Decided to run today even though I ran yesterday because it seemed calm and dry and not too cold. It was too humid. Hard to run in such thick air. Yuck. Ran 1.5 miles, walked for a few minutes, then another half mile. Not much fun, but it was beautiful, staring across to St. Paul. A few trees left, with grainy mustard yellow leaves. The river, a blueish gray.
A 5K! 1 minute walking, 4 minutes running, six times. Scott and I ran it together. Felt pretty good. My knee feels okay. Looking forward to being finished with the injury recovery plan and just being able to run. Maybe then I can pay attention to things other than how my knee feels, what my pace is, when I stop walking, when I start running.
This week’s poetry assignment is haikus. Thought I’d try to do some breathing/running ones.
1.
jagged breaths
as running begins
crisp cold air.
2.
hard to speak
legs start to warm up
air is cool.
3.
nose drips
eyes weep in the wind
hood stays up
4.
zipped jacket
muscles loosen up
breathing slows
5.
longer strides
longer sentences
said out loud.
6.
unzipped shirt
hood comes off. bare skin
is exposed.
7.
a warm trunk
bent slightly foward
hands relaxed.
8.
In 2 3
out 2. rhythmic breaths
rapid pulse
9.
flashing sun
pulses through pine trees
steady feet
10.
quicker steps
sweat pools at tip of
ponytail
11.
six loops run
warmer body and
warmer air
——
12.
to run is
to stop thinking and
start flying
13.
when running
never trust a path
without trees
I made it past the railroad trestle, just as I knew I would. 3 miles today! 1.5 minutes of walking then 3.5 minutes of running, six times. Didn’t listen to headphones, but wished I did. All the cars sounded like planes taking off as they passed and there was a low, insistent hum the whole time I was running. Where was the wind? I’m not sure.
Before running, I worked on a few poems/poem fragments about words. So fun!
Yesterday
I took my words for a walk.
Down the block
to the river gorge
through the oak savanna
on the trail that hovers above the mississippi
I didn’t know I was taking them,
I thought they’d stayed behind
still in bed
but
there they were
just sitting on my tongue
waiting to be spoken
into my phone
into the air
onto a page somewhere.
Today
i think
I’ll take them
for a run
but
will they come?
for Marie Howe.
Walking into words
isn’t the same as
walking in the woods
but sometimes
they can be done
at the same time and
sometimes
they help each other:
the words bring the woods or
the woods bring the words.
Stepping into the floodplain forest
maples and oaks and aspens towering
I encounter
words falling as gently as leaves.
words scattered on the path
words waiting,
just behind a tree
to jump out
and surprise me
with their clarity.
How right they feel!
How much they understand!
How little I knew before they came!
I.
Are thoughts just words waiting to happen?
Words not yet woken up?
Words that want desperately to be
out there in the world
yet can’t quite get there
so they wander and wander and if and
when they aren’t used
wilt or
weep like that willow near the walking path?
II.
Why is it that some thoughts seem so brilliant
until they meet words?
Realizing only then
that they mean nothing
or not yet something
and not nearly enough to be worthy of words?
III.
How do you keep a thought from running away?
Grab a stick and etch it in your hand (Jamie Quatro)?
Put it on a piece of paper and pin it to your clothes (Jonathan Edwards)?
Jot it down in a small notebook that fits in your pocket (Mary Oliver)?
Speak it into your smart phone?
Why not let it run away
instead of trapping it in words.
You might be able follow it
into the woods or
over the creek or
down by the river or
across the bridge.
Colder this morning. I actually wore gloves and 2 long shirts. Winter running is coming!! Run recovery plan for today was: walk 2.5/run 2.5 X 6. My knee felt a little sore by the end but not after I was done.
Walked through the oaks between 36th and 35th at the start of the workout. They are more and less golden everyday. More because the leaves continue to transform from green to gold and less because the leaves are starting to fall to the ground. Realized yesterday that this group of oaks is an example of the “goldengrove unleaving” that Gerard Manly Hopkins writes about in “Spring and Fall.” Learned that a grove is “a small group of trees with little or no undergrowth.”
On another walk break noticed three oaks on alternating sides of the path. The first oak, on my left, had a trunk that leaned slightly, almost as if it were trying to talk to the second oak, further ahead on my right, that had two branches sticking out on either side of its very straight trunk, both branches extended horizontally and then bent up. This tree looked like it was shrugging. I can’t remember what the third oak, on my left again, looked like.
correction: Walked by the three trees again. The third one is on the same side as the second one and has a porta potty chained to it.
I wrote a poem about the trees that I see while I run.
52 degrees! Sunny! Radiant. So many yellow trees, some gold, some paler yellow. A red tree near the lake street bridge. I planned to run with my playlist again but when I started running, it felt wrong to shut out the wind and the crunching leaves and the cars gently driving by. So I took off my headphones. Today’s injury recovery run was walk 3 minutes/run 2 minutes X 6. My knee felt a little sore during the last three runs, but not too bad.
Running when it’s in the 50s is so much better than running in the mid 60s! It was a beautiful morning for a run. I felt strong and not too tired. I ran the first half without stopping, then took a brief walking break at the top of the hill and another one at some point during the run–I think? After spending a lot of time thinking/writing about the run to lake harriet and how it wanders beside the creek, I was struck by how straight the path to downtown is. While it occasionally strays from the biking path, they are usually right next to each other. And the path crosses under several bridges–Lake Street, the Railroad Trestle, Franklin Avenue, I-94, Washington Avenue, the biking/walking bridge to the East Bank of the U of M,10th Avenue and 35W–but not over them. You also don’t cross any roads. The biggest features of this route are the two hills: Franklin and 35W. And the river, the gorge, the views of the U of M campus and the Minneapolis skyline.
I picked up Mary Oliver’s collection of essays/poems, Long Life, from the library yesterday and started it after my run. I haven’t even made it through the forward and I’m already inspired!
Writing poems, for me but not necessarily for others, is a way of offering praise to the world. In this book you will find, set among the prose pieces, a few poems. Think of them that way, as little alleluias. They’re not trying to explain anything, as the prose does. They just sit there on the page, and breathe (xiv).
What a thing to do!
To sit and just breathe.
How novel,
how necessary,
how different from what is expected.
Who needs an explanation
when there’s inspiration
and expiration
and alleluias?
And, here’s one of Oliver’s Alleluias:
For example, what the trees do
not only in lightening storms
or the watery dark of a summer night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now–whenever
we’re not looking. Surely you can’t imagine
they just stand there looking the way they look
when we’re looking; surely you can’t imagine
they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade–surely you can’t imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can’t imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.
I’ve just been editing a piece in which I reflect on what leaves on a tree are for and last month I pondered whether or not trees sigh and why. Now, I want to imagine more about what trees do when we’re not around. As I wrote this last line, I remembered by Modern Philosophy class from college and studying the empiricist George Berkeley and the classic question prompted by his suggestion that “The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived: the trees therefore are in the garden, or the chairs in the parlour, no longer than while there is some body by to perceive them”: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?
Maybe I should play with this question? Here’s a link I found to how some people in the UK respond.
Ugh. Hard. Hot. Humid. I really don’t like running in the summer. Even so, I didn’t give up and kept moving the whole time. More walking than running in the second half, I think. Running to Lake Harriet has become my new long run route. It’s time to write a new running route essay. Here’s a list of landmarks along the route that I might incorporate into an essay or writing experiment.
Reading through this list, I started thinking about words we use for roads/paths and bridges.
link
overpass
platform
arch
branch
span
trestle
extension
trail
lane
road
sidewalk
parkway
artery
byway
track
route
street
groove
rut
walkway
footpath
Technically, I should count these miles in this week’s total, but this long run is for last week. I didn’t have time to run it any sooner because 2 of my college friends (and favorite people!) were visiting. So I’m adding the miles to last week.
Hover over entry to reveal the erasure poem
This race was supposed to be a 5K (3.1 miles), but they measured it incorrectly and we ended up running extra. This error was very upsetting for Scott because he would have achieved a great PR, but not for me because I didn’t care. It wasn’t my fastest time and I was just happy to have only briefly stopped once and to be done. My time ended up being decent: 27 minutes for 3.3 miles/8:10 pace. I’m very happy with that!
Hot! Difficult! Some success, some failure. Gravel on the road, getting kicked up by commuting cars. Pebbles and dust flying at me. A hot wind, blowing in my face, which is already bright red. The sun beating down. My pulse heating up. No running playlist to distract me. And no memory of the running chants that I created to keep me going. What am I thinking about, other than: when am I done? why am I running in this heat? will I make it to Lake Nokomis for open swim? I stop and walk several times. But then I’m at the lake and it’s cooler, with a breeze coming off of the water, and I’m almost done and I’m trying to get past two other runners that are running just a little bit slower than me so I speed up for the last half mile. It feels good.
I’m only swimming one loop since I already ran 4 miles in the heat. I am worried that I might cramp up if I swim more than that. The water is warm, which feels nice, even though cooler water would be nice for cooling me down. The water is choppy, but not too choppy. Gentle, not rough. Only a few big waves are crashing into my face when I breathe on the wrong side. I spot the big orange buoys the whole time. I’m not running into anyone, although a vine ran into me, a few yards back. I’m not being routed by any other swimmers, well, just one at the little beach, but it was only a minor routing and I got back on track pretty quickly. I feel relaxed. Strong. Happy to be out in the water.