Running and Some Irish Culture

I've been doing a lot of writing lately.  Not on this blog, as you will have noticed.  Instead, I have been spending a considerable amount of time engaged in creative writing.  I hope to have something out late this year, or early next.  I have a particular project where the more I write, the farther away the conclusion recedes.  Luckily, I enjoy writing, so having a receding conclusion is less distressing than having a receding hairline or an expanding waistline.  Anyway, while I've been working on writings of a more creative nature, I am worried that I have turned this blog into a bit more of a phone-it-in kind of experience for the readers.  While blogs invariably are the last refuge of the self-involved solipsist, I do want my blog to offer insights and encouragement to others on at least a moderately frequent basis.  So, in the coming weeks I will try a bit harder to bring something meaningful into this space.  It may not be today, in this posting, but I will try.  Otherwise this blog may start to live up to its heretofore ironic name.

The weather this week kicked me around as it alternately raised and then dashed my hopes.  Several times I went out with too little clothing for going into the wind, and to much clothing for running with it - all in the same run.  So I would begin feeling the bite of the wind and frost, with cheeks and chin chilly, and feet and fingers frozen.  I'd return feeling as if my clothes we a portable sweat saturated sauna.  I'd enter my house and tear the garments from my body as if the sweat-soaked togs were covered in acid (I'm trying to say that sweating in hot clothes sucks a lot more than sweating in lighter clothing).

I dd have one day where I was able to run in a long-sleeve top and shorts.  Nice, but it was a day I had planned initially to take off, so my run was only 5k-ish rather than 15k-ish.  Whatever.  If you can't stand the vagaries of Kansas winter weather, you should move.  I'm thinking Tucson, seriously (just kidding, but maybe, seriously).

Anyway... for mixed media, it was Irish week at casa Allen.  Movies were The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and Borstal Boy.  Reading, was the brilliant book, At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill.  Irish history from the late 1800's on (and actually well before that but...) is a terrible tale.  Nothing you read or watch is ever going to end well.   You go in knowing that fact up front.  But it is a fascinating period.  I had seen both movies and read the book before (as well as Brendan Behan's book that became the movie, Borstal Boy).  But all three are so well done that a week of Irish immersion seemed both a treat and a respite from present day inanities.

This is, sadly, not a trail week for me.  It will be all road all the time for the next 5-7 days.  Until my next post, don't put off a run or a workout that you'll regret not doing later on.  How's that for a double-negative awkward final piece of encouragement?