Two painted turtles wait, still as the log beneath them, alert as the sun overhead, watching with one eye. Across the water rises a steady striking, a single snare drum, loud enough to move freshly fallen leaves. Sound takes form and glides above the ground, as if searching for a home. Holding steady then, braving percussion and [...]
Archive for the ‘Running’ Category
In the balance
Posted in Running, tagged Indiana, Nature, running, Trail running, Westwood Park on October 25, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Hollow
Posted in Running, tagged church, dreams, Indiana, Nature, RAIN, Relationships, running, Tecumseh Trail Marathon, Westwood Park on October 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“It leaves you feeling hollow inside,” he said. He understands. The conversation occurred a few days ago as a friend and I discussed the frustration of injuries, especially those that come after a long period of training for a specific event, such as a marathon. He could empathize with my recent knee problem, not just [...]
A knee to the gut
Posted in road bike, Running, tagged bicycle, Cycling, Indiana, Marathon, road bike, running on October 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The postcard lies on a counter in my office. Purchased as inspiration, it’s now a reminder of something lost. I didn’t run the Wabash Heritage Trail Marathon today. Pain and instability in my left knee — proof that no good deed goes unpunished — made running that distance impractical. Then again, for the past several [...]
Denial
Posted in Running on September 17, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Nazareth’s Hair of the Dog screams from the car speakers. Heart breaker, soul shaker / I’ve been told about you There’s something medicinal here. Anesthetizing. Dulling the ache I take home with me, the tightening in my chest. I’ve just put in a 10-miler because I had to know. How’s the knee? Can it take [...]
These shoes
Posted in Running on September 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
These aren’t your shoes. Your shoes are in a box on a shelf in the back room or already re-sold to some other gullible customer. They were my shoes for two days, until I had the opportunity to return them, looking you in the face and telling you why. But you really seemed more interested in making [...]
Miles apart
Posted in Running, tagged running, Trail running, Westwood Park on September 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
A great blue heron rises to the right, just off a corner of Bridge 2. My peripheral vision catches the motion, a blur of gray, but I don’t turn to look. Every bit of energy goes into what’s left of this run, less than 600 meters to the end, but with two final climbs. I [...]
Days to come
Posted in Running on August 17, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Light brightens a section of the trail on the east side of Westwood Park, where the trees stop to look over adjoining fields. There’s a thinning out here that didn’t exist a week and a half ago, a shedding of leaves in the first preparation for a change of seasons. I run on a mosaic created [...]
Summer gifts
Posted in Running on August 6, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
A great blue heron. A green heron. A belted kingfisher. An indigo bunting. Nature takes wing about me, over the lake or into a thicket. The forest floor is dying, but insects have never been more alive. I run in the constant drone of cicadas and other things heard but not seen, the roar of [...]
The Peter Principle
Posted in Running on July 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Peter got it right. Popularized in the 1969 book by the same name, the Peter Principle states that “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” The thought is simple — employees are promoted until they reach a position at which they are no longer competent. There they often stay, [...]
With the fish
Posted in Running on July 25, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
We’ll remember this day not for the run, but for the fish. From the bridge near Mill Road we lean as far over the Big Blue River as courage will allow, dropping our eyes into the knee-deep water below. Minnows we’re used to seeing, but the bass and bottom feeders, suspended in the current or [...]
