I like telling stories. I always figured that telling stories was my way of processing information or events. Or maybe that stories were my way of remembering what it was that happened and focusing on portions of the occurrence. I have also heard that story telling is to allow others to get a handle on the information and to bring them into the event in the retelling. Recently a quote stuck with me that storytelling is a way of validating our existence and establish that we are here.
Perhaps. I am hoping to work that out. And to allow myself to wander and see if I can create timeless-ness and flow. And just to see where it takes me.
I joined the #1000wordsofsummer again and it is my great hope to practice writing which I enjoy and to become clear and crisp in what I have to say. Somehow I fear that sesquipedalian-ism or really simply not learning to transfer narrative from oral to written form has hampered the practice and so, here I am, starting a journey, like mediation, that is a practice and will pay slow dividends.
Whoops, so many tools in this platform that I haven’t used yet. Well, one at a time. The process it not to be rushed
I wasn’t as nervous driving up to the Mt Washington trail head as I had been earlier in the week and that should have meant something. For some reason the trail had me anxious, it was easily 4 miles farther than I have run since the Pandemic started. Just now, a day after the event I realized it was nearly Feb 2020, actually November 2019 since I have run this kind of distance. So it goes. I just wanted to train up. Up being the word on this route, the hill up was 14.6% (in the interests of checking the precise number on Strava) and so power hiking and walking were the order of the day. The route down was 7.3% and that doesn’t describe the Mountain Bike track with banked corners and swoops up and down as well as it should have. Somewhere in the entire process it became hard to go downhill, it was faster than I was comfortable with and whether the lack of water or the lack of training, or the lack of eating, all of which conspired together to simply shutoff the legs and I was
[I went back and edited a bunch and I realize that for this day, I am not trying for a good post, or one where I have edited it and cleaned it up, I simply want to write]
dropped off the back. I am fine with that as the group is fast, faster than I am and yet, I was clearly not running like I can and should have been able to keep up with the group. The most interesting part was on the 2% upgrade on the Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail I couldn’t keep up with a 9min/mile pace. I seriously ran out of energy on the entire run and need to think through this as a post run exercise.
I think the water mattered as the rest of the day I felt thirsty. Or the food. But the heart rate was unusually high as well. Perhaps I have to run longer runs with SGLRG and keep moving up the mileage. And now that I come to it, this week was my highest week in some time and there is a price to pay for coming at a week for more mileage both riding and running than I have done.
Riding it was double the previous week and most likely double the last four weeks although not the highest of the year.
Running it was double the mileage and double the average from the last four weeks and the highest of the year. So that wasn’t a great jump.
So many facts and such a small amount of interesting story. What really felt damn good was Christopher (Run Leader) trailing behind the lead runners to make sure I made the last two turns. I had the route in my watch and would have noticed when I overran them. Still it was super nice to be considered even in the back of the group. And now I have to train more seriously.
Also interesting was that Jodie’s longest run ever and despite no water she was strong. Hmmm.
All of these little tidbits are swimming around in my head to build a story and a narrative of what the run was, what the run meant, what it felt like.
Going uphill was fun as always, I am slow on the snow, and that is rather typical, I am unwilling to slip and sprain something running across a surface that I posthole faster than the “elf” weight shorter runners do. The group was discussing their heights at the top of the hill. And like many runners, they are shorter and lighter, and lighter as a percentage as I am running (pun intended) to extra weight coming out of COVID.
The challenge is to train and to push myself, into uncomfortable roles and distances and situations and then to work on being better and more capable as a result. To that degree the run was an unmitigated success. I am sore, but only slightly, I am uninjured other than a little pride at simply being unable to keep up.
Sidenote, I could feel the heart rate not keeping down and me not keeping up at the end but I still didn’t reach for my Gu and try something new. I wonder, other than simply the distance, what happened. I will say there was an energy loss the rest of the day and that wasn’t a surprise. I hadn’t planned well for it and that was a surprise.
Alright, from a storytelling viewpoint this was all the thoughts and the emotions, even simply acknowledged without a discernible story or thread to tie them together. Awkward. But so it begins. I am going to allow myself to “Do It Badly” and determine to attempt a better story on the next one.
