Time for Nurturing

Time of departure: 7:05am
Return: 9:03am
Sunrise: 6:29am
Sunset: 5:38am
Phase of the moon: Waxing Gibbous, 83% illuminated, rises at 1:13pm

Temperature: 31F
Wind Chill: 27F
Dew Point: 26F
Lake Temp: 33F-35F

Route: The usual but partially off-trail. I think we had a longer walk at the end, you know it's getting warmer out when this happens.
Approx Distance: 5.5-ish miles
Running buddy: Matt
Clothing: Running tights! Yes! I was getting bored with all the bagginess of my army pants. The new RCW: shoes, socks, running tights, wicker, t-shirt, breaker, gator, hat, knit gloves. Gator came off early in the run.

The Drive Activity: unmentionable.
Dog beach Activity: 3 peeps with dogs
People tally:
4 Walkers
5 Runners (we recognized 1 of them!!)
5 Cyclists (we recognized 2 of them! So cool!!)
10 People with dogs

What did I eat pre-run? 1/2 banana, 1 cup of water.
How did I feel? Awesome. I like running faster.
What do I like about running? It gives me time to think, time to check in with myself.
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Environmental commentary? Do I really want to talk about the weather? Do you want to read about the weather? The ground was snowy. Icy. Crunchy-slushy. Sometimes wet; Matt got a wet foot. Sometimes we could run on the path, but we ran along side it as much as on it. Gray sky. Cold, but not that cold. I hardly even think it even deserves to be called cold, it’s more cool than cold. Blah. I’m bored with these conditions. I’m ready for something new. Like mud. Or dirt. Or sand. Maybe some sand… But snow and ice and slush? I feel like I’ve seen enough, run in enough of this stuff so that it’s old news. Old news.

Yesterday I worked. I love my job. There are few things I’d rather be doing. But yesterday when I was pushing my way through the heavy sound-proofing glass door that leads to the front of the clinic, I had this sense of, “I have to be sweet and patient and loving and genuine and present…again??” Yes, Mary. So I found it in myself to be these things, but I realize I’m not getting enough nurturing. I’m not getting enough love. I have never, in the 3½ years I’ve been doing this full-time, had any thoughts like these before. This sense of really having to work at drawing forth my authentic self to be present with my clients is new to me.

So today I crossed off my schedule and I’m getting a massage and maybe a pedicure. I might take myself out to lunch as well. I told Matt this was my plan, and I realized of course that my life is cush. But massage is a funny business. I touch people and hopefully make them feel better, either in the short term or long term or both, but it really isn’t just rubbing muscles. It took me awhile to really understand this idea. People are in pain, stressed out, frustrated with their lives, et cetera, and come to a massage therapist for some relief from any and all of the above. My job? Obviously, it is to work on whatever they say the physical issue is, but also to be present and authentic with them, honest with them about who I am, reflecting back who they are, and creating the space for them to find a new way of being and existing if they so choose. For me to be present to all the pain and baggage people carry around with them, without taking it on myself, is a precise and careful skill to master.

Over the years, since I started practicing massage, I have given much thought and consideration to the art of being present and authentic with someone. First, you have to learn to be authentic with yourself. So, it is necessary that you like yourself. Don’t do things that you believe to be morally objectionable. Do do things that nurture who you believe you truly are. Get in touch with you. With the universe inside your bag of skin.

One can go through life being inauthentic, stressed out, dissatisfied with their life. But where does that get you? Where does that get society? Humanity? The universe?

There was a new issue of, I believe, Newsweek Magazine at work the other day. The cover story was something about men and depression and new medical and diagnostic advances to help men with depression. It really bothered me, though I couldn’t articulate at the time what exactly that was. I haven’t read the article, maybe it was a good article, and maybe doctors are getting away from over prescribing medications and over diagnosing “mental illness.” But my impression of our society is that we are systemically unhealthy and we look for quick fixes to deeply entrenched problems.

You, American Society, are depressed? Well, unless you have an honest to goodness Axis I diagnosis, I can tell you why you’re depressed.

You don’t breathe deeply. We've wrapped the Earth in a restrictive corset of concrete, but you don't notice because you work in a box, drive in a box, live in a box, and are afraid of the elements. You’re so afraid of dying, you’ve made yourself forget what life is about. You invent trivial reasons for your existence, for your continued existence. You get worked up about stupid things. You forget life is a game. You take yourself too seriously. But you have this vague sense that there’s something else out there, some meaning you’re not grasping. Well, there is and there isn’t.

We create a world of cheap houses and plastic toys and mass-produced music and we wonder why we aren’t happy. We eat food that is energetically depleted. Food that isn't flavorful or nutritious except for the artificial flavors and sweeteners and crappy oils and fortified vitamins that trigger some feeling of satisfaction in our chemistry.

You don’t want to be depressed? Get real about life. Get your hands in some dirt. Don’t take some chemical drug to counteract 15 second sound-bites of misery and chemical addictions. Get present to yourself. Get physical. Get over your fear of death. Say what you have to say, do what you have to do to feel complete, to feel alive. Stop making excuses. Start living. Eat whole, organic, locally and sustainably grown produce. Love your food while you're smelling it, chewing it, swallowing it, feeling it heal your body and your soul. Cultivate nurturing relationships. Sip your tea with intention. Listen to live music. Don’t be too afraid of getting hurt. Allow yourself to be creative. Know what your needs are. Practice being present. Sleep enough and sleep at night. Give yourself a break.

Do you realize that your skin is the outer most layer of your nervous system? Get some positive, nurturing, loving touch. When you touch people, touch them lovingly. Honor your highest self. Eat healthy because you love yourself and love your body and love the Earth. Exercise because you love the sensation of being alert, alive, healthy, and in motion. And love people. Realize you are continuous with them, that we are part of the same fabric of the universe, and by loving others you will in turn love yourself.

This is what I do, this is what works for me.

Urban Off-Trail Running!

Time of departure: 7:37pm-ish
Return: 9:33pm-ish

Temperature: 34F
I got home and left in a rush. I didn’t have time to gather the usual stats.

Route: Hmm. What a funny question this one is today. We were on the lakefront… Largely, we followed some cross-country ski tracks. Pretty cool.
Approx Distance: 5.5-ish miles. Difficult to judge since we never once ran on a path.
Running buddy: Matt
Clothing: RCW. I think I need to get new shoes soon. I feel like I need more arch support.

The Drive Activity: not noteworthy
Dog beach Activity: none
People tally:
0 Walkers
0 Runners
0 Cyclists
1 Person with dog
8 Sledders on Montrose hill. But 3 didn’t stay long; they said the conditions were unfavorable.
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This weekend some of my friends and I went to Michigan to go skiing. Originally, the plan had been to do some cross-country skiing (which would have been a workout) and possibly some downhill. But due to the recent high temperatures enough snow had melted so that cross-country was no longer an option. We all went downhill skiing instead and I ended up having a fantastic time! Perhaps I‘ll write a story about that.

But the story here is that downhill skiing, in the manner in which I was skiing, was no workout. And so come Sunday afternoon I was itchin’ to run. I was thinking if we don’t run tonight, we wouldn’t run til Tuesday morning and I’ll loose some fitness. What has happened to me?? Loose fitness?? But, yes, that is what I was thinking. A few days without a run are a few days wasted. You can’t get them back. Luckily, Matt decided he was available and so we were off!

Before I even met up with Matt, both my feet were wet. There was slush everywhere. Slushy-watery-slushy-slush that was often about an inch deep. It sprayed everywhere and soaked into my shoes and socks when I stepped in it. I tried running on the street, but most streets were surprisingly slippery (and drivers really hate to see runners on the street) so I returned to the sidewalk.

I announced to Matt that this was our messiest run so far. He didn’t seem convinced. Apparently, they keep the sidewalks and streets cleaner in his ward. A few blocks always seems to make a difference in this city. But it didn’t take too long for him to begin to agree with me. We’ve had runs that were wetter. They’re not blogged about, but man, they should have been! There were a couple of runs we made in the rain where we were totally soaked, drenched, and caught in torrential rain pour. There was one that was even so bad we had to turn back early, running in that particular rainstorm was like running against a wall of water. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but nonetheless, we had had wetter runs. There’s a difference between wet and messy. This was messy.

Where that icy patch had been the other day, where the cyclists had fallen, the path had about 2-3 inches of watery slush covering it. It reminded me of the juice at the bottom of a kitchen garbage bag. Running in that!? I’d rather not. That’s messy. Thankfully, in his infinite wisdom, Matt made a motion to, “abandon the path altogether and run off trail.” This seems like a good time to mention how we negotiate a route.

It used to work like this: I would decide I wanted to run in a particular direction and I would either point in that direction, steer Matt with my body, or say, “let‘s run that way.” But after many months of me calling the shots, Matt, I think, had had enough. So he introduced a new method of route navigation and negotiation utilizing Robert’s Rules of Order. So now it is supposed to work like this:

“I move that we run over the bridge.” (As was the case when there was a foot and a half of water under the bridge where we would usually run).
“I second that we run over the bridge.”
“It has been moved and seconded that we run over the bridge…” and Matt takes it from here, when he chooses to, I forget how it goes. Something about it being debated on the floor and voted on…

How diplomatic, right? Yes, but this still cracks me up.

So it had been moved and seconded and the motion had passed to abandon the running and bike paths all together and run off trail. Instead of running in 1 to 2 inches of slush we ran in 1 ½ to 2 inches of snow on uneven terrain while dodging tree branches. It was like hiking. But we were running! We were jumping over mud puddles, around slush pools, and skirting around creeks and rivers (these were on other days known as streets, but this night they were creeks). Being off trail there seemed to be more variation in terrain elevation as well, so there were more opportunities for gentle sprints uphill. Sometimes we’d misjudge the ground texture and get a freshly wet sock and shoe. Sometimes we’d have to backtrack because we‘d find ourselves on a peninsula of dry land. Fun times!

Adventure running? I think so. But we decided this wasn’t the most adventurous run possible. More adventurous would have been changing conditions. So if the temperature was to have dropped and the slush turned to ice, and then it got really really cold, and then if it’d started to snow again…that would be more adventurous. Even so, this run was so fun it went by terribly fast. I couldn’t believe we were done when we were. It had felt more like 2 miles or 20 minutes or so. Time is such a funny animal.

It’s fun to dodge branches and jump over little water creeks! It really makes me feel like a kid again, like when I used to pretend to be some sort of Antarctic adventurer. For example, there was a time when the lake was half frozen and I took the kayak out. I had walked out onto the ice until it started to crack, then I laid down and crawled until even that dispersion of my weight was to much for the ice to handle. I got in the kayak and rocked it until the ice cracked and kept rocking it and paddling until I got out to open water. Man, that was stupid. If I had flipped, or had fallen through the ice, I would have been in serious trouble. But I just had this kayaking itch I had to satisfy. I wonder if my parents ever knew about that one…

This was an awesome run. We ran at a pretty decent clip, even if we'd been running on a dry path, and we were running off trail! So cool! Oh, how running is so much fun!

It is amazing to me that we actually ran through this entire winter. We never missed a run. I remember discussing with Matt early in the season what we would do when conditions became too unsavory. When it is so cold that the snot instantly crystallizes in your nostrils, when your eyelashes freeze together, I didn’t think you could run in that! I thought we’d have to find an indoor track or some dreaded treadmills. Oh, how I hate running on treadmills. Whenever I start running on them, I can’t make it past 2 miles before I find myself running off it, out the doors of the gym, into the fresh air. They’re only good for interval training, not for distance, at least not for me. But, no, this winter has been free of treadmills and free of short tracks! We did it!! I’m so proud of us.

We realized this, embracing a sense of accomplishment, as we took in the scene down by Montrose harbor. Observing all the deep picturesque pools of melted snow under a bridge and the congregating Canada geese, we knew that spring will follow. In short time the adventure will be contending with 90+ degree heat and stifling humidity. There is never a dull season in the Midwest.

Story of Dad - Part 1

This is the story of how my dad died. Or, rather, my experience of it. I feel the need to state the reason why I am writing about this and posting it. I feel like I've processed my grief. I've been to grieving groups, done writing exercises specifically geared towards processing grief, and spent enough time in reflection of it all to feel complete about the whole thing. Yet, when I think about doing anything creative I get stuck on this. My dad, my relationship with him, his getting sick, and his dying has somehow stopped up my creative flow. I feel a need to get it out of me and out there.

______________________________________________

So I'll begin.

I was thinking I could begin the story with...

Eric knocked on my bedroom door... It was our senior year in college, we lived with 3 other people in a Vegetarian Co-op we had called Figrund, a name derived from the digits of our phone number. I had painted a big sign that hung on the front porch that read, "Figrund Vegetarian Co-op." We had house meals every Wednesday, rotating who would be doing the cooking, and we'd each invite a guest to come to dinner. It was fun. He and another housemate lived downstairs, I and two other housemates live upstairs. It was a goofy house; though it had two kitchens, there wasn't much community space, so we ended up hanging out in Eric's room a lot. He had a big TV and good sound system. Plus, he was fun and often up til the late hours of the night.

There was an Undressed marathon going on at the time. Undressed was a TV show on MTV or some similar station. It really was a bad show, but we loved it. On any episode there were always three story lines going on, one taking place in high school, one in college, and one 20-somethings. The story would follow the characters until they got "undressed," the significance of which varied a bit depending on their age. We rationalized that it was an okay show to watch because there were gay couples, unattractive couples, etc. You know, they weren't all just attractive straight couples. The producers were trying to be open-minded, or probably just trying to avoid criticism.

It was late, probably one o'clock or so in the morning, maybe even a little later, and I had gone upstairs to my room. I don't recall what I was doing. Perhaps I was wasting time on my computer, perhaps I was getting ready for bed, or perhaps I was even watching QVC or more Undressed on my little TV with the purple spot in the corner. I do have the vague sensation though of being in my bed when Eric knocked on the door so I vote for watching television. I had never had a TV in my bedroom before, it was quite a novelty.

"Dude, your uncle is on the phone." Or maybe it was, "Dude, the phone is for you. It's your uncle."

But this would make for a story that wouldn't leave me feeling complete. So I'll back up.

Without referencing old emails and letters from my dad, the earliest memory I have of him being on chemotherapy was while I was away at military training in Maryland. It was in July or August, the summer of 2000. I recall speaking with him on the phone when I was on break, in the breakroom, at school. The breakroom had four walls of floor to ceiling windows, so that the instructors and drill sergeants could keep an eye on us privates and specialists without being in the room. There were rows and rows of benches suitable for perhaps sixty people to sit on closely together. But there weren't 60 people in there right then. There were just a couple of classes in there, so perhaps 15 or 20 people. More and more people were coming in though as it was the end of the day.

If I recall correctly, my dad was telling me about the vacation that he, my mom, and my siblings had taken. They had gone perhaps to Michigan, and he was telling me it had just been awful and they'd come back early. He was so tired. From the chemo. And it was scary because you know your immune system is down. So no fruits that you can't peel with your hands, because germs live on the skins. And even cutting off the skin would push the germs into the flesh of the fruit. He could still eat his daily banana. Dad was a daily banana eater. But he had been so tired from the chemo they came home early. It sounded like everyone had a rotten time.

I still don't think it was real for me though. Afterall, I was learning to fix guns while wearing uniform--totally out of touch with the reality of my homefront.

I went home very briefly after training, but I was already a day or two late to school so I would not have spent much time there. I have patches of memories of him being sick and having symptoms but I'm not sure when they are from. It must have been though in the few days between training and going back to school that he and I went for a run because it was warm out.

I thought I would make this a separate post, a separate story, but maybe it does fit here. My dad had always been a larger than life creature to me. He was strong and athletic, intelligent and astute. He seemed to know something about everything without being a know-it-all. There was a time when he could do no wrong in my eyes. That time lasted much longer for me than it probably does for most children.

I mentioned growing up on a lake. The swimming leg of the local triathlon was held on our lake. In the years my dad did triathlons, I would sit on the couch, or perhaps out on our pier, and watch him swim through binoculars. We had really large and heavy binoculars, I think they may be from my uncle from the Vietnam war. I could be wrong about that. I enjoyed watching my dad swim in the herd of thrashing arms. I knew his stroke well, I had no problem spotting him, because I had watched him swim back and forth across the lake. I always wanted to swim across the lake too, but I was afraid I may not make it. I was afraid of the seaweed that might rub on my belly while swimming, and afraid of letting my feet drop down past the termoclime if I had to pause while swimming.

I recall him coming back from runs with his friends. Three large sweaty male bodies stretching on our living room floor talking about the run and what they were about to eat. Dad would ask me if I wanted to run with him, and I always said no. I'm not sure of my age, but that had always been my response probably all through high school. I knew I wasn't fast and I'd feel insecure or something silly like that running with him at my pace, slowing him down.

How silly of me, I now think.

When he was running ultramarathons, I just thought he was the coolest thing. My favorite running shirt of his? On the back it had two definitions, printed in the font and style of a dictionary entry. "Marathon: the first half of a race. Ultramarathon: a real race." Or something like that. I still have it. I want to make all of his running shirts into a quilt. I will eventually make the time for this.

There did come a time though when he asked if I wanted to go running and I said, "no, but I'll bike with you while you run." So that is what we did. He ran around the lake, and I biked at his side. We conversed about...well, anything imaginable. He knew something about everything and I was well on my way. :) Certainly, I found most anything he said interesting, larger than life though he was.

I recall driving home with my mom one time, and we saw Dad running. He wasn't far from home, but he looked terrible. We stopped and he got in. I think he had been doing a 20 mile run or something and, well, I guess that's what happens when you run that far. He hit that wall people talk about.

There were a few times when I was in college that we ran together. He wasn't running as regularly anymore, he had developed a problem with his ankle after a 50-mile run one day and a karate tournament the next, and so we were compatible runners. These were awesome times. He would watch me run and critique my form. I would tell him about aches and pains in my body and he would give me suggestions about how I needed to change how I was holding my body. He would be always giving me cues about how to run. After he died, whenever I'd run, I'd have his voice in my ear whispering, "drop your shoulders, relax your wrists, square your chest, let your legs turn under you..." I wonder if I wrote these down anywhere. I feel like I've come to do all these things so much now that I don't hear his voice anymore.

It might have been at that time between training and school, or maybe some weekend I went home, when we went for a run. But I did the running and he did the biking. He was too weak from the chemo to run. I recall some obnoxious boys of the junior high variety saying something about how we were moving really slow. How little people often know about what is actually going on. That is why you should always leave generous tips, even when you get crappy service. You never know what someone else is going through. You don't know who in their family just died, who was diagnosed, or who was the victim of some violence.

But the scary part, the sobering part, was not the boys. It was when we crossed some train tracks. Maybe you haven't been on a bike in a long time, so I'll explain this carefully. When crossing train tracks on a bike, it's important to cross them perpendicularly. If you hit them at too oblique of an angle, your wheel will get stuck in the groove and you'll fall. My dad knew this, of course, he'd done triathlons, and had ridden bikes for years and years. But there is a part of the route around the lake that involves going out on a busier street, and running and riding parallel to the traffic a bit. The train tracks intersect with this road on an angle. If you can imagine the scene, there are cars rushing by and train tracks that you are approaching at an angle. So somehow my dad tripped up the bike tires in the train tracks and fell. Not a big deal to anyone. Except anyone on chemo with the appropriately weakened immune system. He had skinned his hands. Again, not a big deal. Unless you were a person who couldn't eat fruit unless it had a peel.

He was a man who routinely broke bricks with his knifehand and had ran distances longer than I care to sit in a car. He had the most awesome nunchaku form, complete with sound effects and facial expressions. Though humble, he was show-off. Why did he run so far? "Because I can," he'd say.

But here, on a bike, on a route that had just a few years before been too short a distance to warrant getting sweaty over, I saw him humbled in a way that was difficult to digest. It took me a bit to understand the pained and worried expression on his face, the tenseness in his body. It was difficult for me to grasp that a scrap on the skin of his hand could be all the invitation a deadly bacteria would need.

If it hadn't become clear before then, it was clear in that moment. I felt nauseous. It was clear to me that my dad was sick. Very sick. This wasn't something far out there anymore, in the future, something I might have to deal with at some point. It wasn't pretend. It was reality. He was sick. And death at any time was a real possibility.
But it's challenging to go through life, living for the future, knowing there could be a very long future out there, while also realizing that at anytime, the last time I talked to him could be the last. And so still I tended to ignore that this was the reality of my life.

But sometimes it was hard to ignore. When I was home over winter break Dad had pneumonia. When he'd cough, I didn't know how I could handle it emotionally. He was a person who had never been sick. Occasionally, he'd have a cold, of course, and he'd stay home from work and sleep a lot. But he never took aspirin or ibuprofen or anything. He had always been robustly healthy and extremely fit. But now, the lymph nodes in his armpits had been collecting all the cancerous cells in his blood. They were overflowing into his lungs. Whenever he'd shift position, the fluid in his lungs would move and trigger a cough. This was in addition to the pneumonia. I was working on a 750 piece puzzle of with no borders, a repeating pattern of goldfish, and 5 extra pieces. I loved it, though I didn't finish it til I got back to college. But I would sit in the dining room working on this, grimacing as Dad would cough on the couch. He was trying to reach his doctor or nurse on the phone. He remarked that he hated how this, this illness, had become his hobby.

One time over winter break he and I took the train into the city together. This reminded me of the summer after my senior year in high school when I had the job of cleaning pay phones. My cousin and I drove an Ameritech car around, parking in loading zones, hunting the free Snapple giveaway vans, and scrubbing outdoor payphones in preparation for the 1996 Democratic Convention. That summer, I would take the train into the city every morning wth my father. A couple times a week, when we left home with time to spare, we would stop at the local bakery and pick up a donut or sweet roll. This was when I learned to drink my coffee black. There is no reason to sugar it if you were eating it with something sweet. Dad's favorite was apricot or apple sweet rolls, his one unhealthy habit. I say sweet roll because that is what he called them, I'm not sure if that is their official name. I'm referring to those individual-sized coffee cake-like things. I already knew his favorites because the bakery was a few doors down from the karate dojo. He would give my sister and me money after Saturday morning karate classes and she and I'd go get smiley faced cookies, or a donut, and a sweet roll for him. Some of my happiest memories of him and my sister are Saturday morning karate classes.

On that winter trip on the train though, I don't recall if we had stopped for sweet rolls or not. We had parked the car in the adjacent lot and walked to the train. Except we didn’t just walk to the train. I walked. Dad lagged behind. I had to wait for my Dad. There were a few reasons for this in addition to the usual fatigue that would accompany having chemotherapy. One was the fluid and pneumonia that occupied his lungs didn’t allow him to take full breaths of air. This was again challenging for me. He had had the largest lung capacity of anyone I knew. You think I’m exaggerating for the sake of the story? Nope. At rest, he took an average of 2- 2 ½ breaths a minute. This was the result found in some exercise physiology test he had taken. My mom will still remark that she’d look over at him sometimes when he’d be sleeping and wonder if he was breathing or not because he’d breath so slowly.

Another reason was that, and I think it was a side effect of the chemo, his red blood cell count was low. Mom would give him shots of something to boost this, but it was low. And so he had less hemoglobin in his blood to bind with useful oxygen. Oxygen needed for such things as walking.When we were aboard the train, after a few stops a man got on who knew my dad. I think he may have been a lawyer that he used to work with. My dad didn’t have a high opinion of most lawyers. And I didn’t have a high opinion of this guy.

Dad, to me, looked obviously sick. He was pale, washed out looking. It was difficult, if not impossible for him to smile. He was so tired he was having trouble staying awake on the train. And this guy wouldn’t shut up. He had sat down behind us and was leaning forward against the back of our seats. He kept trying to engage Dad in conversation, expecting Dad to turn around. Dad had retired about two years before, and this guy wanted to know what he’d been up to, why he was going into the city. “Oh, you’re sick? You’re on your way to the doctor? Oh, that’s too bad, I’m sorry to hear that…” And then he’d go on talking. You know that feeling when you are super tired and want to fall asleep, but you’re sitting up and you can’t because someone is demanding your attention, and you can’t leave because there is no place to go? And that feeling becomes physically painful? That is the feeling I got from my dad. I felt so bad and so angry at this insensitive brute behind me. I think I may have said something to make him stop talking, it sounds like something I would have done.

I recall the last Late Night Conversation, also over winter break of my senior year in college,I had with dad. The thought and flittered across my mind, should I record this? There are a limited number of conversations I’m going to have with him. But he would not have appreciated me pointing out his mortality, and so I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t record it. This is why I always want to say to parents, stop recording your kids! Your kids, when they are grown up, will be less interested in seeing themselves blow out their 3 year old birthday candles, and more interested in hearing what you thought about the world. So turn the camcorder around and show them who you are. Because you’ll forget to tell them, or you won’t be around, or time will blur it so much they’ll forget what they know when it is most important for them to remember.

The last conversation I recall having with Dad was over the phone when I was back at school, this would have been Spring Semester my senior year. He had had a good day the day prior, which meant he had enough energy to leave the house. He and Mom (I think) had gone to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I hadn't seen it yet. I didn't see it until after he died. But I do recall what he said about it. Overall, he enjoyed it, but he didn't like how dark it was, you couldn't see all the choreography as well as he would have liked. Also, he thought that the fantasy element and special effects used in the movie detracted from our appreciation of just who incredible some martial artists are in real life.

I'm now distracted by the memory of one of my favorite martial art stories he would retell. I sit here trying to recapture enough of it in my mind to tell it and I'm not sure that I have... Hmm. I will have to work on gathering up the details from the recesses of my mind, all the details have not come to mind yet.

Anne, do you recall the one? There is a gathering of martial art masters of a variety of traditions. The protagonist is at about a blue belt level and is perhaps a practioner of karate. Perhaps he was checking out all the other masters and traditions, trying to figure out if he was in the right one, the best one. He observed an older Tai Chi master drinking tea or something during the day when everyone else was doing some "martial arts" and perhaps thought something deprecating about him.

That night he was awakened from his sleep by a loud, "boom, boom, boom, boom..." The whole building was shaking. He went downstairs to see what was causing this loud noise. And there was the little old Tai Chi master, repeatedly punching the center beam of the house (I don't know why he'd do this), shaking the whole house. The protagonist then decided that Tai Chi was the best martial art and that he should change traditions. But I do believe that the Tai Chi master advised him, essentially, that all roads lead to Rome, and to stay on the path he was on. But I forget the details.

Bikes on Ice

Time of departure: 7:00am
Return: 8:30am
Sunrise: 6:37AM
Sunset: 5:32PM
Phase of the moon: Waxing crescent, 31% illuminated, rises at 9:00am

Temperature: 34F
Wind Chill: 26F
Dew Point: 23F
Lake Temp: 34F

Route: Mostly the usual lakefront route with adjustments made for ICE, water, and piles of snow.
Approx Distance: ~6 miles. What is with this sport that it takes 5 miles to feel warmed up?!??? That’s why people think they don’t like running, they’ve just never run long enough to get into the groove. :) It takes patience.
Running buddy: Matt
Clothing: Regular cold weather wear (RCW). Not extreme. Shoes, low socks (still haven’t done that laundry) but it’s warm enough for low socks, army pants (could probably switch to a lighter weight legging anytime now), lakefront 10-miler sweat wicker (my neon one is too rank), t-shirt, purple windbreaker, no gator (if you can believe that, I actually left the gator at home), hat, knit gloves.

The Drive Activity: Hmm…
Xmas tree pile: 3 inhalations of pine scent
Dog beach Activity: 3 people. They probably had some dogs with them.
People tally:

9 Walkers
18 Runners. I counted 18, then I got distracted. I’m not sure I saw more or not...
26 Cyclists
11 Dog walkers
1 Trash collector
1 Snow mover
1 Stander/Map reader
And
2 ice skaters sans metal blades (that would be us!)

Here’s my recommendation for biking on ice based on what we saw:
Stay calm. Don’t steer. Don’t brake. Fighting precarious situations will put you on your back, so just go with the flow. Lower your center of gravity. Be humble. Hot shot attitudes will only lead to more falls.

________________________________

I woke up from a Mary-Is-A-Hero Dream. A boy had fallen down a well and the bunch of men standing around him couldn’t figure out how to get him out. Basically, I walked up, took control of the situation, calmed the kid down, and orchestrated a way to get the boy out of the well. I haven’t had a Mary-Is-A-Hero dream in a long time! It felt good. They often seem to involve me climbing up or down ropes. Maybe I need to start climbing.

So it was 6:44am when I rolled out of bed. I washed my face with my super-duper exfoliating, tourmaline charged Aveda face wash. If you, reader, have never used it…well, you’re missing out. It is some fancy face wash that makes one‘s skin pretty happy. I brushed my teeth with my recycled toothbrush in the usual little circles, paying particular attention to my gum line. I got dressed as I described above, poured some organic Trader Joe’s orange juice down my throat, munched a date or two, and was still stuffing down half of a banana when I got outside and shook out my legs. It was 7:00am.

Do you see why morning runs can be sluggish? Sixteen minutes prior I had been saving little boys from deep wells. My muscles had been blissfully at sleep. And now I was asking them to, well, you know, RUN! That’s a big change in tempo.

So, yea, this was an example of a non-linear progression run. Not that it was bad, or anything, it just started off as more of a jog. But that’s fine, and after 5 miles, I was warmed up and ready to run!

Two things made this run memorable, and I’ll talk about at least one of them. It was icy. And I know you’re thinking, yea, it’s winter, there is ice. But this was eXtreme iCe. The temperature had risen significantly yesterday and so most of all those inches of snow had melted. Which means water. And then the temperature dropped over night. Which means frozen water. Which means ice rinks on the bike path.

The place where Matt and I stretch was just adjacent to one of these ice rinks. It’s at the bottom of a gentle incline and also a turn in the bike path. Bicyclist #2 (in the count) came down this gentle incline, onto the ice rink, and his bike promptly slid out from under him. Shit! he exclaimed, and pounded the ground with his fist. Matt and I called out to him, asking him if he was alright and started to move towards him. But he got up and seemed more furious than injured. In his tumble, his toe cage had come off his right pedal. He picked up it up and angrily threw it into the snow. This is an example of a hot shot attitude. He fussed around a bit, acting angry. He we still on the ice when Cyclist #3 came along.

She seemed to understand that this guy had fallen on the ice and so was braking to slow on down. The problem? She was already ON the ice. You can’t brake on ice. So she went down. And it wasn’t pretty. She fell flat on her back. Her backpack possibly cushioned her fall, but it was one of those falls that kind of hurt to just watch. She got up and decided to walk her bike off the ice. A good idea, right? Well, yes, I would think so, except when you’re wearing biking shoes. They don’t provide any traction. So she went down again, this time falling ON her bike rear wheel. Major bummer. At this point, I think this scene is reminding Matt and me of this video we had watched a week ago.

The both of them continued to fuss with their bikes. He seemed to find his handlebar to be bent, and her wheel looked as though it was rubbing against her brake pads. They both decided the path was too treacherous and headed for the road, he still with his punk ass attitude, and she with an unsightly limp.

When Cyclist #4 crossed the ice rink, he did it right. He didn’t brake and didn’t turn. He rode straight across the ice to the side of the path where it was snowy and gravelly and there was traction, then he changed direction.

Kudos to all you hardcore all-weather cyclists out there!

"It's fun to run fast!"

Time of departure: 10:15pm
Return: 11:45pm
Phase of the moon: Waxing Crescent, 18% illuminated. Set.

Temperature: 31F
Wind Chill: 28F
Dew Point: 29F
Lake Temp: 33F

Route: Met up with Matt, to lakefront, down running path, over bridges, over hill, back home
Approx Distance: 5.5 miles of running. Plus another mile of walking and talking. I just figured it out with gmap pedometer!
Running buddy: Matt
Clothing: Oh, the challenge of changing weather! Matt and I had a conference call about this. I settled on shoes, Universal Sole socks (I haven’t yet washed my new athletic socks and they are not to be trusted. Perhaps I didn’t mention that I threw out my old socks…), army pants, no spandex, a sweat wicker badly in need of a wash, t-shirt, windbreaker (no gortex), gator, hat, gloves, no mittens. Gator, hat, and gloves all eventually came off, but went back on once we started our “cool” down walk. Finally, we were able to have a cool down that didn’t involve us running away from each other shouting, “Good run, Matt.” “Good run, Mary.” Matt ran in his usual t-shirt and hooded sweatshirt and Michael Jordon pants. He was gloveless too for most of the run and his hands weren’t even cold!

The Drive Activity: I didn’t notice.
Dog Beach Activity: I didn’t notice.
People tally:
0 Walkers
0 Runners
1 Bikers
1 Person with 2 dogs
________________________________


The first thing I again noticed when I set out from my apartment and began to run was the complete lack of any feeling of dread. As much as I considered trying to talk Matt out of running and into watching a movie and eating nutritional-yeast-dusted-popcorn, it was 10:15pm after all, I was craving this run. I was yearning for this run. Really and truly needing to get out there and stretch my legs, fill my lungs to capacity, check in with my body, and feel it come alive. I had been looking forward to this all day. Running has become a spiritual act and an emotionally uplifting activity and I needed a boost.

The second thing I noticed was that I felt much lighter without the gortex jacket on. And then I realized that since I last wore my windbreaker, my boobs have gotten smaller! Sorry if that’s too much information. But truly, it’s a huge deal when you’re a runner and you’re a woman. Because it’s damn awesome to run with smaller breasts! Oh, how sweet it is. Actually, my whole body feels tighter and more responsive. Awesome.

These were treacherous conditions we were running in tonight. It was very warm today and yesterday and so there had been a lot of melting of all those inches of snow on the ground. This was particularly evident right before our stretch point where we had to get off the path, which was covered in an inch or two of crunchy water, and walk on the small banks of snow that provided some high ground.

When we came to the fork in the path, where the bike path splits with the running path, my heart trilled with joy. Oh, the running path was visible! It was traversable. Yes! Oh, it felt like coming home, that coming home feeling so often sought after, so seldom felt. It is strange to observe, writing this now, that the most at home I feel in the world right now is on an urban running path. I am coming to know that path so well: every curve, each bridge, even individual trees. I know where the bunch of trees with berries are, the honey locusts, the catalpa trees. I remember where I’ve seen particularly memorable runners, where the tai chi practitioners will soon return to, and where we’ve conversed with people. I have memories on this path.

Every day and every night it is different. The light is different. The color and movement of the water can vary drastically. Nature seems to find an infinite variety of textures to display. The way the lights of the lower city reflect or don’t reflect on the surface of the lake. How sometimes at night you can see where the sky meets the lake at the horizon line, but on nights like tonight they blur together in a hazy mist.

With all the melted snow, there was a lot of this crunchy icy water in all the low ground areas. We ended up going over most bridges, still trudging through snow banks. Ya-hoo! That is fun. There were a few harmonized shit!’s as Matt and I synchronically stepped into disguised puddles wearing thin sheets of ice. It’s our new spring sport, synchronized splashing!

Aside from the few fun and helpful snow banks, the earth had mostly thrown off her blanket of snow and frost. I felt exhilarated looking at all this earth and grass. What is different about the earth that was visible tonight versus the earth two weeks ago before the snow fall is that the ground is not frozen. It gives under my feet. It breathes. It is moist. It is waking up. The grass will soon turn green, the trees will bud, I will see birds and not be concerned about their sanity of trying to survive a winter in Chicago. I am a Midwestern girl. I do love the change in the seasons. I love witnessing this cycle of death, rebirth, and renewal. I understand why haikus are written about nature.

We were running fast. “It’s fun to run fast,” said Matt, “to feel the wind in your ears that forms tears in your eyes…” It is indeed. I was winded for the entire duration of our run, still able to converse, but I had to plan my words around my breath. It felt great. High stepping a snow bank, sprinting up a hill, long jumping over icy puddles; it felt great. My feet had felt a little stiff and at one point I stopped to stretch my right arch, but after that they felt fine.

Running has changed for me. It now feels good to push myself. It didn’t used to, not really. I used to enjoy a leisurely pace with insightful conversation. Now, I want it. More intensity. More sensation. That feeling of searching for something that you can only get by pushing harder. I’m not afraid of running, not afraid of running too fast at first and being too tired to make it home. I know I can.

This being said, Matt and I talked about running smarter, not harder. In massage school, we would receive direction, “without lightening your pressure, take the effort out.” So now, I’m running faster. Without slowing down, remove the effort. I imagined dropping my center of gravity, or whatever that is, the center of my self. It had been in my chest. I had started to develop trigger points in my left anterior scalene muscle from too much upper chest breathing. So I consciously dropped that center of my self down to just above my pelvis. And I felt it, not as clearly as two runs ago, but I felt it. That sensation of my legs turning under me, my upper body just kind of hanging out. It’s easier to breathe. My torso felt squarer. Is this running on chi? No more pain in the scalene.

Matt asked how I felt about running faster. I feel great about it. I also feel that if there are days when I want to run slower, I’m okay with that too.

So often in life we think things have to progress linearly. This time should always be better than last time, and next time should be better than this. Things should always move forward, should always build on what happened before. If there is not continuous growth, there is a problem. But life moves in cycles and waves. Not straight lines. There are days of progression and days of regression. Days of confusion and days of understanding. Weeks of builds, weeks of rest. This is running. This is life.

Record Runners!

Time of departure: 7:30am
Return: 9:15am-ish

Temperature: 19F (I think it was)
Lake Temp: 33F

Route: To lakefront, down bike path to Irving Park and back
Running buddy: Matt
Clothing: BETRAYAL! My awesome new athletic socks aren’t so awesome. They gave me big ugly blisters on the backs of my ankles. Matt said, “did you wash ‘em before wearing them?” Uh. No. I don’t think I should have to do that. But otherwise, it was ECW minus the vest.

The Drive Activity: not noteworthy
Dog beach Activity: not visible
People tally:
9 Walkers
65 Runners
2 Bicyclists
8 People with dogs
1 snowshoer with dogs
2 sledders
2 cross-country skiers
________________________________

Environmental commentary: My schedule hasn't allowed me to write this blog in a timely fashion so I fear I won’t be able to do this run justice. I’ll see what I remember…

When I left my house and began running, I immediately noticed two things. One, there was so much slushy-snow on the concrete that it was like running on wet, but not hard, sand. If you haven’t run on wet-but-not-hard sand then you may not realize that this is quite a bit more challenging than running on hard sand. The other thing was that I considered going back home to get my goggles, because the snow that was falling was hitting my eyes like little bullets.

When I met up with Matt, I said something about how it was difficult to run full-stride because of the slippery snow-slush. He expressed that he had not noticed and hadn’t been having a problem. Interesting. So I lengthened my stride and actually found that it was easier to run faster on slush-snow than to run with a shorter, more consciously careful stride. How odd.

The sky was gray. It was snowing. It had started snowing the night before and there was then an additional inch of fresh accumulation, on top of the inches that were there from previous snow falls. This new snow was light and fluffy on the table we stretch near, a contrast to how it felt to my eyes when it was falling.

Basically, What is important about this run is this: There were A LOT of runners out there. Sixty-five, in fact, by my count. They were in packs. CARA packs. Training for marathons. Some weren’t in packs but in little trios and duets. I wonder if they had fallen behind their packs. One group we talked to was running 18 miles, training for a marathon in Georgia. I haven't counted to 65 in a long time, woah!, what a challenge. :)

How did I feel? I felt good settling into this faster pace. I like it. Anytime I got bored, I ran faster. Matt, “woo-hoo, it’s a window into your mind. I know when you’re getting bored.” I got a side-stitch towards the end of the run, but I think it was well-earned.

What do I like about running? Are you kidding??! I feel alert, alive, powerful, in charge of my body. What’s not to like?! My legs are definitely stronger, I notice it all the time as I move through my life. While working, standing up squatting, sitting down. And when I touch them, they just feel firmer. It's cool. It's cool it's not from lifting or something, it's from actually running...

On Thin Ice

I grew up on a lake, a small and shallow lake. Generally, in the summer the boating traffic consisted of kayaks, canoes, windsurfers, sail boats, and row boats sometimes with an outboard engine. Occasionally, like on the Fourth of July, an illegal pontoon boat might saunter by. They were illegal because their large engines would stir up the lake's bottom, which could create problems with the underwater ecosystem. Also occasionally, a hot-shot high school lifeguard might take the park district's boat around the lake for a spin. Obnoxious, they were. Much like the snow mobilers in winter.

When the lake appeared to be frozen, Dad would first test the ice. He always made a big deal of me staying on the pier until he was sure the ice wouldn't crack. It did happen occasionally that it wasn't frozen thick enough and we'd go back inside to wait. I vaguely remember being out on the ice when I was a little kid with a small kitchen chair as my guide. My dad had played hockey back in those days and loved to skate. So I had skates for every size of my feet growing up. I was never an accomplished skater, but I could always stay upright and move forwards and backwards.

When it was snowy, we would shovel a rink. We'd go inside for some hot cocoa to warm up before putting on our skates to play. Too many times, when I got back out to the rink, a snow mobiler had viewed our heaps of displaced snow as an obstacle to play on. The ice of the rink would be ruined by the treads of their snow machines.

But one year, when I was in fifth grade, there wasn't any snow to shovel and the ice was remarkably smooth. So Dad and I decided to skate around the lake. When running around it, it is approximately a three mile distance, so skating the inner perimeter is substantially less than that. It was in January and the days weren't very long. It was getting dark. We were perhaps 3/4 of the way around the lake. The local conservation people had earlier installed an aeration device to keep the lake alive and the ecosystem balanced. In the summer, this was un-witnessable, but in the winter, the lake never froze completely all the way across anymore. Still, there were snow mobilers out and ice fisherman in their protective blue huts, so the ice felt safe.

But it was getting dark. And in January that means it was getting cold. When you're running around the outside of the lake there's not much you can do when you want to get home faster, but when you're skating, you can cut the corners. And Dad did.

"Dad, I think you're getting too close to the open water."

"No, I'm okay."

And his words, whatever they were exactly, just sort of hung there. As he went down. Through the ice. He was wearing jeans, and a dark green down winter coat.

When his head came back up, the first thing he said was, "Mary, get on your knees!"

I did.

He was splashing, trying to get back up on the ice. It kept breaking. It wasn't thick enough to support his weight, nor the added weight of the water that was now seeping into his clothing.

"Crawl to the shore! Mary, crawl to the shore!" He had shouted. Was he crazy? I wasn't going to leave him. I looked around for a rope or a branch or something. I was perhaps the crazy one. We were in the middle of the lake, there wasn't any rope anywhere. He shouted again. I think I may have moved closer to the shore, but my eyes didn't leave him.

He kept breaking off more and more ice chunks, trying to get to thicker ice. [This seemed to go one for many minutes, though it likely was only a few.] <----I need to edit this but had to remember to add it.

Eventually he did. And I am forever grateful that he had been the show-off jock that he was. Push-up champ, gymnast, martial artist, swimmer, ultramarathon runner etc., these things saved his life. If not for the upper body strength, muscle memory, and the high level of fitness he possessed, I know he would not have gotten out. I don't know if you've ever tried to pull yourself out of water under these circumstances, but it's an extraordinarily difficult thing to do.

While we skated the last quarter of the distance, I still felt he was too close to the open water, but he didn't fall through again. He was soaked, of course, in freezing water, skating in below-freezing air temperatures. The danger now was hypothermia. He looked very tense, as you might imagine. But, we got home okay. He got in a warm bath and everything for him turned out to be okay.

It took awhile for this to all sink in; that he quite possibly could have died. If he had been almost anyone else, he probably would have died.

And what it had meant; all the words he had shouted had been with my safety in mind.