Plenty of Beauty

It has been unusually warm this month, one of the latest falls that I remember.  It is so warm that last Tuesday I disturbed a nest of yellow jackets while raking leaves (fortunately I escaped with only a minor hit on my arm), something I am accustomed to dealing with in July and August while mowing the lawn.  Leaf rakers should be unmolested by yellow jackets, and our seasons should not be mixed together like this.  Even the snakes may still be out, I thought, and so I handled piles of branches carefully.

Visitors who have carefully planned their holidays in Highlands to coincide with the "height" of fall color must also be disappointed.  It normally peaks by now, although there is plenty of beauty if one knows where to look.  These maples next to the Presbyterian Church are always reliably gorgeous, and they hang on until the very last days, too.  The red light at Fifth and Main is barely visible against their bright colors.  I wasn't sure if some of our visitors made it down Main Street that far, in their exercise tights and thigh-high boots, carrying Versace purses and shopping bags.

I walked up on Sunset Rocks today and there was plenty to see there, too; there were many other hikers climbing the familiar path to the top, and they seemed to be enjoying it too, far from the shoppers on Main Street.  It was a beautiful day to be hiking.

On the way to the top, I spotted this very special leaf, which I am 99% certain is that of an American Chestnut.  Local forester Bob Zahner, who passed away many years ago, once hiked up this trail with me to help me identify some unusual species of conifers which I had been labeling as part of a project when I was working for the Town.  On the way, he  pointed this specimen out to me in an off-hand manner, much to my astonishment.  I had mistakenly thought the American Chestnut was extinct as a result of the blight that stuck in the early 20th century, one of the great tragedies of forestry.

But in fact there are millions of sprouts that can be found throughout this area, which still produce trees that can grow to eight or ten feet before taken down. The blight kills the above-ground portion of the trees, but the root system can survive and form new sprouts for years and years.

I never seem to be able to find this small surviving tree except at this time of year; perhaps it is hidden among the rest of the foliage. 

The summit is always worth the climb.  There was our little Town, nestled in the valley below, serene and quiet from this height, far above the bustling streets, the thriving shops and hotels and restaurants.  It's a different world up here.

There is always something beautiful to see!  On my way back down the trail, I was stopped in my tracks by this simple fern, waving gently from side to side.

But I also saw this sobering sight:  the tall, dead trunks of hemlock trees, killed many years ago by the hemlock woolly adelgid, a tiny insect that has killed most of this species in our area.  They are just waiting to fall.  And, unlike the American Chestnut, they will never come back again.

I stopped at the library on my way down, and a man was sitting in one of the rocking chairs out front reading a book on this fall day.  Other than hiking up a mountain, I could think of no better way to occupy the time.

And on my way back to the car, I stopped to take this photo of the old steeple of the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, framed by blood-red leaves.  There's plenty of beauty if one knows where to look.

Bethel Half Marathon

Martha and I have both been running the Bethel Half Marathon for a long time.  The race is in its 26th year, the oldest half marathon in North Carolina and the third oldest in the Southeast.  It is a beautiful course, a figure eight that doubles back to the start halfway through, in a mountain valley east of Waynesville; the Blue Ridge Parkway on the ridge to the west is often ablaze with fall color (although not this year).  As I noted in my last post, I have run it four times, and every year the weather has been perfect.  It was my first half marathon in 1998, and the following year I ran my PR there (1:44:02).  I vividly remember crossing the finish line that first year and thinking that, with a little more training, I might actually be able to run a full marathon, and I did exactly that in December of 1999.  Martha ran her PR there, too (2:05:35, in 2011), and we have good memories of running with many friends over the years.

So we were glad to see Anthony in the Bethel School gym when we arrived, with several of his friends from Franklin.  He is planning to run a marathon in Los Angeles in four weeks, so this was a "short" run for him.  Temperatures were a little warmer than expected and had climbed into the lower 70s by the end of the race.  I was running the 5-K, which starts five minutes later and a quarter-mile or so down the road from the start of the half.  I warmed up and stood along the side of the road with the other 5-K runners waiting for the crowd to pass by us.  The siren went off and the runners started down the road toward us, but suddenly we noticed that they had turned left on the short road that leads down to the finish on the school track.  "Where are they going?" I asked.  "They must have changed the course this year," someone replied.  

"They didn't change the course!" I said.  "We drove it last night and the map was hanging on the wall of the gym this morning!"  We had driven it the night before, and we had also carefully reviewed the water stops on the map that very morning.  We later learned that the lead runners has mistakenly followed a police car down that road, thinking it was a lead vehicle; but we had never seen a lead vehicle in this race before.  As we watched one after another of the runners, including Anthony, turn down the road, suddenly a small pack came toward us on the correct course, with the rest following, and I could see that Martha was in the lead.  "There's my wife!" I said.  "She knows the way!"  Martha later told me that she had watched the runners in front of her turn and in a split second had realized that they must all be going the wrong way.  For a half-mile or so she led the race until faster runners caught up and passed her.  Anthony and most of the others came by us about five minutes later; they had run perhaps a mile before realizing their mistake.  "I should have known better," Anthony later said.  "I've run this race before."

It would not have been easy at the very beginning of a race not to be caught up in the moment, and I later told Martha that I was as proud of her for having the confidence to know where she was going as I was for finishing what proved to be a tough race for her.  They were like lemmings running off a cliff, and when I searched for the foregoing image (which I am probably using illegally), I found that (a) it is, as expected, a myth that lemmings run off a cliff and commit mass suicide, and (b) there are many political cartoons on the internet capitalizing on this mythical phenomenon, most of them featuring our current misleading con man of a President.

But back to the race.  The 5-K went well for me; I felt strong, even on the hills in the final mile where I passed several younger runners (always an immensely satisfying experience to an older runner!), and in a time of 35:17 I achieved my goal of running faster than last year by nearly 30 seconds.  I discovered at the awards ceremony that I was also first place in my age group, although there was only a handful of us over the age of 70.  

After the awards, I walked up to Sonoma Road where the race had started and watched for the half marathon runners to pass by in their seventh mile.  Anthony's wife Sharon was there, too, and we chatted while we watched first him and then Martha pass by.  Martha looked strong and positive, but with inadequate training and the temperature rising I knew the next six miles would be tough ones.

I walked down to the track where the race finished and watched runners crossing the finish line, which can be very inspiring.  Not many people were standing there, so I tried to applaud and speak to each of them.  "Good job!  Nice strong finish!"  A little word of encouragement can mean so much at the end of a difficult struggle.  As expected, Martha's time was slower than her time last year, but eventually she came into sight, rounding the curve on the track, running strong and staying in front of a younger woman.  I could tell that she had given it everything she had.

With a finish time ten minutes slower than last year, Martha found with some surprise that she was third in her age group (as was Anthony, despite his extra mile).  

So it was a good day.  In the parking lot, I passed a woman who I recognized from the 5-K.  "It feels good to be finished, doesn't it?" she said.  "It's the best feeling in the world!" I said.  We drove back to our hotel, the Waynesville Inn, recovered a little, and joined the throngs of people at the Crafts Fair they always schedule on this same weekend on Main Street.  Our late lunch was at Boojums, a little place we had discovered last year.  Then we returned and sat outside our room and watched golfers finishing up their afternoon game in the waning light.  A group of people from Chattanooga were staying in nearby rooms, and one of the women talked with us for awhile.  They come very year in October and play here, she said, and it turned out - small world - that she knew some of the same people Martha had known at Highlands Country Club.  They had ordered take-out barbecue, and after it had been delivered we were surprised and pleased to see them all stand in a circle, bow their heads, and give thanks. 

It was indeed an evening for giving thanks, to be grateful for fitness and health and for achieving new goals.  It was a beautiful setting at the edge of this golf course, and with temperatures cooling it felt like fall was in the air. 

We are looking forward to the coming weeks, with crisp temperatures, falling leaves, and the fragrance of wood-smoke in the air.

Change of Plan

In my last post of nearly two weeks ago, I noted that we had both completed a ten mile run in preparation for the Bethel Half Marathon on October 12.  "It has been an unusually steep climb up the slope of this training plan to the summit of a final long run," I said, "Still three miles short of the distance of a half marathon.  But it succeeded in making us confident that we could complete the race in two weeks time."

Now that those two weeks have nearly elapsed, I have reconsidered that confidence.  I ran six miles last Saturday, and three-mile runs twice this week, and after due consideration it has become apparent to me that, while I could complete a half marathon by walking and running at a 13-minute pace, I have no desire to do that.  If I'm going to run a race, I want to do my very best, and there has simply not been enough time for me to adequately train for a half marathon after the layoff this summer following hernia surgery and our trip to Britain and Ireland.  Also, the risk of injury would be too great in running a race that I am unprepared to run, and I don't want to miss the rest of our racing season.  So last night I sent an e-mail to the Race Director asking if it was too late to switch to the 5-K Saturday.  I received an immediate reply:   "Hi Richard! Not too late at all. I will log in and switch you now."  So it is done.

Martha, on the other hand, buoyed up by her silver medal in the Senior Games, will have no problem completing the half marathon despite her own lack of runs longer than ten miles.  For myself, I hope to at least run the 5-K as fast as I did last year, and I am looking at a series of shorter races this fall, leading up to Atlantic Beach this winter and the Crystal Coast Half Marathon on March 7.

It's good to have goals.  But it's good to have realistic goals.

Both the 5-K and the half marathon courses at Bethel are beautiful, mostly on two-lane roads out in the countryside east of Waynesville.  I ran my first half marathon there, way back in 1998, and went on to run it three more times, as well as completing the 5-K last year.  I hope to be prepared for the half marathon next year.  The weather forecast is good, with temperatures expected to be in the low 50s, and we are looking forward to the race.