Category: Running Log

sept 5/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
82 degrees

Another hot day. Tomorrow, 20 degrees cooler. Windy too. I could feel it rushing past my ears. No panic on the bike — my brain has adjusted to my current state of (not) seeing. As usual, the bike ride back felt faster (time and speed) than the ride there.

5 Biking Things and 5 Swimming Things

  1. sewer construction all around the neighborhood — half of the street was blocked with trucks or huge circular holes in the pavement or pipes
  2. biking past the falls: they’ve patched (only) part of the potholes on the bike path near godfrey, the rest are still bumpy
  3. the creek on the other side of the duck bridge: mucky, stagnant, low — yuck!
  4. passing under the duck bridge, biking slowly and carefully, I heard a shuffling noise but couldn’t see anyone for a few seconds. Oh, there they are — a walker on the other side of the path
  5. a sound like rushing water near the bridge over Lake Hiawatha — I’m pretty sure it was wind. So much wind!
  6. blowing up my safety buoy near the bike rack, a man said, it’s windy out there today! when I responded with some noise — a grunt? — he added, it’s making you work for it
  7. swimming one direction, being pushed from behind and (a little) under, swimming the other direction, slam! straight into little walls of water
  8. screeching seagulls near the shore, honking geese on the other side
  9. stopped at the farthest white buoy to adjust my nose plug: a big splash less than 25 feet away — was it a fish? a boat? a fishing seagull? something menacing about to swim into me?
  10. more ghost vines below me and a wandering swimmer that I think I actually saw and didn’t just imagine

swim: 1.5 loops
lake nokomis main beach
82 degrees

Very choppy and surprisingly cool. With all of the 100 degree weather, I thought the water would be warmer. Opaque water, deep near the white buoys, shallow near the orange ones. My shoulders felt strong, my calves a little strange — sore? ready to cramp? When I finished my swim, I stood, then sat, in the shallow water and looked out at the lake, wondering if this would be my final swim of the year. What a wonderful season!

writing while walking (some sources)

Coastal scientists describe a coast as fractal—dividing infinitely into smaller and smaller increments, all the way down to a protruding rock, a tide line, or even a boot track that fills with water and extends the water’s edge. In retrospect, I would define the relationship of coast to poetic line much as you do. In practice, though, I arrived at the form by creating it, abandoning others that felt unrelated to the landscape or its foot-feel. There are rhythms to walking on rough ground, a step-after-step persistence that swallows obstacles, like irregular lines that nonetheless carry forward through the poem. There’s also a sensory excitement in a sea-rock-light-wind-bird-flower-seal-seep-peat-rain-salt—oh look, there’s a whale!—environment that subsumes attention to any one thing into the press of the whole. I don’t compose on foot as Brian Teare has described in his essay “En Plein Air Poetics,” but I share what he calls the “proprioceptive ecstasy” of oxygen-filled blood and an unlocked mind.

from The Syntax of Sedimentation: An Interview with Susan Tichy

I think I need to order and study — a monthly challenge? — Tichy’s North | Rock | Edge

One of the primary ways I make ecopoetics an active practice is by drafting poems on foot in the field.

Writing while walking makes explicit the intimate relationship between a site and my body, and though writing while walking obviously privileges language as its end-product, it derives that language from relation lived through the physical especially.

En Plein Air Poetics: Notes Towards Writing in the Anthropocene / Brian Teare

sept 4/RUN

2.1 miles
the falls coffee
77 degrees

Another run to the Falls coffee with Scott. So hot this morning! Today we ran a little farther — up the mustache bridge hill to Longfellow Gardens. Back in May I had run here, hoping to see the purple flowers but they hadn’t been planted yet. This morning the garden was full of color — purples, reds, oranges, yellows.

10 Things

  1. 3 turkeys on the part of the dirt trail we call the gauntlet because it’s so narrow and near the road. The turkeys didn’t care we were running by; they were too busy pecking the grass. What are they eating? we wondered*
  2. a bunch of barricades and a cluster of construction signs with flashing lights lining edmund bvld — uh oh, what are they planning to do here, and how will it impact my running?
  3. more sun than shade — so hot!
  4. lots of bikes over on the river road trail, not too many walkers or runners
  5. click clack click clack — a roller skier! said to Scott: I bet they’re excited summer’s over Scott (with some bitterness): good for them
  6. the falls were quiet — I forgot to look as we ran by — with the very low creek, were they even falling?
  7. Hi Mr. Longfellow! — checking out the Longfellow statue in the field below the garden
  8. Crossing under the mustache bridge, noticing the stagnant creek water — so low!
  9. songs overheard at the Falls coffee: an acoustic (asmr-y) version of “I’m So Excited” and a techno, poppy version of “Wonderwall”
  10. checking out the empty Riverview, wondering when the new owners will finally do something with the space; we’ve been waiting for about 2 years now

*a quick search for what wild turkeys eat:

Wild turkeys are opportunistically omnivorous, which means they will readily sample a wide range of foods, both animal and plant. They forage frequently and will eat many different things, including:

Acorns, hickory nuts, beechnuts, and walnuts, either cracked open or swallowed whole

Seeds and grains, including spilled birdseed or corn and wheat in agricultural fields

Berries, wild grapes, crabapples, and other small fruits

Small reptiles, including lizards and snakes

Fleshy plant parts, such as buds, roots, bulbs, succulents, and cacti

Plant foliage, grass, and tender young leaves or shoots

Large insects, including grasshoppers, spiders, and caterpillars

Snails, slugs, and worms

Sand and small gravel for grit to aid proper digestion

from The Spruce

I found this writing prompt from @sundresspublications the other day. I’ll have to try it and recommend it to my class!

Go for a walk around your neighborhood and write down any words you see- words on street signs, buildings, bumper stickers, etc. – and try to arrange them into a poem.

@sundresspublications

sept 3/SWIM

2 loops
lake nokomis main beach
76 degrees

Hooray for firing up and going over to the lake early on a Sunday morning! Mostly calm with warm air. But, cold water. Brrr! And loud, too. For the first few laps, the noise of sloshing water below the surface was so loud. Why?

10 Things

  1. just before I started, a vee of geese flew above me — the first geese of the season!
  2. a big crowd of noisy seagulls on the shore
  3. a seagull! a seagull! a seagull! — a kid (too) excited about spotting a seagull
  4. another flock of small birds flying overhead. I stopped to watch their progress across the sky
  5. more ghost vines — several reaching out for my wrist
  6. fluffy clouds in the sky
  7. a plane cutting through the clouds
  8. a metal detector dude slowly walking along the edge of the swimming area — for 45 minutes, the whole time I was swimming. What was he looking for? What was he finding?
  9. another swimmer — an older man who swam a little closer to shore
  10. cold water except for a spot near the buoy closest to the swan boats, which was warm — unsettling and welcomed at the same time

When I met up with Scott after the swim he told me that an 11 year-old girl drowned last night, right where I was swimming. Since I’ve been swimming at this lake (10+ years), I can recall about 5 people drowning. So sad and strange to think about people (usually kids) drowning in this calm, relatively shallow lake and to know that this water that brings me so much joy is a source of sorrow for others.

turkeys!

On the way back from the lake, Scott had to stop the car for a crossing turkey. It was taking its sweet ass time, strutting across, bobbing its awkward head. Scott quickly started moving again before the next turkey tried to cross the river road. Love the turkeys!

Speaking of birds (which I’ve done a lot of in this entry), I found a list by CAConrad via twitter. Here’s #2:

CROW GIFTS

During the Covid-19 lockdown, I was in Seattle, the empire of the crows. I fed them fruit, nuts, and crackers from a plastic hummus container I nailed to a window ledge. The birds came all day, different tribes moving over their city, terrorizing cats and humans who wronged them. One began to bring me gifts and would stay on the ledge to eat lunch with me, allowing me to stroke its beak. The biologist Lynn Margulis flew in the face of the neo-Darwinists because she believed evolution’s most significant steps forward have been through interspecies cooperation. I feel her theory in my body, and I wonder if you do, too.

a list from CAConrad

sept 2/RUN

2 miles
to falls coffee
71 degrees

A quick run to Minnehaha Falls then the Falls coffee with Scott. This morning we’re driving FWA back to college. Warm, humid, crowded on the trails, more walkers and runners than bikers. One rollerblader. Ran right past the falls but didn’t notice them at all. Did I hear them? Possibly. I don’t remember looking at the river or hearing many birds or stepping on crushed acorns.

sept 1/RUN

3.05 miles
2 trails
67 degrees

It’s warming up again, which always seems to happen in early September just as school is starting. 90s this week. Not too bad this morning. Sunny and breezy. Ran the first 2 miles listening to garbage trucks and trickling sewers and the clicking and clacking of ski poles, then the last mile listening to The Wiz.

10 Things

  1. avoiding exposed roots on the hard-packed and very dry dirt trail at 36th and edmund
  2. later, keeping my balance in the soft, loose dirt near 38th
  3. encountering several runners and walkers in the grass, most with dogs
  4. one quick flash of the river: blue
  5. good morning! — good morning! — good morning! (greeting the people I passed on winchell)
  6. briefly running parallel to someone else near folwell — I was on the dirt trail, they were on the paved path — then descending the hill and losing track of them
  7. stacked stones
  8. mistaking the black fence in the tunnel of trees for a person (as usual)
  9. sprinting to Michael Jackson and Diana Ross singing “Ease on the Down the Road” — don’t you carry nothing that might be a load
  10. more buzzing cicadas

Scott’s dad died sometime in the early morning. We woke up to the buzz of the phone, then a message from the hospice nurse. Yesterday, knowing it was coming, I felt some relief — his long years of suffering finally coming to an end; no lingering almost dead for a year like my mom. Now, I feel tired and sad and tender. He was such a loving, wonderful human.

august 31/RUN

4.15 miles
franklin loop
60 degrees

Since we’re driving FWA back to school on Saturday, Scott and I decided to do our weekly run today instead. We ran (most of) the Franklin loop. A beautiful morning: cool, sunny but with plenty of shade, calm. At one point the wind picked up and I had to recite one of my favorite wind poems, “Who Has Seen the Wind?” by Christina Rossetti.

Fall is coming: discarded acorn shells, glowing leaves, the light seems longer and softer, maybe a bit sadder too?

10 Things

  1. empty river — no rowers or kayaks or big paddle boats playing dixieland jazz
  2. 3 or 4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder
  3. waved at the woman who stopped me the other day to tell me about some other runner who had my same gait. I think she wanted us to go on a date — she kept telling me how cute he was. A new regular? I’ll call her, the Fixer Upper — talking with Scott, we agreed that Fixer Upper sounded like she needed to be fixed up, which is not true at all, so I guess I’ll call her the Setter Upper
  4. the porta potty by the overlook has been removed. Why? I bet the people living in tents down in the gorge really needed it
  5. the cracks in the path just past the trestle are growing wider and deeper. Is the bluff becoming too unstable? Will they need to abandon this part of the path?
  6. a steady stream of cars on the road — no soft moments when all I can hear are my footfalls and my breath
  7. the east river road just south of franklin is in terrible condition — so many potholes!
  8. played a game with Scott — was that noise down in the east flats wind or water? I said water, he said wind. I think he was right; it hasn’t rained for a while
  9. another game — what is that loud, strangled cry? Knowing I was being ridiculous I guessed, a giant gobbling turkey. Scott thought it was a man yelling. We were both wrong; it was a dog barking
  10. crossing back over the lake street bridge: shadows of trees on the river near the shore, soft ripples from the wind

the day made

Walking back through the neighborhood, we encountered a pair of dogs that I had run by earlier in the summer (june 10, 2023) and always hoped to see again. 2 tiny dogs, barking with little yips and snorts, especially the larger one. Scott thought the smaller one — a minpin chihuahua mix? — was so small that it could have escaped through the bars of the fence if it wanted too. It didn’t. Of course, I cried out in delight when I saw them. I might have even clapped. Scott started laughing and then imitating the yip snort whenever I asked. Would I love these dogs as much if I had to live next to them? Maybe not, or maybe I’d love them even more.

Earlier this morning, prepping for my class, I was thinking about being open to the world, letting it interrupt you. These dogs were wonderful interrupters. That glorious bark, those cute, impossibly tiny bodies! Before we saw them, we were tense — Scott needed to hurry home to fix a server, but when they suddenly appeared, everything else was forgotten. It was just those dogs and that moment of sound and blurry little bodies.

I’ve written about frantic dogs barks before (and how much I like them). A few years back, I also posted a poem that included some yippy yappy dogs.

from I Heart Your Dog’s Head/ Erin Belieu

Which leads me to recall the three Chihuahuas
who’ve spent the fullness of their agitated lives penned
in the back of my neighbor’s yard.
Today they barked continuously for 12 minutes (I timed it) as
the UPS guy made his daily round.
They bark so piercingly, they tremble with such exquisite outrage,
that I’ve begun to root for them, though it’s fashionable
to hate them and increasingly dark threats
against their tiny persons move between the houses on our block.
But isn’t that what’s wrong with this version of America:
the jittering, small-skulled, inbred-by-no-choice-
of-their-own are despised? And Bill Parcells—
the truth is he’ll win
this game. I know it and you know it and, sadly,
did it ever seem there was another possible outcome?

It’s a small deposit,
but I’m putting my faith in reincarnation. I need to believe
in the sweetness of one righteous image,
in Bill Parcells trapped in the body of a teacup poodle,
as any despised thing,
forced to yap away his next life staked to
a clothesline pole or doing hard time on a rich old matron’s lap,
dyed lilac to match her outfit.
I want to live there someday, across that street,
and listen to him. Yap, yap, yap.

august 28/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
70 degrees

Biked over with Scott to the lake on a beautiful morning. Even though you might expect the opposite, it’s harder for me to bike with someone than biking alone. Sure, when biking with someone they can alert me to potential danger, but if I’m following behind them, I can’t get a clear view of what’s far ahead of me. And that’s bad with my slow reaction time. But, I didn’t care if it was harder today; it was nice to bike with Scott.

I wasn’t giving much attention to the world as I biked, other than trying to stay safe. Can I remember 10 things?

10 Things

  1. a bit crowded on the trail — most of the bikers were going the other way
  2. wind — it made the biking a little harder and yelled in my ears
  3. a single-file line of bikers riding north. I could see the headlight from the first bike from far away. Not sure, but I think it might have been a group of “silver” riders
  4. an even mix of sun and shadows
  5. more cracked and crushed acorns on the sidewalk
  6. the creek is low, almost dry in some spots
  7. the crack just past nokomis avenue on the edge of the trail near the tennis courts looks bigger — wider? deeper?
  8. a thwack from the pickleball court
  9. errrrrrrrr (the squeak from some bad brakes on a bike)
  10. arriving at the beach, admiring the glittering water

swim: 2 loops (10 little beach loops)
lake nokomis main beach
72 degrees

As I was walking into the water, carrying my small yellow life buoy that I tether to my waist, I’m almost positive I heard someone — at first I thought it was a kid, but it might have been an adult — say, okay we can go in the water now, the lifeguard’s here! I wonder how long it took for them to figure out I wasn’t a lifeguard. Why wasn’t I ever a lifeguard in my teens? I don’t know.

The water wasn’t too cold. As usual, it was opaque. Hardly any visibility. The only thing I could see were more of the ghost vines, haunting the bottom of the lake. Also, the faint form of the bottom of the white, cylindrical buoy — ghost buoy. I felt the ghost vines more than I saw them. Mostly quick sharp taps on my ankles, one time softly wrapping around my hand and wrist — Come with us, Sara, down below! No thanks. I tried staring down as I swam, but nothing appeared — no lake bottom, no fish, no ghost vines.

The water was very choppy on the back half of the loop. Difficult to see and to breathe, but not overly tiring.

I kept thinking I was seeing kayaks off to my right side, but it was only the tree line, or was it ghost kayaks? Yes, the fall is coming and I’m increasingly thinking about ghosts.

Swam for almost 45 minutes, but it felt like 5 minutes or no time or all the time dissolved into lake water.

10 Water Things

  1. a soaring seagull
  2. a circling plane
  3. flashes of pink in the water from somewhere — probably my brief glimpse of a buoy
  4. little waves smacking into me, from the front and the side
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left 1 2 3 breathe right
  6. the silvery white bottom of the safety boat on the other shore
  7. a kayak paddling by, farther out into the middle of the lake
  8. no ducks or geese or monstrous swans
  9. the gurgle or squeak of my slipping nose plug under water
  10. lining up my shoulders and swimming through the narrow opening between two pinkish orangish buoys

august 27/RUN

4.6 miles
franklin hill turn around
56! degrees

What a beautiful morning. Feels like fall and that’s fine with me. I’m ready for cooler mornings, softer light, crackling leaves. I felt good on my run. Relaxed, not sore, happy. Didn’t see the river much because of the thick leaves.

Ran north listening to my footfalls, the birds, a dog barking down below on the trail that winds right beside the river, the clicking and clacking of ski pools, someone talking on the phone in a language other than english. Turned around at the bottom of the hill and kept running until I reached the franklin bridge. Then I put in my headphones and listened to The Wiz as I ran back.

Before I started running again, an older woman stopped me and said:

You run just like this guy that I see near 40th. Same high arm carriage and erect posture. Looks like you run about the same pace too. He’s cute.

Wow.


10 Things

  1. Mr. Morning!
  2. 2 roller skiers climbing the franklin hill — click clack click clack
  3. 2 piles of stones stacked on the ancient boulder
  4. a barking dog below the tunnel of trees
  5. one runner ahead of me wearing a bright yellowish-green shirt
  6. another runner approaching me in bright yellowish-green shorts
  7. overheard from a biker: riding in a junior peloton…they can’t control themselves
  8. shshsh — sandy grit under my feet
  9. goldenrod along the side of the trail
  10. a runner with a slow, shuffling step, carrying a CamelBak — marathon training?

august 26/RUN

3.75 miles
marshall loop
64 degrees

The runner who passed us on the bridge summed it up well: It’s a peach of a morning. Yes, those were the words he used and no, he’s not 90 years old. I’m trying to think the last time I heard that expression, and have I ever heard it as a reference to the morning?

Cooler, great air quality — easy to run, easy to breathe. Now, sitting at my desk writing this entry, I have the windows open and I can feel the gentle breeze. The spider outside my window is chilling on their web, waving in the wind.

Scott and I continued our Saturday tradition. Next week we might have to mix it up, if they’re doing as much construction then as they are now. One side of the bridge and several sidewalks closed. Maybe we’ll do the Franklin loop? Scott signed us up for the Halloween 10K at the end of October. Our first race since spring of 2020.

10 Things

  1. rowers on the river!
  2. a line of kayaks and canoes, too!
  3. certain sidewalks were treacherous: too many discarded acorn shells crunch crunch
  4. a funeral at St. Thomas — we moved out to the road to make room on the sidewalk for mourners
  5. would we hear the St. Thomas bells? Just missed them. 9:20
  6. a slow biker biking up the east river road, a pick-up truck following behind, reluctant to pass. Scott jokingly asked, is that truck pacing the bike?
  7. the lamps are still on on the river road — do they ever turn off?
  8. avoiding the same sprinkler, watering more of the sidewalk (and passing pedestrians) than the lawn
  9. a big crack in the sidewalk — the spot where Scott once witnessed a biker fly off their bike, then land unconscious on the path
  10. a woman fly by on her bike, her chatty kid riding in the back alerting us to her presence

august 25/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
82 degrees

Hot. Legs felt sore, but just sore, not injured. Hooray! Last night my right knee and calf felt weird and I had some trouble walking. I thought about not going over to the lake today, but also thought that I would regret it and that my knee/calf would be fine. And they are.

What do I remember about my bike ride? Buzzing — or were they hissing? — cicadas. No turkeys or ducks or geese. Lots of cracks and potholes on the bike path. Ouch!

on your left — another biker, as he passed me
thank you!

bridges crossed:
the double bridge at 44th
mustache bridge
echo bridge (under)
28th street bridge (under)
bridge over creek, leading to lake hiawatha
the stinky lake bridge by the weir

roads crossed:
river road, entering the bike path
godfrey parkway
minnehaha parkway, at one side of the roundabout
minnehaha parkway, at another side of the parkway
nokomis avenue
river road, by Nokomis rec center

stoplights encountered: 0
light rail trains raced: 1
pickleball courts passed: 1
former tennis courts turned to bike safety courses passed: 1

swim: 1.5 loops
main beach lake nokomis
82 degrees

A perfect morning for a swim! Warm with no waves. Okay, maybe the water could have been a little cooler and empty — there were 2 other swimmers and lots of kayaks and canoes passing by — but otherwise, perfect. The water was opaque and dull yellow. Several times I passed by a vine growing up from the lake bottom, looking creepy and ghostly. I think I’ll call it, and others like it, ghost vines. I saw at least one seagull, dozens of little minnows. Felt a sharp rock at the bottom, heard someone say, anyone need a hairband? after picking one up off the sand. Kept thinking the tree line was an approaching paddle boarder. Mostly it wasn’t, but once it was. We raced each other for a minute, then they kept going and I turned at the buoy. Thought about kicking my legs and following through with my left stroke more. Wondered if my calf would be weird at the end (nope). Breathed every 5 strokes — 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left.

So glad I didn’t listen to the excuses I was making for not going and went. What a glorious 90 minutes of lake and air and motion and life I would have missed out on!