Patience; the new endurance sport.

Here's something you don't see everyday, much less a Sunday afternoon.  The snowy trail is silent, you've seen no one for 2 miles, when suddently from around the bend comes a 14-15 year old kid on a unicycle.  He was solemn and determined and passed me both coming and going.   I wondered if he was running away to the circus.

I cut the work out short due to the 1.5 hours I spent shoveling the driveway.  My upper arms and back ache!  Two days in a row shoveling 5 or more inches off the driveway and sidewalks. If I could just get a second away during the day to ski on it instead of just haveing to shovel it off my driveway I wouldn't be so mad.  But after all that hard work with the snow shovel, I realized that I really should live on a farm.  I'm much better cut out for manual labor than anything else. Today my friend Jim and I had an ongoing disucssion about PT vs. Cortisone.  I'll need to start running in earnest at the end of the month to get myself in gear for Moab --but my hip still bothers me.  So he's suggested better core work (remember, the problem with the hip started with my lower back which caused me to ruin my hamstring, which then ruined my hip.)  Core work....he's right. He sent me this link:  http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/Article-detail.asp?Articleid=486 and also the 100 push ups program: http://www.hundredpushups.com/  So, in addition to the stretching, I may be working on 100 push ups, and core.  Certainly couldn't hurt my hip any more--Althought, I'm not convinced I should keep avoiding the cortisone or the MRI.  It could be scar tissue to blame and I really didn't go through the whole process....I'm sick of doctors for this year.  I'll give PT one more round this week and next before I do the cortisone though.

Oh the treadmill at 6:00 a.m.  Yuck.  Is there anything worse when there are no exciting movies to watch?  I've been rationing Alias because I guess they only made 3 seasons and I only have a few more till the end (thank you Catherine!). I've ordered every James Bond movie ever made from Netflix and should have them soon.  I'd even maybe watch Vin Diesel at this point.  Or maybe I'll just go back and watch all 3 seasons of Arrested Development.  Anything to keep me awake on that freaking treadmill.  These mornings have been harsh.  Is there anything worse than running indoors?  Oh yeah, running at the gym while breathing everyone elses sweat and chlorine vapor. 

The hip, it's the hip again.  It's so slippery on the trail, I realize I'm not practicing the gait I was taught in PT.  It's all I can do to keep from slipping on the ice.  So on the treadmill, my focus is to retrain that gait with the good torque.  Boring.  I'm suplimenting the running with cross training at Sundance....:)

You can visit a place like Concord Mass and contemplate why it is the fecund birthplace of Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott, and Hawthorne. I'm always in awe, that some of our finest writers, minds sprung from the wooded areas around Concord. While I am on the Provo Rivertrail, I often find myself contemplating Walden Pond and how a place can be so filled with energy and inspiration to give birth to ideas and life-changing realizations, developments and philosophies. I have the great privilege of feeling a certain ownership of our Rivertrail. I've often commented that it is my own Walden Pond. I have been using the Rivertrail since 1991. I have seen every season repeatedly pass. But with each passing season I forget the splendor and the beauty of seasons before. I forget the inspiration it brings, until it sweeps through my mind, cleaning out dead ideas, like dry leaves from a tree, with a crisp January breeze blowing across the soft fields of snow. It is on Rivertrail I can most often find joy in the moment, allow it to occupy every cell of my body. It is here, I commune with loved ones passed on, understand the circle of life, take inventory of my life, commit myself to doing better, acknowledge the "cancer" in my daily living that must be cut away. Today each branch of each tree and shrub was covered in a thick layer of ice, giving a thick whiteness to every branch. Then, snowflakes crystalized and stuck to the icy fingered branches. In the sunlight, these crystals shone like millions of diamonds. Looking past the sparkling white branches across the sparkling white fields, I realized how often we believe we can shape nature when we are truly subject to and powerless to her will and beauty. I used to think I could change things, make history, save the world with my work. I realize now after being beaten down again and again, that I am not in charge of the Universe. If I can just learn to see the beauty in accepting what is; like the sparkling crystals on the tree branches in winter, rather than always hoping for some eternal Summer.