Inconsistency

Continuing with my theme of inconsistent consitency, I'm writing again.

The days and weeks are flying by as September approaches. Soon, very soon, friends will start going off to school, and the population of greater-Concord will begin to shrink.

Tonight, is a bit of a send-off for Gwen, who heads to Ghana this weekend for a semester of studying. We all wish you well Gwen, but you will be missed!

As for me, I'm almost beginning to feel recovered from the weekend. My body can usually handle one night of little sleep, but two in a row is just a recipe for disaster. I need a lot of sleep as it is, so that took a while to get over.

Tuesday I had a pretty terrible workout. I found myself struggling to keep up with Jon by the end. For some reason, anything longer than 200m right now just feels like I'm running through sand. I hate not being in shape, but I know that the more of these workouts I suffer through, the closer I'm getting to being able to run the ones that will go well. I guess I just need to adjust my expectations.

Yesterday, I had my second test in my calculus class, which I thought had gone well but then we reviewed it today in class. The problem with a 4 question test is that when you fuck up one problem there goes a quarter of your points. Oh well, last time a 28% was scaled to a C, so I'm not too worried. I spent the afternoon working on Ableton and in the evening went to Cold Springs to run with the Newton Summer Running Project. I had a pretty nice run with Terry and a few others. It felt good to run at a steady, but quicker pace. I think part of my problem with these workouts the past few weeks is that I'm just not running fast enough most days. It's definitely good to run easy, but I need to get my training pace back down to 6:00 instead of 6:40.

In other news, Phish is on tour again! The boys kicked off the tour with a 4 day run at the infamous Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, CO. I haven't listened to all of the shows yet, but what I've heard sounds good. After a few more days on the West coast, they head back through the midwest and then back to New England for the end of the tour. I'm planning on catching two of their last shows in Hartford and Saratoga.

Speaking of Saratoga, I'm a little bummed out in the Skidmore denied what I thought was a pretty reasonable request for a single room. I guess the part that bugs me the most is that I actually spent a pretty good amount of time filling out a long application with lots of long-answer kind of questions and they responded with what was clearly an impersonal email. It just kind of sucks because I don't want to go into this experience with a bad taste in my mouth, yet I feel like that was kind of a dick move on their part. Is it bad to go into my first year of college already planning a transfer?

I think that subconsciously I must be much more anxious than I think I am. I've started having panic attacks and a lot more general anxiety lately. I imagine it's a whole lot of things, some biological and some enviornmental, but it's still definitely never fun.

Building Up

I return to an attempt at regular writing already experiencing a problem of commitment. A few weeks ago, in thinking about where I had been a year earlier, I remembered the start of this blog. I started on the first day of August in 2008, which for me, at the time, was actually late at night on the 31st of July. I had been thinking about writing, thinking about what I wanted to write so much for those weeks leading up to that point that I couldn't wait.

Upon realizing this anniversary of my little journal's inception, I decided that would be as good a milestone as any to push me into writing again. I set out to begin writing again on that first day of August and, as with many ideas that I have on runs, I promtly forgot about it until now.

So, here I am. I'm a few days late, but a little late is better than never, right? Indeed.

Build-Ups.

August will be a month of build-ups, of escalations. Almost everything in my life is gaining intensity at what sometimes feels like an alarmingly fast rate.

The building up of mileage in running is a good model for almost all similar build-ups. When one begins to run more and more miles there are strange effects that the body and the mind can handle in different ways. Some of these results are relatively predictable and similarly easy to deal with. As you run more miles, you eat more. As you run more miles, you sleep more. The list goes on.

However, something remarkable happens after a week or even a few days. What was an increase becomes the norm. Your body has a wonderful way of adapting to stresses, especially for a youthful soul such as myself. Before you realize it, the same intensity that was stressing your body to the max a few weeks ago is just another commonplace, daily activity.

All of this for what? Why the stress and the increase and the fighting against yourself? It's simple: we're working towards that catalyst. In running, your looking for that workout that tells you that you're a runner again, that you're in great shape. A build-up is the stress that lies in the fore-shadow of catalysm.

So, August. August is September's introduction, warm-up, opening band (depending on your metaphor). It's that anticipation throughout the month that makes everything seem so much more intense.

I have a feeling that this August will be particularly intense for me. One of the largest changes in any young person's life, moving out of the house (and into college in my case) is only a month away.

I feel like I should write a bit about the last few months, not that anyone is reading this, but it's nice to look back on myself later. Let me work month by month from when I last wrote:

February: I spent the entire month living with my grandparents in Florida. Running was going great; I won every race I entered and built a large base of miles for the spring racing season. They were lonely times for me, though. I missed the human interaction of being around my peers.

March: I was set to leave Florida at the beginning of this month with my parents. What began as a quick visit from my parents ended up being a week long stay for all of us as my grandmother suffered a series of strokes. As things cooled down, my father and I drove from Florida to Virginia for Phish's first concert in nearly 5 years. We then returned home and I spent a week or so in New Mexico hiking and running with Anna. Near the end of the month, Anna and I broke up. More on this later.

April: April is the cruelest of the months. Although broken up Anna and I continued to talk and act relatively civil to each other. It seemed clear that our friendship would last beyond our relationship. After a few weeks, however, I found out that she had been acting with inappropriate duplicity, had lied to me directly about it, and refused to take any responsibility for her actions. That was the last time we spoke regularly. My running was going okay, but I found myself in a rut in terms of racing. I was running about the same times, which were pretty mediocre, and showing little improvement. After searching for a job for a few weeks, I found myself working at Wendy's, the only establishment that would hire me at the time. Between my social problems, my terrible job, and my poor running performances, I found myself very depressed and alone.

May: May was when things started to change. I quit my job at Wendy's and started doing IT work for triple the pay. People started coming home from college and I found myself being more social. I spent a few weekends visiting my brother at Dartmouth where I had a few very memorable nights. Near the end of the month, I finally had my break-out race at the USATF Grand Prix 12k. I started running faster in workouts and was feeling great about the summer and my last few races.

June: June started on a down note as I was injured just a few days before one of my last races. What I thought was at first a stress fracture of the fibula ended up being some nasty tendonitis around my ankle. I was on crutches for a few weeks but once I was accurately diagnosed and taking ibuprofen, I improved very quickly. Duncan and I went camping in the white mountains for a few days. By the end of the month, I had started minimal running again.

July: In picking out my classes for Skidmore in the fall, I somehow ended up taking a 6 week summer course at UMass Lowell in an effort to place out of more classes. I continued running and increasing my mileage at a frustratingly slow pace. I often found myself surrounded by people that I love. The sun seemed to shine brighter.

August: What will August hold? I imagine an increase in intensity. All of the emotions and practicalities of moving out come to the forefront as there are less and less days for me to not think about it.

For now, I'm just trying to enjoy it. I'm trying to enjoy the people, the places, the sights and smells. Hopefully, that will leave me in a place where change is welcome, not needed or feared.