2014 By the Numbers

RUNNING

Since the title of this blog begins with running I decided to look back at the year in running first. My first race of the year was the Polar Plunge 5k in Tracy, California. I ran it with my niece Brandy and it was a good event. It was cold but they kept a big bonfire going and then served mimosas after the race. We actually planned to run it again in 2015 but when I went online to sign up I found the race was no longer posted. I called and they informed me that because entries were slow coming in they decided to cancel it. That was disappointing.

My 100th race since turning 60 in 2008 was my 3rd race of 2014 and was run in New Smyrna Beach, Florida outside Daytona Beach. I ran the Go Dog Go 5k. It was a pretty competitive race for my age group. I think all the old people were running in Florida for the winter. 

I got to run in some iconic, historical destination races this year and that was certainly a highlight. In April I ran a 5k on the road and the MSAC cross country course in Walnut, California. It was special for me because I ran cross country and track at Mt. Sac and I raced on that cross country course for four years of high school.

In June I returned to Colorado Springs to run at the Garden of the Gods Ten Miler with friends, Robert Spell, Gerald Romero, Walter Miller and Joe Brazil. They did the 10 mile while I chose to run the 5k. The race was a great chance for us to all get together while I was there and run in a beautiful location. Also in June I went to Stinson Beach, California to run the historic Double Dipsea race. Unfortunately I was sick prior to the race and should probably have not attempted it. I wound up making it a "single" Dipsea and had to drop from the race at the turnaround. It was the first race that I dropped out of in over 50 years of racing. It was definitely the right thing to do though because I was sick. 

In July I went to Eugene, Oregon and ran the Eugene Half Marathon that finished on the historic Hayward Field track. It was a great trip because I got to spend time with old friends and attend the World Junior Track and Field Championships. 

The day before my birthday I drove to Laguna Hills, California to housesit for my nephew Tim. I spent almost two weeks there and was able to reconnect with several friends from the 60's, run on some great trails as well as the beach and race at the Orange County Fairgrounds.

In October I went to New Jersey and raced with my daughter, Stacie and then with my son in law Tom. Both races were good. In the 5k that I raced with Stacie, even though I placed in my age group and received a nice medal, the highlight was actually getting beat by Stacie and watching her pick people off on the last hill to the finish line. The race that I ran with Tom was actually a make up race that was canceled last year because of the government shut down; the Jersey Shore Half Marathon. Tom ran a personal best and I surprised myself by running my fastest half marathon in 2 1/2 years.

My final race of the year was actually two races. I did my first Double Running race in Pleasanton, California. It was an interesting day that was a lot of fun. I met Bob Anderson the founder of Runner's World magazine. It was an interesting way to end the racing year. 

I started the year with 97 races since turning 60 and finished with 139 so I ran a total of 42 races in 2014. It'll be interesting to see what 2015 brings.

Another running highlight from 2014 was finishing 10th overall and 6th male in the ShadowChase Running Club Grand Prix. There were a total of 412 club members who competed in at least one Grand Prix race. In 2013 I was 17th overall. As far as 2015 I will run some Grand Prix races but the Grand Prix will not be a priority. I want to do some new races in new places.

Miles Run in 2014 - 1037

READING

For the past several years I have kept a record of the books that I read. I do it just for fun but there is also a practical reason. I sometimes forget that I have already read a novel by a current author and more than once have wasted money buying a book that I have already read. This year in addition to a large number of novels written by some of my favorite mystery writers I went back and reread several books by John Steinbeck. As a result of reading Steinbeck I read some additional novels by early American authors including one that I got halfway through and quit. I also tried to read a Steinbeck biography as well as a Walt Disney biography. I read hundreds of pages in all three of those books and decided to not finish them. The reality is that there are just to many books and too many books that I want to read to force myself to finish something that is a chore rather than pleasure.

In my never ending quest to satisfy my wanderlust I read many travel books including rereading Steinbeck's Travels With Charley. I really believe that if you can't go yourself, you can still learn and enjoy a lot by reading what others have written about their travels. It is also a good way to learn about a place before you make the trip yourself. This year, 2015,  my plan is to spend time studying the life and works of John Muir. I read some of his works a few years ago after a visit to Yosemite with my nephew Mark and his son Andrew. Tomorrow, New Year's Day, I am planning to meet my daughter and her friend at Muir Woods before she returns home to New Jersey. 

Books Read in 2014 - Total 105 Fiction 67 NonFiction 38

I was Blessed this year with good health and opportunities to travel to see friends and family. I'm excited about starting a new year tomorrow with new adventures. We'll just have to see what 2015 has in store.

Foul Weather Training, Holiday Racing and Much Needed Rain

I'm sure if I looked back at last year's notes I would see that there was plenty of foul weather training then as well but it sure seems as though there has been a lot more this year. I haven't been able to run along my usual irrigation canal routes because they are so thick with mud it's almost impossible to clean shoes between runs. I've done most of my training on the roads and even that has been somewhat retsricted because of dogs that are sketchy at best. As a matter of fact I finally had a dog encounter that was to up close and personal during one of those runs and it was in an area with four rotweilers that have never bothered me. Here is a picture of the aftermath of the encounter. Fortunately just a scratch and not a bite.

Despite the bad weather and dogs I have managed to keep my training pretty much where it usual is mileage wise. The whole goal is to stay in shape enough to be able to continue participating in races. When it rained to bad and there was no chance of getting outside for a run I was fortunate enough to have the indoor horse arena to run in. It is approximately 16 laps to the mile but I just run for time so don't bother counting laps except once in a while to get a sense of how far I am running. You can see in the one picture that I had to wear mud boots just to get from the house to the arena before putting on running shoes.

Here are some additional pictures showing how wet it has been (and we need every drop) on some of the days that I have been able to get outside on the roads.

And here is a good picture of the canal that I usually run on.

In addition to the rain the fog has been around a lot and creates its own challenges for working out. 

While the weather has sometimes made for some cold and wet running I have been fortunate when it comes to racing. I have only run in one race when it was cold and rainy and the weather was perfect for the event because for the second year in a row it was a poorly run event. The weather was just the exclamation point. That race was the Turlock Turkey Trot. Amazingly it was the 40th annual. I say amazingly because I was told that the same guy has been race director for over twenty years; you would think he could get it right in that amount of time. Probably won't put that one on my schedule next year. Last year I thought might be an anomaly so I gave it another shot this year. Two for two says no anomaly and there are too many other races to run. And that's not blaming him for the rain.

I ran another repeat race from last year on Thanksgiving Day, the Modesto Turkey Trot. It was followed by a first time race for me, the Hot Cocoa 5k in Patterson, I have been wanting to run a race in Patterson. Then I ran another repeat race, The Spirit of Giving 5k in Modesto, a well run, well attended, fun event.

My final race of 2014 was actually two races in the same day. Bob Anderson the founder of Runner's World magazine started what he calls; "Double Racing: Running with a Halftime". I chose to run the 8k that consisted of a 5k followed by a break, followed by a 3k. The whole event was fun and created quite a remarkable festival atmosphere. The 15 k is the "headline" event so they gave 5 year age group awards in it. The 8k gave 10 year age group awards and I finished 4th in the 60-69. Had they given 65-69 I would have won my division. No big deal it was a fun event that I will definitely do more of in 2015.

Besides the fog and the much needed rain the weather has brought us some incredible sunrises and sunsets. I feel truly Blessed to be able to see them and enjoy them.

And this is one of the trees in our backyard the day we had probably our worst weather with rain and strong wind. I was glad that I had just cut down some large broken limbs or Mother Nature would probably have taken care of it for me.

A lot of natural beauty the past month or so from what would be considered less than ideal conditions from many people.

Catching Up on Recent Races

My last five local races have been a combination of repeat races from last year as well as new races in Stockton and Turlock. Results were all over the place, good and not so good. One thing that I have found interesting the past two years in particular is that there is no guarantee that how I feel right before a race starts is how I feel once I get into the race. The lesson, for me at least, is to just get to the starting line and see what happens. Usually it's fine but in some races it seems that my energy literally drains all at once. It's a strange feeling but that really is how it feels, like an energy drain. In some races I have been able to get past it and still have a decent effort, in others I have been able to finish but that is literally all I do. That was the case this year with the Move Your Bones 5K in Turlock, a race where I won my age group last year.

I started at a comfortable pace and at about 5:30 into the race the bottom literally dropped out. I spent the last 2 1/2 miles literally just plodding towards the finish line. If it had been a longer race, I probably would have had to drop. Again, the only lesson here is simple, you never know what to expect when you enter an event, even after you start but you can still try to make the best of it. Tough race, tough lesson, but race # 131 since turning 60 done.

Before the Move Your Bones and as bookends to my New Jersey trip where I raced with my daughter and my son in law I ran two Shadowchase Running Club races. I ran the Cancer Awareness 2 mile in Modesto and the Cheese and Wine 5K in Riverbank. Both are part of the club Grand Prix series. The results were similar to last year's results in both races. Between September 20th when I ran Cancer Awareness and October 26th when I ran Move Your Bones I ran five races, traveled to and from the east coast and on October 18th I got my flu shot. While I don't believe I got sick from the shot I do think it could have had an impact on the energy crash at MYB. I need to try to pay attention to race scheduling around a flu shot next year.

The first of my final two races that I am catching up on in this post are the St. Joe's 5K in Stockton that actually was 3.65 miles as opposed to 3.1 of a 5K. I never looked at my watch during this race and felt really good the entire race, start to finish. During the race we weren't told that it was a long course so had I been looking at my watch and paying attention to time I might have been discouraged. I couldn't believe how slow the finish line clock said I had run when I had felt so good. Shortly after that we found out the "actual" distance of the race. Lesson here, don't worry about what your watch says, run how you feel and enjoy it.

The second is the Kettle Dash 5K in Turlock, a Salvation Army fundraiser. It was a good race. I met and ran with another Vietnam Vet for the first 2+ miles of the race and we talked about what coming home was like then and now. He picked it up soon after two miles and I didn't go with him. We ended up finishing 3rd and 4th in the 60-65 age group. One of the fun things about going to a lot of races is meeting new people in the running community.

I've got two Thanksgiving races coming up in the next 8 days so I guess I need to get pictures on here from the race I am catching up on and publish this post before I find myself even further behind.

Grand Canyon 2000!

In the summer of 2000 I was fortunate enough to get to go on a private raft trip the entire length of the Grand Canyon. Brian and Kathy Sweeney organized it and it was incredible. For 16 months I gave the $50 a month towards the trip. Do the math! That is only $800! A quote from my journal on July 30th:

"Damn, first morning after camping on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. We've been gone since the 27th. We've run less than 100 yards of river and it's already an unbelievable trip. No one who has never done this can appreciate (Canyon Wren) the tremendous amount of planning that goes into a trip like this. Sweeney is incredible"

Unfortunately my "journal" didn't do the trip justice. On August 3rd I wrote:

"Too damned busy to even keep a journal. I'm going to try to do an abbreviated one at least". On August 3rd I wrote, "The problem with trying to keep this journal is that you get behind and then you forget stuff. As a matter of fact, just now Brian said, 'Where did we camp on Day 3?' That was only two nights ago. We had to discuss to decide". That's what I mean by so much going on.

On the 17th of August in the car riding back near Holbrook, Arizona I wrote that I was going to try to catch up on some of the journal. I got two pages and that was it. Certainly disappointed that I didn't keep a good journal but at the same time I'm happy that I had so much fun and stayed so busy that there just wasn't time. Of course the other way of looking at it is that I didn't make the time. Oh well, water under the bridge. No pun intended. I did write a paper about the trip for recertification credit when the new school year started.

Amazing life experience that I am grateful to have had. Here are just some of the hundreds of pictures that we took, even the best of which don't do justice to the true beauty of the Canyon.

I'm going to close this out with a few notes from my poorly kept journal.

July 31 - My 52nd birthday. "Our boat got caught in a big eddy today. That was a treat. We had to go around twice before we were able to punch out back at the top. You don't want to many of those, you wind up rowing the whole trip twice. 225 miles is more than enough"

August 9 - "We didn't hit our run yesterday in Dubendorff. Oh was it a wild ride. We had a plan if we missed our run but the river owned us. Once we got caught sideways we went completely up on my tube. Thought we were going over".

August 15 - "It has been a spectacular trip. I'll never find the words to do it justice but I'll use photos, my river guide notes and hopefully memory to get down as much as I can. I hope to write a lot in the car on the way home". (The writing in the car didn't happen but I do have the pictures and the river guide.

And final, a quote from the book, The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko that really gives life to what you feel right before dropping into a rapid when the scouting and the waiting is done and there is no turning back.

"There were rapids that you feared, and rapids that you hated and rapids that you would be a fool to take for granted, even under the most benign conditions imaginable. But on those days of wonder, when the tumblers in the lock were oiled and turning flawlessly, any one of those rapids could also transport you into a dimension of pure, unadulterated joy that had no analogue in any other part of your life.

The taste of that joy was absolutely intoxicating, a kind of drug, and perhaps the most potent part of the charge lay in the irrevocability of the moment when you untied your boat, and you and your partners peeled out into the current above a rapid in a tight and graceful little arc like formation of miniature jet fighters. For a minute or two, you would find yourself drifting on a flat and glassy cushion of serenity as the current slowly gathered its speed and heft beneath the bottom of your boat and you drifted toward this thing that waited, invisible, just beyond the horizon. It was silent during those minutes, the only sounds being the creak of your oars in their locks and the dipping of the blades as you made a few micro adjustments in the hope of putting your hull squarely on the one tiny patch of current that would insert you through the keyhole in the cosmos. Then in the final seconds, you would start to hear the dull, thunderous roar, and you would see the little fistfuls of spray being flung high into the air.

This, perhaps, was the most riveting moment of all, because now all of your decisions had been made--you had done your homework and sought a point of balance between instinct and analysis, listening to the data flowing from both your brain and your gut, and now you were well and truly committed. This thing you were running down had no brakes, no rewind, no possibility of a do-over. You would ride the surge of adrenaline and surf the watery crescendo that was about to explode before you, and you would accept the consequences, good or bad, along with whatever gifts or punishments the river was prepared to dish out. There were lessons there, insights a man could put in his pocket and take out later, long after he was out of the canyon, tiny compass points to steer by during those seasons when the river that was your life turned turbulent and ugly. You could learn things about yourself that you would never learn in civil society. And if you were lucky, you might navigate to a place that would enable you to glimpse, however obliquely, a bit of who you truly were". (pgs 110-111)

"Welcome Home" - Veterans Day 2014

It seems that the older I get and the further removed I am from my actually military service the more I appreciate things like Veterans Day. I took this picture in Danville, California yesterday on Veterans Day; I just loved the flag with the beautiful fall colors. I was in Danville because I was picking my sister up at Oakland Airport later in the day and I decided to make a day trip out of it. My plan was to get a free breakfast from Denny's and then hit the road.

The only thing I had to pay for was the coffee so that was nice. I can't believe how many free offers there are for veterans on Veterans Day now. And before I go on with the rest of my day that brings me to the title of this post "Welcome Home". When I can home from Vietnam for the last time in 1971 there was no welcome home except from friends and family. I grew up watching television shows where a veteran would walk into someplace wearing his uniform and everyone wanted to shake his hand or buy him a drink. When I came home we were actually discouraged from wearing our uniforms in many places because there was such a strong anti Vietnam War feeling in this country.

As I have written in previous blog posts I taught history for almost 30 years and other than in an world history class where I taught some modern Vietnam culture I never taught about Vietnam. I was confused for all those years. I didn't even know how I should feel about myself as a veteran because the Vietnam vet was so often vilified. It wasn't until after I had retired from teaching and was attending some men's groups that I really started dealing with my feelings about being a veteran. I had always been proud to be a veteran but I had always been uncomfortable talking about it. That changed in some of the groups I attended. My daughter bought me a Vietnam Veteran hat that was very subtle as opposed to some of the more "in your face" hats. I was actually nervous when I first started wearing it but soon found that I felt a real sense of pride when I did. People began thanking me for my service and it felt odd. I was embarrassed by the attention but also grateful.

As you can see from the picture, the hat certainly received a lot of use. About two years ago I joined an organization called Team RWB or Team Red, White and Blue. It is an organization made up of veterans and civilians who support veterans and it has been a uniform I have been very proud to wear in every race since joining. When I ran the Jersey Shore Half Marathon there were two others wearing the uniform and we slapped hands each time we passed one another on the out and back parts of the course and one guy actually jogged back out after finishing and ran the last half mile with me to the finish. It's fun being involved in such a far reaching organization.

When I started wearing a new Vietnam Veteran hat is when I started having random strangers walk up to me and say, "Welcome Home". At first it felt very odd, after all I came home from Vietnam 43 years ago. I thought that it would be a one time or rare thing but it happens far more often that I thought that it would. While I appreciate the gesture I have to admit that I sometimes feel uncomfortable.

Since I was going to Oakland I decided to visit the John Muir National Historic Site. I have always admired Muir and his contributions to the National Parks of our country. He said, The battle for conservation will go on endlessly. It is the universal warfare between right and wrong". Muir married into the "fruit-ranching Strentzel family in 1880 at age 42. Martinez would be his home until he died in 1914". It was cool walking through his house and seeing it as it was when he lived there. A highlight for me was seeing his study as it might have appeared when he was writing.

Additionally there was an adobe house, the Martinez Adobe, on the property that was built in 1849. In the house was a display recognizing the Anza Expedition of 1776. I was wishing my grandkids were there to share the experience.

When I completed my visit I still had a couple of hours to kill and I saw on a map in the visitor center that I wasn't that far from the Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site in Danville so I decided to drive there. When I arrived there was a sign on the gate that you couldn't visit without a reservation. Oh well! I could have been upset but instead I chose to walk a trail that I drove past on the way to the site. All during my drive on I 680 I had been amazed at how vibrant the fall foliage was so a walk seemed like a great way to kill some time before heading for the airport.

After my walk I drove to the airport to pick up my sister Donna, she had taken a birthday trip to Maryland to visit her son Mark and his family. Before the airport though I stopped for one more Veteran's Day freebie.

Here are some pictures that I put together for my sister for her birthday.