rebuilding

Today I will run (and walk) and it will be
                                                               movement.

I was going to say it will be
                                              fun
but that is not always true.
Sometimes it's
                         frustrating
and it can be hard to find the fun in that.
But I'm looking at my body as a
                                                       work-in-progress
And run/walking is my
                                       paintbrush
                                                         or my chisel
and I'm creating a healthier runner.
a more durable runner.

The body doesn't know pace. It knows effort.

I want to be that grey-haired woman I sometimes exchange hellos with.
She runs with her chin-length hair loose. It sways as she moves.
Not fast but why would that matter
when the smile on her face is bright enough to shine
on the remainder of my run?

saturation

Deep breaths; green breaths; deer-peeking-through-trees breaths.

Sane breaths; rain breaths; nothing-to-explain breaths.

Slow steps; flow steps; out-here-alone steps.

Breathing, moving, still.

layering

every time i run, i layer miles onto my body.

i am building up a tolerance for what i can handle.

every step is a pebble -- no, a grain of sand: seemingly insignificant. 

but building blocks
                                 form

                                          stack

                                                    create.

every time i write, i layer words like bricks.

sometimes they are little three-rock piles, left along the trail to mark where i've been.

sometimes they add strata to the story i'm trying to tell (am telling).

lately, its been mostly the little piles.

but that's okay.

they're important too. 

my feet are becoming callouses of capability. 

my lungs are getting deeper and wider, an expanding universe. 

i watch and my mind is growing too.

there are pockets i haven't even explored.

keep picking up the pen.

keep lacing up the shoes. 

one foot [word] in front of the other. 

not good, but persistent. 

a brief writing from the single-word prompt: layering. 

try it: get a pen. set a 5 minute timer. just write. see what you find.

Soundtrack of Silence

It's early morning. I'm sitting cross legged on the couch with my pen in hand, notebook open on my lap.

I haven't started writing.

Mostly, I'm just listening to the kitchen clock tick.

It's strange, I think, that this sound doesn't bother me. Never bothers me.

Because I am kind of sensitive about sounds.

I hate the sound of other people drinking, for example (shudder). I have trouble concentrating in a quiet room if someone, somewhere, is breathing too loud (ugh, shhhhh). Repetitive noises quickly grate on my nerves (sorry, but your foot tapping is a jackhammer on my soul. could you stop?). I can't sleep if there are any unusual noises at all (hello white noise, my love).

But this clock? For some reason, it's okay.

Even on nights when I simply cannot sleep and the only thing that helps is moving onto the couch in the living room for a new scene to try again to get some shut-eye -- even then, the clock's ticking is either something I don't notice at all or a sound I end up finding soothing.

Perhaps this is because during the day, with so much activity and movement and sound in the house (because of all the people (6) and dogs (2) who live in this small space), the ticking is completely covered under the cacophony of daily life.

But in the early mornings, when it has for years been my habit to sit with my notebook on my lap and a cup of coffee in my hand (sometimes writing, sometimes just staring sleepily into my cup), the clock sings the soundtrack of my silence.

When my girls were much younger, this was one of the only times I truly had to myself, so it was sacred. Now that no one needs me quite so much anymore, I'm not so desperate for or possessive about my alone time.

But there's still something special about that slip of time just after waking, before I'm pulled into the flow of my day.

It's the time when I'm most still. Most settled. Most at the surface of myself, before my mind has gotten buried under the duties of the day.

And maybe, on nights when sleeplessness grips my mind, moving to the couch solves my problems when nothing else seems to help simply because the sound of the clock is a signal to my psyche that I'm in a sacred space.

(Posting more frequently brought to you by inspiration from a blogging friend. I've always loved her writing voice. )

Pep Talk

...for myself (for anyone)
...for These Unprecedented Times (for any time)

It's okay to be bored even when you're doing something you love.

It's okay to resist what you normally embrace.

It's fine if you love something but sometimes you just don't.

It's fine if it feels like it doesn't love you back.

It's okay to keep doing it, keep trying, keep moving, even if it doesn't feel like you're going anywhere.

It's okay to rest sometimes, too.

It's good to avoid pushing too hard.

...but it's not always easy to tell when rest is best or if it's better to keep moving.

That's why it's good to have friends and mentors who see things from the outside.

...though ultimately, we have to know the language of our own minds, of our own bodies.

Dusting off

Last week, I dusted off this blog and wrote a post about all the running I’ve been doing recently. It seemed like a necessary way to cap off a project that ended up meaning so much to my internal world.

After posting, in one of the endless ways I’ve been distracting myself from other things I should be doing lately, I went down the rabbit hole of my own writing and read a bunch of posts from all those years ago, back when writing on this blog was one of the ways I saved my own life.

Looking back, I felt a flush of pride about who I was and how I saw things (still am, still see). I also felt nostalgic for all the grasping and searching I used to do (still do). And grateful that I wrote it down because reading back on it is like flipping through a photobook of my mind.

Back then, I would often feel anxious putting my thoughts out there in the world for other people to read. What would they think? What if it was stupid? What if no one even read it?

In the end (and this is something I suspected but didn’t really care about at the time) the most important reader I could have is ME – now. And me – years and years from now. It feels important to acknowledge that (to myself).

I’m currently working on a novel. Did I ever tell you that? I suppose that’s what made me stop blogging, back then. This project has taken up most of my writing energy, in a good way.

I’ve been trickle-writing it for four years now (four!!!), and it’s nowhere near being done.

But I’m still doing it.

Why?

Not for any delusions about publication. Not for some imaginary future readers.

No – It’s for ME.

There have been frequent times when I’ve fought with myself over this project, one side saying why bother, honestly. And the other side stubbornly repeating because I’ve always wanted to.

Thankfully, I have a supportive writing teacher and feedback group that help bolster that stubborn voice, and I’m optimistic that someday, eventually, I’ll finish it.

It will be really something to hold the completed thing in my hands.

But maybe more than anything, I’m curious about -- and motivated by -- the experience of looking back on the process of writing this novel. Of seeing how I’ve grown as a writer and a seer. Of noticing how I’ve evolved as an observer of my mind and in my commitment to putting this story on paper. Even from the middle of it, I can start to see some of the ways I’ve grown.

I suppose in a lot of ways, writing, for me, is akin to running. It’s more about the process than the product (though it’s certainly rewarding to see the product unfold). It’s more about the journey than the destination (though I’d like to get where I’m going as well).

Or maybe what I mean is – it’s okay for the product to change over time or for the destination to end up being somewhere other than what I first expected.  

All this to say – maybe I’m not totally done with this blog. Maybe there are more tracks I might want to lay down. We’ll see. But I know this for sure: I'm happy to be able to look back. And grateful for all the ways I can move forward.

Every Single Street - Middleton

I’ve lived in Middleton for 11 years. I’ve been an active runner for 4 of those years. During that time, I’ve traced ruts into the ground of my preferred routes. I’ve run hundreds and hundreds of miles in the Pheasant Branch Conservancy.

More of the same often becomes stale.  

A few months ago, I happened upon a film called Every Single Street, about ultrarunner and photojournalist Rickey Gates who came up with an idea to run all the streets of San Francisco.  I was instantly intrigued. His project covered over 1,300 miles and he pushed through it in 47 days, logging double digit miles daily. 

The scale of what he did is incredible and not practical for my location or situation. But still, the idea fascinated me and seemed relevant even in a small city like mine, even for a regular runner like me.

I had, however, already signed up for my first 50K trail race, so it made more sense to focus my efforts on trail running as I trained for this event. It wasn’t long before I put the idea out of my mind.

But then the race got postponed because of the pandemic, and all at once it seemed like the right time to take on this project in my small city.

I did some research and discovered that a lot of runners who are taking on their cities use a website called City Strides that can pull in running data from apps like Strava to show you which streets in a city you have left to complete. The site uses “nodes” on individual streets as data points, which show up as red boxes on incomplete streets.

I was surprised to see how my running ruts looked all overlaid together on the map of Middleton. Each activity shows up as a purple line tracing the route run, and there was a thick band of purple over my usual routes.

There are 315 streets in Middleton, and it turns out I had traversed less than 15% of them during the thousands of miles I’ve logged as an active runner while living in this city.

It was time to change that.

I laced up my road shoes and got to work.

The first time I set out to tackle a new neighborhood, I glanced at the map on my phone and headed out. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that maps held in my head don’t stick, and my navigation skills are lacking. Once I had gone up one block and down another, then this way on a cross-street and that way on another road that curved away from the neighborhood, I discovered that it was hard to remember which streets I had already done and which streets I had only thought about doing.

I started mapping my route ahead of time, jotting street names on a small slip of paper I carried in my hand. The paper was usually crumpled and sweaty by the end of the run but was so useful in helping me complete streets in a more organized manner.

Long runs posed a problem because normally I need to take at least one pit stop over the course of hours of running. On the trails, I can just hide behind a tree, and on road routes I have a good sense of where the public bathrooms are located. Even when local parks close their bathrooms for the season, I can always use a gas station, and the Madison zoo actually has a really nice facility. There’s a pit toilet open year-round off the Picnic Point trails on campus.

I have no problem with planning routes based on bathroom location.

But now is not the time to use public bathrooms if not absolutely necessary, so I used my home as an aid station, designing routes that paused at my front door at least once over the course of the distance I needed to run. While this limited how many streets I could complete in a single run and made me weary of the two-mile radius around my house, stopping at home had its perks. Aside from the much-needed bathroom break, I could change socks if needed, drop off unnecessary layers, and refuel with foods that would be difficult to carry with me for a longer distance. It worked out pretty well.

When I had nearly completed all the streets, my years-old GPS watch started to go wonky on me, tracing routes that didn’t line up with the streets I had traversed or crashing entirely, erasing the physical evidence of the progress I had made. The lost or inaccurate data is something that might have really upset me a few months ago, but here I took it in stride. Honestly, what do I have but time? My own lightness surprised me.

There is a neighborhood at one corner of the city that I ended up running three times before it finally recorded as complete. I wondered if any of its residents noticed me as I ran, oddly, around their courts and down their dead-ends yet again.

I will admit to having prepared a mini-speech I might give should someone stop me with questions. I never needed to use it, of course.

The completed map (minus the 0.63% of nodes that fall on heavy-traffic streets that I deemed unsafe for shoulder-running) doesn’t look all that impressive – it is a small city, after all, and it only took a few weeks of effort to complete.

But the project has meant something significant to me.

Planning routes, eating up nodes like Pacman in running shoes, seeing streets and houses I never would have noticed otherwise – it all felt light and fun. A project. A game. An antidote to all this heaviness and uncertainty. It has kept me motivated during a time when motivation can be hard to find.  

Whether we like to admit it or not, motivation often has something to do with comparison.

Comparison with other people. Comparison with our past selves, even.

But running every single street in my city was a project that had nothing to do with comparison, for once. Not to anyone else. Not even with myself.

It was not about pace. It was not about finishing time. It was not about how I placed in a pack.

Instead, it was about laying down tracks over every inch of the place I live, leaving nothing concrete behind but learning that adventures don’t have to be limited to interesting locations. Adventures can be had right out my front door, within the limits of my own city.

This project turned out to be more of a process goal rather than an end-point goal. Sure, I set out to complete something. But it was more like putting together a puzzle than summiting a peak. Yes, it felt good to put that last piece in, but it was actually equally satisfying to watch the picture emerge.

Working on this project has really helped my mental space over the past few weeks. Everyone copes in different ways, and I am by no means a champion of productivity as the best solution. But for me, finding a way to apply running to a different kind of purpose has really helped.

Now, excuse me while I go chip away at the streets of Madison.

With nearly 3,000 streets, I guess I’ll be busy for a long, long time.

I wonder what I’ll see.