johnsjar

I did an 8 km run this morning in 58:05 for a 7:15 pace. It was cool and foggy, but not too bad. I felt I could have gone faster but my lungs still hurt a bit from the cold I have or had. Right now as I write this after work and after a nap the soreness is totally gone so I hope Sunday’s 17 km run is spectacular.

On my long runs, I run 4 km to the Sanctuary on the local country roads, then 3 km around the trail loop. I am beginning to meet the people who have stayed indoors all winter. On the first lap, they act all surprised that anyone would be running. I meet the same persons on the second lap, and usually on the third lap too. Then it’s another 4 km home for a total of 17 km.

Unfortunately I can’t stick to my plan to run early in the morning just quite yet as I have to work early Sunday for a few hours. I’ll have to run when I get back which is a shame because now I’ll have to run around all the “5 minute tourists” who have stayed indoors all winter. But now that it is spring they all come out to the bird sanctuary on weekends and look at me in interesting and often entertaining ways.

Are you ready for a rant? I’m going to rant now. Call it therapy. You don’t have to read any further.

The 5 minute tourists usually don’t see or hear me until I am almost on top of them for various reasons related to the noise of the wind and the fact that they are totally focused on either their feet (presumably to not fall off the boardwalk and into the swamp) or they are looking at black specks on the water which may or may not be some sort of water bird. Sometimes they see me from a good ways off and sometimes not until I am upon them. When they do see me often there seems to be a look of fear or at least concern. They are probably wondering why this maniac is running towards them. I suppose it might look aggressive in some way. The boardwalk only supports two people walking side by side though there isn’t much room. More often than I like when people see me coming at a fast run they merely stop are stare stupidly like a deer caught in headlights rather than step aside so I can run by. They just stand there and don’t make way for me for some strange reason I’ve yet to fathom. So I mill about and say excuse me and whatever.

This irks me in the wintertime when on rare occasions when it is warm the people come out for a hike on the paths. Usually the trail snow is packed hard and the packed portion of the trail is only a few inches wide. So if you slip or step off that hard pack you usually land in deep snow and must climb up again onto the pack if you know what I mean. Guess who, without exception, always has to fall into the deep wet snow to go around people who just stand there in your way so THEY won’t have to get their arctic mukluks and snow pants tainted by snow? Right, it’s the guy in the summer sneakers who has to go around.

Yes, it’s not only a bird sanctuary, it also has watchable wildlife and I’ll bet that other than the trees I’m the oldest living native organism there as I’ve been going to that sanctuary since 1989. And since I’ve started running a few years ago, I’ve been a regular weekly runner there every week all season long, including winter.

So I get miffed when I see some ignorant people take their kids into a NATURE SANCTUARY and CUT DOWN pussy willows. They can’t cut pussy willows from any one of the hundreds of kilometers of country roads whose ditches are lined every inch of the way with pussy willows. No, they have to jump into their cars and drive 40 miles so they can cut them down in a nature preserve. Don’t get me wrong, I know that pussy willows grow like crazy and are not in any way shape or form endangered. And I have nothing against families and kids cutting pussy willows. That’s not the point. The point is that parents are not sending the right signal when they show kids it’s ok to harvest stuff from an endangered area.

I won’t hesitate to tell people so either, like when I told a kid to stop peeling the bark from the birch trees in the sanctuary. His dad had said nothing and just kept on walking while his kid began peeling the trees and ripping up fungus from other trees. When I caught up to the kid during my run I gently told him NOT to do that because (a) it was a sanctuary, and (b) peeling the bark off the tree would kill the birch tree. Those beautiful pristine white trees are rare to begin with. I think I mumbled something about how he would feel if someone began peeling HIS skin off, but I made sure no one heard THAT! The kid did stop and ran to catch up with his dad. I don’t know what he said to his dad if anything because I went past them on continued on with my run.

I plan on speaking up more often in the future not because I am becoming less polite, but because I see that unless someone corrects this appalling lack of education in kids (and apathy from parents), they are going to grow up without nature sanctuaries for their kids.

That’s it. The rant is over. Rants are good therapy but they always make one look like a people-eating ogre. I’m not one. Really.