Illinois Marathon 2012

Marathon day was lots of fun.  We went to bed the night before expecting rain, but it had all passed by the time we left the house around 6:20.  My parents were here to watch the girls and they took them out to Urbana to see me run by and cheer me on, which was really cool.  Then they went back to our house and cheered for Brian again when the marathon came through our neighborhood.

The photos above are of Brian and I right after he finished his marathon.  My time was 2:04 for the half and Brian finished in 4:12.  I like to joke that I beat him because my pace was a tiny bit faster.  The only time I’m anywhere near as fast as Brian is when his race is twice as long.

We all participated in a race this year.  Norah decided she wanted to run the kids’ race too.  Brian ran with Maya and I ran with Norah.  She was so excited at the beginning of the race.  She had a huge smile on her face and was clapping and running at the same time.  She didn’t want me to carry her and was still having fun by the end of the race, which I think is about all you can ask of a not quite three year old in a race.

I love the bottom picture with all of us and our medals

Confidence boosted. Time to write.

I had a great run this morning.  The weather was overcast and cool, but not windy.  I listened to an interesting discussion on my ipod.  I saw an adorable, fuzzy, baby goose.  And best yet – I didn’t fall, trip, or injure myself in any way.  The fuzzy baby goose’s mama did hiss loudly and chase me, which freaked me out momentarily, until I remembered that I could run faster than she could waddle.  I didn’t want to test that though, so I ran at my max speed.  I don’t blame mama goose for scaring me though.  I was oohing and ahing at her cute baby and maybe getting a little bit too close. 

With an injury free, comfortable, if slightly slow, 9.5ish miles under my belt, I’m feeling much more confident about the race next weekend.  Woo hoo!! 

Brian and the girls are heading to the theater to see the free weekend movie and I’m going to find out if I can transfer some of this confidence to working on writing.  I have a four page goal today.  That doesn’t sound like much, but I have a history of actually reducing the total page count when I work on my dissertation. 

I was telling Brian a couple of days ago that one of the biggest problems I’m having with writing such a long piece is that it’s hard to stay organized and keep track of what I’ve already said and I don’t want to be redundant.  His response was, “but that’s how academics write.  They say the same thing over and over.”  That is often the case – I have to give him that one.  So here I go, off to write and not worry so much about redundancy.

The bloomington

Either Brian or I mentioned something about Bloomington (the central IL city) tonight.  I can’t recall what we were talking about, but it got Norah all excited.  She told us, “We go to the bloomington!  They have a combine and balls there that I like to play with!”  I don’t think Norah knows that there’s an actual city beyond the children’s museum, which now that I think about it is not even in Bloomington.  It’s in downtown Normal.  Anyway, I’m fiddling around with ways to add a bunch of photos to a blog at once.  Here’s my first shot at it with some pics I took at our most recent trip to “the bloomington” (Norah pronounces it blooooomington) over spring break.

In search of a runner’s high

I’m signed up for a half-marathon next month.  I ran the same race last year and had a blast, so I figured I’d do it again (I talked about my first half-marathon experience here).  I run when I have time and when I feel like it and don’t stress about a training plan.  If I have to walk part of the race, fine.  The trouble is that I’ve been falling.  I don’t run that often and I’ve fallen five or six times in the past six months.  I never used to fall and I’m wearing the same brand and style of shoe that I wore successfully in the past.  I should, theoretically, be less tired since my kids are older and sleep better and since I’ve decided staying home with my family in the evenings is a better option than wasting time staying out late trying to write a dissertation and making no progress.  So I wear the same shoes and I’m getting more sleep.  Brian suggested that one of my legs has grown longer than the other in the past year.  Hmm. . .

This morning I had planned to go out for a long run and then get back to my neglected dissertation (because even if it gets me nothing more than a piece of paper that says I have a phd and a chance to wear a rediculous hat and gown I still want to graduate).  It’s rare that I run more than three or four miles at a time, but when I do, I always feel good about myself afterward.  In addition to needing to do at least a couple of  longish runs before attempting to run 13.1 miles in a few weeks, I knew a self-esteem boost would be a really good thing to have when I try to start writing again.  So, I was planning on going out for about nine miles and made it about two and fell.  I walked home feeling like crap, mostly mentally, but my hands, which hadn’t healed all the way from the last time I fell hurt pretty bad too.  Now that I’ve shared my miserableness, it’s time to get to work on transforming pages of nonsense into a coherent dissertation.  Days like these when I play the game of “how many things can I suck at” are really downers.

Sunshine on my shoulders

Winter was relatively mild this year in central Illinois and I never quite reached the level of desperation for warm and sunny days that I usually experience by the end of the season.  I still relished that first warm day when I retrieved our sandals from the back of the closet and the girls stopped asking to watch TV because they’d rather be playing outside.  Nori and I agree with John Denver; sunshine on our shoulders makes us happy.

An outsider’s perspective of the occupy movement

I played hooky from the AAG conference for a day to explore Manhattan and I happened to come across an occupy protest.  I took a lot of pictures and if you’re interested, you can see them here.  I was on my way back to my hotel when I realized that I was walking through the East Village and decided to take a detour to find Tompkins Square Park.  I always like to check out parks when I’m visiting a new place and I was interested in this particular one because of its history as a site of contestation during the 1980s when the neighborhood was rapidly gentrifying.  I learned about it when I read From Urban Village to East Village: The Battle for New York’s Lower East Side by Janet Abu-Lughod for a class a few semesters ago.

I have to say, I was inspired by what I found there.  Things started to wrap up soon after I arrived, but what I saw was a really diverse group of people coming together to share information and stories, play music and sing, make signs, read poetry, and meet friends.  I’m sure there were also curious residents and tourists there who, like me, wandered by on accident.

I was drawn in by the energy of the crowd and found that the overall message of the event was clear: the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the wealthiest one percent of the population is antithetical to democracy and to the interests of the vast majority of the population.  Whether you agree or disagree with this general message, I think it should be seen as a positive thing that people have strong beliefs, they’re speaking up, and they are out there trying to do something to make the world a better place for everyone.

I’m aware of the criticisms of occupy protests and protesters, but I think in any large group it’s likely to find some who do or say things that don’t help further the group’s larger purpose.  On this particular occasion though, what I saw in Tompkins Square Park was a group of people exercising first amendment rights and expressing dissatisfaction with the status quo in a peaceful, respectful, and, I think, powerful way.

A lot of people find protests distasteful, but the fact is that occupying public space is one of the few means people have of raising consciousness and accessing power.  Even in this age of mass-communication, coming together in a physical space is still important.  It forces people to take notice and one thing that I think is already happening at least partly as a result of the occupy movement is that more people are thinking and talking about class.  Instead of attributing poverty to the personal failures of the poor in a way that suggests they simply haven’t worked hard enough to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, more people are thinking about class in a complex way.  Structural explanations for the growing gap between the haves and have-nots are at least on the table.  This is a big deal.

I’ve heard opinions being voiced from people who don’t like the “we are the 99%” slogan and resent being lumped in with what they see as a group of lazy and ungrateful hippies out there causing a ruckus and demanding more than their fair share.  However, the slogan doesn’t imply that the movement represents the views of the 99%.  It is simply referencing the distribution of wealth and power in this country.

Occupy protesters are working under the assumption that we can do better as a society than accept the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. They want a better world for all of us and I applaud everyone that is out there speaking up, dreaming big, and having hope that a more socially just future is possible.

Fun with books

I walked into the living room this morning and found Nori deep into my copy of The Diologic Imagination.  I remember having a similar reaction when I was reading it.

She checked out a few more titles, but came to the conclusion that the big people books in the house aren’t worth reading.  So she decided to make a road with them.

Then she took a rest in the empty bookshelf.  Yikes, I really need to clean under there!