Don’t be afraid to try again
Everyone goes south
Every now and then
-billy joel

I love kayaking but unless I’m really going somewhere it’s just not exercise. Well it is, but not enough.  So as I start looking ahead to September and focusing on being capable of doing long days again I just have to run. Running reminds me not to dis myself too much when I look in the mirror.  Yeah, I don’t weight 145 lbs but I can run… and when I run I almost feel weightless.

I took up running in 2006.  It was somewhere back in there were I had lost a bunch of weight by hiking the mini-mountains in my part of the world daily. By spring of 2006 I was not losing weight any longer.  Fast, long hikes didn’t work.  That’s when the abhorrent idea of running came to mind.  Honestly I tried to push that idea out of my head.  I always hated running.  Even as a kid the PE 600 yard thing just killed me.  Yeah, in my freshmen year I actually pulled off the presidential fitness award.  Not sure how. Must have been something I was smoking!  (It had to be, that was the only thing I was doing with regularity! ) Well, suffice to say I broke down in ’06 and started running.

Now I’m a trail person.  I never even considered running on roads or sidewalks.  I need to be out in nature, away from the noise, stress and pollution of human civilization.  At least as far away as possible.  The deep, quiet forest suits my crazy head.  I got out the state park maps and marked out trails, combined them and over weeks GPS’ed them so I had some options.  One thing I did realize was that I was not going to avoid hills.  I tried to map around them, but it was not going to happen.  Finally I set myself to my goal.  5K (about 3 miles).  Not because it was a “running” type of thing but because thanks to my GPS homework  I found could run a 3 mile loop 3 different ways at the park.

It killed me at first.  At the time I weighed about what I do now and my feet fell hard.  My lungs and calves protested.  For the first few weeks I couldn’t make a mile but I stayed with it.  I ran or hiked 4 days a week (paddled 3 more) .  Finally by late August I was running a bumpy, muddy, hilly 3 miles every other day and often paddling another 3 miles around the local lake on the day.  For what it’s worth I didn’t lose much weight. Even so, I felt light.

Warp up to 2009 and I’m feeling thick. It’s my fault.  For all sorts of reasons I spent most of 2008 in a bit of a coma.  I couldn’t really get enthused about much of anything.  That happens.  As Billy Joel once said, “everyone goes south, every now and then”.  Paddling and running are acts of living, and antithetical to bouts of stress & depression. For quite some time I stopped running and paddled only when I “needed” to.  Now that I feel like I’m emerging from the caves once again, I find myself working to back on top of things without having to book 50 shows at the O2 Arena.

I’m happy to say I’m 3 years older but pretty much back to the same running health I was in the fall of 2006.  I’m enjoying the trails again.  In the end it’s the running that will help me keep the stamina for the long journey ahead. We’ve had this talk before.  You don’t have to be an Uber athlete to paddle in your local lake or even around the world. You do need to be in paddling condition, whatever that realistically means for you and your body.  For me the focus has to be strength & stamina first.. weight loss is a byproduct.   Another byproduct of running is simply a bit of self confidence and joy.. something that can’t hurt anyone.