Days/Daze of Summer: Part 2

Time to run.

Time and space to focus on my level of physical activity is one of my favorite things about summer. My body handles my running best if I cross train: running every other day max and then some other activity for the days in between. Sadly I confess that during the school year fitting in two runs per week plus one or two days of other activities constitutes a magnificent training week for me. Summer means a chance to develop a better schedule that just might work into a more habitual routine.

In the summer I always run in the morning. While in the states and ensconced at my dad’s place in Stansbury Park, I usually try to beat the sun to the pavement for a cooler experience. This summer, however, did not seem as hot as the last few, and I was fine letting the sun beam over those eastern mountains before I had to arise from my bed; I could “sleep in” until seven or so and still run in the morning cool.

My run commences with the route through the neighborhood my dad set up for his run when he moved to Stansbury Park almost ten years ago; he introduced me to it on my first visit there, and I’ve used it ever since. I add a bit more on the end, though, and continue on into a nearby set of streets that have hardly any traffic at all and form a circle of sorts. Now, where my dad lives it is very flat—a fine thing for certain kinds of running…and bicycling—and there is no school track close at hand. So I forego the hill runs, knowing I can easily restore that type of training when I return to Japan, and employ the second set of streets (the real quiet ones) for my track.

As I describe this next part, please keep in mind I do all this between seven and eight in the morning. Well then, after my regular run, I segue into a routine more commonly reserved for a track scene: butt-kick running, high stepping, skipping, and running backwards. Probably no more than five people total ever really witnessed these events in the flesh—okay, I don’t know if anybody watched on the sly from a window—and, truly, the only “running styles” ever to generate a second look are running backward and skipping. Yeah, especially skipping. I guess you don’t see many ladies of my age and deportment engage in the exhilaration of skipping down a street. And usually I have to use “dance arms” with my skipping, too…because I love to skip—I loved it as a little girl, and I loved it when we did it in modern and jazz dance classes in high school and college, and I still love it. Plus, nobody really knows who I am there (so I tell myself even if some people in the vicinity do have the label “George’s daughter” in their cognizance) and I will always be gone in a matter of weeks.

On the mornings I don’t run, I try to skate. I have skates, pads, and a helmet in storage at my dad’s abode in readiness for my visits. Those skating mornings I load my gear in a backpack and bicycle to the nearest church; it has a grand parking lot that is largely empty of vehicles on week day mornings. This summer I could skate more on the roads than ever before because with less construction—economy, a maturing neighborhood, or both—hardly any mud and gravel were in evidence to booby-trap my glide.

Ready to depart for more productive skating territory.