they must need bears

Climbing yesterday, figured out what I was doing wrong on that traverse (Did you know there are two footholds at the part I got stuck at? Because, er. I didn't. And I was using the higher and further-away one, which got me all wrong-footed.), got past it, and got stuck where I had been stuck before. As near as I can tell, the next move is "Stick your left foot in your ear and then stand up on it."

Maybe Wednesday.

However, I did manage three other 5.7s, two of which I had done before, but one of which was brand new to me and I got it on the first try, albeit with two falls and some dogging on the rope. I think I can do it comfortably next time, though, though I already know I will still have to rest on the overhang. This excites me, because it means there are three 5.7s in the gym I can do comfortably enough that I don't kill myself on them. Which means I can probably mostly-retire that 5.6 I've been doing mostly so that I didn't have to stop after two or three routes, because god knows I need the endurance training and the exercise.

I came home from last Wednesday's climbing with a mystery bruise in the palm of my left hand, where the ring finger and pinky run into it. It wasn't particularly sore, though there is one achy, firm-feeling, paler spot in the middle there. It seems to be fading out, though, and it doesn't impede my grip strength, mobility, or fine control, so I think I'm not going to fuss about it. Probably just trained a tendon on that (%&*(^)*&^ traverse.

With a 6 mile hike Sunday and a 4.5 mile walk today (After the hike and the climbing, I decided to give my calves and toes a break from running) which included two miles under pack, as I was bringing my groceries home, I'm feeling pretty all right with the world.

Also, hey, did you know that when nothing's screwing with my biochemistry, I'm halfway sane? It's pretty exciting, is what.

174.9 miles to Lothlorien. I'm climbing to Redhorn Pass, fearing snow. (With good reason!) Memo to me: Bear, you suck! Practice guitar today.

And now, I am going to go terminate a bagel with lox, with extreme prejudice. And then maybe read some more Elizabeth Moon and do some actual work of my actual own.

Boy, what a beautiful morning. High thirties into low forties, clear and crisp, everything in bloom. Just gorgeous.

Two and a half miles this morning, and I did my first mile in 14:59. If you think I am smug about it, you would be right. Then the nine-minute loop of the park (I think it's actually longer than a half-mile, but gmaps pedometer says it's not), and then some stretching, and then mostly-walked the mile home in 16:47. I justify this to myself by means of the scorching (for me) time on the run out, the fact that I was going to stay home this morning, the fact that my shins and calves hurt, and sheer laziness. Also, it really is a pretty morning.

Climbing last night was better than Monday, despite ongoing lack of strength and soreness issues in my right arm. That traverse that I couldn't do and then I could do? I can't do it again, so I still have not finished that damned blue 5.7. Even though it's a short wall, it's tricky. I did however finish a fairly long 5.7 with a similar traverse that used to completely kick my ass (and I felt secure the whole time, though I had to stop and rest), and also a 5.7 and a 5.6 on the slab, both of which I have done before. I tried a 5.8 and couldn't get off the ground, so I fell back and did the 5.6 on the same wall, which is sort of a bunny wall overhang. It's overhung, but you can barely tell. Still, it will help make me strong enough that I can tackle the overhang on the black 5.7 that is my other project wall. The Jeff is after me to try a 5.7 on the tree wall that he likes. It looks like absolutely no fun at all, but I will probably adopt that one as a new project once I finish one of these other two. It has to happen sooner or later, right?

I have a hell of a bruise on the palm of my left hand. Wheeugh. No idea how I got it, either.

189.9 miles to Lothlorien.

In other news, I appear to be cured. Right. Not taking those pills any more. Man. It's been donwright pleasant and spacious inside my head for the last two days.

And now I need a shower and some food and tea and some work on "The Red in the Sky is Our Blood," which is standing at around 1000 words currently. Because hey, progress is good.

Good running day today: Made the (uphill) mile out in 16:04 including a pause for street-crossing, and jogged the whole thing except the first two blocks. Walked a half mile around the park in 8:56 (taking my time), stretched for five minutes, and ran the (downhill) mile back in 13:31. I had to drop to a walk for a tenth of a mile breather on the way back, but I made it up at the end, so I still ran 9/10 of the mile, and actually hit a pretty good spot of competence for about a block at the end there. A tenth of a mile of feeling pretty good! That's not to be scoffed at!

It was raining steadily on the way out, broken sun through the overcast on the way back. The dogwoods are in full bloom and the lilacs are starting--didn't those used to be May/June flowers?

Running in the rain is so much easier and nicer than running when it's sunny out. This will improve as the trees along my route leaf out, but for the time being, I need to get out earlier in the morning, dammit.

After Sunday's climbing (sent a 5.4 that was actually more like twenty-five feet of 5.6 and then twenty-five feet of 5.4; flamed out spectacularly fifteen or twenty feet up a 5.7+, flamed out less spectacularly maybe 25 feet up on a 5.6 with a chimney, due to the fact that my toes hurt so much I couldn't put weight on them any more) I came home and slept from 10 pm to 8:30 the next morning, which is unheard of for me.

So I couldn't fall asleep until 1 or 2 last night, and though I did wake up at six this morning, but since I had had a triggery night of hypervigilance and kept waking up every time anybody in the entire apartment building got a drink of water, I decided to pull the cat over my head and go back to sleep for another two hours.

Somebody from Massachusetts recently had a rather spectacular single-car accident where I enter the park. I can tell he was from Massachusetts, because he left his license plate behind. Sadly, he also shattered an old granite curb and took out two or three of the old Victorian neighborhood's beautiful slate paving blocks, which means the broken ones will be replaced with cement eventually. Entropy makes me sad.

Climbing last night was less than spectacular. I managed two 5.6s on the slab (one of them, the last, with a lot of pathetic flail at the top) and a 5.6 on the wall, and quit after that because my tennis elbow (which, in true me fashion, I gave myself while wielding a sledgehammer on my 35th birthday, go me) was acting up. Climbing two days in a row? Still brutal. (You should see the bruises on my knees from wedging my leg into that chimney on Sunday.)

Today's work is varied. I need to finish the final or nearly-final draft of "Overkill," get started on the new Secrit Projekt (tentatively titled, "The Red in the Sky is Our Blood") the opening paragraph of which came to me on my run, do laundry, blurb two things, pay a credit card bill, join the Ragged Mountain Foundation, file some tax paperwork, call my lawyer, email my agent, and make bread. Maybe I will try cvillette's pretzel bread recipe, though I have to buy butter if I am going to do that.

Full day. I guess that means I should get started, huh?

2.26 miles this morning on intervals. I am virtupus!

Also sweaty. *g*

(also, since I didn't do a CM post, the discussion appears to have broken out in the comments of the post I posted saying I would do a CM post when I got home next week. *g* In case you want to come play. Spoilers!)

The crocuses are over. The hyacinths have begun.

Highlights of this morning's run brought a guy using an atlatl to play fetch with his golden retriever at the dog park. I kind of sucked today: I ran the first 8/10s of a mile and walked the other 2/10s (in 16:16 despite a long wait for traffic at one point, and quitting a block short of goal because my calves and arches hurt a lot--the first half of the route is uphill, which is one reason why it's generally slower) and then I added a half-mile loop around the playground, which I walked in 9:01, but I wasn't pushing hard. Stretched for five minutes, and I mean to do intervals for the mile back, but I wound up only doing two, because my arches, calves, and hips hurt so much. Still made it in 17 minutes, though.

Sometimes, there is a time to respect what your 36 1/2 year old body is telling you. And sometimes what it is telling you is "Now cut that out."

215.2 miles to Lothlorien. In Middle Earth, it's very early on the morning of Jan 9. Soon Gandalf and Frodo will notice a low-flying Nazgul.

I am still showing no signs of regrowing anything like a brain, though I am thoroughly bored. (I never know what to do with myself when I'm not writing. It ennui seems to be a necessary part of the creative process, however: out of fallow time, things grow.)

And now I have to pack for Penguicon, and tomorrow's semi-epic drive.

Well, the brainwashing is starting to kick in. I just caught myself thinking, hey, I have time to go for a run before I drive to Fall River (Most famously the home of of Lizzie Borden, for those of you not from the Northeast).

Stand DOWN, meat puppet. It's a recovery day. You have to climb tomorrow. Figure out what you're having for breakfast instead.

In news that may interest many of you, Thich Nhat Hanh is on "Speaking of Faith" on NPR this week. You can listen to his interview here.

In the last two days on my morning constitutional, the signs of spring are everywhere. Yesterday I heard a woodpecker playing "Moby Dick" up by Elizabeth Park (both coming and going; she must have found a good spot). I've seen fat squirrels playing tag, people exercising dogs large and small, roofers and lawn services, a sparrow disappearing into the eaves of a lovely Victorian bearing a flowering twig in her claws, another sparrow puffed up fat in a small bare tree. The maples are covered in a red froth of tiny blossoms. Today two magnolias are starting, one pink and one snow-white, neither fully open yet. Soon, I must extend my route to take me through the park, because soon the park will be flowering.

It was rainy overnight, but it's lightly overcast with gray sunlight now.

Speaking of said constitutional, I can call it a run without irony today, as I jogged the whole two miles (sparing a two-block warm-up and cool-down.) On the way out, I hit a nice sustainable easy lope and just stuck with it (never underestimate the importance of finding your stride.) I felt good enough at my turning point that after I stretched out and breathed for five minutes, I ran back the same way. I'm adapting--my left knee twinged for the first half mile, but I ran it out, and I felt good enough in terms of cardio to have kept going at the end, but my arches had been killing me for a quarter mile so I gave it up. Still, the shoes are finally breaking in, thank God, and my feet are getting used to it.

16:40 on the way out, 16:06 on the way back. 221.7 mile to Lothlorien.
Go team me.

In other news, very nice Washington Post review of Dust.

A brisk ~3 mile walk along the river bluffs with ashacat and Sunil yesterday afternoon (when it was gorgeous out, even a little too warm for my long-sleeved t-shirt) and my alleged run this morning means its 223.9 miles to Lothlorien. I'm more than halfway there--In Middle Earth, it's January 8th, and I'm headed toward the ill-fated pass through the mountains. Moria soon! Beware Balrogs!

This morning, despite the treesex-generated slugs hibernating in my sinuses, I ran the first mile of my route--and actually ran it, as opposed to the geriatric shuffle I have been doing. Of course, I had to do the last block as a sprint, because I was pretty much out of glycogen and stored oxygen at that point, and then I spent the first three minutes of my recovery period flat on my back, alternately heaving and giggling. At least it's kind of rainy out, which might help settle the pollen. I walked back rather than doing intervals, to reward myself for a good effort on the way out. Go team me.

There. I swallowed my live frog today. Now I can shower and make myself some tea and cereal and work on page proofs until my dinner guest arrives.
Not sure yet if I'll try for a run tomorrow morning, but it definitely has to be a yoga day. I'm stiff and sore.

But my feet aren't killing me--though the awesome Amie (my massage therapist) was laughing at me yesterday about the tightness in my right arch. Her now ritual question when I go in to see her is "What have you broken this week?"

While I'm pimping awesome local businesses, through the offices of taichigeek, I've discovered a local organic chocolatier in the Manchester parkade. (Conveniently right across the street from Hall's Arrow.) It's called Divine Treasures Chocolates, and I can seriously vouch for the Grand Marnier orange creme (which has a little piece of chewy candied orange peel on top) and the peppermint patties. (I also have some tropical fruit bark, but I have not tried that yet.)

Also, congratulations to stillsostrange, who became yet another casualty of the hive mind client of Fancy Agent Jennifer Jackson yesterday.

Playlist for today: Chris Isaak and ZZ Top. Apparently we are in the mood for songs about nasty girls who know what they want.

And now, into the shower.

Never has the subtitle of this blog (it's a great life if you don't weaken) felt more appropriate. Jeepers.

The progress notes will be informal today.

I was going to give myself a day off from running today, but I woke up at 6 am raring to go, so I got up and drank some water and answered my email and put my shoes on. I jogged the entire first mile (at a crawl, mind you) with the exception of the first two blocks, which I walked as a warmup. It was cold out--widget on my taskbar says 28 degrees F--and since I was out there by 7:20, the light was beautiful. Still, a whole mile! My cardio was great at the end of it, too--I took five minutes to stretch and recover, but I didn't really need them. I did make myself stretch for the whole five minutes though, temptations aside.

And then I ran/walked back on fire hydrant intervals (five of them) and took the last three blocks as a cool down. Time out: 16 minutes. Time back: 13 minutes. So when I say that joggy bit was a crawl, it was a crawl.

I was pretty ineffectual at the climbing gym last night--four routes, including a 5.7 I didn't finish. There's a traverse out from under a corner that is killing me. Also, I did a 5.5 with a small overhang that was the first route I ever sent, way back wen, and did not fall off the place where I always fall off. (Yeah, it's only a 5.5, but it's a 5.5 that involves dragging yourself out from under a corner with only one foothold, which is in a bad place.) Scraped up my right arm pretty good falling off a climb on the slab wall, but got back on the horse and finished it. Go team me.

The climbs helped break up the lingering anxiety. Some of it was back this morning, but I'm hoping the run will have taken it out of me. And I have PT today, and ashacat and I are going to see Jonathan Coulton tonight, so--those will also help.

On to the stuff that may actually interest some of you. I talked to my agent last night and got permission to suspend work on Chill for a while. Whether this means I won't make the June 1 deadline or not, I don't know yet. We'll see what happens in May. But I'm giving the book the rest of April to percolate, in the hopes that that will help me work through some of my issues surrounding it.

In further proof that it is, in fact, this damned novel that is killing me, I woke up this morning not only in a mood to write, but with a head full of stuff for the scene in "Ballistic" that I was swearing only yesterday I could in no wise write, for lo I was a burnout case and probably should be taken out behind the chemical sheds and put out of everyone's misery. I also figured out in the car last night (I should really list the Moby Smurfberry as my co-author, I do so much thinking in that buggy) one of the things that is turning Chill into such a fucking nightmare of a novel to write, why I keep glancing off its surface, and why I feel like I can't get into any of the characters at all.

Because the thematic arc that I find myself swearing up and down the book doesn't actually have is there, buried, and it's all about a bunch of people who grew up in a tremendously abusive, exploitive household, and the ways those experiences have affected them.

So here I am, writing all these damaged beauties, and no wonder my subconscious really doesn't want to let me inside their heads right now, considering what the last two years of my own headspace have entailed.

Stupid books as therapy. I dudn't want therapy. I just wanted a nice block of flats rollicking adventure novel.

Permission not to be working on the manuscript feels like somebody pulled a giant wodge of Kleenex out of my brain. Stupid book I am not ready to write yet. Why can't you be more like your brother?

And hey, I only have about 150 pages left to write. When it comes unstuck, I can do that standing on my head, right? :-P

Anyway, I have three sets of page proofs this moth, and two conventions, so It's not like there won't be enough work to keep me busy. And maybe the b&#k can use that time productively, to sort out its issues, so when we try to get back together there's a chance we can make this thing work.

233.9 miles to Lothlorien

And now I am going to go take off this sports bra before it cuts off circulation to my brain, and shower, and practice guitar before I go to PT.

Last night, ashacat and I went to the venerable and redoubtable Eastern Mountain Sports, a local New England outdoor sports equipment Emporium--notable for employing a dedicated and knowledgeable assortment of ski bums, climbing bums, hiking bums, kayaking bums, etc.--to buy her shoes and harness.

Meanwhile, I've been making noises for a while about cancelling my gym membership (BORING) and taking up running again, in the full knowledge that this will be a process full of misery and despair.

See, I used to be a runner. I was never a very competitive runner, because I don't have the build for speed, but I loved trail running, and I was adequate at middle distances. (If I were a football player, I would probably make a pretty good halfback, let's put it that way. Good Eastern European stock: "When ox die, harness wife to plow.")

I suck at jogging, mind you. I'm not good enough at pacing myself to jog. I like to run.

I had a lot of joint problems in high school and college, and while I could still manage endurance sports like racewalking and hiking (at least until the bout with mono), my knees and hips wouldn't take the impact of running. (It turned out not to be lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, or half a dozen other things, and eventually I walked out with a diagnosis of juvenile onset osteoarthritis, a naproxen prescription, and a cane. These days, they'd probably call it fibromyalgia. However, since it went into spontaneous remission in my twenties after a heavy course of antibiotics for a lung infection, I now harbor suspicions that what I had was chronic Lyme disease. Anyway, that's all backstory.)

Well, EMS is in the throes of their winter clearance, and what with one thing and another, while the ashacat was trying on climbing shoes, I walked out with the pair of North Face trail runners that were marked down almost into my price range, and two pairs of Smartwool running socks. (I also got two pairs of hiking socks, because dammit, there will be hiking this summer.)

These are very silly shoes. The innovative lacing system is, well, a winch. And a bunch of very fine cables run through the body of the shoe, all of which tighten when you twist the little wheel on the heel. Silly, yes.

But wow, do they fit. And I think the socks weigh more.

So this morning, I did something I haven't done in twenty years. I got up, put on my workout pants and the sort of scary-ass sports bra a DD-girl needs for running in, put on my socks and shoes, grabbed a t-shirt, put my hair in a ponytail, and went for a two-mile run in the rain.

It wasn't an unbroken two mile run, mind you--I've been hitting the treadmill and the ski machine at the gym, but that's not a thing like actually getting out and running over slate sidewalks in the early morning mist. But I managed six intervals (I didn't time--I just ran until my chest and arches hurt too much, and then I stopped and walked until I could run again. Got to the halfway point, stopped for five minutes of stretching and begging to die, and turned around and came back.

Two miles in twenty-five minutes, not counting the five minutes of stretching. Not a great time, by any means, but a beginning. And I have a 5.2-mile route mapped out for Eventually. (It's my walking route when I am going for a walk to go for a walk, not as an adjunct to errands downtown, so I know it well.)

So I ran this morning in the rain, through the old part of town with the ancient trees and the slate sidewalks. And I'm already looking out the window at the rain, wishing I were back out there.

Tomorrow, I may see if I can do it again.

240.7 miles to Lothlorien

And now I need to go take a shower, start some laundry, and get to work on this book I'm supposedly writing.

I think she was a middle distance runner.
The translation wasn't clear.