Micro Runs

 

Marine Corp marathon, the fall after my dad died, 2009.  

There will always be a distance runner in me.

Kenny is not quite 4 months old, and getting so verrrry big…!  I must remind myself that his age is the important factor when attempting to train him on the leash to run.   During the past few weeks, we have gone out after work into my northerly neighborhood streets which give us some nice, relaxed stretch of blocks free of major traffic.  I loop the leash around my shoulder so I have one hand on the lead directly (like training a horse), and he seems to respond well to this soft touch.  Once I warm up a tad (sitting all day in a cold office does not make for good evening runs…) I start a very slow jog and let him trot along beside me.  On a good day he can easily cover a few blocks no problem, except for his ‘distractibility’ level.  On some days EVERYTHING is interesting, even the oil spots on the road!  Other days he seems more in tune with the motion, like I am, and we just trot along comfortably.  Trouble is, between the lack of focus and the heat we never last more than a few miles before every bit of shade becomes a good place for a nice belly-down in the cool grass. (Him, that is, not me! Although it looks like a fine idea at times!)

I have not logged any “real” miles in some time, except for Sundays, and my long runs have turned into ‘medium-sized’, due to my lower level of overall endurance.  If you want to be an endurance/long-distance runner, then you need the miles, there is just no other way to do it.  So cross-training aside, losing my weekday runs under my own solo full-steam has been a worthwhile sacrifice for Kenny.

But something else interesting seems to be happening, as I pile my little micro runs up mornings and evenings.  I have never been this consistent, on a daily basis. I have never been up at sunrise (our morning walk/runs) or out every evening like I have been now.   I may not run ‘real’ miles on my usual schedule, but I AM running EVERY DAY, even if it is in very short bursts. Apparently, I am conditioned enough and these years of running have created a good foundation, a base of ability that can now carry me through these changes.  So when I’m out on the weekends without Kenny, I still do pretty well! And the gods must want me to know this, because I saw a beautiful little article via Facebook that spoke exactly to the theme of running small miles, not big ones, as a key to overall health!

 I feel so bonded, physically and emotionally, with this amazing creature, Kenny, who is a natural athlete and will be a fantastic future runner, since he’ll likely have long legs and a big chest to serve him well out on the roads, no doubt about it.  And there is something magical about having him next to me, trot-trotting along in his own little right-brain bliss, just taking in the world, same as me.  Not talking, not ‘handling’, not training, just moving and grooving along,  taking it all in. 

I tried to re-engineer all this at first:  calling on dog-sitters or gating him back up while I took off on my own.  Trouble was, I have so little time with him around work; my conscience got the better of me when I figured I would just ‘go with it’ as it is and see how it felt.  I had to get over so many of my own deep-seated control issues and prejudices:  the will to be the distance runner in my head, and not the runner in my heart who took on this doggie project by responding spontaneously to the call for adopting a puppy from an abandoned mommy.   We never know how our lives will change when we give birth, adopt (child or animal), marry/separate, but we can trust it WILL change and ferment a new mix of our daily cosmology.  I am still a runner.  I am a different runner now, a different person- with Kenny.

Sevens

A 10k is 6.2 miles.   Seven miles is a very doable distance, with just enough challenge to be considered 'long-ish' by my humble standards, when overall mileage is down- as it has been these days.  Longer than a 5k, about half the half-marathon.  I feel properly 'trained' after a 7-miler, a nice default mode.

I probably covered something like that today, my last day off of the holiday.  On the 'to-do' list:  run, pick up shopping @ WFs, write a blog post.  It's been about 7 weeks since I moved.  All this time a handful of drafts were written on themes of change and new beginnings....managing just one posted in June.  Kenny came since then,  and the entire Solstice season fast transitioning to Beltane, the mid-mark to Fall equinox coming up...the Wheel turns regardless of chaotic weather or Cosmic Re-design;  Mother Nature is undergoing her long birth process, and we can expect nothing but surprise, or miracles....and just when I think I 'got it', and the world Gestalt has opened to me,  fast open the flood gates of the unexpected.

I drove the new Jetta to Whole Foods to stage.  I geared up including hydration belt (always in summer) and my parka just in case.  Every day it's been storming, raining, flooding, lightening....somehow I've lucked out most of the time, and managed a run in between bouts of weather outbursts.  Same today.  looped south on Federal, over Sunrise to pick up Middle River and the lovely quiet residential stretch to 26th.... Taking my leisurely time afterwards for a rare Monday shopping trip for my 7 mile-ish reward of dense calories and the week's food.

Kenny is learning how to run.  At this age (still shy of 3 months) he is so distracted by everything, the stains on the road, the noises...he can hear a dog bark obviously far away.....so I watch him endlessly trying to sift through the stimuli around him.  But with persistence, he will settle into the gait I start on the leash....me in a shuffling lope,  and him syncing up besides me in his puppy stride....a beautiful thing, because I can see the runner in him.  Dogs are such natural athletes.

Monty is giving Kenny some good trainings too.  Establishing the 'pack' order of the house has settled out now, and it's been lovely to see Monty heal from losing Seven, his dog I knew when we first met.  Seven was also a rescue, a mixed something and his loss has cut a deep wound for M all these years.  Kenny's funny, sunny exuberant nature make it impossible not to fall in love with him.  And yes,  a dog can heal so much.

The blogs are full of inspired wisdom on the 7/7/7 today.  July (7), 7th, 2014 (2/14=7).  Signs and symbols are everywhere right now, your signs, mine;  and Great Mother's atmospheric blasts,  Her news with views, for where ever you are now in the world,  great change is upon you too.  Your village is under siege, or assault, or sinking into the sea, the desert, the endless rows of farmland.  Your family was displaced by flood, fire, famine, fear of murder, rape, cultural genocide.  The more that surfaces the more I celebrate the Cleansing of this endless pain, washing and rewashing out the wounds of the Patriarchy upon us all.

I don't know how deep the ETs were to orchestrate such polarizing dharma, because I feel more and more now that it's pointless, this eternal repetition complex we have all resigned ourselves too...THIS TOO is obsolete.  For once, we can step cleanly outside of the mind-fuck that is the patriarchal control-machine.  So it doesn't matter too much to me anymore who orchestrated it all.  They, too, are becoming irrelevant.  The Old Game is over.

Freedom is always the first law because in reality it's already 'Free';  all this other stuff is just our mass hypnosis, our distortion, our attempt to subjugate ourselves somehow, some way into a powerless place.  There's an attraction to staying there too,  it 'seems' as if we have side-stepped all choice and responsibility.  We can build denial higher from the foundations of the prison we have been led into, and remain even though the key is in the lock, in the door.

So here in our displacement of mind, of 'right-mindedness',  of sync with our True Nature and that of the World,  we need mantras to remind us:  FREEDOM IS THE FIRST LAW.  Yes, YOU are free..  YOU too,  can believe what your heart is telling you, it's YOURS- your heart, your soul belongs - no matter what- to only you.  YOU ARE SAFE.  YOU are FREE. 

When you climb the "Seven Story Mountain" you are ascending your own inner chakra/energy system.  Something has called to you for a long time,  and it's something that causes that energy to happen, to travel without obstacle to the fulfillment of you.  Sevens will liberate you in a musical bar; seven days a week,  you are being reminded:  work with that passion, follow that Bliss- something Bigger than us is coming on through.  It will make our Freedom apparent,  it will show us where our Power truly lies.   Today I run my journey and celebrate a path that leads me through the nodes of chaos, putting soft shards of sunshine in my back pocket.