Raking Leaves

A beautiful fall day:  tomorrow is Halloween, and it is still unseasonably warm, but cool enough to be able to work out in the yard without being pestered by gnats.  I love these annual rituals of putting things to bed at the end of the year, of preparing for winter.  The garden has already been turned and some early fallen leaves have been raked.  Today I disassembled the bird bath and put it in the garden shed before it has a chance to freeze.  I rolled up the hoses (after washing the car one final time).  I mowed the lawn for the last time and then ran the mower until it was out of gas.  And then I spent the rest of the afternoon raking leaves, an activity that I have enjoyed since I was a young boy growing up in a yard filled with maple trees.

I must be the only person in Macon County who does not own a leaf blower.  Instead I have two old faithful rakes, one of them steel and the other bamboo, and these are tools that I thoroughly enjoy using.  There is something hypnotic in the gentle swish of slowly descending down the slope of the front yard, pushing those dry poplar and maple trees into higher and higher piles, raking them onto a tarpaulin, and then carrying them to the compost bins.  It is very satisfying to see the yard clean and neat, devoid (mostly) of leaves.

And the compost bins are filling up, more than half-way already, and deep enough to bury coffee grounds and apple peels so that they can be transformed into compost over the winter, that magical additive that has made the soil in our garden beds better and better each year.

I stop and stretch from time to time and look around.  The leaves have not been colorful this year, but there are brilliant pops of color here and there, especially some maple trees on our running route up in Town.  I gaze upward at the big tulip poplar trees overhead.  Still a few leaves to come down.

And finally, because I had already washed it, I decided to drive the Mini up to Town and back.  For absolutely no reason at all.

Hobbling with Perseverance

It has been a disappointing October for those who have come to Highlands looking for the brilliant fall foliage that we are known for.  The unseasonably warm summer and early fall have left the trees still green, and now they have begun to slowly turn brown and fall off without the brilliant, incandescent reds and oranges.

It is easy to become depressed in a season like this without the medicine of running, and my running has dwindled to almost nothing.  I will tell myself, "What I need is a good ten-miler this morning," but of course the slow recovery from an injured knee has put me in such poor condition that I am incapable of the long distances that so reliable brighten the mood and energize the body.

My two-mile run on Wednesday went well, but in the darkness on my way to the bathroom late that night I stubbed my toe very badly on a piece of furniture.  It is a sprain rather than a break, although the first couple of days it was hard to tell the difference.  I was a mess on Saturday morning when I met two visiting runners at the park for a nice long run; I explained that all I could do was walk a mile or so, and as it turned out they liked each other and enjoyed running, just the two of them.  As I hobbled up Chestnut Street, left toe stiff and red, right knee a little tight, I couldn't help laughing at my condition.  At least I was now in balance.  I amended the little inspirational verse I had put on the kitchen blackboard the week before Martha's half marathon:

And at least I can walk, and day by day I improve.  I have a renewed appreciation of the simple joy of being mobile, running or walking.  Not everybody is so fortunate, and some of that bad fortune has happened through no fault of their own.  Five of our friends are battling cancer, serious cancer.  So as I hobble along I am thankful that, as far as I know, I do not have that dread disease lurking inside of me somewhere, the kind that has no symptoms until it is too late, like pancreatic and ovarian cancer.  And so despite the slings and arrow of outrageous fortune, as Prince Hamlet says, and "the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, " I hobble thankfully.

Saturday night, a strong wind howled through Clear Creek, worse than anywhere in the area apparently, knocking down a large limb that narrowly missed our cars and scattering branches and debris all over the road; it also uprooted the umbrella from the center of the table on our deck, toppling it and the chairs over, and then flying off the deck in a broken heap.  Martha was having a great four-mile run up in Town this afternoon and stumbled on a piece of that same debris, and she fell hard, hurting once again both knees, an elbow, and a hand.  But she has become a tougher runner, toughened by the cycle of injury and recovery that every runner has experienced if they have run for a few years.

I know that she will handle her own recovery well, trusting in the miracle of healing and good health, and probably far better than I will.  And she, too, will count this great wealth of blessings that we share.

Race Trophies

Monday morning, after 48 hours of rest, both of us went running here in Highlands.  I ran an easy two miles with only a slight twinge in that right knee; I know I need to be careful with my training, especially with starting speed work again.  Martha ran four miles and also reported feeling no ill effects from her half marathon.

There may be some spur-of-the-moment opportunities to race in the next few weeks, but the next real race we have on the calendar is The Turkey Strut on Thanksgiving Day in Winston-Salem. I have run races on Thanksgiving morning more than once - Turkey Trots and Gobble Wobbles - but Martha has not, so she is looking forward to the experience of recognizing this national day of giving thanks by taking part in a race and being grateful for our health and fitness.  I suppose this could also fall under the category of what my Dad used to call "working up an appetite" when I was a boy; he would often take us on a vigorous walk on Thanksgiving morning so that the appetite was sharp and the stomach rumbling when the turkey was delivered to the dinner table.

Meanwhile, our trophies are still on the kitchen table, where they will remain for several days.  I used to keep the finish time on my watch after a marathon until the next race, so that I could gaze at it from time to time in simple pride.  Be proud of your accomplishments, runners!  Dangle that finisher's medal from the knob of a kitchen cabinet for a few days.  My shelves have filled up with trophies over the years - not that I am an exceptional runner, but you sometimes manage to bring home some hardware when you go to races, and the Bethel 5-K was race number 179 for me.  Trophies used to look like this:

Several years ago, plastic trophies seemed to fall out of vogue, and we began to see wooden plaques, and then engraved beer mugs - we have a cabinet full of those.  But my favorite trophies are the unique ones, the hand-made ones.  Martha's finishers medal for Bethel is a delicate piece of ceramic, the kind that could easily break if dropped:

Age group awards were also unique - small pieces of pottery, smaller than a coffee cup, more akin to delicate Japanese tea cups.  I thought there might have been a slight resemblance to the man and woman who won them!

Bethel

Bethel is one of my favorite places to run.  I am not talking about the Bethel described in Genesis 28, where Jacob famously fell asleep and dreamt of a ladder stretching between Heaven and Earth thronged with angels.  This Bethel is a beautiful rural valley just six miles east of Waynesville, although a place so beautiful on this Saturday morning that one can imagine angels hovering over the cows while they grazed in their green pastures, the horses and hay-filled barns, and the cascading waters of Rocky Branch along the road.

I have run the Bethel Half Marathon four times, and it holds a special place in my heart.  It was my first half marathon (1998) and my PR half marathon (1999 - 1:44:02).  It is also the place where the thought first occurred to me that I might be capable, if I trained properly and slowed my pace down accordingly, to run a marathon, which I went on to do in December of 1999.  This year was the 25th annual Bethel Half, and we learned that it was the oldest continuous half marathon in North Carolina and the third oldest in the southeast.

After the rains had passed through on Thursday, Friday dawned cool and breezy, the first day it really felt like fall.  We left early and had a picnic lunch, stopping at Barber Orchard to pick up some fresh apples.

We were staying for two nights at the Waynesville Country Club, and our room was quiet and convenient, only 12 minutes from the race start.  From our balcony we could watch golfers out on the course playing that game of skill that somebody once described as a good walk spoiled.

A group of auto enthusiasts, all of them driving classic Mercedes convertibles from the mid-50s to early 60s, was also staying at the country club, and it reminded us of our Mini trip in 2016, except that these classic cars were in the $100,000 range.  That murky green one in the foreground bears the appropriate license tag "Pea Soup."

We love going to races in a way that is difficult to describe to non-runners.  Why would anybody in his or her right mind want to set the alarm for 5:00 a.m., miss the sumptuous breakfast buffet offered by Waynesville Counry Club (which we, however, did enjoy on Sunday morning), and voluntarily run as fast as we can for mile upon mile, up hill and down hill, in all kinds of weather, early in the morning or after midnight?  But competing in races, challenging ourselves in this special way, has taken us as far afield as Boston and Richmond and Kiawah Island, and we treasure the memories of pre-race pasta dinners and post-race celebratory dinners and those miles and miles of feeling absolutely alive, of digging deep in those late miles, and that unparalleled feeling of achievement in crossing another finish line.

So we went through the time-honored rituals once again, eating simple pasta as Boccelli's Italian Restaurant and remembering the pasta dinners we have had sitting across the table from celebrities like John Bingham, getting to bed early, laying out our clothes for the morning, and sleeping fitfully.  Of all the races we have run, the conditions were nearly perfect this morning:  fog breaking away as the sun rose higher, temperatures in the 40s with a light breeze.  My 5-K race started five minutes after Martha's race, farther down the road, so we were able to watch all of the half marathoners run past.  "Go Martha!" I shouted as she flashed a smile.  A pinto horse in the corral across the road from our start became very excited, jumping at a metal gate, then turning and running in a big circle and approaching the gate again; we thought he might escape the half marathoners as an unlikely race bandit.

My race was uneventful, after all.  There were only 40 or so of us, and I finished toward the back in a time of 35:42, two minutes faster than last weekend, and I was encouraged that there was no pain in my knee at all; I was even able to pull the final hill in mile three, pass a young woman who had been playing leap-frog with me for the entire race, and finally put her away as we crossed the finish line.

Martha had planned to run 10:30 miles, so after my race I walked up to the road where she would be passing by (the course is a figure eight), and was surprised to see her approaching much earlier than I had expected.

She had a smile on her face and looked strong!  And she had completed the first seven miles in just under 70 minutes by my reckoning.  I later learned as we reviewed our split times (another ritual, usually enjoyed over dinner after the race) that her first mile had been 9:17.  That stubborn pain in her hip began to affect her in the last three miles, though, and slowed her down just a bit.  But I was again excited to see her coming around the track to the finish line, finishing strong, and way ahead of schedule.

Her finish time was 2:17:26, the fastest of the three half marathons she has run this year.  I am so proud of her!   Good enough for fourth place in her age group.  A good day in Bethel.

As for me, I had waited to hear my name at the awards ceremony, only to be surprised by taking first place.  But there was a perfectly good explanation for this:  I was the only man in my age group.

So another chapter is filed away in our race journals, another weekend of wonderful memories, of lunch at Sweet Onion, wandering slowly up and down Main Street where a crafts fair was set up, listening to a little bluegrass band, watching some energetic cloggers, and marveling at the Montreat Scottish Pipes and Drums, a dozen men and women twirling their drumsticks and wailing their bagpipes joyously into the bright blue sky.

Autumn Breeze

The 16th Annual Autumn Breeze takes place on one of the most scenic courses we know, following the Tallulah River and meandering on a shady paved greenway trail in Tallulah Gorge State Park.  The thermometer said 82 degrees but it felt cooler because of cloud cover and a nice . . . autumn breeze.  I was not sure I would be ready to run a race today; it has only been nine days since I began running again after a 10-day lay-off and acupuncture treatments.  But I was able to run three miles non-stop twice last week, so I decided to go along with Martha, who was prepared to run a good race as a speed work-out six days before a half marathon.

It is always inspiring to run a race, even if it is at a slow pace.  The race-day excitement is there no matter how fast you run, and when the race begins and runners sort themselves out, settling into each individual's pace, it is the same as running a fast race when you are in top condition.  One little girl with a blond ponytail appeared to be five or six years old, and she took off and left a small group of us in the rear, never to be seen again.  "I don't like to run on a road," she had told her friends.  "I like to run in the woods!"  A future trail runner.

I felt some twinges in that right knee in the first half-mile or so, but then they disappeared and everything felt smooth and strong, even though I realized  that the result of having run a total of only eleven miles in the past three weeks have left me woefully out of shape:  three miles felt like six.  But getting back in shape is just a matter of patience and mileage and eventual speed work, and I have been in this place many times during my running career.  I was even able to "stalk" one or two runners and than pass them and stay ahead of them, which is very satisfying when the stalked runners are younger by several decades.  Above all, I was glad to be able to finish a race again, and to see before me the upward-curving optimistic path of recovery!

For Martha, it was a good day, placing first in her age group again as she has in so many races this year, and in a fast time of 29:17.  Age group winners get to select hand-made pottery from the Rabun County High School Visual Arts Department, and Martha chose an appropriate piece of autumn pottery.

She is well-prepared for the Bethel Half Marathon next Saturday, another scenic course that we both love and where we both set our half marathon P.R.s.  I, however, will settle for another 5-K (Martha was able to change my registration), and I will be grateful if I can finish another race only six days from now. 

On the Mend

I doubt that there is anyone following this blog these days; why would someone want to read about injury and recovery, and not much excitement in the way of running these past two weeks?  But if nothing else it is a useful record that I can go review, as I recently did - a record of ups and downs, of injury and recovery:  the story of an aging runner.

I am glad to report that there is progress, although it is slow.  After an unprecedented ten days of not running, I tried a mile of combined walking and running last Friday, and it went pretty well.  This was the program I used three years ago in which I would walk, then run perhaps a quarter-mile, then walk, gradually lengthening the running portion of the walk-run.  It is a good program for both beginning runners and recovering runners.

Saturday I managed two miles pain-free, taking only two or three walking breaks.  It, too, was encouraging.  And today I made more progress, walking for the first 100 meters or so, and then running without stop for the remaining three miles.  "No knee brace?" Fred asked as we passed one another on Sixth Street.  "So far, so good!" I called back. The pace was slow, but there was no pain in my knee.  And today I am a thankful runner!

I am also an impatient runner, and I know that that single virtue is exactly what is called for during these days of gradual recovery.  So after I came home and had lunch, I did some light yard-work but deliberately called off the harder work (raking, mowing) remaining to be done this time of year.

Today is the first day of October, the beginning of a new month, and one of my favorite times of year.  I hope that I will be running longer and faster by the end of this month, but for now it is nice to know that I may be on the mend.