you can keep your diamonds

Like probably many runners, I do most of my running at an easy, conversational pace.  I don’t race much and so it is pretty rare that I venture into the territory where my running gets me out of breath and makes my heart pound.  If I’m breathing hard on a daily run, it is because my lungs are having a bad day, not that I’m taxing every fiber of my leg muscles to their maximum capacity.

I come from a sprinter heritage, though.  I cut my teeth in junior high and high school in the short distances, the races “tailor made for the neurotics;” my events were the 100 and 200 meters.  I felt like the coach was punishing me if I had to run farther.  I lived for the all-out adrenaline burst from right out of the block, the pushing of every fiber, the pure speed of running as fast as I possibly could.

I’m still pretty fast, which seems to surprise people.  If I’m not reduced to a quivering, hyperventilating puddle of goo by the end of the race, my kick is very dangerous – if you let me hang near you at the end you do so at your own peril.  A few weeks back on a whim I ran 400 meters on the track and managed to actually clock a 65 – which is actually faster than I could run in high school.  Granted when I hit the line I was completely spent – toast if you will – and I wasn’t running another step further than that.  My legs were totally exhausted and depleted, left quivering and shaking from the high level of exertion from running all out.

Every so often, I feel that ancient need, that unquenchable desire to just burn, to run fast and hard.  It isn’t really a competitive fixation; I don’t really feel the urge to try and run people down who I see on my runs (it is actually not too common for me to come up on another runner).  No, it is more really just a primal thing, an urge, like a hunger or a deep, hot thirst.  Like that I wasn’t just meant to run long and steady all the time, I was also supposed to run fast.  For me that yearning to run fast is a burning ember that lies mostly dormant in my soul, just smoldering, waiting to erupt when a few droplets of passion ignite it into a ball of flame and the urge cannot be resisted anymore.

Today was one of those days.  Maybe it was the unseasonable coolness – it was fifty-nine degrees this morning and I half-expected to be able to see my breath.  Such days are exceedingly rare in August and must be suitably relished and celebrated.  Perhaps it was the strange sort of newly scrubbed cleanness the world had this morning: everything looked sharp – no haze or fuzz or heavy fog today.  Or the fact I slept well for once last night.  Maybe it was the easy run the day before that left my muscles aching for something more.  Or maybe it was just all the salmon I ate last night.  (Definitely possible.)  Or perhaps something in my subconscious just woke up that smoldering volcano in my soul.  But whatever the reason, this morning, there was a bit of steam in my step.  And so there was no gradual easing into my usual stride. And there was no sightseeing nature trip– I took off running right from the bottom of the driveway, rolling along, fast, clipping away the miles at 7:20 pace.

(Fast is, of course, relative.  What is fast to me is just a Kenyan’s warm up jog.  7:20 to me is just over 5K race pace.)

I ran right into the rising sun that had just peaked red over the top of the horizon and the buildings.  I ran straight towards it with reckless abandon, like I was racing the sun itself, and if I won, I could reach out and grab it.  There’s a thrill to running fast, to the quicker rhythm, to the faster breathing that excites the senses.  Everything is sort of enhanced – the sun looked redder, the grass greener, the trees outlined against the sky sharper, the sky itself a more brilliant shade of heavenly azure blue.

Running is a primal act – so simple, yet so beautiful, something you find yourself yearning for hungrily if you miss a few days, something you find yourself craving, and the reason is because it is something you were always meant to do, something hard-wired in your genetic code as a human being.

Running is easy to write about because it is natural poetry and the words that describe it just flow from the tip of the pen to the paper.  Running is a symphony of the various systems of the body.  You find the effort perfectly dialed in and your just rolling.  The brain is the conductor of this great musical opus — after all there is a great deal of rhyme and rhythm to running — and act that is at once both wild and free and chaotic like a runaway freight train yet at the same time fully in control.  The brain maintains control of the orchestra, not allowing any one piece to dominate the others — no, instead the brain remains firmly in control of the whole, monitoring each system of the body, adapting, adjusting, aware, seeking information from the eyes and the ears, from the muscles and the nerves, and sending cues.  Cues to the gut to shut down temporarily, cues to the lungs to draw in more oxygen from the air to feed ravenous muscles, cues to the heart to hammer a hard and steady rhythm like a sledgehammer to pump and push and hurtle hot blood in rushing torrents through the labyrinth of veins and arteries that make up the aqueducts of the body.

No wonder one feels no more alive than when running.  And no wonder we yearn for it when we can’t do it for awhile.

I ended up running four miles at that pace, with a few more tacked on for good measure at a much slower and controlled pace – my much more usual 8:20s.  Still the fast running felt good, and I finished with a flourish, relishing a good day.  All days aren’t good days, and you can’t run fast every day – obviously.  But there is also the incessant whisper of your rational self, the self that reminds you of the wisdom that if you ran this way every day, today wouldn’t be special.  After all, rare things have always been most prized by human society, things like rock hard diamonds that glisten brightly just like the many millions of transient drops of dew that lined the individual blades of grass.

I suppose most girls would prefer a gift of sparkling and burnished diamonds more than a good hard run like I had this morning.  They can keep their shiny rocks – they don’t interest me.   For what I had today is just as rare as the most precious and exotic stone ever produced by the earth, but it can’t be bought or sold in any store or marketplace; indeed, it can’t be bought or sold at all.  Diamonds can be purchased for you with the sweat of others, with the expended effort of others.  What I experienced today can’t be bought or sold, it has to be earned and won, and slowly honed and sharpened like the fine steel blade of a sword by YOU.  It has to be won in sweat and strain and hard work that can only be given and expended by YOU.  You get back what you put in to this sport.  No one can do it for you and give you the feeling of accomplishment, of pride, of feeling and experiencing the symphony of poetry in motion that is running.  And that is what makes the feeling I had this morning way more precious than any shiny rock.  You can keep your diamonds.  I have something of much greater value than all the shiny and rare rocks in all the world.

learning to fly ~ a post script

Last weekend, I wrote about the fledgling kingfisher who was learning to fly and was having a hard time living up to the species reputation as a superb and agile flier due to flight feathers that hadn’t grown in quite yet.  I figured after leaving the valley that day that I would probably never see the bird again.  Although always hopeful that the bird would grow up and come to a good conclusion, I know the mortality rate for young birds is extremely high.  All sorts of dangers lurk for a young bird that can’t fly very well — the prehistoric snapping turtles that lurk below the murky water, the ever present and vigilant hawks that patrol from the air, and simply the muddy water itself that can drown a youngster who can’t find dry land quickly enough.  Nature sometimes seems to be exceedingly cruel.

I’m currently dealing with some health issues of my own that I’m 99% sure are NOT related to lymphoma (unless they happen to be side effects of the chemo, always a possibility I suppose) so I haven’t been logging my usual miles.  I’ve still been running, though.  After a rather long week that included my baseball team raising the white flag for the next who knows how many years, I  was looking forward to spending the day engaged in the activity that makes me happy.  That activity is, of course, loping down dirt paths through fields lined with the first of the newly blooming yellow wingstem that rises as tall as me, through woods scented with the sweet smell of button bush, where everything is now overgrown and green and vibrant and alive.  Its high summer in Cleveland right now.  Even if the temperature and the humidity this summer seem like as though we’ve been stuck in a continual September, the blooming touch-me-nots and doll eyes and cardinal flowers indicate it is the beginning of August.  The dog days.

Running along the millpond path, I saw the young kingfisher.  I can’t ever be certain it is the same bird — but it was obviously a young bird.  It was perched up in a tree.  I stopped to watch it.  It stayed motionless for a long while in the tree (allowing me to approach fairly close which I think indicates it may be the same bird) — but then it took off and flew on steady strong wings all the way across the pond.  No hesitation, no threat of falling into the water, just steady and sure flight.  Not quite as good as mom and dad yet, but a marked improvement from last weekend.

Obviously, I’m cheering for this little bird.  How it does, how long it lives … No one probably will ever know.  I do imagine now we never will cross paths again, or if we do, I won’t be able to tell next weekend this bird from any of the others down at the mill pond.  But I’m happy to put the post-script on the story that this little guy has been successful — at least so far.  I think it probably has overcome the biggest hurdle of its life — just getting out the door and testing its wings.

Fortunately, the stakes aren’t life and death with running, unlike for the little kingfisher living down at the millpond.   But in fifteen plus years in the sport, I have found that the “mortality rate” for new runners is as high as he mortality rate for young birds  — so many people start, find it too hard or get injured, and then they quit the sport.  Like nature, running can be cruel — no time outs and progress that can be frustratingly and maddeningly slow.  And there are traps — too much too soon, naysayers, injuries like shin splints.  However, just like the young kingfisher has his parents and other kingfishers to learn from, there are plenty of people willing to help new runners — runners who remember the first time out the door testing tentative legs, finding wings to fly.  No one can run the miles for you, though, just like no one can fly for our young kingfisher.  For that, you have to rely on your own heart and will to ultimately beat the odds and survive.

learning to fly

My afternoon runs are photo runs. I started doing “photo runs” during chemo — I wasn’t spending as much time running, so I started heading out on hikes and walk/runs with my camera. Mostly restored to health, I’ve kept up the hobby, doing jogs through the woods at an easy pace, camera tucked safely away in a backpack. If I see something, I stop and shoot. If I don’t see anything, well, then I keep jogging around until I do. I’ll shoot anything in nature as my extremely varied portfolio of Northern Ohio wildlife attests, but I mostly like birds. Birds are amazing and beautiful and wonderful.

Of course, there are birds I like more than others. I will shoot just about anything I see, but some birds have a special place in my heart. I’m a great fan of herons and large wading birds like egrets, and of course, I have confessed here before how much I love pileated woodpeckers. I like crows and cardinals, finches and hawks. Not as much into water fowl, but I have a soft spot for wood ducks and goslings. But my favorite of late has been the sprinter of the sky — the belted kingfisher.

Kingfishers boast a high twittering laugh call and they’re fast. They’re the Bolts of the sky, darting, swift, extremely elusive. Getting close to a kingfisher would frustrate a saint. Their numbers seem on the upward trend, though, so I figure one day I’ll get lucky, and I’ll get my chance to photograph one of those sprinters of the sky.

Today’s spot came about two miles into my photo run and was a great blue heron. He was up on top of the beaver dam and he was systematically dismantling it, throwing sticks everywhere. I could tell from the coloration that this was a juvenile, and he was acting his age. Seemed to be greatly enjoying tossing the sticks everywhere — I’m sure the beavers won’t be as thrilled with this wanton mayhem.

I settled down with my camera behind a tree to photograph the juvenile delinquent. Was getting some decent shots when suddenly I saw the heron’s head shoot up — and then I observed what I thought was probably a distressed fish flopping around in the water about fifty feet away. Except the strange part was I knew if it was a fish the heron would certainly go spear him, and instead he was just looking sort of quizzical.

Of course, it wasn’t a fish — it was a bird. Closer examination through the camera lens revealed it was actually a kingfisher. The regal king of the skies was flailing about in the water, desperate just like a wounded fish.

Confusion washed over me. Fortunately, the bird thrashed its way over to a log and managed to drag itself out of the water. This was certainly unusual behavior — I figured the most likely scenario was bird must have dove, gotten stunned, and just needed time to catch its breath. It was too far away to photograph, so I continued studying the heron, all the while ready to switch the camera setting to hopefully catch the kingfisher when it decided to take off.

A few minutes passed and the kingfisher indeed tried to take off. I caught its take off — and the subsequent failure to lift more than just a few inches above the murky pond water. The kingfisher crashed back into the water, thrashing and sloshing about once again, looking not unlike a deflated balloon. This time I started taking off my shoes — it was automatic, instinct, I couldn’t let the little guy drown so I was going to go wade into that muddy morass and save it. However, before I could finish getting ready to go in, it flopped over to a tree and perched there once again.

I alerted the naturalist who examined the little fellow. Turns out it is just a juvenile and its flight feathers aren’t quite fully grown in just yet. My guess is it got waterlogged and that along with the short flight feathers is why its having trouble lifting off. Fortunately, we found its parents hanging around so it is fine.

At first, I thought “poor baby” about the kingfisher. But then I realized it wasn’t “poor” — instead, it was out taking maybe the biggest risk of its young life and learning to do something grand. It was learning to fly. It most certainly wasn’t coming easy to him but it seems like nothing worth doing is ever easy, at least at first. Today didn’t go too well, but I’m pretty confident that soon it will be sprinting around the skies … It only takes a day or two for the flight feathers to grow in well enough for it to dart about like mom and dad.

The little kingfisher is a good reminder of both how difficult and how glorious it is to take a risk, to try out new wings, to learn to fly. Going out was certainly not without risk for this little guy — the pond is fraught with lurking dangers like snapping turtles, but to fly, to be a glorious kingfisher, it had to take some lumps and take the risk. It had to take the first step out.

The kingfisher learns to fly just as how we learn to run — we have to take that very first step out into a brave new world that is fraught with uncertainty. Its not always easy, but if you persevere, running, like flying is worth it. After all, running is like flying — it’s the chance we get to break the ties that bind us to earth — if you look at a series of pictures of yourself running, you’ll see you do momentarily get to float, both feet off the ground.

My series of the juvenile kingfisher.

unquestionably.

They were waiting for me on the porch next to the mailbox when I arrived home today. I spotted them out of the corner of my eye as I pulled my car up into the driveway. A wrapped box, resting quietly against the iron porch rail. I bounded from my car and up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and reached down and scooped up the package. I cradled it in my arms, fiddled the key absentmindedly into the lock, and burst into the house. The cares of the day slipped away in the flourish of excitement of tearing off the package and slitting open the tape on the box. The plastic odor of brand new nylon and rubber wafted up as I unsealed the box. Inside there they were: bright white, red, and silver and impossibly clean — new running shoes.

I never tire of getting a new pair of shoes. I think it’s the potential that they have — how many miles we will run together, where we will go, what we will see. Its like an unexplored mine just waiting to be discovered and explored for what jewels and riches await. Maybe we’ll seek a rainbow together and follow it until we find the end and learn if there is indeed a pot of gold.

The craving and relentless itch to test out the new shoes was too intense; not the mounting hunger gnawing at my stomach or the fiery reds and vivid yellows outlined with bright variegated shades of green about fifty mile distant on the radar screen, nor the irresistibly congregation of thunderheads in the southern sky could suppress the need, the overwhelming desire to go out and christen these new shoes with a run. How could I leave them to sit next unused, untested, unloved next to the others that had already had the pleasure of many miles run? Even the slightly materialistic interest in keeping the new shoes looking nice and clean for more than a mere hour wasn’t enough to overcome the desire to run; if it rained so be it, it would simply hasten my new shoes on their journey to looking like the trusted friends that have already seen and logged many miles in all sorts of weather.

And so even though I knew the run would be short, I slid the new shoes onto my feet, tightened the laces for the first time, and slipped out the door.

The smell of rain immediately filled my nostrils. It hung thick in the air, portending the coming storm even more than the bright blossoms on the radar. Rain smells good and earthy and clean. Natural. Pungent and subtle, strangely at the same time. Like freshly cut grass in the summer time. But it hurried me on my way — this wasn’t a day to linger before breaking into a run.

I fell into my usual loping run. I’m a natural forefoot striker and I have a sort of bounding gait — I am sure I probably spend a few extra fractions of a moment off the ground than most people. I like a shoe that just comes along for the ride, that protects my foot from the hardness of the concrete sidewalks and from the occasional small stone or shard of glass. But otherwise, a good shoe just comes along for the ride. These were good shoes. I could tell within a mile because I forgot that they were even there.

Instead, my eyes focused on the horizon to the south, on the gathering storm clouds. The wind was picking up and it carried stronger wisps of the sweet and earthy fragrance of the coming rain. Above the soft sound of my footfalls and the steady intake of my breath, I could hear the low, ominous rolls and peals of thunder, a distant heavenly cannonade. No lightning streaked and cut through the sky yet. But I could tell from the way the sky was darkening like a fresh purple bruise that it was time to turn back if I wanted to avoid being soaked.

The sky reflected my mood of late — dark, somewhat tormented, stormy. I’ve lacked the desire to run the last couple weeks; I’ve run more from force of habit than out of enjoyment. I’m tormented by my own fears and by pain both physical and mental. And even running hasn’t quieted the beasts or the pain lately.

Today, though, running silenced the fears that threaten on certain days to rise up like flames licking at their victim and consume me, that settle as a nauseating coldness in the pit of my stomach, that keep me awake at night. I dare say running even quieted that angry demon who pokes and prods at my right elbow and wrist, setting off reverberating pains as though I have been struck over and over again by a tuning fork.

It started to rain gently while at the same moment a beam of sun broke through, and the world was strangely colored as though someone had put a orange filter over my eyes. I was almost home by that point, but the rain felt good. It felt like it was washing away all of the bad stuff of the past couple weeks, rinsing me clean.

Sometimes its good to run in the rain. Maybe not on the days when its forty degrees and the droplets are little knives seeking to stab and cut their way in to any exposed skin, but on warm days when you can make it home just before the storm and just have a little gentle rain warmly mist over you … That’s definitely a good run in the rain.

When that beam of sun cut through the black clouds and washed the earth almost otherworldly pinks and purples, it also washed over me and I felt a sudden, great warm tidal wave flood — all at once I remembered all at once why I love to run, why this is my sport, why when my judgment day comes I hope people will remember me as a decent person who loved nature and who was a RUNNER. Certainly I won’t be remembered like a Bannister or a Hall or a Kastor as a fast elite runner who ran great and fantastic times flirting on the edge of what human physiology can accomplish. No. I’m nothing like that. I don’t chase after records or glory, but rather after a feeling — I am not particularly good at running, I run simply and purely because I love to run. Its not about running fast or far, its about running for the sake of running, to revel in the beauty of what my much battered and broken body can do.

Such moments are fleeting; the sunbeam was quickly replaced by a fully darkened sky. But the warm feeling remained. Reaching my house and bounding up the stairs two at a time again, I sat on the porch with my back safely planted against the wooden post and watched the storm roll in … I waited there for a long while, savoring the feeling of being alive, sipping icy water from my trusty green camelbak bottle listening to the approaching rolls and peals of thunder, until I saw the first bolt of lighting burst through the sky and reach down towards the earth. The gnawing hunger in my stomach and the sheets of rain that soundly began to fall from the heavens convinced me it was time to go inside and eat.

But the run was certainly worth the time spent tonight. Unquestionably.

trudging.

I love running, I really do. Most mornings I wake up and I’m eager to lace up my shoes and hit the pavement. But this morning I woke up this morning and muttered, “what’s the point?”

I’m down, I’m depressed right now. I recognize it, I freely admit it. Even running isn’t a cure-all panacea sometimes. Still, as the t-shirts state, running IS cheaper than therapy. So I run anyway, even if I don’t really feel like running on a particular day.

Except today I almost didn’t run. Fortunately, though, being a programmed creature of habit is sometimes a good thing because I found myself getting up, pulling my hair back, and lacing up my shoes anyway even if I really didn’t want to be heading in that direction. It is sort of like there is some sort of magnet stuck in my head that draws me towards the running pole. Somehow the Garmin managed to make it on my arm and my body out the door precisely at 6:00, like clockwork as I do every Monday morning, without fail.

Except this morning my mood, as aforementioned, was really dark. Even a beautiful sunset beginning on the eastern horizon didn’t lighten my mood. My shoulder and elbow were really bad last night. You know that feeling when you hit your elbow and it reverberates? That’s the feeling I have and it radiates from my right chest, through my shoulder, down my elbow, and into my hand. I spent most of the night trying to find a comfortable position, and when I did sleep it was that sort of restless tormented sleep that you get when your mind can’t shut itself off and quiet down like its supposed to at night.

So there were lots and lots of excuses not to run this morning, but I still found myself out on the roads, same as always, fighting the nerve pain in my elbow and the tightness in the right side of my chest. I’d like to say after struggling out the door that things turned around and I had a great run … But this is life, not a movie. It was not a particularly good or memorable run. No time spent floating along with the miles clicking off regularly like the seconds on a clock. Just sort of a trudging run, eight miles. A run I’m sure I will soon forget, that will merge into many other runs in the deep recess of my memory.

I didn’t run today because I love running but because running is what I do, its who I am. I run because I am a runner. Its just what I do. I run. I’ve been doing it so long its natural, like eating or breathing. It seems almost as necessary for my organism as those water or such life-giving necessities as dark chocolate.

It is funny how running has become such a necessity. Running, after all, isn’t as much fun as eating dark chocolate (for example). No — running is not a sport for the fair weather fan; for those seeking an easy path. Running is strangely different. Running is hard. Oh sure, there are those glorious moments we wax poetic over, that make the non-runners think we’re nuts — you know, those moments on a run we pursue like shooting stars blazing their meteoric path across the heavens, those miles spent floating down a trail on the perfect day, as though we had slipped free from gravity’s steady and incessant pull and ascended into running heaven. But the truth is, much of running is what I had today — a sort of trudging forward, maybe the legs a bit tight, maybe something a touch sore, the breathing perhaps a bit off. A little too warm, a little too cold, too much breeze or not enough. Definitely not floating; feeling earthbound.

But yet a lot of us still run even though the trudging miles may outnumber the floating elusive great ones. Seems to go against human nature, especially human nature of modern man. To enjoy running, to stick with running, you have to be something a little different. In a society based on instant gratification, you have to be something of an anachronism — someone with patience, someone willing to struggle, to suffer some, to delay gratification, to wait. The good parts of running take time to discover and the great moments are elusive and fleeting.

Those you see out on the road all the time — I’m pretty sure almost all of them have tasted running heaven and found its very hard not to want to go back again and find that fleeting place again. I am sure I will be out there again looking for it tomorrow morning. Some things are worth waiting for. Breaking free of gravity to touch running heaven — definitely worth the wait and the struggle.