I celebrated the longest day of the year by going jogging. I probably shouldn't be jogging - kung fu is doing enough of a number on my knees - but I have yet to give up my fantasy of being a runner, and I need to work on my endurance so that I can hold out longer in fighting class. So when I realized that there is a dirt track in a park right behind my fighting studio, dirt tracks being easier on knees, I made my way over there tonight.
I was pleasantly surprised, actually, at how well I did. I only ran two miles, with a 2 minute break in between to find the map and figure out if I'd been running the right track, but I ran them in a comfortable 11 minutes each. That won't win any prizes, but considering that I normally have to literally jog as slowly as my legs will go in order to keep moving, I consider it a win. It is much, much better than I did the last time I tried to run, last fall, soon after I started fighting class. Five minutes of running wiped me out then. Tonight, I could have kept running for quite a while, had I not needed to come back to my house and work on learning xiao hong chuan, the form that I have to know if I ever want to test for a yellow belt in kung fu.
(I have a coworker who claims that a real martial art for adults only has three belts: white, brown, and black. I, however, need the instant gratification of the colored belts, thank you very much.)
...
Friday last, I drove over the mountains with my window open to the sun and breeze, singing along to the radio until I lost all stations but public radio, which played folky sorts of songs that perfectly fit the sky and the pines and the river. As the last of the music faded to static, I put my hand against the radio so it could use my body as an antenna, and then I turned the radio off and propped my ipod up on the dashboard, below the speedometer, to provide my driving soundtrack.
Over there, the days were utterly perfect: clear and sunny, cooling in the evening. We all spent more time outside or in the 91-degree heated pool than we did inside, soaking up the Vitamin D that we do not get for so much of the year on the sheltered side of the mountains. I got a little bit of sunburn on my legs and the part of my hair, just enough to feel like summer was about to fall, and then I drove up the long, desolate road through the high desert to Ye Little Town, Northwest, where I reveled in a night and day with the B.s, whose house feels like yet another home. It's good to have some homes, especially when the town where you live doesn't feel like one.
I was pleasantly surprised, actually, at how well I did. I only ran two miles, with a 2 minute break in between to find the map and figure out if I'd been running the right track, but I ran them in a comfortable 11 minutes each. That won't win any prizes, but considering that I normally have to literally jog as slowly as my legs will go in order to keep moving, I consider it a win. It is much, much better than I did the last time I tried to run, last fall, soon after I started fighting class. Five minutes of running wiped me out then. Tonight, I could have kept running for quite a while, had I not needed to come back to my house and work on learning xiao hong chuan, the form that I have to know if I ever want to test for a yellow belt in kung fu.
(I have a coworker who claims that a real martial art for adults only has three belts: white, brown, and black. I, however, need the instant gratification of the colored belts, thank you very much.)
...
Friday last, I drove over the mountains with my window open to the sun and breeze, singing along to the radio until I lost all stations but public radio, which played folky sorts of songs that perfectly fit the sky and the pines and the river. As the last of the music faded to static, I put my hand against the radio so it could use my body as an antenna, and then I turned the radio off and propped my ipod up on the dashboard, below the speedometer, to provide my driving soundtrack.
Over there, the days were utterly perfect: clear and sunny, cooling in the evening. We all spent more time outside or in the 91-degree heated pool than we did inside, soaking up the Vitamin D that we do not get for so much of the year on the sheltered side of the mountains. I got a little bit of sunburn on my legs and the part of my hair, just enough to feel like summer was about to fall, and then I drove up the long, desolate road through the high desert to Ye Little Town, Northwest, where I reveled in a night and day with the B.s, whose house feels like yet another home. It's good to have some homes, especially when the town where you live doesn't feel like one.
No comments:
Post a Comment