5.7 miles
ford loop
46 degrees
(almost) drizzle
Fall running — I love it! Mostly I felt great running, only my left IT band and my right glute started to ache. I ran into some wind on the lake street bridge at the end of the first mile, but I noticed it for the rest of the run. It rained all day yesterday so everything is wet, slippery, squeaky. When I checked last night, the weather app predicted showers around 10 this morning. At 9:30, around mil 4.5, I looked up at the gray sky and thought, I’ll make it home before it starts! As if to prove me wrong, the clouds opened up and started raining. I had to stop and put my jacket back on. Was it rain or just lots of water collected in the trees and loosened by the wind? I can’t be sure. Wherever it came from, it stopped in a few minutes.
As I ran, I thought about how I’d like to have a better second half in the marathon next year (we already signed up for it!). I decided that one of my big problems this year was mental. On every long run, my approach was: once I’ve made it halfway, I’ve done the hardest part. Whatever happens in the second half doesn’t matter. This approach helped to make big distances seem less intimidating, but it also led to a habit of stopping more in the second half — taking breaks, walking. During the marathon, even as I was more intentional in my running/walk plan, I still took more walk breaks in the second half. This year, I want to give more attention to the second half of runs — going faster, staying stronger, building not falling apart.
To keep myself steady for today’s run, I chanted in triple berries. Strawberry / blueberry / raspberry
10 Things
- more reddish pinkish leaves in the neighborhood
- almost every tree is orange or yellow, I only remember seeing one that still had green leaves
- stretches of sidewalk covered in leaves — they squeaked as I ran over them
- ran past the house on the next block and noticed that the guy wasn’t sitting on the steps, thought about how he hasn’t been sitting there the past few times. Even as I’m glad to not breathe in his cigarette smoke, I hoped he was okay
- the planters in a neighbor’s boulevard garden near lake street have some ripe tomatoes
- the strong smell of tar, rumbling — trucks, people paving a driveway for a fancy house on the river road
- wild turkeys — 4 of them, just off the path, grazing in the wet grass
- mud on the dirt trail — squelch!
- the paved trail on the east side of the river is in bad shape — slanted and cracked
- an open view from the ford bridge, looking north — a patch of glowing yellow on the east side, mellow oranges and reds everywhere else
fun fun fun with the IT band
When my IT aches, I like to play with IT. Usually I turn it into an acronym. Today, how many works can I think of in 5 minutes that begin with it?
- item
- italics
- italicized
- iterations
- Itasca
- itch
- Ithaca
- itinerary
- italien
- italian
- itemized
- itchiness
- itty-bitty
That was harder than I thought. My favorite today is italicized, as in, the world, italicized, from a favorite Diane Seuss poem, I Look Up from My Book and Out at the World through Reading Glasses. One key word I forgot: itself
And now I’m thinking (again) about it’s and it is and its. Yesterday, I refreshed my memory on Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s poem, “Writing a Poem,” and I was struck by her use of it’s and it is and its. I wondered why she chose it’s and then it is — why not it’s or it is both times? Double-checking the text just now, I noticed something cool:
It’s eating up the hours
as if they were the sweet nectar of day,
which they are. It is impossible
to think or write. Its buzz takes away
feelings, takes over ears, is drilling a hole
It’s / It is / Its — Fun! I love stuff like this — a fun challenge for the writer, a fun discovery for the reader, a fun way to ensure that I’ll always remember the exact words the poet uses. If I hadn’t memorized this poem, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the echoing of it’s/it is/its — and that opportunity to notice more carefully is a key reason why I love memorizing poems.