Grief and Twine

Joy and woe are woven fine        
A clothing for the soul divine        
Under every grief and pine        
Runs a joy with silken twine.

Do you think William Blake is onto something about running?

At this time of year, many teachers I know claim to die a slow and mainly meaningless death by paper. Paper cutting, editing, grading, revising and shuffling. I don't mind so much because I can't imagine doing anything else, or rather I can't imagine procrastinating the doing of anything else. In fact, I'm not much good at anything else, except for this reading and writing business...and even then. I've got the twine, for sure, and some of the joy and woe. I say now and forever, long live William Blake's "mind-forg'd manacles", but here's to getting out of that rut.

...and "through the world we safely go", with our bus pass, house keys and whatever gets us from point A to B.

Happy running or whatever it is you do when you're not thinking about it.

Gone bird fishing...

As you can see, I've been working on the visuals here. I could elaborate on the symbolic aspects of birds and wires and flying and taking off and going against the grain and all that. Instead, I'll go literal for the moment.

I'm recasting the imagery.

Maybe this will also make me run faster.

It couldn't hurt.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Fail Better

Dear Mr. Ms. Mme.  I-think-we'll- pass-on-your-poem-this-time-around:

I'll go running anyway.

I will write anyway.

Anyway. Right. Where was I?

Oh yes. I was sitting on the bus across from a nun with a deep cut on her index finger, wondering why on earth I rushed to get to somewhere I didn't have to be.

And, planning my next long run at the same time.

Defiantly indefatigable might be another way of spelling s-t-u-p-i-d.

Pronoun diminished.

Staying Motivated

Training in Montreal between November and March is a less than comfortable enterprise, and I am a pretty good example of this, although I'm not exactly a fairweather runner anymore. I may be slow, and I may not have the so called natural runner physique, but I am determined and persistent. I do admit that I'm kind of getting tired of being at the receiving end of the predictable "at-least-you're-here" mantra shield of disappointment. That said, I don't have any real magic potion to stay motivated. In fact, as I write this, I am avoiding my treadmill training for the day.

E-V-E-N-T-U-A-L-L-Y doesn't have to be never.

Is just getting off of one's butt and out the door really enough? After years of running official races, I am trying to actually speed up. Actual. Speed. This is really hard to do without supervision as I'm discovering. And so I have been training on a track at McGill University here in Montreal with about 20 Elite Athletes. Seriously elite. And, serious. And elite. They are very sweet, and awesome in their physicality and commitment. In fact, my worst fear is that I'm just in their way, but they very generously high five me after a session. In French, we exchange a few "bravo" and "bon travail" comments. For a nano-second, I almost feel like I'm one of them. It's a weirdly good feeling, this almost being part of them feeling, that I wish could last longer. In my most paranoid moments, I think these runners must sense that I'm on fragile ground. Or that I'm oblivious.


All of that whining aside, I've just signed up for The Pacific Road Runners First Half in Vancouver to be held February 10, 2013. I am taking a sabbatical from my college for next term and by the time the race is run, I will have spent several weeks on a solidarity project in Nicaragua, and New Years in Belize. I will have also, hopefully without too much pain, run my actual first half marathon of 2013 in Miami. I am trying to take ten minutes off of my time in each of those races. It may seem self-evident that to run faster, one simply needs to (ahem) run faster. Wish it were that simple.Same goes for staying motivated, I guess.

Until then, I pray to the running mojo deities that I remain injury free.  Happy running...and all saints day too.