I've been obsessing over a minute for a three days now.
Last Saturday I ran the Weston Fest 5k, and let me say at the start that it was a great race. It was cheap — $10 with T-shirt, $5 without. (I took the shirt; it says "Village of Weston" on the back, and I'm starting to collect items of clothing that have a sense of place with them). It had a great course that included the Birch Street bike/pedestrian bridge over Highway 29. (All bike/ped bridges are just cool and a car honked encouragingly when my fellow competitors were crossing it.) And it had a nice field of runners, about 200 or so, I reckon, athletes of all ages. (Including most of the members of the D.C. Everest High School cross country team, who trounced everybody, I think. Shouldn't the WIAA do something about that?)
The race started and ended at Kennedy Park, and I knew the course had a good, long hill, the one going south on Birch Street heading toward Ministry Saint Clare's Hospital. So my plan was to run even and steady up the hill, then push hard on the downhill stretch past Everest High to the finish.
It was good plan, and it worked great. I ran the first mile in nine minutes and felt good about that. (I realize that nine-minute miles are a very pedestrian pace for most runners. But it's brisk for me, and besides the numbers really don't matter. It's all about the spirit behind the numbers.)
I felt strong throughout the race, especially going up the hill. Strong and steady, just like I had planned. I got a bit gassed on the downhill, but hey, I thought it's OK. With about a half mile to go, and the finish in sight, I looked at my watch. It said 27 minutes.
What?! How could that be? I knew the race was over. My goal was to beat 27:30, my time from the last 5k I ran, a few weeks ago in Moorhead, MN. I had biked about 60 miles before that race, and it was hot and humid. I struggled throughout the whole three miles, and the only thing that saved me was that Moorhead is not as flat as a pancake, but flatter.
So everything about the Weston race pointed to a good time. Not a top three time, not a winning time, but a good time for me, who I am, what I am and where I am in my life and fitness level. So when I saw that 27 minutes, everything just deflated and while I pushed to the end, my heart wasn't in it. A girl, she looked like she was about 12, and her dad both outsprinted me at the finish.
I ended up with a time of 28:32. I know it's only 20 seconds per mile or so slower than the Moorhead race. So what's the big deal?
The big deal is that I had birthday between the races. The big deal is that I still believe I can run a 5k in 21 minutes or so, like I used to when I was in high school. I know, I know. It doesn't really make any sense, but it's there anyway. I'm 46 years old now, and I'm facing the inevitability that I won't be able to improve my times at all, that I'll just have to accept the reality of aging and humanity and life, and know that my times will decline.
So it's not just about the 20 seconds per mile. It's about being 46 years old and realizing that life is finite, and that there are many more things to come that will be slower, or the last or whatever.
My running career -- yeah, I'm calling it that -- isn't anywhere near over. It's been punctuated by a lot more losses than victories, and always, always, I toe another starting line and keep on running. This won't be any different. I hope to run until I'm 90. I'll find new ways to find meaning and joy from running and biking and competing in races.
And maybe I'll run a 5k in 21 minutes again, sometime.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Monday, July 16, 2012
Fargo
I love the Coen Brothers, but the movie "Fargo" certainly does not do justice to the real town. "Fargo", of course, is about a bunch of slow talking Minnesotans who pepper their conversations with a "Ya sure" a lot.
The real Fargo is in North Dakota, and the people there talk nothing like Twin City suburbanites. They sound more like the cowboys from "Lonesome Dove" than they do the characters of the Coen Brothers movie.
OK. So they took some artistic license with the naming of the movie. After all, would a movie called "Eden Prairie" have the same cache?
But my real problem is that the movie leaves the impression that the real city is a boring, middle-of-nowhere place. Fargo IS a middle of nowhere place, and that's what makes it cool. But after two long weekends of visiting the town, I think it's everything but boring.
The fact that is is surrounded by a flat-as-a-pancake prairie, with no other major city to be found within 100 miles, naturally makes Fargo interesting. There is a great minor league baseball team, some terrific stores, a nifty little museum devoted to baseball great Roger Maris, who grew up in Fargo.
Really, Fargo is the northern gateway to the west, and that in itself makes it cool. The guys wear cowboys shirts, the girls walk around downtown in flowing dresses. There are pickup trucks and motorcycles and hot sports cars. Oh, and there are a lot of trains running through there.
Moorhead, Fargo's little Minnesota sister, has a great Scandinavian heritage center, the Hjemkomst Center. I had my first (and last) meal of lutefisk there. Hjemkomst, by the way, means homecoming in Norwegian.
But the best surprise for me is how great Fargo is its bicycling. There are bike lanes everywhere, and the street systems made up of a numbered streets and avenues make it easy to find your way around. There are great paved biking paths weaving through a bunch of nice parks, and the Red River running its meandering way north makes it all interesting.
I stayed at the Super 8 on the south end of Moorhead, and used my bike to get just about everywhere. But I also took a couple of long bike rides out into the country, and the prairie roads make riding interesting. On a 60-mile loop, I found the flatness and the fields and loneliness awesome. For the first hour. Then I realized that nothing much was changing. I was tapping out a decent tempo, never shifting up or down, never having to think about much of anything at all. It was at once cool and disconcerting at the same time -- there was a distinct sensation that despite all the work being put in, I wasn't moving at all. I found myself looking at my computer a lot, just to make sure I was making headway.
I also went for a nice 6-mile out-and-back run, heading south out of Moorhead. I ended up on a gravel road that ran between a cornfield on one side, soybeans on another. No cars, no people, just me and plants and an occasional blackbird. The vistas were amazing, and sky was everywhere. Such a cool sensation of the open spaces, so different from running and biking in hilly, green and woodsy Marathon County.
The real Fargo is in North Dakota, and the people there talk nothing like Twin City suburbanites. They sound more like the cowboys from "Lonesome Dove" than they do the characters of the Coen Brothers movie.
OK. So they took some artistic license with the naming of the movie. After all, would a movie called "Eden Prairie" have the same cache?
But my real problem is that the movie leaves the impression that the real city is a boring, middle-of-nowhere place. Fargo IS a middle of nowhere place, and that's what makes it cool. But after two long weekends of visiting the town, I think it's everything but boring.
The fact that is is surrounded by a flat-as-a-pancake prairie, with no other major city to be found within 100 miles, naturally makes Fargo interesting. There is a great minor league baseball team, some terrific stores, a nifty little museum devoted to baseball great Roger Maris, who grew up in Fargo.
Really, Fargo is the northern gateway to the west, and that in itself makes it cool. The guys wear cowboys shirts, the girls walk around downtown in flowing dresses. There are pickup trucks and motorcycles and hot sports cars. Oh, and there are a lot of trains running through there.
Moorhead, Fargo's little Minnesota sister, has a great Scandinavian heritage center, the Hjemkomst Center. I had my first (and last) meal of lutefisk there. Hjemkomst, by the way, means homecoming in Norwegian.
But the best surprise for me is how great Fargo is its bicycling. There are bike lanes everywhere, and the street systems made up of a numbered streets and avenues make it easy to find your way around. There are great paved biking paths weaving through a bunch of nice parks, and the Red River running its meandering way north makes it all interesting.
I stayed at the Super 8 on the south end of Moorhead, and used my bike to get just about everywhere. But I also took a couple of long bike rides out into the country, and the prairie roads make riding interesting. On a 60-mile loop, I found the flatness and the fields and loneliness awesome. For the first hour. Then I realized that nothing much was changing. I was tapping out a decent tempo, never shifting up or down, never having to think about much of anything at all. It was at once cool and disconcerting at the same time -- there was a distinct sensation that despite all the work being put in, I wasn't moving at all. I found myself looking at my computer a lot, just to make sure I was making headway.
I also went for a nice 6-mile out-and-back run, heading south out of Moorhead. I ended up on a gravel road that ran between a cornfield on one side, soybeans on another. No cars, no people, just me and plants and an occasional blackbird. The vistas were amazing, and sky was everywhere. Such a cool sensation of the open spaces, so different from running and biking in hilly, green and woodsy Marathon County.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
What happened to Father Rene Menard?
(Note: I wrote this column back in 2003 for the Wausau Daily Herald. I liked it, so I'm posting it here.)
What happened to Father Rene Menard?
Only God knows for sure.
Menard was a French priest, one of the first Europeans to walk and explore the wild land that would become Wisconsin. He spent his days in the middle 1600s doggedly spreading the word of his God to the native people of North America. But the end of his story is shrouded in fog.
Some historians from Lincoln County think the pioneering priest may have gone missing somewhere north of Merrill in July 1661. In 1923, the Merrill Council of the Knights of Columbus erected a monument to Menard at the top of Nine Mile Hill on Highway 107 between Merrill and Tomahawk, using a granite obelisk to forever claim the explorer as their own.
The memorial's brief and tantalizing inscription, carved in simple block letters, reads: "In honor of Pere Rene Menard. Born at Paris Sept. 7th, 1605. Entered the Jesuit order Nov. 7th, 1624. Sailed for Quebec in March 1640. Lost hereabouts in July 1661, while en route to Huron village to baptize Indian refugees."
Not to be critical of the good folks of the 1923 Merrill Council of the Knights of Columbus, but this inscription raises more questions than it answers.
Lost? How? Why? Did he forget his compass? And "hereabouts" simply isn't specific enough for me. I've stopped at the monument numerous times, and on each visit, I am tempted to take a hike in the woods to look for a skeleton or an ancient cross.
It just so happened that the last time I stopped at the monument (along with my wife on the way back from a sojourn in Minocqua, because she goes nuts over roadside monuments), I happened to have a book in my truck entitled "Wisconsin River of History," by William F. Stark.
This is a 354-page tome, but it devoted just three midsize paragraphs to the beloved Father Menard. Unfortunately, those three paragraphs just deepened the mystery.
Stark writes that Menard was "not in the best of health," and traveled to Wisconsin to "minister to some of his former converts who had been residing in the eastern part of Canada but had been forced west by the fierce Iroquois and were now located on the south shore of Lake Superior."
Menard was near some rapids at the headwaters of the Black River when he stepped ashore to lighten the canoe, Stark maintains. He never returned to the river, and several years later Menard's cassock was discovered in the possession of some Sioux Indians.
That just begs the question: The Black River? That's really not anywhere "hereabouts" of the monument, unless you draw a wide circle on the map.
Because of the incongruity of the monument and Stark's account, I turned to another resource, a book simply and elegantly entitled "Wisconsin," which I found in the back corner of the Wausau Daily Herald library. This five-volume resource, edited by Fred L. Holmes, and published by The Lewis Publishing Co. of Chicago in 1946, dedicated nearly a page to Menard.
"Though broken and infirm from twenty years of labor in the Canadian wilderness, he welcomed the opportunity to go as a missionary to the distant tribesmen," the book said.
Menard traveled from Quebec, said Holmes, with seven French fur traders. They weren't kind men.
"Menard, according to the Jesuit chronicle, suffered neglect and abuse from his traveling companions," Holmes mentions.
He made it to what is now Ashland, Holmes said, where he devoted himself to preaching to Indians.
During the summer of 1661, he set out inland with one French guide to find a band of Hurons who were starving. On his return, the guide said he became separated from the wilderness priest. Holmes conjectures that Menard disappeared on the Jump or Yellow River in what is now Taylor County.
Did Menard simply keel over while relieving himself in the woods? Or was he set upon and murdered? Was he on the Wisconsin, Jump, Yellow or Black River?
We'll probably never know, said Alice F. Krueger, 74, a vice president of the Merrill Historical Society. But Krueger said there are many who are convinced that Menard walked on Lincoln County soil. A rock with a cross carved in it was found in northeast Lincoln County, and that sent intrepid historians out with metal detectors to find some Menard artifact. Nothing was ever found.
OK, so maybe Menard didn't disappear near the monument on Highway 107. But standing there, on top of the hill, looking at the green forests to the north, it's easy to imagine a man of God walking along, listening to the wind in the trees, preparing to meet his maker.
What happened to Father Rene Menard?
Only God knows for sure.
Menard was a French priest, one of the first Europeans to walk and explore the wild land that would become Wisconsin. He spent his days in the middle 1600s doggedly spreading the word of his God to the native people of North America. But the end of his story is shrouded in fog.
Some historians from Lincoln County think the pioneering priest may have gone missing somewhere north of Merrill in July 1661. In 1923, the Merrill Council of the Knights of Columbus erected a monument to Menard at the top of Nine Mile Hill on Highway 107 between Merrill and Tomahawk, using a granite obelisk to forever claim the explorer as their own.
The memorial's brief and tantalizing inscription, carved in simple block letters, reads: "In honor of Pere Rene Menard. Born at Paris Sept. 7th, 1605. Entered the Jesuit order Nov. 7th, 1624. Sailed for Quebec in March 1640. Lost hereabouts in July 1661, while en route to Huron village to baptize Indian refugees."
Not to be critical of the good folks of the 1923 Merrill Council of the Knights of Columbus, but this inscription raises more questions than it answers.
Lost? How? Why? Did he forget his compass? And "hereabouts" simply isn't specific enough for me. I've stopped at the monument numerous times, and on each visit, I am tempted to take a hike in the woods to look for a skeleton or an ancient cross.
It just so happened that the last time I stopped at the monument (along with my wife on the way back from a sojourn in Minocqua, because she goes nuts over roadside monuments), I happened to have a book in my truck entitled "Wisconsin River of History," by William F. Stark.
This is a 354-page tome, but it devoted just three midsize paragraphs to the beloved Father Menard. Unfortunately, those three paragraphs just deepened the mystery.
Stark writes that Menard was "not in the best of health," and traveled to Wisconsin to "minister to some of his former converts who had been residing in the eastern part of Canada but had been forced west by the fierce Iroquois and were now located on the south shore of Lake Superior."
Menard was near some rapids at the headwaters of the Black River when he stepped ashore to lighten the canoe, Stark maintains. He never returned to the river, and several years later Menard's cassock was discovered in the possession of some Sioux Indians.
That just begs the question: The Black River? That's really not anywhere "hereabouts" of the monument, unless you draw a wide circle on the map.
Because of the incongruity of the monument and Stark's account, I turned to another resource, a book simply and elegantly entitled "Wisconsin," which I found in the back corner of the Wausau Daily Herald library. This five-volume resource, edited by Fred L. Holmes, and published by The Lewis Publishing Co. of Chicago in 1946, dedicated nearly a page to Menard.
"Though broken and infirm from twenty years of labor in the Canadian wilderness, he welcomed the opportunity to go as a missionary to the distant tribesmen," the book said.
Menard traveled from Quebec, said Holmes, with seven French fur traders. They weren't kind men.
"Menard, according to the Jesuit chronicle, suffered neglect and abuse from his traveling companions," Holmes mentions.
He made it to what is now Ashland, Holmes said, where he devoted himself to preaching to Indians.
During the summer of 1661, he set out inland with one French guide to find a band of Hurons who were starving. On his return, the guide said he became separated from the wilderness priest. Holmes conjectures that Menard disappeared on the Jump or Yellow River in what is now Taylor County.
Did Menard simply keel over while relieving himself in the woods? Or was he set upon and murdered? Was he on the Wisconsin, Jump, Yellow or Black River?
We'll probably never know, said Alice F. Krueger, 74, a vice president of the Merrill Historical Society. But Krueger said there are many who are convinced that Menard walked on Lincoln County soil. A rock with a cross carved in it was found in northeast Lincoln County, and that sent intrepid historians out with metal detectors to find some Menard artifact. Nothing was ever found.
OK, so maybe Menard didn't disappear near the monument on Highway 107. But standing there, on top of the hill, looking at the green forests to the north, it's easy to imagine a man of God walking along, listening to the wind in the trees, preparing to meet his maker.
Monday, April 30, 2012
The Fringe
The Fringe at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point was billed as a night of original, student-written theater.
As you may or may not know, my nephew Luke is studying musical theater at my alma mater, and Luke has been talking about his role in one of the four Fringe plays. He made it sound weird and wild, and I was up for something like that Friday night.
But my expectations were low. They shouldn't have been, because I've been to several productions at UWSP over the past two years, and almost without exception they've blown me away, shown me the power of live theater and generally given me a different perspective on interesting subjects including the obsession that often accompanies great art, Irish culture in the late 1800s to the political struggles at the beginning of the AIDS crisis in New York City. ("A Normal Heart," still thinking about that one.") The latest production I went to was "A Streetcar Named Desire," which was so good that I thought the movie starring Marlon Brando paled in comparison.
But The Fringe was going to be something different, I told myself. I guess I was expecting the level of writing that my classmates and I produced in a scriptwriting class in 1989. I wrote a movie about a young naive kid going off to college, and frankly, it makes me cringe even thinking about it. And my script was probably one of the top third in the class. Most of it was trite stuff, either, boring, stupid or pretentious, or in my case, all three at once. My prejudice is that a college kid simply doesn't have enough experience to write with depth. Passion, yes. Originality, yes. But meaning? Well, maybe. Of course it didn't help that Luke prefaced the performance by saying, "It's a little long."
Within the first 10 minutes of the first performance, my close-minded perceptions came tumbling down.
Play 1:
"Where the Green Things Grow"
Written by Tom Bebeau
Directed by Zach Woods
This short play was about what happens after a 17-year-old decided to break into an older neighbor's greenhouse to steal a flower to impress a girl. In a very short time, we learn the kid is insecure and geeky, that his father was a jerk. The neighbor is a widower who deals with his pain by nurturing plants.
What I most liked about this play was that it developed deep, rich and funny characters in such a short period of time. My only quibble, if I have to find one, is that the dialogue about Harry Potter was a bit off. Wouldn't a bright a 17-year-old such as Michael progressed a little deeper into geekdom than Potter? Or am I doing an injustice to the Potter world?
Play 2:
"Commitment"
Written by Abigail Hencheck
Directed by Eric Norton
This play was about an elderly woman living on her own, and at an age where her daughter wonders if she needs more help. Rose Mary, the elderly woman, is a kick of a character, and Hanna Gaffney made the most of her character. Her flirting with the sheriff was terrific.
The conflict of the story comes shortly after Rose Mary's daughter, Kathleen, marries a man, Richard, who has a college-bound daughter. Richard tries to convince Rose Mary to loan him money for his daughter's education. When she refuses, he tries to have Rose Mary committed to a home to gain access to her money.
This play, too, captured me. Both "Where the Green Things Grow" and "Commitment" were strong because they were able to mix the nuances such as grief, caring for elderly parents, insecurity, etc., with humor.
I really liked "Commitment" because you never know if Rose Mary foils Richard through dumb luck and ignorance or whether she cannily set Richard up. Quibbling criticism: Kathleen comes off as smart and strong -- it seems to me that she could have seen through Richard and called him on it. I might change her character to show her so blindingly besotted with Richard that she couldn't recognize that he was a class A ass. As it was, she stood up to him on money matters. Wouldn't she surely stand up to him when it comes to the care of her mother?
Play 3:
"Baby Steps"
Written by Erica Figurin
Directed by Lauren Kacere
I liked this play the least among the four, not because of its quality in writing or acting, but more because of its theme. It was a melodrama about a couple, Dan and Haley, who have struggled to have a child. Haley especially yearns to be a mother, and is ecstatic when she finds out she's pregnant. Dan is happy, too, but at the same time he's feeling the guilt of having an affair.
Just not my cup of tea, frankly. It had all the elements of a Lifetime movie, from what I understand, since I've never watched a Lifetime movie. There was tragedy in the play, when a car accident injures the couple and kills the baby, and Dan realizes that he loves Haley and his life with her.
Quibbling criticism: I don't think the affair worked. It makes Dan, played by Tom Bebeau, who wrote "Where the Green Things Grow," to be too much of a jackass, and I think such a person who would carry on an affair, tell his girlfriend about his wife, and simultaneously work to prepare for a baby would be too far gone into self obsession to come to the realization that Dan did. I think it might have worked better if Dan simply didn't want to have a kid, and instead is having an affair with a job, or something like that. Make him go through the motions of preparing for a child, then realize it's what he wanted after its too late.
Play 4:
"Donner Party"
Written by Hanna Gaffney (who was great as Rose Mary in "Commitment)
Directed by Kelsey Yudice
Here's where the weirdness that I expected came in, and, of course, Luke was in the middle of it all. Because of the title, I expected something set in the old West. Instead, what we got was a truly original combination of slapstick, gothic themes, British humor a la Bertie and Jeeves and Oscar Wilde, and horror.
Donner is an upper crust Englishman who is weird, funny and, you think, crazy. Luke was typecast. (He's not English, though.) Donner invites some friends over with a scheme to quell a disease in which the afflicted tear the limbs off of other people and eat them. I was unclear about the nature of the disease. Did it make the sick stronger, to allow them to rip arms off? Or did make others weaker, so their limbs were easily tearable. At any rate, the thing degraded to Three Stooges type of action in which arms and legs were torn off and blood spurted around. And it was great.
My quibbling criticism: I still don't get the disease very much. But really, were you supposed to?
Sunday, March 11, 2012
My new year's resolutions
I overdressed for yesterday's bike ride with Jake, and took my heavy old plodding touring bike. I didn't want to get my good bike dirty in with the sand on the sidewalks, the puddles and the crappy snow that was all over the place.
Jake rode his road bike, and then proceeded to kick my ass. And still I had fun. I was worrying over nothing yesterday. My passion for biking hasn't diminished, and now I can't wait to get on road bike and start building on my biking fitness. Jake road about 25 miles yesterday, I got in about 21.
Today, though ,was significant because it was in the mid 60s and I wore shorts for the first time in about five months. To me, the first shorts day of the year is the real start of the year, and it's most appropriate to talk about resolutions on that day.
So here are mine.
Athletic goals:
Take more walks. Do some yoga whenever I can. Make sure I do some kayaking. Run and bike and don't worry about a race that's coming up -- just go. Go mountain biking after work once in a while. Do more trail running, especially on Rib Mountain. Do more speed training down at the cemetery on the mile loop. Don't worry about how speed. Race to run or ride, not the other way around. (Racing is the best way to develop fitness, and fitness makes everyday training more enjoyable.) Have fun.
Mental health goals:
See above, especially the yoga and long walks and not worrying about times. Write in this and other blogs more, and don't worry about whether it's any good or not. Try to put together some audio podcasts, maybe makes some video stories. (This is for me, and not for work, but work will benefit, too. When I'm happy at work, I'm happier all the time.) Read more. Noodle around with the guitar. Have fun.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Time to get rolling
Maybe spring is here.
The snow cover is melting, leaving behind sand, soda bottles, beer cans and frozen chunks of doggie doo-doo that are melting into small pockets of smelly brown goo. Yay spring!
It also seems that the cross country skiing season is over. I'm gonna miss it. I think one of the reasons I like cc skiing so much is that I'm not very good at it. It seems like every year I learn something new, figure out a better style or find a new waxing tip. By the end of the winter, I feel like I'm almost mediocre.
Last weekend, after we got a dumping of a half foot of snow, was terrific for skiing. I went 20 kilometers around the outside of Nine Mile County Forest Recreation Area, and was completely knackered. It was the first time I went that far on skis in what, three years? And now it's over.
So today I'm meeting Jake for a bike ride, probably around 14 miles or so. I'm not all that keen about it. Which is disturbing. Because usually I'm slathering to go for a ride about this time. Without that yearning, it feels as if I've lost touch with a high school friend, and I'm not ready to reconnect. I'm hoping that the ride today will touch off a spark, because if I don't like riding anymore, I spent $2,000 on a fancy carbon fiber bike two years ago for nothing.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Walkin the streets of Wausau
I discovered the pleasures of the long walk recently.
My truck was in the shop, and I had some time on my hands. So I decided to walk to the library. It's about a three-mile hike one way. And the walk goes through one of the iffiest neighborhoods in Wausau, which means it's got some lower middle class housing and plenty of rentals filled with people who like to leave furniture and children's toys outside all winter.
The homes may be a little run down, but they are interesting, and I found myself looking at the different turn of the century building styles, day dreaming about how I would fix up that place or renovate this place, and soon I was in downtown, a few blocks from the library. Wow, I thought, that was kind of cool.
I spent about an hour wandering around the books. I was looking for a specific copy of a Joseph Campbell book, but couldn't find it. Finally, a little reluctantly, I decided to head back for home. Part of the allure of walking is that you can noodle around with your routes. This time, I headed down for the river, and strolled the pathway that runs parallel to Wausau's world-class whitewater kayak course. The water is open at the rapids, and it burbled musically around the rocks. I felt totally at peace.
Ten minutes later, I was stepping into Cafe Latte on the corner of Grand and Thomas, ordering a large mocha. I took it to go, and felt the warm sweet coffee glow in my stomach. It made mile or so stretch of noisy and jarring Grand Avenue seem a little more pleasant.
Back in our southeast neighborhood, I took a round about route to home, and saw homes that I never noticed before. My legs, hips and knees were getting a little sore when finally slumped on our new couch. But it was that special kind of relaxing sore that tells you that you did just the right amount. I decided then and there that the long walk will now be a regular part of my exercise repertoire, along side the bike riding, running and skiing. It's not the glamour sport, and it won't make be faster or stronger. But it just makes me feel good, and that's the main goals.
My truck was in the shop, and I had some time on my hands. So I decided to walk to the library. It's about a three-mile hike one way. And the walk goes through one of the iffiest neighborhoods in Wausau, which means it's got some lower middle class housing and plenty of rentals filled with people who like to leave furniture and children's toys outside all winter.
The homes may be a little run down, but they are interesting, and I found myself looking at the different turn of the century building styles, day dreaming about how I would fix up that place or renovate this place, and soon I was in downtown, a few blocks from the library. Wow, I thought, that was kind of cool.
I spent about an hour wandering around the books. I was looking for a specific copy of a Joseph Campbell book, but couldn't find it. Finally, a little reluctantly, I decided to head back for home. Part of the allure of walking is that you can noodle around with your routes. This time, I headed down for the river, and strolled the pathway that runs parallel to Wausau's world-class whitewater kayak course. The water is open at the rapids, and it burbled musically around the rocks. I felt totally at peace.
Ten minutes later, I was stepping into Cafe Latte on the corner of Grand and Thomas, ordering a large mocha. I took it to go, and felt the warm sweet coffee glow in my stomach. It made mile or so stretch of noisy and jarring Grand Avenue seem a little more pleasant.
Back in our southeast neighborhood, I took a round about route to home, and saw homes that I never noticed before. My legs, hips and knees were getting a little sore when finally slumped on our new couch. But it was that special kind of relaxing sore that tells you that you did just the right amount. I decided then and there that the long walk will now be a regular part of my exercise repertoire, along side the bike riding, running and skiing. It's not the glamour sport, and it won't make be faster or stronger. But it just makes me feel good, and that's the main goals.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Running away from the crazy
About a week before Christmas, I found myself having a breakdown of sorts.
This is difficult to describe and harder to admit. I had been struggling for a while (when I look back at it now, a long while) with low-grade depression.
The first thing any doctor or mental health professional will ask someone dealing with depression is whether they are suicidal. In my case, the answer was no, but I was at the point where if I did die of more natural causes, I would have been OK with it.
The morning things came to a head I found myself forcing myself to go to work, with my stomach roiling and my soul feeling as if it were soaked in sludge. I had been in a similar place before several years ago, and that time my wife and supportive coworkers encouraged me to call my doctor. I did that, and was put on a low dose of anti-depressant medication. Things got better. But I hated taking the pills, and after a year or so, with my doctor’s OK, I stopped taking them.
This time around my wife again first noticed the cloud coming down.
“You don’t seem to enjoy anything any more,” she said.
I am an expert at self-delusion and denial, and I had a variety of excuses. I was training for a marathon and just tired, I said. Things will get better after that. Things are stressful at work. Things will get better when we go on vacation.
Things did not get better. Just talking, working and living took so much energy.
Finally, I just ran out of oomph and it seemed like something cracked in my psyche. I decided this feeling wasn’t normal. So I called my doctor and started to cry while trying to make an appointment, much to the consternation of the person at the other end of the line.
I am now on another anti-depressant, and I’ve attended a few counseling sessions. The medication took weeks to take hold, typical for most anti-depressants. The counseling sessions helped immediately, especially after the therapist gave me practical suggestions about how to deal with depression and anxiety.
She also told me that it was likely I have a form of depression called dysthymic disorder. When I looked it up on the Mayo Clinic website, the listed symptoms unfortunately read like my personality profile — hopelessness, lack of energy, fatigue, low self-esteem, trouble making decisions.
Oddly, that comforted me.
I’m lucky that my particular illness is not severe in the whole spectrum of the disease, and I have come to understand that it is an affliction and needs to be dealt with like any other ailment.
But the most striking thing to me is how important exercise is as a weapon against depression. I was struggling to run a couple of times a week just before the breakdown, and exercise alone wouldn’t have cured me. But now that I’m feeling better, I’ve got the energy to go for runs, walks and cross-country ski sessions.
I can’t even begin to describe the difference.
I’m not skipping up and down staircases, but the sludge is gone. My goodness, but that feels good. The whole experience has led me to reframe the way I look at exercise. Now I’m doing it primarily for mental fitness — physical fitness is the secondary goal.
This is difficult to describe and harder to admit. I had been struggling for a while (when I look back at it now, a long while) with low-grade depression.
The first thing any doctor or mental health professional will ask someone dealing with depression is whether they are suicidal. In my case, the answer was no, but I was at the point where if I did die of more natural causes, I would have been OK with it.
The morning things came to a head I found myself forcing myself to go to work, with my stomach roiling and my soul feeling as if it were soaked in sludge. I had been in a similar place before several years ago, and that time my wife and supportive coworkers encouraged me to call my doctor. I did that, and was put on a low dose of anti-depressant medication. Things got better. But I hated taking the pills, and after a year or so, with my doctor’s OK, I stopped taking them.
This time around my wife again first noticed the cloud coming down.
“You don’t seem to enjoy anything any more,” she said.
I am an expert at self-delusion and denial, and I had a variety of excuses. I was training for a marathon and just tired, I said. Things will get better after that. Things are stressful at work. Things will get better when we go on vacation.
Things did not get better. Just talking, working and living took so much energy.
Finally, I just ran out of oomph and it seemed like something cracked in my psyche. I decided this feeling wasn’t normal. So I called my doctor and started to cry while trying to make an appointment, much to the consternation of the person at the other end of the line.
I am now on another anti-depressant, and I’ve attended a few counseling sessions. The medication took weeks to take hold, typical for most anti-depressants. The counseling sessions helped immediately, especially after the therapist gave me practical suggestions about how to deal with depression and anxiety.
She also told me that it was likely I have a form of depression called dysthymic disorder. When I looked it up on the Mayo Clinic website, the listed symptoms unfortunately read like my personality profile — hopelessness, lack of energy, fatigue, low self-esteem, trouble making decisions.
Oddly, that comforted me.
I’m lucky that my particular illness is not severe in the whole spectrum of the disease, and I have come to understand that it is an affliction and needs to be dealt with like any other ailment.
But the most striking thing to me is how important exercise is as a weapon against depression. I was struggling to run a couple of times a week just before the breakdown, and exercise alone wouldn’t have cured me. But now that I’m feeling better, I’ve got the energy to go for runs, walks and cross-country ski sessions.
I can’t even begin to describe the difference.
I’m not skipping up and down staircases, but the sludge is gone. My goodness, but that feels good. The whole experience has led me to reframe the way I look at exercise. Now I’m doing it primarily for mental fitness — physical fitness is the secondary goal.
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