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.