being alive

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life... I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive."
-- Joseph Campbell

yesterday was my first 34 mile run in training for the 100 miler. i kept catching myself smiling while i was running. it was kind of funny. i guess you could say that in those moments, i was truly feeling alive!

i was running with about 10 other people from hill country trail runners out in bastrop state park. if you're looking for a convenient place to do 10 mile repeats with the option of hills, its a great place to go. i'm not sure if they allow mountain bikes on the trails, but if they do, it would be a good place for beginners to go.

i spent the afternoon today out at barton springs with a bunch of t4k-ers. i'm not a fan of having to pay to go into barton springs (its nature!), and conveniently, its normally free before 9a and after 9p, the times i'm normally there. after getting in the water in the heat of the day though, i've decided that its definitely worth the price. cool and refreshing!

perfect laughter

If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.
~Charles Bukowski

4th of july weekend recap...in photos!

i found the cable to connect my camera to my computer! so here is the recap from last weekend (minus the part mentioned in my previous post).

first and foremost, i got to see my brothers and their better halves!

l to r: julia, chris, brittney, rob

pepperoni...the new cucumber, as demonstrated by my cousin bridey

godfather and goddaughter

i also had the good fortune to learn a few more things about my family this weekend:

chris apparently dances awkwardly, and julia is good at imitating.

none of us are capable of blowing up those long skinny balloons that clowns use to make balloon animals, as demonstrated by uncle george and rob.

the shovlin (mom's maiden name) clan is a pretty good looking crowd...its just difficult to get them all to sit still in a picture! most of us are in the picture above, but we're missing a couple aunts, uncles and cousins. and for those not familiar with how cameras work, low light = grainy picture...sorry about that, but we didn't get around to group photos until after dark!

we had brunch on the morning of the 4th of july at club in nyc...in their roof deck garden. my friend todd (from t4k) just moved to nyc and was able to join us...ask him about his lovely moving experience and you'll understand why he couldn't hang out more!

you can bring me to a nice restaurant, but you can't make me not burn the menu...oops!

here we are at rob's birthday dinner (his birthday is the 4th of july).

after dinner, we got to see the fireworks (sort of). then we all walked back across town to rob's place (where chris, julia and i were also staying). we ordered mangoes with sticky rice and had it delivered to the door. personally, i think this is one of the greatest things about nyc...mangoes with sticky rice on call. awesome.

i stayed up for awhile talking with chris and julia and then headed to bed. sunday morning had me up early and hiking to penn station to catch a train to the airport to fly back to austin. it was a super quick trip, but i had a great time seeing everyone!

born to run

well, i had grand plans to post pictures, but i haven't been able to find the cable that connects my camera to my computer. i spent last weekend in nj and nyc. my aunt and uncle bought a new house and it was my aunt's 50th birthday, so the entire extended family descended on nj on july 3rd. it was awesome to see everyone, and it was amazing to see how fast some of my little cousins had grown in the past couple years!

saturday morning (the 4th of july) i got up early and ran around the southern end of manhattan. i could see the statue of liberty and ellis island from the route i took, which reminded me (more than the fireworks) what the holiday is really about. as luck would have it, my brother's birthday is also the 4th of july, so there was much eating and merrymaking throughout the day.

that afternoon i got to spend an hour or two sitting in tryon park, catching up with alex and susan, two of my housemates from hawaii, and kakwira, another friend from hawaii and his girlfriend sarah.

i'm done traveling now for several weeks, but i have been grateful for all the reading time i've had lately while waiting on planes and flying. if you haven't read it yet, go read born to run. my father read a description of it in the newspaper and went out and bought it immediately (he's not a runner). after reading it, he sent me his copy and said that reading it helped him understand how i think and why i like to run so much. needless to say i was intrigued by this statement. that is until i read the book. yes dad, you're correct. there are a lot of other things i would like to say along these lines, but its probably all meant for a conversation off line. i definitely recommend the book, especially if you're interested in running or have a significant other who seems absorbed by it (for more than superficial reasons).

i just finished my mid-term exam for my digital signal processing class. the term is half over. i had a meeting with my advisor today, and its entirely possible that i won't have to take a class in the fall (even on pass/fail). maybe the flip side of that though is that there is so much to do!

peer pressure

leadville was awesome. i'm not sure i can express the awesomeness in words, so here is more of the trip in pictures (with captions):

view down the street from our rental house

home in leadville for the weekend

fred and cindy on the bus to the start of the 26-mile saturday run (all were still smiling afterward too...)

trail up the twin lakes side of hope pass (12,600 ft elevation)...if you see dots in the distance that look like people, they are in fact people.

trail near the top of hope pass. yep, we had to run through snow.

the top of hope pass = two thumbs up...sunday was a 21 mile run that went over this twice. each side had ~3000ft of climbing.

me, dan, tom, jack, donna and dave on top of a mountain during the sunday run.

view from the top of mt. sanitas (boulder) where we ran on monday morning.

moral of the story: i was peer pressured by people i didn't even know (in addition to the ones i did) to sign up for the race. so i did.

colorado

we arrived safely in colorado last night. when fred, tom and i got out to fred's car at the airport however, we had a momentary set back...flat #1.

our first flat

once we got the tire fixed, we headed to fred's house in boulder and met up with dan, jack and joseph. we spent last night in boulder, and then after a quick breakfast this morning, dan, jack, joseph, tom and i piled into car and started driving to leadville.

we rented a little victorian house in downtown leadville that sleeps 10 and is right down the street from the morning meeting point for training camp. after changing, we drove down to winfield, a little ghost town about 40 minutes from leadville, which is also home to the 50-mile turn around point for the race, so we could do a training run.

jack, me, joseph and dan pre-run

today i put in about 13 miles or so. we started at winfield and ran along the road to the trail head, and then started the climb up to hope pass. the top of the pass is at 12,600ft elevation, and the climb to get up there is something to be reckoned with. the trail is great, but it is steep enough that i probably wouldn't want to be running up it even if i weren't at altitude!

joseph and tom on the road to the trailhead (jack in the background)

we got up to the top of the pass in about an hour. the view from the top was pretty amazing. it was so nice to be out on the trail. you could here water rushing by in the stream...and thunder echoing in the background as a storm rolled in.

me at the top of hope pass. in the background is (are?) twin lakes and are the first and last 45 miles of the leadville course.

we didn't stay up at the top too long because it was getting cold, but i definitely got a good taste of what our sunday run at camp will be like. by the time i got back down the mountain it was raining a bit harder. joseph and i ran up the road for 15 minutes in the direction opposite of the parking lot, and then turned around and started heading back to the car...although we didn't have to run up a very steep incline, we got on a little hill and i had to start walking. at this point i realized that aside from the pancakes i'd had for breakfast, all i had to eat today was one gel. we started our run a little before 1p and hadn't eaten lunch, so the lack of food just hit me. i could mostly run back, but whenever we started to go up an incline, i started hiking. on the one hand this could be demoralizing (i was bonking afterall), but i think it was actually just good practice to start walking and start booking it! in ultras, ultimately, you have to cover the distance. you'll probably be walking at some point.

about a mile before we were to arrive back at the parking lot, dan, jack and tom pulled up. joseph and i happily piled in as we'd already done extra mileage for the day anyways and it was starting to rain harder.

i should say at this point that to get to the parking lot, we'd had to turn off the main road and drive on an unpaved road for 9.5 miles. well, we got back onto the main road, and dan made a comment about how the car was handling oddly. we pulled over and you could hear the hiss as the air escaped out of the tire. awesome. fortunately we made it back to leadville and were able to get to a garage and have them fix the tire.

flat #2

when we got back to the house, donna and dave had arrived...and were making dinner for everyone! mmmm. well timed guys! fred arrived at the house after dinner, so now there are 8 of us here. we're only waiting on cindy to be complete.

he who feels punctured must have once been a bubble

i've been working my way through "the world's religions" by huston smith, who i mentioned at the end of last month. the book contains a brief history and description of the major world religions rather than telling the reader how to practice them. i just finished the chapter on taoism and a few quotes stuck out at me.

first, the title of today's post is from the Tao Te Ching. if you've never read it, i'd recommend it. you can read the whole thing in 30 minutes or an hour, but, as smith points out, you could study it for a lifetime. i think i have been a bubble at various points in my life.

in discussing the tao's observation "muddy water let stand will clear," smith writes:

If you want to study the stars after being in a brightly lit room, you must wait twenty minutes for your eyes to dilate for their new assignment. There must be similar periods of waiting if the focal length of the mind is to readjust, withdrawing from the world's glare to the internal recesses of the soul.

the other quote that stood out to me was:

The Chinese word for landscape painting is composed of the radicals mountain and water, one of which suggests vastness and solitude, the other pliability, endurance, and continuous movement.

in some ways i feel that the radicals embody my connection to water and attraction to mountains.

i got to climb sunday evening for a couple hours with my housemate daniel. it was a lot of fun. we went to austin rock gym, which was nice because there weren't too many people there and we didn't have to melt in the heat. my lats and shoulders are a little sore, but that could also be because at core workout last night, the instructor turned 32. because of this, he decided we needed to do 32 sets of 32 reps. when you do a couple sets of 3 minute and 20 second planks, 32 pushups, etc, one can expect to be a wee sore the next day, i suppose.

i'm finishing up my problem set and packing tonight and tomorrow. we leave tomorrow night for leadville!