My Lucky Day

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."– Herman Melville

Yesterday, Alpha arrived at my home early in the morning for our trail run. He finished building a ramp for Hope, his border collie, so that she can navigate the stairs. Unfortunately she is not doing too well. He told me that he wanted to run short today because he’s tapering. Short, for Tony, means a run of about 6 miles. I told him that I wanted to run longer today because of my rib injury. This hurt interfered and caused me to miss a few days of running.

So we started out by walking, one of my favorite loops which is roughly, 10 miles. We walked and talked and then I heard a noise. I turned around and here comes Madhu running down the trail with only pepper spray in his hand. No water for him today only peppers spray to ward off the wild animals. Madhu, incidentally, organized the San Jose Quicksilver trail run on the 11 Th of May. Alpha, Jonathan, Tara, and I are running the 25K. Madhu’s wife Farah also planned on running the 25K but withdrew last week because of an injury. Madhu has entered the 50 mile trail run and hopes to complete this tough trail run in about 10 hours. He is celebrating a 50 something birthday this month which is why we are partying with him.

On a side note, I met Tony a.k.a. Secretariat and a.k.a. Alpha at a ride and tie in 1997. At that ride, I was introduced to ride and tie and decided to enter a competition. As a result, my first ride and tie was at Quicksilver in 1997. My last Quicksilver ride and tie competition was in 2008.  A couple of years ago during a ride and tie competition at Quicksilver, Tony and I went up and ran part of the course. So I’m looking forward to returning next week even though I know about the difficulty of the trail and hot weather conditions.

Back to our run and walk. Madhu turned off to another trail while Tony and I continued on our loop. We talked, talked and ran. I was telling Tony this story about interviewing Mike Keller and a conversation about the mental toughness of Jack Youngblood and Jerry Rice.

I told him that Jack Youngblood would likely continue running into a tree to see if he could move it while Jerry Rice would run around the tree. Mike Keller said it was Jack’s job to punish people and Jerry Rice’s job to avoid people. Tony said Jerry Rice was still tough because he had to catch balls thrown toward the middle of field and then he would get hit. We all agreed that Jerry Rice was mentally tough.

 I just stopped running and as I was telling Tony that story, I looked down and saw my black glove that I had lost about three weeks ago. How is that for coincidence? It must be my lucky day. For your information, I run (in the cold) with one black glove and one white glove. I am now matched again.

Franks Glove

At the creek crossing, I told Tony that I was to go further (another 4-5 miles) and he could join me if he liked. He declined and we intend to run again on Sunday. For this last loop, I ran, focused on my breathing since I had no one to talk to. Today, Linda Nails her Arabian and I are going on a 10 mile ride and run. She likes to ride and so it is.

Remember to keep moving, laughing, smiling and rhythmic breathing.