Nothing ventured, nothing gained

Since moving to Minnesota, I've consciously adopted an aggressive "Just say yes" attitude.  It hasn't been difficult, as one of the motivations behind my move was the desire to experience and live life differently.  So, since moving, I've gone to parties alone, met strangers for ice cream, canoed 16 miles down Minnehaha Creek, relearned how to drive a stick shift, biked to a Peter, Bjorn & John concert before hitting an art opening before hitting a bar with pals one night.  All of that has been fun, but by far the best and most thrilling thing I've done was to agree to fill in for an injured runner on a Ragnar Relay team.

A sweltering stretch on a Wisconsin highway.

Ragnar relays are held in 11 or 12 places around the country and they generally work like this: teams of 12 take turns running legs of the race that are between four and eight miles long.  The total distance run is about 200 hundred miles.  Each runner runs three legs and you always run in the same order (e.g. runner 1, then 2, then 3, until runner 12 finishes her leg, then runner 1 goes again).   The teams usually shuttle themselves in two vans of six runners per van.  When you're not running, you're cheering on your teammate.  When everyone in your van has finished their leg, you eat or rest while your teammates in the other van run, and when they finish their legs, you start to running, in order, again.  It sounds chaotic, but it's really quite orderly and well organized.

Looking for my incoming teammate.

When James, a friend from college, contacted me to see if I'd be interested in filling in, and consequently running about 15 miles over 20 hours, my first reaction was to say that I was busy that weekend and so couldn't do it; my fitness level is pretty low right now and I hadn't run more than 3 miles at a stretch in several months.  But the more I thought about it, the more this seemed like an amazing opportunity to see an old friend, meet new people and challenge myself in a completely unexpected way.  So I said yes, and it's probably the best decision I've made since deciding to move to Minneapolis.

Teammate in site; bouncing with excitement before my first leg.

Because I was by far the weakest runner on the team, I was quite nervous about my performance and abilities, but my teammates were incredibly warm and encouraging and supportive.   There's nothing like slogging your way down blistering highway in 96 degree heat without a lick of shade and then rounding a corner to see your pals waving and cheering for you and hearing the call of the vuvuzela (yes, we had one of those) pulling you forward.  Periodic improvised showers didn't hurt, either.

While the running was fun,

we were all happy to be done with our legs when we finished them.

The oppressive heat was a common post-run topic of conversation.

 We ran through some beautiful (and hilly) parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota

Sunset on Lake Pepin

 and met some enthusiastic fans and volunteers.

Best cheering: Stockholm, WI.

The race started at 11 Friday morning, and by 10 pm Van 1 (my van), was gearing up to run our second legs of the race, which we finished around 2:00 am.  We napped briefly in the town of Stillwater while Van 2 ran through the grim hours of the morning, and by 7:15 am we up and running again. I finished my third and final leg around 9 am and our team as a whole finished around 3:30 Saturday afternoon.  

Van 1 at the completion of our portion of the relay

In addition to having an awesome weekend with spirited, dynamic, fun and interesting people, running in the Ragnar Relay reminded me that I can do more than I sometimes think, that it's possible to acknowledge one's limitations while simultaneously pushing oneself, that there's seldom anything to be gained in saying no, that life is wonderful if you are open to living it and that  there's no better feeling than pride in a job well done.

Thank you Ragnar and Team Kittens and Yarn!  Here's hoping for another adventure in 2012!

Today

  

 Cold hands

Bright sky

Runny nose



Sweaty face

Big smile



Sturdy legs



I love a winter morning run. 

Vacation, all I ever wanted

You'll not often hear me complain about the weather, but I kind of especially love summer.  It's also my favorite time to visit my family.  Some poeple like Christmas, but I think that, as get-together occasion, it's kind of awful.  Airports are crowded, people are stressed, there's so much pressure.  Ugh.  But when I go to see my peeps during the summer, and it's invariably awesome.  My family's a lot of fun in general, but it's touching how they go out of their way to show me a good time when I visit. 

We like to eat and we're not opposed to bending an elbow, so this year there was a fish fry and a barbecue, several rhubarb desserts and the new Grain Belt beer.

Despite some record breaking heat (97 deg. one day,  which is bonkers for Minnesota in May), I spent a lot of time outside going for runs and walks.

One ambitious day I went running in the wetlands behind my Aunt Irene's house and ended up on my great-great-great grandfather's homestead, the place where he and his family settled when they came to Minnesota from Ohio.  That was pretty neat.  There's a grade school and water tower there now.  Could be worse (think strip mall).

Despite being there for a week and bringing THREE projects with me, I got very little knitting done.

 

I was having too much fun, I guess, with godsons

And friends

 

The feeling was mutual.

Marathon Sunday

For close to 10 years now, I've been carrying on a love affair with New York City Marathon. It started when I was invited to a marathon party on the Upper East Side. Promised bagels and Bloody Marys, I showed up that Sunday morning a bit skeptical and unsure of what to expect. How exciting could it be to watch strangers run past me?

Very exciting, as it turns out. It was the fit and the fat, the old and the young, families and friends and firefighters and folks in costumes. Then I saw the man with one leg. Cue the waterworks. What I learned that day is that the New York City Marathon is not about watching people run past me; rather, it is about watching what a single person can do when he puts his mind to it. And it's not just what a person can do, it's what ANY of us can do, if we commit ourselves. Not "athletes", not professionals, not the genetically gifted. Any of us

A year after watching my first marathon, I ran one. It wouldn't have occurred to me to sign up on my own, but my cousin Paula, who's always been more athletic than I suggested it. I promised to think it over, and then, during Christmas dinner that year, she announced our intention to run the marathon to our entire family. So, over the next six months, separated by more than 1,000 miles, we trained and trained. And then, in June, we got the good word: both of us had made it into the marathon by way of the lottery. Five months later, we crossed the finish line, in front of Tavern on the Green, together. It was an amazing day.

A couple of years later, I moved to an apartment in Brooklyn that happens to be on the marathon route

and started hosting an annual marathon party, for friends to come and eat, drink and cheer for the racers. Around 50 people come to the open house; some early to watch the wheel chair and hand cycle athletes.

And some come a bit later, nursing hangovers with coffee and mimosas.

It's a very family friendly event.

We line up on the sidewalk waiting, WAITING for the police cars and official time truck to come by and signal the arrival of the day's first racers.

And when they arrive, we clap and jump and scream and cheer.

It's always a bit slow at first.

But in no time, there are throngs of racers.

One of the most exciting things about hosting the party is having guests who are cheering for a particuler runner. This year, Laura and Don were cheering for Don's husband, also named Don, who came down from Toronto to run.

They saw him! People ALWAYS spot their runners from my place. It's got good juju.

Because guests start arriving around 8:30 in the morning, I've got to get my ass organized, so I spend Friday night and all day Saturday cooking and baking. I usually wake up in a panic, worried that there won't be enough food, and so bake one more loaf of this, or another pan of that.

This year's menu included Green Chili and Chorizo Breakfast Strata, vegetarian Chili and Cheese Strata, homemade Oreos , Cook's Illustrated's Dreamy Cream Scones (recipes compliments of Smitten Kitchen), Brooke's Grandma Smith's Banana Bread, pumpkin muffins, pecan muffins, lemon bundt cake, oatmeal blueberry breakfast bars and a spinach chickpea curry. It's important to have a mix of sweet and savory at a morning event, don't you agree?

Of everything I made this year, the scones were my favorite. They were ridiculously good, creamy almost. I baked some of them as written and served jam* on the side but with the rest, I did my thing, by which I mean I baked jam into the scones. Holy Mary, is that delicious. Trust me and try it sometime. Your loved ones will freak out.

Although the racers are pretty much gone by 1:00, the party doesn't usually end until 7:30 or 8, which makes it a mini-marathon of our own, I suppose.

Good times.

*Jam made by Brooke and Marisa.

An idle mind is a playground for the Devil

That's not exactly my personal philosophy, but it is a repeated line in the latest song to be on heavy rotation in my iPod: Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me, by Peter Brown. Behold, the album cover:

I'm guessing the answer to his question is "yes."

ANYWAY, during the past month, neither my mind nor my hands have been idle. No, not at all. This month of exclusively working on projects for myself turned out to be fun, productive and really satisfying. I almost never make things for myself, so it was a real change for me to be completely unleashed with respect to yarn and project selection. On more than one occasion I found my head spinning with the possibilities: what to start? Socks? Scarf? Sweater? But start I did and, perhaps more importantly, finish I did. I felt very focused this past month, the month of selfish crafting. I often have a hard time finishing projects, or at least those which require "finishing," and it can be a bit depressing to look, day after day, at an almost complete, let me just weave in the ends, attach the sleeves to the body and block it project. So wrapping these puppies up made me quite happy.

One project in particular gave me a real sense of accomplishment. Months ago I hatched a plan to crochet a bunch of flowers, as many as I could get out of two partial skeins of Louet Merlin. The remnants had been lying about for almost two years, and I really, really wanted to make use of them.

I've yet to settle on a final project for les petites fleurs, but at least they're done. I'm thinking that it could it could be neat to join them all in a random fashion with white linen yarn, perhaps make a window covering for one of the windows that looks out into my backyard space. We shall see.

The other thing I am really excited to have done this month was to knit up my first garment sans pattern! I saw a simple sweater that I liked on Ravelry but didn't feel like shelling out cash for another pattern. then I reasoned "I'm fairly bright. I can knit a swatch and calculate gauge. I know how to knit do simple increases and decreases. Bring it on!"

One thing I'm no good at is taking photos. Between poor lighting and nothing on which to balance a camera, it's hard to get shots of me wearing anything that I knit. But I do try. The things that makes me the most happy about this sweater is that it was knit with recycled cotton. I had a sweater that I never quite loved on me and was about to put it in the Goodwill pile when I remembered that I could frog it and put the yarn to a better use. So I did! It was a little tedious, but not too bad and so worth it (read: cheap). It's rare in life that one gets something for nothing, and since I also honed some skills, this project was kind of a twofer.


In other news, I ran the Brooklyn Half-Marathon this past weekend! I was nervous heading in to the race because I really hadn't been training properly and didn't go for a single run in the week preceding the race, but I did carboload with pasta, Jeni's ice cream and white wine the night before (that's something, right?). Fortunatly, the 10,000 of us who ran the race were blessed with a beautiful, sunny day with low humidity and clear skies. The race started with us running two loops around Prospect Park, then heading down Ocean Parkway all the way to Coney Island, where we finished on the boardwalk in front of the Atlantic Ocean. Dawn, Julie and I ran the entire race together, chatting away to keep our minds off of the task at hand, and celebrated with hot dogs (me) and cheese fries (not me) at Nathan's Famous. To quote Ice Cube, I gotta say it was a good day.