54 degrees
franklin loop
*An alternative name for a competitive rowing boat is a shell. I know this because I just looked it up. I’m a bit disappointed. I was hoping for a more interesting name. I do like the names of the different rowers, like the Engine room (the rowers in the middle of the boat), also known as the Power house or the Hammer (someone who is known for power more than technique). I’ve never rowed, other than on the rowing machines at 7 Flags Fitness Center in high school, but I’m pretty sure I’d be a Hammer.
Hover over the first paragraph to reveal an erasure poem with advice for this beautiful spring day.
april 12/3.15 MILES
47 degrees
mississippi river road path north
Another gray day. Decided to listen to my playlist to motivate and distract me. Today distraction was helpful. While listening to music, I generated some interesting ideas for writing. Here are two:
idea one: Write about vision fogginess. As I was running up the hill under the Lake Street Bridge, everything looked foggy, like when my goggles fog up during a swim. I’d like to add details about learning to swim during open swim without being able to see, which occurred before my vision diagnosis. Learning this was more useful than I could have anticipated.
idea two: Mash up song lyrics from my running playlist with moments from the run.
Here are the songs that I listened to during my short and fairly quick (maybe too quick) run:
- CAN’T STOP THE FEELING!/Justin Timberlake
- At the Ballet/cast from A Chorus Line
- I Can Do That/Wayne Cilento, A Chorus Line
- Grease/Franki Vali
- Hey Ladies/Beastie Boys
- Furr/Blitzen Trapper
- Without You/Usher
- Skyfall/Adele
- Sorry/Justin Bieber
I started working on this idea and as I listened to lyrics, I ended up crafting a poem out of them alone, instead of adding my own thoughts about running. Does it work? Not sure, but it made me think and it was fun! I’ll try this again.
I got this feeling, inside my bones
like a metronome
Nothing flat
only real
all-knowing
I heard my mother
I am lost
I won’t run, I won’t fly
This is the end where we start
Put your hand in my hand.
You know I try, but I don’t do too well
I know you know I’ll go, I’ll go and then you go,
you go
I know
all
I could keep tweaking this but I’m afraid that I’ll edit it down too much. I’ll leave it like this…for now. The line about hearing my mother seems to shape the poem. She died in 2009 and oftentimes I think about her when I’m running. I’ve learned to live with my grief, but it haunts me, not always in bad ways. Sometimes it comforts me to have that grief. When my memories of my mom are fuzzy, I’m still connected to her through it.
Update: I edited the poem a little more and coded it so that when you hover over the text it reveals that full lyrics and song title. I also discovered that this type of poem is a Cento. Read the revised version here.
april 9/4 MILES
57 degrees
mississippi river road north
Hover over the log entry to read the hidden erasure poem.
april 8/10 MILES
53 degrees
mississippi river road path south/lake nokomis/mississippi river road path north
10 miles on a beautiful morning. Wasn’t sure if I’d run the 10 today or tomorrow, but once I started I knew that this run was my long run. I can tell that all the training and the increased mileage has made me more mentally tough. I used to spend significant portions of my longish (6+ miles) fighting against doubts and the desire to stop or start walking. Not today. There was no question that I would be running all 10 miles.
Random Memories of the Run
- About 5 minutes into the run, heard a dog barking repeatedly, almost rhythmically. Decided to count the intervals between barks. Of course, the dog stopped barking, just as I started counting.
- While running right by Minnehaha creek, heard a splash and a snort. Tried to see what it was but couldn’t. I wonder what critter made that noise? A muskrat? Beaver?
- Encountered a bunch of runners just about to start a group run as I crested the hill between the Lock and Dam no. 1 and Wabun park about two miles into my run. Encountered the same group having finished their run and saying good-bye as I returned to Wabun on my way home. I wonder, how long of a run had they done? And, did they remember seeing me just before they started? Did they wonder the same about me?
- Saw a woman walking her dog by the creek in a winter jacket and stocking cap. Wasn’t she hot, I wondered. Maybe she wondered the opposite of me in my running shorts: Isn’t she cold?
- As I reached the halfway point of my run, near the little beach at Lake Nokomis, saw some kayakers in the water, many of them just about to get out. No ice on the lake! In just over 2 months, I’ll be swimming across that lake!
- At about 9 miles, I felt really good. I smiled, knowing that I could run for much longer. At about 9.6 miles, I felt sore. I smiled again, knowing that I only had to run for a few more minutes.
Hover over the second paragraph for a hidden haiku.
april 7/3.25 MILES
41 degrees
mississippi river road path (south)*
A nice, easy run, with a faster last mile. It may have been only 41 degrees, but it was sunny and april and there was hardly any wind. It felt like spring. I love when spring arrives; it means summer is coming. And so are early morning runs and open swimming and biking and baseball and sitting on the deck, drinking a beer and going to outdoor concerts and walking around late in the evening with no jacket and reading by the lake and writing outside and hiking by the mississippi and going to the north shore and the UP and throwing pebbles into lake superior and obsessively watching the tour de france and eating cheese curds at the state fair and…hard core training for my first marathon. So far, my training has been pretty relaxed. Easy 10 mile long runs. About 25 miles a week. Towards the end of May, the training picks up. Will I be ready? I think so.
*up until this log post, I’ve been writing “mississippi river road path” without specifying which direction. About 85% of the time, the direction has been north, towards downtown. But occasionally, like today, I run south, towards Minnehaha Falls. As it gets warmer, I imagine I’ll be running this direction more, finishing at Lake Nokomis for a quick swim or continuing on to Lake Harriet. So, it seems important to start noting my direction on the path.
Hover over the log to reveal an erasure poem about opposites.
april 4/5.25 MILES
47 degrees
mississippi river road path
Thomas Gardner writes:
I’ve been feeling my way all week toward some still-unstated problem, running without a watch, not tracking my thoughts, trying to let the run distill itself down to breath, or rhythm, or attention–a single maple leaf suspended in a web, five feet over the trail. It’s hard to do. Thoughts rise and rattle, spread their wings, legs trailing them over the pond (35).
Was thinking about this as I ran. It is hard to “let the run distill down to breath, or rhythm, or attention.” I did have a moment, though, when I was focused on the river. Illuminated by the sun, it looked white, almost, but not quite, like it does when it’s covered with snow and ice. I like watching the sun and the river when they get together. The other day, the sun was focused on one spot in the river, a circle of light on the surface, inviting me to enter it. What would I find, I wondered, if I dove in?
april 2/3.05 MILES
50 degrees
mississippi river road path
Almost beat the rain this morning. Just started drizzling when I was finishing up my walk back to the house. During the run, while listening to the 3rd episode of S-Town, felt disconnected, disembodied, distanced from everything: the path, the people, the cars, linear time. I entered the dreamlike trance that Thomas Gardner writes about in Poverty Creek. This trance was not transcendent or like Quatro’s running as prayer. And it wasn’t triggered by a runner’s high. It was the result of the wind, the impending rain, the somber podcast and the gray sky that made everything look fuzzy.
april 1/9.5 MILES
54 degrees
mississippi river road path
A beautiful morning. Spring is finally here! I ran too fast in the first couple of miles and paid for it. I think it was because too many people were out on the trail. It felt like a race and I always run faster in a race. I didn’t wear headphones so I was able to hear the birds and when people said good morning to me. I estimate that I greeted around 20 people. There was one stretch of the trail where it felt like I was saying “good morning,” “good morning,” “good morning,” over and over again. It felt good, unlike the Franklin hill. That was tough. Had to walk part of it.
march 31/5.3 MILES
37 degrees
mississippi river road path
Nice, easy run. Listened to episode 2 of the new S-Town podcast. Enjoyed it, even though I probably would have preferred no headphones, but I had to catch up to Scott before he spoiled the twist at the end of the episode. I think hearing the twist (no spoiler), at the end of my run, made my whole running/listening experience more intense and other-worldly.
For my silence poem, I decided to read over my past log entries. Here are some themes that I noticed:
themes from running log (jan-march)
- restlessness: a need to move
- used to be active, then inactive, then active again
- thinking brain vs. moving body
- confident bodies
- walking vs running….is walking failing?
- what do I think about when I run?
- Best’s Disease
- hills
- not over-thinking, over-analyzing (balance)
- breaking bad habits
- fuzziness…what words can I used to describe this feeling of not seeing…being out of it? removed? disconnected
- feel the ground beneath us (pay attention, be present and aware)…winter: icy, slippery, sloppy, cold
- Even as we try to transcend our bodies while running, we are constantly reminded of our limits. We are bodies. We need that reminder to ground us and to keep us from getting too lost in the dreamlike state that running creates. Gardner discusses the dreamlike state in several other entries.
- reminder, not getting lost…ALSO A REMINDER OF DANGER, to be too disconnected is not to hear, be alerted….DISTRACTION…THINK ABOUT THE RUNNER WHO JUST DIED
- to be distracted or not? sometimes noise is necessary, distraction is necessary
- feb 15: 3 stories about the sun
- feb 16: calf injury
- feb 20: discipling (building up) and undisciplining (breaking down)
- goals, joy, speed, competition, being proud of being good (feb 21)
- list of noises heard, feb 26
- distracted running feb 27, feb 28
- march 3 more on sounds
- march 4 noise can drown out distractions, like annoying runners who talk too loudly
- more sounds, march 11
- discipline as reining in my excesses?
- limits and freedom (remember: beside body….still connected to it, but not tied down to it)
- beside each other, where a need to engage and an ache for silence can be met
march 29/3 MILES
48 degrees
mississippi river road path
Today I decided I wanted to listen to music and run faster. So I did. Splits: 8’38”, 8’22”, 8’08”. Negative splits are always nice. It felt difficult but not undoable. The amount of effort I seemed to be putting in made me think my splits would be even faster. Oh well. Still felt great to fly down the path, working hard but knowing, after months of training, that my body could handle it. That joyful feeling of flight is my goal, not a fast time.
3 ruminations on silence
one: Lately I’ve been running without headphones more, listening to my breathing and the sounds around me. I’ve also been trying to allow for silence in my running. To not shut everything out with a playlist or a podcast. I like it. I like listening to the crunch of my feet on the path and how that sound changes depending on the condition of the path. I like picking out the different bird sounds, even as I can’t identify them, as I’m running above the river. I like being able to hear people greet me and to respond with a “hello” or “good morning”. And I like listening to the wind and coming up with words to describe its sound, like “sizzle” or “static on a tv.”
two: Read an article this morning about how Minnesotans are listening to more audiobooks lately, partly because of they’re more accessible, but also because their quality is higher. The article ends by speculating on the dangers of listening too much to audiobooks:
The pull of audio content is so strong that fans are beginning to wonder if having an easily accessible stream of stories is crowding out something vital: silence.
“We never want to do nothing and just think about life,” said Ubl. “If you study creativity you know inspiration comes when you allow your brain to turn off. Much can be found in the world of quiet but we’re uncomfortable there,” she said, “and we are missing something important.”
I agree with what Ubl says, but that’s not the main reason I’m making note of her words. Her quote is the final paragraph of the article. Another one of her quotes is used towards the beginning:
“I like the escapism, but I need the learning,” said Ubl, 28, research director for the generational consulting firm Bridgeworks. “I feel like I’m wasting time when there’s any moment of my day when I’m not learning.”
I imagine that this contradiction in her thought was, at least partly, taken out of context. It’s not explained, or even pointed out, in the article. But I think there’s more going on here. This contradiction exists for a lot of us. A need to always be doing! and learning! and engaging! even as we ache for silence. Many people are scared of that ache. Others don’t have time for it. I want to find some balance, where the need to engage and the ache for silence can be met beside each other.
three: I’m curious about silence. I decided to begin work on a poem about it with lots of questions. At this point I’ve only just started it. I’m using it to explore silence and to play with the tension between technology and nature that seems to saturate discussions about the need for silence.
What is silence?
Is it the absence of noise?
The shutting down of devices? Ideas? Expectations of what you should be doing?
What is silence?
Is it the abundance of sounds
that we usually fail to hear? That we often refuse to listen to? That don’t require a wifi signal?
Why is silence
so fragile, easily broken by the innocent rustling of the leaves or the oblivious ramblings of a bluetooth user?
Why is silence
so deafening, amplified by the absence of noise or the aftershocks triggered by years of exposure to LOUD music? LOUD thoughts? LOUD demands?
How is silence
ever possible when the hum of the city rumbles beneath us, a constant reminder of what has been done, is being done, will be done?
How is silence
ever comforting when it shuts out our access to inspirational podcasts and forces us to confront the beliefs about ourselves that we work hard to conceal?