Missoula MT is a town I made up myself. It existed for a few years in the late '90s and then disappeared until three years ago, when I moved back. I insulated the town, enclosed it in a bubble, and everyone was pretty happy with that. I had a bear and some deers and fishes, I had nice sunsets and some hills to climb up to watch those sunsets. Downtown was a western railroad town with old brick buildings and even a cobblestone street or two. It was pretty nice, I was pretty pleased. I would ride my bicycle around aimlessly, discovering new streets and neighborhoods with every turn. I went wherever I wanted to go, didn't know anyone at all, liked it pretty well. Some things were about the same as I'd left them when I abandoned the place in the year 2000 - the same smell of oak trees on campus, for example, and some of the same scenic faces walking around with the same backpacks on. One time, before I left, I looked up at the green slope of Mount Sentinel and saw the sunset reflected off the golden sides of a herd of grazing deer.
We just got new bike lanes downtown on Higgins. Very comfortable bike lanes - 'comfortable' is the only word to describe them. But now they've covered over the lines with chip seal, erased the lanes, so forget about them - that's all there is to do. South of the river, Higgins is blocked off for a couple blocks. I like it, I really like it. If I had my way Higgins would be blocked off all the time. But probably no one else would approve of that. They can have their street back after the summer.
The river trail has been extended west. I was unaware of this development, but it's happened despite my lack of knowledge or input. There's a creek crossing over there, and you have your choice: plank, pallet, or plywood. Apparently the plywood is the suboptimal solution. There are low-hanging bridges, so you have to watch your head. This was a new part of Missoula that I hadn't run through before. Maybe, if I were still connected to the land, if I hadn't moved south of the river, I would have known about all of this. Instead, I haven't even been to a baseball game this year.
At work I am trapped, all my exits blocked off except two of them, and one of those comes with a warning sign. Perhaps the best way out is a window?
"The unconscious is the true psychic reality; in its inner nature it is just as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly communicated to us by the data of consciousness as is the external world by the reports of our sense-organs."
- Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
29. Summertime and projects, running is dead to me
If you'd like a visual representation of what my race was like, this is perfect (the wan ghostly figure in the foreground is me) - such a contrast to last year (the cheery speed demon in the lower right is me). Obviously cutting off my hair really did me in this year, it really did me in. I cut off my hair and then immediately got sick, stayed sick for a couple months, started falling all over the place, and had a tough race. Exactly like Samson! But will I learn anything from this? No, because I look like a shaggy dog right now and I'm going to get my hair cut again. (This one's funny too. I finished the race and then just stood around for a while being miserable, bewildered, and dumb.)
Addendum to the previous post: It was perhaps a tad self-aggrandizing and scientifically irresponsible to diagnose myself with a heretofore unknown type of cancer just because I got cold during the race. I've talked to a few other people who also got chilled, so, maybe I'm not dying, whatever.
Now, on to other things. I'll probably never write about running ever again.
Okay, so if you didn't know, Missoula is heaven right now. True story. Missoula right now is the kind of place that's so heavenly you're a sucker for not doing everything you should be doing while it's so heavenly, know what I mean?
Missoula has an impossible line-up of happenings to celebrate its heavenly status. Way too much to do - so exhausting I usually opt to go to bed instead. Look, there are festivals in Caras Park every single freaking day, there are outdoor movies, there are concerts and films at the Wilma, there are farmer's markets and horsey rides, there are band concerts at local parks, there are block parties, there are races and baseball games and other such sporting events, there's kickball on the Oval, there's porch-reading and deck parties and warm evenings that you need to ride your bike through, etc. etc. etc.
The other day I saw some crazy hooligan swimming in the Clark Fork. He was alone, bobbing around in the middle of the river, just his head sticking up, heading slowly towards the rapids. It really worried me. First of all, my god, the fishes! Didn't the guy know that the river is full of fishes just waiting to rub their fishbodies all over your legs and various appendages? Eek. Second, the unclaimed bodies! People are drowning in the river all the time, their bodies seldom recovered, just waiting for some hapless something-or-other to stumble upon them. (I saw him a few days before the latest body turned up - I don't know the circumstances of that, maybe it was him. Sorry, maybe I should delete this paragraph.)
Now that I don't have a gigantic race to train for I don't know what to do with myself in spite of all the summertime festivities I had enumerated above before this post got all macabre. Since my reading-by-decade project was ruined last week by that jerk Agatha Christie, I haven't had anything to read. A couple months ago a couple people loaned me a couple books, which I haven't read because of the constraints of my 1930s project (I've decided to start calling the various pointless things I do 'projects'), but now that I'm free to read anything under the sun I totally do not want to read those books that I should have read months ago and I'm considering giving them back unread. What I really should be doing, now that my spring running project and its celebratory week are over (in the last week I've gone to more parties than I have all year [3 - so crazy!]), is get ready for the two stressful projects that are coming up very, very quickly. But since I'd rather do anything but prepare myself, I've been engaged in cleaning projects. Very soon my house will be spotless.
Yesterday I went on a hiking project with a friend and we talked about traveling and my wanderlust kicked back on and I might die from it. Maybe, depending on how things go this fall, I'll leave on a big fat traveling project in January, one that requires a passport andsensible shoes quick-drying underwear.
(soundtrack)
Addendum to the previous post: It was perhaps a tad self-aggrandizing and scientifically irresponsible to diagnose myself with a heretofore unknown type of cancer just because I got cold during the race. I've talked to a few other people who also got chilled, so, maybe I'm not dying, whatever.
Now, on to other things. I'll probably never write about running ever again.
Okay, so if you didn't know, Missoula is heaven right now. True story. Missoula right now is the kind of place that's so heavenly you're a sucker for not doing everything you should be doing while it's so heavenly, know what I mean?
Missoula has an impossible line-up of happenings to celebrate its heavenly status. Way too much to do - so exhausting I usually opt to go to bed instead. Look, there are festivals in Caras Park every single freaking day, there are outdoor movies, there are concerts and films at the Wilma, there are farmer's markets and horsey rides, there are band concerts at local parks, there are block parties, there are races and baseball games and other such sporting events, there's kickball on the Oval, there's porch-reading and deck parties and warm evenings that you need to ride your bike through, etc. etc. etc.
The other day I saw some crazy hooligan swimming in the Clark Fork. He was alone, bobbing around in the middle of the river, just his head sticking up, heading slowly towards the rapids. It really worried me. First of all, my god, the fishes! Didn't the guy know that the river is full of fishes just waiting to rub their fishbodies all over your legs and various appendages? Eek. Second, the unclaimed bodies! People are drowning in the river all the time, their bodies seldom recovered, just waiting for some hapless something-or-other to stumble upon them. (I saw him a few days before the latest body turned up - I don't know the circumstances of that, maybe it was him. Sorry, maybe I should delete this paragraph.)
Now that I don't have a gigantic race to train for I don't know what to do with myself in spite of all the summertime festivities I had enumerated above before this post got all macabre. Since my reading-by-decade project was ruined last week by that jerk Agatha Christie, I haven't had anything to read. A couple months ago a couple people loaned me a couple books, which I haven't read because of the constraints of my 1930s project (I've decided to start calling the various pointless things I do 'projects'), but now that I'm free to read anything under the sun I totally do not want to read those books that I should have read months ago and I'm considering giving them back unread. What I really should be doing, now that my spring running project and its celebratory week are over (in the last week I've gone to more parties than I have all year [3 - so crazy!]), is get ready for the two stressful projects that are coming up very, very quickly. But since I'd rather do anything but prepare myself, I've been engaged in cleaning projects. Very soon my house will be spotless.
Yesterday I went on a hiking project with a friend and we talked about traveling and my wanderlust kicked back on and I might die from it. Maybe, depending on how things go this fall, I'll leave on a big fat traveling project in January, one that requires a passport and
(soundtrack)
Monday, July 13, 2009
28. Running. No gory stories about squirrels.
I might have forgotten on purpose to write that the big race of the year was coming up. That's because I was feeling very pessimistic and out of shape and fat and lazy and I was trying to pretend that the race was still way off in the distance. Instead, it happened yesterday.
Dumb things:
1. I finished the race at a full sprint.
2. I got COLD during the race.
3. I am extremely sore today.
Discussion:
1. You should finish a 5K at a full sprint. You shouldn't finish a half marathon at a full sprint (unless you're winning). But here's why I did: I sped up for the last mile because I was excited that the stinking race was almost over and I knew if I didn't speed up considerably I wouldn't beat my time from last year. I was running on fumes, passing people, wondering if I was going to fall over, and I finally got to the Higgins bridge and I passed a lady. She did not like this so she sped up. I thought she was probably in my age group and I wanted to beat her so I sped up, which she took issue with so she sped up, which I didn't like so I sped up. So by the time we got to the finish line it was a flat-out sprint and I beat her by a split second. Turns out she wasn't even in my age group. I need to be more dignified in life. Sorry, lady.
2. It wasn't cold yesterday. I've been fine running when it was 8 degrees. I've been almost uncomfortably warm when it was 24 degrees. The low yesterday was 55 degrees = not cold. I got cold and was cold for about the whole last half of the race. Maybe it was because I was dehydrated, although I drank plenty of Gatorade and water on Friday and Saturday (although admittedly I am not the best judge of what I actually do imbibe on any given day - example being that I forgot to eat dinner last night even though I was starving). But normal dehydrated people experience an increase in core body temperature and not a decrease (my internet research skills are to the max) and so I am forced to conclude that I was not dehydrated but instead have body temperature regulation cancer.
3. My quads are killing me. I have not been this sore in a very long time. I was sore after the first half marathon I ran - I felt like I had whiplash - but I've gotten better at it since then. But today I can't go up or down stairs without groaning loudly and grimacing like an old man. This might be because I didn't eat enough after the race and messed up my recovery - I was too busy chatting it up with my homedogs to eat. But also I felt pukey and couldn't force myself to eat much. I kind of still feel pukey. Today a coworker gently suggested that I might be getting sick. I might agree with that.
It was a tough race for me. I didn't have a bad race by any means, but I didn't have a great race. Sometimes you run and feel like you could run forever, you feel light and fast and built for running and it's incredible. Yesterday I felt like I was wading through mud and it was not incredible. It was fine, though, and it was fun, and I did get a PR, so I'm happy.
And thus concludes this year's running season, I guess. There's a race in two weeks, and two half marathons in September, but no more running group and no more discipline. And now that this is over I have to start thinking about the things I've been putting off thinking about. What do I do for escapism now?
And the day before the race I discovered to my great dismay that I had been hoodwinked into reading a book written in the 1970s. Totally threw me off!
Dumb things:
1. I finished the race at a full sprint.
2. I got COLD during the race.
3. I am extremely sore today.
Discussion:
1. You should finish a 5K at a full sprint. You shouldn't finish a half marathon at a full sprint (unless you're winning). But here's why I did: I sped up for the last mile because I was excited that the stinking race was almost over and I knew if I didn't speed up considerably I wouldn't beat my time from last year. I was running on fumes, passing people, wondering if I was going to fall over, and I finally got to the Higgins bridge and I passed a lady. She did not like this so she sped up. I thought she was probably in my age group and I wanted to beat her so I sped up, which she took issue with so she sped up, which I didn't like so I sped up. So by the time we got to the finish line it was a flat-out sprint and I beat her by a split second. Turns out she wasn't even in my age group. I need to be more dignified in life. Sorry, lady.
2. It wasn't cold yesterday. I've been fine running when it was 8 degrees. I've been almost uncomfortably warm when it was 24 degrees. The low yesterday was 55 degrees = not cold. I got cold and was cold for about the whole last half of the race. Maybe it was because I was dehydrated, although I drank plenty of Gatorade and water on Friday and Saturday (although admittedly I am not the best judge of what I actually do imbibe on any given day - example being that I forgot to eat dinner last night even though I was starving). But normal dehydrated people experience an increase in core body temperature and not a decrease (my internet research skills are to the max) and so I am forced to conclude that I was not dehydrated but instead have body temperature regulation cancer.
3. My quads are killing me. I have not been this sore in a very long time. I was sore after the first half marathon I ran - I felt like I had whiplash - but I've gotten better at it since then. But today I can't go up or down stairs without groaning loudly and grimacing like an old man. This might be because I didn't eat enough after the race and messed up my recovery - I was too busy chatting it up with my homedogs to eat. But also I felt pukey and couldn't force myself to eat much. I kind of still feel pukey. Today a coworker gently suggested that I might be getting sick. I might agree with that.
It was a tough race for me. I didn't have a bad race by any means, but I didn't have a great race. Sometimes you run and feel like you could run forever, you feel light and fast and built for running and it's incredible. Yesterday I felt like I was wading through mud and it was not incredible. It was fine, though, and it was fun, and I did get a PR, so I'm happy.
And thus concludes this year's running season, I guess. There's a race in two weeks, and two half marathons in September, but no more running group and no more discipline. And now that this is over I have to start thinking about the things I've been putting off thinking about. What do I do for escapism now?
And the day before the race I discovered to my great dismay that I had been hoodwinked into reading a book written in the 1970s. Totally threw me off!
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