A Winter Solstice howl or hymn.

Deccember 21st. Winter Solstice of 2010. The longest night of the year, the darkest night of the year (sounds like a Lord Byron line.)

The previous three weeks of running have been solid, even with unusually cold conditions on the coast. But as life does, a series of good runs becomes viral laryngitis and bronchitis, becomes the first shift of the year missed due to sickness, becomes ennui and gluttony and then sweet easy hours. Dr. Sparr declared that Sunday’s fourteen miler, kicking into the windy cold coast and back into sun-dry air, wore my body down, that two or three days out of the running cycle could be a good idea, that running was a love of his before two knee-replacements, and that he missed it. But seeing my wariness, he amended his advice to trying a slow, short run, keeping careful attentions to my body’s response, eventually submitting a reluctant “You’ll know.” But knowing he spent much more money on an education than me, I moved on to other interests, a thing easy to do as I’ve been reclaiming my mania recently, my attentions pushing me to an easy zealousness for damn near anything. First, I convinced my wife to let me join her on her day off. Our indulgences began with a delicious meal at Flaming Amy’s where I applied my theory of spice-hot food aiding the body’s immune system. I then accompanied her to the mall, falling into the Christmas frenzy, spraying Yves Saint Laurent and Dior on small white cards and sniffing coffee beans between studying fashions she may enjoy and suits I could wear, casually and everyday-refined. Everything smelled woody, like dry wood, moth’s wings, the powder of moth’s wings. Fragrances which were normally oiled or sweet like heated cedar permeated old hair; cotton smelled of a beery hay; handmade wallets were distorted through my olfactory disarray from musk and leather to something else entirely, like a sulfuric match kissing off. Wandering through myriad ties and dress shirts, I thought of getting my two suits dry-cleaned. Cell phones rang in spontaneous cacophony. Pretzels baffled me with a certain admiration of invention. Gift sets stacked like a marvel of architecture. It was then a good friend suddenly appeared, said hello, a moment of recognition, and I was immediately There, acutely aware of my presence at the mall, and self-conscious, a mottled wreck. My hair was heavy with the oil of uneasy sleep, the fevercloud of my body’s expulsions towards wellness; eyes were heavy and brooding, pthalo shades of dehydration beneath; my lungs were busy pulling air through the filaments of space remaining in my nose, and my voice sounded like a phonograph recording of Custard’s last stand. So the Mall adventure ended with me feeling sick and dirty, delirious.

Home was warm and the sunset was flooding rich cadmium spectrums against the cotton-wad sky, and winter’s first night was swelling from the East. Winter had come as official as a calender. As official as Dr. Sparr’s prognosis.  Sweeps of raw red slashed windswept clouds as purple drapes fell in the background, deepening to bone-black and carbon-black, flecks of silver, settling ash.

In the night is the luxury to be sick. One succumbs to sputtering coughs, heavy head mulling in fog, the red-burn of fevered eyes, the labored reel of breath and wheeze and ember throat. The one work shift I’ve missed would be concluding, and the associated guilt is released. Now is when can one rest while reading essays on Pollock’s works on paper, reconsider de Kooning’s Sag Harbor or Clam Diggers, dig into Olson’s study of Twombly, revisit Hoffstadter’s Godel Escher and Bach. Hell, Sillitoe is back out on the coffee table, along with a Dare Devil graphic novel and my image/text journal. Rauschenberg combines flash fast through mind’s gallery. Shostokovich beats the shit out of a cello. A private kaleidoscope of Image. The prime internal gallery of memory. Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Schnabel, Tworkov, Courbet, Gotti, Carravaggio, Basqiaut, Beuys, Ghenti, McCarthy. . . . ad infinitum. Kirkegaard, Cantor, Wallace, Miller, Cioran, Melville, Ferlinghetti. . . . the Winter night allows, glorifies the loss of boundary, the fraying of edge, the dynamic bleeding of element into element, disparate emergence, the crossover or matrix of separate Idea and Idea, a mutation or splicing of things. A fusion in pursuit of the synergy of seasonal associations, such as an entire history of visual art. . . mind you, to elucidate, this is not a Smithsonian or a Louvre, this is not a cultural memory of Art but a private museum, a place of singular Muse, a solipsist gallery Wittgenstein or Foucault would get. A madness of Winter’s paleness. It is a stream-of-consciousness addressing the personal retrospect of image-encounters. A Proustian Collection.

A run on December 16th.

Folks Café was the first stop of my run. A three-count pour of sugar with a splash of cream readied the robust Sumatran before I stashed it in the truck, slinging my hoodie on top of keys, raisins, a cliffbar, my work apron, and a long-sleeve shirt. I stared down Princess Street with a certain nostalgia, I once lived here, ghosts of lovers and dope fiends and their counterpart peddlers, the laundry spot, desolate nocturnes pacing home from bars broke, Schoenberg or Schnittke or Dvorak in the head, the cycle of those days. Essays on entropy or the unfinished Michelangelo sculptures, the late slave series, addled dereliction and hymns, the Stab-n-Grab. . . . I turned the other direction to march then slowstride then jog, shaking out the heft of legs, letting ankles loosen, knees bend into the kick, Coca-Cola warehouse and Ninth and Princess, next a right and the park at Fifth and Chestnut and the run worked from Downtown to Greenfield Park and back up Front Street to Water Street. Ultimately it was a ten mile journey and one of my most effortless runs. The Sumatran was still hot when I returned cold, and Beastie Boys Check Your Head got me home.

And now for something completely different- JumpinGoat Coffee.

JumpinGoat Coffee Roasters and Shop, Helen, Georgia, December 2010.
The serpentine mountain road that takes you through Nacoochee Valley into Helen Georgia does not warn you of the coming mountain cabins, cascading down the road as the Chattahoochee river flows behind (and sometimes beneath) them. Worn-paint walls struggle against winter and age, and hand-painted signs claim their wares. These rustic shopsteads avoid the final, fatal slide into the river, offering interesting wares, including the goods of a stone-wheel mill, glass arts, local pottery, and the JumpinGoat Coffee Shop.

The coffee shop is separate from the roastery, located above on the mountain, but the smell of dark coffee is a thick, aromatic tincture pushing against the vapors of winter. Inside the provincial cabin, the oiled pine planks groan beneath numerous bags of flavored and roasted coffees, neatly bulging out of wooden baskets. The attendant poured samples, including a chocolate coffee so rich and delicious, I thought they had coated the cup in mocha syrup. The JumpinGoat signature blend had interesting flavor notes, was energized and layered, smooth as the wooden floors. For my afternoon cup I chose the Nicaraguan Arabica, and man alive was this a cup of java! Hearty, deep, nutty, with some smoked-wood notes, I felt like I was drinking the essence of the place. A touch of cream and sugar extracted more flavor notes, and I felt a few cravings to go run the mountain. The sumatran looked superb, like a bean of polished onyx, but there was none brewed on that particular day.

 
If you are in the vicinity, the sign-laden JumpinGoat Coffee and the neighboring stone-wheel mill (fresh-ground grits with molasses!!) are excellent reasons to drive to Helen, Ga. By the time you reach the Nacoochee Valley, you will be ready for a hot cup of coffee, the perfect fuel for running trails or roaming shops.

Blue Clay Mountain Bike Park, Ramones, French Roast.

it's a chilly week in wilmington which may explain the emptiness of the blue clay mountain bike park the past two days. i encountered one lady with her two dogs, and that was the whole of my human contact over two consecutive days while running the 6m loop. the coolness and the solitude suits me, makes for a perfect run. smooth, fast sections of packed earth twist through the wooded land, building into brief-but-ferocious intervals of sharp inclines/declines, then break down into bulging roots and partially-exposed stones. wooden planks form bouncy boardwalks and five-or-six bridges are engineered across creek cuts. x-slope works the strength of ankles on the hilly sections, and the many bike jumps and switchbacks keep the quads burning. the trails earn their "advanced" labels, especially for a runner, but this is still the coast so terrain determines the difficulty as opposed to the roughly 65' of elevation gains.

this trail is broken intervals of technical or speed, a sortof speed chess of legturn & mind, otherwise you’ll find yourself ground down face-first.  a moderate speed with frequent shifts of leg-gears, an involuntary fartlek run, suits my trail experience & aptitude.  (speed is not my talent.)  the scenery dissolves into a rapid foot-dance, with certain passages keeping your eyes glued to the next 10' of trail. sun-dappling and shade, pine needles and leaves, all serve to distort the perception of approaching terrain, the effect intensified by increased mileage/pace. nascent growth encloses the trail, a mixture of hardwood and evergreen- which includes young long-leaf pines.  squirrels scurrying across leaves in the quiet of the woods assume gigantic proportion-- robin birds sound like they might be thirty pounds when flittering out of a creek bank.  several of the seven dwarfs hang out on trees (trust me, this isn't another "creative visualization."). the loops range in distance from 1.6 m to 3m to 6m to any combination thereof, and are easily interchanged.

my first introduction was three years ago when i scouted the trails after registering for the first run for ray 10k. a week before the race, i followed my scribbled map to the blue clay trails, and immediately fell into the spirit of running in the woods.  blue clay was born of the efforts of a local mountain biking organization, Sir-Bikes-A-Lot and SORBA, who started (and still maintain) the trail while pushing for its endorsement as an official county park. the park is well-marked and well-groomed, with a map at the trail head.

while i enjoyed having the trail to myself, i imagine its an unusual luxury. if you head out to blue clay trails, be mindful of the space and others around. a runner can stop and step aside ten times easier than a biker, so remain alert and respectful. there is no water, but there is a chemical toilet and parking is plentiful (and free).

lung distance logs ii. georgia blue ridge.

november 29th 2010. clarkesville georgia. chattahoochee forest national park, panther creek trail.  lung distance logs ii. Knee is healthy and the mountains are in my window.

I barely had time to find the beastie boys cd and drink a half-cup of coffee on the nine minute drive to the trailhead of panther creek trail. the route was well-marked, making a trailhead in the middle of nat’l forest georgia easy to find. Three dollars for a parking permit, a stop at the rustic but private facilities, and across the highway, i began the run and pushed into the depth of forest which is the chattahoochee forest. just wonderful.

Panther creek trail is a ~7 mile out-and-back run on mostly packed red clay with plenty of ankle-grappling, foot-contorting rocks knotted with gnarled roots and varying x-slope, grinding the legs at every click. The trail follows the panther creek, making harsh cuts through the woods, climbing juts of stone and jaggedrock cliffs, crossing the water four times (twice on rock and twice on foot bridges) and then pushing up burley root-steps and limestone slopes to eventually bomb into a flat area at the base of the panther creek falls. The trail has some fast sections, but mostly it is technical and makes for a pleasurable pace to absorb the many smells, images, and the interesting landscapes.

across seven miles, my footfalls were flat a total of one mile, maybe, and the rest was rock-kicks, root-juts, contortionist ankles and leg tweaks. iron and wine was in my head (from great heights, the slow release) when I relaxed from focusing on the ten feet of trail before me. thick with autumn smells, the morning was a cool 41 degrees with spritely air in the nose. . . . occasional animal smells provoked a higher attentiveness, but never a visual on any animal, neither bear nor bobcat nor panther nor dogs. . . a few birds flitted along, and I remember thinking they seemed very small. The trail was entirely void of human beings, adding another dimension of appreciation for this trail. . .

December 2nd. Tallulah falls state park, ga. I quickly filed my paperwork for a backcountry permit at the state park offices, paid a five dollar parking fee, (parking is free at ga state parks on wednesdays, the one day I didn’t run) mixed a watery g2 mixture and started the stoneplace trail. The trail is a 10 mile out-and-back route that cuts through the mountains surrounding tallulah gorge & falls, emptying out into a lake at the bottom of a strange mountain cradle. The trail is entirely primitive, with softball-sized and larger rocks ALL across the trail. I mostly followed the narrow path in the middle of the trail, cut by the torrential rains of Wednesday, a single-track rough the heavy layers of leaves and exposing the rocks and roots.

At about mile two, I’d found a gravel road (via a wrong turn-- blaze markings are sparse on stoneplace trail), venturing into a strange community of stacked multiplexes. Sliding down the valley’s slopes like archaic condominiums were six or seven “residences” composed of trailers and wooden structures, a hunting cabin with a cooking shelter ten feet to the left, and one smoking chimney of an unknown structure– maybe a still. Truck campers were roughly balanced on wheel barrow boxes, and two old pop-top campers butted against rustic wooden shacks. Rebel flags hung high beside rusted drums, and one unseen dog barked. An old chevrolet, a 70's sedan, was stuffed with fake flowers across the front seat and the back seat, probably in the trunk too. I knew hunting lands bordered the trail, and while I was wearing orange and yellow attire, I didn’t want to risk totally losing the trail. So I backtracked and found a blaze and kicked it back up the red clay. (While I don’t want to sound like a stereotyping asshole, the film Deliverance was filmed here, and I was totally alone and a touch nervous for a minute. That is confessional and non-PC, so take it as you will.)
The beauty of stoneplace trail is well-preserved, is ungroomed and natural, but it is not postcard vistas. The smells are of red clay, decaying leaves (molasses and distant smoke), wisps of pine, wet stone, and fermenting cedar. It is rough mountain growth with massive trees decaying in the spot where they fell years ago. Steep descents allow a creek to babble up here and there, but there are few water features except at the turn-around point. There, a lake sleeps, tranquil and dark, fed by a few small creeks webbing in. An unpaved road snakes in from the west, blue-n-gray gravel, steep, gouged by sliding car tires. The lake is a recreational center I suppose, unremarkable but for the juxtapose of a lake cradled by mountains. The run back was acrobatic and fun, with fairly visible blazes on trees, and one open-face wooden shelter for camping. The trail strikes me as a very masculine energy, a powerful space to force one's self through.  Moments of joyful work accompanied me, and this was another wholly solo run.

December 3rd. Panther creek trail remix. Wednesday's massive rains eroded and resculpted much of the trail, also causing slippery crossings on limestone faces. But I was confident in my feet and legs, loose, if a bit tired initially, and had a a tight run. One terrifying image haunted the first mile, a strange tyler-durden-splice of a figure in wet black trenchcoat, an older male face, deep dark eyes, classic horror face staring down the trail as I ascended the ledge. I swallowed my heart, stopped (entirely baffled), breathed again and resumed the run through the apparition’s vapor. Strange. 

The bulk of the run, the middle section, was the same as before, but with a more heightened sense of terrain variations.  Nuanced dips where water pushed around rock and root brought concave spoons of mud, loose ropes of hemlock root grabbed for toeboxes, and at least two more fallen trees crossed the trail.  The smells were primal. The water was rushing and loud as water can be.  It was a wholesome experience. 

Towards the finish, I found some deep (but not huge) paw tracks, with claws, directly under the 441 bridge at around ½ mile point. I smelled nothing, but six miles into the run and nearly done, my pace was certainly boosted.

this trail is cleansing and focusing. pay the three dollar parking fee and run yr fucking heart out. The good work puts you in a state of glowing ecstacy. And its unpopulated status (on my two trips) makes a superior experience. It is not a long run, but it is aerobic and quick-footed as well as quick-minded, and leaves you energized and lucid, the reason for it all.

December 5th. mud and muck and miles. A cold wind seemed to face-off against me every step of a ten mile run, home again, Sunday, and thick in the post-vacation decompression. Weaving through the traffic of three major wilmington/ wb churches as they let out, I craved the mud and smells of the georgia foothills. Someone honked and yelled from a while tahoe. Mayfaire mobs collected at intersections like alligators waiting for a parade of chickens. I was back home. I bowed my head and kept running.

dead bird in laundry room, gator trail 2011, live birds push into sky.

november 14th.    bird carcass in the laundry room, spray of fallen feathers. proud cat purrs.


i am preparing my entry form for the Gator Trail 50k, the closest ultra to my hometown at about an hour's drive west. . . last referenced here, i’ve wanted to do this race for two years; so 2011 is the year of the commitment regardless of my current patellafemoral pain. thirty-one miles ought to prove a solid physical challenge and a base for a significant emotional journey, with the reprieves being the location and the small race charm. . . check 'M' for shirt size and gender, sign the liability clause and the check, stamp and drop.  Done.

November 17th, 2010. Schubert’s string quintet in C. Ferocious, rabid, erotic.  schubert, dead at 32 years of age from syphillis & alcoholism.  the guts of decay and chaos remains the soul.

nov. 23rd. Three and one-half miles with no grand happening, with a minimum of tightness in left knee. New shoes felt good, a little fluffy in the sole and stiff in the kick, but thats expected in their newness. . . stayed in neighborhood for the run, seeing one marvelous bird formation, hundreds of birds, congregating in treetops and exploding out into spontaneous flight and spiraling back into trees, then launching in silhouetted chirp-cloud towards the south.  i wonder if their sound waves influence their formation waves. . . . a fractal type function? A marvelous sight, the cool ballet of birds in punk screeches. followed by french roast, brahms string sextet, a brief essay-effort and then work-grind.

(run for ray trail half-marathon packet is signed and sent. run for ray 2010's write-up is posted here, and then the brutal follow-up blogpost of scarred & scabby nipples. )

the naked and the raw-- running narratives continue.

I. The day’s frenzy. . . . snarls of time versus goals.  (into the delirium. . .
November 9th, Tuesday, a six mile loop at wrightsville beach, port city chop house through summer rest trail ‘round loop and back, a recovery run of moderate effort, with only six folks encountered along the way. The beach was serene and vast and easy.
II. November 11th, Thursday. . . I need a miracle everyday.

USS Gravely (i think) entering Cape Fear River by CB State Park

eight miles churned on mix of sand and compacted bike trail and unbusy road down at wrightsville beach. Much of the run focused on the troops humping afghanistan mountains with packs of leadweight and their endurance on fields of combat (internal, external), and just how little of my own potential I touch on. I am not military, nor have I ever been, and in fact rarely considered it as an option for myself, but somehow I have a deep compassion & admiration for those men and women who have done it, are doing it, and will do it. . . . brutal brave existence.

garcia was also in mind in long meditative stretches, I need a miracle everyday, and that sums up the wholesome truth of it all.

III.  Running narrative continues. . . . november 12 2010.

Ernest Shackleton: “We had reached the Naked Soul of Man.”

carolina beach state park for a run of around six miles, and then some photographs before pcj at myrtle grove, grabbing a blueberry bran muffin with medium organic coffee and headed back home to hang with my dog. Out in the park i followed campground trail from the welcome center to the main trail and after a mile or so climbed the “rare coastal mountain” called sugarloaf dune, then descended along the sandy-spine of root steps and steep slides down where I promptly lost the trail (which was detoured/ closed I would later learn upon encountering a utility horse and big orange detour sign at a trail intersection) and followed the shoreline of the cape fear mouth, thinking of madelbrot/madelbrot number sets as I admired the natural patterns of coastal grasses as melodic wave tracings, fallen trees decaying in interesting forms, amorphic and surreal, the crag oaks with pale green moss deforming contours like scales, the push of color of an isolated butterfly against the estuary fall-grays of the landscape. . . . the swift swoop of birds and the lap of wake against brack and branch. . . . smells of pine resin and salt-wet wood permeate. . . . uprooted trees lay with strange primal maps in their woven root structures, and birding decks overlook long fields where coarse grass taptap each other with dry percussive sweeps of a cold wind, and then finally back into thick sand (terribly inefficient footing, trudging, even in my salomon trail shoes) tightening into pine needled path and then the marina where I turned round to follow sugarloaf back to the car and grab a warm shirt (of organic cotton, purchased at take a hike gear store in black mountain with proceeds going to maintain the Appalachian Trail, a very cool gift from my wife), drop wet socks and shoes and get it down in language.  
 

Numbers=> 33m/ 53m/ 1133m

take the time to enjoy the thing; halloween to battleship half marathon-

November 1 2010 11h18am.   total for October was pushed out by a good long run y’day, halloween sunday, a twelve mile run of about 1h40mins. . . . ran from home through ogden park (and the hispanic soccer playoffs) to construction roads and trails and huge sand berms and lakes and large geese migrating just overhead, their strange languages of flight-form and squawking and laughing, I alone and enormous paw prints in wet sand keep me alert and somewhat wary and the run pushes up high-voltage trails, long straight swatches of ankle-twisting brashness and quick-touch toe-runs and eventually back into ogden park and home. the numbers are: 150 miles for October, 1081 miles for the year.
November 5, 1h29pm. Our other laptop, on which all of our documents/ photos/ music & general cross-referencing library of personal data is collapsing due to some hardware failure (error hex 50), so I am on a loaner. . . . updates are few and far between and the original documents are binary pulses, static, on a harddrive currently unusable. . . . so lets start from scratch.
this weekend is the battleship half marathon in downtown ilm. still uncertain of my participation, i know i can do better than last year, and that fact continues to intrigue me, to pull me in against the monetary resistance, almost as much as crossing the bridges in their strange, grate-teeth-on-soles splendor.
recent reading includes, still, dfw’s collection of short stories entitled “oblivion” as well as the short stories of chekhov, babel, and a bit of dostoevsky. The short story format revisited– the powerbars of literary feasts. . . . wonder why mccarthy doesnt put shorts out? should re-read some d. eggers. . .

November 6th. Eight miles of ramblin’ runnin’ at carolina beach state park, sand and pineneedled trails, wet and puddled leaf-mosaics bordered by black swamp swirling with pine oils; nasty currents of carbon and burnt steel cutting against yachts in icw, sugarloaf like the finest, white flour crunching beneath my salomons on sharp/quick ascents. A perfect midmorning run. Quiet and solitary, with only three other folks on the trails, and topping sugarloaf three times as i followed the trail which wraps the park while inter-weaving the run with various spontaneous trails. A good meditation, coastal brack and brine and cypress and luscious smells of autumn, good god-time in birdland and shed wet cold shirt for drywarm sweater and drove towards home, stopping for a blueberry bran muffin and hot columbian coffee. Work and work.
Saturday November 9th– i have registered for the half marathon, becoming the 1293rd person to do so with a cutoff of 1300. Destiny is mine.
November 8th.  the day after the 2010 Battleship Half Marathon.
Monday morning and my legs are tender with ropey tendons screaming the slightest movement, shoulders push against abdomen muscles like tired rowers in rough churn, mind reels the race-tape through as kyote chases a soccer ball and mahler’s third symphony belts out horns and string, heralding autumn’s first coastal frost. Now, recovery from the 2010 battleship half-marathon begins in earnest. the 13.1 miles y’day opened cold and collected, passing with a few strange (and by strange, I mean psychotic?) Moments, a homemade lunch of seered tuna and black bean tacos, then i worked my Sunday night shift to exhale, crashing into eight hours of royalty-worthy sleep. chasing kyote around the house will be my recovery run today. . . . but y’day’s half marathon was smooth and overall very good, with a coldcold morning tightening the veins in bare legs until the effort of the first incline heated and loosened and the legs began milling out the miles. . . . it all started behind the hilton of downtown wilmington, boarding the river taxi. My goal was around 1h40m, but the trip across the cape fear pushed a new goal. Some asshole harassed the first mate on the river ferry across from downtown to the battleship park (and yes, it was a rough ride and it did take four efforts to dock, but we were safe and ontime and the guy was just a dick. . . his brandnew minimalist nikes, his compression shorts and fuel belts and two garbage bags wrapped around more compression/ tech gear, garmin watches and heart monitors and this guy could've been a navy seal on a mission but besides that: my wife and twenty month old were cold and patient on the bench with a cape fear wind whipping the deck, so this guy was just an overtestosteroned chump who was marring my morning) and so my Mark was quickly exiting the river taxi with a haughty look to the first mate (who was holding the gate wide-eyed and embarrassed), and ky and kas and I got off and squared away and I was jogging to the start where the countdown was already underway. Hopping the dayglo orange tape, I found folks with attentive expressions and we began walk-trotting as an airhorn blew, pulling the runners out like a ribbon dance as the field expanded and a trot became a jog became a slalom became a run up the first bridge.

Ill skip the meat of the run but for a few choice cuts: at around mile 8 things got weird. The mind-voice began something like this:
“Ahh shit, a heavy, bonkey feeling in legs and chest. . . 13 miles. . . i'm done running, just done with it, i’ll never run again, this is ridiculous, 13 miles. . . every week I run this. . . runners drugs. . . need some music, a song in my head, fast and fast. . . easy skanking, easy skanking- skanking it slow. . . last year: gogol bordello; I felt good, lifting my head, felt strong and ran harder, arms in air, pumping. . . a burst. . . no ipod now, simplify and run. . . . enjoy the thing, the act of now. . . don’t bonk, could use some music. . . am i hitting a wall? Slow down, stomach breath. . . gatorade at next station, calories and electrolytes. . . what the hell are salt tabs?  compression man in sight, a belt full of hammer gels, drafting offa some cat. . . simplify to the run, no gum, no gels, breath. . . where did my pacifier go? (I chew my tongue for a second before realizing this is not a rational consideration.) Well that was abstract. maybe I’ll go to the comic store tomorrow.”  during this fugue i also projected several false recognitions on random faces.  i saw a friend mailyn walking on the path, and i saw a good running buddy jimmy coming the opposite direction, and, well, in short, these were false moments.   things chilled at an aide station and someone yelled “looking strong 1992" (my race number) and I felt better, felt human, and proceeded to pour a gatorade down my jaw and shirt and chased that with a water, shot a snot rocket, and pushed the final five miles. . . . (eventually compression man finished twenty meters before me.  for the record, i did pass him before my left shoe came untied.)

picked up some fresh tuna filet and seered it with black beans and fresh salsa and had lunch with kas and ky before a few restful minutes of football and then dressed for work.  good food and be-here-now runs are the Art recently.   that and a few sketches of punkass foot slogger. . . .
numbers=> 13m for the week/ 32m for the month/ 1113m for the year.