrete that rocks when you step on it wrong (or right?)
- an abandoned bike under the franklin bridge
- the water under the bridge — blue then brown, something under the surface disrupting the flow, creating small waves
- Dave, the Daily Walker — Hi Dave!
- beep beep beep — the alarm under the trestle going off
- rowers! a coxswain’s voices giving instructions
- a roller skier, laboring on a flat stretch of path
- the hollow knock of a woodpecker
- the loud crunch of an acorn under my foot
Before the run, reading through the post from august 21, 2023, I rediscovered Robert Frost’s poem, Come In. As I read it, I noticed that the word, still, in the line, Though it still could sing. I clicked on the link; it was a list of different definitions of still. Nice! I don’t think I created this link, I must have copied it from somewhere else, but where? Anyway, I love the word still and have written about it many times on this log. During my run, I decided to think about what it means to be still.
I thought about being quiet and calm and the opposite of restless and anxious. Then I thought about my core — literally and figuratively. Core = my core muscles, strong back, a straight spine. Core = enduring values, character. I felt the stillness within my self and my body even as the world blurred and floated and drifted around me. Then, Mary Oliver’s “deepening and quieting of the spirit” popped into my head — amongst the flux of happenings. Yes! A stillness of the spirit, where stillness is being satisfied and balanced and present in the moment, not needing to do more or feel guilt or regret for what was or wasn’t done.
The last thing I wrote in my plague notebook before the run was from Maya Angelou: Still I rise. I thought about Michelle Obama’s speech at the DNC, which I watched while eating breakfast, and her beautiful words about her mother and the importance of honoring elders and continuing their legacy and the need for endurance and enduring. I thought about the still in Still I rise as continuing to show up in the face of suffering and injustice and also as a sureness and clarity of conviction, especially when it becomes hard.
swim: 4 nokomis loops
cedar lake open swim
76 degrees
More great swimming. I feel strong this year — no sore shoulders or neck or back — powering through the water. Buoyant, relaxed.
Cedar Vibes, 10 Things
- someone calling out, I think I could swim to that orange buoy and back. That’s it!
- 2 swimmers on the other side of the beach from the open swim course, swimming farther away from buoys and lifeguards and the course
- a swimmer rounding the orange buoy and then swimming perpendicular to the course
- a wetsuit with a yellow safety buoy swimming the wrong direction
- music blasting at Hidden Beach — Don’t worry/about a thing
- scratchy, persistent, loose vines floating in the water
- scratchy nets of vines, reaching up from the bottom, trying to entangle me
- a canoe with a person in the water hanging off of it, stopped in the middle of the course, trying to decide what to do
- more swimmers way off course, on the wrong side of the buoy
- an annoying teen repeatedly (20 times, at least) calling out, Get out of my way!, in a VERY irritating voice
Before the swim, I was thinking more about still and I remembered the expression, still waters run deep. Then I thought about depths and surfaces and my recent efforts to push myself to dig a little deeper with things I’m passionate about — that’s why I’m training for the marathon again.