The joy of running in storms

                BRUNSWICK, Maine – I am a preacher when it comes to running in bad weather. For years I have cajoled friends to get outside during pouring rain, sleet storms, blizzards, or even run-of-the-mill high winds. (I draw the line when it comes to extreme heat waves, hurricanes, lightning storms, and seriously icy roads.) Too many of us look outside at sheets of rain and say to ourselves, ‘Not today.’

                I recently ran in two storms back to back – one here in Maine during a snow storm and the other in Chevy Chase in a 43-degree rain. I’ll acknowledge that I hesitated a minute before running in cold rain. But years of preaching had its rewards: You say something too many times and you start believing it.

I always tell my friends they should run in rains and snowstorms because they always will feel better afterward. During these recent runs, though, I started examining why that is so. Five reasons came to me.

          No. 1: You are almost always alone.

Think about it. During many runs, especially in populated areas, trails are full of other people exercising; the constant line of people becomes part of your focus. But in a downpour, you can go miles without seeing anyone. And when you do see someone, there’s almost a kinship, as in, another crazy is out here. You may even wave.

This difference in a routine can spur creativity. Patterns of thinking change. The focus at first may be inward, thinking about how your body is responding to the rain or sleet or high winds. Gradually, though, in my experience, the thoughts while running in storms turns to mounting other obstacles in your life, and this is an opportunity to explore why you haven’t had success – and what you can do to find a solution.

No. 2: You have to know yourself well.

To run in extreme weather, you have to prepare both physically and psychologically.

In the 43-degree rain, I opted to wear thin nylon wind pants, for instance (along with a T-shirt underneath a semi-rain-proof running jacket, light leather gloves, and a running cap with a head band to keep my ears warm). If it were 47 degrees, I would have run in shorts. If it were 37 degrees, I would have put on my insulated running pants. Know what you’ll need, even to the level of five degrees difference in temperature.

In the snow in Brunswick, I prepared myself psychologically as well, knowing that while it was beautiful to run through snow, my footing would be unsure; I would slip backward slightly with every stride. I ran slowly. I was careful not to give myself a hard time for running at such a pace, knowing that the experience of being in the snow was more important than the pace of my run.

No. 3: You are on an obstacles course.

 Bad weather can close off paths. In the rain recently, my run took me past three brooks, which are leap-able in normal weather. But the brooks had risen high, and I was forced to stop and look for new passages.

In one case, there was no way to clear the brook without getting wet. So I looked for a way  least likely to injure me – a deliberate jump in the brook with one foot while maneuvering with my second foot for mud on the other side. That brings me to ….

No. 4: You’ll get wet, get over it.

One of the best things about running in a hard rain is that you are drenched in two minutes. In 20 minutes, you’ll still be drenched. So why not enjoy it? In a hard rain, with nylon pants clinging to your legs, it’s one of the few times you’ll be aware of the strong muscles in your thighs and calves. Let that be a moment of inspiration.

No. 5: You will laugh.

How many times in life can you feel like a five year old? Running in bad weather brings out the inner abandon, and the pure joy, of a child playing in the rain. So when you splash in a big puddle, and your foot feels the piercing cold wetness almost immediately, instead of saying, aaaarrrgghhh, why not laugh about the ridiculousness of being outside in a hard rain in the first place?

On runs in bad weather, I will laugh out loud a dozen times. Fair-weather runs are boring in comparison. So the next time it is truly awful outside, and there’s not a threat to life or limb, dress for it and get out in it. You’ll feel better for it. 

What happens after a fall during a run

             WASHINGTON, D.C. – This blog usually is about runs while traveling. This time, I’m writing about traveling while running.

                On a recent autumn morning, I went running with my friend Ellen on the trails in Rock Creek Park in DC. It was cool, crisp, and dry. A thick blanket of leaves covered the path, and both of us talked about it as we set off.

               We didn’t talk about its beauty, even though our path was a carpet of natural colors. Instead, we saw danger: The leaves obscured rocks and tree roots. And that, we knew from experience, meant it would be easy to trip and fall.

The Rock Creek trail cuts through miles of wood and follows a stream that roars by after hard rains and is tame the rest of the time. On this day, the water was low.

              Halfway through the run, I tripped and caught myself. Then I tripped a second time, again barely avoiding a crash. We slowed the pace a little. But I tripped again and this time I flew through the air and landed hard on the ground, falling on my right knee and thigh and stopping my momentum with both hands.

 

                I immediately felt pain on my right knee and left hand. My knee was bloodied. When I looked at my hand, I gulped: the base of my pinkie was nearly double in size. I thought I must have dislocated the finger. And so I yanked it. The finger popped back into place, and the bulge disappeared.

              I carefully wiggled my fingers and felt some pain. I started walking and both knees ached. But there were miles to go still, and we continued onward.

A few minutes later, I was on the ground again – a second fall. Again, I landed on my right side, sliding in the gravelly surface.

            Now the embarrassment hurt more than the wounds. How could I trip four times and fall twice in one run? Ellen tried ordering me to walk, fearing (perhaps knowing) I was about to do real damage to myself. But after a minute, we were running again.

We made it back without further falls, but I felt the after-effects for some time. I had to deal with some pain – it was hard to type for a few days, my knees ached, and my toes had turned nearly purple and were complaining. But the mental impact of the falls was far greater. For a couple of weeks afterward, I felt off-balance, as if I could fall in certain situations. I bike to work every day and I started to travel at a slower pace. For my runs, I kept to pavement. All the while, I wondered what had happened back on that run.  

            Perhaps the leaf cover was inherently dangerous – but I had tripped four times, Ellen none. Perhaps I wasn’t lifting my legs high enough (obviously true!), because I was exhausted. I buy that last explanation. I had just returned from a flight to Asia.

What’s the moral of the story?
 

   Not sure about that.

   Don't run in the woods after a flight from Asia? Stay off leaf-covered trails when tired? More like it. I’ll be more careful. But I bet I run again when tired. I’m too set in my ways. Falls are in my future. It’s an awful thought as I replay the crash scenes. At least I’ll know how to deal with a dislocated finger.

A run in Paris, a flood of memories

              PARIS – Paris in mid-November: rain, a chill in the air, clouds low and gray.

In other words, perfect for a run. A hotel doorman told my work colleague and friend, Ed, and I that we should try running in Tuileries Garden, just steps from our hotel.

We started at 6 a.m. in a light rain along the walls of the garden and turned a corner onto Les Champs Plaza. Amid the deep puddles, we spied an opening into the park.

In the gray light, we entered. Ed wondered if it would be dangerous. I said the only danger was the puddles – our feet were about to get soaked from splashing into one. We ran ahead, passing statues and tree-lined walkways. We kept zig-zagging, saw a large archway ahead, and started talking about various trip details. Suddenly, someone started yelling in our direction: Arret! Arret! Stop! Stop!

I looked to my left and a high-powered flashlight was trained on us, moving up and down. The man was running at us.

He started yelling in French. I thought he was saying something about the park being closed, and probably that we should get out of there. Still, I wasn’t 100 percent certain he was police or security (after all, it was dark and he was yelling in a language I didn’t understand), so I told Ed we shouldn’t wait for him and we quickly retraced our steps, splashing into puddles as we went. I looked back and the man had stopped behind us.

We exited the park. Drama over, I remembered that the hotel doorman also had said we could run along the Seine River. That thought made me happy. It brought back memories of reading the Madeline books to our daughter Paige when she was a little girl, and a trip that we took to Paris when Paige was four and Gavin only one. (Wyatt would be born 18 months later in Jerusalem.) In one of the books, Madeline’s Rescue, Madeline falls into the Seine River and is saved by a dog. The orphanage director Miss Clavel allows Madeline and the girls in the orphanage to keep the dog, until they find her real owner.

 

 

         All during our trip to Paris, Paige kept asking, “Will we see Madeline?”  We said we weren’t sure, but we should go to the Seine to look. And so we did, several times, Paige looking for a French girl who looked the part.

Ed and I headed toward the Seine. We crossed a bridge and followed the river on the other side. Soon we came to a narrow wooden bridge, and I looked into the distance. Ahead was a sidewalk along the river, where I remembered we had bought prints of flowers, ducks, and fish. The bridge was the same one on which I had pushed Gavin in a collapsible stroller. 

Ed and I stopped to walk. He noticed that both sides of the bridge were now covered by thousands of locks of all sizes, many with messages on them. Others had sprayed-painted in black their love for another over the locks.

I knew just where we were. We ran to the end of the bridge and descended a narrow flight of stairs to the banks of the Seine. We tip-toed along the cobblestone path, a somewhat treacherous decision because the water was high, the cobblestones slanted toward the water, and it was dark.

        “Let’s go slowly,” I said. We did, dodging puddles. Ahead, the Seine spilled over onto the sidewalk, leaving just a narrow passage. We slowed even more, lest we meet Madeline’s fate, and decided to go up to street level. We found stairs. I heard a rustle near our feet.

“A rat!” Ed said.

I looked around, but saw nothing. “It was big,” Ed said. “The size of a chipmunk, but with a longer tail – the tail of a rat.”

I believed him. We raced upward, keeping an eye out for other rats, and soon we were along the streets.

Within minutes, we had come to Louvre Museum, first built in the late 12^th century and now housing nearly 35,000 objects. It attracts 8 million visitors a year – the world’s most popular museum. But standing near the museum’s glass pyramids (designed by I.M. Pei and built less than 30 years ago), we were nearly alone.
 

The sky had lightened slightly, the day was beginning, and I was transported back to a moment when the children were so young and tender.

Back to Cairo.

 

 

Back to Jerusalem.

 
  Back to Petra.

 Back to violin lessons and face painting in Ireland.

 

         I could have stayed in that moment for a long time.

Running in the world’s best-named capital: Ouagadougou

 

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso -- I have always dreamt of running here. Just to say I had.

What a name! Ouagadougou (pronounced Wa-ga-do-gu), and often shortened to Ouaga, was named by the Yonyonse tribe. It means the place "where people get honor and respect."

The mystery and remoteness about this place interested me. It’s the central African version of the Central African Republic, or the south Asian version of Bhutan, or the South American version of Paraguay.

All are landlocked. All are places with relatively few tourists, or even Western business people. But Burkina Faso’s capital had it on the competition in one respect: Its name. No other capital can beat Ouagadougou.

The trouble was I had just 18 hours here. Work took nearly all of it. We arrived at the airport at 7:30 p.m., and on the ride in, I looked out the bus window, seeing little. With a police escort and roads largely cleared, it seemed a deserted city.

First stop was a state dinner. At the presidential palace, we walked past guards dressed in red uniforms. They stood erect, not moving, not even allowing their eyes to take a sideways glance, holding swords so that the tip nearly touched their nose. I wondered what they were thinking.

We walked into a seating area with sofas and coffee tables, and there guarding the entrance was two stuffed cheetahs.

They looked ferocious. I walked slowly around them.

Others, like me, kept turning back for a glimpse. A few brave people walked over to them. I followed. Some took pictures. I thought, why not, without a picture I might later think I was making this up.

Two hours later, after a dinner that featured quail from the president’s farm, I was back in my hotel room, a few hours of work ahead of me. I went to bed at 2 a.m. Less than 12 hours left. I put my alarm on for 5:10 a.m. How could I not run in Ouagadougou?

At 5:30 a.m., I left the hotel and started heading up the highway. Our 12-story soulless hotel, built by Libyan construction companies during Muammar Ghadafi’s heyday (West Africa is dotted with Libyan hotels), sat in what must be one of Ouagadougou’s wealthier areas. In a country where 40 percent of the people live on less than $1.25 a day, all the houses nearby were nearly mansion sized.

Street lights provided pools of connecting light. The road was empty. Every so often a car would pass, or bicyclers, or the stray runner. I turned down a side dirt road and ran in front of houses with the flags of various countries – all personal resemblances of ambassadors, I was sure.

I turned back, crossed the highway, and started noticing small birds fly just in front of me, some darting close to my feet. I stopped and looked and several of the male birds had bright red heads and gray bodies. The birds were sparrow-sized, no bigger than my thumb. I marveled at their bright color. 

 

On the way home, I turned off the road again and could see an animal pulling a cart, dust in its wake. As it came closer, I could see it was a donkey, and the driver was a young woman wearing sunglasses. The sun was just coming up, a pink ribbon stretching along a half-moon of the horizon. She was prepared for the day, the sun, and the heat.

It was temperate now, though, the air dry. I had run for 40 minutes and barely had sweat. I showered and dressed, and at 7:40 a.m., my work began. We sped off in a motorcade, moving from one official event to the other. At 1:30 p.m., we were on a plane, headed for Paris.

I barely saw Ouaga. I could say I ran there. Along the way, I saw two stuffed cheetahs, scores of tiny red birds, and a donkey driven by a woman in sunglasses. Ouagadougou remained mysterious, more runs needed.

Next running blog: Paris.

A run in St. Petersburg: Breaking from routine

             ST. PETERSBURG, Russia – I wonder sometimes about routines, about how they develop and how it’s possible to have several. At home, my routines include just about everything from how I pack my backpack to preparing meals to cleaning up at night. I even brush my teeth in the same pattern, twice a day.

When I travel, I adhere to another set of routines: the packing of my carry-on suitcase; the mix of work (writing or editing) and fun (reading or watching a film) on a plane; and writing emails on my Blackberry during the short breaks in between meetings.

When it comes to running, I feel like I have a split personality. At home, I run early, sometimes at 5 a.m. I set out almost exactly 30 minutes after I get up. I have certain set routes. (When I go on a different route, it seems to take much more effort.) On the road, though, I run whenever possible. It could be soon after arriving at the hotel. Or I could go when there’s an opening in the middle of the day. And almost every run is a new route; finding my way doesn’t seem to bother me a bit.

At home, I am rigid; on the road, flexible. Maybe my routines on the road are simply a matter of taking advantage of time. But why can’t I do the same at home? At home, my routines both give me comfort (peace of mind in establishing a known rhythm of a day) and restriction (there’s almost no way I’ll run at the spur of a moment.) On the road, I’m free.

I was just in St. Petersburg, and after a meeting, I found out that I had exactly one hour before  our group were going to dinner. I wasted no time. I ran up the stairs in our boutique hotel, changed in my room (called the Bangkok Room for its Thai motif), and was out the door. I turned north along one of St. Petersburg’s many canals.

We had the luck of being here in fall, and the temperature was about 60 degrees. It was 6 p.m. with still another three hours of light, and the sun felt soft and warm as I headed toward the old part of the city.

Guidebooks call the city the Venice of Russia for its canals, and it was easy to trace a run along them. They criss-cross every four blocks or so, and I found myself going up and down foot bridges like an old goat might. If sun fell on the canal path, I followed it, turning every few blocks or so.

I had wanted to come to St. Petersburg since I was in high school in the town of Springfield, Vermont, a place also dominated by water: The Black River ran through the town, and machine-tool shops were built along its very edge. In high school, I wrote a paper about Leningrad, then the city’s name, relying heavily on a National Geographic article as my source. I still remember the beautiful pictures of the city; it was described as a gem behind the Iron Curtain and I wondered whether I would ever have the chance to see such veiled beauty. And so it was especially thrilling to me to have a stolen hour in this city, turning corners and seeing architectural wonders that were just pictures in a magazine to me before.  

I ran past cathedrals, the statue of Alexander the Great, the Hermitage Museum. I stood by the main waterway that ran through the city, the Neva River, and marveled at what was all around me.

 

 The park along the Neva stretched for blocks. Couples posed for cameras in front of the statues. Two kids wrestled in the grass. Four women wearing head scarves and black abayas averted their eyes from me, perhaps because of my bare legs. It was a splendid late afternoon in St. Petersburg, and I couldn’t quite believe my good fortune to be in the middle of it.

I looked at my watch. I had been out 25 minutes. With 25 minutes to get back, that gave me just 10 minutes to shower and change. I reluctantly left the river and the majestic buildings from another era, and started running back along the canals, scooting in and out of traffic at crosswalks, a little extra spring in my well-traveled legs, so happy to have had a break from routine in a city I had dreamed of.

In London, a find unlike any other

LONDON – I went out for a run in East London’s Canary Wharf fairly recently, and I wasn’t in a great mood. I had hoped to run with a friend (hello, Megan!) but she was injured and couldn’t make it. And the area seemed to be surrounded by industrial parks and highways along the River Thames.

Indeed, I started out along the Thames for five minutes before hitting a highway and then reversed course. I hit a few more dead-ends after that, and finally smartened up: I spied another runner and followed him away from the river; local runners always know the best routes. He led me through a warren of narrow streets, until finally I was running along the river again, in an area with a great name:

The Isle of Dogs.

The name alone put me in a better mood. I knew there must be great convoluted history behind it, likely going back centuries (and there is), and kept running alongside working-class-looking apartments that I was sure likely went for a half-million pounds each.

I passed a little park (with a few dogs) and then came upon a mini-brick domed structure, which rose about  three stories high.

 

It looked like the top of a buried building. As I stopped, a couple of bicyclists emerged from one side of the building. Then a few more came out, and a few more, totaling eight or nine in all.

Where had they come from?

The round building had an elevator with a wide door, as well as an internal spiral staircase. I descended down the stairway.

 

I went down, down, down, for two minutes, until I reached a landing and then turned a corner.

There, in front of me, was a tunnel!

 

I realized I was underneath the Thames. So I ran.

I felt like I was entering a time from an earlier century. The tunnel was not high – maybe eight feet at most – and it was dank and poorly lit. It was wide enough – maybe nine or 10 feet – for two lanes. That was a good thing as a string of bikers was headed my way. 

The tunnel descended and then ascended – it must have been a quarter mile long, long enough so that I couldn’t see the end – and I raced through it with the joy of a boy who had just discovered something magical. (And perhaps the fear of a man who can feel slightly claustrophobic.) I reached the end and ran up the spiral staircase and exited on the other side of the Thames. I had to see the view. The brownish river was in front of me, a park behind me, and more bikers headed my way. I reversed course, and ran through the old tunnel again.

Two weeks later, I was telling the story to our neighbors, Gerry and Deb, both Brits. Deb knew about the tunnel immediately, and Gerry pulled out his iPad and confirmed where I had been: the Greenwich foot tunnel.

We learned that tunnel construction started in 1899 and was finished in 1902; its purpose was to replace an “expensive and and sometimes unreliable ferry service” for workers on the south side of the Thames to get to London docks and shipyards around the Isle of Dogs. The person who pushed it through was a politician with the memorable name of Will Crooks.

 

Thank you, Mr. Crooks. Your long-ago political maneuverings have benefitted many on a daily basis for more than a century, including giving me an unexpected find on a summer morning.

The difference of 25 years: Backpacking then, presidential palace today

SANTIAGO, Chile – The temperature in early morning was no more than 40 degrees Fahrenheit, as I put on a long-sleeve shirt. It felt like an indulgence after weeks of hot weather in Washington. But it was cold enough that I pulled the sleeves over my hands to keep them warm.

I crossed a highway and a bridge over the Maponcho River, which ran fast and was hemmed in by concrete walls, a protection against flooding. I ran along the left bank, heading in the same direction as the river, toward the city center.

At 6 a.m., it was dark, and I was on guard, for my footing and for people in the shadows. The path was uneven close to the river and I could make out shapes of men along the way. I couldn’t tell what they were doing so I maneuvered to a path to my left, which was close to the road. Near one intersection, three rangy, old German shepherds crawled out of makeshift tents and barked at me. One hobbled after my heels, his barks as menacing as a 90-year-old man, woof woof woof. Still, he made me scoot.

I eventually found a straight path with picturesque little lanterns on poles every 10 yards lighting my way. I could almost imagine myself running in a Parisian park. More than that, though, the light freed me to think about something other than falling or falling in the hands of others.

As my mind wandered, I remembered my first trip to Chile – some 25 years ago with my wife, Laura, on our honeymoon. We backpacked for about six months along the spine of the Andes, starting in Quito, Ecuador, and eventually ending in Torres del Paine in southern Chile.

The two of us stopped in Santiago for a few days, arriving on a long-haul, air-conditioned bus that we boarded near the desert region along the Peru-Chile border. At the border, we were reminded that we were entering the Pinochet dictatorship; the guards pawed through all our belongings, pulling out our books and leafing through them. They took one – Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America. Maybe they thought Brautigan, shown in the cover photo, looked subversive.  

 

         In Santiago, we checked out a couple of hotels. At the first one, we asked about the rate, and the person behind the counter said: How many hours? I thought I heard him wrong, replying, “Well, 24?” He looked at me oddly. “We rent by the hour,” he said. We looked more closely at our surroundings, at the bustle in the lobby, and burst out laughing. We went looking for a place that rented by the day.

Santiago was gray and dirty then, but it had newsstands that sold some American newspapers, and a colorful movie marquee advertising recent blockbluster action films. We loved the countryside outside of the city, where we had picnics of cheese, fresh bread, and wine in a cardboard box, something we had never seen before. While the city was fast-paced and full of army and suspicion, the countryside was leisurely and lovely.

On my run, I returned to the present moment and replayed arriving in Santiago from Lima the day before. A police escort took us straight to our hotel and then to an official meeting in La Moneda, the presidential palace.

 

There was a press conference in the palace and later we were guests at a dinner hosted by the finance minister and the captains of industry. (Almost all were men; there were just three women among the group of 75.) In a grand room, with a ceiling 20 foot high and walls painted red and adorned with over-sized life portraits of Chile’s leaders in the 19^th century, white-gloved waiters served us fine Pinot Noir wine (in glass bottles).

I thought: boxed wine in the park when we were young, and Pinot Noir in the presidential palace in middle age. I thought again: arriving unawares into a house of ill repute, and being escorted into the house of power. The contrasts made me smile. The experiences were both memorable. As I finished my run, with the first light appearing to the east above the Andes, I thought that I likely will still remember the visit during the days of Pinochet, the visit with the shared wine poured from a cardboard spout, more vividly. That wine, among other things, was a revelation.