Still Running Some

I've run upon some hard times recently.  Since returning to running in May after a 2 year layoff due to health issues, I bumped my weekly mileage total from zero to 12-13 miles early this month, still running three times a week.  I had a long run of five miles, my longest run yet.

Although I've been very cautious in climbing the ladder of increasing my mileage as my conditioning slowly returned, I think I ramped up the weekly total too quickly, before my joints had settled into the new routine.  Plus I don't think my 5K race this month where I was forced to run fast (it's all relative!) 's My hip especially was giving me trouble, pain actually, whenever I stepped up to climb into the driver's seat of my hi-rise pickup, so I went to my dock, for the second time this year.  Like never look behind you because someone may be gaining on you, don't go to the doctor if you can help it (or stand it) because you might find out things you don't want to know.

Diagnosis: Arthritis in both hips.  The subtle but persistent pain in my hip coupled with the diagnosis made me consider abandoning running for awhile.  But I had worked too hard the last half year to do that so for the last two weeks I have cut my mileage total to the bone but kept at it, running my mandatory three times a week.  It's a discipline thing, getting out there and lurching into motion for a mile run even.

I've enjoyed my short runs, easily loping along for a dozen minutes or so but still breaking into a sweat the last half of the shuffle.  I still mark down 3 entries per week in my running log (I note only distances now, not times anymore), with a long run of only a couple of miles, and it keeps me from giving up running entirely again.  My conditioning is deteriorating slowly from my current level I am sure, but it hasn't dropped off a cliff, and I am still in the game as my hip pain subsides for the most part, and I plan to bump the mileage up the scale even more slowly soon.

Columbus Day, er, Indigenous People Day 2019

Earlier this month on the Columbus Day holiday I went for lunch during the noon hour to the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover, as was formerly my wont for many years on all holidays and special days when I was around, ever since my youngest child turned 18.  It was crowded when I arrived and I went around the establishment but I didn't see anyone I recognized.  I took a seat at the bar, which was wide open, where I could see anyone entering or leaving the premises, but during the ensuing hour I still didn't see anyone I recognized.

Columbus Day, or I guess some people insist it's Indigenous People Day now, has been a sad day for me for almost two decades.  When my quarter-million-dollar four-years-of-litigation divorce was just getting started, I was at an extreme (or fatal as it turned out) disadvantage because my wife and mother of my three children, Sharon Rogers Lightbourne, had taken the children out of the house on a holiday ruse to her parents compound in Cleveland, filed a stealth divorce petition, and refused to bring them back to Arlington unless I vacated the house, which I did so they could come back home and return to school.  Of course, I was then accused in court subsequently of "abandoning" the family.  Welcome to the divorce wars, where you'll meet the White Queen soon enough.

In the meantime, Sharon busily started instilling in these three tender minors an us-against-him mentality and a we-have-to-stay-strong-and-stick-together mantra, which took flourishing root in their immature minds as this insidious and relentlessly motivated manipulator, driven by what I believe to be her covert narcissistic personality, overbore their wills by withholding and then giving back her love in a cold calculation, centered upon herself as the victim here and immersing them up to their armpits in the exciting litigation.  (We're suing dad!  For mom!).  Do a little research on covert narcissism, drop the term into a google search and it will make your hair stand on end, and this disorder is viewed by many as exceedingly manipulative and destructive, for which about the only ameliorating action one can take when closely associated with such a person is to literally flee him or her before he or she ruins your life by adversely affecting all your loved ones.  Although I received visitation in court that gave me about 22% of the time with the children, the approximately 78% of their other time was filled with rigorous debriefings by her of every minute of our time together, many secret trips to many different psychologists, complex plans devised by her for them to execute in case I got "mad," secret cell phones they brought over and hid that I didn't know about, her disregard for sending over the children's medication with them (thus their claim that I was a poor parent for not keeping them on their prescription schedule which I didn't even know about), and all kinds of other malicious mischief.  Meanwhile she allied herself with family-wrecking courthouse "professionals" who busily tore the family unit apart in complicity with the serial-suer attitude she brought to bear upon their father, sharing draft court pleadings with these pre or barely pubescent children contrary to settled public policy.

Eighteen years ago this month I took the children to Columbus on the Columbus Day weekend to visit their aunt and uncle (an OSU professor) and their three cousins (all boys roughly the same age as my three sons).  We had a wonderful time.  We wandered around the Ohio State campus, conducted a fun experiment in their uncle's lab under his supervision, went sightseeing around this state capital, and the boys romped, played and watched movies.  Then I brought my charges back to their mother's house on time.  The next morning my lawyer called and told me that she had called up the court-appointed "psychologist," Victor Elion, the night before to complain that I had brought the youngest boy home "tired" and beseech him what she should do about the lad's homework.  (She had not communicated to me that he had any homework, and my son had said he didn't have any homework when I asked him if he had any.  It was, dear reader, a set-up.)

The charlatan Ph'D appointee, who hung around the courthouse to get work, suspended my visitation sua sponte and ex-parte, without even a hearing.  Suspiciously to me, this charlatan had billed a four-hour session with Sharon earlier on the day I left with the children for a trip to Colorado during the summertime.

The first hearing I was able to schedule, at which my visitation was restored, was over two months later and I spent a lonely ten weeks without seeing or even speaking to my children (they never answered their phone, which had caller ID, when I called), or even knowing where they went for Thanksgiving.  My fatherhood was effectively over as by then, it is my opinion that the children had been brainwashed by Sharon and her coterie of what I consider to be childhood wreckers in a stark example of PAS, abetted by our slow and unresponsive domestic law system.  Although I received full joint legal custody of the children, patricide had been completed already, and the children soon stopped coming for court-ordered visitation (discovering how easy it is to be a scofflaw following their mother's example, in my opinion).  I haven't seen nor even spoken with any of my children (now all adults) in over a dozen years.

These dolorous recollections flooded through my mind as I sat alone in the Lost Dog Cafe earlier this month.  I ordered the New York Giant sandwich, a delicious contraption of hot pastrami, creamy coleslaw and melted cheese, and a draft.  I enjoyed it in quiet solitude, reflecting upon the countless hours of changing diapers, attending parent-teacher meetings, preparing for special-ed appeals, taking them to doctor visits, nursing sick children, hurrying them to ERs when they had standard childhood accidents, coaching them and earning coaching licenses for their and their teammates' betterment, taking vacations with them, spending time building leggo ships and helping them with homework, driving them to school when they were late for the bus, planning for their financial futures (each of the three children already had a Roth IRA set up by me, funded with money earned by "lawn mowing" for neighbors that coincidentally matched their annual allowances); all these childhood memories dissipating in an obscene orgy of bogus recriminations hurled at me in public court hearings, kow-towing to phony or agenda-driven "professionals" like Victor or Meg who were in effect controlling (ruining, in my opinion) their childhoods now, absorbing $15,000 legal bills each month plus enduring a fiduciary lawsuit from my very own children (yeah, these minors brought the suit, sure).

Sharon was sanctioned and assessed costs of almost $50,000 ultimately for her "harassment petition."  That in no measure made up for having her scummy divorce lawyers, Bill and Joe, stand between me and my children during this time in their development, resulting ultimately in a thoroughly destroyed family unit at any level, an extra-judicially killed parenthood and three children having their childhoods murdered by those adult "professionals;" it would make angels cry and makes me weary and heartsick to even think about.

I miss my children.  The last time I spoke to my wife, when I encountered her on a public street, I asked her about each child:  Is he alive? Is he well? Is he married? Does he have children? Where does he live?  Her non-answer to these questions that any normal parent would answer for the other  reflected her granite heart.  Stony silence.

At the Lost Dog my memories vanished in a swirl of regret and wonder at the inscrutability of life.  I finished my meal, leaving a part of my sandwich and draft behind as a talisman for if I ever come back there in a rapprochement attempt again, paid, and left.

The race in retrospect

More thoughts about Saturday's 5K race.  It felt good to be back in the saddle again, even though it was my slowest 5K race ever at 32:39.  Only once before did I run a 5K race in more than thirty minutes, a July 4th race several years ago on a hot, humid afternoon in the heat of the day run on the blacktop surface of the parking lots out at RFK Stadium which felt like running through a steel factory between two rows of blast furnaces.  I had to walk twice that day in the sapping, cloying heat and finished finally in about 31 minutes.

Sunday I didn't walk but it was a long slow grind on an out and back run on the W&OD Trail with one significant hill in the second mile that had to be tackled twice, going out and coming back.  Going out to the midway turnaround the runners sorted themselves out in staking out their positions in the race.  The hill didn't bother me in either direction, it was short (about 80 yards) although relatively sharp, because I've been working hills around here on my runs and they're knocking me back less and less.  Hills are good (training) for you, it's where you can take down a runner in a race who's close by and get or keep in front of him or her for good.

I got by two or three runners on the downhill section of the hill the second time and then had the last mile and a quarter to myself mostly as the runners were separated into their spots pretty much.  I was glad I had worn my ball cap as the sun was shining directly into my eyes on the return leg and the bill pulled down helped my vision considerably.  My eye woes last year has affected my vision while running noticeably, unfortunately, and I have trouble seeing the surface ahead of me in low light or bright light situations.

My breathing cadence settled from gasping to regular though heavy during the last mile.  A woman came up fast behind me then and disappeared slowly in front of me as she was finishing strong, the only runner who hauled me down in the second half of the run.  I watched her pass two more runners further ahead of me upon whom I had had no designs on catching, but her passing them motivated me to run a little bit faster (turnover! I thought) and I started eyeballing the runner 30 yards ahead as I slowly, very slowly, ran up on him.

I decided, from the back, that he might be in my age group and I passed the few minutes I used it took to catch him that thinking how disappointed in myself I would be if I took the easy way out and just kept my place and he was third in my AG thus putting me at fourth.  It ultimately was moot because the race didn't award AG places plus he clearly wasn't as old as me when I looked at his face, but still I caught and passed him, in the last quarter mile and one other runner 10 yards in front of him.  I spent the last 400 yards glancing behind me anxiously to see if either of them, or anyone else, was coming up on me near the finish line, the perils of being in front of likewise runners but nobody made a push those last hundred yards and I finished in the aforesaid 32.39, a time I was very happy with given that it was my first challenging run after spending 5 months coming back from a two-year complete layoff.

The race wiped me out and I'm a day behind in my training for the week, although I intend to make up the day.  I did run 4.2 miles on Monday in 47 minutes, with a long hill near the middle point, and contemplated as I tackled the hill both ways that although my pace hasn't really improved yet in the last several months, my ability to take on hills without wilting has definitely improved.  I am encouraged, I just wish I had someone to run with sometimes because I always enjoyed running with my running buddies, all of whom have moved away or moved on from running, at least with me.

Finally, a race.

I ran the first race I have signed up for in over three years today, a 5K. A search of the internet reveals that I ran a 5K four and a half years ago in about 26:30, when I was in much better shape and forty pounds lighter, and I ran a 5K three and a half years ago in about 28 minutes as I recall, a little more or a little less, and that might have been my last timed race.  (My medal for finishing the Home Run for the Homeless 5K run in Arlington.)

But then two years of inactivity ensued as I recovered from an achilles strain that put me in The Boot for all of the summer of 2017 and in the summer of 2018 the horror of a detached retina and four eyes surgeries transpired. Returning finally to running in May, I started from scratch and have been running twelve-minute mies, basically, as I slowly pushed my weekly mileage up to 12 miles and my long run up to 5 miles in 61 minutes.  (It was the first chilly morning of the fall so conditions for racing were perfect.)

Today I ran the Home Run For The Homeless 5K in Bluemont Park in Arlington, sponsored by a non-profit charitable foundation that spends millions in Arlington getting homeless families back on their feet and into a self-sustaining life situation, wherein the proceeds of the race go to this cause.  The day was chilly at race time, perfect conditions to run in.  (Corporal Johnson of the Arlington SO provided security, and friendly encouragement, wearing her pink embroidered breast cancer awareness badge that is standard issue for this month in the department.)

Just yesterday I ran 5K as a training run in 36 minutes (34 minutes if you don't count the time I spent in the local library returning books that were due that I had carried there in a multitasking run), even before I knew that I would race a 5K today in a last second decision at the urging of a couple of friends I encountered unexpectedly late yesterday afternoon.  I finished the race in 32:39, a 10:32 pace, far back in the pack (43/46 men by the time I drove away) but I was happy with the results because it felt good to be out there pushing myself as I continue to return to running.  (Happy that it went well.)

Running some

Once my eye woes were behind me, come May 1st, I started easing back into running with a slow, gradual buildup because I knew to try to do too much too soon would send me back to the couch, where I'd been for two years due to my serious health issues (an achilles strain and then a retina detachment leading to four eye surgeries to save the sight, sort of, in my affected eye).  I mapped out three runs per week (which I'm still adhering to religiously), starting out at half-mile runs.

I couldn't even do a half-mile run that first run (or rather, slow jog) but now, five months later, I'm up to 12 miles a week, with 10 pounds melted off and more importantly, I'm adamant about running three times each week, and doing my prescribed mileage, without shirking any runs as the seven days of each week pass by immutably.  This week I did 5 miles, 4 miles and then 3.1 miles (5K), at a pace averaging out at 11-12 miles per minute.

Lordy, it's hard.  I'm so overweight and I feel so old and unmoving.

This week though was indicative that I'm progressing, albeit slowly--5 hilly miles in 61 minutes (12+ pace), 4 hilly miles in 45 minutes (11+ pace) and a 5K today in 36 minutes (12 pace, but it included 2 minutes lost in the town library while I returned some books and slurped cool water from their water fountain).  Tomorrow I am signed up for a 5K race.

Images from Columbus

Here are some last images from my visit in the summer to Columbus:

A pedaling bar vehicle downtown.  I think the cyclists are pedaling away their inebriation.  I hope the driver is the designated non-drinker.

The Orthodox Christian Church downtown.

A bridge over the Scioto.

Hangin' with my nephews.

Sundown downtown.

The Confederate Cemetery at Camp Chase.

The food truck festival downtown one evening.

St. James Episcopal Church in Upper Arlington, my sister's church.

Images

In Columbus, I tried to capture some beautiful photographic images. I always love to capture mirror images of bridges or structure on the water; here I got a picture of a bridge reflected on the Scioto River underneath as a boatman paddled up to it.

Here's the city's namesake outside City Hall.  I wonder when the groundswell of removing Columbus' statue will grow to a volume that can't be ignored because after all, his arrival in the New World (can I still say that?) initiated the genocide of indigenous peoples due to the introduction of urban diseases like smallpox and the disparity of technologies like guns versus spears.

I enjoyed spending time with my sister and her family.  Here I enjoyed a libation with her and her middle child, a graduate student in Columbus.

Later we were joined by her youngest son, who also lives downtown and is an engineer who works for a foreign car company.  These young men apparently didn't get the memo from my three children about how terrible I am, actually, these blood relatives of mine haven't heard from those lads in over 15 years.

Columbus

In Columbus, I hung out with my sister, her husband, and my nephews.  One of my sister's sons lives downtown while he attends classes to get a Master's degree, and I met them downtown.

We went to the location of the big POW camp in Columbus during the Civil War and in the Confederate cemetery there, I noted that the Rebel sentinel was standing guard over the graves again.  During the murderous Neo-Nazi riots in Charlottesville a couple of years ago, the sentry was vandalized and sent out for repair; I thought he might never return but he is back.

We attended a food truck festival downtown and enjoyed a beautiful sunset.  The city has created a river walk along the Scioto River in the heart of the city.

The next morning I went out early and tried to capture a beautiful sunup at a nearby park.  There is a lot to do in Columbus, Ohio's capital and its largest city.