Peterson Ridge Rumble

Peterson Ridge Rumble is a 20 mile run with a 40 mile option that takes place on trails above the town of Sisters.  It is unique in that dogs can run with their owners on the 20 mile version.  Summer my dog was beside herself with excitement at the start.  So many people to run with, and dogs too!  She is not the best mannered trail runner though as she constantly tried to smell other dogs, and did not take the hint from some that they were not interested.  Some dogs were so focused on the run, they were little black machines, a study in stride and concentration.  

Vivid images of this run still spring to mind a week out now.  Mas frio!  Lazy snow flurries drifting through the pines.  Extensive trees stretching unfathomable distances.  Dark forest beckoning, foot paths extensive and spaghetti like.  A hard isolated terrain, made lonely by the slate gray sky, blanched of all color except endless pine green and dull brown.  A flurry of activity at an intersection, the leader and eventual winner leaping past me downhill as I still proceed up - thoughts of home far away as the race time grows longer, the purging of sin, the cleansing of my soul, the renewal of real self here on the cold mountain where time has stretched endlessly before and endlessly after, the bounding young runner enthralled to the trail, now and later, when he sits and can move no more...only in his imagination, in his memory is he taken back to an event that seems to have occurred just yesterday...the slight felt in grade school harbored still by the 80 year old grandfather, a cut as keen today as on the day it was dealt.  For this reason we pray, for forgiveness, to be more like Christ, more fully alive in our soft heart than we ever were reaping the fruits of this world. 

So that is why I run.  I won't be the first across the line and for some that means not winning the race.  But winning the race is more than first place.  The battle is greater than that, and sometimes the battle is to renew yourself, away from the world that tries to define you.

This was a training run for the Eugene Marathon, a chance to dial in a state of mind and some fitness and confidence.  For a long time I've felt like a thinner faster runner lurked inside me, I just need to find and pull him to the outside.  I think some progress has been made in that regard over the past few weeks as I am running now to my breath, rather than my legs.  How my breathing feels dictates how fast I can go - slight exertion is where I want to keep it for over the 26 miles.  A few times I feel like I am flying and remember a time from childhood when my legs spun so fast beneath me that I ran right out from under them.  What a good feeling that is!  To go as fast as you want and not be afraid.  And that is an essential point to learn - that there is a psychologically interesting fear of fast.

The finish line was snowing and cold.  I got a pair of cool socks and Summer got a pig ear.  The food line was a formidable Mexican feast, but between juggling socks and water bottle, the burrito I made fell apart in my hands and onto the ground, quickly scooped up by Summer, good compensation for her losing her pig ear the minute she got it.  Looking forward to Eugene Marathon next week.  It should have solemn inspiring energy with the recent Boston Marathon bombing. 

Running the Dark River

January 1 2012.  New Years Day.  A day filled with hope and resolution.  How ridiculous to break a resolution on the first day!  Which explains why I'm running on a dirt path at night, beside the dark Deschutes River.  It wasn't supposed to be this way.  My intent was to get up early and get this run done and over with, so I could enjoy the rest of the day.  If you consider hobbling around with aching feet and sore muscles enjoyable.

Resigned to the dark night, I leave my home and descend an access trail to the Canal Trail, a trail that follows a water canal out to the dry sagebrush.  At an intersection I suddenly turn to the left, and descend down to the River Trail.  I feel a twinge of guilt as I told my family I would only run the flat easy and safe Canal Trail.  They worry about my night runs, my kids especially.  It is a vague fear they have, difficult for them to articulate exactly what it is, though there is some mumblings about zombies.  But at two miles long, the Canal Trail is short and uninteresting.  The River Trail though leads to possibilities.  I can access the Meadows trail, or run on Skyliners road leading to the Cascades Mountain Range, or head into the maze of the half built Tetherow housing development, or continue following the river downstream.  Mindful of news reports on Gray Wolves and a pack of Coyotes, I opt for the lights of downtown.

A half moon hangs lows in the frosty sky.  I cross a foot bridge that carries me over the icy river water.  My headlamp illuminates a dirt path covered with pine needles and bits of wood.  Though only 5:30 pm the trail is dark and empty.  My dog runs close to my side, reluctant to venture far from the safety of Master.  She has terrible night sight and often mistakes boulders for something alive and sinister with fearsome teeth.  Master will protect her.

I keep my headlamp on until we emerge from the woods and into the light of the Old Mill shopping district.  Light from lampposts and ambient moonlight is enough for me to spot my way through the path.  I arrive at the first footbridge that could could lead me back in a loop to home.  Impulsively I keep going into downtown Bend.  Christmas lights decorating the riverside homes are burning bright and light up the dark water beautifully.  I go through downtown, following the trail that hugs the river and am soon plunged back into the darkness of night.  I switch on the headlamp to illuminate my way.  How does one make their way through life without a guiding light?  The headlamp is my guide, I shall not want, I shall lay down beside gentle waters.  The trail crunches beneath my feet, the frost on the close cropped grass breaking under my weight.  Sawyers Park is to my right and I contemplate lying down in the glade, bathed in frosty moonlight.  A high escarpment is to my left, where mountain lions hide in wait.  I am a Gray Wolf though, not afraid of the dark or that which hides in it.  I am sleek fast and hungry, a missile ready to strike.  "Ain't that right, little doggie?"  My dog looks at me startled and scampers ahead a few feet.  

At the 1:35 mark I cross a deserted road.  I stop and look at the night sky, the stars so far away.  My belly is so cold to the touch, that night air chilling the skin.  The warm glow of nearby palatial mansions call to me.  How wonderful at night to lock yourself up securely in the light and warmth of home.  I turn back to the trail and start on my journey home.

Grace on the Prairie

'The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.'

A quote of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian communist, active in the early 1900s.  The context was political, though the personal could be more apt, especially if applied to spiritual beliefs. 

Grace as I conceive it is a state in which we are one with the world.  No division, no disharmony, no searching for a place for us to fit into nature.  I imagine a pre-fallen world, one in which neither Adam nor Eve bit into the apple of knowledge, and never realized they were naked and alone and afraid.  Times in which we are given an opportunity to temporarily reside in that world are gifts to be cherished and held onto loosely, as it is a gift given and then taken away.  Our hope is that this gift will one day be given to us forever. 

But I am not concerned today with the the everlasting gift, but in the temporal state of grace we unexpectedly find in unexpected places, a vaporous and evanescent state that can slip through our fingers like tendrils of smoke.  While I would love to capture this state and codify a set of easy access instructions, I know it is difficult.  All I can do is create conditions ripe for grace and hope that grace manifests.

I drove out China Hat road yesterday for a training run around the Horse Butte Trailhead.  The annual precipitation in Central Oregon steadily decreases the further east you travel from the Cascade mountain range, and this is strikingly evident in the vegetation.  The first few miles on the trail are dominated by Juniper and Pine trees which suddenly give way to low-lying sage brush and prairie.  With the sun out and the wind at my back, the air is filled with light and my spirit soars.  A mid-sized butte is on my right hand side, crisscrossed with the tracks of ATVs.  Gunshots ring in the distance from target practice.  Another solitary runner appears, coming towards me, dog at his heel.  "Great day, great day!" we congratulate each other at our good fortune to be outside on a Saturday morning.  The minutes and miles slowly pile up; 20 minutes = 2 miles, 40 minutes = 4 miles, 60 minutes and it is time for a swig of water and some gummy bears.  I count my steps in groups of ten, hypnotized by the exercise and the repetitive number count.  I start to think in between the numbers; what exists in that space between?  Counting is so rudimentary; we measure out the hours and days by numbers, and the sum of these make up our lives.  60 years, 80 years, at most 100 years.  Time moves on and we with it, but what is there about the in-between time?  An offshoot of Zeno's paradox: if we take the count between one and two, and divide it in half, then divide each half again into half, and so on and so forth onto infinity, have we not just shown that there is an infinity between one and two?  And at times it feels like that is where Eden is, in the space between the seconds.  I can't live there, but I can see it from here.

As I lay down my beats from one to ten, I overlay it with my breaths from one to four, each breath a word, each word an affirmation, a confession, a supplication, a plea. 

Boise Perspective

On a business trip to Boise Idaho and it is 10:20 pm Wednesday.  Bumping around the hotel, don't want to be cooped up in the room and vegging out to the telly. 

Boise has a certain charm to it; the main attraction is a greenbelt along the Boise river.  This park hugs both sides of the river, running through downtown and into the foothills of the mountains that loom over the town.
 
Started a stress relieving run after a business meeting, from downtown along the green riverbank and up to a ridge overlooking the town.  It is early summer and the daylight is tremendous, a fluorescence unending.  The trail is peppered with runners and bikers until I arrive at a golf course; the trail crosses over a road and winds uphill. 

No one is on the uphill route.  Dusty plants grasp a tenuous hold in the dry dirt; the trail deposits me onto a field of waving wheat-like weeds, swaying in the warm breeze.  My mind drifts from thought to thought, then meditates for a while on my son growing up.  Yesterday was his last day of 4th grade, and we went to Red Robin to celebrate.  He is jacked up and bouncing around the restaurant like a young colt.  His attention span is short and conversation leaps from topic to topic; his horizon is limitless.  Sometimes a limitless horizon is intimidating though; with no end in sight, it seems the journey will take forever. 

And there it is: the perpetual conundrum between journey and destination.  Life in the moment and life in eternity. 

I am enjoying the heck out of the sun and the warmth; the fragrance of life blooming.  If I were a dog I'd be rolling on the ground with sheer exuberance.  I wouldn't think of time to leave.  But I do; I see the sun descending towards the western horizon and I am getting tired; it is about mile 10 / about age 47.  I persevere by looking slightly ahead: "okay make it to that fencepost.  Ah, good job Al.  Now, let's make it to next year and maybe a graduate degree?  Be a good person while you're at it."

But my nature believes in neither good nor bad, does not believe in a moral code.  Sometimes it prefers sitting in a bar drinking and eating fatty beef with a harem in attendance.  Other times it wants to lay in a summer field, in summer's cauldron with the droning insects. And I am sorely tempted to do just that.   

Bend to Sunriver 8-31-10

My second Portland Marathon is in 5 weeks, and this time I am determined to 1) not feel like crap in the last 6 miles and 2) finally break 4 hours.  The fact I have not yet cracked 4 hours, given that I've run 3 marathons, is a bit of an embarrassment.  I mean, over 4 hours in the first marathon is understandable.  But the next two?  Time to pick up the pace!

Part of the problem is that I've been concentrating on long slow distance running (which gets you to the finish line) rather than speed work (which gets you there faster).  To help me reach this goal, I pick up a book called '4 months to a 4 hour marathon' and am religiously following it.  The training alternates speed work with the long slow distance runs.  For the speedy stuff, I take me and two unwilling kids once a week to a nearby track.  Usually we go to Alanna's middle school to run, however if someone is on that track, and there is the slightest possibility that the someone we see might be someone Alanna knows, or someone that attends her middle school, then that track is instantly radioactive and we have to find another place to run.  Because of this aversion to being seen running, we have done the grand tour this summer of all the tracks in Bend (there are seven and each has a unique characteristic: Cascade Community College has the spongiest surface, Bend High the hardest surface, Mt View High is the most dilapidated, High Desert Middle has the best view of the city dump, Cascade Middle has the most politically correct runners who shoot you dirty looks for letting your dog poop or your kid write in charcoal on the side of a shack, Summit High is the one that most seems like a set from a movie called 'At Play in the Fields of the Lord', and Juniper Middle is the most claustrophobic).
Once we finally arrive at a suitable track, the fun begins.  There are plenty of complaints from all three of us.  Running is not the best of times, and running fast might be the worst of times.  It hurts.  But we feel good when it is over. 

But today I did another type of training run, a long slow distance one from Bend to Sunriver.  This is twenty three miles and is the second longest run before Portland.  It is a one way run, with my wife picking me up in Sunriver.  A real treat being picked up and not having to do the out-and-back routine.

I set out from home.  Despite the calendar's contention that it is still August, the nip and chill of fall is in the air.  Clouds scud low across sky, whipped by a Pacific breeze.  I follow my regular route along the canal trail to Meadows camp, six miles away, regulating my pace so to not leave my Marathon 'out on the trail'. 

From Meadows I follow the Deschutes River trail, which winds 9 miles up-river to Benham Falls.  It is a lovely day, and absolutely wonderful to not be at work.  On a good run the world opens up and becomes filled with a sense of the possible.  Right now is a good time to have that feeling as it pushes back against the ever-present burdens: work, children, family, mortgage, money.  I see several solitary men along the riverbank, basking in the sunlight, seemingly no trouble in their minds.  I have been there though, and a wonderfully apt Steve Earle song floats through my mind: "I ain't never satisfied!".  The time of my utmost freedom from responsibility (Australia, riding me pushbike up and down the coast for months on end) were also some of my darkest times.  Man is not meant to live without some sort of yoke strapped to him.   
   
The sun is playing hide and seek through the clouds, alternating the heat of an August afternoon with the chilly shadows reminiscent of October.  The fluorescent green stalks of the cat-tails contrast nicely with their thick brown tops.  The breeze is delicious, shooing away the late season mosquitoes.  The trail periodically opens up onto fields of grass and wildflowers.  Bikers pass me, groups of two and threes.  A solitary man on a bike approaches in the distance, bellowing out 'Sarah!' across the fields, his sound swallowed up at the edge by the dark woods.  He awkwardly downshifts past a log blocking the trail, and asks me if I saw a woman on a bike?  Somewhat heavyset Asian woman?  I nod yes and say I saw her pass ten minutes ago.  Relief fills his face as he thanks me and pushes off after her.

I'm past the Aspen trailhead, maybe thirteen miles or so, and am now on a section of trail I have not been before.  Mountain bikes are not welcome on this narrow, rocky, root-riddled section.  The trail clings to the riverbank, hemmed in between the rushing water and a steep rock wall.  It is a tunnel-like nave of tree limbs and branches, closed in.  I am running through a cathedral that is holy and sacred.

I'm nearing the end of the Deschutes River trail, and there is a path ascending to the lookout over Benham Falls.  I've gone sixteen miles and getting tired.  A crowd of tourists await near the top, marveling at the gushing water shooting over the lava rocks.  A thick mist of spray plays over their heads.  I run past them, sweaty and determined, righteous in my workout.  After another mile a wooden bridge is splayed out across the river, thick with fly fisherman, the river below choked with weeds and water-plants.  On the other side of the bridge is the parking lot and a sign post informing me that it is two point seven miles to Sunriver.

The trail to Sunriver is dusty and curvy, meant to appeal to the vacationing families who bike down to Benham Falls.  Towards the end of the trail I check my watch and see three hours thirty minutes have elapsed since I ran out my front door.  I am now on the paved Sunriver bike trail, plodding along, big right toe throbbing away, breaking in the new shoes.  I near a map and see the entrance to Sunriver, which is where my wife will pick me up, is quite a distance away.  Cripes Sunriver is big!  I have about four miles to go the way the crow flies, but these biking trails have a lot of twists, turns and circles.  I follow my watch closely and when it hits three hours fifty minutes I stop - that is about twenty three miles at a ten minute per mile pace.  Good enough for today!

Running in the Badlands 3-13-10

I wake up this morning one hour after the alarm has rung.  Perhaps I was a bit too ambitious last night.  And that last beer did not help.  Regardless it is now 7 am, the sun is shining brightly and my schedule today calls for 16 miles.  Time to get a move on.

Slugging down a few cups of coffee helps get me out to China Hat Road, which is the start of the Badlands east of Bend.  Everytime I hear that name the Spingsteen song marches through my mind.  I start out slowly, warming up - it is much colder than it looks with all this sunshine.  The wind is whipping pretty good as I travel over a rocky path.  At the end is fire road, which is essentially just a bigger dirt trail.  I run along the fire road for a while, warming up as I run into the sun.  The hat comes off, the gloves, the sweatshirt.  All this stuff to carry!  I set it down at a fork in the road and continue running, now in sweatpants and a t-shirt. 

My mind starts to flit about the day - possibly snowboarding with my son or skiing with my daughter.  I struggle with how hard to push them, whether I should insist on their going up the mountain with me today or not.  I decide to let them take the lead.  If they initiate it, I will follow through.  I seldom know how hard to push with kids.  If I should insist on my way, or not.  It is easier to not insist, but where does that get you?  To the lowest common denominator, I think. 

I'm running now through a landscape that is sparse.  A clump of Juniper here, a towering lodgepole pine there, mostly manzanita and other dry bushes.  The wind when it blows is icy, and I'm thinking that taking off the hat and gloves was a mistake.  I'm looking at my watch, counting down to when I turn around.  I decide to run for two hours, or 12 miles, as snowboarding is a possibility and I don't want to be too tired.  The past few times I snowboarded after running, I was exhausted after a few runs and falling a lot.  And that hurts both body and ego.   

I'm running now through a warren of trails that criss-cross each other, and I am trying hard to keep them straight.  Generally I am good with directions, but this landscape is repetitive and easy to get lost in.  I remember getting lost a few years ago, and that surge of panic welling up.  The panic feeds into a voice that gets louder, saying This Way!  No, That Way!  No, the Other Way!  It is not pleasant to harbor thoughts of drifting aimlessly through the woods and not finding your car.  The Panic wants to take over, but we must keep our wits about us.

I pass by another runner, she has three dogs woofing and boofing at me and my dog.  This runner is older, tanned and lean from the outdoors.  We give a hearty greeting to one another.  It can be lonely out here in the Badlands, and when you do see another soul you are mostly happy.  Unless it is at the tail end of a long run, in which case you are miserable and not happy to see anything except the end of the trail and your car.

Finally my watch reads one hour.  Turn around time.  I take off my sweatpants and use them to keep my hands warm.  My hands are numb from the cold.  The sun is not doing its job today.

Running back I can follow my footprints through some questionable areas and succesfullly bring myself back to the fork in the road where I left my extra running clothes.  To my chagrin they are not there.  What the Hell?!  I am mad as it is cold and I want the gloves and hat.  Also this is the third time someone has stolen my running clothes.  Once in Vegas, a second time in Coos Bay, and now here.  I can understand Vegas, and even Coos Bay.  There was a lot of traffic there.  But here?  There is no one to be seen.  Except that grizzled old runner.  But no, it could not be her.  It must be hobos living in the woods around here.  I slowly scan the surrounding countryside.  Suddenly I feel like someone is looking back at me, through the vegetation.  I don't care, I want them to show themselves, and continue to glare off into the middle distance.  But it is useless.  After a few minutes I shuffle off, heading back down the trail I came from, and leave the Badlands behind.  20 minutes to the car.

March 2009

Started running in earnest this week...4 miles on the treadmill Saturday, 4 miles Monday, 3 yesterday with an incline of 1%. And started thinking about the benefits of running. It will make me stronger, younger, sexier, and happier overall. I also enjoy the peaceful restful trance I get into and the relaxed way I feel after running.

So the goal is to run the 10K this weekend, Pacific Crest half-Marathon in July, and then the Portland marathon in October. What an accomplishment that will be! Someone addicted to cigarettes and beer (yum!).

My mind loves to get into logical traps. Running helps give me a way out of the maze, the dead ends I encounter, the moral conundrums that rear up and engulf us. This is an offshoot of our left brains demanding answers that are either/or, yes/no, 1 or 2. What is sad is that it takes so long for us to realize this. For example, I love chess and math - things that have answers, that are not nebulous or gray. Our society has evolved tremendously with these tools but also suffers as the essential mysteries do not yield themselves to logic. Faith and logic - ever battling, ever entwined, never reconciled.

Back on the trail again

Went running yesterday by Bessie Butte. The road there is a lonesome gravel topped straight as a ruler deal that leads from china hat road past Bessie Butte into Newberry Caldera. A cold windy afternoon, cool in the shade of the Butte warming up slightly once you ran out into the setting sun. A herd of deer startled by our approach took flight acrosss the road up the Butte. Summer was very curious and excited, yet cautious. She must remember the last time she locked up with one of these animals she almost got her little head trashed by their hooves. Generally they are not afraid of a mid sized pup bounding in the air in imitation of them. Perhaps they are even offended at the leaps and bounds of a bird dog, thinking it a parody and insult to their more graceful leaps.

Had a cloud of depression settled on me most of the afternoon, dissipated though by the run. Glad to be back at it after one week off due to flu. Plan to do it daily at lunch break as a way to fight off the mid-day torpor and blues.