pedestrian saga

Despite a few pesky butterflies beforehand and continuous incline with punishing evening sunshine in the face during the first half of the course, I finished the Midsummer Night’s Run Saturday with my C25K team. Whoo-hoo, team!

We were slow but steady right through to the finish (and on to the sacred temple of shaved ice). One of our ranks transcended expectations and scored a ribbon!

The fearsome threesome approaches the finish line: C’est moi, Renee, and Red Ribbon Rachel

Barry and Scott-o’-the-blue-ribbon ran incredibly well for not being on the C25K plan, but I won’t hold it against ‘em. Thanks for joining in the fun run, boys! And a shout out to awesome Eric for the escort and sag wagon!

I was disappointed they didn’t close the road and let us take over the centerline, but what can ya do? It was a small event. Today Corvallis, I say, tomorrow the world!

Victory portrait courtesy of Scott. No, I’m not going to Disney World, but perhaps…golf? I won a free round in the raffle! Unfortunately, there’s only so many hobbies the champ can master at once.

More zany farce than hard-boiled crime fiction, this Aurelio Zen mystery features an ensemble of wacky characters running amok in beautiful Bologna―la dotta, la grassa, la rossa. A Berlusconi-esque tycoon and controversial owner of the local football team is found shot dead and stabbed with a parmesan knife. Meanwhile, an arrogant semiotics professor (a thinly veiled parody of Umberto Eco) dukes it out with a contentious student and a maniacal and fraudulent celebrity chef. A slapstick gumshoe muddles various links between characters, while our detective hero, Inspector Zen of the national police, turns out to be brooding and lethargic, a borderline hypochondriac who, in this case, doesn’t investigate much beyond his navel. Read the rest of this entry »

JO’GGER n. s. [from jog.] One who moves heavily and dully.
They, with their fellow joggers of the plough. Dryden.
—Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755

Tomorrow is the last practice run before the 5K this Saturday evening. So it’s a still sort of moment, the quiet before a big event. Reflective, as in, “Holy crap, I can’t believe how far we’ve come and how much we rule!”

Last week began with me ably demonstrating Dr. Johnson’s definition of a jogger, except I would add to it “gasping and wheezing.” The camaraderie of my fellow joggers has made all the difference on those rough mornings. I’ve found that intensive pre-jog stretching focused on the neck and shoulders (lifelong repository of angst—and there’s been plenty) has made the difference between a rough morning and a slightly improved passage of oxygen to the lungs.

Or maybe it’s all in my head? How much of it is mental? External distractions and successful mind tricks certainly mark the better days.

Last Saturday was one. To prepare for the elevation change in the 5K course, R and I left the track behind and instead ran all the way up the hill to the hospital—without feeling compelled to check ourselves in.

And yesterday was another:

0630-0702
32 minutes
“Me and Mia”–”Shake the Sheets”
11 laps
~2.75 miles
~4.4 kilometers

…jogged without stopping, and finished hard! Shake the Sheets is a crazy wonderful high.

Sylvia is traveling the French-speaking world this summer and logging an impressive journal of her adventures in pictures and words. Having led a group of her young students on a two-week tour de France, she’s now assumed the student role herself for three weeks to explore Switzerland and Belgium under the auspices of the American Association of Teachers of French. Then, toward midsummer, she joins the Waza Alliance in DR Congo to participate in their Sister School Partnership project.

Mum visiting Geneva

Despite this vigorous itinerary she’s managed to write in her journal and post to her photo gallery with characteristic eloquence and frightening regularity. It’s been a real privilege to follow her journey closely and in such detail. Favorite stories so far include the fencing and calligraphy lessons at Nimes/Arles, the climbs at Rocomadour and Montségur (in between visits to the hair salon), guest speaking at a French collège on the last day of school, and beginning Swiss political and literary history (in the land of Frankenstein!)

For quality armchair travel this summer, I highly recommend A Walk with the Wood Elf.

Jogged another two miles in 25 minutes this morning. I was tired and not breathing well. R was on fuego. She called fartlek twice, which just kills me—the sprinting itself but also the fact that she can’t resist saying fartlek with such glee. (”Fartlek to the blue arrows!”) And while I was merely thinking ahead to breakfast, she was already imagining post-5K possibilities and wondering aloud if there may well be a very special 10K in our future. Adrenaline does this to a person.

Since I first laid eyes on it, driving the coast north with Scott around Christmas 2005, I’ve been dying to cross the Astoria-Megler Bridge by unmechanized means. Scott remains unconvinced that traversing the mouth of the mighty Columbia on our tandem would be the ultimate rush. When I first mentioned the annual 10K crossing to R, on the other hand, her eyes widened, and she began quoting the Lewis and Clark journals and talking about spiritual quests. That’s more like it!

Ah, but midsummer first, before the fall.

0623–0653
30 minutes
“London Calling”–”Clampdown”
10 laps
~2 1/2 miles
~4 kilometers

…jogging the whole of it without stopping!

Back in May, I went on a mission with two plucky colleagues: we would follow the nine-week Couch-to-5K Running Plan and train for the Midsummer Night’s Run July 19. I hate running (Intentional self-suffocation? No, thanks!) and happen to be quite fond of the sofa. They had never run before. Wait, why did we decide to do this again?

Too late for rationale, because, folks, I’ve established a jogging habit! For two months, excepting a couple of pretty active vacations, I’ve reported for practice at the neighborhood track every Tuesday, Thursday (0615), and Saturday (0800).

The genius of C25K is that it encourages steady, incremental change. It really works. And it works really, really well with a partner. Or, in a pinch, the Clash on an iPod.

You start by jogging just a short distance and then taking a walk break. Gradually the jogging distance increases as the walk breaks decrease. There does come a point, however, when you’re challenged to jog without stopping.

It was this challenge I faced early today. Victory was possible thanks to Jóga running interference, transmitting the glorious first half of the seminal 1979 double album directly into my brain. “Rudie Can’t Fail” kicked in just as I was sagging around Lap Five and became (with apologies to Strummer/Jones) :

Kaaaay-tie can’t fail!
Kaaaay-tie can’t fail!

“Clampdown” powered me around the final bend of Lap Ten, and when I eased into “The Guns of Brixton” to cool it on home, the adrenaline rush was badass.

Hello, summer! Hey-ya, sunshine! Long time no see.

Summery stuff ascending…meanwhile, some inoculation against next winter’s grays:

Sleater-Kinney performing “Jumpers” on the Letterman show in 2005

Maybe I will buy an artificial sun and stare at it.

Or maybe I will blare Sleater-Kinney. I will sing along. I will not get depressed.

Today, it takes a pick-up-your-sad-ass-and-prevail, funk-decimating sort of montage.

Rather than relinquishing this book to the library right away, I felt compelled to reread the fourth chapter on the history of English dictionaries (which transports us back to Shakespeare’s time, when it was impossible to look a word up—the horror!—and highlights some amusing entries in Dr. Johnson’s mid-18th-century dictionary) and also to append a few more notes to my review.

Best echo of recently enjoyed English fiction about crotchety German philologists (amidst a marvelous digression on the controversy surrounding the plural form of protagonist, which prompts a close examination of the OED entry and oldest citation of the word’s written use):

This, from a lexicographical point of view, seems to be the English word’s mother lode, a fair clue that the word may well have been introduced into the written language in that year, and possibly not before. (But the OED offers no guarantee. German scholars in particular are constantly deriving much pleasure from winning an informal lexicographic contest that aims at finding quotations that antedate those in the OED: At last count the Germans alone had found thirty-five thousand instances in which the OED quotation was not the first; others, less stridently, chalk up their own small triumphs of lexical sleuthing, all of which Oxford’s editors accept with disdainful equanimity, professing neither infallibility nor monopoly.)

Best stirring reminiscence of the first feature film I captioned (at the scene in Westminster of the seminal November 5, 1857, meeting of the London Philological Society):

The gas lamps fizzed and sputtered, and on the corners of Piccadilly and Jermyn Street small boys were still collecting last-minute pennies for fireworks, their ragged models of Guy Fawkes—soon to be burned on bonfires—propped up before them.

Mapped, in my mind, just around the corner from the murder and insanity of Hangover Square!

Moving ahead, The Professor and Madman inspires me to:

• read more Simon Winchester, including even his second book on the OED, The Meaning of Everything (because I’m that dorky).
• collect a personal copy of Hangover Square, now finally available on DVD!
• spend some time with The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce.

These classic western spoofs—the one a hammy, hokey romp; the latter a vulgar, racy burlesque—weren’t quite as fun this time around. Probably best enjoyed among the gregarious company and contagious chuckling of Dennis or certain former in-laws.

1/2 star for the dizzying web of references that stoke my fascination with pop western mythology; for the catchy, make-your-family-crazy-humming-it-for-days-on-end “Ballad of Cat Ballou”; and for Lee Marvin and Slim Pickens.

***1/2

Spurs me on to:

• everything Lee Marvin; for starters I’ve thrown Paint Your Wagon, The Professionals, Emperor of the North Pole, and Hell in the Pacific in the Netflix queue
• Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid