Long Run

mile 1 12:24
mile 2 14:46
mile 3 15:44
mile 4 14:38
.57 mi 8:34
mile 5 14:03
mile 6 17:13
mile 7 15:16
mile 8 16:02
.79 mi 13:52

Total 9.36 mi in 2:22:42 (not counting 8:48 in rest time) for an average pace of 15.14. Rolling hills the whole way but the worst hill was in mile 3. Today was harder than last week's long run, but last week I ran in the morning, while this week I swam hard in the morning and started my run at 6 pm. I tried to eat a fig newman per mile, and that seemed to work fairly well. I had had a little dinner before I went out.

not ready

Classes start tomorrow and my syllabus isn't done. I'm chairing a search committee, and two candidates are coming in, each for three nights and two days, next week. The third candidate come in the following week. Several people I care about are having tough times. I guess it is time to focus on one small step at a time.

Belize

I do want to write something about our trip. We were at the beach, but in the southern part of Belize--60% of the tourists go to the northern coast. The resort where we stayed had 8 cabins and was located in the hamlet of Maya Beach about 10 miles north of the town of Placentia. Placentia is at the southern tip of a peninsula served only by a dirt road. At our resort, there was special tap in each kitchen dispensing filtered rainwater, which they told us we could drink and we did. The rest of the water, including the showers, was groundwater and was brown and smelled distinctly like a swamp. There was indeed a long white beach right outside our front doors, and you could walk along it for miles, but it was narrow. Walking out in the water the bottom was sandy for a while, but became grassy maybe 50 feet out, before the water was waist deep. The food was of some local interest, but not plentiful or much variety.

The people were very friendly. Belize is much less poor than the countries around it, in fact the workers at the banana plantations in Belize come from Guatemala. Because Belize was isolated by its barrier reef, it ended up a British colony and has a large Afro-Caribbean population. Other people we talked to described themselves as Mayans. The area where we were was on its way to rapid development, although I think that will only happen if the road gets paved and the telephone service upgraded (the resort where we were said they could only get one phone line).

Guides took us on trips up a river to see howler monkeys, to the Jaguar preserve, and to the Mayan ruins at Xunantunich. Our favorite guide was Dwayne of Joy Tours.

year end totals

I finally got to my year end totals:
Swimming: 120 hours
Biking: 202 hours
Running: 385 miles

That is about 418 hours for the year, or 8 hours a week. I'm pretty impressed I am averaging more than an hour a day.

home again

Much too much to do today, but here is a picture:

busy

But I think Christmas is organized. I'm glad to be back in my own house--my mother is celebrating Christmas with my sisters in Connecticut and my sister Sheila had her vacation before Christmas and went back to Perkins. We leave the 27th for Belize. I got in two swims this past week, my two three mile runs and a 7.1 mile run, and two shortish bike rides. But the rest of my time since we got back from Concord has been spent getting ready for Christmas.

getting away from rigid thinking

I grew up in a family where there was only one right way of doing things (my mother's way), and I still fall easily into rigid thinking. Having decided to increase my long run by 1/2 mile a week, it literally never occurred to me that I could increase it by 1/2 mile some weeks and by 1 mile other weeks.

I'm trying to remember there are alternatives to that rigid thinking that says life is about trying hard to do everything right. Rather than looking for the right way to do something, I can look for flow and smoothness and creativity. I was talking to someone about my inner work and said that we need to think not in terms of getting it right but in terms of creativity. I imagine a choreographer saying: "Try this. No, that didn't work, try this." It isn't a matter of fixed right and wrong but of trying different things and feeling out what gives the most satisfying result.

We are off tomorrow for a visit to my mother, back Tuesday.