Boston Marathon

The Boston Marathon is being run this morning, a year after the terrible attack that killed three people and injured hundreds of others.

I crossed that finish line back in 2007. Its hard to explain to people who haven’t been there, but it is a transformative moment, that run through Boston, even without the commemoration. I didn’t understand that before I went seven years ago. I thought it was just another race.

It is electric. After you get through the four Newton Hills and past Boston College, you’re totally spent physically. The glycogen is gone and your brain is swimming in this chemical soup of pain — and the crowd is stunning. They’re beaming at you, like the Twin Cities marathon crowd a hundred fold. They’re standing in rank after rank on the course and in places you can hear the roar even before you get there.

I imagine it must be what its like at the Olympics or the Super Bowl.

The great thing about Boston is that its the one sporting event like that that you can actually decide to participate in. You don’t have to get picked in the draft or have a miraculous fastball. You can set your mind to it, do the training, run a qualifying race and then step up to the starting line of one of the most famous athletic events in history.

There’s nothing like it.

Two Bridges run

This is a Bing map of my all time favorite run. Mostly because its so close to my house, but for other reasons, too. Erika and I call it “Two Bridges,” although I’m sure that’s what everyone else calls it too: it’s the Minneapolis and St. Paul park paths that run between the Lake Street bridge and the Ford Parkway bridge.

I imagine that some people get tired of running the same route, over and over, but I never tire of this one. I can practically run the route in my sleep. Even now, I can picture the granite cobblestones at the foot of Summit Avenue, the chipping limestone pavers at the west end of the Lake Street bridge, the stump on the bluff above the Ford Dam.

But even so, its always changing. Because I am on this route so often – I know I’ve run it 300 times at least – I notice everything. The buds on the branches, the falcon in the tree, the Gatorade bottle left by the path in front of Minnehaha Academy.

It’s also along the only gorge in the Mississippi River, a permanent geological fixture that changes constantly. There’s always something floating in it, although sometimes just ice. There’s a storm sewer outfall at the foot of Marshall Avenue that is an ever evolving canvas of graffiti. The river rises and falls against the concrete lip of the outflow, changing sometimes by just a few inches from day to day.

We didn’t even really realize this was here when we moved into our house in St. Paul. But it has, over the course of nearly two decades, become one of the defining amenities of our residence. It’s so easy to just slip out the back door and see what this slice of the world looks like. It is practically irresistible to pay it a visit, burn off 800 calories or so and churn out another six miles on the odometer.

Reebok 4K Pump Senior Hockey Skates

 

It’s hard to be a casual skater in Minnesota. It’s so hockey-mad that you can scarcely step foot on a sheet of ice without dodging a stick-waving child prodigy, slewing between the skaters in a beat up hockey helmet.

But we’re giving it a go anyway at our house anyway. I finally got a good pair of skates.

I was astounded how fantastic these skates are. They’re generations better than the ones I learned to skate in, and some of most comfortable footwear I have. I love the pneumatic ankle padding and the fit.

For the first time ever, I really like skating and understand how someone can get better at it.

Nike Patella Band

Two hundred fifty two miles. That’s how far I got before my knee gave out.

I started running 20 miles a week in December. I’m shooting for a 1,000 mile year. I left work on Thursday and had shooting pain under my left kneecap as I stood up from my desk — I hadn’t run in more than 48 hours.

I’ve had similar things after early season bike rides, particularly down at Hell Week, in Fredricksburg, Texas. (My other knee, by the way is recovering from falling down on the icy asphalt behind my garage last week.)

Normally, I just lay off, don’t work an injury and try to let it heal up before I go back to working out. In 2012, I had a nagging achilles injury that I waited for two weeks, then four weeks, then two months, then six months to heal, because I kept going out and reinjuring it.

But this felt like the patellar tendonitis I’d had down in Texas. So I tried out a “patella strap” made by Nike.

It was like a miracle cure. I got on the treadmill and ran 14 miles with it. Not only is my knee not hurting as I run, but it quit hurting the rest of the time (except for sitting through Othello last night at the Guthrie).

I’m used to slow, tedious healing. I can’t believe what a difference this thing has made for my knee in the last 48 hours. I’m back on the road, and it sure feels good and I’m at 266 miles as of this morning.

Spalding NBA Super Tack basketball

Gunnar and I just wrapped up our first season of basketball tonight. He played on the 10 and under “Black Knights” team at Palace Recreation Center in St. Paul, I played chauffeur and clapper from the bleachers.

It started out a heartbreaker: my basketball parenting has been a study in neglect and it showed on the court. Gunnar had a signature shoulder-high dribble and could NOT get past the distinct absence of taking turns with the ball. It was about like watching someone you love get mugged on the street, but with a scorekeeper on the boulevard.

Unlike me, whose basketball career lasted precisely one night of 7th grade practice, Gunnar kept at it. For three months. We went from celebrating a weekend win, to celebrating grabbing a rebound to celebrating taking a shot and even, at one point, celebrating a basket. Both of them.

It was a seminar in parenting. I know now how easy it is to be a dad when your kid is taking his first steps, or playing a trumpet solo in the school band concert or striking somebody out on Field 2 at Groveland. But coming into the gym and watching your offspring struggle week after week, not getting any passes, oblivious to the strategy, tossing the ball over the backboard: that’s something else. That’s where you sit with your head in your hands and wonder whether this is one of those “teachable moments” or if you’re just trying to make a stubborn point and atone for your own shortcomings.

I don’t know if I’ll ever find out.

But as we were wrapping up the post-season pizza party tonight, Gunnar said he wanted to keep his reversible mesh jersey. For the next time he has practice.

National Mall, Washington, D.C.

I think this may be the best run in America: from the Lincoln Memorial along the Reflecting Pool, past the Washington Monument, through the Smithsonian and around the Capitol. It’s about a four mile loop. It’s full of people, like it was this afternoon, when I took this picture.

It’s also got history at practically every turn, like the World War II Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial and one of my favorites: an engraving on the spot where Martin Luther King Jr. spoke on the steps of Lincoln Memorial in 1963.

It also seems seems like every time I’m here there’s some kind of construction project to look at on the Mall. These days they’re repairing the Washington Monument after a 2011 earthquake.

But the best part: Minnesota was bracing for more than a foot of snow and on the National Mall, the sun was shining, it was 56 degrees and I could run outside in shorts and a T-shirt. It’s my first miles away from a treadmill since Dec. 1.  It’s just the third week of February, but I could feel spring coming today.

Women’s 15k skiathlon

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Debate the propriety of slopestyle as you will: there’s NO doubt who the real athletes in the Winter Olympics are.

It’s the cross country skiers.

I’ve skied the Vasaloppet and a number of smaller races here in Minnesota. I saw this Harry How picture from Sochi and knew exactly what these women felt like when I saw them laying in the snow after the finish line.  There is nothing more exhausting than an all-out skate ski sprint.

Norway’s Marit Bjørgen won, by 1.08 seconds, after falling to 26th place at one point, then clawing her way back into the lead in the last kilometer of the race. She beat the Olympic 10k freestyle champ to win.

There’s no arm waving or fist pumping or anything in this picture. You know those women had nothing left when they crossed that line.