More rivers

After Shreveport this week, I got up to Philadelphia, and continued my streak this week of running along rivers … this time it was Coshohocken area along the Schuylkill River.  I don’t even know how to say either of those.

And in the travel world … sometimes you are the windshield, sometimes you are the bug.  On the flight from Houston to Philly, I got an exit row without any company.

But my next flight … from Philly to Denver, I got walloped with a delay.

Needless to say we did not depart at 533PM.  And apparently our reroute was significant enough to mean we had to go back to the gate and get more gas.  And then people wanted to deplane and get a different flight.  It was a bit of a mess.

I get it is easy to crack at air travel.  And I have signed up for this to some degree based on my chosen profession. It is sort of like choosing to come back from the mountains on a Sunday at 3PM.  What, you didn’t expect traffic?  And in the grand scheme of things, a three hour delay is no biggie.  What I have seen in though is how people react differently based on how the delay is messaged.  I got hit with a delay of about 3 hours and missed a connection in Chicago that left me there unexpectedly overnight.  But everyone on the plane took it much better than typical.  The difference?  The captain of the bird came out of the cockpit during the delay, spoke to the passengers, was apologetic (even though it was a ground delay due to weather in Chicago that delayed us so it was not his fault), made jokes and kept everyone informed. 

That is very different than most of the flights where it is a non communication status and you are bled with 15 minute delays over and over again, or you sit on the tarmac for 45 minutes without a word out of the cockpit.

I’ll try to learn from that.

Meanwhile in Ames …

Right on

Quick run along the Red River in Shreveport LA. Before today I had never been here.

Almost 30 years ago to the month I headed to Loring AFB in Maine. Originally I had orders to head here - Barksdale AFB in Shreveport. But there was an airman who had the same job code as me and was from Louisiana... and I was from New England. We did the paperwork and swapped.

Can’t help but wonder a little bit how the next 30 would have different if I had started here versus Maine. Not wondering in a regret or wishful short of way but just a wondering how it would be different and the same if the start of the path had been here versus in the icy potato fields of Caribou Maine.

It is my 51st travel night of the year.  Meaning this is the 51st night I have spent in a hotel for work.  That stat is a bit deceiving I guess … as there is often some travel beyond the nights I spend in a hotel.  Last week I did a day trip to Dallas …I left the house at 3AM, hopped a 5AM flight to TX, got to the client site, did my work and reversed the process to get back home at 6PM that night.  And then I got three miles in. 

On my run tonight, a man who was walking the trail, looked up at me and smiled and said, “right on whitey.” I found it inspiring, because he was cheering me on, just like anyone else saying “good work.”  I said, “good evening” and probably picked up the pace a bit. 

Passing the Triple Crown Torch and a nod to Jack

Had the honor of passing on this piece of Pack Burro History this week to Kirt Courkamp. Kirt with Mary Margaret found “lightning in a bottle” and sealed a Triple Crown win with victories in the FairPlay, Leadville and Buena Vista Pack Burro races. As far as I know, he is the sixth man since this came about in 1978 to accomplish this with Tom Sobol and Ardel Boes having done it in years with burros that are unclear, Bobby Lewis with Wellstone in 2011, Hal Walter and Full Tilt Boogie In 2013 and me with Jack in 2015. Winning a single one of these events is no joke ... to do three over three weeks is a bit of luck, a lot of sweat, and takes a lot of support. It took Jack and me three years to get it right and I think it has taken Kirt and MM about the same.

While at the WPBA dinner where the traveling trophy was awarded, I was given a copy of the Summit Daily. I was told my picture was in it. As it turns out it was more than a pic of the carrot act that Jack and I do, but a write up that reflected how lucky I got to race with Jack better part of this decade.

The saying is that “figures never lie but liars figure...” It is probably not best to look at racing stats from the last decade when the races have going on for seven decades ... and margins of victories don’t mean much when you are second anyway but it does go to show how Jack has been a Hall of Famer: three wins at FairPlay, and the four second places there. Five wins at Leadville and a second place there. A BV win and a Triple Crown. No donkey has been better in the last 10 years.

I have been lucky to have that guy as my guide in this game.

Hat tip again to the current TC winners ... I know you feel as blessed as I do.

A week in New England

I had a work week north of Boston.  Specifically I was in a hotel in Andover.  Well, until Thursday evening.  I was supposed to check out Friday morning but due to the gas explosions there, my colleague and I were politely evacuated from our Marriott and found lodging somewhere else.

Not really a big deal for me … we went from one hotel to another, versus say a family displaced by the event that saw some 70 reports of explosions, fires, and gas leaks in the Andover-Lawrence area.  In fact, I was ridiculously oblivious to the whole affair until my colleague called me and notified me that we needed to hightail it out.

After my day at the job site, we got back to the hotel, I called home, and got ready for an evening jog.  I was tired.  The week felt like it should have already ended.  I was a bit miffed at that I was going to miss a Friday XC meet with the team.  I felt a bit sore in the legs for no good reason.  I was unmotivated and had that “gee maybe I’ll just lay down and do nothing really productive” sort of feeling.  The feeling is not unusual, and this time, like most times, I made the steps out the door and started the slow jog.  i knew I’d feel better even if I got a few miles in, regardless of how much a slog it would be. 

I headed down to the Merrimack River.  It was less than a half mile from the hotel to get to that.  It set for some nice single track along the water, away from traffic and where I could relax my head a bit.

As I have admitted here countless times, my runs are no longer just a training event for me.  While they have often been that, they have become an almost near daily event for me to unwind, meditate on an issue, escape, to think about something or to think about nothing.   Sometimes they are with podcasts to catch up on news or some aspect of business.  Sometimes they are harder running, enjoying the effort and thinking of race days gone by.  Tonight I engaged in a guilty indulgence.  I listened to Pink.  My daughter introduced her to me a few years ago, and I’ll admit I find her tunes catchy. 

I made easy but purposeful tracks along the Merrimack path.  I stopped to watch some swans in the river.  I ran some more and then checked in for my flight for Friday and checked to see if I could get a better seat assignment. 

I ran some more and came up on the six lane track by the Greater Lawrence Technical College.  I contemplated doing some work on it but thought the others on that, that seemed like some organized group, might take issue with that so I moved out from the trail and onto the roads in Lawrence.

I was mildly surprised at the traffic but did not really significantly consider it.  I guess I should have noticed it was a bit atypical in that both lanes were being used to head outbound out of town but was in my run.  I ran by the VFW and noticed the fire department there working what seemed to be a small fire.  With it were the crowds of people you sort of would expect to watch such an affair.  I kept running.  I was heading against traffic and got “the look.”  It is the look that a middle aged bald guy who is sweating hard on a New England later summer evening gets.  I dismissed it as I get the look plenty often.  I kept running, up the sidewalks into Lawrence and against traffic.  I noticed a couple of helicopters in the sky and figured whatever car accident that was stacking up this traffic and rerouting it at 6:30 like it was must have been significant.  I switched the music to Cross Canadian Ragweed.  I got back on the trail as dusk was starting to come in.  It would have still been enough light for a road run, but with the cover of trees it was significantly darker.

I thought about how this area of the world that I grew up in as a kid felt sort of foreign now that I had been in Colorado for over 2 decades.  The trees and forests are greener and thicker, the trails are muddy and root ridden, there are bugs (I thought about ticks way too much this week), briars, and the thickness of the air.  The air is not just thicker because of the increased partial pressure because of the altitude but it just feels thicker with the humidity.  I thought about how the culture feels different in these New England towns – business and homes interpacked together, roads shifting in all different directions as if there never had been a direction really designed. the lack of side walks and how there are no significant shoulders to roads, the old mills and churches, three story old Cape homes and the inability to hold an R at the end of a word but the need to replace it with an AH. 

I was nearly finished with the run, wrapping up on the trail before coming back up to the hotel when my colleague called me and asked where I was.  He informed me that we were getting evacuated from the hotel and in fact, all of Andover, North Andover, and Lawrence were being evacuated because of exploding gas lines in the area.

Yeah, if I wanted to escape from it all for a bit with my run – I had done it. 

The hotel staff were doing what they could to get arrangements for everyone to get somewhere else.  As grizzled vets, we took matters into our own cell devices and got on our Marriott accounts and got a booking out of town. 

A few other pix from the jogs on the week.

Week wrap up 09SEP2018

70 on the week.  No real workouts to speak of but the two runs in DC I did left me pretty depleted given the heat and the humidity.  I broke a toe Friday, but it really didn’t impact my running.

Saturday was a XC day up in Lyons. 

JZ, while improved over last season, is still coming into fitness given he missed chunks over the summer due to various “niggles.” 


The boys team is a long shot to make the State meet.   It could happen but it will require the team to be significantly better than they are now – and from 1-5.  And probably a bit of luck in how other teams perform. 

So there is a dichotomy there  … I care about the team’s results and in parental regard, my son’s results.  But the result is not particularly important as much as the process.  There are countless lessons greater than any one race or workout or even a season … commitment, discipline, team, humor, seriousness, the dichotomy of risking it for the moment against patience for the bigger view, the other 22 hours …

I am really enjoying that process of being involved with my son and the team.  JZ is not an all-state athlete, and while varsity on the Broomfield squad this year, he’d be a C squad on some teams in the state.  It is not quite that “none of that matters” because the process here is about training for a result.   I love what this process provides for young people and what it has for my kids.  And I’m hugely fortunate to have that front seat to all that. 

Don’t get me wrong.  This is not a complete “ah it is all about the journey and screw the destination.”  That is the dichotomy.  It is because there is a desired destination that the journey is so rich.  If it were an easy place to get to, the trip along the way doesn’t matter.  It is the stakes themselves that set up the opportunity. 
 
Eric S sent me a very nice piece of art as a “thank you” for being involved in his seventh finish at Leadville.  This is pretty cool.

It is a very nice and very thoughtful piece.  I think it will go in the home office.

I gave a bit more of an eyeball to the calendar and realized I’ll be traveling in some regard for a straight nine weeks.  I hate that seems to always come during XC season but that seems to be the pattern I have created (to some degree).  This week I’m off to the north of Boston area.

A few parting shots.

If you have never heard the Tool cover of Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter” … well, it is clearly one of those covers far better than the original. 

DC gets me every time

In DC … well for a day.  I got out for a very muggy sticky jog tonight.  I was looking like I had gone for a swim by the first mile.

I decided to head out east to get some different looks … I hit the Anacostia Park area along the water (and was reminded of the east coast biting bugs we often forget about in the Rocky Mountain west).

I came up the back of Capitol Hill from the east and caught some setting sun on the National Mall.
 

I decided to head over to the Jefferson Monument.  I had never been to that one.  It was worth the “side” trip and a skip of the Lincoln tonight. 

Nice little run.  I was more than parched when done with all the sweating I did.  I even cut the run in that once I got to 12 and change I decided to just take the Metro back to the hotel (a nice safety to have here).

Weekend XC

I woke really not feeling the race.  My legs felt tight, my stomach was gurgling, and I just didn’t feel sharp.  It would have been easy to bag it – I was not registered for this affair and so I could easily just get another hour of sleep and head over the Centaurus meet at Waneka Lake on the bus with the XC team.

But I said I’d do it, and if I create the excuse to not do these sort of things, it only furthers a habit road I don’t want to go down. 

My warm up did little to allay my concerns.  I felt slow, tired, a bit sore, and creaky.  Ah, oh well.  I lined up with Parker and Braun – my peer assistant volunteer coaches – and two yung-uns.  If you summed their ages, you’d not get to mine. 

I got out too fast (5:55 for the mile, and that is with a second half of that mile climbing up), and then slowed the rest of the way (6:18, 6:24).  I finished in 19:32.  I’ll take a positive from this in that it is a bit of an improvement to do about nearly the same I did on the track a few weeks ago on an XC course.   30 seconds to a sub 19 seems far away but I think if I did some actual focused training (say some actual intervals), and I got the pacing a bit smarter (start at 6:05 instead), I might get to that. 

Had a lot of fun with the meet the rest of the day hollering and cheering for the kids.  It was a grand day for XC.

Last night we drove to Cheyenne to the Cowboy Invite.  There were five our our HS alum up there racing and so that set the hook.  So yes – we drove 3 hours round trip to watch two 5k races that were done in in less than a total of 40 minutes.  But it was worth it.