Day 16

This morning's run was everything I could ask for in a run.  I woke up, took care of the dogs, cat and birds, and debated waking Jacob.  I left him sleeping.  He's worked so many long hours over the past few days, and will be working another dreadful shift on the 5th, so I thought he needed the sleep.  And sometimes, I just like to run alone.  I had a glass of apple juice, since I'm having a lot of gut pain again, and am back to clear liquids.  I prepped my stuff (bottle belt, phone into ziploc bag, shoes, socks, hat, sunblock), and drove to Forest Park, which is a beautiful park in the city.  It's large, the site of the 1904 World's Fair, our Science Center, Art Museum,  and our fabulous St. Louis Zoo, two golf courses, two tennis centers, an ice rink, an archery field,  the Jewel Box (a beautiful glass greenhouse), the Muny Opera, baseball and softball, soccer and cricket fields, and woods and streams, playgrounds and trails.  I started my run at the Fieldhouse, and ran on the gravel path along River Des Peres, to the new sections of boardwalk over the wetlands restoration.  It was amazingly gorgeous.  Cup plants taller than me, cheerful, rippling water, water lilies, frogs, egrets, a Blue Heron, and a Green Heron, and a flurry of red-winged blackbirds.  A male, Eastern Box Turtle was in the middle of the path, in all his neon colored mating season glory.  I saw the spot where the raccoon feeds, lots of empty, shining, discarded mussel shells in the water,  just off the edge of the rock.  So much beauty, just in this small space.

I'm glad I ran by myself today.  The thing I love most about distance running is the time I can spend with myself, and enjoying the world around me.  I can run for two hours, and process a lot of information, internal and external.  I'm not able to do sitting meditation for that period of time, my body is too distractable, I have to keep it busy with the motion of running to be able to focus enough to map my internal landscape.  At the moment, I have a lot to process.  This colon issue has me thinking and chasing my mental tail.  Everything I read tells me that what I need to do to solve this, is what I have always done, before this happened.  I feel betrayed by my body, we've been partners for so long, and yes, we've had our ups and downs, but I thought we had a good thing going, and now this.  I have a deep seed of fear that it has to be cancer or some other invasive problem, because I can't believe my body would let me down like this.  And I can't stop thinking about my dad, diagnosed with colon cancer and dead in a couple of years.  It's good to be able to write about things you don't really like to say out loud.  I've said it, but not often.  I'll say it here, though, I am not going to die.  Then I think more about this, how they say lots of people have it, it's no big deal, it's controllable, but I was already doing everything they say to do, and THEN I got sick.  So, I spent some time thinking about fear, and death, and how I can be proactive in my own healthcare, how I'm going to heal this, and thinking about how many people are so much worse off than I am, and still going out and getting on with their lives.  Which seems to be the only smart choice.  To live each minute that you're alive.

Then moving onward into appreciating the world around me, and thinking about how I am still able to move myself forward, and motivate myself to do the training I want to do.  I was extra thankful for the local running store, Ghisallo Running, who had an aid station set up at the park, for anyone who needed a drink.  They gave me a nice cool cup of watered-down Gatorade, just what I needed at that moment, as my water was warming up.

The west side of the park is hard to find shade in, because of the golf course.  I don't begrudge the golfers, but I do think golf courses are a selfish use of space, monoculture, and elitist by their nature of denying anyone else use of that space.  They won't even let barefoot runners on the course, even if no one is playing.  I'm alway a little worried about mis-fired balls hitting me when I run down the side of the course.  I know that's a somewhat irrational fear, but I guess I'm worst-case scenario girl when it comes to being whacked in the head by fast moving objects.

When I run I think about lots stuff, some profound, some not so much.  Like that Standard Poodles (of which I saw a herd, a woman with 6 Apricot poodles) have the same body type as Afghan Hounds (of which I saw two, running, much more graceful than I).  They have  an upright posture, small waist, smooth, light gait, high tail carriage.  On the only slightly more profound end, I spent a lot of time pondering the word play of running as a soul-baring,  sole-baring, and weight-bearing, activity.

I know this is a long, disjointed, rambling post.  It was a long, disjointed, rambling run.  I'm not a fast runner, for me, running, like everything else, is a process, not a product.  Today's process was exceptionally good.

The stats for today, 2:02.10 hours, 8.80 miles, max speed 7.25 mph, avg speed 4.49 mph, elevation gain 1,472 ft, min elevation 451 ft, mx elevation 728 ft.  This from My Tracks on my Droid.  Wore my Ryka shoes today, since I'm not quite ready to do long runs in the Merrell's.