Winter Weather

“We pay close attention to the weather out here,” I said in my last post.  It would have been difficult to ignore the weather last night because the wind intensified, and in this south-facing condo on the beach a north wind howls through the cracks under the front door.  Martha says it sounds like a teakettle on a hot burner, and during the night she got up and stuffed a towel against the door.  This morning, the wind chill was 10 degrees.  I had thought yesterday that if it was not sleeting or snowing I might go for a walk on the beach this morning.  But that thought blew away this morning, out over the ocean, like my cap would have had I ventured out onto the dune-top deck, let alone the beach.  White waves are churning wildly out there, and I wonder where that colony of seagulls I saw the day before yesterday is sheltering.

Last year, it snowed out here, four or five inches at least.  But it looks like Carteret County may be the only part of North Carolina to escape the ice storm that is slowly approaching. 

Our friends back home will not fare as well, I am afraid.  Predictions there are for somewhere between “destructive” and “crippling” ice.  It only takes a quarter of an inch of ice to take down power lines, and Highlands could receive more than half an inch.  I am glad that we are here, despite the howling wind in the background (partially muffled by a towel) as I post this blog.  And I hope our friends and neighbors will come through what looks like the worst ice storm in years.

Atlantic Beach

This is the eleventh year we have stayed in Atlantic Beach during January and February, the coldest months in Highlands and therefore the most difficult months for a runner.  I used to be able to run when temperatures dropped into the teens and even single digits, but with every passing year I feel the cold more and more, and I have never found a treadmill that fits me.  Temperatures here are on average 15 to 20 degrees warmer than in Highlands, which makes just enough of a difference.  Running is the cornerstone of my fitness, but there is also good hiking at nearby Fort Macon and a well-equipped Sports Center just across the causeway in Morehead City – I worked out there in the nearly-vacant weight room this morning while Martha attended a yoga class. 

This is also a time of year for restoration and recreation, a time for reevaluating our lives, for considering what we accomplished last year, for planning what we want to accomplish in 2026.  I call it a Sabbatical as well, because as a writer I somehow find more time here to work on poetry and prose, and this blog, too, which I enjoy writing despite almost nobody following it.  The sky is wider here, the horizon is broader, and in this greater expanse time itself seems to widen, the hours seem to grow longer.  Both of us catch up on reading, too, the tall stack of New Yorkers and books I brought with me slowly diminishing in height, and more books on a long list waiting to be borrowed from the library.  Evenings are spent reading quietly.  There is theater, too, and plenty of opportunities for exploring the Downeast culture and history that we have come to love.  The television has a beach towel draped across the screen and is never turned on.  As for me, I have given up for a time the habit of watching the late-night comedians and MSNOW every day to either ridicule or be horrified by the latest outrageous episode of the Trumpworld reality-TV show.  I need a break from it all.  I want to watch instead for just these two months a line of pelicans gliding by the balcony, sandpipers scurrying in the surf, and the never-ceasing drama of ocean and sky and changing weather. 

We left Highlands two days earlier than planned, stopping at our usual halfway oasis the Historic Brookstown Inn in Winston-Salem, made slightly poignant this year by the absence of long-time resident Sally, the hotel tabby cat, who arrived several years ago, a stowaway in a moving van, and was a fixture in the lobby and courtyard ever since.  Her usual chair was empty, and there was a lovely little shrine to her in the lobby.

Because we left earlier than planned, we first spent two nights at the Doubletree Hotel when we arrived, which is oceanfront in Atlantic Beach.  We stopped at the Full Moon Oyster Bar on the way, where we saw an amazing sunset over the Sound and enjoyed some chargrilled oysters, a much-appreciated welcome.  

The Doubletree is only a few blocks from the Island Grill, one of our favorite restaurants, which on Sunday was hosting a Winter Warmer Beer Luncheon (the main reason we left early, to be honest).  It was another much-appreciated welcome, and especially so because it was a chilly, rainy day.
 

I love a rainy day at the beach, though, and I sat outside the hotel in a chair Sunday morning before the luncheon, just as the rain was starting to pick up, and simply listened to the sound of the ocean. 

I’ve missed this sound, the sound of the surf,
long breaking on the long beach,
the deep belly-breathing sound,
the many-plied overcast sky in
shades of gray, the same gray as the ocean
where they join on the distant horizon.

By Monday morning, the rain was completely gone, and we awoke to a crisp blue sky.  Martha had learned that there was a hike at Fort Macon that morning, a place we are very familiar with from countless runs and hikes.  We arrived early enough to talk to Randy, the Park Superintendent, who is well-known for his bird hikes.  Randy has the uncanny ability to spot birds the rest of us don’t notice at first.  “Look, a yellow-rumped warbler!” he will exclaim, and point into the branches of a live oak tree, where sure enough a tiny warbler will be perched on a tiny branch.  Sometimes he even whistles and calls them out.  Today’s hike leader was another ranger, Paul, and he took a small group of us down to the beach to search for shells and sea glass and whatever else the Atlantic Ocean had to offer. 

Yesterday I went for my first run, only three miles with quite a few walking breaks, but it was wonderful to be back on the familiar road to Fort Macon, and the path through the maritime forest, and then down to the Picnic Area and onto the beach.  It was high tide, but the beach was wide enough to make for easy running, stopping here and there to pick up a shell – an olive, and a tiny whelk.  Near the Picnic Area a silent colony of perhaps a hundred sea gulls were standing, all of them turned in the same direction against the wind, waiting for the tide to bring in some unseen school of fish.  In the past, I would have sometimes charged into their midst, flapping my arms wildly to make them grudgingly take to the air, but they seemed to be deep in meditation this morning and I did not want to disturb them. 

The forecast for Saturday and Sunday is for snow and ice, not only in Highlands but here at the coast, where we have only seen it snow two or three times.  “The models are trending toward ice rather than snow,” according to the Storm Team Nine meteorologist I am in the habit of watching.  We pay close attention to the weather out here, and the forecasts are pretty accurate for such an unpredictable place, where winds can suddenly shift around, fronts can blow in from the ocean, and some afternoons – like this one, which I am watching from my computer set up on the dining room table, can suddenly bloom sunny and bright and gracious.   

A good time to finish this post.

New Year's Resolution Run

For many years, it has been my habit to run on this first day of the year, even in the most extreme conditions.  From 2004 through 2020, that run was part of an annual event called the New Year’s Resolution Run hosted by the Highlands Roadrunners Club, which officially ended in 2020 (largely due to Covid).  It was surprising how many runners and walkers would show up on January 1.  One year it was so icy that a handful of us tip-toed very carefully down Main Street in the sun and back.  But at least it was a run, and at least it indicated our dedication.  Or what my sensible wife would call “Not Right in the Head.”

 I have photos that long-time friend and HRC member Bob Sutton faithfully took for every one of those years.  It is poignant to look at those photos now, all of us older, some of us gone forever.  Here is the photo from 2004.  That is Richard Tankersley, third from the left in the rear, and (perhaps) Don Paulk, second from the left, both of them dead now.  I am in the center, with daughter Katy in front of me.  And to the left of her is Morris, and Vicki and Thalley in front of him – the four of us still run on Saturdays.  But we no longer look as young. 

Here is the photo from 2020, only two months before Covid shut the whole world down and we discontinued the event.  I’m in the rear toward the left.  Brian and his dog Jaxon, kneeling on the right, still run with us on Saturdays. 

I did not take a photo this morning because I was the only one who showed up.  It was windy and cold, and I encountered only two or three others out walking and running, all of them strangers to me, visiting Highlands for the holidays.  I completed only two miles, but they were filled with gratitude, and with the memories of past Resolution Runs and all of those other runners and walkers who were Not Right in the Head.  And then I returned home and entered my mileage in my new running log.  That brings my total mileage up to 33,628. 

Siempre adelante, nunca atrás – always forward, never back.

2025 Annual Report

On December 31, runners and non-runners alike often review what they have accomplished in the past year.  Now that Martha and I are both in our seventh decade, we are focusing more and more on a healthy lifestyle for the duration, which involves not just daily exercise but a good diet, good relationships, managing stress, and many other factors.  As a wise man has said (the anthropologist Ashley Montagu, as far as I can determine), “The goal is to die young as late as possible.”  We should be more focused on a health-span rather than a life-span.

But since this is ostensibly a blog about running, I will limit 2025 to that one activity, which for me is the cornerstone of my fitness.  Like many runners, I am an obsessive record-keeper, and I maintain not only a spreadsheet of all of my races over the years (220 so far), but a daily running log.  My own running log is recorded in a weekly “At-a-Glance” diary that I started 30 years ago, in 1995.  (I ran quite a few miles before then, but I didn’t record them.)  It has become more and more difficult to find this specific ancient spiral-bound diary since most runners now keep their running logs on various devices and apps.  But I have not yet gone paperless, and I stubbornly cling to my faithful running log, in which I enter my daily mileage, a description of the running workout I completed, my daily weight, and other exercise statistics.
 

There they are, 30 running logs arranged in order on a shelf in my study.  If I want to take a trip down Memory Lane I can choose one at random and be surprised at the kinds of workouts I once completed - long runs exceeding a week of running these days, mile repeats, tempo runs, hill climbs. 

I record my mileage at the end of each week and at the end of each year.  This year I ran only 315 miles, the fewest miles I have recorded in a humble career that recorded 1,578 miles in a single year back in 2005, and a lifetime mileage of 33,626.  I had a few non-running injuries this year, but the end of the year is no time for excuses.  It’s time for looking ahead, making new resolutions, and being optimistic.  And that overall mileage number sometimes astounds me – it’s much farther than the earth’s circumference.  But as any runner can tell you, it is not very large in comparison with that of an elite distance runner. 

A line graph of the data looks like this:
 

It it is only natural that each decade has found me running fewer and fewer miles.  And I am sure that line will continue heading in the same direction.  I am older and I am also slower - a graph of my finish times would look the same.  As I have recounted in this blog in the past, I once lamented to a fellow septuagenarian runner while waiting for race results, “The older I get, the faster I was!”  His immediate reply was a good once: “Yes, but you're still the runner that you are, right now!”

So today I will write 2026 on the cover of my new running log and turn ambitiously to the first page.  I have not run since Saturday because temperatures have been in the low twenties and wind chills in the teens and single digits in Highlands.  But I will run tomorrow, one way or another, and fill in that first blank page in a brand new year.

Black Mountain Turkey Trot

What a great race the Black Mountain Turkey Trot was this morning!  The website described it accurately:

Challenge yourself on our professionally designed 5K course winding through Black Mountain's charming historic downtown and picturesque neighborhoods. Every step takes you past stunning mountain vistas and welcoming storefronts decked in holiday charm. With chip timing for accurate results, competitive runners can push for a personal best while casual participants enjoy the festive atmosphere at their own pace.

We "casual participants" drove over to Black Mountain yesterday and picked up our race packets at Pisgah Brewing, where some runners were sitting congenially around tables making their race plans over pints of beer.  The shirt is technical and very attractive.

We were told that there were 600 runners signed up and the race was sold out, which was great for what I believe is an inaugural race.  We left the brewery and drove into Black Mountain, and while Martha did some shopping, I diligently scoped out the areas designated for race-day parking and studied the course map.  Then we returned to the hotel for an early dinner at the on-site restaurant, the Woodfire Bar & Grille, where we had learned that one of the items on the menu was farfalle pasta with a light tomato sauce, fulfilling our customary pre-race dietary needs. 

As I have grown older, and now that I have run 220 races, including 20 marathons and 20 half-marathons, I have relaxed my rigid standards as a runner, including pre-race preparation.  When training for marathons, I would often not drink any kind of alcohol for several months.  In recent years, I have experimented with a relaxing glass of red wine the night before and found that it has not affected my performance at all.  Martha joined me in enjoying some excellent Biltmore cabernet sauvignon with the pasta.  Outside, the trees were beginning to shake vigorously in the cold wind, and as promised by meteorologists, the temperature began to “drop like a rock.”

By this morning, it was 29 degrees and the wind gusts were up to 25 mph, for a wind chill of 17 degrees.  

I went outside for my morning Tai Chi and, as I customarily do on race morning, and to “check conditions.”  Conditions were very cold and windy!  I knew it was going to be like this, though.  I had been watching the forecast all evening, and at 4:00 a.m. I awoke and made what in retrospect was a wise decision, which Martha willingly agreed to as well.  Have I mentioned that I have relaxed my rigid standards as a runner?  The result of that relaxation means that I will no longer run races when the wind chill is several degrees below freezing, nor in pouring rain, both of which I have done many, many times before.  Martha has described this past mental deficiency as “Not Right in the Head.”

So congratulations to the 600 runners who braved the wind chill and finished this great race!  Back in the day I would have joined you.  In fact, the race results revealed that, had Martha walked as she had planned, she would likely have taken second place in her age group (faster than 57 minutes), and had I done the same, I would certainly have taken third place, since there were only two other men in my age group.  But “would have” is not something to consider once you have made a decision.  There will be other races.

We happily went downstairs for a light breakfast in the same Woodfire Bar & Grille, which had been transformed overnight into a breakfast buffet, and then sat by the fire in the lobby drinking our coffee and exchanging Thanksgiving greetings with family and friends.  And then without any regrets whatsoever, we drove to one of our favorite restaurants, Season’s at Highland Lake Inn, and enjoyed a sumptuous Thanksgiving buffet. 

And gave thanks for all of our blessings.  The thing to take home on this holiday - perhaps my favorite holiday of the year - is not a second- or third-place trophy, but a heart of gratitude.

Glorious Days

The cool, dry days of fall have finally arrived  in Highlands after one of the rainiest summers that I remember.  Rainy days that made running difficult, that brought out more gnats and mosquitos than usual, and that on one luckless day in August resulted in my slipping and falling on our rain-slickened stone sidewalk, clutching to my chest a circular saw and a drill.  I was left with very interesting circular-saw-shaped bruises to my chest and a trip to the Urgent Care center in Franklin for an x-ray to determine whether or not I had broken any ribs.  I know something about broken ribs.

Fortunately, my ribs were badly bruised but not broken, and so the slow, gradual process of healing proceeded through August and September.  Finally, within the past two or three weeks, I have been able to resume morning pushups again!  And then in October the weather began to change, with bright blue skies and cool air - perfect running conditions.  Everywhere around me on my morning runs, the trees were simply beautiful!  My usual route was transformed.

I missed some races I had planned to run this summer, but that was all right with me.  Perhaps the forced down time was a benefit after all.  Every runner, especially an aging one, should take a complete break from running periodically, planned or unplanned, and I have felt the past two weeks better than I have in a long time.  Monday, I rambled on unaccustomed roads, taking walking breaks whenever I felt like it.  And today I did the same, even venturing down the Franklin Road and through the Will Henry Stevens bridge at the entrance to The Bascom.  I have not done that all year. 

New route, new adventures.  Temperatures have warmed to the 60s in the afternoons, and the Walhalla Road is still golden with November color.  These are the days we need to enjoy and savor because they will not last long.  November will turn to December, cold weather will come.  So I am grateful for each of these glorious days!

Azalea Festival 5-K

I have not run a race in six months, since the Octoberfest 5-K in Walhalla on October 19.  Since that race, I was in Italy in November for five weeks and did next to no running (although a great deal of walking).  And following a hard fall on February 14 that fractured three ribs, and banged up a knee in ways still to be determined by my orthopedic doctor, I went another five weeks without running.  Recovery has been slow, but I signed up for this small race in Pickens, South Carolina, a month ago because I knew I needed to have a specific goal.

It was a perfect day for a race – overcast, temperatures in the 60s, and a nice shady course beginning and ending at the Doodle Park, where there was a train depot and exhibit.  The Park is at one end of the Doodle Trail, a 7.5-mile rails-to-trails greenway between Easley and Pickens, wide, asphalt-paved, with an easy grade, built on the bed of the so-called Doodle Line.  The railroad used to run between the two cities and was named that because the freight engine could not be turned around so had to run backwards from Easley to Pickens, looking like a “doodlebug” according to a sign posted at the depot.  I learned that a “doodle” is “said to have derived from the insect-like appearance of the units, as well as the slow speeds at which they would doddle or ‘doodle’ down the tracks.”

It was an appropriate name for this old runner, running at slow speeds due to recent injury and as a result being woefully out of shape, who lined up with two hundred other runners to run a course that was surprisingly steep for the first two miles.  Instead of the Doodle Trail, we began on city streets that climbed uphill through suburban Pickens and then out into the countryside, finally turning to pick up the Doodle Trail in the final mile, the most pleasant part of the run.

I enjoyed myself, as usual, by chatting with the other runners, including two young women I was leap-frogging with who kept taking walking breaks so that I would pass them, then they would pass me..  The younger of the two said if was only her second race.  I told them it was my 220^th race.  My legs were feeling heavier and heavier, and it turned out that the first mile, mostly uphill, was my fastest.  But neither of my knees hurt, which was something of a surprise and a piece of information to relay to my orthopedic doctor when I see her next Tuesday.

I did not expect to place in my age group – first place was taken by another 76-year-old man, a short, wiry veteran who ran an amazing 26:33.  The last time I ran that fast in a 5-K was in 2013 (when he was probably running sub-20).  Still, the finish line is always a reward, and I was grateful once again merely to finish, to attain another goal, on such a beautiful morning where the azaleas were blooming and the petals of flowering trees were spread out on the trail underfoot.

Every finisher received a nice wooden award medal, and the first-place age-group winners each received something I had never seen before in a race, a potted azalea plant, which would be a lovely reminder of your victory every spring when it bloomed.  We spent the rest of the afternoon walking up and down Main Street past the many tents set up there, enjoying the Azalea Festival and its crafters and vendors, eating lunch at an upstairs window table (sandwich and a nice IPA) while watching festival-goers walking below.  The race finishers were easily identifiable by their blue shirts which loudly shouted in huge letters 5-K.  But it was a technical shirt, and I never complain about shirts or awards, having been a race director myself for many years.

There was also a good live band playing at the other end of the street in a park, which we sat and listened to for awhile.  The lead guitarist was exceptional, and a bit of a showman as well, playing with his teeth and behind his neck on some of the Stevie Ray Vaughan numbers.  The sun had come out, and we rambled back through the countryside top-down in our Mini to Clemson, where we stopped for appetizers and margaritas at Tipsy Taco before making our way back up the mountain. 

We doddling, doodling old runners like to celebrate even humble victories!