#32 Boston - Too Tired to Eat - Jan 12
Community Running my foot - community torture was more like it. On the recommendations of my very athletic friends Ana, Ken and Camille your truly attended a trial run Monday night at the Boston Community Running track workout, looking for a much needed kick in the pants in order to improve my skills when it comes to fast feet. The evening started innocently enough with a 1.5 mile warm-up jaunt where everyone zips at more or less fast-ish speed around the MIT campus. After sweating it out a little, everyone headed upstairs to the track. There are two groups - the "insanely fast" (Brian's Group) and "the slugs" (Amy's Group) - I joined the latter of course and when our coach told us we would run 12 x 400s, I thought "No problem! I can run 12 laps, big deal!" Hah! Turns out each lap was only 200 meters, which meant we had to circle the darn thing 24 times. The goal was to learn to pace yourself for 10 Ks, 5Ks and 3Ks, and I personally have no clue as to how to do that.
I went wayyyy to fast in the first 10 400s with the result that for laps 11 and 12 I was seriously sucking wind. Not only that - my friend Ana (who did this the right way and got faster as the evening went on), passed me twice, which put a serious dent in my extremely competitive nature...
I don't know how I got home -somehow I did stumble through the streets of Cambridge and once I was home, I took an even more serious nose dive. I was literally too tired to eat and the only effort my exhausted body and mind could come up with to pour boiling water over a broth cube and supplement with crackers. Coma would have been an adequate description of the state I found myself in, but you know what - I was happy. It did feel good to push myself a bit beyond what I felt I was capable off. As I said - the right kick in the pants. Stay tuned for future speed updates.
Currently I am engaged in quite the opposite activity – lounging on the couch of Rick’s home in Franconia, New Hampshire. No snow outside, but apparently we are expecting some white stuff tomorrow. They better! On the way up here there were just a few hints of snow and ice, so not all is lost.
The week has finally shown some signs of winter, meaning bone-chilling cold weather, in particular on Wednesday when Chris and I were the only courageous joggers from the Running Partners contingent to brave the 20 degree weather. Poor Chris had only brought shorts, but as he himself stated “that’s no excuse!”
What else happened? Hopefully you enjoyed the pictures from Mt Auburn Cemetery where Elaine and I did our annual January Winter Walk – it was simply a gorgeous day, a bit cooler than the day before (T-shirt weather, 69 degrees), but still in the late-summer/ fall category. Mt Auburn Cemetery spans 175 acres and has as its claim to fame that it was America’s first landscaped or garden-like cemetery - http://www.mountauburn.org/ - dating back to 1831. It also is known as a prime bird watching area, and the last time when Rick and I were there we had spotted a red tailed hawk. This time there were no birds in sight! Dirty little buggers probably had some kind of fun in the bushes. The cemetery is littered with architectural gems, including its earliest building, an Egyptian Revival Gateway dating back to 1832, the Bigelow Chapel (1840s Gothic Revival Style) and the Washington Tower which provided us with a fabulous view of Boston. Lots of VIPs are laid to rest here as well, including famous Boston architect Charles Bulfinch, visionary Buckminster Fuller, abolitionist and US Senator Charles Sumner, and of course, Boston’s grand dame of art patronage, Isabella Stewart Gardner.
To throw in a little culture – ushering duty this week led me to the Lyric Stage Company and Michael John Lachiusa’s “See What I Wanna See”. Short Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa in a sort of a jazzy musical setting. Part one was an adaptation of “In the Grove”, same as Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film “Rashomon” – despite my love for the master director’s movie, not my favorite story – and part two, “Gloryday”, the story of a scorned priest, who loses his faith after September 11th. In his bitterness he tries to expose the blind faith people show in God by promising a miracle in Central Park, only to be the only one experiencing the miracle whereas everyone else truly believes him to be a delusional liar. The audience loved it, I did not.
That pretty much sums up the week – work was busy in a good way, I did watch some nice movies (newest discovery: “Folye’s War” – wonderful British series) and life was mostly good. Have a good weekend my friends, enjoy the snow if you have some and make a snow angel for me!
Love,
Pet:)
Just a brief, but sad note at the end, one of my favorite photographers and mountaineers, Bradford Washburn (who also was the founder of the Museum of Science in Boston) passed away – the world has lost of most wonderful human being. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Washburn
I went wayyyy to fast in the first 10 400s with the result that for laps 11 and 12 I was seriously sucking wind. Not only that - my friend Ana (who did this the right way and got faster as the evening went on), passed me twice, which put a serious dent in my extremely competitive nature...
I don't know how I got home -somehow I did stumble through the streets of Cambridge and once I was home, I took an even more serious nose dive. I was literally too tired to eat and the only effort my exhausted body and mind could come up with to pour boiling water over a broth cube and supplement with crackers. Coma would have been an adequate description of the state I found myself in, but you know what - I was happy. It did feel good to push myself a bit beyond what I felt I was capable off. As I said - the right kick in the pants. Stay tuned for future speed updates.
Currently I am engaged in quite the opposite activity – lounging on the couch of Rick’s home in Franconia, New Hampshire. No snow outside, but apparently we are expecting some white stuff tomorrow. They better! On the way up here there were just a few hints of snow and ice, so not all is lost.
The week has finally shown some signs of winter, meaning bone-chilling cold weather, in particular on Wednesday when Chris and I were the only courageous joggers from the Running Partners contingent to brave the 20 degree weather. Poor Chris had only brought shorts, but as he himself stated “that’s no excuse!”
What else happened? Hopefully you enjoyed the pictures from Mt Auburn Cemetery where Elaine and I did our annual January Winter Walk – it was simply a gorgeous day, a bit cooler than the day before (T-shirt weather, 69 degrees), but still in the late-summer/ fall category. Mt Auburn Cemetery spans 175 acres and has as its claim to fame that it was America’s first landscaped or garden-like cemetery - http://www.mountauburn.org/ - dating back to 1831. It also is known as a prime bird watching area, and the last time when Rick and I were there we had spotted a red tailed hawk. This time there were no birds in sight! Dirty little buggers probably had some kind of fun in the bushes. The cemetery is littered with architectural gems, including its earliest building, an Egyptian Revival Gateway dating back to 1832, the Bigelow Chapel (1840s Gothic Revival Style) and the Washington Tower which provided us with a fabulous view of Boston. Lots of VIPs are laid to rest here as well, including famous Boston architect Charles Bulfinch, visionary Buckminster Fuller, abolitionist and US Senator Charles Sumner, and of course, Boston’s grand dame of art patronage, Isabella Stewart Gardner.
To throw in a little culture – ushering duty this week led me to the Lyric Stage Company and Michael John Lachiusa’s “See What I Wanna See”. Short Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa in a sort of a jazzy musical setting. Part one was an adaptation of “In the Grove”, same as Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film “Rashomon” – despite my love for the master director’s movie, not my favorite story – and part two, “Gloryday”, the story of a scorned priest, who loses his faith after September 11th. In his bitterness he tries to expose the blind faith people show in God by promising a miracle in Central Park, only to be the only one experiencing the miracle whereas everyone else truly believes him to be a delusional liar. The audience loved it, I did not.
That pretty much sums up the week – work was busy in a good way, I did watch some nice movies (newest discovery: “Folye’s War” – wonderful British series) and life was mostly good. Have a good weekend my friends, enjoy the snow if you have some and make a snow angel for me!
Love,
Pet:)
Just a brief, but sad note at the end, one of my favorite photographers and mountaineers, Bradford Washburn (who also was the founder of the Museum of Science in Boston) passed away – the world has lost of most wonderful human being. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Washburn
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