Quintessential Boulder (and a few huge, absolutely vital, totally crucial updates)
Every time I think I've already described the consummate Boulder scenario, someone one-ups it.
Yesterday afternoon, I was running on a wide, straight residential street on the eastern side of town (Pennsylvania Ave., if you must know, and no, there's no number 1600). Someone had helpfully set up one of those fold-out DRIVE LIKE YOUR OWN KID LIVES HERE signs right in the middle of the eastbound lane. I was on the sidewalk on the other side of the road when a guy turned out of a driveway on a mountain bike, pedaling toward me with his head down, texting or otherwise screwing with his phone. Two young kids, maybe 5 and 6, followed on their own little bikes equipped with training wheels. I made an indistinct noise, and when the guy looked up, he appeared surprised to see me there. And why not? What kind of pedestrian uses sidewalks when whole families might need them for bicycling expeditions? (Hey, at least they all had helmets on.)
I think I'll drive through that neighborhood tomorrow like my own putative kid really does live there. A kid who loves diving out of the way of oversized go-karts doing 85 miles on hour skimming across every lawn in sight.
Anyway, it's good to be home after six weeks on the road. My instinctive reaction at this point at seeing an 18-wheeler is to imagine blowing it up, and it may be some time before this fades. Close to 5,000 miles of Interstate driving in a 45-day period will do that, at least to someone of my demonic psychological constitution.
I was hoping to achieve three main things (or at least see three distinct things happen) in in the past six weeks and went a definitive 0 for 3 in that realm. In two cases, I had zero control over the outcome, but in the other one it was just me once again refusing to take meaningful chances in life.
On the other hand, I got to see some friends I hadn't seen in as long as nine years and meet some others for the first time in person. I had some outrageously high-quality time with my best friends in Concord, although the loss of their almost-14-year-old Aussie, Trixie, on April 16 was extremely difficult, coming as it did weeks after the passing of 16-year-old Copper (RIP, Aussie Posse). And I returned here fitter than when I left, perhaps not markedly so, but fitter.
Copper and Trixie.
I experienced some vocational upheaval along the way, almost all of it for the better, but it's harder to manage such things efficiently while in transit than it is when in Boulder mode. One thing I'm in the process of doing is moving most of my coaching material to Lowell Running, L.L.C., which is Ruben Sança's project. Ruben, if you don't know, is one of the true nice guys of distance running, perhaps even supplanting me in that area, if only by a factor of six. He's a 2012 Cape Verdean Olympian, a 13:56 indoor 5,000-meter runner and a 2:18:43 marathoner, and he's aiming to reach his second Games in 2020. He is also wicked smaht, holding an M.B.A. from the University of Lowell and about to embark on a second master's degree, all while working full-time for his alma mater, serving as a volunteer U. Mass-Lowell coach, and logging 100 or more miles a week. He moved to the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston when he was 13 with his family from his home country; he spoke no English at the time, and is now more facile with the language than most of my college-educated friends. As a junior at John D. O'Bryant High School, he started the cross-country program there and proceeded to win the Division 2 Mass. Cross-Country Championships as a senior in 2004. I am Ruben's coach and manager, but have gotten largely away from online coaching owing to other writing and tutoring interests, but Ruben has built a formidable platform with far more modern implementations than my quaint little set of pages.
My running was shamefully weak overall compared to what I envisioned in advance, but I only missed one day of it despite depressing (though not atypical) New Hampshire weather, and I got to experience the Broad Street 10-Miler for the first time and play a role in one of my fellow metageezers setting a PR by mere seconds there. I ran it in 64:35, feeling very comfortable the whole time, but like you I always want to punch people who say "I didn't push it, but I felt great jogging!" in the face for even suggesting how much faster they could have gone than they did. But I was in Philadelphia primarily in a coaching/observing capacity anyway; what really keeps me going in this sport now is the kids, and seeing kids with wonderful and thoughtful parents and coaches makes it all the better.
I learned how to play "Superstition" on my neatly portable Casio keyboard, although not all of the parts at once. It makes perfect sense that a blind man would write so many songs in E-flat-minor.
Like I said, it's good to be home.