Reentry

Four weeks ago today I completed my 1400 mile run from Boulder to Petoskey.
Today I...read the newspaper, went for an hour-long run, cleaned the bathroom, weeded the garden, called my mom who has had some health problems since we were in Michigan, checked email, reserved a room for family weekend at Knox, put in my name as a race volunteer, submitted a resume for another volunteer job, organized some photos, went (ran) to the library to photocopy some articles, ironed some shirts, went (ran) to the grocery store, made dinner, watched a movie, ho hum ho hum. Today's life is a bit more complex than the summer's simple triad of running 8 hours per day, eating, and sleeping. Complex, but missing the simultaneous threads of excitement and calm that the summer of running offered. Just four weeks, yet a lifetime ago.

Long enough ago that the sensations are beginning to fade - I'm glad I wrote down the things I missed about the run during our return trip to Colorado.

• Quiet
• The breeze on my face for hours at a time
• Being outdoors all day long, surrounded by weather...and not much else...
• The rhythm of the run, 30 miles/8 hours per day
• Talking to my dad as I ran toward the horizon
• Kendall time, Paul time

• Taking a shower because I really needed to
• Waking up to a chorus of birds each morning

But there are good things about being back in Boulder: there's a mystery stalk of corn growing in our yard (undoubtedly to remind us of the zillions of cornstalks we passed this summer), my dog is once again at my side, I've got running buddies to laugh with along the trail, and I don't have to run 30 miles every day!

(btw: watch the links on the left side of the blog page...I'll be adding links to pictures and various articles)

Surprises

Len (of Len and Jen who so graciously invited us into their front yard when we had our first sighting of Lake Michigan 1,127 miles into the run - when I saw Lake Michigan in Wisconsin I really wanted to get right up next to the water and Jen was happy to accommodate when she heard how far I had come to see the lake) asked about "the most amazing thing" I'd seen so far. For some reason, I find it hard to ascribe "amazing" to any one sighting...amazing being defined as overwhelming with surprise... but there were certainly a number of surprises - most of them quite delightful. I've been putting together a list; here it is in no particular order:

• Waving. I still smile thinking of all of the drivers (particularly in Nebraska) waving and smiling as they drove carefully by me. I very quickly started waving back - and, in fact, am still waving at drivers, cyclists, and runners who pass by me in Boulder.
• Quiet. So many miles were filled with only the sound of the wind and birds (and, if a hot day, the sound of ice melting in my hat). ...so hard to find in the midst of city living, so very welcome as I passed through the heartland.
• A town park in every single town we stopped at for midday break - most with water and/or bathrooms and some with sculptures and fountains such as this park in Emerson, Nebraska.
• No jets above - from eastern Colorado to Minnesota.
• The sky, the clouds, the horizon: so blue, so active, so expansive.

Mountain-Bay Trail, Wisconsin

• Turtles along the road in Colorado and Nebraska.
• My first sighting of the Colorado state bird - the lark bunting (found primarily on the eastern plains).
  
• Red-winged blackbirds and killdeer squawking at me all the way from Boulder to Petoskey.
• Discovering my picture staring out at me from the front page of the Brush News-Tribune when I ran into town on June 9. (The editor had interviewed me on-line and asked me to send a photo to accompany the article.)
• The wildest lightening show I've ever seen, while we were camping in Julesberg. Across the entire sky, continuous, sheet lightening and bolts. Stunning!
  
• Boot fences in Nebraska.
• Watching the corn grow - from calf-high in Colorado to taller-than-me in eastern Nebraska. (Yes, it was a sloooow crossing of the country.)
• Giant farm vehicles (see teeny runner to the left, humungo farm vehicle to the right below).
• A stretch of Lincoln Highway when trains appeared to my left, my right, and straight ahead. I really enjoyed the accompaniment of the trains, the rhythm of their chugging often in synch with my own. I'd always wave when they passed by, and about a third of the engineers would toot their horns at me. Another smiling moment.
• The beauty of the Nebraska Sandhills.
• Klingon cow. Yes, a cow (bull, actually) that was at least a head taller than any of the other cows in the herd and had a head and brow that was distinctly Klingon.
  
• Horses - almost more horses than cows in Nebraska. (The pie and coffee ladies at the Burwell Senior Center said most of the herds were out in the hills.) Horses (unlike cows who stampeded whenever I passed by) would tend to run with me. These four appeared from behind hay bales and lined up all in a row (not holding position quite long enough for Kendall, who was cycling with me, to get his camera out).
  
• Stampeding cows - every time I would pass except for the time they all lined up along the fence when my son, Paul, was describing the latest Spiderman movie to me. Could Paul be a cow whisperer? Are cows craving story hour? Or....
• A tailwind north of North Platte that was so strong that Paul, who was cycling next to me, didn't even need to pedal...at all...even to get started...on a steep uphill. We'd race each other: I'd start running and challenge him to catch up to me without pedaling. He won every time.
• Pie and coffee at the Burwell Senior Center. My one injury stopped me from running more than two miles on Friday, June 22nd. I climbed into the motor home and suggested to Lysa (who was crewing for me that week) that we go into town and get some coffee...and we discovered that Fridays are pie and coffee days at the Burwell Senior Center. That led to one of the most delightful mornings of my life!
• No mean dogs (other than the two ferocious junk yard dogs who went after running buddy Joe on the day he crewed for me...day 3 of the run). I've come to believe that the "big honking whistle" that I carried (in order to, hopefully, scare a charging dog for at least a couple seconds) was a good dog talisman, keeping bad dogs away. During the run, there were, indeed, several occasions when overly friendly dogs wanted to join the run - much easier to deal with than angry dogs.
• Trying out motorhome camping - and liking it!

• Funny campground showers (push a button and get water at one speed and one temperature, pull a chain and do pirouettes to rinse off while holding the chain, corn-motif shower curtains...)
• Discovering I was running in long-time running buddy Patti's childhood neighborhood in Sioux City.
• Corn as far as the eye could see in Minnesota.
• Wild raspberries along every trail. Yum! Beats Gu any day!
• Hearing a deer (sort of a high huffy noise...).
• So few biting bugs, so many varieties of other insects: dragonflies, butterflies, lightning bugs...
• Sandhill cranes in Wisconsin.
• Bald eagle circling above then zooming into the trees next to me and coming back out with a partner and soaring together to the wilds beyond.
  
• Many many turkey families - young turkeys don't even look like turkeys!
  

• Discovering the Buffalo River ATV trail as a refreshing 30+ mile alternative to Highway 10 in Wisconsin. Yahoo!

• Running through Amish country and sharing the shoulder with horses & buggies.
• The Pulaski Polka fest, camping right next to it and being lullabied to sleep with polka music...
• Only three chance encounters with runners in 1400 miles (excluding Mackinac Island). The runner who passed me in Wisconsin said I was the first runner she had ever seen along that stretch of road - which she runs every time she visits her parents.
• Discovering that my GPS/watch unit battery is only good for 12 hours. That's just 1.5 days of running!
  
• WWII airplanes flying in formation overhead (12 planes, in four sets of 3) as I crossed the bridge from Wisconsin to Michigan. (My dad was a WWII pilot. He died this past December, ever-skeptical of this running venture, but oh how he looked out for me all summer...)
• A bizarre collection of tunes stuck in my head: the Beverly Hillbillies theme song (Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota), Mama makes shortenin' bread (Minnesota and Wisconsin), Take Heed It's a Tumbleweed (a song of my own composition, sung in Nebraska pretty much whenever I saw a tumbleweed, much to my son's dismay) - and finally, Sousa marches - a vast improvement which occurred when I crossed into Michigan.
• Seeing Boulder buddy Deb waiting for me at the end of the day/trail in northern Michigan two days before the finish - cheering me along with pom poms made of toilet paper...nothing but the best!
• Wild flowers: roadside, trailside, forest floor ...
• Reading an article about my run in the Northern Express, written by high school buddy and good friend Connie.
  
• Spotting my "pjv" chalk mark in western UP on our way back to Colorado. (The mark was left at the end of the day July 24th, and spotted again on August 7th!)
• Son Paul's sense of humor and his uncanny ability to keep me steady.

Sakatah State Trail, Minnesota. PJV with Paul,
the consummate cycling support crew

Paul with his mom
after catching her first glimpse of the Michigan state line

Energy rebounding

I think my energy stores are on the rebound. The first clue was waking up at midnight and putzing about until almost 4 a.m.. Then:

• read a book and a newspaper from 5:30 a.m. until 8-ish.
  
• painted the downstairs bathroom after a quick breakfast. (We had a plumbing emergency just before we left town. The repair work, done during our absence, included putting a hole in the wall. The subsequent dry wall patch looked a tad tacky with our dark blue bathroom.)
• ran to the running store.
• walked a few miles to/through the next round of errands.
• mowed the lawn until driven inside by thunder, lightening, and huge downpour
  
• ran through the rain to the neighborhood park to see if the creek flooded. Did it ever! It had become a roaring river filling up its banks, the creekside bike path, and the tunnels/underpasses beneath the neighborhood streets and bridges. Exciting stuff.
• cleaned the bathroom.
• washed the kitchen floor.

I think it may be time to start bringing my mileage back up!

Where to start, now that I've finished?

It's one day shy of two weeks since I ran into Petoskey. It feels rather like a lifetime ago! For the first several days, I kept having dreams that I needed to run some more to get to Petoskey. During one dream, I half woke up, realized I was in Petoskey, and the dream said, yeah, but you still have to run some more in order to actually finish the run. Not that I was stressed about making it to the finish line or anything...

And now I'm back in Boulder. There have definitely been adjustments - like to noise, crowds, traffic, being indoors, sitting... At one point during the trip back to Boulder along I80 in Nebraska, I asked Kendall if we could get off the interstate and hop back onto my route on the Lincoln Highway - the stretch that I picture whenever I think back to the calming effects of the run. So that we did, and it was wonderful. It put me right back into the serene state of mind that my slow moving adventure had bestowed upon me.

Emerald waves of grain...

June 2007, Lincoln Highway, Nebraska

But back to the original question: "Where to start, now that I've finished."
My vote is to start by thanking the multitudes of wonderful people who helped make this journey such a resounding success!

Family:

• Kendall and Paul who spent the bulk of their summer going across the plains two miles at a time and conjuring up aid station entertainment guaranteed to keep a smile on this runner's face.
• Devon who kept Jester dog happy and our Boulder home humming - making our summer just that much more care-free knowing that someone was keeping an eye on the home front.

Friends:

• My friends who helped crew the first week (Deb, brother-in-law Andy, and Joe).
  
• Lysa who crewed in Nebraska for a week giving Kendall and Paul a break back in Boulder. (If you ever want a wonderful traveling companion, find a mellow historian: fantastic, easy-going, fun fact conversationalist.)
• Bob K. who met us on the road in Minnesota with homemade rhubarb pie, fresh-picked raspberries, cookies, homemade applesauce and great conversation.
• Patti who made up a cd with absolutely fantastic tunes that played perfectly with this running adventure. (Think "I hope you dance" 1355 miles into a 1400 mile run!)
• AndyE who crewed in Wisconsin for two days while Kendall and Paul rested up at SandyE's brother's farm (Anna's Inn - wonderful spot in Marshfield, Wisconsin).
• Deb who rendezvoused with me almost weekly over the past year to help put the logistics for this run together, crewed for me the first day (Boulder to Ft Lupton), then traveled to Petoskey to meet me at the finish - what a treat!
• High school buddy Connie who wrote stories about the run for the papers back in Petoskey and organized both the welcoming committee on the day I ran into Petoskey and a grand bash at the waterfront with a whole bunch of high school buddies the weekend after I finished. (The party was so much fun a number of them asked if I'd do the run again next year so they'd have an excuse to get together again. Ha!)
• Everyone who sent e-mails and text messages, who phoned along the road, who posted comments to my blog or signed the guest book on my web site. Every word put a spring in my step!
• The many new friends I met along the way who took such an interest in the run and were so very encouraging!
  

Sponsors:

• Great Harvest Bakery of Longmont : sent out boxes full of the most delicious goodies: bread, rolls, sweet rolls, cookies, muffins, brownies, energy bars. I lost a bit too much weight on this trip - I can't imagine what would have happened if I hadn't had all these tasty treats available! I ate bread with almost every meal; my standard post-run treat was a Great Harvest cookie as we drove to our campsite; and starting with Wisconsin, I went to "real food" for my on-the-run food - with my favorite being nibbles of either Great Harvest Happy Whole Grain bread or Great Harvest energy bars. In fact, on the last day, I was running ahead of schedule (I was told I couldn't reach the Petoskey Wheelway until 11:30 tho' no one would tell me why) so I had to wait almost an hour at a park just outside Petoskey. During the wait, I ate my last piece of "Happy bread" slathered with Justin's almond butter. Yum! And that brings us to:
• Justin's nut butters. Justin sent out a jar of almond butter and a box full of packets of various kinds of peanut butter. If you like nut butters, you must try Justin's. Absolutely delicious. And if you want a real treat, try some Great Harvest cinnamon bread slathered with Justin's nut butter. Yummers!

pjv right after eating Happy Bread with Justin's Almond Butter
just outside Petoskey, 8/1/2007

• Gatorade. A chance encounter, and I'm set for fluids for the entire trip. It just so happens that Paul runs cross country for the same college as the son of the president of Gatorade - and we met each other at the first meet of the season last year. He heard about my plans for this summer and a few weeks later, boxes of Gatorade and water bottles and jugs started showing up at our doorstep. Riptide Rush was the flavor of the summer - a light enough flavor that I could drink gallons of it and that's just what I did.
• Holly Beggs: massage therapist extraordinaire. She not only kept my body moving during training, she also helped with nutrition and support preparations - and - when I was injured in Nebraska talked me through self-massage techniques that got me back on the road in very quick order.
  
• Mark Plaatjes: A friend - and extraordinary athlete and person - who heard about my idea for a run and who, after saying "Why do you want to do that?" volunteered to help me with a training plan that would get me ready for the adventure. The plan worked beautifully and Mark's encouragement was, as they say in the commercials, "priceless".
• Brooks and Boulder Running Company - partnered together to provide me with shoes to last across the country. I was able to keep four fresh pairs in rotation throughout the entire trip. My feet were very pleased.
  
• BCOR got me started on my training program, building up core and upper body strength where there was very little strength to start with - and Coach Josh sent encouraging words all along the way.

So, that's where I've started. More to come - this journey is going to stay with me a while...

PETOSKEY!!!!

1400 miles later, I'm here!

Pictures will tell the tale today. More words at a later date...

My first view of Little Traverse Bay (where Petoskey is located)

The first view of Petoskey's waterfront

High school buddies Carl & Connie, and Tom, my cycling trail guide for the day, share the trail into town


Petoskey city limits!!!!!!

Paul & Paula at Petoskey's waterfront

In front of the shop my folks owned while I was growing up


Coming in for a landing at my mom's house - finish line tape (held by son, Devon) in Petoskey High colors