Going to ramble on something. Time flies. I looked back a few years ago of the things I did …. and this came about when I stumbled on an old document in my drive. Actually not that old but is now dated for being over a year. I used to record a brief summary of what happen each day/week. And somehow during the pandemic of last year I stopped doing it. I was glancing over at the things recorded. Wow, time flies. So what if five months or five years have gone by?
To me looking back was like a blink of an eye but looking forward into the future is slow and hazy.
I was wondering why I stopped writing entries. So what happened? I think I got into running virtual races after the covid19 happened in our area, I was especially drawn by the one of racing across Tennessee. I am still doing it this year. The epic race took all my time and attention.
I keep a record of things because it shows where I was heading in life and it kind of determines where I would go next. I was thinking about life in general how easily for me to get off track or be distracted even with all the planning and tools I have at hand.
I thought back of the time about learning land navigation by dead reckoning, probably the simplest method, and I was taught to pick a point in the distance and head straight toward it, while counting the pace. I was not very good at this of course being a city boy. In a woods or anywhere for a fact, it is very hard to keep going straight in one direction. There is always things crop up that you have to go around. The terrain is constantly changing as you walk. Nothing is smooth and flat as appeared on a map. Small stones and rocks you can step over it but bigger obstacles, you have to go around. As I learned, after a few steps, I got off course even though I thought I was going in the same general direction. This would amplify the farther you go, unless you do correction. I was inexperience (and still am). This is especially true in the woods when you can’t see that far ahead.
So what this got to do with life? I like planning things. Often my planning is like a point-to-point navigation. I will try to achieve this goal first and then after that decide on the next goal.
I like simplicity and probably due to my limited ability that I can only do one thing at a time. Actually one thing then rest and then plan and then another thing.
What I realize is, looking back, all these goals I tried to achieve, they did not line up to a straight line. They kind of meander left and right. In fact looking back, what was I trying to do? I have no clue. When planning you think you have a clue, but looking back, many things came about due to unanticipated encounter – might have called it fate. How did I get into running the last five years? And how did I come to running long-long distance? Sure I like it immensely, but I didn’t foresee it five years ago. Now I do nothing but run, which is my passion.
While some goals are so easy to achieve, even those initially were hard or impossible, they were accomplished, and others I thought shouldn’t be that hard are still pending. This is so true about my 50 states marathon goal. To this day, I had run only in 7 states and there are 43 states left. You might say, I am just bad at executing my goals and I am easily distracted.
Today is my weekend off – meaning I am not traveling or have plans. I have been a bit busy the last few weekends, having to prepare for and then to run in Grayson Highlands ultra and then last week went to Richmond to run in River Rock. It was very straining on my mind. I was emotionally very high from the runs. One was the hardest race I did and the other was also hard too but very vacation-like kind of running. I had a blast. They took a lot of my mental power to plan and execute. It might not have reflected in my journal entries but they were a heavy weight for a long time.
Well this weekend I should go up to PA World’s End State Park to visit a section of a trail I will be sweeping for a race in two weeks. I am kind of nervous because as a sweeper I am responsible to get the last runner off the trail by herding them toward a designated point (15 miles long), but however if I get lost or unable to run fast enough to catch up to the last runner, it would be very embarrassing, especially if they have to send someone else out to look for me if I didn’t arrive by a certain time. My shift is an evening shift, from 5:00 pm – 10:30 pm, a lonely hour slot once the sun sets. How is this related? I will be using my land navigation skill plus running in the dark!
But I am a bit tired today and couldn’t wake up for the long drive. Also just no desire to travel at all this weekend.
I have nothing much to write today, so going to say I signed up for another marathon — Moonlight Marathon at Blackwater Falls, West Virginia.
The race itself is not that enticing, since we will be running on a 3 mile stretch of road back and forth in the middle of the night. Eww is my reaction. This is the most boring of marathons. Any way, the park at BlackWater has tons of trails so during the day time, I can have plenty of trail running. So as an extra challenge to myself, I will go into the race probably having run a marathon or more that morning and trying to stay myself awake that night doing a timed marathon on their real course. Then probably run some more in the woods the next day. My time for the marathon will be bad (they give us 9 hours and I will fully use it all), but I will be there for the fun at the park during the day. This will be on the last weekend in August, still a long time away.
That is what I really want to tired myself to the point when I go to bed, I would just crash and be weak for the whole week after. That is what I call fun! I need something like that every weekend!
Enjoy your weekend. Next week is the Memorial Weekend – I will probably be around. Personally, I will try to rack up enough miles to finish the CRAW region (racing around the world). Our team is expect to finish our region that weekend. This race is 3 year long and we are about couple months from finishing the first year. So I will be running.
In awe 