His Hero

It’s been a good day today.

I applied for two jobs that both look good, followed up on my Whole Foods interview—again—and cycled about 30 miles around town doing errands and appointments. Bought some rather healthy food at Safeway to make myself dinner. Returned some materials to the library for a friend. Saw my doctor. Chill day so far…

And then I ran into a neighbor I know from my days at Ideal Market, who told me I was his son’s hero. His son is an adorable little boy, maybe 6 or 7 years old, and apparently they’d seen me out running first near our apartments and then out at the Boulder Reservoir. The little boy was apparently blown away that I had run so far—it is a considerable distance—and told his dad I was his hero.

Now, I haven’t actually run all that way. I’ve done a marathon and definitely have done my share of higher-mileage training for the marathon, but I knew I didn’t run out to the Rez. So I let him know that, and he smiled and winked at me, “It’ll be our little secret. My son thinks so highly of you.” What had actually happened was that they saw me on two different runs the same day…first a run around the neighborhood and then out at the Rez. I wasn’t really planning the second run, but a friend was headed out there to swim and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to run out there. I especially loved that when the little boy saw me the second time he said, “I bet she’s not even out of breath!”

I probably was, but it was a wonderful story anyway.

Reflection

I started working for Wild Oats on August 22, 2000. If I'd made it to this August 22 it would have been 7 years there.

Instead, I turned in my resignation on Thursday afternoon and was severanced out, with pay, thru the 13th. The way my boss's boss explained it, I had 2 weeks of paid vacation.

The way I see it, they were doing everything possible to fire me. This is not your standard-issue "my-boss-is-an-asshole" rant. This is me. Anyone who knows me knows better than to believe I did a piss-poor job. The ends didn't justify the means anymore. So I resigned and was pretty much booted out. Figures.

The way I see it, I had a few hours to say goodbye to people I'd known for years. A few hastily-scrawled emails to vendors. A lot of hugs, and a few tears. A phone call to a dear friend who came to my office to help me get my stuff home. A couple of bags and boxes. It's amazing how little space 7 years really occupies.

So...onto bigger and better things. If I don't adopt this attitude, I will start crying.

Good bye, everyone...and remember...do one brave thing today...

...then run like hell!!!

~Dondi

Stress Is Curling My Hair

OK, no, but seriously now...

It IS making me do really crazy things. Like trash a 5-mile run because I was so distracted I wasn't pacing myself effectively and checlked them up to "junk miles". Like try to go to bed earlier, wake up earlier, do more things earlier. Like getting in some strength training here and there. Becoming better friends with one of my neighbors who likes to run at the rez (and even attempting to keep up with him during our first outing together! And I did! But I think he was probably being nice to me...) and even agreeing to a--gulp--7:30 a.m. Sunday morning run. No going out after closing up the shop for me; I'll be heading home from Origins Saturday evening to some kava kava and an early bedtime. For an early run. On a Sunday.

Not that I was a partier (party-er? somehow, partier never looks right to me...) in my previous life or anything. But work has stressed me to the point where I am running for the sheer relief of being consumed by an activity that isn't work. Call it escapism. Call it whatever you want...I call it sick. Pathetic. A bit frightening.

But, also...strengthening. Renewing. Reinforcing. Quieting and, incredibly, slowing. Reassuring and peaceful. And as a result of this insanity, I'm growing, and changing, and realizing I am capable of extraordinary things. Like trying to hear more of my friends' stories. Listening to their laughter. Trying to contribute instead of overtaking. Maybe it's progress, maybe not. But it sure feels good. When I'm at work I feel exhausted, faded, washed-out, done. Tired. Weary. When I run, my heart, my eyes, my smile is open. I'm laughing out loud (much to the dismay, no doubt, of the pros running circuits along the same bike path) and my faith in the world is renewed.

Enough that with registration for the 2007 race filling, I stake my claim by registering for the Boulder Backroads Marathon again. Finishing is still the only real goal. But...could that be New York, gleaming in the distance? Or is it...Boston?

...just sweet...

Edie seemed a little unsettled when i put her to bed the other night after I tucked her in, so I sat with her and stroked her hair and sang to her until her eyes started to fall heavily closed all on their own. I was singing Jack's adaptation of "The Song of the Wandering Aengus", by William Butler Yeats, and my voice does neither the poem nor the song Jack created from the poem justice, but it seemed to calm this beautiful little girl and begin to put her to sleep...

...sweet...

Bitter...sweet?

So my director, who I think is on my side, calls me into her office this afternoon for what I think is a routine update meeting, which actually turns into a "you're going to get fired in two weeks if you don't shape up" meeting. And all I can think is, this is SUCH bullshit.

First of all, I've been busting my ass on this project. I have the permanent marker marks all over my hands to prove it. But instead of getting recognized for my productivity, I get, "You had that dentist appointment Monday," and "You were on the phone with a vendor who called you on your cell during your lunch break," and that's just not okay. So, the appointment that was scheduled two months ago I should've rescheduled because my boss--who is out of town--has too much testosterone to admit that this is a personality conflict and I'd be better placed in another department? Wha...?

And so I just nod and grimly smile. What am I supposed to do at this point? Leap, and the net will appear? Or the void will swallow me...at least then I'll get some quietude...

Baby-sitting

I met Howard and Jen through Jack, and my life has been infinitely more blessed because of them (and him, for that matter, but that’s another blog for another day…) and their unique and beautiful presences. What an honor it is to allow me to care for their children.

Jen and I have the same conversation every time I baby-sit for her children. I think she overpays me, and she explains that she couldn’t possibly pay me enough. Round and round we go. One of these days, she’s going to get genuinely pissed off at me. At least that’s what I worry about.

But how can I tell her what an honor and joy it is to take care of her two lovely lovely little ones, what beautiful children they are, what peace and calm and absolute joy I get from cuddling with Edie, putting her to bed, knowing that she knows me and feels safe with me. How it feels when Gabriel lets a bit of his guard down and curls up with me for storytime, how cool it is that I can talk to him at some level about Star Wars, enough, at least, that when it’s time for bed and the stories have all been read he tears out of his shirt and indiscriminately requests that I scratch his back while he drifts off. How much joy comes out of that moment for me, that he feels safe (enough), loved (enough), protected (enough), secure (enough) to ask me to stay, to love him a little, in whatever way he’ll let me? How can I tell her what an honor it is to be with her children, know that she and her husband can go out and enjoy an evening together, alone, as a couple, as themselves, really get to enjoy each other, knowing—really knowing—that their children are safe and loved and adored and protected, how do I tell this woman who in about the first seven minutes of knowing her had already stitched her family into my heart: Howard, Jen, Edie and Gabriel. Assorted pets (Lucy and Willy, the dogs, Annie, the cat, Gup-gup, the fish, Coco, the guinea pig…am I missing anyone here)...how can I tell her how much I love them all?

Most especially, these two precious little gems. One eleven, one seven. Dark, dark hair and blue blue blue eyes. Sprinkles of freckles on their noses. Children are easy to love; they're also easily detestable, but Gabe at his worst with me is just a notch or two on the wrong side of hyperactive and Edie...you can't help but love Edie. You can't help but love Gabe for that matter; even when he's acting out he's still a good kid (this is, of course, based on my knowing this family for less than a year and no doubt missing a substantial majority of Gabe's less-than-promising moments...but you just know he's a good kid, just occasionally acts rotten to keep me on my toes, it seems). These children are so beautiful and so loving, how could I possibly not love them?

When I carry Edie to bed and get her settled in, she coos and smiles at me, and it’s as if she can see right into me, right through me. Her eyes flutter when I kiss her forehead and tell her good-night, tell her to have sweet dreams, tell her I love her. Because I do. When Gabe pulls the blanket over his head as I try to drop a kiss good-night onto his forehead, then lowers it, his eyes dancing, both teasing and imploring. So I kiss him good night and tell him to have sweet dreams, smiling, tell him I love him.

Because I do. And so they sleep snuggled warm and tired in their beds, and I head down to hang out with the menagerie that will now keep me company, until Howard and Jen come home.

How did I get so freakin BUSY???

Monday: Double shift (Oats 8:30 to 5:45ish, Origins 6-9:30ish)
Tuesday: Oats til 5:30; Bikram's 6:30 to 8
Wednesday: Double Shift
Thursday: Oats til 5:30ish; running with Rick at the rez
Friday: Double shift
Saturday: Origins 10-4, baby-sitting for Howard and Jen 6:30ish til...
Sunday: long run at rez...and maybe...stillness?

You know it's getting bad when you're wondering when you can possibly fit in meditation...

"Leap and the net will appear..."

It's a nice idea, as a testament to your faith. A principle by which one tries to live. A notion that in and of itself comprises part of your belief system, or just a phrase you try to keep in mind, to give you a bit of perspective.

When it dictates your life and rules over it like a fascist dictator, on the other hand, it's absolute torture. When it means you don't have any firm ground to stand on, that every component of your life is in limbo all at the same time, that you've leapt and now you're in a state of freefall and can't see the net and can't see the net and can't see the net...well, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe it will appear.

Please, please, please let it appear...

BolderBoulder 2007

She Warmed Up. She Started. And By God, She Finished.

She also managed to prove that the bigger you are, the harder you fall. As a kid, it would’ve been minor, a skinned knee, a skinned hand, a lot of dramatic sniveling, and then Mommy would kiss it and make it all better.

When you are twenty-five years old, however, and forget that in order to overcome massive obstacles like a crumbling curb, you need to pick up your feet, it’s major. You’ve got that much further to fall! Ooops.

This year’s Bolder Boulder was definitely better than last year in terms of time (I think), quality, feeling in general, etc. Jack came out to cheer me on at the intersection near our apartment complex where the race passes through. I gave him a quick high-five and felt an incredible sense of warmth and love and happiness. That he’d get out of bed at 7:30 in the morning and stand there waiting for me to pass meant the world to me. It so warmed my heart that the permasmile I slap on when I’m running a race, workout, anything, was even bigger than usual. At the advice of one of my favorite triathletes, the 2006 World Long Distance Champion Bella Comerford, I try to remember to “stay tough, and keep smiling”, as she wrote to me in an email before the marathon last year. And so I stayed tough. And kept smiling. Even through the fall.

About a mile or so from where Jack and I had slapped hands (he stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, smirking cutely and shaking his head, then reached his hand out once I extended mine…I later found out he was only semi-conscious; just goes to show how euphoric the runner’s high really is…you can mistake a friend’s expression, which is really brought on by his being in a state of half-awake, half-asleep, for perfectly-placed mischievousness) I was running up 20^th Street when my brain apparently lost touch with my basic running skills and I fell. I tripped on a section of crumbling curb and went straight down, solidly skinning both knees and my left hand. The residents gathered in the yard in front of which I fell immediately started towards me, but I sprang up too quickly, brushing myself off and announcing to them, the other spectators, the volunteers, and about 200 of my fellow BolderBoulderites that I was okay, I was fine, no big deal, just a stupid mistake. Every volunteer after that, it seemed, asked if I needed help. My fellow runners expressed concern here and there. Basically, anyone who’d either seen me fall or saw the results of it. Aside from being profusely embarrassed I was constantly reminded of it. But stopping the race? Hell, no! It was a couple of scratches, minor abrading, no big deal. I finished. Legs stretched out mightily from the top of Folsom thru the chutes at the finish, I suddenly realized that a) I was selling myself WAY short on capacity in terms of what I was able to do, and would therefore have to work on improving my cowardly baby steps to becoming faster and faster, and b) now that I was finished, I could probably use some medical assistance. I walked over to a paramedic I saw and asked for a band-aid. He eyed me warily, then nearly jumped when I showed him my knees and hustled me over to the medical tent. Sidenote: I am so grateful that the only time, thus far, knock on wood, that I’ve had to visit the medical tent was for severely abraded knees and a skinned palm, nothing more serious. A woman came up with her daughter and the girl was suffering severe dehydration; she was pale-grey colored and visibly shaking. They were laying her down to rest and giving her water as the paramedic who worked on me finished iodining and bandaging my knees and hand. At that point, I had glanced at my injuries a few times but was more interested in scanning the crowd for signs of my friends and figured I’d let the medic do his job.

When I got home, however, and undressed to shower, it was an entirely different story. My hand was pretty okay, just a couple of nicks, and my right knee was slightly-to-moderately abraded. My left knee, however, which I’m assuming took the brunt of the fall (I barely remember falling, just one second running along fine smiling and the next second feeling the unmistakable sensation of road-and-crumbled-concrete-and-sand-and-gravel against skin, and then jumping to my feet again and starting to run), has a NASTY goose egg on it and a substantial abrasion. Now I know why so many cyclists shave their legs. The cut is not pretty for sure, but it’s the horrible bruising that I’m really worried about. Oooops…

And I will write more later, as I am exhausted and a little cranky. Mostly just tired, but I need some fluid replenishment myself and I want to see what goodies are in my BolderBoulder bag this year…they’ve been getting progressively worse over the last four years, for sure. Sidenote: why is it that the sunscreen companies can create sunscreen that won’t get in your eyes but will invariably get in your mouth? I’ve Listerine’d twice now and still can’t get that detestable taste from my mouth….eeeewwwwww…

Several days later…

Well, my cardiovascular system may have recovered from the 10K but my knees are just starting to mend. Along with nasty scrapes on each one I’ve got some terrific bruising going on, especially on the left one. I found out my time was one hour, twelve minutes and fifty-four seconds…two days after the run, when they collected data from everyone’s electronic shoe tag and posted it all to the website and got it up and running—no pun intended—as 50,000-plus users tried to access it all at once. When Seagate can’t keep a website up…well, just goes to show what happens when you have a few score-thousand people trying to login to it. I exchanged a few entertaining emails with my friend Gregory who’d also run the race with his fiancé and several of their friends, but alas, as much as we cursed and damned the site it didn’t do us any good. Seagate finally got it going yesterday afternoon and I checked my results last night, laughing audibly when they came up and I realized I only did better than last year by about three minutes. Well, a sprinter I’m not, that’s for sure.

The goodies weren’t so bad although “nutritious” would be a stretch…the most nutritious item in the bag was, as usual, the produce item, which instead of an orange or apple was a tiny bag of baby carrots this year. I dug into those immediately. The rest of the bag’s contents remain in the bag, on the floor or my living room. As big a fan of junk food as I am, the words “Breakfast” and “Cookie” just don’t go together in my vocabulary.

So, onward and upward…I’ll start running again in a few days, when it doesn’t re-open the scabs on my knees every time I bend them. I’ve been thinking I should attend a Bikram class but then I start thinking about the postures, there are definitely a few that would hurt my abraded joints like hell. And te sweat pouring into them probably wouldn’t help either. So I’m restlessly resting, eager to get moving again, semi-twitchy with a virus only athletes—or those of us struggling to be athletes—get when we can’t train for a few days, general restlessness. But man, what a race. While I understand why the frenzy surrounding the BolderBoulder every year send the rest of my fellow Boulderites packing for a long weekend anywhere BUT here…I don’t have a car, so traffic isn’t a concern. I don’t have to fly in, drive up, find a place to stay…just take off about half an hour before my start time to the starting line, slap on a smile, and enjoy my run.

Coca-Cola to Buy Vitaminwater...

Among the many disturbing headlines I spotted in the NYT digest I receive in my work mail inbox every day, this was the most terrifying. Not the war in Iraq (I've seen so many "we lost xx number of troops today and xx number were severely wounded and are listed in critical condition" that I've become, sadly, rather desensitized to it), not the fact that our "elected" leader made a buffoon of himself yet again when he stated that Queen Elizabeth was here for our country's bicentennial in 1776, not the record numbers of people being slaughtered, publicly or privately, by military coups, angry ethnic wars or religious strife. The most terrifying was the fact that Coke is buying Vitaminwater.

For those of you who don't know, Vitaminwater is exactly what it says it is: water enhanced with vitamins. It comes in many different varieties and flavors, and is a great alternative to, well, Coke, Pepsi, and other carbonated soft drink beverages. For your information, Odwalla is also owned by Coca - Cola, see the following link for more information on that acquisition.
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=70760

Now, I don't drink Odwalla juices because I prefer Naked. I DO drink Vitaminwater because they provide excellent postworkout refreshment and electrolyte replenishment.

I am also a Coca Cola FIEND. This has tapered off significantly, especially as I've been introduced, through my part-time job at Origins as well as my boyfriend's love for tea, but it's still there. In fact on my desk right now there's a Nalgene of filtered water, a glass of Pom Wonderful's new Lychee White Tea, and a 12-ounce can of Coke. Call me a hypocrite.

The issue I have is with the fact that the manufacturer of a product thst removes rust better than commercial rust remover (the Mythbusters proved this one) is now making all-natural juices and electrolyte replacement beverages (and for the record, I prefer Gatorade to Recharge, though they're both great...I think that's ingrained from when I was in sixth or seventh grade and that was the only option we had for electrolyte replacement). The way I see it, it's only a matter of time because high fructose corn syrup starts sneaking its way into your Mango Tango and Dragon Fruit drinks. I think I'll stick with Naked for now.

My Love Affair With Lilacs

My boyfriend probably thinks I am crazy, and understandably so. But still...

Every spring since we moved to Colorado in 1995, right around the end of March thru the beginning of May, I waited, captivated by the blooms which, though tiny and furled, would soon open to release the most magical scent, the most beautiful flowers, in colors ranging from pure white to the palest lavender to bright fuchsia and beyond. The blooms would last a month or so, eventually, as all spring flowers do in the arid heat of the Colorado summer, fade, crumple and die. As I sit here writing this today there is a vase full of tiny white lilacs—my favorite; their scent is so sweet. There’s another, larger, vase on the middle of my coffee table. One in the bathroom. Two in my bedroom. I can’t get enough of them. And yes, they droop and die quickly in my vases, no matter how tenderly I try to handle them or how carefully I monitor their fresh water; they very simply need their bushes, the mother plants they were so unkindly snipped from at the giddy greed of my shears.

I don’t remember lilacs in New Jersey, but that’s where Mom remembered them from, and her eyes would grow wide as she told us of these incredible bushes that lie dormant for most of the year and then, for only a short time, burst forth with the most beautifully-scented, heavenly flowers. I was enraptured, and couldn’t wait for the lilacs to start blooming. It was no secret that the relationship between my mother and I was, at best, strained, though while I outwardly maintained my standard-issue adolescent angst, rudeness, brattiness and outright cruelty towards my mother and sister, I inwardly ached for my mother’s approval, my sister’s confidence. The confidence that would grow between Emily and I had to grow from a wary trust, and by the time she began confiding in me I was completely blown away. I was honored and terrified, what do I do now? Oh my God, she actually loves me and respects me and wants my opinion! Oh, shit! But that’s another post, for another day.

My relationship with my mother, on the other hand, was absolutely awful. I cried myself to sleep at night because I couldn’t make her understand where I was coming from, she was totally against me, she always took Emily’s side, she…take your pick of horrible motherly sins, they utterly destroyed me at times. I can’t say for sure because I haven’t asked, but I wonder now, now that I’m an adult—well, more of an adult, anyway—and our relationship has grown into a deeply loving and respectful friendship, if she cried herself to sleep those nights too. Not knowing the answer, I’m still confident it’s probably “yes”.

My mother’s birthday is April 17, prime time for lilac picking. The awesome part about lilac picking is that while many people grow them in their own private lawns and would rather not have them violated by a skinny little teenager with a pair of shears and a heart set on procuring the luscious flowers for her mother’s surprise birthday present, they also grow all over the place, wild. One entire main avenue near our house was nothing but lilac blooms for five or six blocks, and so, on the morning of April 17, I would set my alarm super-early (Mom’s an early riser, so getting anything done before she gets up requires some thoughtful planning in advance) and, by six o’clock in the morning was riding my bicycle along Drake Road in Fort Collins, clipping the beautifully fragrant, silky branches and dropping them into the knapsack I’d brought along for this express purpose. When Mom got up that morning, she was greeted by a sleepy, but smiling, oldest daughter, a gigantic bouquet of lilacs and a Happy Birthday card. She hugged me tight and thanked me and kissed me, and for a moment, everything was okay.

I took advantage of this tactic every year I lived in Fort Collins for Mom’s birthday and then again for Mother’s Day, and she was always delighted, although I’m sure the surprise wore off pretty quickly. And of course they died quickly, drooping and wilting in their vases until they finally had to be discarded, mournfully.

I’m not a typical Boulderite. That is, I ride my bike absolutely everywhere, but it’s because I have no other option, save my feet or the bus (which is absurdly expensive), or maybe a taxi (even more expensive). I eat well because I work for a natural-foods company. I take Bikram yoga classes because I love them…that’s all, pure and simple. But I also love Coca-Cola and junk food and until recently was a smoker and imbibed alcohol on a fairly regular basis (these two habits have been cutoff entirely…smoking for good, drinking for awhile, at least, if not forever). So the conclusion I’m about to draw here digs a bit deep for parallels, so you’ll have to excuse what I see as completely obvious, but will probably come off as sounding like your standard-issue Boulderite fruitcake, yet another resident of the city known as “ten square miles surrounded by reality”. But I don’t really care. It’s my blog, and I get to say whatever I want here, and if you’re reading this, you can form your own opinions. Anyway. At this point in my life I see a unique relationship between the lilacs I would pick for her, and the relationship we struggled through during my teenage years. When removed from its “mother” or the mother plant, the lilac draws its nutrients however it can: a vase filled with water, the ground if it’s been carelessly torn down. But without the mother plant, the thriving organism that gives it life, allows its blooms to unfold and open to the sun, strong, hardy blooms ready to take on the world, or at least, produce magnificent scents and beautiful flowers until they grow dormant again until the next year. This relationship, looking back, was not unlike my relationship with my mother. The further away I got from my mother, the more I wilted, the more I drooped, fell apart, because angry and depressed and enraged and gave up. But the moments that we were connected, the times that I felt our closeness so tangibly it made me cry, were the times I felt the strongest, the most myself, the best about my life and my happiness.

So, call me a crazy Boulderite. I don’t care. My love affair with lilacs will continue for the rest of my life. As will my love for my mother.

BolderBoulder 2007

Well here it is just 19 days shy of the 29th BolderBoulder, the 10k race that draws thousands of people into Boulder for just one weekend, and then they all leave again. I am starting to wonder given my growing dread of running if I can prep for this race by cycling and yoga alone. Ohyeah, right, it's a 10k RUN. Duh.

I need to get my arse in gear. This is almost embarrassing. The hundred's not going to happen and neither is my humble desire to complete a marathon in each of the months of June, July and August and then do the Boulder Backroads Marathon again in September. I guess we shall see...maybe I'll just run the course in June, July and August in prep for September. That could be cool.

I really need to get on board with training, it's just been wearing on me and I have too much energy and not enough to do with it all. Youth is wasted on the young, I suppose...

Does a Wannabe Trailrunner S*** In The Woods?

You bet we do! Holy cow, I've had plenty of runs where "holding it" really meant hauling to the end where I could safely empty the contents of my bowels into the nearest Port-a-Potty but this time...this time...there I was...out at the Boulder Reservoir...the closest ANYTHING civilization-esque being a house at the end of a half-mile long driveway. So it was either...sprint that hafl mile, praying someone was home the whole time, beat on their door, desperately try to convince them (if they were home) that I wasn't a lunatic, just out doing an eighteen-mile run and suddenly had the urgent need to evacuate my bowels, stat, hope that they would believe me AND not mind the lack of delicacy of the subject at hand, and allow me to use their restroom or there was...the ditch. Slightly hidden by a bare-branched tree (no spring leaves to cover up yet), about two feet down, a nice little incline from the road to the lip of the ditch givine me enough room (I hoped, I hoped) for cover. Grateful for the fact that my allergies require that I run with the equivalent of several boxes of Kleenex stuffed into the pockets of my gear, I dropped trou, squatted, and let loose.

Oh, come on now, it wasn't THAT bad. It wasn't like I some great diarrheaic fountain pouring out of me, just your average poop, no big deal. Until I saw the car. The car stopped at the stop sign at the T-intersection where every other car I'd seen while running along this route thus far turned the other way. The car that would, of course, luck of the Irish combined with luck of the ill-fated endurance athlete (I never knew there was such luck until this moment; the luck of the Irish I've been a victim of my entire life), turn this way. In my direction. I had maybe a block or two before they'd see me. I quickly draped my Nike jacket around me to cover as much flesh as possible without shitting all over the damned thing as well, and hung my head as the vehicle lumbered slowly by. I peeked up just in time to see an elderly couple staring at me, aghast. Whoops. Looks like I didn't do a good enough job of covering up.

Afterwards I resumed my run as qucikly as possible. I felt...lighter, less encumbered, for sure but oddly, animalistic. I even kicked a bunch of dirt off of the road to cover my scat and dug a crude hole in which I placed my used toilet paper, then carefully covered it and weighed it down with a rock. I felt suddenly like my cat, a bit, and in some weird way understood now why she felt the need to cover her scat. There were some sort of primal feelings in me that had been dormant my whole life, but suddenly and very strangely were awakened. I looked around me, at the dirt roads, at the multi-million dollar houses and ranches, at the communities bordering the edges of the foothills, and for the first time I realized just how far we've come, us humans, this singular and entirely-too-complex species I belong to. I sort of wondered, as I eased into my regular pace and my breathing regulated itself, had we really evolved or were we moving backwards? When did partial nudity (okay, people, the most theu could have seen were the sides of my behind and thighs) and disposal of waste become this clandestine act? And why did we allow it to become so? I pondered it for awhile and then, suddenly, as Ricky Martin's "She Bangs!" started blasting through my head I realized: Dondi, you're pondering the evolution of shit. A wide grin spread over my face, my head cleared, and I kept on truckin. There was a nasty hill I was about to encounter, and my concentration definitely needed some refocusing. I put my head down, increased my awareness of my heart rate, breathing and foot strike, and plodded on down the road.

I Must Learn To Love My Life

God, you'd think after knowing "The Secret" and trying to put it into action I'd be more positive. I just deleted the last five posts because they are so bloody negative. So I am going to start over...and practice better...and be more positive. Lookout world, here I come...

xoxo
Dondi

I'm Back!

When I checked my gmail account this afternoon after spending a grueling hour calling vendors and stores, that was the very first email I saw. I could've shot through the roof, I was so happy, and I tried to contain my very obvious excitement from the vendors being escorted past my cubicle to a conference room by my VP ("nothing to see here, folks, nothing to see here"). "I'm Back!" was penned by my wonderful darling friend Matt, a college buddy who made International Law a much more interesting class, joined me in poking fun at (and becoming friends with) our TA in American Foreign Policy, introduced me to the finer pleasures of the Irish carbomb, spent countless hours with me totally intoxicated and yelling about Reagan at Conor O'Neills, possesses the world's most gorgeous blue eyes and fantastic grin, and completely broke my heart by joining the Army and go to Afghanistan.

Fortunately great friendships, not unlike great loves, last even through heartbreaking decisions made by one party or the other. The last time I saw Matt we went to Conor's and dropped back a few carbombs, then up to Dillon to stay at his brother and sister-in-law's place and ski one of the most fun resorts in Colorado. Being around Matt, and Ryan and Jill too, always imbued me with a sense of total happiness. These are some of the most genuine, kind, loving, warm and intelligent people I've ever known. I took him to the airport to go back to Chicago and then, a few days later, he left for Afghanistan. Fuck, man. That seems like forever ago...and it was only Thanksgivingish 2005...

Here we are at Conor O'Neill's over a year ago...the last time I saw my dear friend...and now he's HOME!!!














Can't wait to see you, babe. I am so happy you're home.

Insomniac

Melatonin is fucked-up shit, man.

I’m a major insomniac. Even as I write this now my brain is mentally sweating out, minute by minute, how much less sleep I will receive because I am sitting here writing this post instead of sleeping. I have MAJOR sleep issues and I can’t take sleeping medications…as determined by my blackout experiences with them. Anyone who’s ever been blacked-out drunk knows blacking out isn’t like other states of unconsciousness, because you’re still doing stuff. Blacking out just means you’ve intoxicated yourself to the point where your brain has shut off its memory functions in self-defense, its desperate attempt to keep you from poisoning it further than you are. For those of you who swear drinking to excess is okay, it isn’t. Alcohol is poison. End of story. There’s a reason it’s called intoxicated, people. Anyway…sleeping pills have the same effect on me as alcohol, with scarier events happening (I nearly burned down my apartment, drank an entire bottle of wine on my own in one evening, and gave myself a deep gash in the leg…none of which I remember, at all) and no hangover, so I’ve been working with more homeopathic./herbal/natural sleep aids for awhile now trying to figure out something that works for me. I have trouble getting to sleep, see…once I’m there, I’m okay thru the night, but until I get there, I toss and turn and can be up half the night trying to turn my brain off or at least quiet it enough so that it doesn’t keep me awake. Gaia Herbs “Sound Sleep” formula was a good find for me, but it’s expensive (even at 20% off, my discount for being a loyal employee of Wild Oats Markets, Inc. for 6+ years) and not as effective at getting me to sleep as I’d like. Wine works beautifully except for the hangover, potential liver destruction, and issues with substance abuse running deep on both sides of my family. What to do for the chronic insomniac?

Enter Origins, a division of Estee Lauder Cosmetics, International. I originally took this part-time job to earn some extra cash, enjoy a deep discount on products I already loved, and for great writing material (retail is always good for this). I did not expect my first blog on my experiences with Origins to be on a product, however. Anyway, I took this job part-time in October to earn some extra money. It fits well with my day job, both being centered in wellness-based companies, and I really fully appreciate how well they complement each other. When I am discussing a product at Origins and my customer wants to know what it does, I can usually refer to a supplement or experience I’ve gained from working for Oats for so long. When I’m at the office, I will often recommend an Origins product for a skincare concern or offer to bring samples of something that I know will work well for them. The possibilities are endless and my work ethic and sales skills (unbeknownst to moi, I assure you!) have garnered me a comfy position as a well-loved part-timer at Origins. Which is great, because with 45% off, I can actually afford the skincare I love.

Well, we carry a supplement called “Nite-trition” that you take before bedtime to help you sleep and to “help restore skin’s vitality overnight”. A proprietary blend of peppermint, lavender, chamomile, ginseng and melatonin, it seems like more of a sleep aid than a skin restorative (that’s what Night-A-Mins are for, dear) to me, but what do I know? So I got some that a customer returned (post-Christmas, we are now well into return season…ugh) and took it home and took it last night with my glass of red wine (don’t even start; one glass is good for you…anymore than that is NOT) and my Gaia Sound Sleep and went to bed about an hour later. My brain was slowing a bit sooner and more efficiently than normal, and I thought maybe I’d finally found the perfect curative for my insomnia.

So when I woke up hearing my alarms going off in the distance, I was quite confused. Where the hell was I? How did I get there? Why were my alarms so far away? It was like waking up in an episode of the Twilight Zone, seriously. Freaked me out big time.

I finally sorted out that I was on my couch, curled up on one fo the couch pillows, with my couch blanket (fortunately, a warm fleece) tucked around me. I’d taken off the cotton socks I wore to bed and had laid them neatly beside me. I got up, went into my bedroom, and turned the alarms off and the lights on. From there, waking was impossible, I simply could NOT get enough sleep. I finally dragged ass out of bed around 7:15 and got into the shower. Ugh. As best as I can reason, I got up to go to the bathroom and went back to bed on my couch for some bizarre reason that made sense to my herbally-addled brain much better in the middle of the night than it does now.

So, the moral of the story is…don’t mix supplements, they can fuck with you big time. Just because they’re herbal doesn’t mean they’re safe. I am taking the Nite-trition by itself tonight and am already feeling a bit more tired than I normally would without it, so my hope is that this works as well as I think it could. And now I need to get to bed, because my brain is telling me that it’s 11:12pm, I am getting up at 5:30 to run, and that gives me less than 6.5 hours of sleep.

Best wishes for peaceful sleeping and thanks for reading…

In other news...

It just occurred to me that anyone who reads this blog probably thinks I do absolutely nothing but train all the time. It also occurred to me that this is not only entirely untrue, but that lately I have found that I can barely squeeze my training into the rest of my life, and that some of the rest of my life is getting pretty tight as well!

So, to catch everyone up...let's see...I am working two jobs now, full-time nine-to-fiver at Wild Oats Markets' corporate office and part-time some evenings and weekends at an Origins retail store...corporate peon by day, brilliant saleswoman by night! So that keeps me busy. I am writing regularly and submitting some work to contests very soon. My little sister Em just moved to North Carolina and I miss her like crazy...it's just me & Mom out here in CO now...here's Em with her dog Haze and Em and I after a 5k we ran on her birthday.





















I have hesitated to speak in any sort of definitive tone about this for quite some time, but I'm relatively comfortable admitting that I'm involved with a pretty great guy. Jack's my neighbor and we've met a few dozen times on the stairs and in the laundry room of our building over the past three years, but the conversation never really moved past the weather or similarly mundane, hey-there-hows-it-going talk. Until we started chatting a bit more over the summer, one thing led to another, and we've been hanging out together for awhile now. Time flies, as they say. I really like this guy...as evidenced by the super-cheesy grin on my face in these pictures.

Jack's a musician, and his devotion to his craft is evident in his incredible passion and the breadth of his talent in guitar--steel guitar, specifically--and vocals. He really, really, really loves to play music, and I really, really, really enjoy being his groupie, absurd as that sounds. I'm not usually the type to go for the brooding musician...it must be his incredible sense of humor or dashing good looks or...something...

That's really about all that's new...as usual, staying busy busy busy! Thanks for reading!

The Route I Used To Love

(I need to take a self-defense class.)

(Note to audience: Profanity ensues here…)

When I began running again some 2.5 years ago, I started out by training for the BolderBoulder 10k. The route I ran the most was a 3.5 mile loop starting at my apartment, through the Valmont/Balsam neighborhoods to Broadway, North on Broadway to Iris, Iris East to 28th Street, and South on 28th back to Valmont and, basically, my apartment just off of 28th Street and Valmont Road. It’s a great loop and can be cut into various other distances: 1 mile, 1.5 miles, 2 miles, 3 miles, just about any variation. Whichever way you run it, you end up getting a nice little uphill incline-nothing too crazy, just a gradual uphill—at the beginning, which makes you work harder to start, and a nice little downhill at the end, same deal: nothing drastic, but it gives you a bit of a rest and a chance to make sure you’re keeping your form in check, check your breathing, your pacing, your footfalls, gait, posture, etc. I love this little loop and I run it all the time.

Well, not anymore. I was running east on Iris during my second lap of what was supposed to be a 14-mile training run…so for me, 4 loops. While 14 might have been a bit overambitious, I knew I could do at least ten, so at about 6 or so I was feeling pretty good. Until this drunk sonofabitch motherfucker tried to grab me and scared the shit out of me.

I was running along, minding my own business, listening to whatever was playing on my MP3 player (I think it was Jeff Buckley’s version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, pilfered from a CD Jack brought over once…although as much as I can appreciate dark irony, I really hope it WASN’T that, because I don’t want to associate that song with this incident…it’s too beautiful) when I noticed someone cycling by me on my left, the outside or road-side of the sidewalk (this is important later). Except he didn’t cycle by me, he cycled up to me, and started trying to talk to me. This guy was an overweight Mexican man with deeply pockmarked skin & a bushy mustache, wearing a pair of Oakley knockoffs and an absolutely filthy parka, and he was turning to try to talk to me. I pulled one headphone out of my ear to try to hear what he was saying, and when I did, I noticed very quickly a few things:
1) He positively reeked of alcohol. He stank so badly that when the stench did hit me it nearly stopped me in my tracks.
2) His rambling—in Spanish—was completely slurred. I’m pretty sure that even if I were a native Spanish speaker I wouldn’t have understood a word this creature was saying.
3) He was barely able to balance on the bike he was riding—a piece of shit mutilated mountain bike—and was tottering all over the place. At one point during our very brief encounter he swerved and nearly ran right into me…I just reacted quickly enough.
Needless to say, I came very quickly to the conclusion that he was quite drunk. I shook my head at him repeatedly as he continued to ramble in Spanish and then, finally, seeing that this was going nowhere, picked up my pace. Then it got worse.

As I picked up my pace, he stepped his up to keep up with me. When I looked over at him, he was leering at me: he couldn’t have been more obviously leering had his tongue been hanging out of his mouth. LEERING. My friends and pretty much anyone who knows me atall knows this is one of those things I just don’t abide by very well atall. Glancing, winking, looking over, whatever, I don’t care. But fix your eyes on me with that hungry-dog expression and just stare, and buddy, I just want to punch your fucking lights out. Add this to the fact that, sorry to sound ethnicist/racist/whatever here, but it’s always fucking Mexican men who do this, who leer at women, at least in this part of the country. In the deep South the leering Mexicans are joined by leering white-trash redneck assholes, who are the very first reason I will never, ever, ever move to that pigheaded backwater piece of shit part of the world. Visiting my family there is hard enough. Training there was surreal: in addition to the fact that the oxygen saturation gave me much better splits than I get here in Colorado and that I had my own mobile aid station, my dad, schlepping water for me in the car and waiting for me at every mile mark, in that every mullet-wearing, Confederate-flag displaying, reason the word “redneck” was invented would slow their POS 40-year old Ford pickup to whistle or leer at me or both as I ran. I fucking HATE that. Is there something particularly sexy about cross-country running shorts and a singlet? A bright-red face under a mask of sweat and sunscreen? A breast-flattening sports bra? Anyway, back to my story…so then the worst thing happened…

I guess he realized that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with trying to talk to me, maybe he even figured out that I don’t speak Spanish after my repeated head-shaking, so he figured he’d step his pathetic overtures up a notch or two and lunged for me, trying to grab my arm or my wrist or my hand or something on my periphery. As he lunged, the warning bells that were going off in my head already turned to bright red sirens screaming “DO SOMETHING!” So I did. He lunged for me, I stepped out of his way and when he pulled his hand back to right his tottering bulk on the bicycle, I started to realize some things: that I wasn’t going to get out of this easily, this guy could persist and if I didn’t do something about it I was going to put myself in a seriously scary situation (despite the fact that it’s broad daylight on a heavily-trafficked road in the running capital of the world…I wasn’t even paying attention to cars on the road at this point), and—and this is what REALLY terrified me—it occurred to me that he was on the road side, and I was fenced in by him on one side and walls, fences and hedges on the other side. I was trapped. Which I think probably had something to do with what I did next. I turned to face him, still running or at least maintaining my gait and, lunging forward, put my hands out and shoved him away from me as hard as I could. Since he was already off balance, this pretty much did him in, and the last I saw of this fuckwit was him tipping off of his bike, then off of the sidewalk, toppling over and into the road. And then I ran.

I didn’t look back for blocks; I sprinted instead. Now, not only am I NOT a sprinter, but I’m an endurance runner…long and SLOW. Sprinting is NOT my thing and after about three blocks or so I felt like my lungs were going to burst and slowed, slowed, then stopped. My heart rate had skyrocketed and I could feel the blood pounding in my ears and throat when I finally slowed to a walk. Finally, gingerly, I glanced back. Whatever the hell happened to him, I don’t know. He wasn’t there anymore atall, not in the street, not on the sidewalk, nowhere to be found. For one crazy moment I freaked out and thought, ohno, what if he got AHEAD of me and was waiting for me and would be right then when I turned back around and so I spun around to face…nobody. Nothing there either. I began walking and after a few minutes, tried to start running again. I may as well have tried running the Leadville Trail 100 every day for a year. My legs were rubber and my heart rate was still coming down from a very very sudden increase. The trembling I felt internally transferred out into my body and limbs, and soon I was shaking so hard I balled my hands into fists and swung my arms back and forth extra-hard, racewalker-style, to try to keep from knowing how freaked out I really was, how much I was really shaking. I tried to run a few more times, but couldn’t, and finally resigned myself to walking back. My previously-warm leg muscles quickly became cold and achy, and I need to finish this blog fast so I can get into the shower and ease the millions of little mini-cramps I’m feeling in them now, no doubt a direct result of the significant amount of lactic acid built up that unfortunately now has nowhere to go and needs to be worked out of my muscles somehow, and the fact that I went from strong exercise to almost nothing very very quickly, and my muscles got COLD. When your muscles get cold they shrink a bit and harden a lot and if they get cold enough, every fucking step is agony. I didn’t quite get there, but I got close. And then the tears came...shuddering blustery sobs tearing my guts apart and wrenching my face...I can't imagine how terrible...and terrifying... I must have looked...and I didn't realy care. I just wanted to get home.

So, the moral of the story is, I won’t be running that route again anytime soon, if ever. There’s a lovely bike path near my apartment complex, I am just going to run there from now on, and the Rez when I can get out there, and probably take advantage of my dear friend Kristi’s home treadmill and repeated offers that I can use it whenever I want to. I’m really bummed about having to give up my favorite route, and I’m really kind of angry that from now on that incident will be burned into my brain if I even tried to run the route again. Mostly, though, I’m just resigned to finding a new route. Part of me wonders what I did to deserve this, what I put out into the world to manifest this situation, but the “how” of these things must be left to the universe, not to me, so I just need to accept it and move on. Maybe there’s a reasoning I’ll understand behind this someday. Maybe not. In the running capital of the world, however, where there seem to be as many pedestrian paths and trails as there are roads, I’m sure it won’t be too difficult to find another route to make my own.

**Afterthought: It is possible that he was just really that drunk, that he didn't lunge for me but was nearly falling off of his bike and reached for the closest object to keep him from falling? I think it certainly is possible, and while it doesn't make the behavior okay, it does give me a little bit of solace about the whole experience.

Gearing Up For Base...Again

I am hoping that my major accomplishment for 2007 will be the Leadville Trail 100. That’s right, a 100-mile trail run averaging around 12,500ft, starting out at the highest incorporated town in the United States. I will have to complete 2-3 more marathons and a 50-miler before then, as well as, of course, train my ass off. Gregory and my crowd of tri friends already think I am insane. (That’s okay, in my opinion, they are crazy, I am only doing one type of activity for an absurd distance while they all do three.)

Fortunately this race is not until August so I have lots of time to prepare myself physically and, most importantly, mentally.

I am a bit frustrated right now because my training has been sidelined by a horrible bout of bronchitis. Hacking cough and drippy sinuses and wheezing and fatigue. I finally ran a fever and went to the doctor. Took the weekend off from my 2nd job so I could focus on getting well and now just trying to get all of the crap out of my chest. I am still coughing so much that it seems a bit daft to try to incorporate running into my daily life right now. I am not happy about this. I had one perfect week of training and then it all went to shit when Jack got sick and I started taking care of him. While I’m perfectly aware that this was all entirely my decision and therefore, the illness I sustained was also my choice, I got sick the following week and now, two weeks later, am just beginning to feel normal enough to start running again soon. Hopefully I will be able to complete my long run scheduled for Saturday as a start to get back into it. It will be slow for sure but I really want to jump back in again. I was all set to start building my base on November 1 and did well for that first week. Then, as terrible luck would have it got sidelined the Tuesday following my first week with a sick neighbor/boyfriend who I care for deeply and won’t ignore for the sake of my training or, apparently, my health. My friend and sort-of coach Tom warned me, “You have to be selfish about this stuff.” I know he’s right, but I’m too much a caretaker. I can’t walk away when someone I love is sick. Pathetic though that is. So I pay the consequences.

Right now my training schedule is as follows:

Sunday: short run (3-6 miles)
Monday: REST
Tuesday: short run (3-6)
Wednesday: mid-distance run (6-10)
Thursday: strength training (weights, core, etc.)
Friday: cross-training (swim, bike, Bikram’s)
Saturday: LONG run (10-15)

Tom looked it over & thought it was pretty good. Tom’s exactly the kind of coach I need: a person who will harass me at the office about whether or not I am following my training plan, who will look over my schedule for me and hound me about it, but who won’t be crunching numbers for me or yelling at me every mile during my training runs (unbelievably, some endurance athletes actually have a life), who has done a couple of ultras so has great experience but knows I’m not out to conquer the ultra world so won’t be a jerk. I do appreciate the getting on my case at work…it really does help.

Now the only way to deal with my training frustrations is to go out and do my program…hopefully that will not be more easily said than done!

Happy training…