I tend to think of resolutions as an assurance of disappointment. Invariably, I commit to ideas that are just ridiculous, the breaking of habits that I know (deep down) I have no intention of breaking. So instead of figuring out all the stuff I'm going to stop doing, I figured I'd start 2010 with a proactive pursuit.
I've been debating what to do with my running goals. Post-marathon I've been running very little, sticking more to classes at the Y, logging maybe 10-15 miles a week. While I do feel like I have another marathon in me, I don't think 2010 is the year. Instead, I'm committing to six half-marathons, one for each month May through October. I'd like to be faster, with several races to look forward to instead of one GINORMOUS event that overwhelms my life for months on end. Half-marathons are also just easier to plan around, easier to fit into my world, and take far less time for recovery.
I will never be fast. But I can be faster.
A tentative schedule...the only one I've registered for is the July 4 Half as I was afraid it would fill up fast and there aren't many Half-Marathons in July. Maybe Minnesotans think it's hot here in July? Strange. The first and last entry are in parentheses because I'm not sure if I want my first in the series to be in April, when it could still be yucky outside. I did the Get-in-Gear 10K last year and it was pretty rainy when we started. Hmmm. But I could see myself getting jazzed for racing early in the season so maybe I'll embrace the potential chill. I'm also torn between the Lake Minnetonka race and Stillwater. I bet the Minnetonka race is very pretty, but since Stillwater was my first half-marathon I have a certain affection for it. Happy decisions to be made in the New Year...
(April 24: Get in Gear Half)
May: Either May 2 Lake Minnetonka Half OR May 30 Stillwater Half
June 12: Grampa Stays Home Half, Bald Eagle Lake
July 4: Red, White, and Boom Twin Cities Half
August 28: Rochester Half
September 25: Birkie Trail Half (Hayward, WI)
(October 10: Whistlestop Half (Ashland, WI))
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
River
My family makes a familiar drive this week to Arkansas. It's remarkable only in its sameness, its Americana-drenched stereotype of road trips and gas stations and kids ignoring Dads, noses buried in books.
But the drives I've made criss-crossing the Midwest and the Central South, remind me constantly of how tied my family is to this deep, darling trench carved by the Mississippi. I have lived in Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, and Minnesota, four states equally beholden to the might of that river. I felt it least, perhaps, in Arkansas, as I was a child and largely remember smaller rivers and streams.
In Missouri and Louisiana, however, it was a powerful, destructive, glorious force. Not long after moving to St. Louis, I remember volunteering with dad to sandbag areas threatened by the Great Flood. I remember that dark, gloomy water creeping up to the topmost steps of the Arch grounds, remember the newscasters and their shock at 100 year water levels. But in most instances the Mississippi in St. Louis was a sleeping giant. A river that loved the Cardinals, and lovingly reflected the blues and greens and reds of fireworks at the VP Fair.
The river in New Orleans was more than a river. More than a highway. It was sister to an ocean that threatened us. Sister to a Lake that flooded us. In every request for directions, it was a landmark, a true North. "Drive toward the river. Drive toward the lake." By the time she reaches New Orleans, the river is so strictly corseted by levees, one can hardly fault her for impertinence. Her deadly, hurricane-laden anger. But in her peaceful moments, she was a beautiful silver thing. And when I watched her spill into the Gulf, watched that brown bleed into blue, it seemed like the world was made correctly, with no flaws, that God knew how to make water, knew how to build land with tiny, tiny, tiny pinpricks of sand, knew how to return it all to the sea.
I have lived away from this river and I have loved the years I spent away from her. But there is something haunting and tempting and simply home-like in driving through the farmland and cities she built. It is land she carried and created, like some happy alchemist, depositing promises of fertility in dark dirt. I feel at home in many places. In the mountains of East Tennessee. In Jackson Square in New Orleans. On top of the Sindi Sud in Marrakech. Climbing those blasted rocks on Pinnacle Mountain. But there is a familiarity and warmth in simply living and traveling and building a life in this cradle of the Mississippi. And that was a five paragraph title for the following poem:
I leave the river often, freedom knit to my brow
And I am strong and unkind to memories of her mud
Wrapped round my ankles, cushioning my falls
I leave and she is worthless in her beautiful flood.
Sometimes I run, breathless in my escape
Fingers stretched wide on the wheel, heel to the road
You are a bitch, you River, you destroyer of cities,
You burn, you break, and you carry me home.
Sometimes I wander, eyes cast on some distant parade
Of adventures and dreams and dark, riverless nights.
I forget the river, her slow, steady explosion
And weave ribbons instead of water into my riverless life.
But always I return, feet, heart, head
Glued to this open, cupped palm of a river
This open wound of a river, itching for new blood
Always I stray, and always I return
Into and away, beyond and beholden
To my sly, angry, precious Mississippi mud.
But the drives I've made criss-crossing the Midwest and the Central South, remind me constantly of how tied my family is to this deep, darling trench carved by the Mississippi. I have lived in Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, and Minnesota, four states equally beholden to the might of that river. I felt it least, perhaps, in Arkansas, as I was a child and largely remember smaller rivers and streams.
In Missouri and Louisiana, however, it was a powerful, destructive, glorious force. Not long after moving to St. Louis, I remember volunteering with dad to sandbag areas threatened by the Great Flood. I remember that dark, gloomy water creeping up to the topmost steps of the Arch grounds, remember the newscasters and their shock at 100 year water levels. But in most instances the Mississippi in St. Louis was a sleeping giant. A river that loved the Cardinals, and lovingly reflected the blues and greens and reds of fireworks at the VP Fair.
The river in New Orleans was more than a river. More than a highway. It was sister to an ocean that threatened us. Sister to a Lake that flooded us. In every request for directions, it was a landmark, a true North. "Drive toward the river. Drive toward the lake." By the time she reaches New Orleans, the river is so strictly corseted by levees, one can hardly fault her for impertinence. Her deadly, hurricane-laden anger. But in her peaceful moments, she was a beautiful silver thing. And when I watched her spill into the Gulf, watched that brown bleed into blue, it seemed like the world was made correctly, with no flaws, that God knew how to make water, knew how to build land with tiny, tiny, tiny pinpricks of sand, knew how to return it all to the sea.
I have lived away from this river and I have loved the years I spent away from her. But there is something haunting and tempting and simply home-like in driving through the farmland and cities she built. It is land she carried and created, like some happy alchemist, depositing promises of fertility in dark dirt. I feel at home in many places. In the mountains of East Tennessee. In Jackson Square in New Orleans. On top of the Sindi Sud in Marrakech. Climbing those blasted rocks on Pinnacle Mountain. But there is a familiarity and warmth in simply living and traveling and building a life in this cradle of the Mississippi. And that was a five paragraph title for the following poem:
I leave the river often, freedom knit to my brow
And I am strong and unkind to memories of her mud
Wrapped round my ankles, cushioning my falls
I leave and she is worthless in her beautiful flood.
Sometimes I run, breathless in my escape
Fingers stretched wide on the wheel, heel to the road
You are a bitch, you River, you destroyer of cities,
You burn, you break, and you carry me home.
Sometimes I wander, eyes cast on some distant parade
Of adventures and dreams and dark, riverless nights.
I forget the river, her slow, steady explosion
And weave ribbons instead of water into my riverless life.
But always I return, feet, heart, head
Glued to this open, cupped palm of a river
This open wound of a river, itching for new blood
Always I stray, and always I return
Into and away, beyond and beholden
To my sly, angry, precious Mississippi mud.
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