Iowa

There’s nothing quite like the aroma of manure in the morning. It’s more effective than coffee at arousing you from slumber and almost twice as strong! These are just a couple of the semi-lucid thoughts that bounce around my head during my solo run down a dusty country road in the middle of July. It’s only 6:30 but the humidity is rising faster than the sun and adding to the acridity of my bovine bouquet. As I near the farm house where the scent is originating I catch my first glimpse of the putrid perpetrators. In their pen, a dozen cows stand motionless save for the slow turning of their heads in unison as I run by. The quizzical looks on their cowy faces only serve to re-enforce my growing sense that I’m a stranger in a strange land.

The Song of the Ungirt Runners

by Charles Hamilton Sorley

We swing ungirded hips, 
And lightened are our eyes,
The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
We know not whom we trust
Nor whitherward we fare,
But we run because we must
Through the great wide air.

The waters of the seas
Are troubled as by storm.
The tempest strips the trees
And does not leave them warm.
Does the tearing tempest pause?
Do the tree-tops ask it why?
So we run without a cause
'Neath the big bare sky.

 





The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
But the storm the water whips
And the wave howls to the skies.
The winds arise and strike it
And scatter it like sand,
And we run because we like it
Through the broad bright land. 

10 Years Running

When I celebrated my 39th birthday back in November of 2008 I also celebrated a decade of running. Back in 1998, when I turned 29 and weighed 230 lbs, I decided it was time to get in shape. Recently I decided to go through some of my old training logs and reminisce a bit. Below is some of the information that I found to be interesting and worth sharing.