O Tannenbaum

Conditions were ideal for running this morning, overcast and not much wind, temperatures in the low 40s.  So Martha and I both headed out toward Fort Macon again.  It is a great place to run, with its bike lane on both sides and low traffic.  From our condo to the restrooms/water fountain at the Fort and back again it is almost exactly five miles.

I am so proud of Martha!  For several months, she has been practicing a series of exercises first thing in the morning using a set of four DVDs she found through Prevention magazine, and combined with an even more healthy diet than we have been using for many years - lots of avocados for example - she has lost an incredible twenty pounds, and also become much stronger.  That has made a significant impact on her running.  The age-old, tested formula for weight loss in a runner is this:  two seconds per mile per pound - that is, down to the optimum weight (which Martha has now attained).  Translated into time, twenty pounds means 40 seconds per mile she can expect to gain in a race.

I am on a similar diet and I have also, with an occasional fluctuation of a pound or two, reached my optimum weight - what I weighed when I have stood on the starting line of most of my marathons.  Martha has the edge, though - she weighs far less than I do, and she is younger than I am.  In races this year I expect her to dust me pretty thoroughly!

Martha is still building her base after injuries this year, so she decided to run the five miles to Fort Macon and back.  I decided to apply some interval training at my usual place, the rest area halfway to the Fort, where there is a straight, flat, little-trafficked place to run along the edge of a parking lot, which I calculate to be about an eighth of a mile.  Even without the measured quarter-mile splits to which I am accustomed in Highlands, I can apply the same intensity, rest, run back again, rest, etc.  I begin at the YIELD sign and sprint down the straightaway.

And at the end, I click the lap button on my watch at this small, brown, knee-high wooden sign:

Yes, PLACE CHRISTMAS TREES HERE!  This is where all the holiday trees in the area are recycled, thrown into tall stacks, sometimes still wearing a little red bow or stray piece of tinsel.  Under these hundreds of trees, children opened presents on Christmas morning a mere three weeks ago:

"O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree
How lovely are thy branches."

When I finished six intervals, I knew in my legs that I had done my best.  I stood by this stack of trees, the pure essence of the fragrance of Christmas, and breathed deeply.  Two young men were loading some of them into a big State Park truck, preparing to carry them down to the beach where they would be carefully arranged, trunks toward the windward side, stabilizing sand dunes and trails through the park.  The sound of loud rock music was coming from the truck radio.  "Hey," I hollered;  "You're supposed to be playing Christmas carols!"  One of them thought for a second, grinned, and said, "Those are Christmas carols!" 

On the way back to the condo, on weary legs, a few stray drops of rain fell on my head out of a mostly-blue sky.  I decided to grab my phone to go back and take the foregoing pictures, and Martha was coming into the parking lot just as I was driving out.  "I hope you weren't coming to get me because of a few drops of rain," she told me later.  Hah!  No way.

Late in the afternoon, I took a walk westward on the beach to the fishing pier; the wind was from the north and had picked up a bit since this morning,

 I gathered some broken sand dollars along the way, and watched a single sandpiper darting in the surf.  These two pelicans winged silently past, heading due east.

And in the west, behind me as I returned to the condo, I could see gathering clouds moving in, thick and dark.

According to the weather forecast, these clouds hold six inches of snow, because of which they have already reportedly called off school for tomorrow.  We shall see!  Tomorrow I may be posting pictures of snow on the walkway to the beach . . .