A “reloaded” post is a quick-clipped summary of a bunch of small things from the past few days. I want to write them down, but I am either lacking in (a) details or (b) time. That’s just how it goes sometimes. Enjoy. On the Tick For the fourth year in a row, approximately mid-morning on New Year’s Day, I found myself standing in the start line of Resolution Run garbed in a brand new (blue) race jacket and in some state of freezing and recovery from the holiday past. The five click jaunt around a neighborhood in South Edmonton isn’t meant to be much more than a primed start to the turn of the annum… followed by a pancake breakfast. It had been a warm [...]

It’s one of those Fridays when (thanks to my compressed work weeks) I’m off. So, I’m blogging. But sometime today — either later this morning or sometime tonight — I’m going to go out for the ninth of my thirty-two daily runs in December (plus January First’s Resolution Run.) And, about half way through that run, summing up all the klicks I’ve run in those nine days, probably not marking the moment with anything more than a cold shrug, I’m going to pass the 42.2 km mark. That’s a marathon. But, a couple things. First, I don’t actually know how much effort it would be to run a real marathon. A lot, I assume. I do however know how much it takes to run a [...]

As much as I try to deny it, I’ve always been a bit of a fanboy when it comes to the whole New Year’s reolutions thing. I can’t think of a year when I haven’t — even if it has just been privately — made some little life-altering goal for January first. But then I had a slightly different idea this year. The logic goes something like this: Every year we make a big deal about the year turning over, spouting off some nonsense and drivel about how the calendar is being refreshed and renewed and that our lives are due for the same kind of winter maintenance. January first rolls around and we have — most of us — made little promises to ourselves [...]

So, here it is straight; I’ve had a really shitty year for running. I’ve run a lot, but out of the four full calendar years I’ve been running, this year, 2011, has ranked pretty close to lowest total kilometers. I’ve shirked. I’ve made excuses. I’ve… well… you know how it goes, right? I had set this fairly mediocre goal back in January, and — even though I thought I’d bust through it no problem — I’m (as of right now) about a hundred and thirty klicks short. And, math-oriented geek that I tend to be, I mapped this out and easily determined that I’m no where near (even accounting for my clinic-based running in December) close to on track for that goal. How disappointing. Turns [...]

A Random Find? I was poking through some old (Google Docs) documents and found this essay on running I’d written back in 2009 for a project I’d started and never completed. It’s not polished, but it’s complete, and I thought rather than hide it away in some dusty digital archive, I may as well hang it out for folks to read. It might be interesting for someone. Interface: a point at which independent systems or diverse groups interact. Let’s begin. The ambient air temperature is a frigid minus twenty degrees Celsius and the mismatched collection of runners gathered at the storefront are exhaling in deep bursts of frosty breaths that must first pass through the knit face-masks now caked with white ice crystals. A few [...]

I must have been in some kind of post-run daze, having forgot to mention while prolifically spouting off in two blog posts last night, that yesterday was another experience in extreme weather running. Specifically — and I don’t know why, sitting here in the coffee shop at seven-thirty this morning I am reminded and compelled to share — an experience of running in the rain. Wednesdays are typically a run club night.  My attendance has been spotty at best, our weekday evening schedules either cluttered by other obligations or just simple fatigue from the day.  But I’d taken the bus to and from work, had a fairly relaxing commute curled up in a train or bus seat with my Kindle, and (having struck lucky with [...]