Last Run of 2018

I have not run with our running group on Saturday morning for eight weeks, so it was nice to wake up this morning and find mid-40 temperatures and no precipitation in any form.  Martha decided to go up a little later in the morning, and when I arrived by myself at 9:00 a.m. there was nobody at Founders Park.  Then I saw Debbie running down Pine Street, raising her arm to catch my attention; and then Karen popped out of the path in the woods to the library, and Art and Vicki came down Fifth Street.  "So good to see everyone!" said Karen, "Let's have a group hug!"  I felt the same way.  As I have said before in these sporadic posts, although I have been running mostly by myself due to recent circumstances (old, slow, injured, odd time of day), I do enjoy our running group.

We started up Fifth Street chatting and catching up, and in a little over a mile we heard Fred coming up behind us - Fred, who will turn 80 on January 12!  What an inspiration he is; what an inspiration we all are to each other, older and slower every year, but still enjoying this wonderful thing called running.

It's that time of season when we reflect on the past year and look forward to the new one.  Our extraordinary friend Anthony must have had the same idea.  He posted on Facebook, "After 28 years of running and racing, and at the ripe old age of 60, I've just completed my most satisfying year."  Then he proceeded to list his 2018 exploits, including six marathons in six states and a total lifetime mileage of 24,901, "once around the earth at the equator."  Anthony made it clear that his intention was not to boast, but to encourage others to take up running, to accept challenges.  In the photo he is holding a globe, and he ends his post by saying, "There's a whole world out there that's a lot bigger and a lot prettier than the globe I'm spinning.  It's waiting to be rediscovered.  And it's just beyond the front door."  Well said.

I am not the runner Anthony is by a long shot - I have never run more than two marathons in a year, for example - but I measure up fairly well.  The reason I know this is that I keep a running log, and have done so since 1995.  I know Anthony keeps one, too.  Mine consists of a little spiral-bound Day Planner, and Martha keeps an identical one. 

Turning the pages of my 2018 running log, I can review my weekly mileage, the distance of my long runs, my times in interval workouts, my races, the weather conditions, my daily weight, an account of my other forms of exercise, and other pertinent information.  This may seem a little obsessive-compulsive to some, but many runners are meticulous record-keepers.

My running log is the reason I know that I had not run with the Saturday morning group in eight weeks, and why I did not (out-of-Town races, snow, rain).  That's how I know that today marked my last run of 2018.  I ran my fewest miles ever in 2018 (693), a fraction of the 1535 miles I ran in 2000.   And my own total lifetime mileage?  30,035, as of this morning.  And that's not counting the miles I ran since I first began "jogging" in 1981 but did not think to record.  So it's good to reflect on the past year as a runner, to thumb through the pages slowly, to realize what has been accomplished in the past year.  A New Year is waiting, just two days away, and it is filled with possibility.

A few years ago, we were leaving a restaurant in Raleigh where we had just had lunch with Martha's Aunt Lizette.  In the hallway there was a cabinet containing some high-priced wine in a glass-doored cabinet, and one of them caught our eye - "Betz Family Winery."  There was some chuckling over that label.  I was curious, and I later learned that the Washington state winery (founded by one Bob Betz, no relation) sells very expensive "boutique" wines.  One of them in particular caught my eye on their website:  Possibility Red Wine.  Wine labels can sometimes be a little pretentious, but I thought this one hit the mark for this North Carolina Betz, who does not own a winery, but who continuously strives to rediscover through running that world just beyond the front door that Anthony wrote about:

Living in Possibility

Living in possibility unleashes our potential.  

It allowed us to move forward despite seemingly 

insurmountable obstacles.  It propels our thoughts

and actions to seek ways of thinking and doing

that are only possible if we surrender to the

journey and have total conviction that the

impossible will become possible.

Stripping of the Decorations

Some churches have a tradition following the Maundy Thursday service known as Stripping the Altar.  The lectern and pulpit are stripped bare, symbolizing the humiliation and barrenness of the cross.  Our Presbyterian Church here in Highlands began this several years ago (it is more common in Anglican, Catholic, Lutheran, and Methodist churches), and I had never seen it done before then.  There was no Postlude, and those attending the service were asked to leave in silence.  It is a very moving ceremony.

We felt a little like that today when, only two days after Christmas, we began the work of removing all the Christmas decorations (see previous post) - Stripping the House, as it were.  We nestle the ornaments, one by one, gently in their little tissue-paper-padded compartments in the tattered old boxes; we disassemble the little village in the bay windows; we take the lights down from the mantle; we put away the nativity set; we fold up the artificial Christmas tree we bought three years ago and put it in its coffin-like box.  Then Martha crawls under the landing off the sun room and somehow manages to fit it all in there like a three-dimensional puzzle.  Most of this work is done by Martha except where height is needed:

For example, I reached up and took down the oldest ornaments from the chandelier, the ones I inherited from my parents and grandparents.  My Mom told me that some of them came from "overseas," wherever that might have been, probably somewhere in Germany.

But unlike the Stripping of the Altar, we did not work in silence; we worked to the sound of Christmas carols, which we will not listen to again until next year.  And instead of barrenness, our house simply returned to its normal state.  William Morris, the 19th century artist, famously advised, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."  And that is a principle we have tried to apply to our own house (although Martha has been known to chide me for concluding too soon that something has outlived its usefulness).  Neither of us likes clutter.  

But I suppose Morris might make an exception for seasonal decorations, those scarecrows and pumpkins and strings of lights with which we mark the passage of our annual holidays, those times of planting and harvest, and the fullness of summer and the emptiness of winter, which people have observed for centuries.  

The holidays scattered between the holy days.

Christmas Eve

It is Christmas Eve and our house is filled with the sound of Christmas music, the aroma of ham baking in the oven for tomorrow's Christmas dinner, and the sight of familiar Christmas decorations all over the house.  Martha walked around and took pictures of them and posted them on Facebook.

That little snowflake on the tree reminds us of 1979, the year we were married.  And all the other decorations bring back wonderful memories.

We have enjoyed a lot of holiday festivities this month, perhaps more than usual, including a wonderful overnight stay to see the Winter Lights at the Arboretum in Asheville the week before last, where on an unusually mild night (with snow still on the ground) we wandered through fantastic lights, listened to Christmas carols, and roasted marshmallows over an open fire to make Smores.

We also saw some good holiday theater:  The North Georgia Players production of "A Double Wide Christmas" last weekend, and earlier this month "A Seussified Christmas" at the Clemson Little Theater. Tonight will find us at the candelight Christmas Eve service at the Presbyterian Church, a tradition we have seldom missed over the past 35 years.

It is a season when we spend time with friends and families, but it is also a time for remembering with some sadness those who are no longer with us.  As we lose parents and friends we can understand more and more why this is a difficult holiday for many.  Still, there is hope for the future, and plans on the horizon:  a successful surgery, a good mammogram report, an encouraging visit to the ophthalmologist, journeys planned to faraway places.

For the more immediate future, we are looking forward to our time in Atlantic Beach, where thanks to the generosity of Martha's Aunt Lizette we will once again be able to spend some time in conditions more favorable for outdoor activities.  My running log for this month shows a scattering of short runs between the snows and the cold rains.  This is something we hope to remedy soon! The contrast on a windy, cold morning like this Christmas Eve is remarkable.

The warm sun, and the open road, are beckoning to us, and while we will miss Highlands, we are looking forward more and more to some time to read and write, time to run and meander across sand dunes, time to get away and renew ourselves in body, mind, and spirit.  Sabbatical.

Apple Cake

Our running has been impacted for several days by Winter Storm Diego and its aftermath.  I managed to complete only two runs last week, both of them down here on Sassafras Gap Road where the lower temperatures dried the road surface more than up in Town.  This morning I ran in Town for the first time, jumping over the occasional pile of snow still lingering by the sidewalks.  The roadside is still littered with debris, fallen limbs and trees pushed to the side, testifying to the difference only 1200 feet in elevation makes; what fell as rain and snow down our way fell as ice and snow up in Town, taking out electric service for many.  Now the slow process of cleanup is underway.  It was nice to be able to run the usual three-mile loop to which we are accustomed, good to get out of the house even though the northerly wind was a little sharp.

This afternoon, I decided to do some baking with the last of our apples.  I made apple turnovers on two occasions early this month, but there are still plenty of apples left, so today I pulled out a treasured old recipe from my Grandmother ("Gram"), written down at my request by my mother years and years ago when I first began to take an interest in baking the old recipes:  Gram's Apple Cake.

You can tell it's an old recipe because it calls for butter or "oleo," or oleomargarine, an ingredient rare to find in most supermarkets today but used frequently by my frugal mother.  "Bake 375 til done."  That "20 min +-" is in my own hand.  Mom (and Gram) simply knew when it was done without the need to time it on a running watch.

I happened to be talking to Martha's aunt Lizette on the phone while they were baking; she is a very good chef responsible for memorable Thanksgiving dinners and scrumptious bakes.  She has been having some health problems but is doing better now, and we have been calling to check on her.  "I wish I could send you this aroma over the phone!" I told her as I stepped into the kitchen to take them out of the oven.  Is there anything, indeed, that can better sustain body and soul this time of year than the aroma of apples, sugar, and cinnamon, freshly taken from an oven?  It is something I always associate with the holidays.  My Mom would often make Gram’s Apple Cake on Christmas morning.

So these simple old recipes, and the memories they bring to mind, live on for us today.  I felt as if my Mom was in the room, nodding her approval, and perhaps my grandmother as well.

There’s more snow predicted for Friday night and Saturday morning, so perhaps it will be a good snowy weekend, time to pull some more dusted and splattered index cards from the venerable filing box. 

Waiting for the D.O.T.

They began naming these winter storms at some point when I was not paying attention.  Winter Storm Diego rolled across the mid-west and into Western North Carolina Friday night - we heard it gently tapping on the roof during the night.  It had not accumulated much by Saturday morning, but by mid-day it was really coming down, perhaps five or six inches in all.  Temperatures have risen above freezing this morning, though, and when I went out to clear the driveway I faced about one inch of heavy slush.

 

“Driveway shoveled, waiting for the D.O.T..” I proudly captioned this photo on Facebook, “But it looks like they have their hands full.”  They do indeed, as I discovered when I poked around on Facebook – down trees and power outages in Highlands, and much worse east of here in Buncombe and Henderson counties.  

In addition to escaping Diego's bulls-eye, we are just above freezing here, 35 degrees as I write, and the snow is melting and dripping fast off the roof.  What a difference a few hundred feet in elevation makes! - it's 2650 at our house but 3850 on Main Street, where the Highlands Newspaper weather cam shows (through a snow-occluded lens) no traffic moving.

We knew this storm was coming and we prepared as well as we could, so there is plenty of fuel oil for the furnace, gasoline for the generator, and water captured in buckets to flush toilets.  But thankfully the power is still on and has not even flickered.  So we are in that enviable place:  warm and cosy, all the Christmas lights on, looking outside at melting snow, waiting for the D.O.T.

Meteorological Winter

Saturday we had planned to run yet another 5-K, the Reindeer Run in Brevard, and had even gone so far as to book a room at the Sunset Motel Friday night so we could get an early start.  The Sunset is a great little place we discovered through Tripadvisor several years ago, conveniently located and frugally priced, reminiscent of the roadside motels of the 50s in their pink and turquoise neon glory.

Saturday morning, we awoke to cloudy skies, and as we made our preparations, we could see the band of heavy rain moving inexorably toward Brevard on the radar.  By race time, 9:00 a.m., a cold rain was indeed falling, and not without some regrets we decided to abandon our plans ("bag it," in runner parlance).  Both of us have run marathons in the rain before (and after four months of training, what else can a prepared runner do?) but this race had been merely another last-minute 5-K and we had not registered.  It will be an event to put on the calendar for next year.

So we had a real breakfast and a good cup of coffee (not motel coffee in a teabag) at Quotations, and a little later some delicious soup at the imperfectly spelled Kitchn (formerly Jamie's Creole Kitchen).  We packed up, and in increasingly heavy rain we drove south on Highway 276, past Caesar’s Head State Park, fog lights on, squinting in the cold rain and fog, finally arriving in Clemson in time to have a nice visit with Martha’s Aunt Anne Sellers.  Dinner was something of a Christmas tradition, an exceptional meal with Anne at Paesano’s, and then a play the next day.  The play was at the Clemson Little Theater, a matinee performance of a clever little play called A Seusified Christmas Carol.  "Imagine a Cat In a Victorian Hat and it may put you in the mood for this whimsical treatment of Dickens' beloved Christmas tale in wacky rhymed couplets."  There were many, many children in the audience!  The rain had stopped by lunchtime, and when we came out of the theater, we discovered that the temperature had soared to 71 degrees.  We returned to Highlands after the play where it was also unseasonably warm.  Monday morning we went up to Town and enjoyed very pleasant running conditions, savoring these last few warm hours of a season that would soon be gone.

Meteorological Winter is a term I only recently learned, and it differs from Astronomical Winter by beginning on December 1 rather than on the Winter Solstice, thereby more accurately reflecting the actual temperatures and weather conditions.  Yesterday and today, the temperature indeed plummeted, and wind chills are forecast to be as low as 10 degrees by tomorrow morning.  I walked a mile in brisk north-westerly winds this afternoon, snow flurries flying wildly around, thinking how rapidly conditions can change this time of year and to what extremes the runner must adapt himself.  

And so it is winter, and the north wind blows cold in Highlands, making running problematic.  My friends Fred and Vickie can content themselves with the treadmill this time of year, but I have never found a treadmill that can accommodate either my frame of mind or my frame of body.  It is a matter now of running when we can, slowly becoming acclimated to this new bleak but hopeful advent season just beginning.

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.