Last week was my first non-running week this year. Not for lack of desire, though. I was so busy at work; throw in a painful tooth extraction, a worsening of my shoulder tendonitis, and so on, and I figured maybe I would slow down some and test whether the shoulder would get better or worse…
Winters in Vancouver don’t have much snow or very cold temperatures unless you get at some elevation. What we do have are endless days of rain, wind, and–occasionally–the near freezing clear night with many stars, which sleeps soundlessly until a layer of frost brings on the next morning. Our rainy season feels moody, and I…
Wouldn’t you know it that on Saturday, I fell on a trail run and the brunt of my weight ricocheted to my bad shoulder, which I’d just had physio on the night before. It’s funny how when things like that happen you are paralyzed with pain while the nerve receptors in the body do their…
I’ve been spending nights curled up in bed, with the sounds of cold rain washing through the cedars outside, reading Neil Peart’s Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road. Though the book is over a decade old now, its relevance is timeless and Neil, the main lyricist–and of course Rush’s great drummer–is a writer to…
There’s a documentary on Netflix called John Denver Remembered, and it’s pretty good. Growing up when I did, with parents who had his albums, his music was an integral part of my life from childhood on. My musical tastes are pretty eclectic. I like hard rock, a little rap, some old Kentucky fiddle music (from…
As the rainy winter season lingers, I find myself both loving the cooler running weather and wondering if we’ll have another heat wave and drought from May to September this year. Yesterday after work I ran on a campus trail that was super muddy; the light was beautiful, so close to dusk. The run was…
Sunday was day six of the 10K training (repeat of the program), which was a straight 35-minute run. I went to Mundy Park, which is just up the hill from where I live. It was a cool but partially sunny day. The rainforest floor was still quite damp from the rain we’ve gotten lately. I…
I decided to set goals for myself this year, and they include disciplining myself and having fun at it. I usually don’t need gimmicks when running, but training plans do help. I decided to retrain on the 10K program and, when it fits, doing the Zombies, Run app on top of that. Today was my…
On New Year’s Eve, we went out to the pitch dark farmlands surrounding Pitt Lake. I blogged about this area last year, as they do wet cranberry harvesting on the little ponds and reservoirs out there. We took the tripod and camera and hoped to see the Aurora Borealis, due to a solar storm that…
Perhaps the seed was planted when my Pappaw Collins held a conch shell up to my ear when I was very young. He said, “Listen, you can hear the ocean.” Years later I would find myself leaving my life-long home of the Midwest and heading to southern California, partially on a whim but with a…
