I ran outside again today. The air was brisk and was perfect for running. September is almost here.
Tag: running
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Sunrise run -
A few weeks ago, I started using a tread desk when I work. I walk four hours a day, five days a week, while I type. It is as awesome as it sounds: 40 miles a week and I’m working while I walk.
The only problem is that I rarely go outside to exercise anymore. This morning was cool for August, though, and so I grabbed some music and my phone, and I went for my first run in weeks.
The wildflowers and growth along my route are as tall as I am, and I noticed a creek today that I hadn’t noticed before. As usual, I forgot how hilly this place is.
I miss running with my camera(phone). Now that fall is approaching, I need to do it more.
This is another entry for the Today Was a Good Day photo challenge. I’m having fun using Mesh :-).
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Flower cart in early morning One of my favorite things about early morning runs is the quiet. The streets are empty, and the flower cart pops with color — without the distraction of shiny metal cars zooming by.
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I know I’m ten years late to the party, but when I was stuck in an airport on the way home from Hawaii, I fell in love with Instagram. I blame Brie Demkiw and her breathtaking photostream from our Kauai meetup. I added my own Hawaii photographs in the Atlanta airport while I awaited a homebound flight, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Sheep, December 21, 2014 Now, Instagram is what inspires me to run. After shoving my phone in the strap of my sports bra on a couple of winter jogs, then pulling it out to photograph sheep, or a bale of hay, I have become addicted to the challenge of shooting something different on my route every time I run.
Thistles, December 23, 2014 
Running path, December 24, 2014 
Hay bale, December 26, 2014 And every time I walk.
Corn field, December 28, 2014 
Fences on a gloomy day, December 29, 2014 I love playing with Instagram’s filters to add atmosphere to my not-so-great phone-photos.
Llama and a happy cloud, December 31, 2014 
Stroubles Creek, January 2, 2015 
Spooky tree, January 4, 2015 With the limitations of my phone’s camera (close-ups are pretty terrible), I’m running out of ideas for how to capture my route in new ways. Today I was inspired by the Daily Post’s Shadowed photo challenge and squeezed out one more new perspective.
My shadow, January 11, 2015 As the seasons change, so will the photographs. The light will warm, the colors will brighten. Brittle limbs will soften with green.
Cold Sky, January 7, 2015 Until then, I keep running, looking for new ways to see the same old route.
I’m on Instagram @andreabadgley.
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I was planning to run my first bike/run combo today, which is called a “brick” in triathlon lingo, because your legs feel like bricks when you try to run after riding a bike. But when I checked the forecast yesterday, it called for thunderstorms all day today, with an extra special treat of severe weather this afternoon, which here in Minnesota usually means tornadoes.
In the middle of the night, I woke to crashing thunder several times, with lightning flashing through the openings in the curtains, and every time I thought, “Go on weather. Get it out of your system now so I can wake up to clear skies.” I really didn’t want to ride and run in a lightning storm.
And when I woke this morning at 7 AM, this is what I saw through the slats in the blinds:
Blue Sky You’d better believe I jumped out of bed to take advantage of it. Because what I couldn’t see from my bed was the ring of black sky all around the small patch of blue.
My bike ride was awesome, as bike rides always are, and I was tempted to take it even longer than my training schedule suggested (only 30 minutes – what’s the point in that?). But the sky was darkening back up, and I figured I should get back home and run before my luck ran out.
I dropped my bike off, changed shoes, grabbed my headphones, and took off running. At first I thought, “Bricks? What bricks? My legs feel totally normal. Like I didn’t even ride my bike!” By the end of the block it felt like someone had opened me up and poured lead into my waist. The heaviness seeped down my hamstrings, into my calves, all the way down to my heels and toes. Picking up my feet was like uprooting trees. And I thought, “This sucks.”
I looked at my watch and 4 minutes had gone by. Only 4 minutes? I’ve got to do this for 26 more minutes? What the hell was I thinking of signing up for a triathlon?!
The sky was grey and gloomy. No more blue skies and happy clouds. All I could think of was my friend Liv’s blog post, Three Ways to Make Blogging Suck Less, and how I wanted someone to inform me of three ways to make running suck less. Besides doing more running.
So I suffered and complained in my head, thinking about how much running sucks, until this song came through my headphones:
The clouds parted (for real!), I found my stride, and the Runner’s High commenced. My right foot fell on every down beat, in perfect rhythm with the music. I was swift, I was light, I was running, and it didn’t suck! I ran like a track star, like I’d been running all my life, like my legs were feathers. My stride lengthened. My shoulders loosened. My lungs opened. I grinned a stupid grin while I ran.
In short, I kicked ass.
I have no idea what the song is about, because my Spanish is no good, but I do know that that song lifted my feet and lightened my load, and it put me on cruise control for the remaining 20 minutes. The next thing I knew, the run was almost over, and James Brown’s Make it Funky came through to take me home. I feasted on homemade crepes and a perfect cup of coffee with my family as the sky opened up and poured its deluge onto the roads I had just ridden and run.
Originally written May 22, 2011 in Minnesota, when I was training for my first (and only) post-children triathlon, I thought this would be a good fit for this week’s Daily Post photo challenge: Good Morning! Also, Calle 13’s “Pa’l Norte” has this effect on me every time it comes on my iPod when I run. I’m kind of sick of my other workout music though. Do you have any favorite running tunes?
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This morning, instead of running through neighborhoods, where I’d smell the familiar Sunday morning scents of warm coffee, salty bacon, and sweet pancakes, I decided to run into the hills, away from people, and into the corn.
Big mistake.
Until I was in it, I didn’t think about the corn. The stalks, with their green leathery leaves that blocked my view down the rows, towered over my head, and golden tassels hung from each plump ear. The rows were so close as I ran by, I could have reached out and touched them. Luckily, the air was still – no breeze moved the tall stalks or rustled the leaves. I watched the tops for movement, then looked away, knowing I wouldn’t be able to handle it if they began to sway.
I thought about all those years I drove alone between Savannah and Athens, along country roads in Georgia, where corn fields snuggled up to the shoulder for miles. I was always terrified of those sections, not with a normal country-road fear of a deer jumping out, but with a fear far worse. A fear of the Children of the Corn.
As I jogged within arm’s length of the endless rows, on a new path I’d never run on, with no houses, cars, or people in sight, I turned up my music so I wouldn’t be able to hear if the corn started to whisper. I expected any second now, a pair of white hands would emerge from between rows, part the rustling stalks, and Malachi, child of the corn, would step out in front of me. Just like he always did when I drove at night on those corn-lined country roads. I’d lean forward in my seat, both hands gripping the steering wheel, my high beams lighting the empty two-lane road ahead of me, and I always feared that out of nowhere, Malachi would materialize in the middle of the road. My headlights would shine on his pasty skin, and red hair, and clear eyes. Especially his eyes. They’d be looking straight into mine as I slammed on the brakes and screamed, and he’d stand motionless, unafraid, as my car would swerve and hit him, and my head would strike the wind shield, shattering glass and spattering blood, and then the children of the corn would drag me by my feet, between the tall whispering stalks, to sacrifice me to He Who Walks Behind the Rows.
No, I didn’t smell coffee and bacon on my run this morning. I smelled the sweet sickening scent of dew laden vegetable matter at the end of summer. Instead of pancakes frying, I smelled a heavy, cloying scent that clung like oil to the back of my throat. A scent that mixed wet greenery with brown decay, that mixed damp earth and the dry dust of grain, that held the perfume of honeysuckle and clover along with the rot of dead grass and leaf litter, decomposing and crawling with beetles and worms beneath the dense brush that lined the never-ending cornfields. The rotting scent reminded me of Pennywise, the evil clown from another Stephen King story, IT. Now, with the rot, in addition to expecting the corn to part and Malachi to grab me, I expected to see a balloon rise up from between the rows, and then I’d know Pennywise was coming to get me too.
Damn you Stephen King.
Butterfly Mind 