The Solitary Runner

I think my flatland legs are finally beginning to recover their mountain strength!  Today I ran six miles, all my myself, and it was one of those rambling, wandering runs that I love so much.  I began on the usual route, but at the top of Chestnut Street I departed from pavement and climbed around Lower Lake Road, and then across Gibson to the top of Harris.  From there I circled the business district of Town, going down Spring Street and then back up the entire length of Main Street, which I love when there is little traffic - past all the shops and restaurants, past the late-risers coming out of Buck's with coffee to go, past stately Highlands Inn, and all the way back around Fifth and Chestnut.  I did not even think of looking at my watch until that point, and realizing that I wanted a mile or two more, I took a right on Fifth and found myself climbing "Monkey Hill" on Hickory Street.  Then past the ball field, all the way up Chestnut, and around once more.

Six miles.  I did not plan out a route, so every turn I took was completely by whim.  This is not easy to do unless a runner is by himself, and perhaps this is why so many runners do not want company.  As I have said before in this blog, I do enjoy the company of other runners.  There's something almost biblical in it, after all:

"Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:

Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together,
as the manner of some is; 

but exhorting one another."
- Hebrews 10:24-25

But I love days like today, too, becoming a kind of running heretic, departing from the normal route and answering to no one, under the vow of silence, deep in my own solitary thoughts, giving thanks for returning strength, for deep breath, for the bright sun breaking out from behind the clouds.  Solitude.

First Day of Spring

It was the first day of Spring in Highlands, and it felt like it; temperatures began just a degree or two below freezing, rose to the 50s by noon, and was up to 70 degrees in Clayton where we ended up this afternoon after an errand in Franklin.  It was a good day for New Beginnings.  And I am a little superstitious about New Years and New Seasons; it marks the opportunity to begin a new project, to prepare for a new journey, to sum up what has come before and look ahead with anticipation toward what lies out on the horizon.

So I ran up Big Bearpen, for the first time since January 2 (I actually had to look that date up just now).  It was a great way to start off a New Season, climbing higher and higher, the morning sunshine warming me as I climbed, step by step.  That old bluegrass song went through my mind.

I'll be waiting on the hillside on the day when you will call

On the sunny side of the mountain where the rippling waters fall.

And it was the same as I had remembered up on the summit, bright clear vistas stretching out on the south toward South Carolina, the bright unmistakable profile of Whiteside Mountain on the east.  It is always a little humbling to stand and gaze out at these distances, legs trembling a little, breath coming back slowly.  A beautiful morning!  And good to be home again.

But I sure felt it when I ran back down-mountain, easing carefully around the curves with knees unaccustomed to that kind of running.  I have been running on relatively flat roads for 10 weeks or so.  When I got out of the car at the Post Office I realized that my legs were a little rubbery.  It will take a little time to adjust to this altitude again.  But today there seems to be plenty of time.

I wrote this Spring poem 37 years ago for Martha, and today I was reminded of it again.

Now the crocus-ruckus has begun,
The branch is empurpled with sap;
From stony bulbs of tulip and daffodil
Slender green stems break

Out of their cold ruts.  The bud is sticky,
The stem shines.  There is dew
Instead of frost.  Instead of ice
Water wells up in the ground

And careers in orange torrents
In the roaring creek.  The wind
Is an eternity of air shifting,
A wall advancing, a new

Weather, a different key.  Love,
Cast away the details of last year,
The hollow, bone-white weeds,
The old bark and leaves,

And let the season sweep you
Up in ruckus.  This daffodil,
This trumpet voluntary:
Listen - it is for you!

After dinner, we noticed that a peculiar kind of light was tapping softly at the windows; we went out on the deck and sat in our rocking chairs and watched the first day of Spring come to a dramatic end.

Daffodils and Visitors

"Cutting slack" this week has meant more days off than this obsessive-compulsive runner, with his running log and his unrealistic plans, would like to see.  But sunshine finally made a modest appearance on Thursday afternoon, and we ran a couple of miles down here on Sassafras Gap Road where temperatures are usually at least five degrees warmer than up in Town.  But that wind was still sharp!  Eliot thought April was the cruelest month, but I would cast a vote for March; those warm days and fragrant daffodils making a sudden appearance, tempting the unwary runner out in shorts and a too-thin shirt, and then slicing him up with that sharp wind.

So it was nice to see temperatures finally rebound to 50 degrees for our Saturday morning run, and to see so many runners gathered at Founders Park, as ready as I was to recover some lost mileage.  One of our visitors was Terry, who had e-mailed me earlier in the week and said "I'm supposed to run eight miles."  I told Terry that sounded like either a training plan or a guilty conscience.  It turned out that it was a little of both, and I was also surprised that Terry was a woman.  She had undergone ACL surgery a few months ago and was training for a half marathon with her running group, although she did not actually plan to run it.  Terry turned out to be a likeable and chatty companion for me and Fred and Martha and Vicki, as most visiting runners are, and I ended up with more than seven miles in my precious running log.

It is nice that we have a presence on the internet (Terry said she had Googled "running routes in Highlands" and our website came up) and can meet up with so many visitors, many of them training for a distance race and not wanting to lose mileage while traveling, and some of them even sending back finish-line photos.  We are part of a community after all, one of the nicest things about this obsessive sport, and it never becomes more apparent than when we can offer hospitality and make a new friend.

Cutting Slack

I was looking forward to seeing my running friends in Highlands on Saturday morning after being gone for so long.  It really wasn't that cold - just a few degrees below freezing and a light breeze - and, expecting to see a large, convivial group waiting at Founders Park, I was surprised to see only one runner, Bob, and he did not look very happy.  He was not feeling well either, he said, and only came to Town to take his daughter to work.  We waited the usual five minutes, then five more minutes, standing around the corner of the building to avoid a wind that had become sharper.  I told Bob he should go home; then I left on a solo three-mile run.  When I returned home I sent out this e-mail to some of the Saturday morning regulars:

"Hey, what's going on?  Has this running club fallen apart in my absence?  I show up Saturday morning - a nice balmy morning, by the way - and only one runner shows up, Bob, and he is not feeling well so he has to go home.  So I have to run BY MYSELF!  Saturday morning runs are the MAINSTAY of the running club!  Where was everybody?"

Always nice to stir up a guilty conscience!  As expected, I received some replies from the guilty and the innocent and the merely tardy.  Karen said she was late and saw me disappear around the corner as she crested the Fifth Street hill - fair play to her!   Morris said he waited until later in the day, when it was warmer.  Despite my outraged e-mail, I have to agree that it is sensible to wait until the warmest part of the day this time of year (but when have runners been known for being sensible?).  The problem this week was finding any warm part in any day.

We awoke to a light snow Sunday morning and it looks like there is more on the way, with temperatures going down to a bone-chilling 12 degrees by mid-week. There was a time when I would run in conditions like that just to test myself.  Art and I ran one Saturday morning when it was 10 degrees and I joked that, when I spit, it froze into a little ice-ball and bounced on the road.  But those days of "character building" runs seem like a long time ago today as I sit here enjoying a cup of hot tea.  I completed a half marathon a week ago, after all.   

We all need to take a few days off from time to time.

More Winter

It was good to be running back in Highlands again - three miles this morning, down our road, with crows and robins out in the fields instead of laughing gulls wheeling overhead.  It was nice and warm, too - 60 degrees - and it seemed as if Spring has already arrived.  Gladys Nix's daffodils were nodding in the light breeze, and when we rounded the curve just before the bridge, all the flowering trees along the Westbrook property were  just beginning to bloom.

But I have lived here long enough not to be deceived by these early harbingers of warm weather.  The "Blizzard of the Century" rolled through Highlands on March 13, 1993, and every local who survived has stories to tell about that blizzard (like the man who was forced to burn his neighbor's split-rail fence for fuel in the fireplace).  The forecast is for snow on Sunday, and for a low of 14 degrees next Tuesday.  Time to measure the level in the fuel oil tank and check out the generator.

I am ready to bury my CWX tights and gloves and toboggan at the bottom of the drawer, but I am afraid that Winter has not yet relinquished its icy grip. 

Returning Home

One final magnificent sunset lit the western sky on fire for our last night in Atlantic Beach, spilling a bright red pool of light behind the pier.

And the next morning, too - Tuesday - I awoke well before sunrise and was greeted by an almost luridly beautiful portrait, light draping down from an impossible sky.  I went down onto the beach for my last Tai Chi, my feet leaving a little scrabble of footprints.

As I stood facing east, I suddenly heard a quick sizzle of sand behind me, and an animal flew by me - fox? dog? - racing toward the sunrise; he did not even give me any notice of his approach, and I was so startled that I did not capture him in my camera.  Where he came from or where he was going I could only imagine; it seemed as if he was running into the sunrise itself, as if a bright door had been opened and he was trying to fly through it before it closed.

We broke our trip home into sections by traveling to Raleigh for the night to visit with Martha's aunt Lizette, who was so gracious in allowing us to stay here for so many weeks.  Her 88th birthday is approaching, and partly in honor of that and to show our appreciation to her, we drove her to Kinston for dinner at the award-winning Chef and the Farmer restaurant, made popular by the PBS television show A Chef's Life.  We had eaten there three years ago on a trip to Duck and had not forgotten how special it was.  

Chef Vivian Howard enjoys creating new twists on Eastern Carolina favorites, like flash-fried collard greens (delicious).  She has written:

"I often tell people that Ben and I had our first baby in June 2006. Naive but determined, we opened Chef & the Farmer with the hope that our restaurant might light a spark in our little town and help transition some of Eastern Carolina’s displaced tobacco farmers into food farmers. Since then, our restaurant has come to be known for thoughtful, creative cooking rooted in this region’s ingredients and traditions. I’m proud of what our first child has accomplished and excited for her future."

Although she was not at the restaurant while we were there, Vivian had left a nice birthday note for Lizette.  We shared scallops, sea bass, those unusual flash-fried collard greens, and for desert Carolina Gold rice pudding and (of all things) marshmallow ice cream (also delicious).

And then the long journey back home, leaving Raleigh on Wednesday morning and driving in heavy multiple-lane rush-hour traffic.  Driving like this does not come easy after weeks of becoming accustomed to two-lane roads and quiet rambles to Harkers Island and Swansboro and Beaufort.  18-wheelers thundered by, city drivers with nerves of steel cut back and forth in front of us - it was a relief to have diminishing traffic as we traveled west, and to see the soft outlines of the Blue Ridge rising ahead of us on the horizon, and then to climb Old Fort Mountain with popping ears, through Asheville and Brevard, finally arriving on that lovely winding two-lane road that we know so well:  The Familiar!  What a balm it is for sailors to see their port approaching.

And finally we arrived in Highlands, our beautiful little town, and greeted family and neighbors, and eased down our own road, into our own driveway, to see forsythia and hyacinth and daffodils blooming everywhere.  Home.

Sailing Home

This morning dawned clear and cool again; the stiff northerly wind moaned all night and has not relented.  It seemed like an even longer walk than usual to the dune-top deck for morning Tai Chi, but overall I think I have recovered well from this half marathon, just a little tightness in that right knee and that left hip, and the soreness that I know will peak tomorrow rather than today.

Our time is running out in this lovely place.  I am writing from the dining room table here, and through the open balcony doors I can gaze on the bright blue horizon before me, an expanse of sea and sky that seems to stretch out forever.  But it will be good to return home to our quiet little valley, gazing instead on the comforting contours of mountains all around us, gathering together once again with family and friends and neighbors.  It has been a good Sabbatical; we have read more books than I expected, I have gotten some good writing done, and we have both made some good decisions about the direction of our lives in the upcoming year.

We bid farewell to our Methodist Church this morning, celebrating communion and hearing another powerful sermon from Pastor Powell.  It is a church that we have come to love, warm and friendly and compassionate, bursting at the seams with families and children, and we look forward to worshiping here again in the future.  This was the first Sunday in Lent, and here they do something I have never seen before:  a circle of Lenten candles, purple with a white one in the middle similar to this image I found on the internet, is lit by an acolyte at the beginning of the service.  Then one of them is extinguished, and I am thinking another one will be extinguished every week until Easter, like Advent candles in reverse.  This is a season for becoming more disciplined and reflective, for learning what it means to say "I shall not want."  And it is a fitting end to our Sabbatical.

That freighter is still out on the horizon, ready to begin its own long journey home, and then onward to other oceans and other shores.  So this will be my last post in this blog for a few days.

.

 "Aboard, aboard, for shame!

The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail. . .

Farewell." - Hamlet

Crystal Coast Half Marathon and 5-K

Delbert McClinton did not disappoint us last night.  The 76-year old is a multiple Grammy Award winning musician and we had second-row seats in the packed Carteret Community Theater; his tight working band (Self-Made Men) was on full display, "the finest band he has ever had" according to him:  Bob Britt (one of the finest blues guitarists I have ever heard), Kevin McKendree (keyboards), Mike Joyce (bass), Jack Bruno (drums), and Quentin "Q" Ware (trumpet).   A young woman named Dana Robbins was also sitting in, playing a searing jazz saxophone.  As his website describes, Delbert "is considered a master among Texas music afficionadoes, rock artists (he gave harp lessons to a young John Lennon), blues experts, and critics alike."  We left the theater in high spirits and with ringing ears, and tried to get as much sleep as possible, never an easy thing for me to do the night before a race.

We awoke at 5:30 a.m. and began preparations for the race.  That big freighter was still out on the horizon in the pre-dawn, its navigation lights like a constellation come to rest on the surface.

Race headquarters was an easy 10-minute drive from the condo and we arrived in plenty of time.  This was a well-organized event in all of its details, starting on time, good traffic control, finish times posted promptly, plenty of refreshments available - everything just perfect.  The lobby of the Bask Hotel was filled with runners taking selfies and preparing themselves.  I enjoy so much the joking and camaraderie that goes on in a place like this as we barely contain our excitement to begin.

My race started at 9:00 a.m., Martha's at 9:30 a.m., so I had plenty of time to worry about her falling and incurring re-injury; how happy I was to cross the finish line (one-and-a-half hours after her finish) and find her unscathed, unbandaged, and the proud winner of a first place trophy in her age group and a finish time of 32:03!

My race went well, too, although I settled for a fourth place; I had planned to run a 2:30 and I finished in 2:31:37, and my last miles were strong.  Those bridges were definitely a challenge, but I had determined not to let them daunt me at all, and they did not; I absolutely refused to stop on them.  There are so many sights and sounds in a long race like this!  A pair of women in front of me stopped at Mile 4 on the summit of the bridge to take a selfie.  I passed a man carrying a large American flag the entire way (he finished right behind me) in memory of his police officer mother, killed on duty four years ago.  A guy was wearing a kilt and I said, "Och, Mon, y'er looking good!"  Nearly every runner I passed (and there were many, because we ran to the 8-mile mark on Fort Macon Road, well past our condo building, and turned) had something positive to say.  "Looking good!  Good job!"  We  were all in the same battle, after all, comrades-in-arms against our own fatigue.  The first-place guys came flying by, and then the first-place woman, not an ounce of fat on her, blond ponytail whipping back and forth smoothly.  My attempt to come in under 2:30 made me pick up the pace in the last two miles, which proved a success even though I missed my mark by a minute or two.

So it was a good day!  For both of us, this race was a kind of redemption, a reclamation of fitness, a rediscovery of freedom from injury.  A new start.

"But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty.
We go forward in this generation triumphantly.
All I ever had is songs of freedom.
Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever had:

Redemption songs, redemption songs."

- Bob Marley, Redemption Song

Same Kind of Crazy

Those massive ships on the horizon are on the move today, or at least one of them is.  I have decided that the larger one, military grey in color, must be a Naval vessel of some kind; it is larger than the typical Coast Guard cutter and almost resembles an aircraft carrier on the horizon with its flat wide decks.  This morning it slowly turned about and headed out to the open ocean due east of here.

The other two ships are clearly freighters, red-orange in color, and through our binoculars we can see tall cranes for loading and unloading cargo.  This week the ocean seems to be swarming with ships of all kinds; they appear far out on the horizon and close to shore as well.  This little fishing boat came up so close to the beach this morning that I thought it would go aground.  Back and forth it went, fishing that shelf between shallow and deep water right off the beach which we have learned is a highway for fish.

Today we picked up our race packets at the Bask Hotel in Morehead City, which included light, thin, technical T-shirts.  We will not be wearing these in the morning; there is a freeze watch for the morning, and we will be dressing accordingly.  I love these ritual preparations before a long race:  the proper carbohydrate-rich nutrition, sipping of Gatorade and water throughout the day, careful laying out of clothes in the spare room.  We are ready.

One thing we do not ordinarily do the night before a race is stay out late, but tonight is an exception; we are going to hear Delbert McClinton, a talented songwriter whom we have enjoyed for a number of years.  We were surprised to learn that he was going to be here of all places, tonight, in the little auditorium where we saw a Sunday matinee theater performance a couple of weeks ago, and we wish it was tomorrow night instead.  But we won't be able to sleep anyway, and perhaps one of his songs will get us psyched up for the race in the morning!

We may even be thinking of this little song, one of our favorites, as we line up at the start in a stiff 40-degree wind off Bogue Sound:

Did you ever meet somebody that likes all the same things you do?
Somebody who can make you or break you anytime they want to?
I met her at a red light, love at first sight, can it be true?
Well, she's good for me, and she told me I was good for her too

Now I don't want to jump into anything;
I been trying to use some self-restraint.
But man it's amazing,
She's the same kind of crazy as me.

Waiting

Two days until race morning, and we are at the tail-end of our tapers, waiting.  Martha ran an easy two miles this morning, driving down to Fort Macon State Park to avoid the wind.  I completed two miles also, in the same direction, but at a brisk walk.  I was filled with nervous energy, itching to get up on the balls of my feet and turn that walk into a sprint.  But there is much wisdom in that old saying by which marathoners swear:  “There is nothing you can do at this point to improve the condition you are in.  But there is a lot you can do to destroy it.” 

We have been receiving e-mails from the Race Director (organization for these events appears to be superb), one of them asking me if I wanted to lead a pace group at 1:45 (yeah, right!), 2:30, 2:45,. or 3:00 finish times.  "We will refund your registration," he wrote, "if you provide us pacing services! You have to agree to run smooth, even miles, not wear headphones, and be friendly and encouraging to anyone you are pacing."  If I had been running more races recently and could be sure of those "smooth, even miles," this would have been a tempting proposition; but I have no idea how those final miles will go and would not want to be responsible for shepherding a flock of expectant first-timers twice across that high bridge.

When I was running yesterday, I saw a big ship out in Bogue Sound, so massive that I thought the channel would not be deep enough; I did not have my camera, but it was tall enough to entirely obscure the six-story condo in Beaufort that I have learned is the Old Towne Yacht Club, a landmark that we can see from Fort Macon.

This morning I saw the same ship out on the horizon with two freighters, its silhouette hazy against the morning sky.  These freighters have come and gone at unpredictable times during our two-month stay here; sometimes the horizon is completely empty, other times they can be seen in the morning like this, or lit up at night with bright navigational lights.  Their movements are as inscrutable to me as those of the blue whales that swim deep in the ocean; I don't know what cargo they are carrying or what distant countries may be their destination, what flags they sail under.  Perhaps they are waiting, too, gathering up reserves of strength for that journey across the vast expanse of the deep; perhaps they are waiting for other ships to join them; perhaps they are singing strange, beautiful songs to one another.

The Lion and the Lamb

Today is the first day of March, and I am not sure whether it can be described as Lion or Lamb.  The wind is strong, a pretty steady 25 mph coming in off the ocean - so strong that it is difficult to open the door to the condo when the balcony sliding glass door is open - but at the same time temperatures are in the 70s and the sun keeps appearing, disappearing, appearing again.  Perhaps the lion is trying to lie down peaceably with the lamb on this day of contrasts.

It was difficult to know how to dress this morning as I completed my final three-mile run during this "taper" period.   As in the past before long races, I was lethargic, almost as if I was coming down with something, and I felt all kinds of unusual little niggles and pains (is that right knee that tight again?); it seemed preposterous that I would even contemplate running more than four times this distance, as fast as I can, three days from now.  But a runner learns to trust in his training, and I remembered that this is always the way I feel this final week before a race.  As importantly as building reserves of glycogen may be, even more important is building reserves of confidence:  "to have full trust." 

We spent the evening reading and resting.  The wind was still blowing steadily when we went to bed, but at 2:00 a.m. I awoke to flashes of lightning and distant booms of thunder, way out over the ocean.  Rain sizzled against the window intermittently, like someone throwing fistfuls of sand.  I did not sleep well.