Jacob's Ladder

Although this blog has been languishing, Highlands Roadrunner has not!  Upon return from our anniversary trip, I realized that it was time for training mode to begin in earnest.  The event I am training for is the Bethel Half Marathon, that same half marathon that I was prepared to run last October but had to cancel because of my brother-in-law's heart attack.  So this will be a matter of unfinished business, a redemption of sorts.

The Bethel Half Marathon was the very first half marathon I completed, in October of 1998, exactly twenty years ago.  If I can arrive at the starting line uninjured I have no doubt that I will cross the finish line, and it will be the fifth time that I have done so.  I ran it with Fred that first year, and I remember thinking when I finished that if I had trained just a little harder and slowed my race pace by a minute or so, I might actually be able to run a full marathon, which I went on to do in December of 1999 at the significant age of 50.

Bethel is a lovely place, a community just outside of Waynesville in a long valley surrounded by mountains, with pastures surrounding a river which mysteriously changes its name from Bird Creek to Rocky Branch to Inman Branch to Poplar Branch.  The Blue Ridge Parkway winds along the crest of the mountains to the south, and the foliage is usually at the height of fall color in mid-October.  The name "Bethel," I discovered, means a holy place, a name given by Jacob to that place where he fell asleep and had a vision of a ladder stretching between Heaven and Earth and thronged with angels.  So I like to visualize Bethel as the end of a long climb up the ladder of training, step by step, making incremental progress and walking on that fine line that a runner who will be 70 years old next February must be careful not to cross.  Martha will say, as I leave the house for another hard run, "Don't overdo it!" and I will reply, "Yes, but I don't want to underdo it, either!"

Training mode:  it is good for a runner, or at least for this runner, to be following a plan.  So for the past four Mondays I have climbed Big Bearpen, and then logged a day of speed-work - 400s and 800s - later in the week, an easy rest day, and a long run on Saturday increasing from 8 miles to 10 miles.  Weekly mileage has increased from 20 to 22 to 24, half the distance I would be logging ten years ago, but enough, I hope, to be able to acquit myself well at the finish line.

This morning I had not planned to run because yesterday was a Bearpen Day.  But I looked at the weather forecast and realized that I had a small opening before two or three days of heavy rains.  So I hurried out the door and completed another six mile run, and was so glad to see Martha out doing the same thing, aiming for the same race.  Another page for both of us, I told myself, ambitiously dog-eared in the book of training, another rung higher on the ladder.