Flagstaff Run

While working the West End 3K running race in Boulder on Thursday night I treated myself to three delicious, thick, gooey pieces of pizza from Papa Romano’s Pizza on the Hill.  Eight hours later I woke with a blazing headache, nausea, and dizziness.  It stayed with me for the entire day, though the headache gradually wore down to a dull roar.  Initially I thought it was food poisoning, until I heard that no one else who ate the pizza was sick.  Rather, it was my own form of food poisoning; I have a gluten sensitivity and didn’t listen to my body.  The pizza smelled great, looked fantastic and I forgot to bring my own gluten-free yummies.  The upside to all this is that my extended family got an up-close-and-personal look at me in utter misery due to gluten ingestion.  I have a feeling those that were holding out waiting for my gluten-free “phase” to pass will wait no longer and consider making gluten-free food at family gatherings.  Yay.

Fast-forward to Saturday.  I was thrilled to be upright and mobile on Saturday morning, considering the fact that I spent the previous twenty four hours flat on my back with a cold cloth over my eyes moaning in agony.

Our Saturday morning running group met at Chautauqua near the Ranger’s station.  We discussed the route, as there were several options.  After consulting the handy-dandy trail map, it was decided that we would head up the Flagstaff trail to the summit and loop back down again.  I didn’t listen to the discussion of where we were going since I planned on trailing of the group the entire way in deference to illness-related weakness. 

I brought Kirby and my new Nikon camera as a way to slow myself down in case I had any illusions of running fast.  I’m glad I had the camera, because even though I was upright and running at a snail’s pace, my memory of the morning isn’t that great.  There were lots of pretty flowers still blooming, even this late in July when the mountain should be brown and dead instead of wet and colorful.  I remember chatting with Missy as we ascended the first hill and noticing the sogginess of the ground beneath my feet.  We coasted across a few bridges, ascended a few more hills, and ran down the mountain.  Kirby was a happy companion and more than willing to enjoy the photography breaks to munch on the abundant grasses and wildflowers.

Here are a few pics to commemorate the morning.

Some of the ladies checking out the map, deciding our route.

Some of the ladies checking out the map, deciding our route.

Blue wildflowers, I think they're cornflowers?

Blue wildflowers, I think they're cornflowers?

The ladies are headed up the first of many hills to the top of Flagstaff.

The ladies are headed up the first of many hills to the top of Flagstaff.

Running across a bridge on the way up Flagstaff.

Running across a bridge on the way up Flagstaff.

My gorgeous dog, Kirby.

My gorgeous dog, Kirby.

Waiting at a mid-point, always a good time for a quick picture!

Waiting at a mid-point, always a good time for a quick picture!

 

Next up: 10K trail race in Eldora on August 1.  Should be fun, I’m looking forward to it.  Don’t know if I’ll “race” it or just go out to have a good time.  Will wait til that morning to decide how hard to push.  It IS only a 10K, though it’s at altitude.  Stay tuned…

Nikon Loves Trees

I love trees.  They secure their roots underground, provide shade for people and branches for birdies, and have been the subject of countless Japanese haiku.  There’s something primal and Zen about trees.  My own house has a forest of trees around it; during the summer you can’t see the house from the road because of the sixteen trees in our yard.  You read that right.  We have 16 fully grown trees in our yard.  Ten of them are cottonwoods.  I helped plant most of them when I was a kid.  We didn’t realize that trees have a habit of getting a lot bigger and didn’t do too much about the whole “spacing” issue.  Oops.

 

Speaking of trees, I have a new Nikon S630, thanks to Connor trying to get a close-up of Sophie coming down the slide with our 4-year-old Olympus.  We repaired the Olympus last summer after Sophie dropped it on the cement at the zoo; this time, the damage was too great to justify repairing it.  I said a fond adieu to the Olympus and an eager hello to the cute little Nikon from Costco.  I’ve wanted a little camera that I could slip in my pocket since I started running.  Thanks to my little boy who doesn’t understand that moving objects (and people) tend to stay in motion coming down a slide, I finally got my coveted new toy.

  

We went camping at Dowdy Lake for Connor’s seventh birthday this week.  I’ve been working my butt off this summer (that’s a whole nother blog post) and all the “Zen” in my running has moved out for the season.  I’m tired, tired, tired.  I’m crabby when I wake up in the morning thanks to my overly active brain and endlessly poking Bill to “turn over” to stop his snoring.  (The snoring is what got me up out of bed this morning after five crappy hours of sleep, by the way.)  Summer means long days and not a lot of down time for this busy Momma.

 

I went for a long meander around Dowdy Lake with my new camera the day we got there.  I wanted to play with the settings and see what the thing could do.  I love taking pictures, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but if I try long enough I can usually get a good shot of something.  Sophie started walking with me but stalked off after Kirby’s leash got tangled around my neck when I squatted down to take a stupid picture of some sage and I got mad about having a leash tangled around my neck.  Nice going, way to run off your adolescent daughter who wants to spend time with you.

 

Kirby and I kept going.  I was going to walk this lake until I stopped being mad, be it one lap around the lake or ten.  This was bullshit.

 

I came upon a rocky outcropping and went over to investigate.  Not only was it a beautiful view, but there was a totally non-descript pine tree growing straight out of the rocks.  The boulders were huge and tumbled one upon the other, and this particularly zealous pine tree had large tangles of roots that were digging deep into the rocks and securing a toe-hold on life.

 DSCN0119

Maybe it was my bad mood, maybe it was my search for a photography subject, maybe because Jupiter was in retrograde and I was PMSing enough for ten suburban women, but that tree caught me up short and did a dance on all my bubbling piss and vinegar.  I hate it when people talk to themselves but at that moment in time there was no one else around to call me on my shit so I had to do the honors.  “You’re so busy waiting for all the conditions to be right so you can start your living that you’ve forgotten to dig deeper and see what’s right under your own feet.  Open your eyes, fool.”

 

Every life is based on a foundation that either supports life as you know it or supports a life as you haven’t yet experienced.  People thrive in all sorts of conditions.  Sometimes the conditions look like an Amazonian rain forest and sometimes they look like Death Valley.  The thing is, the rain forest and the desert support life of some sort.  Various species have the creative work of figuring out how to adapt to the conditions and get on with the business of living.

 

In honor of the tree that helped me gain a little bit of perspective this week, here is my utterly lame attempt at haiku:

 

Camera captures

Roots embedded in hard rock

Eyes and heart unfold.

The Land of Milk and Honey

Summer months are hard months for writing.  Seems I’m so busy playing at the pool, running, gardening, reading, sleeping, and eating all the fresh abundance of the season, I barely have time to reflect.  The joy of the season is upon us and I can’t bear to slow down.  What I crave most of all, an actual physical longing, is that ultimate rush of being fully alive, grounded and spiritually present.

 That rush was satisfied on our weekly run up Dowdy Draw last week [Read more...]