Talking to the Dead

You must read my wife's recent blog about the next foreign language that our children will be learning.

And while you're there, read her blog about poop samples.

First Trail Run of 2010

Yesterday, after church, I was able to get a short trail run in at O'Brien. It was great. I'm not in shape to run an ultra yet, but there is hope.
Races that I've got my eyes on and I think I can pull off this year:

Two Rivers 50K, May 15 (underground)
FANS 24 Hours
Afton 50K
Twin Cities Marathon
Black Dog 100 Miler (underground)

Then, I hope to run some long runs on full moon evenings.

Congrats to all those who ran, completed, or attempted to complete Zumbo or Chippewa this weekend. The photos are great. Thanks to all who have posted them on MN dead runners.

She Slept Through the Night

Yes. Last night, Sadie slept through the night!
Well, she slept in the basement, so if she did cry, we didn't know.
So, actually I don't know if she slept through the night, but we did!
Anyway, it was glorious.

Tom Petters and Danish Fishermen

Two articles ran side-by-side in a local Twin Cities paper today.

One was about a small group of Danish fisherman during World War II. Hitler's Germany had occupied Denmark and had begun to extract Jews back to concentration camps. Knowing full well what would result if captured, these Danish fishermen filled their small fishing boats full of Jewish families and motored them to neutral Sweden. They rescued about 7200 souls from certain death.

The other article was about how Tom Petters, ponsai schemer extraordinaire, was requesting that his sentence be reduced to four years of prison.

I was struck by the enormous difference that these two stories represented.
In one, in order to save a few people, a few men were willing to risk everything they had spent their lives to build.
In the other, a man spent his life taking advantage of a lot of people in order to make millions of dollars.

When push comes to shove, I sure hope that I would be a Danish fisherman.
My wife would kill me if I'm not!

Waiting

I'll be watching the first few ultras of the season pass me by. I'm a little sad. However, I'm getting older, and with age comes wisdom that I did not expect. For example, I am learning how the act of simply waiting is important.

So often, I have watched others, and myself, fret about a problem. Sometimes, the problem has been huge, sometimes just the fretting was huge. But in each case, the problem passed, as did the fretting.

Among other things, one thing always remains the same: time marches on. Tomorrow, the problem may be gone. Next month, the disaster never developed. In a year, a new job or new work may present itself. It's possible that none of this could have ever been anticipated.

So, sometimes the way to avert tragedy is simply to wait, to survive a few more days, to not rush too quickly to rescue oneself from what may not turn out to be a problem.

Here I am this year. Watching races come and go. Not training. Not running, yet. Lots of children at home. Lots of changing rooms, dirty diapers, stubbed toes, faces to wash...

For now, I'll just wait.