Flying Pirate on the Horizon

This Saturday morning, we awoke to the mildest, most pleasant conditions we have experienced since we returned to Highlands.  The temperature was 50 degrees and the sky was overcast, although the sun kept partially-breaking through, nudging aside openings of blue sky and glimmers of Spring sunshine.  The forsythia and the daffodils were in bright full bloom.

I arrived at Founders Park early enough to run two or three miles before 9:00 a.m., the time when runners in our club meet together.  There was nobody there at that time, but when I emerged from the restroom my friend Fred was standing outside.  "Fred!"  I said.  "I was just thinking what a pitiful running club we have become, but then you showed up!"  He laughed.  Fred is always interesting to talk to, and we began one of those easy, wide-ranging conversations runners have, which included thanks for introducing me to Peter Robinson, author of the mystery books I have been reading, to the mileage of our respective sports cars (we have a Mini Cooper, he has a classic MG).  "Mine has either 85,000 miles, or 185,000 miles, or 285,000 miles," he said.  They didn't plan for that extra digit on the odometer in the 60s.  I thought to myself that the same thinking applied to the two of us; I just turned 70 and Fred just turned 80, and many smaller races still content themselves with the "60 and over" age group, let along the 80 and over.

After a mile or two we doubled back on the route so Fred could run some intervals, and there was Karen coming toward us, who had been a few minutes late.  Karen is retiring from her job at the library on Monday, and so I turned and ran with her so we could talk about books and Democratic Party politics.  Tag team running.  Martha was out, too, running a faster pace than any of us, and we paused to check on each other from time to time.  And so the miles flowed out behind me as I ran, even the last three which I completed entirely by myself, turning corners onto streets I don't often run on on a day when it seemed as if we had all the time in the world.

Ten miles:  a very satisfying feeling.  Last Saturday, I wrote:  "For myself, I'm going to be cautious, waiting until next Saturday's 10-mile long run to decide for sure."  I had stopped for walking breaks and stretches here and there, but I felt good, and that right knee had survived intact.  So after lunch I made the decision to go on line and sign up for my next race, my 20th half marathon, the Flying Pirate in Kitty Hawk.  It is a race I have completed four times so far on a beautiful course that meanders along Kitty Hawk Bay and Collington Creek, circles the Wright Memorial, and then terminates in a three-mile unpaved stretch before a final climb over a mulch-covered path across sand dunes to the finish.

The plan now will be to taper mileage over the next two weeks - no more long runs, no more fast runs - and show up at the starting line well-prepared and confident.  I've never been sure what a "Flying Pirate" is, exactly, but we will hope for a good day, run strong, and embrace the experience.

Midway Between Half Marathons

We have been back for almost two weeks now, and while we love running in Atlantic Beach, it is nice to be back in Highlands running with friends again, on the familiar roads we know so well.  Dodging rain showers most of that first week, we ended up running by ourselves - I completed two runs down our road (and quickly remembered how steep that last 200-meter hill is up to our driveway) - but last Saturday we showed up to run with the group.  Hugs and handshakes were exchanged all around. We had a visitor, too, and I later wrote about her in our monthly newsletter:

The Highlands Roadrunners Club has a presence on the internet - http://www.main.nc.us/hrc/ - and I am often contacted by e-mail or phone through the link provided there from runners visiting Highlands.  On March 16, a young woman named Terry from Nashville visited us for the second time and wrote to me afterward:  “Thank you so much Richard!  It’s always wonderful running with you guys. Everyone is so kind and hospitable. I got my 9 miles in and it was perfect.  We are planning a trip back in August so I will probably see you then.”  So thanks to all of you who help make our running club kind and hospitable! 

That's what makes a Running Club so special, after all:  long-time companions enjoying each other's company and also welcoming new members and visitors.  Before we started this club 25 years ago, many of us would pass each other out on the road, running in pairs or alone.  But now (at least on Saturday mornings) we run together, sometimes as many as ten or fifteen of us; we have a presence, as I told Terry. 

Another week has gone by now, and I realized this morning that we are exactly mid-way between two half-marathons six weeks apart.  For younger and more capable runners, running these long distances so close together is not a problem; young bodies recover quickly from racing.  One of our friends whom we had seen at the Myrtle Beach Half Marathon had run a marathon two weeks before, and he ran another marathon two weeks later.  Even in my prime, I could only manage two marathons in a calendar year.  And in this brave new age group in which I now find myself, I know that I am pushing myself a little.  Martha had no qualms about signing up for the next race right away.  But for myself, I'm going to be cautious, waiting until next Saturday's 10-mile long run to decide for sure.  The planned long runs look like this:

13.1 miles - Myrtle Beach

5 miles

8 miles

6 miles

10 miles

6 miles

13.1 miles - Kitty Hawk

There is a nice symmetry to these long runs, and today we are at the very middle of that hourglass-shaped plan.  And so far, so good.  But it is not the first time that the quote attributed to Charles Barkley came to mind.

Returning to Highlands

It always takes a little longer than we think to pack everything up for the trip home, and Sunday morning we did not finally leave until late in the morning.  We stopped only for gas and rest stops; lunch was kale salad from Blue Ocean Market and home-made tuna salad at a rest area just west of New Bern.  By 2:00 p.m. we had arrived in Raleigh and found our way to Millbrook United Methodist Church where Martha's aunt Lizette's 90th birthday party was just getting underway.

In 2001, Lizette and her husband Leon, long-time members, donated a large sum of money to enable the construction of the Christian Ministry Center there, and it is an asset much-appreciated by the members and ministers of the church.

We were among the first to arrive, and spotted Lizette immediately, surrounded my family and friends - a lovely tribute and celebration for a woman who is thought so much of by by her church, family, and community.

We had the opportunity to meet many friends and relatives on that side of the family, some of whom we had not seen since Leon's funeral.

But we had a long drive ahead of us, and soon set off toward home.  Traffic became heavier even on a Sunday, and we only made it as far as Winston-Salem, where we stopped at the familiar Historic Brookstown Inn, which has been praised in the pages of this blog many times.  Such a wonderful place, with its high-ceiling rooms, exposed beams, and old brickwork.

We always marvel at unique places like the Brookstown, off the beaten path a little but well worth it.  We have stayed in Williamston at a place called the Big Mill, which features only a handful of eclectically-decorated rooms in an old barn.  Both places have rates lower than the big chain hotels nearby like the Hampton Inn and the Mariott.  Where else can you have cookies and milk every evening as we do at the Brookstown?  And perhaps be lucky enough to spot Sally, the hotel cat, as we did this time, curled up in the best chair in the lobby.

Martha had posted some photos on Facebook of Lizette's birthday celebration, and that night we returned to our room and looked over the many comments, some of them from friends of ours who Lizette does not even know.

Julie Mayer Potts: She's beautiful ❤

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Amy Jenkins Ramey: Looks like a wonderful celebration! ❤

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Benita Budd: Wonderful!

Pearl Barfield: She's beautiful! What an inspiration.

Jessica Fretwell Jenkins: Happy Birthday Lizette♥️.

Geri James Crowe: She's beautiful!!

Richard Betz: She’s a beautiful and remarkable woman and sure doesn’t look 90!

Jean Middlebrooks Morris: Congratulations and Happy Birthday!

Glenda Maxwell Bell: Happy birthday Ms Pryor and may you have many more

Vicki Thompson: So beautiful and I can see so much of her in you, Martha!

We had restful sleep at the Brookstown, and then continued on our way to Highlands on Monday morning.  What a wonderful sight to see ahead of us in the west the high mountains of the Blue Ridge, and to finally climb that long grade up I-40 on the other side of Old Fort.  Some of the trees were flowering, and the grass was greener by several shades than when we had left over two months ago on this same route.  But the trees were still bare and Spring still a few weeks away.

Finally, after stopping for lunch in Asheville, and then in Brevard for groceries and coffee, we arrived in Highlands, our journey and our Sabbatical at an end.  We found our house in good order, although there were branches down everywhere in the yard.  "You had some strong winds," I messaged our neighbor.  "Yes, we had some very strong winds!"  But the winds and most of the frigid temperatures are over for the winter, we hope.  

As we were falling asleep Monday night, we noticed how dark and how quiet it is here, five miles from Highlands and its streetlights, sheltered in Clear Creek valley.  I thought I could hear a murmuring, whispering sound in the background, and then I realized that it was not the sound of the Atlantic Ocean to which we had become accustomed for the past two months, but the little creek out back, making its way with a gentle sound like wind chimes, cascading over a little waterfall in our back yard, then into Clear Creek, and then into the Chattooga River, and then the Savannah River, finally finding its way to that same ocean that lulled us to sleep during our Sabbatical.

Leaving Atlantic Beach

Tomorrow morning, we will leave Atlantic Beach for the year, first stopping in Raleigh at Martha's aunt Lizette's church in the afternoon for a 90th birthday celebration in honor of her.  It will be good to see her, and to personally thank her once again for letting us stay here during the coldest months of the winter.  We have had a good Sabbatical - reading, writing, hiking, exploring, running, practicing yoga, attending church - discovering and rediscovering the kind of life we want to live when this Sabbatical comes to an end.

As a runner - the ostensible topic of this blog, after all - it  has been especially satisfying, at the age of 70, to train for and complete my first half marathon in two years, and if all goes well I plan to run another one five weeks from today in Kitty Hawk.  Martha, too, has gotten into perhaps the best condition of her life as a runner (although, for both of us, the era of Personal Best times is probably gone).  We would not have been able to achieve this level of fitness without being able to spend this training time here in the winter, in a more forgiving climate than Highlands.

So as the days come to an end, we drove over to New Bern again for one last lunch at Morgan's.  It is always a treat to eat in this big, roomy place with the old brick walls and high ceilings.  Then I wandered around New Bern a little and found some surprising art on some of the brick walls.:

We both ran five miles this morning, one last time out the familiar road to Fort Macon where nearly all our training has taken place this year.  It was hard to believe that only a week ago, we were running a half marathon in Myrtle Beach.  Afterward, we drove across the high Atlantic Beach Causeway bridge to the Shuckin' Shack in Morehead City for one more taste of those char-grilled oysters.  Then we came back here and continued packing.

This morning, when I went out on the deck for my morning Tai Chi, I saw this big ship out on the horizon, moving slowly eastward, and then turning south and heading out to the open sea, perhaps making its own voyage back home.

"Every second
Every moment
Carries hope on its shoulders
Standing tall
Growing more and more
Stretching
Peeking
Over walls
Into horizons
Across the oceans."

- Horizons by Ane Brun and Dustin O'Halloran

There Away

Yesterday, Martha saw some activity out in the surf, and we both picked up our binoculars and took a closer look.  There seemed to be dolphins out there, not far from shore, leaping out of the water; but  some of them were larger than the dolphins we had seen in the past, and I noticed what looked like water spraying into the air.  We realized that what we were seeing was humpback whales breaching, and also perhaps a pod of dolphins swimming with them, feeding on a school of fish.  Gulls were flying overhead and kept diving down to pick up the scraps.  I went out the walkway and took 50 or more pictures with my iPhone, none of which turned out very well, but you could clearly see the water spraying up in the air, and sometimes a long black body in the water, much larger than a dolphin.

As we near the end of our Sabbatical, we have begun to list on the fingers of one hand the things that we still would like to see and do before returning to the mountains - a long walk on the beach, for example, if it ever warms up enough (it was 30 degrees this morning!)  We did not expect to be able to include on that short list these humpback whales, these magnificent creatures, inhabitants of the deep ocean, here so close to shore. 

“But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Recovering: You Can. You Will.

I have noticed in the past few years that not only have my race times gotten slower and slower, but my long runs seem to be longer and longer; thus, a 10-mile run feels like a 20-mile run used to feel.  I thought about that some during the race on Saturday, but I realized that my final mile was strong and relatively fast, not at all like the final mile of a marathon.  So recovering has not been as difficult, either.  After a marathon, it would sometimes be difficult to walk down steps, for example.  And I would often take an entire week off, "as a matter of principle!" I would say.

Still, a 70-year-old runner needs to take recovery seriously.  We ate carefully after the race, and we kept moving, too - taking that long easy walk on the beach Saturday afternoon, for example - perhaps the most important thing to do.  We drove back to Atlantic Beach on Sunday, and when we stopped for breaks we could both feel the stiffness in our legs, which quickly diminished after walking around a little.

Yesterday we walked on the new section of trail they have constructed just this side of the entrance to the Bath House area at Fort Macon.

The trail was very nice, winding under sprawling live oak trees, and then crossing a little marsh on a well-constructed walkway.  Finally, it crossed a little pond, visible from the road, where we have often seen egrets and herons in the past.  We saw no birds, but it was exactly the right thing to do.

Finally, after three days, I decided to complete my first recovery run this morning.  It had rained all night and turned unusually cold, 35 degrees here and farther inland, in New Bern, there had been traces of snowfall.  It had almost stopped by late in the morning, but I still thought that a few stray drops I encountered along the way seemed to be half-way between rain and sleet.  I took several walking breaks and was glad to return to the warmth of the condo.  I felt as if all of the stored-up reserves of strength after two months of training was depleted.  Now it is time to build those reserves back up again and carefully increased the distance of long runs.  The old rule of thumb is a good one to remember this week:  Don't run hard again until "X" days after the race, X being the miles run in the race.  So I will not run hard for 13 days.  And then, if all goes well, I will be prepared for the next race.

We have been enjoying wearing our shirts from the Myrtle Beach half marathon (see pictured in post of March 2).  We saw many other runners wearing them after the race, in restaurants and on the beach, and they were instant conversation-starters; "How'd you do in the race?" we'd ask.  In addition to the Skywheel on the front, they have this phrase on the back:  "You Can.  You Will."  Many runners wore their shirts in the race, and it was inspirational to see that phrase all through the long 13.1 miles.  And that shall be my mantra in the days and weeks ahead.

Myrtle Beach Half Marathon

As I have noted in previous posts, we have not been to Myrtle Beach in a long time.  But the drive from Atlantic Beach is an easy one, down the coast through Emerald Isle, Swansboro, then around Camp Lejeune and Wilmington, and finally south on US-17 - called "Kings Highway" as it passes through the wall-to-wall restaurants, amusement parks, shopping malls, and hotels of Myrtle Beach.  It brought back some old memories.

The expo at one of the two host hotels was nicely done, and package-pickup went perfectly.  Then we drove what I remembered to be the course, down Ocean Boulevard between the tall motels lining the ocean along what they call the Grand Strand, past the Gay Dolphin (named, I suppose, before "Gay" meant what it does today), then back up the Kings Highway to the start/finish at Pelican Park, a big sports stadium across from the Broadway at the Beach shopping center.  We checked into the second host hotel, The Breakers, and found ourselves, directly on the ocean and very nice:  palm trees, several different buildings on the campus, and heated swimming pools including the "lazy river" that meandered outside under our balcony and then back inside again in which children and their parents were floating and splashing and laughing.

It was only a mile from the start, but we decided to take the shuttle which ran from 4:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. and were glad we did - traffic is a nightmare near the start of this race in which 4,489 runners participated.  We had pasta that we prepared ourselves in our little kitchenette room Friday night, and then set the alarm for 3:00 a.m. but woke up before then.  A slim new moon floated low over the ocean as I did my morning Tai Chi on the balcony.

What a surprise to find ourselves on the shuttle bus sitting behind my old friend Pat Muse, who worked for the Macon County Health Department and has run our Twilight 5-K in Highlands more than once.  He was pacing his neighbor Trish and her daughter (who works for Old Edwards Inn), and it was nice to catch up with him there and in the starting area.  We also ran into Dave Cockman, a friend of ours whom we met several years ago when he ran from Murphy to Manteo.  We were staying in Duck at the time, but we organized runners from the Highlands Roadrunners Club to run with Dave through Highlands, and then we watched him finish at Jennette's Pier in Nags Head several days later.  Dave was running the marathon, but he is a modest runner, and we did not find out until later that he had run a marathon two weeks ago and plans to run another one two weeks from now.

It was dark as we waited for the 7:00 a.m. start, and we watched a brilliant sunrise gradually fade away behind overcast skies (much preferred over bright sunshine on a long run); temperatures were in the upper 50s, and after a rousing singing of the national anthem, we were off, running south on Kings Highway and then circling through a development called the Market Common (not part of the course back in 2008 when I ran it - and the course also ran in the opposite direction then).  I passed Martha on the divided road to the Common, as this part of the course is out-and-back, and we waved encouragement to each other.  She was looking very strong, and in fact finished about 40 minutes ahead of me.

But I knew it was best to stick with my pace of 13:30 per mile or so - "Run your own race," the old adage says - enjoying talking to various runners around me and looking at the scenery.  I would ask a group of onlookers, "Hey, is there anybody behind me?" which would always get a laugh.  A man in a black tee shirt got up behind the 3-hour pace group; he had a medley of Bible verses on the back of his shirt all on the theme of Faith, and I told him that I always seemed to come upon someone with inspiring Bible verses in a marathon or half-marathon just at the moment I needed to see it.  "Glad I could help," he said.  The three-hour group began to disappear up ahead of me.  A tall woman with a pony tail was running with me off and on - Jessica, from Myrtle Beach - and was clearly struggling; she told me the three-hour group was way ahead of schedule.  She ended up finishing a few minutes after I did, as did black-tee-shirt man (I clapped him on the back at the finish and told him, "Faith could move mountains.")  You make such quick friendships on these long races!  I ran for a long time with an older man and woman wearing "50 States" shirts, and it turned out that he had run 324 marathons and she had run 326, in 22 countries.  What an achievement!  They looked like they could run all day and not tire at all.

Coming up Ocean Boulevard in those last difficult two or three miles, I caught up with the 3-hour pace group and black tee-shirt man again and passed them.  One of the two pacers, a young woman, was doing a great job - encouraging and pumping up the man, who seemed to be the only one with the group.  I joined in and we told him how wonderful it was that he was out here, doing something special.  I told him how my Mom used to ask me when I returned from a marathon, "Did you win?"  And I would always say, "Yes, I won; I crossed the finish line!"  And I told him, "That's what you're going to do today.  You're going to be a winner!"

I picked up the pace in the last mile, and two black woman standing on the sidewalk with "Jesus Saves" hats on cried out "Hallelujah!"  I said, "Thank you!  That's what I've been saying to myself this whole race!"  And then there was the final turn, and the finish line, and the big clock overhead.  I ended up finishing in 2:58:35 and could not have been happier with my time.  And my knee, which I had been a little worried about, did not hurt at all.

I walked around in that slightly-dazed state of exhaustion, sipping a water bottle someone had handed me, accepting a mylar blanket and the heavy finishers medal and the special "Finishers" shirt, grazing on bananas and pizza.  Martha had found me at that point and we decided to find our way to the shuttle and return to the motel.  Martha, who had been waiting over half-an-hour, had been warm at first but then had become very chilled - I know the feeling well! - and I gave her my mylar blanket.

What a relief to finish this race, this culmination of two months of training, and my first half-marathon in two years!  Martha ran a strong race in 2:18:22.  Of course, neither of us placed in our age groups, nor did we expect to (I had 20 runners in my group).  But we accomplished what all runners should do, regardless of the distance or the age-group awards:  we ran the best race we could.

After showering and relaxing a bit, we went out for lunch - Duck Tacos for me, Shrimp Tacos for Martha - and then walked on the beach for awhile, down to the pier from our hotel.  It was warm and sunny and it felt good to walk.

This was a well-organized race and one that we may return to again.  Everything went well for us, and the shirts were especially nice, bearing a picture of the famous Myrtle Beach Skywheel.  We had our picture taken on the pier with the big skywheel turning and turning in the background - a perfect day, a perfect afternoon, for celebrating our achievement.