Justin Vernon's Cabin

Sometimes isolation is the best inspiration.

When I first started running with UCRR, I seemed to have perfected the art of showing up as everyone was leaving. I made the turn into the Harris Teeter parking lot to see the group start to pull away. Sometimes I would just start late, and lag behind, other times I would bag completely and just run later in the day. However, I somehow eventually mastered the art of the alarm. Either set on my phone, or internally locked in my brain, I just got up because I knew I needed to get up. The run was still the thing, but the group was just as essential.

Today's run started the way it used to, by showing up late. This was a lateness born of scrambling to find enough clothes with a steady rain already falling at 7am.

I started out David Taylor around 7:15, and ran into Theoden who came out from under a tree (hoping to wait out the rain). We clipped off some quick miles heading out to the Y, he doubled back after about 3.5, and I was alone for the rest of the run. The goal was simple, try to hang around 8:15 pace (finished @ around 8:17....with a long break @ 10.5 to change clothes/bathroom), stay steady on the hills. Even though I ran into Hazel and Beach at the Y, the rest of the run definitely had a feeling of isolation. It was kinda cold....it rained....then stopped raining...then started raining again. I decided on a course of a double Y loop, so there always seemed to be a hill around every corner. I don't want this to come across as hyperbole, like I'm trying to paint myself as a character in a Jack London short story, it just felt lonely...but in a good, pensive, reflective kinda way.

The story of how Justin Vernon wrote the Bon Iver album "For Emma, Forever Ago" has been well documented. Alone....with mono....in a cabin.....in Wisconsin. He didn't go there planning to crank out breathtaking songs like this one...



It just happened. After going 0-4 in my attempts to knock out a 20 miler, I just wanted confidence coming out of this run. I didn't intend to find it by running most of the run by myself in the rain, but it just happened. Just a quiet run, that provided the self-reflection that would have never happened in a group, might not have happened without the rain. Still not sure how this will translate to the trails in 3 weeks, but it was nice, even with sore legs, to quiet the doubts in my head....and I didn't even need to get mono or go to Wisconsin to do it.

Not Swans Reboot

What follows are words I wrote at the end of March last year. In the t.v. buisness I think they call this a re-boot, or since this will likely be quite different from the original, a re-imagining. ~ August 2011

They say, when "they" are trying to offer perspective, that there is always someone faster and slower than you out there, which is statistically true for all but two people. Like the kid whose parents tell him about the starving kids in Africa as a driver to finish his green beans, this has always been too abstract for me to latch onto, even if it is true. The truth is we spend most of our time in the middle...between those running behind and in front of us; chasing and outdistancing other versions of ourself.

If this blog had covered my last 3 years of running it would have tales of how great things are going with my running, and how impossible, injury-causing, that running is to me as well. In reality, most of my running time is spent between the triumphs and tragedies - logging miles on loops I could do in my sleep, gutting out a AM track workout, being injured enough to slow down, but not quite stop. This is the reason for the blog's title, stealing from one of my favorite bands, singing about what I interpret as that space and struggle in the "in between".

As that was the reason for the title, the reason I started this is just that I think about running OHSOMUCH. I carve out the time and energy for the family I love, the job I'm lucky to have, and all else that makes up my identity, yet there is building pressure almost of thoughts of fitting in my next run, when will (fill in the blank) stop hurting. The thoughts, sometimes deflecting like a raquetball, also include music, which I find hard to talk about without bringing in running, and I followed several top-notch blogs that feel the same way.

So yeah, that's what ultimately gave me the internal shove to start this blog...to turn down the voices in my head, to invite the voices of others in, and to constantly remind myself that I am not a swan, nor am I as ugly as I think I am.