Hosanna

I've been searching for a writer to remind me why I love to read, why I love to write. Sometimes I go through a dry spell; a longing where I pick up 10 different books and put each down. Books and words are right when they are right. Mood, time of year, what my soul is seeking.

Hosanna. Yesterday was Palm Sunday. Hosanna is a word that takes me back to St. James church services, "Hosanna in the highest, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." Just before communion.

It's a word I've always dug. Just the sound of it, to say, to hear. Hosanna.

March 18 was Franz Wright's birthday. He died last May of lung cancer at age 62. It's not a name most people will know, despite winning a Pulitzer Prize. Poets don't get to be on Oprah or make the best seller list.

Wright is one of those writers, who lights up my soul, points it in different directions.  Yesterday I picked his "Walking to Martha's Vineyard," up off the bookshelf. He is a writer who has been to, lived in, the depths, the mud, the suck, and found religious transcendence; used his struggles to fuel him:

This sky like an infinite tenderness, I have caught
    glimpses of that, often, so often, and never yet have
    I described it, I can't, somehow I never will.

Hosanna. Palm Sunday. The crowd is going crazy. Rock star Jesus is coming in to town and Hosanna is the word they are using to sing his praises, thinking he is going to overthrow Rome. But they got it wrong. That's not what He was up to. Yesterday's sermon in church touched on the crowd, waving their palms, waiting and pleading for the wrong thing.

Back to Wright, last night, on the couch:

Rilke in one of his letters said that Christ
is a pointing,
a finger pointing
at something and we are like dogs
who keep barking and lunging
at the hand

Spring is rebirth. Renewal. It's a return. Saturday was a return, on a cold, rainy afternoon, to Tuckahoe State Park, and a 10-mile trail run loop that we've done countless times over the years, but I'm not sure when I'd run the full loop last.

I went out there to put a hurting on myself, to make good on a promise to log some trail miles and find something in me that I haven't found another way to access. And there were times on the trail, particularly the parts I hadn't seen in some time, that I found myself smiling, laughing, for having returned. I found some part of myself that maybe I keep out there as a reminder.

Hosanna. I was playing with the word like a puzzle, like a challenge. I was repeating it in my head, the sounds, the word, the language. But mulling the meaning. A friend pointed out that "Hosanna" is frequently translated as, "Lord, help us."

And then I saw someone talk about how the word has changed over time: "It used to be what you would say when you fell off the diving board. But it came to be what you would say when you see the lifeguard coming to save you... the word moved from plea to praise; from cry to confidence."

During the course of a run, during the course of years, during the course of a day, perspectives, words, meanings can change. When I am active, exploring, paying attention, I can have something to do with that. The weekend was/is a journey of meals, runs, worship, dog walking, reading, reflecting. It takes getting my feet wet, metaphorically and literally, to get on that path.

As I came down to the creek in the middle of Saturday's run, a Great Blue Heron flew horizontal to and parallel with the creek. One of my favorite things to experience while running.

Wright, in his searching, in his writing, in my reading...

Still sleeping bees in the grove's heart
(my heart's) till the sun
its "wake now"
kiss, the million
friendly gold huddlings
and burrowings of them hearing the shining
wind
I hear, my only
cure for the loneliness I go through:

more.

I believe one day the distance between myself and God will
              disappear.

Hosanna.

Response to Sunday

It's the same shelf at Newscenter, full of random books at the end of the aisle. The first time it was Merwin's The Shadow of Sirius. It didn't belong there and I've never seen another copy in the store since.

This time the shelf coughed up Jules Renard's Nature Stories.

It's Sunday evening. Rain swirls outside, but it is quiet in here, which amplifies the dervish out the windows. Three girls are sleeping. I've got my second evening coffee and am dwelling somewhere between the couch and Renard's animated countryside.

The evening caps a day that started with a 10-mile mudfest of a trail run, where Shaun and I scared up a half-dozen deer darting ahead of us across Little Florida Trail at Tuckahoe State Park.

As I ran until and through my legs hurting from climbing; as I ran short of breath and ski-sliding down muddy hills, I was at times part of the trail, at times my lungs, heart and breath, at times thinking about Renard and what he would see in the woods, on the trail, through the rain. Both what he would see and how he would say it.

It's something of a three-part process: observation, interpretation, expression. Being mindful and receptive to what is there, having it resonate and work through, and reordering it into a personal/universal form of expression.

For people, the possibilities of self-expression are staggering. For a bullfrog, less so. This morning they drank in the rain, the creek, the footsteps of runners passing by and sang it out in one bellowing, continuous note. To our ears, the bullfrog has one note, one word, one song in response to the world.

Tonight, the house is still quiet. In the kitchen, the oven is pre-heated and I've got a mind for baking flounder. This morning's run started with talk of the backwards notes of the mandolin, and with a looking forward to spring and summer fishing. My response tonight, it seems is preparing flounder and cueing up Blues for Allah.

A Mixed Bag

Illumination courtesy of Tuckahoe State Park and the keen eye and lens of Joel Shilliday.

Tuckahoe State Park is closed until further notice. At least that's what I think the black flies were buzzing as they circled and dive-bombed us yesterday as we cruised the seven-mile version of our loop there.

Katherine Binder, Lori Callahan, Mike Keene, and I rolled out from the Coffee East/Diving Dog parking lot at 6:30 a.m., knowing that running conditions (i.e. ticks, poison ivy, black flies, heat) might be at a low point for the year. I have to say, thanks to the black flies primarily, Sunday was as miserable as I have seen it in three-or-so years running there. Keene correctly pointed out that the flies will soon be gone, which I do recall from a late July run last year, which is slight consolation.

Having said that, it was still a blast, and a great way to start Father's Day, for me. Our Tuckahoe Sunday was the start of a taper-ish week for me, with the Team Slug 50K Fun Run coming up this Saturday, June 21. Five or six miles Tuesday and four-ish miles Thursday is the recipe for final "Slugfest" preparation.

This past week saw some solid training runs--7.25-ish miles on Monday, 13.1 miles Wednesday, for a more detailed account of that run, check the Rise Up Runners blog, and then I set out for a faster/tempo workout on Friday, where I ran a 7-mile out-and-back route in 52:29--averaging 7:30 miles for the run. Friday's tempo run felt (and was) a faster pace starting out than my normal, longer runs, and when I would start to drift into an easier pace, I would stride into it to pick it up. I had some left in the tank, but was reasonably spent at the end, after a good push up Rails to Trails on my final two miles. At one point, I felt the automatic legs--a la Landy Cook's trail horse analogy on the home stretch and had to smile.

So the next big thing for me is to try to tackle 31 miles in the summer heat on a flat 5K trail loop in Delaware. The loop provides ample opportunities to resupply, fill water bottles, grab a few more Clif Shot Blocks, and shuffle back around. Hopefully 10 laps won't make me too dizzy :) Stay tuned for how it all goes.

And on the bigger trail and ultra running scene, we are just shy of two weeks out from the granddaddy of the 100 mile trail races: the Western States 100. If you follow trail ultras, you may already realize that the field in this year's race is phenomenal. The odds makers seem to favor Wunderkid Anton Krupicka, whose footspeed and hundred mile tenacity seem unmatched at the moment. Defending champion Hal Koerner is back in the house, perennial top 10 runner Andy Jones-Wilkins, and the blazing speed of 2007 JFK winner Michael Wardian could be factors, not to mention Karl Meltzer and a number of others. Last year, I checked in periodically during the webcast/stats of the race to see what was going on.

So there's a mixed bag of recent runs, upcoming races, and a peek at one of the big national races. Anything else to add?

A Romp Through the Woods

The scene of the crime - most of us have a run-in-semi-dry-shoes ethic, and scamper over a downed tree to cross the creek at the bottom of the Turkey Hill trail. Landy Cook has a different approach.

After Sunday's run of the Tuckahoe 10-mile loop, two awards need to be given out. The first is the "downed-trees are for wusses" award, which goes to Landy Cook. As we reached the bottom of the Turkey Hill trail, I pointed out the "Bikers Dismount" sign and the crossing point for the creek, meanwhile pointing to the fallen tree that can keep your shoes dry.

"I don't need a way to cross, I came to get wet!" Landy yelled as he forded the creek, thigh-deep, and went charging out the other side. An inspiring sight.

Now, I don't mind getting my shoes wet or dirty--I actually dig it--but most of us who run back there, especially over the winter, opt out of the submerged trail shoe scenario. Landy correctly pointed out though, that there are some big water crossings in the Delaware Trail Marathon, and that he wanted to see how his shoes behaved when wet. In any event, it was like watching a young child with a new pair of rain boots jumping in puddles. And that feeling is one of the reasons I enjoy trail running so much.

The second award is the ironman award, which goes to Joel Shilliday. When Joel, Landy, and I started running together, Joel mentioned that he liked to run 10Ks. He preferred trails over roads, and for Sunday, he was looking to push himself and run about 7 miles. Joel strapped on a Camelbak, bore down, and ran the whole 10.1-mile loop, finishing in somewhere around 1:45, for just over 10-minute miles. I will go out on a limb (or a downed-tree) and say that the 10 miles at Tuckahoe is as challenging a 10 as you will find on the Eastern Shore, in terms of climbs, switchback, downhills, etc.

But by "challenging," I also mean fun. Out at Tuckahoe, and on trails in general, you can run like a kid. You can see blue herons flying, the occasional turkey, deer, and you'd have to ask a birder how many kinds of birds. You cross streams, run hills, and watch the green of spring recapture the landscape.

Conditions were perfect, with the trails mostly dry, and all parts accessible. To catch the sun coming through the trees through the latter stretches of the Tuckahoe Valley trail is a sublime experience for me. To enjoy the morning and the trails among friends, makes it all the more so.

For the record books, our list of runners who have completed the Tuckahoe 10-Mile Challenge during 2008 now looks like: Stephen Bardsley, Mike Keene, Jim Crowley, Landy Cook, Joel Shilliday, and Michael Valliant. With some of the e-mails and interest we've been seeing, it looks like that list will continue to grow, and that will have a fun party at the end of the year. With some of the speedy legs mentioned above, I think we are also going to see the current "record" time disintegrate into the mid to low 1:20s, easy.

My advice to those looking to take the challenge, or simply to enjoy the trails at Tuckahoe: spring is a stellar time of year to do it. Sure beats the black flies and poison ivy of summer ;) And congratulations to Joel and Landy on their prestigious awards, and their continued inspiration to me, to romp through the woods or around town in the dark.

A 3-Week

Tuckahoe State Park, bridge from Tuckahoe Valley Trail to Griener's Fishing Road and one time scene of Mike Keene as "The Horse Whisperer" to a spooked horse.

The theme of this past week's running was embracing my schedule. Rather than try to jam a run in mid-day or evening, when it's tough for me to make em happen, I ran at times when there were no conflicts and nothing else going on. The result? My first week of three runs (roughly 6, 7, and 7 miles) in who knows how long.

This past Sunday was a postcard day at Tuckahoe State Park, with morning temperatures moving into the high 40s, with mostly dry trails and a trifecta of runners as Joel Shilliday and Landy Cook, and I rolled out for a 56-minute tour of parts of the Tuckahoe Valley and Pee Wees Trails. A few mountain bikers and anglers were kicking it on a Sunday as well.

My other two runs were 5 a.m. specials, through Easton, and motivated in part by tying in with Landy for 00:dark:30 miles. Beginning my runs in the dark, wicked early, has always been what has worked best for me--whether Mike Keene and I have been hitting Wye Island with the muzzle-loading hunters, or I've been catching sunrises on St. Michaels Road, four miles into a run. My problem has been the snooze factor, which is combated when you have agreed to meet someone to run.

In stark contrast to Easton at 5:30 p.m., when cars sit molasses-stuck at downtown traffic lights, the town at 5:30 a.m. is empty, sleeping, and surreal to run. I have always enjoyed a kind of connectedness to places by running them early, when no one (or few people) has accepted an invitation to see what's behind the pace of commerce. There is also a sense of accomplishment in knowing that at 6 a.m., I have finished my run, have 7-or-so miles under my feet, and have the rest of the day ahead, which is already filled with work, girls, gymnastics, making dinner, etc.

Tomorrow (3/09) is on the books for a 10-mile Tuckahoe run, likely a mud-hopping run, based on rain last night and today. Looking forward to enjoying the trails, getting dirty, and hopefully beginning another three run week.

Stay tuned for a post early in the week about the new book Barguments, by Oxford native Doug Hanks, and how a local "bargument" that went on for about a year--Who would win in a race, a swimmer swimming across the Oxford Bellevue Ferry route on the Tred Avon River, or a car, driving the speed limit, driving around from Oxford to Bellevue?--inspired me to take on the only swimming "race" I've undertaken to date. Swimmer vs. car, next on the 4-1-Run.

Sunday Training Partner

The Golden Low-rider, 7-year-old occasional training partner, Ivan is still the fastest runner I've hit the woods with. If I lose the leash, it is a scene straight out of Chevy Chase's film "Funny Farm."

I've never tried running with my nose to the trail. I can tell you though, it seems pretty fast when getting pulled down a hill by an overzealous canine training partner. Whenever I take our Golden Retriever Ivan for a trail run, I always try to pick up pointers.

I've had people tell me that I run downhill like a nut, which feels accurate at times, and during JFK and some other trail races, I tend to pass people quickly while descending. Some of this credit goes to Ivan, who drags me down hills, causing me to have to look, react, and step pretty well instantly. When I go back to running solo, or with a human counterpart, the hills roll by underfoot fairly naturally.

Mike Keene reported that he and Jim Crowley, running on Saturday, found sections of trail out at Tuckahoe State Park, still snow covered and untrod. By Sunday at noon, mountain bikers and the sun had negated that effect, but 40 degree temperatures made for some trickling water from the snow melt, on top of solid ground--conditions that make running a blast.

I ran into a hiker atop a hill on the Tuckahoe Valley Trail, that we usually crest at about 30 minutes into a run. We are usually walking forward, tipping water bottles, but with Ivan, I was planning to turn around at that point and double-back to another trail. The hiker was coming up a different side of the same hill, on a trail I had never noticed before. Go figure, after countless times there over the past three years.

Ivan and I dove down the new side, which cuts back around to the Tuckahoe Valley Trail, making for a wicked circular trail for hill repeats. I can foresee a grueling battle with that hill preparing for bigger hills in spring, summer, and fall races.

This time last year, Keene and I were two weeks out from the Holiday Lake 50K++, our first ultra marathon. We had a 20-mile run, followed by two 15-to-17-milers on back-to-back-to-back weeks. I have to say I miss the time on the trails, as well as the challenge of having something we hadn't done before ahead of us.

2008 is a different year for me. My longest run of the year has been 10.1 miles (Mike and Jim had a Garmin with them, that measured our normal run at 10.1 miles). My radar screen races this year look to be 20 miles and shorter, giving me more time to focus on the home front and weekend adventures with the A-Team (Anna and Ava). I hope to emulate Richard Louv and his book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, on that front. Our girls will stay outside as long as we let them. I will likely log less miles, but find more acorns; at times trade the runner's high for the father's high of skipping shells at the Oxford Park (worth noting - I haven't been neglecting the young'ens to be running, we do these things anyway!--just more so this year).

Both running and fatherhood feed my soul, one with a mango juiciness, the other with a pan-fried catfish in creole sauce sustenance. I need both for my palette.

I think a couple unique trail running adventures may be shaping up for late summer and early fall. I will be elaborating more on each before long here.

In the meantime, Ivan and I enjoyed a solid hour run in the woods on Sunday. Saturday night and Sunday night, were friend and family birthday parties for Anna's 6th birthday, which is Thursday. Not a bad attempt at balance, at least for one weekend!

Running in the Woods

July, October--what's the difference really when you get to go run in the woods?

Much on the mind these days...Monday, October 29, met Stephen Bardsley and Mike Keene for a longish Tuckahoe run, which ended up at 2:56:51 for me (which includes clock running during an 11-minute refueling break at the end of about 10 miles, reached in 1:51), and 5-10 minutes less for the speedier Bardsley and Wood Frog. Must have been a 15-ish mile run when all was done, perhaps farther. It was great to be running in the woods, catching up and talking shop about the JFK-50 miler. It was an encouraging run for me, 1) in that in many stretches I could just run like a kid, smile on face, and feet on terrain, and 2) my legs actually got tired before my breath gave out, which is REALLY encouraging after recent runs. Bardsley and Keene, in my mind, are poised for great first-time finishes at JFK. I am hoping to rock the under-12-hour finish, given my conditioning and training as of now.

Much on the mind these days...Nov. 3 was a new day for American marathon running with Ryan Hall dominating--as in pulling away from an elite field of American marathoners by running a 4:35 mile at like mile 18--the field, to win the Olympic Marathon trials in NYC, in only his second marathon race. He is also the guy who set the new American half-marathon record by running the half in 59 minutes and change. However, what should have been a straight-up celebration, ends up a sad day for running as 28-year-old Ryan Shay, one of the best of the Americans, dies suddenly at mile 5-and-a-half.

Much on the mind these days...the next day, Martin Lel and Paula Radcliffe win the NYC marathon, with Tour de France legend and now Olson twin dater Lance Armstrong rocking a 2:46 marathon, bettering his 06 time by 14 minutes or so, and Tom Cruise wife Katie Holmes runs her first marathon in 5:23. Certainly a circus of a marathon, with celebrities, elites, and the world's biggest city as a backdrop.

Much on the mind these days...a stellar weekend spent with family, which included a fantastic bonfire get-together at Wood Frog's Wittman lily pad, with all kinds and all ages. I enjoyed the time with friends and family there, and the rest of the weekend with not much of an agenda, but a lot of good time with the girls.

Much on the mind these days...a question of balance and discipline to make time for things to happen. Haven't run in a week, since Tuckahoe, am entering a planning, creative, forward-looking, forward-thinking time at work right now; Girl Scouts and gymnastics for the girls; freelance writing jobs; Historical Society board; keeping up with everyone and everything. Wished-for abundance, but tough to keep pace at times.

Much on the mind these days...thankful. Brought home by the simplicity of one foot in front of the other, either in quiet or with tunes. But brought home also by Charles Schulz and tracking down a copy of Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving, and Linus' great thoughts on Thanksgiving and the fact that America is the first country to have made a national holiday to give thanks.

Much on the mind these days...but I am going to stop on thanks. And abundance. And family. And work. And running in the woods. Like a kid.

Roots Running

If I'd hauled the camera this past Sunday, you'd see a lot more mud and
warmer runners.

I started running in high school because I was tired of soccer practice. I'd played soccer through youth league, middle school, and a year of high school, and was done. I fell in with a few other free-thinking, skateboarding vagrants, who said, "We're going to run cross country. You chill out, run through the hills, and have a blast. You in?"

I was the new kid at school in Hagerstown. Sounded interesting, and I'd be set for lacrosse in the spring. Our home course was hilly and wooded and fun. 3.1 miles became a breeze, and our coach would frequently load us into the school van and turn us loose on the C&O Canal tow path or a trail around the Antietam battlefield. I consistently placed between 3rd and 5th for our team at meets (in the 20:00s for 5K, it was a small school) and we traveled into West Virginia, Delaware, and western Maryland and ran in the woods. I was 15 and 16 at the time.

Running didn't find me again until I was 22 and hell-bent on joining the Army. I got into the routine of running almost every day, and occasionally ran from Oxford to Easton, where I would bum a ride back down Route 333 from a friend. My self-inflicted boot camp, and a chance meeting with my now-wife (we became the couple who ran 2 or 3 miles together before hitting the dock bar at Schooners Landing at night), provided me with the discipline I needed to finish college, while working, and then find a real job, whatever that may mean.

Entering races through that time meant 5Ks and 10Ks. It was the group-think of a friend that got us signed up for the Annapolis 10-miler 6 years ago (incidentally, that friend was too hung-over on race day to make the trip to the western shore). I suffered through the hills, but ran well enough for me, and enjoyed the longer distance among the other runners.

Two daughters and a daytime desk job caught up to me coming up on Christmas time a few years back, and I made a commitment to get back running. My goal was the Oxford Day 10K in April--a race from my roots, that I had never done. Training for that race, I began picking up Runners World and Running Times magazines and read about a nut named Dean Karnazes who was trying to run 300 miles without sleeping. I picked up his running autobiography and other magazines and books, kept running, and decided I was going to run the Baltimore Marathon that fall.

Distance is what has made it stick. I enjoy the time on the road or (even better) the trails. I enjoy pushing myself. I enjoy going to work on a Friday after a 4:45am 15-mile run. I've found a training partner equally nutty who enjoys the long runs, and the goal races of increasing distances--26.2 miles, 34 miles, 50 miles.

Roots running hits on a couple levels for me. It is a return to my roots--of my first runs in the hills and the C&O canal 17 years ago; it is a return and refocus on the things that keep me rooted--family, friends, being outside, writing; and it is nurturing and growing solid roots for life ahead.

Three of us put in a great 11-ish mile run this past Sunday at Tuckahoe, mud-happy in stellar weather. Stephen talked about running marathons with his father and how his own son ran the last couple hundred yards of the B&A Trail Marathon with him the weekend before. Mike's two girls each won their age group in a 3-mile race in Easton the day before. And my 5-year old ran her first 1-mile race the day before as well, with her sister (in a stroller) and me behind her. I was overfilled when she told our friends that night at dinner, "I ran 1 mile in a race today!"

That's my roots running story, or at least part of it. What's yours?

Return to Tuckahoe

Mike Keene running to the sun on the Tuckahoe Valley Trail.

I have not been shot at trail running at Tuckahoe State Park. I have, however, had to cut a route short to avoid been driven by scent hounds. And being shot at wouldn't necessarily dissuade me from going back--Tuckahoe is the promise land for trail running on Maryland's Eastern Shore. It's a rolling network of singletrack, horse trails, creek crossings, and as many hills as you will find in the land of flat farm and forest acreage.

Yesterday (2/24), Mike Keene and I made our first return there since running the Holiday Lake 50K++. We carved out a 10-mile route that included the Tuckahoe Valley Trail, Creekside Cliff, and Pee Wees Trail, with a minimal road stretch to get back to the lake and the truck. It was roughly 30 degrees, with winds from 10-20 mph, giving us a functional temperature of 20 degrees. We left Easton at 6:00am, and took in the bulk of the sunrise on the trail. No wildlife encounters--though I have come across everything from fox, deer, a startled and disgruntled raccoon, and one morning, what had to be the fastest land turkey on Delmarva.

Our return to the trails also represented a first for me: hauling a digital camera along for the run to get some pictures. This was all-in-all a successful endeavor, though new batteries will be on the pre-run checklist next time.

Tuckahoe has been our main training grounds for Holiday Lake and will be as well for the JFK 50-miler in November. It is also, simply put, the best place to run on the Eastern Shore (I am willing to modify that statement if someone can point me to somewhere comparable). I first discovered the park about 14 years ago as a mountain biking destination, then forgot about it until a couple years ago when the trail running hobo jumped the thru-train to the soul. Since then, I have mapped out routes from 4 to 20 miles, either solo, or dragging dog, friend, or family out there whenever possible.

If you are inspired to take a trip out there, I recommend parking by the lake, and building your route off the 4.5-mile (from point-to-point) Tuckahoe Valley Trail, which connects to most all the other trails. Creekside Cliff (1.25 miles), Little Florida (1.75 miles), and Pee Wees Trail (1.6 miles) are all exceptional. Adkins Arboretum is located next to the park, and some of the Tuckahoe Valley Trail has shared stretches with the Arboretum.

Tuckahoe is a managed hunting area, which seems an interesting concept for a system of trails widely used by horse riders, mountain bikers, dog walkers, and runners, but checking hunting seasons for the Shore makes it fairly easy to avoid noisy, heart-racing run-ins. And if you are just jones-ing, and willing to take your chances with hunter run-ins (as I have done) the cautionary bright-colored apparel (neon orange preferred) can serve as your yellow brick road.