Running Through Tampa

"The Marathon Post" Second Installment

2006-06-01T19:19:00.000-04:00

click here to read The Marathon Post sequentially

It’s here, walking gingerly along the river in the long shadows of the late evening sun that I start to make some connections. The physical manifestations of river and city serve only as backdrops to the many dramas that have played across their stages. As the evacuation of New Orleans finally began, each commandeered school bus took with it pieces of the city that would not return without being changed, if they were to return at all. For months the vibrant, eclectic, and quintessentially American culture of New Orleans came to a halt while its participants scattered across the country to experience new environments and rituals, and to alter those destinations with their presence in much the same way that the Mariel boatlift had changed the face of South Florida twenty-five years ago. The months-long abandonment of New Orleans would have been enough to alter its unique character forever, but the storm’s destruction had erased many of the physical reminders needed to jog the memories of its former occupants on their return.
The experience of New Orleans or Tampa or any other city is immersive, temporal, and elusive: a leaf in the stream of the city’s people, history, geography, and culture. The city’s personality, like that of a man, is a product of these competing and ever-changing forces that can never again be duplicated. Just as a man’s DNA can theoretically be extracted to produce “exact replicas” of himself, the infinitely complex set of influences that created his personality can never be reproduced. In New Orleans this scenario was multiplied by the hundreds of thousands. Katrina dragged her hand slowly through the ant trail of New Orleans, and its occupants had lost the scent and scattered.
The plane to New Orleans had been crowded with hard-hat-toting construction workers, project managers, and government-official-types, each with their own concept of what New Orleans was and, more importantly, what it would become. Most of their ideas had originated in far-flung government offices and had little or no relation to the city of New Orleans, its people, and their unique set of circumstances.

All of my life’s most memorable experiences have started well before dawn. From childhood fishing trips with my father to college road trips, touring with the band, backpacking, and mountain climbing; it seems like anything worth doing requires the use of multiple alarm clocks and a coffee maker that is pre-loaded and ready to go. The morning of February 26th, 2006 is no different. Like some sort of numerologist’s dream, I have chosen to run 26.2 miles on 02-26-2006.
At three o’clock I awake and start my now-familiar long run ritual. Drink thirty-two ounces of water standing naked in the dark at the kitchen sink. Turn on the kettle and see the room lit only by the blue flame of the gas burner. Shower by candlelight. The thought of the kettle boiling away on the stove helps to keep me from luxuriating in the shower’s warmth for too long. Still wrapped in my towel, I pour the steaming water into the French press and stir with a wooden spoon stained a dark brown to the middle of its handle from years of this routine. I turn up the dimmer in the kitchen, letting my eyes adjust gradually to the light. As the coffee steeps, I dress myself slowly. First comes the BodyGlide; a generous coat applied to any surface that might even think about blistering or chafing, then I powder my feet and slather my upper body in sunscreen. My clothes are laid out on the dresser like a seven-year-old on his first day of school, and I slip into them quietly while Jan sleeps. I take my shoes and socks out to the couch and sit down, deliberately lining up each seam over my toes, making sure that everything lies flat and straight. There is something about the act of putting on my shoes that always gets me lost in thought. Somehow, this final act in my morning ritual sets me to thinking about what lies ahead and I sit, one shoe on and the other in hand, “locked in a stare” as Jan would say. I’ve done this all my life, and I’m not the only one in the family. A week ago I watched my brother do the same thing as he got ready for an early flight back to California. Coming to, I think of the nursery rhyme that my stepmother would tease me with as a child, “Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John/ Went to bed with his stockings on/ One shoe off, and one shoe on/ Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John.”
A large portion of marathon training, I have come to believe, is not directly related to the physical act of running. There are certain adjustments that one’s body must make in terms of metabolism, pacing, stamina, and overall tolerance for abuse, but the vast majority of what is accomplished in the months of training is a little harder to quantify. It is only through constant repetition that the runner begins to gain control over the more subtle and less conscious elements of their performance. The “involuntary” smooth muscles of the digestive tract begin to obey signals from the rest of the body, and on mornings before a long run there is a cleansing that takes place as the body tries to free itself of all unnecessary baggage before embarking on the journey ahead. I have experienced this effect several times now and it has become part of my pre-run ritual, but the last few days have been slightly different. Something inside of me knows that today’s race carries with it the weight of all my previous efforts, and this has manifested itself as a week-long obsession. I have an insatiable desire to do the three things that, according to Lenny Bruce, led to the first laws of civilization: Eat, Sleep, and Crap. I’m locked in the grip of a full-body peristalsis, and I can’t seem to get enough.

"The Marathon Post" First Installment

2006-05-26T13:05:00.000-04:00

“I would like to say I remember, but a person only remember(s) if they remember what they remember.” – Allen Toussaint

Bernd Heinrich’s “Why We Run” is written from his own present-tense perspective as he runs a 100 kilometer (62.1 mile) race at the age of forty-one. The majority of the book is presented as a series of flashbacks interspersed throughout the narrative of this seriously long run. I thought that the experience of running my own marathon would help to put the previous six months in perspective for me, and somehow I would finally figure out where I was headed with this project. As I ran the 26.2 miles of mostly familiar territory, I thought that perhaps the connections would start to form and I would cross the finish line four-and-a-half hours later with the Great American Novel perched atop my head like a delicately balanced bowl of water. This of course didn’t happen. In the intervening weeks and months I have gained some insights, but in some ways my obsessive mapping has only gotten me more lost. I have spent most of the last few months without running, writing, or even thinking much about this project, and this I think is where the real perspective has come from.
Near the beginning of this project I went to Alaska on a medical escort that flew directly over New Orleans about twenty-four hours after the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. The pilot dipped the left wing of the plane as we passed to the north of the ruined city, and we all craned our necks to see the shredded roof of the Superdome and the streets glistening in the sunlight as water began to pour in from the breeched levees around the town. At the time we had no idea of the horrors that New Orleans would experience in the weeks, months, and years to come. My post from that day makes mention of the Good Friday earthquake that struck Anchorage in 1964, but it says nothing of the human catastrophe that was unfolding directly below us.
Six months later, and two days after New Orleans’ first post-Katrina Mardi Gras, I’m doing a medical escort flight from Beaumont, Texas to New Orleans for a nursing home patient who was evacuated after the storm. It’s only been four days since the marathon, and two full days of flying on a thirty-seat turbo prop has done nothing for the condition of my legs. I shift restlessly in my seat, convinced that at any second I will dislodge a blood clot from the distended veins in my ankles and I’ll keel over dead from the ensuing pulmonary embolism. My patient is not concerned at all. Her advanced Alzheimer’s disease has erased most of her memories of home, and the recent tragedy of Katrina hasn’t even registered with her. As our plane comes in over the blue-tarp roofs of suburban Jefferson Parish, I think about the memories that we each hold of the ruined city rising up below us. The New Orleans that exists in my patient’s mind began to disintegrate years before the levees finally let go. Undoubtedly, the nursing home to which she is going will look a lot like the one in Beaumont; a facility which could not have been much different from the one she first left in New Orleans. Her connection to the present is tenuous at best, and the city of her past was swallowed long ago by dementia’s rising tide. Her only connection to reality is a persistent and misguided belief that she is waiting to be picked up by her daughters. The nursing staff in Beaumont confirmed that she had three daughters in New Orleans, but none of the staff had had any contact with them in the six months that their mother had been in Beaumont.
Back at home, I’m thinking about the countless personal histories of New Orleans that now seem so irrelevant. I remember the book “Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans”, one of the first unabashedly subjective histories I had ever encountered, loaned to me by a friend ten years ago and never returned. He had just gotten the book back from an extended loan to another friend and he gave it to me with the promise that I would return it promptly. Today I find the book in a stack of boxes at the back of the house and I read the forward that had impressed me so much ten years ago. “We maintain that there is no definitive history, only stories told with more or less documentation.” As I thumb through the old paperback’s yellowed pages, I find a hand-written letter tucked in at the back cover dated February 19, 1996.

There’s something so sad in that letter. There is an undertone of resignation that I just can’t put my finger on. Here I am ten years later, reading a letter that I could have written myself. A portent of some kind. I haven’t seen S. in at least five years and although I can make no claims as to my continued sobriety, it was in many ways his steadfast refusal to see things from any sort of sober perspective that led us apart. Maybe I’ll get there sometime…
I’m out for one of my first runs since the marathon, and what used to be a simple four mile route is about to kill me. How can this possibly be so hard? I have repeated before that I am not a natural runner, but I think through my six months of training there was a secret part of me that began to feel I had become one, and I was right, but this recent hiatus has permanently altered my development as a runner in the same way that my six months of training forever changed my life as a non-runner. I’ll recover, and I’ll get back to where I was at least, but I am changed.
I am only what I do, and the history of what I have done doesn’t enter into it any more than does my desire for things I would like to do or my lies about things I claim to have done. I am right now, and right now I feel like I’m going to shit my pants. I’d better walk for a few minutes.

New Posts

2006-05-25T13:26:00.000-04:00

I know, I know. It's been a long time coming. I've been struggling with how to present my post-marathon writings, and I have decided to post them in a serial format because the post seems to be reaching novelesque proportions and I don't want to hold up whatever readership I have left while I continue to tinker with it. As a sidebar I will be publishing the work in its entirety for those who missed prior posts or simply want to read things sequentially. There will most certainly be additions, deletions, and other changes made to this complete work as the writing evolves which may not be reflected in the day-to-day (or week-to-week/month-to-month) installments. Enjoy.

Devon

Now What?

2006-02-26T14:26:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note to say that I ran the Gasparilla Marathon this morning. I stayed pretty close to my goal time, and most importantly, I finished! 26.2 miles in approximately 4 hours and 44 minutes. I'll have a complete posting soon. Special thanks to Jan and Carlo for getting up at 3am to be my support staff, and to everyone else who showed up to cheer me on. It's nap time.

Devon

The Hypnic Jerk

2006-02-22T22:35:00.000-05:00

Marathon Loop 26.2mi
2/7/06 11:30am

“Well, Mom, remember my dream of owning a big house on a hill, and how I used to wish for a living room with a plaster lion in it from Mexico? And how I always wanted a large-seat dining table in a dining room with original paintings by Michelangelo and Rembrandt? And remember how I always wanted a rotating bed with pink chiffon and zebra stripes? And remember how I used to chitchat with dad about always wanting a bathtub shaped like a clam and an office with orange and white stripes? Remember how much I wanted an all red billiard room with a giant stuffed camel and how I wanted a disco room with my own disco dancers and a party room with fancy friends? And remember how much I wanted a big backyard with Grecian statues, S-shaped hedges, and three swimming pools? Well, I got that too.” -- Steve Martin “The Jerk”

Quality sleep in a fire station is often elusive. The beds aren’t comfortable, the air-conditioning is always too cold or too hot, and the roommates snore. Then there are those pesky alarms.
I’ve never been the type to fall asleep immediately after laying down. It usually takes awhile before my thoughts begin to slow and eventually stumble under their own weight. On busy nights at the station, this may be as far as I get before the tones go off again and I’ve spent another evening in the twilight shadow of sleep’s precipice. These hypnagogic evenings do provide some degree of rest, and in some ways they fuel the imagination and lead to connections that I would not have made before.
I think of past evenings spent in a slowly swaying Mexican hammock, lulled to sleep by the hammock’s gentle motion and the distant roar of howler monkeys in the Chiapan jungle. We would light mosquito coils and place them below us in a futile effort to keep the insects at bay. The sounds of the jungle, the bugs, and the constant motion kept me in what seemed like a waking dream where I hung, wrapped in smoke, as the earth turned slowly beneath me. Without the black timelessness of a deep sleep, the days became circular as night was experienced in its own right. At home, things were sequential. Day after day. Here time was a continuum of slightly varied dreamstates.
These days I’ve taken to listening to my headphones in bed, and I’ve found that the spoken word provides a sufficient distraction from the litany of late-night thoughts so that my mind can drift, and soon I’m off to sleep, guided through my dreams by the voices in my ears.
My lullaby for the last month has been Scott Carrier’s radio piece “Running After Antelope” produced for This American Life in 1997. This piece, along with Bernd Heinrich’s “Why We Run”, was part of what sparked my initial interest in running as a contemplative endeavor. Both authors explore the idea that man is biologically predisposed to long-distance running. Carrier believes that man’s bipedalism allows him to breathe independent of his stride, and this gives him an advantage over even the fastest of four-legged prey. Carrier makes his seemingly impossible quest to run down an antelope appear totally logical, and the mysticism and power of this pursuit provide an explanation for the primal appeal of running today.
I drift off to the soft, lilting cadence of Carrier’s voice, imagining a run through the desert’s blank canvas with no destination at all. “I have a plan, and I’m trying to follow it. But it’s hard. It’s a hard plan to follow. I’m trying to get in shape, and I’m trying to live like a primitive man…I want to wake up naked and alone in the desert. I want to eat sand and drink piss and pass out screaming from sunburn and spider bites. But I know it won’t work and I know it won’t happen, either because I’m a coward, or unable, or it’s just not possible at all for anyone.”
After my last failed long run I’ve had doubts about my own ability to complete this quest, but after enduring a few weeks of my own defeatist nature and the unsolicited advice of a few soothsayers along the way, I set off for my final long run before I start to taper for the race. I’ve laid out a marathon-length route made up of three separate loops focused on my house, allowing me to stop twice for minor adjustments, nourishment, and shoe changes if needed.
I immediately forget my plan to run the Rome Avenue loop first so that I don’t have to ascend the MLK bridge after running 12 or more miles, and out of force of habit I head north along the Sulphur Springs route. I’m taking things slowly and paying special attention to the road surface, looking for the flattest possible line. My knee feels good and my new shoes seem to help in relaxing my stride.
I feel like I’ve started to learn a few things from these long runs. A precise rationing of effort is what it takes to complete these runs, and over the last few months I’ve become more adept at the delicate titrations necessary along the way. On the Rome loop headed south I can feel my pace quicken on the flat, level surface of the sidewalk, and I short-stride my way to the top of the bridge without much of a problem. Despite the greater impact associated with running on concrete, the even camber of the sidewalk is what my legs have been craving, and I decide to modify my route for the last loop, to head for Ybor City along Central Avenue’s long, straight sidewalks.
Around mile twenty I realize that I’ve run the last few miles without thinking about my legs, my breathing, my watch, or anything else for that matter. I’ve been moving for so long now that this feels like the normal state of affairs for me.
It is in this trance-like state that, despite the dictates of common sense, running becomes a form of meditation and, consequently, a passable substitute for sleep. A dark, overcast haze has hung over me all morning and now a gentle rain begins to fall, keeping me cool and slowly rinsing the salty crust from my face. I press my face to the mist and run home, the ground moving easily beneath me like a quiet Mexican night.

And Also You're Drunk

2006-02-09T22:40:00.000-05:00

River/Davis 17.3mi
1/26/06 10:00 am

"Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you're drunk" -- Jack Handy

I like to do my long runs during the week because the neighborhood streets are virtually deserted in the daytime, and I can run down the middle of the road, keeping an ear out for traffic coming from behind. The road’s camber is always more noticeable along its outside edges, and although it doesn’t play much of a role on my shorter training runs, it can take its toll on a run of more than twenty miles. I know because I proved it to myself today.
On an unseasonably warm Sunday morning, I start out running south along the river’s eastern bank with a twenty-three mile route in mind. Today’s forecast calls for temperatures as high as eighty-four degrees, and I’m well equipped with Gatorade mix, sunscreen, and a vague idea of the water fountains and convenient stores along the way. The first six or seven miles pass in relative comfort, and I make my way onto Davis Islands and south along the eastern shore as the temperature starts to rise.
Near the Marjorie Park Yacht Basin I see two young girls stop their bicycles to investigate something in their path. Sunlight glitters off of the surface of the road, and as I get closer I can see the outline of a large possum with the broken shards of a beer bottle scattered around its head. The scene has all the elements necessary for a great and ridiculous painting: two innocent girls bathed in the Florida morning sun peer over their tassled handlebars at the glittering mandorla of a deceased marsupial while the palm trees sway in the breeze.
As I pass, one of the girls is lifted from her reverie to give me an expression that is at once puzzled, sad, and slightly amused. I’m the only adult around and she looks at me as if to say “How could this have happened?” I don’t have the time, the energy, or even the ability to explain the complexities of this question to her. I simply shrug my shoulders and give her my best non-vocal “beats me” expression. As I continue to the south, the image of her face stays with me, but it begins to fade as the pain in my knee starts to make itself known.
Nearing the airport, the trees start to thin out and soon it’s just the sun, the heat, and my knee. The weekend traffic has forced me to the far edge of the road where I weave in and out of the double-parked BMWs that clog the streets for today’s NFL playoff parties. My knee is simply not having it. It’s hot and I’m pissed. I’m trying to think of positive mantras to get myself through, but the only thing I can come up with is one that I heard fifteen years ago at a protest against the first of the Gulf Wars. A group of middle-aged mothers and their young children were marching through the frigid January streets of Washington DC chanting “We’re tired! We’re cranky! And we don’t like the government!” Strangely enough, it seems to be working. I am! I am! And I Don’t! I need to get off of this island.
Eventually I make my way back across the bridge and up North Boulevard to the river’s western bank. At Blake High School I realize that I’ve never run this route from the south, and the hole in the chain-link fence that I usually squeeze through is like a one-way valve pointing in the other direction. I’ve been swimming upstream for the last three hours, and now, as I try to force myself through the opening, the analogy is complete. I’m a salmon caught in a gill net. I writhe around on my stomach as the barbs dig into my back and catch on my fanny pack. I try my best to ignore the pontoon boat full of Sunday smolts, but they have stopped their saltwater migration to gawk at my struggle on the shore.
Finally free of this mess, I hobble north towards Rick’s On The River. I’m still almost six miles short of my goal, but my knee is screaming and I remember the cell phone in my bag.
“Hey Mike, it’s Devon. Yeah. How’d you like to meet me for a beer?”

Second Runner-Up, "Bitten To Death By Rats"

2006-01-24T13:39:00.000-05:00

Woodlawn Loop 8mi

1/14/06 3:14pm

I have a confession to make. Despite my mapping obsession, when it comes to the finer details of training - the statistical “facts” that so many runners become obsessed with - I usually just give myself the benefit of the doubt. Distance, pace, and time may all be relative terms with me.
Most days I walk from my house to the corner and I don’t start my watch until I actually start running. Of course, when I map the route I always start at my front door. The difference is only about 1/20th of a mile, but it does skew the pace calculations in my favor.
I always round off my finish times to the nearest minute. Anything between one and forty-five seconds gets rounded down.
If I get stopped by traffic or pit-stops for water and bathrooms, I subtract those times from my finish time. I don’t actually measure how long these things take, I just estimate. Liberally. There’s a lot to be said for the power of positive thinking.
Today, after a protracted struggle with an arsenal of new gadgetry, I’m finally ready to take the Forerunner out for a test run. I decide to run against the “Virtual Partner” and I set the pace for a ten minute mile. The Virtual Partner feature allows you to run against an imaginary friend (or foe) over a set distance and pace. I’ve laid out an eight mile course, and I feel like eighty minutes should be a good healthy finish time for me.
Unfortunately, technology has no regard for my feelings. My virtual partner, That Little Bastard, just keeps right on running his ten-minute pace, attempting to pass me at each red light and stop sign. A few quick calculations show that I need to have about a 250 foot lead on TLB if I want to stop for a one minute walk break (a mile is about 5000 feet and I’m running a ten-minute pace, so I’m covering about 500 feet-per-minute. If I slow down to half that speed I’ll need to be 250 feet ahead of TLB for him to catch me in a minute’s time). This changes the usual dynamic a bit. Previously, the reward of a walk break was solely time-dependant, and it came around every five minutes with amazing regularity. Like clockwork. Now if I want to take a break I’ve got to work for it. It’s like I used to run for the county and now I’ve moved to the private sector.
I'm learning quickly about the things that ruin a good pace. The first time I stop to stretch my calves I watch in horror as TLB goes screaming by me and I’ve got to really dig in just to catch him.
I used to assume that Stopping came immediately after Walking in the hierarchy called: Actions Which Are Slower Than Running. It seems obvious now, but I hadn’t realized that the difference between ten minutes and fourteen minutes was miniscule in comparison to the difference between fourteen minutes and not moving at all. Skipping, Staggering, and Somersaulting all come well before Not Moving At All, the list is not alphabetical. In fact, all of these actions are infinitely faster than stopping. Now I find myself speeding up at the end of each walk break in an attempt to fend off my attacker for a few more precious seconds.
I make it inside the Woodlawn Cemetery for the first time, but I’m still being chased and it’s hard for me to concentrate on the graves of Tampa’s second-generation pioneers. Italian, Cuban, and Jewish names mark the headstones alongside the carnival workers of Showmen’s Rest, and the monuments to Union and Confederate soldiers. Woodlawn is newer and more carefully maintained than downtown’s Oaklawn Cemetery, and its history may not run as deep, but it is a good demonstration of the diverse population that was responsible for Tampa’s unique cultural heritage.
A few weekends ago we took a Sunday afternoon trip to Oaklawn Cemetery to pick our way through the low hanging branches of live oaks, looking for the headstones of some of Tampa’s earliest inhabitants. This is not a place to run but to stroll slowly, head down, trying to take it all in. Many of the graves here appear to have been vandalized over the years, and some of the headstones are so weathered that it would take a careful rubbing to decipher their inscriptions. Others speak so clearly they give you chills. The stones range from the slick polished marble of the McKay family, to the cast concrete markers bearing the names of Cuban and Italian immigrants.
Here is the Coller family plot; the first civilian settlers to the area, Levi Coller ran the sutler’s store that supplied the troops at Fort Brooke.
After some searching we find the famous grave of William and Nancy Ashley. William Ashley was Tampa’s first City Clerk and the namesake of present-day Ashley Drive. He is buried here next to his former slave Nancy, with whom he lived in common-law marriage. “Here lies Wm Ashley and Nancy Ashley. Master and Servant. Faithful to each other in that relation in life, in death they are not separated. Stranger consider and be wiser. In the Grave all human distinction of race or caste mingle together in one common dust."
Although I like the tone and the sentiment of the inscription, it’s the matter-of-fact descriptions that I like the best. How can you beat an epitaph like “Mr. Hubbard, a Cuban pirate, found dead in woods June 18, 1850.” According to Julius “Jeff” Gordon’s genealogical study of Oaklawn, Hubbard was killed by a group of Indians who were hung from tree limbs before they could be brought to trial. Hubbard was buried in a “pirate’s casket” for the sum of seven dollars.
I had always said that I wanted to be cremated. This was before I knew about pirate caskets. Even with the conversion to modern-day dollars it’s still a bargain at $163.88. “Found dead in woods” has a nice ring to it, but I think I’m going to go with “Torn apart by wolves.”

Goddamn Mick Jagger

2006-01-07T11:00:00.000-05:00

Bayshore Loop 20.5mi

On weekend mornings as I drive home from the station, sometimes I feel like it’s just me and the street corner paper sellers. I’ve usually been up for a few hours already and I’ve had two or three cups of coffee. At least. Being a habitual late sleeper myself, on these days I feel like I’ve been given a glimpse into the secret world of weekend mornings. Today in the center of my driveway I see the telltale accordion fold photocopy that could only have come from an individual that I have come to know as The Evie Man.
I’ve been receiving dispatches from The Evie Man since we moved into Seminole Heights eight years ago. The first things that we received were hand written notes stuffed into our mailbox without envelopes or postage. As a young interracial couple in a new neighborhood, the often blatantly racist tone of the letters was especially disturbing to us, and without any evidence to the contrary we assumed that they were directed solely at us. I didn’t save any of these early letters because I didn’t see any connection for awhile, but eventually I began collecting the strange communiqués. Soon the letters began appearing in a standard format; a strange, obsessive accordion fold photocopy distributed throughout the neighborhood in a seemingly random fashion. After realizing that I was not the only one receiving the letters, whenever I found one in my yard or driveway I would set out to canvas the neighborhood in search of others. Sometimes they were all the same, but usually there were several different versions distributed at one time, or the same basic letter would have subtle changes made to it in the other versions that I found.
Eventually, what may have begun in the mind of the Evie Man as a simple neurosis and a bit of paranoia about the changing demographic of the neighborhood had slowly morphed into a full blown psychosis. “There’s a giant spider in my mind,” began one of his more ominous messages. These delusions finally gave way to the classic paranoid schizophrenic notion of persecution at the hands of Hollywood celebrities. The Evie Man felt especially oppressed by the Rolling Stones and a Norwegian gospel singer named Evie Tornquist.
One morning several years ago I found an unmarked cassette tape lying in my yard carefully packaged in Saran Wrap. I popped the cassette into my truck’s tape deck and immediately I knew where it had come from. “An eye doctor put drops in my eyes that blinded me, however, I went on a twenty-five day water fast and I can read the bible again…this is a song by Evie.” I sat transfixed and listened to the tape in its entirety. The depth of psychosis and the rhythmic repetition of delusions was dizzying. This man was the John Coltrane of paranoia. A few months later, when I had a copy of the tape burned to CD, I took Mike L. out to my van to listen to it after we’d had a few beers at New World. We sat in the parking lot listening to a twenty minute tirade about “Hollywood Queers” and The Evie Man’s twisted logic spiraled in on itself faster and faster until Mike opened his door and vomited on the asphalt (Listen To The Evie Man's Audio).
I have never seen The Evie Man. His deliveries always come in the middle of the night, and they are spaced far enough apart that I have usually forgotten to be on the lookout before the next one arrives. I had always assumed that he lived somewhere in the area until I mentioned him one evening during an appearance on WMNF. A listener called in to say that they had received dispatches from The Evie Man as far away as Valrico.
There must be some kind of a pattern here.
A comprehensive GIS study of The Evie Man’s movements could provide a valuable insight into the cartography of psychosis. The Evie Man exists somewhere in the nexus of points occupied by The Rolling Stones (Audio), Evie Tornquist (Audio), and an Australian surfer named George Greenough.
For the first five miles of today’s run I’m consumed with the details of the Evie Map. I find a few more of the papers as I run west on Fern Street, and I stuff them into the pocket of my Camelback. I’m keeping close tabs on my pace and forcing myself to slow down until I finally lock into an 11:30 pace. I know the mile markers for about the first ten miles and I’m able to stay right where I want to be. After running this pace for the next two hours I’m locked in the groove and I can tell where the mile markers are by looking at my watch. But I’m not there yet.
At mile six I round the corner onto Hillsborough and I notice something strange about the house to my right. The palm reader’s house has a gaping hole in its side as if someone has driven their car through it, providing me with a clear view of the kitchen and living room. I don’t see any tire tracks or other evidence of an accident, just this huge hole in the concrete block wall. I snap a few pictures with my camera phone and I am putting it away when I see a skull capped biker eyeing me suspiciously from around the corner of the house. He glares at me, glares at the hole in the house, and glares back at me again. I give him the perfunctory runner’s nod and quickly run across the street. From the median I hear someone yelling from behind me and I turn around to see another mustachioed ne’er-do-well standing on the sidewalk and screaming in my general direction. The confidence that I have in my ability to outrun most construction workers over long distances does me little good when I have anything less than a three mile head start. Plus, you never know, this guy could be pretty swift. That mullet does make him look like a horse. I decide to try my luck and the mullethead stays where he is, pawing the dirt at the edge of the street.
The next fourteen-and-a-half miles flow by with comparative ease. My strict attention to pace has paid off.
People must be making up for the time lost to the holidays as everyone seems to be working today. The UT campus is bustling with construction workers, the bleachers are being set up along Bayshore for the Gasparilla parade, and downtown is gridlocked with minivans full of circus goers.
Gradually the crowds thin out and it’s just me again, putting things in perspective and ticking off the miles twelve minutes at a time. “It’s sort of like being on a mountain and looking down at a farm, and then you see what others don’t see, a giant spider.”

More From The Evie Man

They Are?

2006-01-05T17:00:00.000-05:00

Epps/Lowry 4m1

I’m not a total Luddite. I’m more of a technological skeptic…the kind that loves gadgets. While I enjoy solving the problems of design and manufacture in a variety of different materials, computers with their hidden architectures and perpetual incompatibility issues can send me into fits of blind rage. While I may be in the mood to pimp my house or my furniture, I want my computer to behave like a Honda Civic right off of the assembly line. I want to turn it on and have it take me from point A to point B. I’ve been switching things over to a new system for the last couple of weeks, and I’m starting to think that changing residences would be easier. If I had a wooden shoe I would throw it deep into the gears of this machine.
Not being the type who enjoys tinkering with buggy software and devices of questionable usefulness, I generally wait until it is impossible to hold out any longer, whereupon I become immersed in the technology and immediately start extolling its virtues to the true technophobes that I know. This has cemented my position amongst the truly tech savvy as a hopeless neophyte, however people who haven't yet figured out how to open their department mandated email accounts have decided that I'm some sort of systems administrator.
Recently, thanks to Dan D, I acquired a powerful suite of GIS software that I will be using to produce maps for this project. Dan showed me a few things about the software, and we were able to quickly produce a dangerous dog map of Tampa by accessing the county’s GIS server. It turns out that the frequency of my encounters with presumably dangerous dogs has a lot to do with the fact that I run through all of the worst areas in town. I will be posting some of these maps as soon as I work out a few of the kinks.
I also ordered myself an MP3 player and a Garmin Forerunner 201. The Forerunner GPS unit should, among other things, allow me to upload my routes directly to Mapcard instead of having to input them manually as I have been doing. The MP3 player doesn’t figure into my Running Through Tampa plan very much because I refuse wear headphones while running on the street, however there is a tangential benefit in that I will be listening to instructional podcasts while I’m on the elliptical trainer in an effort to improve my Spanish.
For the time being though, my running is still technology free. I’m following Monday’s route in reverse for a slight change of scenery. As I pass the first mile marker on Ola just north of Broad, I hear what sounds like a swarm of bees coming from up ahead. Rounding the bend I see five or six full grown men standing in the road, radio controllers in hand, as a swarm of gas-powered toy trucks buzzes up and down the street, through lawns, and over makeshift plywood ramps where they tumble through the air and land on everything but their wheels. There is a woman doing a sort of Wimbledon-ball-boy routine, running back and forth turning the trucks back onto their still spinning wheels while another man in a wheelchair sits watching gleefully from the sidelines. Everyone is laughing at me as I try to pick my way through the melee, the trucks playfully strafing me from all sides, and I think about stopping to take some pictures but I’m running an 8:30 pace and I think I can push it through to the end.
This area has a long-standing appreciation for juvenile behavior, from these guys and their trucks to the Hampton Terrace go-kart racers as well as my own ill-fated moped gang and the Seminole Heights Marching Band.
In the early nineties, Andrew and I were the only people amongst our friends who drove SUVs. I had an old Isuzu Trooper full of garbage and Andrew had a Dodge Ram Charger with a nine-millimeter in the console. One of our favorite weekend pastimes was to load up our trucks with revelers from the constant party at the Baldwin house on Hiawatha, taking them on high-speed night tours of the alleys of Seminole Heights. Years later, when we both lived in the neighborhood, he and I would retrace these routes on our Sunday afternoon moped tours of the area.
Riding a moped is a lot like being a fireman. The children are really impressed. Almost everyone else thinks you’re an idiot. Almost.
One Sunday afternoon, as Andrew and I pull the bikes onto Broad Street from the Alpine Liquor parking lot an aging, bemulleted rocker stops his muscle car to lean out the window, throw us a goat, and yell “those things are TITS!”

A Popemobile Would Be Nice

2006-01-03T18:00:00.000-05:00

Epps/Lowry 4mi

Fearing that my resolution may already be slipping away, I step out into the fading light armed with my headlamp and a few other “essentials”. Until recently I had done all of my shorter runs without carrying anything. No water, keys, or money. Not even an ID.
I’ve always held that I’m in very little danger on my runs because everyone knows that runners don’t carry anything with them. When I reached the point where I started needing water on my long runs I started taking my Camelback. This allowed me to bring a few other things along (cell phone, house key, ID). As the runs got longer I started to need sustenance and I added gel packs, Clif bars, and a few bucks for Gatorade along the way. Sometimes I even threw in a credit card just in case. If I bonked downtown I could just get a room.
What had started out as a kangaroo’s pocket was slowly calcifying into a turtle’s shell. My rig was making me slower, thus more vulnerable, and now I needed protection. Lacking the funds for a Derringer and an ankle holster, I opt for the only slightly wimpier can of pepper spray. If anyone makes fun of me I’ll mace them.
Originally I only carried this setup on my long runs. I still did my short neighborhood routes without support, but the more close encounters I had with dogs and other non-human assailants, the more I thought I’d really feel like an idiot for leaving the pepper spray at home when something did happen. I couldn’t just carry it in my hand though. I needed some place to put it. On went the hip pack. Since I’m wearing it I might as well throw a few things in it. Cell phone. Keys. ID. It wouldn’t hurt to take some water. Maybe I should just drive.

Resolutions, Revelations, and Resuscitations

2006-01-01T11:00:00.000-05:00

Rogers Sulphur 9.8mi

Here we go again. The month of December was pretty much a wash. I didn’t write, I didn’t map, and, most importantly, I didn’t run…much.
There were a few notable exceptions. I ran a nineteen-mile route along the northern section of the river from my house to Temple Terrace. I was woefully under prepared for this distance, and the last few miles almost killed me. I had my first brush with lactic acid buildup around mile sixteen. At first it came only every five or ten minutes, but it felt like an electric eel slithering from my knee to my ankle along my left calf. Gradually the frequency increased, and by mile eighteen I could only run for a minute or so before it would start and I would have to walk for two or three minutes. This was not the kind of pain that can be pushed through. When it started, I stopped. There was no other option. Did I mention that it was raining? Yeah, that too.
The nineteen-miler aside, the only things I did to excess were eat, drink, and smoke cigars. I think I was subconsciously following the training program developed in my last post. It was going to take a New Year’s resolution to get me back on track.
As much as I hate to admit it, I’m a fairly superstitious person, and I secretly believe in the power of New Year’s resolutions. While none of mine have ever been wholly successful I have, at one time or another, lost weight, quit smoking, and started exercising among other things. While the long-term efficacy of all of these may be debatable, something is always better than nothing.
Exercising on New Year’s Day makes me a little self conscious. New Year’s Day is to running what New Year’s Eve is to drinking. Amateur day.
A few years ago on New Year’s Day I worked a cardiac arrest on a very large man who had decided that he was going to take up running as his New Year’s resolution. In the chaos of the back of the ambulance I hadn’t realized that the patient’s wife was riding up front with my partner. I asked him to call the report in to the hospital (our hands being full with CPR, intubation, and drug administration). He hollered back to me that the hospital wanted to know what cardiac rhythm the patient was in, and everyone in the back yelled “asystole” in unison. It was then that I heard her sobbing. “I told him this exercise program was going to kill him,” she said to my partner.
I had planned to run a 5k this morning to help with my pace prediction for race day, but I decided that at this point I needed distance more than speed, and I set out for an unmapped ten-miler. The first few miles were fairly smooth, and somewhere around mile four I had a little epiphany. All of my worries about not writing and letting down whatever miniscule audience I might have were ridiculous. I had already accomplished what I had set out to do on this project. I didn’t need a map. I could decide how far or for how long I wanted to run, and I could be home within minutes of my desired time. I had done it many times now. These neighborhoods were totally foreign to me just a few months ago, and now I knew their eccentricities; their shortcuts and dead-ends, and even a few of the characters along the way.
I made a loop of the golf course among the sparse holiday golfers and headed back through Sulphur Springs where the remnants of last night’s fireworks echoed through the empty streets.

Mandelbaum's Apothecary

2005-12-15T18:30:00.000-05:00

West Bank 3.6mi

I’m a minimalist at heart. Unfortunately I’m also a lazy slob. The minimalism of running appeals to my purist aesthetic, and its immediacy meshes well with my penchant for procrastination. A run can be squeezed in at almost any time of the day without any planning, and with very little preparation.
Tonight I step out into the twilight again to run the West Bank route before dinner. I’m thinking about running as a low-tech undertaking which harkens back, in some ways, to another concept of fitness. Charles Atlas and the strongmen of yesteryear were positively fat by today’s standards, but they could teach you how to deal with those bullies when they kicked sand in your face at the beach. The pursuit of six-pack abs and single digit body fat was thought of as a ridiculous and somewhat effete pursuit engaged in by a few isolated weirdos. Getting “cut” was something that you defended yourself against.
I have a vision of a gym designed by Mister Jalopy; where the smell of sweat is mixed with leather and cigar smoke, where everyone wears Chuck Taylors, wife-beaters, and shorts pulled up past their bellybuttons.

"He may pork her Russ, just keep eating"

2005-11-29T08:30:00.000-05:00

Rogers Hanna 10.5mi

I have said before that many of modern man’s problems stem from the fact that he no longer lives in fear of being eaten by wild animals. In his book “Why We Run”, Berndt Heinrich proposes that man the hunter is a natural distance runner who, over the ages, has used his propensity for endurance to run down the swiftest of prey. This may be the case, but interestingly enough, running is now one of the few modern-day activities that turns the tables and places man back in the position of prey. Well, me anyways.
Today’s middle-distance long run starts with a straight shot to the east, down the sidewalks of Hanna Avenue into the rising sun. Last night’s sushi is making its presence known, and about three miles in I jog into the convenient store for some antacid tablets. I have to ask the clerk for assistance because the one-dollar rolls of Tums are closely guarded behind the counter. He apologizes for the inconvenience with a conspiratorial “you know the neighborhood”. Apparently, antacid theft has reached epic proportions here, yet the beer coolers are still open to the public. The message is clear: take all the poison you want, we’ve got the antidote right here.
From here I run north to River Grove and begin following the river back to the east. I’m enjoying the cool weather, the sun, and the slight elevation changes when I see the first dog. A large, mangy chow (it’s always a chow) runs into the street from a hidden driveway and chases me for the better part of a block. I don’t even look back at it, I simply cross to the other side of the street where I’ve spotted a metal garbage can that I figure I can use as a weapon if necessary. Eventually the dog falls away and I run on, a little disappointed that I didn’t get to clobber it with a trashcan.
Finally on Ola just south of Broad, I’m almost home when I hear a dog’s low growl from behind a parked car to my left. The animal comes into view, a medium sized pit bull/boxer mix, and I slow to a walk while moving to the other side of the street. In the front yard of the house ahead of me I spot its partner, a much larger male of similar breeding. There is a man standing in the doorway of the house and I ask him to call his dogs in the calmest voice I can muster. No response. “Sir, can you please call your dogs,” and he gives a half-assed whistle to which the animals simply cock their heads momentarily before returning their growling, teeth-baring attentions to me. “Don’t worry, they won’t bite you,” he says, obviously annoyed.
This is possibly the stupidest thing that anyone could say about his or her animals. “They won’t bite” is right up there with “Hey y’all watch this” for famous redneck last words. If you ever find yourself saying this to someone, realize that your animals have already invaded their space. I am constantly telling visitors that my dog will bite them. This is not just precautionary, he has and will, but this is his home. I would never let him out in the street and expect a stranger to show the slightest deference to his Napoleonic tendencies. My dog bites. Your dog bites. And if your dog only bites one person in its life, it will be me. You may say that it’s because they smell my fear, but I believe it is my unbridled hatred for their owners that causes them to perceive me as a threat.
“Well, they’re still growling at me.”
“Only the little one,” he says.
The “little one”, so-named only in contrast to “THE BIG ONE”, still has me locked in his bloodthirsty gaze. So, with less than a mile to go, I turn around and backtrack to Broad Street where I can detour around this idiocy.
I’ve had enough of the primal roles of hunter and hunted for today, but on that final mile, it’s the National Lampoon logic that really has me incensed.
“Your dog is going to bite me”
“He’s not going to bite you”
“I still think he’s going to bite me”
“He’s only going to bite you a little”

From Above

2005-11-27T17:00:00.000-05:00

Epps Lowry 4mi

This is the run that brings me up to date. A familiar route run at the last minute on a day filled with sloth. When I get too far behind in my writing sometimes I feel like I can’t even live in the present until I get clear of the past. The weight of runs unwritten and posts unposted keeps me from writing and even running so that I don’t make the backlog even deeper.
Chris and I used to have a plan to become famous artists, uncorrupted by the money and power that we would inevitably have access to. We didn’t spend much time making art or even talking about how to become famous. That was a given.
The plan began at the point where we were both world-renowned painters (we were both artists but neither of us could paint to save our lives). Our works would be sought after by galleries and collectors, but we would simply refuse to sell them, preferring to throw them out the window of our Ybor City studio. Naturally, as word of this got out, crowds of people would gather on the street below our window, waiting for us to bless them with our genius. To thwart this kind of activity, we would begin stockpiling our work, waiting for months until one rainy night a lone homeless man would stagger off of the deserted street to slump against the building, and we would throw out hundreds of paintings at once.
These past few weeks I haven’t exactly been slaving away in the studio and you, dear reader, haven’t exactly been standing in the street. Nevertheless, I’m throwing all of these entries out at once. Use them to cover your head. It’s raining out there.

Drumsticks

2005-11-24T09:30:00.000-05:00

Platt Loop II 17mi

I’ve finally made my way back to the seventeen-mile long run that I missed several weeks ago. This week I pushed it to Thursday because of other obligations, and Thanksgiving Day seemed like the perfect time to burn off a few thousand calories. I usually spend the day cooking and, despite my gluttonous desires, when it comes time to eat, I can never really pack it in the way I would like. Today will be different.
Today we are going to a friend’s house to eat and we have only been tasked with one of the turkeys and a few sides. The turkey has been marinating in mojo for a few days, and I have talked Jan into tending to it while I run. After some last minute shopping, the bird is in the oven and I’m out the door.
I haven’t taken the time to map out a new route, so I follow the Platt Loop with a couple of changes to accommodate the increased mileage. The first mile passes easily, and I am surprised by how loose I feel. My stride is relaxed and I’m not struggling. This is usually the point where I start trying to increase the pace, but today I’m right where I need to be and I’m happy to be there. The first two miles come in right around twenty minutes and I wonder if I should hold back a little, but I’m still feeling good and I’m pretty sure that I can maintain.
I have always been fascinated with rhythm, and I think this is one of the things that attracts me to running. Somewhere inside this rhythm is where runner’s high is experienced. It’s like highway hypnosis at slower speeds. This running trance is what I crave, where my thoughts are limited to snippets of old songs, and my breaths, heartbeats, and footsteps are all multiples of each other. The feeling is hard to attain on shorter runs. It seems to take me about forty-five minutes just to get through the myriad distractions of muscle cramps, achy joints, to-do lists, and blog topics.
The Zen of running is the same as any other activity. It works best when it is completely ignored. Thinking destroys it. Concentrating on form leads to bad form.
I find it hard to understand people who say that running bores them. Boredom is the product of an active mind with a lack of adequate stimulus. When I run, the stimuli never seem to be lacking. Yet, if I’m lucky, I can block it all out and my mind will be still. I don’t think about anything at all. One. Two. Three.
My observations and writings are made after the fact. I repeat the run and follow along from above, picking out landmarks here and there, and recalling vignettes that have left an almost subliminal imprint on my memory of the day’s run.
So I can say this. I ran for three hours today and I don’t remember much about it. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. A breeze was blowing. Everything was closed for Thanksgiving. I paid four dollars for a bottle of water at the Ramada downtown.
What I remember most is a rhythm. At Blake High School I follow the sidewalk south along the seawall, across the river from Tampa Armature Works. When the wind changes direction, suddenly I can hear a burglar alarm blaring from across the river and I realize that my footfalls are in perfect time with its incessant yelp. The wind changes again and it’s just my footsteps, breathing, and the blood in my ears.
An hour later I’m running north on the river’s eastern bank with the high school across the river to my left, and I hear the alarm again. My feet are still falling in time and I’m pleased to be maintaining my pace after two hours of running. It grows louder as I cut through the park where homeless men lounge in the grass, apparently oblivious to the noise. Slowly, the sound fades as the building passes to my left, but the siren continues to broadcast my cadence to the river as I move silently towards home.

A Zed And Two Noughts

2005-11-22T22:30:00.000-05:00

Rome Lowry 3.9mi

Through a combination of work, side-work, procrastination, and laziness, I’ve been getting out the door a little bit later every night. Tonight I didn’t step outside until almost 10:30. I’m tired of missing runs. Tired of not writing. Tired of working too much.
I’m working again in the morning and I should probably be sleeping right now, but this won’t take long. I could run the first part of the route with my eyes closed. I know it by feel. South on Highland past the Korean church, the cigar smoking man, the roof dogs, and then west to the park. South again behind the scratch-and-dent grocery where everything is “On Stale”, and west across the drawbridge, the metal deck sending echoes of each footstep down the river. At the palm reader’s house, grab the guardrail to make the switchback onto the sidewalk without breaking stride, and check the time at the oak tree in the middle of the road. Mile one.
Follow the river north along the sidewalk or, at this time of night, down the middle of the road. Push up the hill towards Rome Avenue, rising out of the river’s bottom. Cross Rome and follow the sidewalk north past the Church of Metaphysical Science, the Polish American Club, and the German American Club.
Here the route becomes less familiar to my pedestrian eyes. At Sligh Avenue, turn back to the east and run along the fence of the horse corral at the Lowry Park Zoo, looking for glimpses of the animals in the darkness. Soon I’m back on well-traveled ground, across the bridge and south on River Shore where I make the final push towards home, hoping to be there before midnight.

Spelunking...It's Not Just A Euphemism Anymore

2005-11-17T18:00:00.000-05:00

Central MLK 4.9mi

Daylight Savings Time is a sham. I don’t care one way or the other but, for chrissakes, let’s decide on one way and leave it at that. It’s not like we’re adding hours to the day. We’re just giving more up front and taking it off the back end. It’s like a Bush tax refund.
What this all means is that I’m going to spend a lot more time running in the dark. That’s fine, but with my penchant for procrastination, now I have one more reason to cancel a day’s run. Tonight I fought the urge and strapped on my headlamp for some neighborhood spelunking.
The evening commute is still going full steam, and I try to stick to the areas with sidewalks and streetlights. The oak-lined streets of Seminole Heights provide new challenges at night. The thick canopy of trees provides a welcomed respite from the midday sun, but in the dark it blocks out the streetlights in the places where they are needed the most. Over the years, the tree’s extensive root systems have pushed up on the sidewalks, heaving them into jagged concrete moraines, perfect for stubbing toes and twisting ankles.
Tonight I stay to the sidewalks though, unwilling to battle the traffic in the dark, and despite the obstacles I feel like I’m really moving. At MLK I turn to the east and push against the river of headlights until I reach Central Avenue. I realize that I have never run on the eastern side of Central, so I cross the street and follow the sidewalk as it meanders up and down to connect with each cross street.
Sometimes it takes a few miles before I can get up any speed. The halfway point is usually a good point to gauge how much gas is in the tank. Today I ease up for the mile or so past the halfway point, then slowly I start to ratchet up the pace. By the last mile I’m running about an eight minute pace, hoping that I’m picking my feet up enough to avoid the broken sidewalks because now I can’t see anything at all. I have to remind myself to stop and check for traffic as I cross Florida Avenue and sprint the last tenth of a mile to the house.

I ran three miles today... finally I said, "lady, take your purse."

2005-11-15T18:00:00.000-05:00

River Central 4.7mi

Okay. After a few undocumented runs, and a full week’s running and writing hiatus, I am back at it. For now. Maybe I needed the break. Probably not, but I’ll tell myself that it was necessary.
I was having some physical problems. On my last few runs I was plagued by a tightness in my right shin that would not go away. I did an eight-mile run through Rogers Park Golf Course where I was unable to shake it off. Eventually my toes went numb and my foot started to swell. I took a few days off to recover and, the next thing I knew, a week had gone by and I hadn’t run at all.
Today I force myself out the door in the last of the evening light to run an unknown route for a yet-to-be-determined distance. Following Ola south across the river, I feel smooth and relaxed at a 10:00 minute/mile pace.
Perhaps due to my lowland upbringing, I feel especially susceptible to gravity. Isaac Newton has always had a strong hold on me. When I am in motion I tend to stay in motion, but if I am at rest I tend to stay at rest. When I am backpacking I like to think of myself as a marble, perpetually seeking the lowest of elevations. I struggle to the top of each rise only to race down the other side.
Today it is my mental inertia that must be overcome. Despite what I may tell myself, I am very comfortable with stasis. My body thrives on change, but my brain prefers a routine. The less taxing the better. Like Emo Phillips said, “I used to think the brain was the most wonderful organ in the body, then I realized who was telling me this.”

We Bite

2005-10-30T13:00:00.000-05:00

West Epps 6.3mi

For the first time ever, my speed session didn’t wreck my legs, so I decide to run a little further than usual. We’re going to a Halloween/birthday party this afternoon, and I figure I’ll prepare myself for any excesses of food and drink by having a few extra miles in the bank.
I start out following the same West Bank route, thinking that the early assessment of my legs may have been premature. Everything is tight, but I move along slowly, confidant that things will loosen up eventually. When I make it back to Sligh Avenue, I’m still not feeling great, and I briefly consider bailing out for the 3.6-mile route before crossing to the north. If things don’t get any better I’ll turn around.
The Sunday picnic crowd is out, and there seems to be an inordinate number of cars driving on the running paths. Everyone has pulled their SUV up to their own pavilion, and they sit with the rear hatches open, listening to their radios. The park vibrates with a cacophonous mix of heavy metal and meringue.
As I round the bend onto River Shore Drive, I’m struck by the view across the river. The yellow Spanish-style speakeasy house and the water tower behind it are both illuminated by the afternoon sun at my back, and their glowing reflections bounce off the black water of the river.
I follow the loop around, across the Florida Avenue Bridge, and back into the neighborhood where I dodge the smeared-out remains of the paw paw fruit that has fallen into the road. At Highland and Hiawatha, the Wahl house has been stripped to its concrete block skeleton.
Halloween decorations are out in full force, and Denis Wood’s theory seems to be holding up. It’s always the nicest houses in the neighborhood that have the most elaborate decorations. The fake-tombstone-with-witty-epitaph is a common theme, and I think about ways to update this idea by using the names of recently deceased political figures and other celebrities along with pithy remarks about the circumstances surrounding their untimely deaths.
On our block we may not be the most upwardly mobile occupants around, but our Halloween decorations are top-notch. The paint is peeling. There are vines growing up the west wall, and stray black cats roam the property peeing on everything in their path.

Blowing Chunks

2005-10-28T17:00:00.000-04:00

West Bank 3.6mi

When I was a teenager, my friend Eric’s stepfather, Hank, had a red and white 1968 Pontiac Bonneville convertible. He kept the car parked neatly between the solid yellow lines he had painted on the driveway of their family’s mobile home compound, midway between my house and the MGTP (Mighty Good Trailer Park). The large suburban lot was covered in a constantly mutating collection of mobile homes, hastily cobbled together to resemble a miniature Tampa Airport wrought in aluminum, vinyl, and indoor-outdoor carpet. In the main trailer’s living room, a wall-sized photographic mural depicted California cliffs dropping off into the Pacific. Hank brought the whole scene to life by mounting small plastic seagulls on metal rods embedded in the wall. The larger birds were mounted on longer rods, creating a foreshortening effect that turned the room into a huge diorama. Across the top of the scene, eight plastic reindeer pulled Santa in a tiny sleigh. The scale was all wrong. Even the smallest of the seagulls was bigger than the reindeer.
Hank was a man of many talents whose business cards referred to him as the “Doctor Reverend Bishop Henry”. If he actually held any of these distinctions they were certainly all of the mail-order variety, but he did have a knack for the theatrics of the church. One evening, at what was supposed to be a get-to-know-you meeting of neighborhood parents and their kids, Hank kicked things off by administering a Eucharist of Wonder Bread and Thunderbird wine, insisting that everyone prick their finger on a rose’s thorn to feel some of the pain that Jesus felt on the cross. There must have been a hurricane bearing down on us at the time, and I remember the black clouds swirling around over us as we sat in folding chairs under the aluminum awning of the carport, listening to Hank’s race baiting speech from the pulpit. Following the sermon was a short set from the metal band that I played in with Eric.
Eric’s house always had a sort of supernatural trailer park feel to it. In his bedroom there was a stereo with an automotive-style tape deck in which the cassettes were inserted through a slot in the face of the machine. During one particularly good Megadeth rock-out session, as we listened to Dave Mustaine growl “Christ burns me with his eyes, but I’m still alive, welcome to the lungs of Hell”, the tape suddenly ejected itself with such force that it flew across the room and flames shot out of face of the machine. This was the devil’s music for sure, and we loved every minute of it.
I remember Hank telling me that older cars needed to have the carbon deposits burned out of them periodically. I’m still not sure if there was any truth to this, but it provided a good excuse to get out on the interstate and drive at warp speed. He explained this theory to me one night as we roared down I-275. I was sitting in the backseat behind Eric, and Hank turned around to face me, steering lazily with his left thumb, to scream above the wind and the engine about carburetor shellac, ignition points, and compression ratios, as the speedometer buried itself on the right side of the gauge.
This week’s long run was considerably easier on me than the previous two, and by Friday I’m feeling well rested and ready to run. I decide to run the West Bank route at a nice brisk pace to clean some of the sludge out of my own system.
I don’t know if I’m moving fast enough to burn out any of the deposits left from my years of sloth and excess, but I can feel the momentum behind me, and the first mile comes in at just over eight minutes. I can tell that I’m stronger since the last time that I ran this route, and I’m able to maintain my pace until the third mile, when it starts to lag a bit. I finish feeling strong at 30:15, a two-minute gain over my previous best for this route.

Peace, Love, And Understanding

2005-10-25T12:00:00.000-04:00

Platt Loop 16.3mi

“I don’t like hippies, and I don’t like cornbread, and I don’t like much.” -- Lyle Lovett

I don’t like hippies because they ruined my concept of the American Indian. In the children’s game of Cowboys and Indians, I always wanted to be an Indian like everybody else. Later, in high school, I grew my hair down my back, pierced my nose, and even wore turquoise earrings on occasion. My reverence for hippie subculture was a kind of hero worship that came from a mix of my parent’s nostalgia for their “hippie days”, and my early love for the music of that era. By the time I had met some practicing hippies in college, the mystique had worn off. I never could get into the body odor thing, and everyone seemed to have some unseen means of support that I could never figure out and didn’t have access to. And there were so many rules. I do love cornbread though.
The hippies’ identification with the American Indian sprang from their own idealized and stereotypical notion of what Indians represented, a characterization most likely formed from watching John Wayne movies as children. John Wayne was my grandfather’s hero, and what better way for my father to rebel than to cheer for his enemy, the noble savage, but the hippie concept of the American Indian was as twisted as John Wayne’s.
In college, as a new reporter for the school paper, I got my first byline for an interview with Russell Means, the former leader of the American Indian Movement. Means was in town to protest the arrival of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, replicas of the famous fleet made to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage. He towered over me, a giant of a man, thick black braids on each shoulder, as he railed against Columbus, the media, and Hollywood’s portrayal of Indians in recent movies like Dances With Wolves. Later on, Means apparently changed his mind when he appeared in The Last of the Mohicans and provided the voice of Chief Powhatan in Disney’s Pocahontas, a movie that he referred to as “the finest movie ever done about Indian people in Hollywood”.
Gloria Jahoda’s River of the Golden Ibis has renewed my interest in the figure of the Indian in American history. The Indians that Jahoda describes are not only at one with the land, they are intelligent, articulate, complex, deceitful, and vengeful. They are human.
Today I run south along the west bank of the Hillsborough, known to the Seminoles as the Lockcha-popka-chiska, and earlier to the Timucua as the Mocoso. The Timucua town of Mocoso sat on this side of the river near what is now the University of Tampa. My plan is to cross the river at the Platt Street Bridge before it empties into Hillsborough Bay. I’m trying to follow the river as closely as I can, but I keep getting pushed to the west by the security gates of apartment complexes, and the dead end streets of riverfront homes. I follow Rome Avenue to the south, past Tampa Catholic High School and its waterfront stadium, home of The Crusaders, a team destined to strike fear in the hearts of others like the Chamberlain Chiefs, but not immune to the terrors of King High School’s Lions.
Continuing today’s theme of empire and subjugation, I cross Columbus Avenue and pass the riverfront housing projects with their tall iron fence along the water. I guess these people aren’t paying enough rent to be allowed to enjoy their prime location. I had hoped to find a shortcut from Rick’s On The River through the baseball fields to the south, but all I can see is barbed wire and thick underbrush. I take advantage of the detour to use the facilities at Rick’s before skirting the ball fields to the west. On Spruce Street, I find a way through the elementary school to the track along the river, and I locate the path that connects the fields with Blake High School on the other side of North Boulevard. This is not the best of neighborhoods, and my aunt, a guidance counselor at Blake, has said that students have been mugged along this path on their way to Phys Ed. I’m about an hour and a half into this run, and I think if someone steals my Gatorade money I’m going to cry.
I follow the path under the North Boulevard Bridge and along the river until I have to squeeze through a hole in a fence to follow the path under I-275. My efforts are thwarted again at Tampa Prep, when a security guard in a golf cart refuses to let me run through the campus. I head west and take North Boulevard to the University of Tampa campus, past the former Tampa Bay Hotel , and south to the Publix at Platt Street, where I jog up to the register with my precious bottle of Gatorade.
From here I take the Platt Street Bridge across the river towards the convention center on the Hillsborough’s eastern bank. This is the site where Fort Brooke was established in 1824. It was here that I stood in 1992, microphone in hand, embarrassed by my long straight hair, as Russell Means spoke against Hollywood, political correctness, and “hang-around-the-fort” Indians. And it was here that Indian agent Wiley Thompson, under the presidency of Andrew Jackson, proposed the Seminoles be gathered for their forced emigration to Oklahoma.
Thompson did not live to see his plans realized. On December 28th, 1835, he was shot fourteen times by the Seminole chief Osceola, in an event that would lead to the Second Seminole War. The rifle that Osceola used had been a gift from Thompson.
Osceola was a hang-around-the-fort Indian, spending time at both Fort Brooke and Ocala’s Fort King, and he used his time there to study the tactics of the United States soldiers. His knowledge of their methods helped him to lead a struggle that lasted seven years and cost thousands of lives.
I head north along the river’s eastern bank, through the beleaguered Dan Kiley Riverfront Park, where the only people living off the land are the homeless men bundled up against the cool weather. At the Performing Arts Center I’m enveloped by a group of high school age runners, and I fall in with the pack, proud to be keeping up at eleven miles into my run. For the remainder of the route I stick to the river road, getting the occasional glimpse across the water to where I came from hours ago. It seems like years.

Slideshows

2005-10-23T06:00:00.000-04:00

Westchase 3.5mi

I couldn’t decide whether to run or crosstrain to get back on schedule, but I had to work and the gym is closed on Sunday mornings, so I opted to run. I set out at a nice easy pace from the station onto Linebaugh and into Westchase. I never run in Westchase, and in some ways this area doesn’t even exist in my mental map of Tampa. During the years that I spent exploring the outskirts of this city after I got my first car, this entire community did not exist. This was one of my favorite places to go on a Sunday afternoon when I could go to Ella Hardy’s camera shop at the Oldsmar Flea Market, wander through abandoned dairies and ranches with my Rolleiflex medium-format camera, and drive my car along Racetrack Road in a manner befitting its name.
These days Westchase is a sprawling collection of subdivisions within subdivisions made up of randomly winding streets designed to break up the monotony of the three available home designs repeated ad infinitum. Imagine being able to look straight down a street of this kind of repetition. The curves help to break things into smaller pieces, and by the time you round the bend you’ve forgotten that this house looks exactly like that one.
I remember riding through here at Christmas time in the back of a rescue unit running emergency to a call. We were driving through one of the condo communities, and I was looking out the side window at the units illuminated by the rescue’s strobes. The light created a movie-like flicker effect as the same scene reappeared from the darkness time after time, projected on the screen of my small window. It was like watching a piece of stop-frame animation where the set remained exactly the same, right down to the Christmas tree sparkling by the sliding glass door. Only the actors changed as we passed. Here was a man laying on the couch, now a woman cooking dinner, an empty apartment, two children watching TV on the floor. Each scene strobed past so quickly it was almost subliminal. The only way to take it all in was just to watch without thinking.
I have witnessed this effect before while watching graffiti through the subway window in New York. On the Manhattan bound B train from Brooklyn, there was a place where an abandoned tunnel ran parallel to the B’s tracks, the two tunnels being separated by a series of archways. For some reason the empty tunnel was brightly lit, and some intrepid graffiti artist had taken advantage of the flicker created by the archways separating the tunnels when viewed from the passing train. Repeated on the far wall of the tunnel, framed by each archway, was an image of a rocket ship that shifted a little more to the left in each scene until it passed out of the frame, creating the effect that it took off each time the train passed. This snippet of animation lasted only one or two seconds, and I can remember it clearly many years later.
I drive through these streets nearly every working day, but the memory of that Christmas montage is one of the few that sticks out in my mind. My mental map of the area is rudimentary at best, and I just can’t seem to populate the woods and pastures of my youth with these lanes and cul-de-sacs.
Today I follow Linebaugh to Montague and run south through West Park Village and down its fake little Main Street (this development is too new to appear in the mapcard aerials, but it does show up on GoogleMaps). Starbucks is open already, and a few people stroll around in the predawn quiet, clutching their Sunday morning lattes, past the shuttered boutiques advertising “only the best for your baby”. There seems to have been some kind of carnival here this weekend, and the nearby park is full of partially dismantled rides, games, and concession stands. I feel like I’m on a stage set. Somehow even the other people on the street don’t seem real to me. Who gets up at 6:00 on a Sunday morning to walk around in the dark drinking $5.00 coffee? Maybe they’re extras hired by the neighborhood association.

Tastes Like Burning

2005-10-21T15:00:00.000-04:00

Sulophur Springs of Darkness 8mi

This week’s long run came a little late because of last Saturday’s race. The distance for the week is eight miles, and I’ve decided to repeat the Sulphur Springs of Darkness route because it is one of my favorites, and I am too lazy to map out a new run for this distance. I still haven’t been able to shake the soreness out of my legs from the trail run though, and I’m not sure how I’m going to feel after eight miles of mostly pavement.
I start out following the river to the north along its eastern bank, and the tightness in my calves begins to ease a little more with each mile.
On the path down to the troll bridge I catch a brief flash of color in my peripheral vision, and I look to see a familiar red-blossomed vine entwined in the chain-link fence to my left. I know next to nothing about Florida’s wildflowers, but I have a distinct memory of these particular flowers being introduced to me as a child. On what must have been a school field trip, someone pointed out the vine growing along a similar stretch of fence. The bud-like blossoms pulled easily away from their sepals, and they were full of a sweet nectar that attracted both children and ants. I remember standing there sucking on flowers, amazed that something so beautiful and sweet could be found growing along a stretch of rusty old fence.
About forty-five minutes in, I start to get my legs under me. This seems to be my standard pattern. Whatever the length of the day’s run, I start to feel good about halfway through. I’ve heard over and over about how much of running is a mental exercise, but I’m just starting to realize this for myself. My perception of each run is shaped largely by the approach that I’ve taken before I’ve even laced up my shoes.
As I turn back to the south, my stride has become more compact, efficient. I’m several minutes ahead of my pace from previous runs on this route. I round the corner from Mulberry onto River Cove, keeping pace with a Rasta on a bicycle pedaling along lazily and talking on a cell phone. Ahead I can see the flowering vine again, and I remember now where I was on that field trip twenty-five years ago. It was right here at what is now a small park along the river. My memory is partially obscured by the vines, but I can see a zoo with a bear in a cage and river otters playing in a concrete pond. I pull a blossom off of the vine, suck out the nectar, and run off towards home.

Cardiopulmonary Espionage

2005-10-19T16:00:00.000-04:00

Photo Run 4mi

I set out with my digital camera to document some of the areas mentioned in previous posts. I always feel a little strange taking pictures when I’m out running, like people will think I’m some kind of federal agent disguised as a friendly neighborhood jogger. My obvious lack of running prowess only serves to support this suspicion.
I stop along the way to shoot the hidden spring on North Street, the dismantled Wahl house, and the River Shore spring, along with some other neighborhood design gems. My legs are still stiff from my 15 mile run, and I don’t know why this run has taken so much out of me, but I don’t think that over training is the issue. I vow to be more diligent about my crosstraining sessions.

Would You Rather Rage Against The Machine Or The Dying Of The Light?

2005-10-18T18:00:00.000-04:00

Seminole Heights 4.5mi

I’m out for a quick run around the neighborhood before it gets too dark, and my legs feel like they belong to a lazy old man. My joints are creaky and my muscles are sore. I keep feeling like one leg is shorter than the other, but I can’t decide which one. It keeps switching. My shoes are too tight and my clothes feel like I have them on backwards. Eventually I loosen up a little and I meander through the streets of Old Seminole Heights enjoying the quiet and the old houses lit by the setting sun.

Wendy O. Williams, Where Are You Now?

2005-10-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

John Holmes 15mi

I rescheduled my normal Tuesday long run for Saturday so that I could run a 15-mile race on the Croom trails. The race was organized by the West Central Florida Adventure Racing Club (WeCeFAR) and was the “fun run” companion to the John Holmes 50K. The Croom Tract of the Withlacoochee State Forest is located to the east of Brooksville and is home to many miles of trails which wind through a landscape of pine forests, cypress hammocks, scrublands, and HILLS. After some initial difficulty locating the race, I’m standing at the start with about 60 other runners of various ages, builds, and ability levels. The atmosphere is much less hectic than most of the races I’ve run, and the general vibe seems less like a competition and more like a bluegrass festival. A few people jog up and down the dirt road to warm up before the start, but most people are talking with friends and just standing around. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone stretching. The race director gathers us at the starting line, which he has drawn in the sand with his heel. He briefly explains the course to us, and counts down to the start: “five, four, three, two, one” and yells “BANG!” I’m off like a startled turtle.
The first half-mile of the course follows Croom Road to the east before heading north on a fire road and linking up with the trail. The amoeba of runners slowly spreads out and begins to divide into four smaller groups: the winners, the optimists, the realists, and the simply happy to be there. I find my place somewhere at the pessimistic end of the realists, struggling to stay ahead of the gap that the happy to be there are pushing up behind me. As the faster runners break away from us, someone behind me yells, “It’s only a fifteen mile race. Get it out of your system now.” I think I’ve found my pace group.
When I stop for my first walk break I’m passed by a couple of runners, but I catch up to them slowly on each run, getting a little closer each time before stopping to walk again. This looks like a good comparison of running vs. run/walking. At the second aid station, around mile four, I overtake them and then, gradually, I overtake a few other runners who started out ahead of me. I’m being passed occasionally, but these runners are obviously doing the 50K and are already on their third or fourth lap of the seven-mile loop course.
The hills and loose sand are working my calves in new and interesting ways, but my pace feels consistent and my heart rate hasn’t gone through the roof yet. I wish that the aid stations were a little closer together (at my pace I’m reaching them about every thirty minutes), but they are well stocked with drinks and snacks, and I laugh to myself that I’ll just eat my way through this race like it’s the world’s longest buffet line.
Around the end of my first seven-mile lap, I experience my first fleeting moment of what might be called “runner’s high”. I’m running through a cypress hammock by a marshy pond full of wild daisies and butterflies on the first truly cool morning of the year. I’ve just filled myself with M&Ms and electrolyte drink at the last aid station, my pace still feels good, and I’m not tired. I think to myself, all I have to do is run. The route is laid out for me, the blazes are easy to follow, there is food and drink at each stop, and the weather is beautiful. Just run. I’m glad I’m alone because I have this stupid grin on my face. The kind of grin I used to get as a kid when someone played the banjo or said something that no one else thought was funny. The kind of grin that you try to suppress and you just can’t. A laugh in church.
Throughout the morning I’ve been hearing the typical race-day platitudes of “looking good” and “keep it up” from the volunteers at the aid stations, but a few other runners have said things that actually seemed sincere. Looking back at me approaching them on the trail, they said, “Wow, you’re looking really strong, I’d better step aside.” Quite a few of these runners were doing the 50K and they had every right to look the worse for it. Their race started two hours before mine, and they were still out there. Still, the encouragement is nice and as far as I know I haven’t been passed by anyone who started behind me after the initial half-mile shakedown.
Somewhere around the thirteenth mile, “all I have to do is run” has become “the one thing I know that I can no longer do...is run.” I try to push through it and I increase the frequency of my walk breaks, but still each three or four minutes of running seems to go on forever. I’ve fallen off my goal of a three-hour finish. Somehow I think my body has a way of preparing itself for the task ahead whether it’s three miles or fifteen miles. If I’ve decided that I’m going to run for three hours, when that time comes I just don’t have another fifteen minutes in me. This is definitely something to keep in mind when deciding on a marathon pace.
At the second to last aid station my disposition has taken a turn for the worse, and the volunteer handing out water looks at my shirt and says “Oh my God!” Earlier in the week I had done a little manscaping to my chest hair, thinking that a high-and-tight would be more comfortable in the heat than my old Tom Selleck sweater-vest. What I hadn’t realized was the level of nipple protection afforded by the deep loft of my chest hair. I look down for the first to time and realize that the front of my shirt is covered in blood from my chafed, sweaty nipples. The woman offers me some Vaseline, which I smear on by the fingerful as I limp off down the trail. Struggling through the last couple miles, I’m haunted by the image of that tub of Vaseline, wondering whose fingers have been in it today. Everyone who has touched it has slathered it onto a bloody, seeping rash. I’m just glad I’ve had my hepatitis vaccinations. At 3:14:10 I finally cross the finish line, amused and buoyed along by today's Deep Thought: when it comes to community Vaseline, I think there needs to be a strict prohibition on double dipping.

Updates

2005-10-13T12:00:00.000-04:00

I have been working on adding some new features to the site and they are finally ready to debut.
I have been playing around for awhile with different GoogleMaps mashups and I've finally found something that I'm relatively happy with. The mashup developed by Jared at CommunityWalk allows users to post markers, text, and multiple photos on their own GoogleMap, and it allows for various levels of depth through internal links and filters. The two maps that I have developed are in this site's sidebar under "Photomaps". The "Running Through Tampa" map is a companion site to this blog with photos and text excerpts tagged to their locations on the map. "Tampa Folksonomap" currently looks identical to the "Running Through Tampa" map because it only has my markers on it, but this map is open for other users to post their own text, photos, etc. This could be a powerful tool for us to develop a grassroots view of our community's history, culture, geography, etc. Follow the tutorials at CommunityWalk for directions on how to post to the map, and be sure to look at the other map communities for ideas and interesting information.
I have grown tired of deleting the comment spam from each new post, so I have turned on the word verification feature. Now you will have to prove that you are not a robot before you can comment.
Finally, in response to a conversation I had with Stefanie, I have added a "Reading List" to the sidebar for anyone who wishes to follow along.

The House Where Nobody Lives

2005-10-12T17:00:00.000-04:00

Epps/Lowry 4mi

10/10/2005

On Sunday I missed my run because I went straight from work to New Port Richey so that Mike and I could look over some video of the Furniture Challenge show at Chris’ house. Chris has been doing some marathon training of his own since we talked about this project on the night of the Furniture Challenge opening. We have been trying to get together to run without any luck until now.
On Monday morning, Chris meets me with his daughter Maya in tow. We head east along the Epps/Lowry route with Chris pushing Maya in her running stroller, and the three of us looking very much like an ad for the benefits of gay adoption. Chris is a former resident of the storied North Street Compound, and we talk about the history of these houses and their residents as well as the house across the street at the entrance to Epps Park. I had been told before that there is a spring beneath this house, and it is apparent from the constant flow of water from the yard into the storm drain along North Street.
Chris tells me that, allegedly, the spring had been a favorite swimming hole for neighborhood children, but after a child drowned there the city capped off the spring and filled in the hole. At some point later, a house was built on this spot and the owners only learned of the former spring when their foundation started to settle and the water began percolating up from beneath their house. The current owner of this property is almost universally reviled by everyone I have spoken to in this area, and he now seems to be engaged in some sort of squatter’s rights claim to Epps Park itself, as the fence around his house gradually expands to include more and more of the riverfront land.
As we run north along the river, Chris and I swap stories about the neighborhood and I get to point out some sights that I’ve mentioned in previous posts. In Lowry Park I spot The Squirrel Whistler coming towards us, and I dance in and out of the vermin lingering on the path as Chris steers the stroller from side to side.
My watch has died and we are just running by feel, taking walk breaks here and there, passing the small spring on River Shore Drive, and turning back to the south at the foot of the water tower. Crossing Sligh again at Highland, we run past Bert Wahl’s house at the corner of Highland and Hiawatha. I tell Chris about my memories of Wahl in the 80’s, showing up for parties at the Baldwin house on Hiawatha with spider monkeys and raccoons that he had rescued. If there was anyone in the neighborhood that was a nuisance in those days, surely it was us, not him. We always thought that his Wildlife Rescue operation was a selfless labor of love, but as time passed there were more and more allegations made about Wahl’s treatment of the animals, and about his right to keep them in the city limits. Wahl’s story, as I have come to know it, has all the intrigue and plot twists of either a great documentary or a terrible soap opera.
The first reference that I can find to Wahl’s long list of troubles comes from 1983 when he pled no contest to battery charges for locking an assistant in a panther cage. Normally the sole occupant of its enclosure, Wahl’s “Florida panther” was actually the descendant of generations of captive-born cats who had been interbred with other non-Floridian sub-species. This didn’t stop Wahl from presenting the cat as “full-bred” when he spoke to schools and civic groups about the need to protect the last of Florida’s panthers, a presentation that he gave regularly for a $200 fee. Wahl and his cat were frequently in the press as they shared the stage with political figures from Lawton Chiles to Prince Charles, and he was even credited as “animal wrangler” on the “wildlife unit” of the 1995 movie “Just Cause” starring Sean Connery, a division that also included the somewhat-less-prestigious classification of “fly wrangler”.
I remember thinking, along with many others, that Wahl’s mounting problems were largely political in nature and that the city, county, and state governments were on a mission to destroy a well-meaning individual who simply refused to bow to their authority. This is what Wahl said at the time, and it may have been the case for a while, until he started believing his own press. As time passed, Wahl was cited and arrested repeatedly for violations of city codes, improper handling of endangered species, animal cruelty, and neglect. Wahl was eventually sentenced to nine months in jail for the abuse of his 16 year old cougar “Old Man” when he “choked the cougar; dragged the cougar; dragged the cougar by a choker chain; punched the cougar; kicked the cougar; hit the cougar with a shoe; and jammed a mop and broom handle down the cougar's throat” in an episode that ultimately led to the animal’s death.
At some point, Wahl abandoned his house on Hiawatha where it sat and slowly caved in on itself. His last arrest on record was made on September 13, 2004, on charges of “maintaining a public nuisance”. I can only imagine that this refers to the condition of the Hiawatha house, which had deteriorated substantially after that summer’s string of hurricanes. And still the house sat, a monument to Wahl’s righteous indignation.
Today something has changed. There is a dumpster in the front yard and two men appear to be slowly dismantling what is left of the house. Looking at the overgrown cages in the backyard, I think back fifteen years and I can remember seeing the large cats lounging in the sun next to the rescued emus and river otters. Most of all, though, I remember the sounds. The strange, haunting cries of female panthers in heat that would echo through the neighborhood. A sound so loud that it would stop us in our tracks as we rolled metal garbage cans down the street in the middle of the night.

10/12/2005

On Wednesday I run the same route again. This time I’m concentrating on my pace, my stride, and my breathing. There’s no need for me to stay conversational today. My watch is still broken, so I glance at the clock next to the television and run out the door. I know I’ve got a good pace going and I’m guessing the first mile comes in right around eight minutes. I close down the aperture of my senses and run. A little bit slower with each mile, but I’m still moving along nicely. Rounding the corner at Thomas and Highland I dig in for the last quarter-mile and sprint up the steps to the house. I have to get a look at that clock.

Beer Run

2005-10-07T18:00:00.000-04:00

New World 4mi

Running to the bar has its advantages. For one, it’s a one-way route which is always more satisfying because it gets you twice as far from home. It is almost exactly four miles from my house to New World. This makes for some nice easy calculations. By most accounts, runners burn about 100 calories per mile regardless of their pace. Up to a point, the increased effort of a faster pace is offset by the decrease in time it takes to run the mile. This means that when you arrive at New World after having run today’s route in whatever time it takes you, mine today was a perfect 40 minutes for a 10 minute/mile pace, you will have earned yourself a happy hour discount of approximately 400 calories. Coincidentally, a pint of Guinness is almost exactly 200 calories, so you can have two pints before they even start to count. And after running four miles in the heat, you’re not going to want much more than two pints.
New World has a large outdoor patio so you don’t have to be all self-conscious about being the sweaty guy at the bar. People might ask why you’re looking so sporty, but when you tell them that you’ve run over hill and dale on your journey from the village in the north they’ll be so impressed they might even buy you another pint. Pints that you didn’t pay for don’t count either.
This leads to the last point. The fact that you are running to the bar means that there is going to be someone there to pick you up and drive you home. Of course technically you still haven’t had anything to drink, but, just to be safe, let them chauffer you home and watch your forty minutes of struggle glide by in ten minutes of air-conditioned comfort.

Toilet Humor For The Dinner Table

2005-10-04T18:00:00.000-04:00

Rogers/34th Street 7.75mi

A weeklong battle with what turned out to be bronchitis forced me to take a few days off from my training schedule. I finally went to the “doctor” and got a prescription for a new single dose antibiotic. I think this stuff basically irradiates your insides and only leaves the buildings. Without being too specific, I’ll just say that when I dropped the kids off at the pool they were all Caucasians. Frightening!
I managed to make it back from my illness in time for my long run. Lately I’ve been thinking about the socioeconomic profiles of the neighborhoods that I normally run in and I’ve realized that most of my routes are through middle to upper middleclass white neighborhoods. I played around a little with a GoogleMaps mashup that imbeds maps with US Census data, and I started looking around the area for neighborhoods of different ethnicities and incomes. With a general idea of the areas that I wanted to cover, I decided not to preplan my route. This allowed me to explore more freely based on what I saw, and I simply ran for the amount of time that I thought it would take me to cover the requisite seven miles.
I start out headed east towards Old Seminole Heights where I take a lap around Lake Roberta with the other evening joggers and the ducks before continuing east on Henry Street. I had noticed on the aerials that Henry is one of the few streets that crosses the railroad tracks east of 22nd Street, and it goes through a more diverse, and generally poorer, part of town.
I figure that at my slowest pace I’ll run a twelve-minute mile, so if I want to run seven miles I should run for 1hour and 24 minutes. If I run any faster, the extra mileage will just be a bonus.
As I move east on Henry, gradually the wooden privacy fences turn to chain link, and kids on bikes making ramps out of plywood and cinderblocks supplant the joggers and strollers. I haven’t eaten much today, and I start to notice the smell of food being prepared as it floats out onto the street. For whatever reason, I think that poorer families tend to eat dinner earlier. Blue-collar workers usually start and finish their shifts earlier than white-collar workers, and roofing just builds more of an appetite than web design. At six in the evening, this neighborhood is filled with the smells of barbeque and cornbread.
At 34th Street I turn towards the river and follow River Grove until it meets Willie Black Drive on its way to the Rogers Park Golf Course. Named for the prominent black business leader G.D. Rogers, in Tampa's days of segregation Rogers Park was the only city park where blacks were allowed to picnic and later, to golf. I have been wondering if there is a way through the golf course that crosses Rowlett Park Drive, but I haven’t been able to find anything obvious on the aerials. I follow the cart paths west over the first two holes and find a shortcut along the railroad tracks into the Hobo Jungle.
Following Park Circle back to the west reverses the socioeconomic progression of the first half of the run, and I think about the median incomes rising slightly with each step. The sun has begun to set, and in the fading light I’m forced to rely on my other senses. I move forward, guided by the sound of my footsteps on the road, the taste of salt on my shirt as I touch it to my face, the aches in my feet from a new pair of shoes, and again the enticing aroma of food. It’s as if I’m riding the crest of this olfactory wave, where the forces of economics, leisure, culture, and cuisine come together to produce a dinnertime node that moves forward at about eleven minutes per mile. The smoke of the barbeque grills has softened to become a roast in the oven followed by the distinct fragrance of garlic and onions sautéing in olive oil. I run on in the dark past women in kitchen windows and men smoking cigars on porches.
At home I can smell my own dinner as I walk past the house for a brief cool down, and I open the door to a room filled with chicken parmesan and Jan setting the table. I drop my sweaty clothes, wrap myself in a towel, and sit down, shirtless, to eat.

I Want The City, But I Want The Country Too

2005-09-27T08:00:00.000-04:00

Wilderness Loop 15mi

There are at least three versions of every long run written before my pen ever touches the page. The first version is the pre-emptive narrative, written from above as I scan the aerials planning my next route. Some of the decisions made here are based largely on formal considerations. Curves are always better than straight lines, and smooth arcs and diagonals are always more elegant than stair-steps and zigzags. Shade, of course, is a must. Sometimes the route only reveals itself as I zoom out for a broader perspective, the tiny fissures of trails and the subtle color shift of changing vegetation suddenly coming into view. Patterns appear that beg to be circumscribed.
Of course there are requirements to be satisfied. So many miles on certain days. Areas of historical significance. Routes from home. Routes from work. And there are rules to follow.
Always run east first. In the morning the rising sun will light your way and the trees will keep it out of your eyes. As the sun gets higher and hotter, you will turn your back to it and run home. In the evening it will guide you home as it sinks below the western horizon.
I study the narrative to be recalled on the next day’s run. Here are the mile markers. Here are the names of unfamiliar streets. Here is a water fountain. A bathroom. The river.
Today’s run involved more reconnaissance than usual. I knew there was a trail connecting the Wilderness Parks of the northern Hillsborough, but I had no maps and no information on it. I’ve been reading a history of the river by Gloria Jahoda entitled “River of the Golden Ibis”. Her descriptions of this area in the days of Ponce De Leon and Hernando De Soto have pushed me to explore these northern sections of the river basin, which remain, in places, similar to the way the conquistadors found them almost five hundred years ago. I drove from park to park until finally at Flatwoods I found a photocopied flyer of the route with no scale or mile markers. The flyer said that the total length of the trail is 15 miles, but I later found some information online that showed the length to be anywhere between 17 and 20 miles. After having run the route I feel confidant that it is very close to 15 miles. A long 15 miles.
The second version of the days run is written on the trail. It is typically just a litany of complaints, punctuated by brief moments of discovery and even fear. The morning starts with a string of obstacles: oversleeping, disorganization, stomach troubles, and a dead battery in the van. By 8:00 am though I am at the trailhead, slathered in sunscreen and looking sporty in a new running outfit.
I start out running south from the Trout Creek Site along the raised levee road. The road is a good twenty feet above the surrounding landscape, but the tall pines on either side still provide a bit of shade in the low-angle morning light. After the first exposed mile, the trail ducks into the underbrush of palmettos and scrub oaks. A sandhill crane stands at the trail’s entrance to the woods, undisturbed by my passing.
The area to the east of Morris Bridge Road is a maze of trails and loops popular with mountain bikers, but the main trail is well marked and on this early weekday morning I have yet to see another human. The bugs have found me though. Twice I swat the sunglasses off of my head as I try to defend myself against the horseflies on my face.
As the trail turns north and heads back towards the river, it opens up and straightens out a bit. Either the bugs have subsided or I’ve started blocking them out.
At Morris Bridge Park, the trail parallels the road briefly, and I spot an enormous alligator sunning itself in the duckweed gathered at the base of the bridge. A mile further, bright bands of color move lazily across the trail in front of me, and I struggle to find a grade-school mnemonic in a memory bank now deprived of oxygen. “Red touch yellow kills a fellow.” Coral snake. That’s enough to bring me back to reality, and I scan the trail ahead intently. At a distance every root, tree branch, and vine becomes a coiled rattlesnake waiting to strike. A startled armadillo explodes from the dry leaves at the base of a nearby palmetto, and I decide that it’s time for a quick pee break because I’ve almost wet myself.
Around the two-hour mark, I realize that I’m running in a kind of fog. My head is just floating along, dragging my body and legs behind it like a jellyfish. The breeze is starting to give me a chill and it must be at least 85 degrees by now. I suck down one of the gel packs that I’ve brought, along with part of a Clif Bar. This perks me up a little bit, but as I wash down the sickening-sweet-cake-frosting taste of the gel pack, I take a hard pull on my drinking tube and realize that I’m out of water. This is when I start composing the opening lines for Version Two. “Everyone has a bad run sooner or later and today was just my turn…”
I’m well past the last water stop and there’s no way that I’m turning around. I slow my pace and increase the frequency of my walk breaks and soon I’m not feeling too bad. The last half hour consists of more walking than running and I still manage to finish in 2:57:00. I must have gone out way too fast, but the lack of accurate mile markers has made it hard to judge.
Back at the park I shower off, change clothes, and drink two of the best tasting sodas I’ve ever had. Hooray for 82 grams of sugar.
On the drive home, forces beyond my control bring the van to a stop in the mall parking lot where I hastily consume a large bacon cheeseburger at a brass-n-glass establishment. I sit reading “River of the Golden Ibis” while the waitress repeatedly refills my drink, and the final version of the day’s events starts to take shape. It takes a certain amount of time and distance to forget the agony of a fifteen-mile run, but as the mind and body start to replenish themselves the connections develop and I can see the banks of the river populated by the huts of Timucua and Calusa Indians long before the Seminoles came to this area. I imagine Ponce De Leon and De Soto dragging their murderous and ill-equipped vassals through the same hummocks and thickets that I’ve just emerged from. I can see them mired in the Green Swamp, headwaters of the Hillsborough, weighted down by their ridiculous armor, trying to float rafts of pigs through the dense undergrowth of the swamp. My brief loss of clarity pales in comparison as I imagine the Indians who led them to their eventual deaths, moving them ever north with the promise that the riches they sought were always just around the next bend in the river.

And The Rains Fall Soft Upon Your Fields

2005-09-25T19:45:00.000-04:00

Epps/Lowry 4mi

I managed to procrastinate for long enough that I had to wear a headlamp for my morning run because the sun was setting.
I spend the first of four miles trying to zero in on my pace. I’m starting to get the feel for what different paces feel like in the 8-12 minute/mile range. Today I’m trying to break my ten-minute miles into smaller increments, judging which landmarks are a tenth of a mile ahead and checking my one-minute splits against them.
I round the corner on Hanlon and remember my idea for the water tower view map as it looms into view. With its new footlights it reminds me of the Mayan ruins at Uxmal lit up nightly for the tourists.
In the coming darkness of a post-football Sunday night my familiar route takes on a new feel. Three men sit on the bank by Andrew’s shop dipping their cane poles in the black, swirling water. A couple gazes across the river from their parked motorcycle, and a group of teenagers passes a joint around a picnic table.
I dance between the pools of yellow streetlight until I reach the park where the trail shrinks to the size of my headlamp’s faint glow, and I watch the reflections of the docks and houses slide by on the river’s slick surface to my left.
Crossing Sligh Avenue again, I take the shortcut trail through to Epps Park and think again about water balloon launchers in the trees. I marvel at how we were able to simultaneously break every single rule on the park’s “WARNING:” sign during this year’s New Years celebration. At night the park’s elevation changes seem more pronounced, and as I turn west onto a section of North Street devoid of streetlights, I kill my headlamp and run in the darkness, feeling my way up and out of the river’s pull as the pavement rises to meet each step.

Negative Splits

2005-09-23T06:15:00.000-04:00

North UTBT 3mi

Another day on duty and another three-mile run on the UTBT. I start out at a nice easy pace, slowly opening up my stride as I go. My time at the turnaround is 15:40 and I’m feeling good, so I start to crank it up for the return trip. I finish the second half in 12:20. If I can maintain this pace for a 5k (we’ll see in October), I may actually shoot for a sub-four-hour marathon. But I’m not making any promises.

Big F*#&in' Rats

2005-09-20T07:15:00.000-04:00

West/Epps 6.3mi

I hadn’t actually looked at my training calendar for awhile and I just assumed that this week’s long run would be 12 miles, but it turns out that last week’s goal was 11-12 miles (I ran 11) and this week begins the alternation between truly long runs (greater than 10 miles) and shorter recovery runs. So, this week's Tuesday goal is only 6 miles. Of course this would generally be considered good news, but I have come to enjoy the increase in distance each week, especially now that I've gotten myself into uncharted waters. Next week will put me into half marathon territory.
I ran a 6.3-mile route staying as close to the river as possible and, as always, running upstream first and letting the current carry me back. I don’t know why, but it just feels better this way.
In the evening I did some surfing around and found that my friend Stefanie had written a response/review of this site on her own blog page.

if you squint your eyes the air sounds like water
i've been reading my friend devon's blog about his training for a marathon in tampa and now all i can think about is the centro asturiano and naviera coffee. i have been away from tampa for nearly seven years and suddenly i am intoxicated by the thought of it. such exotically familiar surroundings. he writes in depth about the routes that he painstakingly maps out and i feel as though i was asleep for the ten years i lived there. his tampa is one i only saw glimpses of. mine is only a half-real dream. disjointed memories of another life. i miss the abandoned cigar factories. the now demolished tides motel on st. pete beach watching german films projected on bedsheets. falling asleep on the beach after talking all night to a guy with hair just like mine.i miss the late nights working in our lazy-criminal infested studio. i miss watching the guys making cuban bread at four in the morning in the bakery i visited at least three times a week and now can't remember the name of. i miss the heated debate about where we should have breakfast--three coins (spinach feta omelette) or niko's (the best and surliest waitresses). i miss working in a warehouse where the only air conditioning to be found was sticking your head in the sink. i miss throwing rocks at my friend steve's window only to find him throwing rocks at mine. i miss broom hockey in the painting studio and our experimental band we liked to call: a cooking egg. i miss the intense friendships that can only be formed through youth and oppressive humidity.i miss the first house i lived in with it's stucco walls and imbedded pieces of colored glass. the porch where we drank my questionable neighbor's seemingly generous gift of moonshine. my crazy landlord, a triplet from the cayman islands and her bumbling brother who broke everything he ever fixed. the bench imbedded in the river bank. the river. our constant attempts and plans to scale the sulphur springs water tower. the inexhaustable love i had for a boy who picked me up for our first date in a canoe.

I called Stef , who I hadn’t actually spoken to in a few years, and we spent a couple hours catching up on our current pursuits and interests, and talking about Running Through Tampa. She said she felt like it was her little secret that she revealed to a select, and mostly disinterested, few, and that she had started limiting herself to reading my posts on the weekends so that she wouldn’t be disappointed if I only had one entry for the week. I was touched that there was even one person out there anxiously awaiting the next dispatch and amused that she was secreting them away like the chocolate bar that Jan hides in the refrigerator for when things get really bad.
Part of what struck me about Stef’s comments was the importance of the histories that we had created for these places ourselves, and the indelible impressions that they had left on us both. Historical research helps to fill out the body of images and memories that we have of these places, but it is the history of our own making that brings them to life.
So I return to a memory map of the river. My earliest memory involving the river is of my family launching water balloons across to the west bank from Epps Park, when my aunt lived in the now infamous North Street compound. The keys to these houses have passed through the hands of countless artists, musicians, and general misfits over the last thirty years or so. It seems like everyone in Tampa knows someone who has lived in one of these houses, and volumes could be written solely on their occupants over the years. My aunt worked in a lab and would bring home long sections of surgical tubing which we would tie between two trees with a funnel in the center. These devices were capable of launching a waterballoon clear across the river and could be used to knock revelers off of their homemade rafts during the Hillsborough River Rat Race.
Another random image: night kayaking from Ed’s house to the water tower with Mark and Kim. On the way back, in the spirit of exploration, I suggest to Mark that we paddle our kayaks up the drainage culvert beneath the Nebraska Avenue Bridge. I think we can fit if we just duck forward and paddle with our hands.
“What are you nuts?” Mark asks. “That thing’s full of rats.”
“How can there be any rats?” I say. “There’s no land in there.”
One of the quickest wits I’ve ever known, Mark turns me around mid-stroke with his curt reply. “There will be when you go in.”

What Can I Say?

2005-09-18T19:00:00.000-04:00

Epps/Lowry 4mi

I took a slightly modified route through Lowry Park and tried to maintain a nice brisk (for me) pace. My time at the three-mile mark was 27:00. I had to slow down some for the last mile to catch my breath and I took some extra walk breaks, but overall I felt pretty good. Today it was the lungs that couldn’t hang with the legs.
I have to say that recently I’ve had a harder time keeping up with the writing that this project involves. This could just be laziness, but I think there may be a bit of writer’s block at work as well. The vasculature of my thoughts is not one hundred percent occluded, but it may be just a little sclerotic. Part of the problem, I think, has to do with my reading list. When I started this project, I was reading material that provided a constant source of ideas and inspiration about history, cartography, memory, etc. Lately I haven’t been reading as much, and some of the connections that I was able to make easily before have been a little harder to get to on my own.
There are several streams of thought that come and go through these runs, tributaries to the main current of ideas that often go nowhere. I’ve been thinking of running mock disaster scenarios to see what Tampa would look like under varying levels of storm surge, and I’ve been pre-occupied with zones of influence, visualizing a map of the areas in Tampa that have a view of the Sulphur Springs water tower. I want to see a map of the most flood prone areas of the city overlaid with the per capita concentration of Hummer ownership.

'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy

2005-09-17T06:15:00.000-04:00

UTBT/Gardner 4.1mi

I missed another training session on Friday, so I traded out my cross training day and decided to run this morning. The sun is coming up a little later these days and the start of my run is pretty dark, but the solitude is nice, if not a little spooky at times. My training run pace has been slowly increasing, and I seem to be maintaining a 10-11 minute mile pretty comfortably on a run of this length.
My headlamp is having trouble penetrating the darkness, and as the sun comes up I can see that there is a thick blanket of fog creating an artificial horizon where it hangs about four feet over the trail. I plug along with my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds, a disembodied pair of legs to the passers-by.
Since the Castles Made of Sand Run on Tuesday, I’ve had an insatiable appetite for Jimi Hendrix. That afternoon I stopped at the record store and bought a couple of Hendrix cd’s that I must have lost years ago. Actually, the original copies that I had were on vinyl and they weren’t in the best of shape. Listening to my new copy of “Are You Experienced?” in the van, I realize that the version of “Purple Haze” that has been playing in my head for the last fifteen or twenty years has been permanently altered by my Uncle Steve.
As a kid, Uncle Steve was my hero. He was a sort of William Hurt-esque record producer in Nashville who claimed to have hung out and shot heroin with the likes of Jimi and Janis. He had also been the voice of Jesus for a version of the Bible on tape. Man, talk about track marks.
As young aspiring musicians, my brothers and I were always eager to impress Steve with our knowledge and interest in all things musical. On one of Steve’s trips to Florida, after what had probably been quite a few beers on his part, we all ended up in the “guy’s room” listening to records. Steve sat on the edge of a bunk bed smoking Buglers and listening patiently as we showed off our record collection. In the middle of “Are You Experienced?” Side One, Steve just reaches over and stubs his cigarette out on the record. In the middle of a song.
We just sat there aghast. Maybe it was just a mistake, but now I think this was Steve's drunken way of showing us that his connection to this music was so much deeper than ours would ever be. His relationship to it was so close that he could even commit acts of violence against it. Besides, the Columbia Record and Tape Club would send us another one for just a penny.
I can imagine myself now, not much younger than Steve was then, listening to a Minor Threat album that my nephew has “discovered”. Or, better yet, Nirvana. I’d put a cigarette out on that for sure. Right in the middle of the Ipod’s scroll wheel.
Anyhow, Steve succeeded in editing out the entire second verse of the song and that’s the way that it stayed until I finally lost the record years later. At first, the skips were infuriating because they obliterated a part of the song that I knew was in there somewhere, but over time that verse just stopped existing for me and I came to love the record for what it was. Or, rather, for what it had become: my own unique version of “Purple Haze”. I’ve listened to that record so many times now that I could notate the rhythm of the skips from memory.
Steve’s version of “Purple Haze” became even more important to me than Hendrix’s. He left a mark on that record that forever changed my perspective of something that I thought I knew, and I’m richer for it.
That’s how you make a map. Scratch your temporal existence on the infinite.

Castles Made Of Sand

2005-09-13T07:00:00.000-04:00

Davis Island 11mi

View Interactive Map

I got a bit lazy with my route planning, but I remembered that I had a preprinted map of an 11-mile route on Davis Island that I had picked up at the downtown YMCA. This route is like a fractal variation of last week’s run, eliminating the final stretch downtown, and following the coast in greater detail to achieve the additional mileage.
Parking the van in a spot near the Y, I realize that I only have enough quarters to put two hours on the meter. Luckily, I know the mileposts by now and I can gauge my splits pretty well, but I’ll have to run a record long run pace to be back in time. The threat of a $25 ticket waiting for me when I get back proves to be a great motivator.
I run the route clockwise this time and I’m off of the exposed sections on the eastern shore before the sun gets high enough overhead to be a real nuisance. Along the coast, it seems that this entire island is under construction. This is a perfect place for a runner with stomach problems as there is a Port-O-Let every 200 yards. Today I’m in too much of a hurry to make use of them, but last week I was glad they were there.
I’m thinking about New Orleans and the change of perspective caused by rising floodwaters. My image of this island is shaped more by aerial photos than by street level views. I look at the blue-glazed ceramic tile roofs and wonder if I could pick them out on the aerial photos. The majority of people in New Orleans had an image of their city that was shaped by their mostly street level, pedestrian experience. Now their city is a series of rooftops in the Gulf of Mexico. I read that many of the first responders from other parts of the country were having difficulty finding their way around this unfamiliar city, but I would bet that many long-term residents had trouble adjusting to the sudden shift in their vantage point. What would our cities look like viewed in horizontal cross sections of 4, 6, or 10 feet of elevation? When we were hiking in Washington State, Jan and I crossed through several old avalanche zones where all of the trees had been broken off at the same height, now thirty feet above our heads. I remember standing on the trail in the ninety-degree heat, trying to imagine being in the same place at a different time, a snowfield littered with downed trees, oblivious to what lay beneath my feet.
Davis Island is a man-made dredge mound that sits in the delta of the Hillsborough River where it empties into Hillsborough Bay. If the river is our Mississippi, then this is our New Orleans, without the music, food, history, or culture. In contrast to New Orleans, here the wealthiest residents live along the coast in the island’s most flood-prone regions, perfectly poised to absorb any storm surge pushed ahead of an advancing hurricane and magnified by the constriction of the bay at this point. These people have cars though, lots of them, and they can navigate freely through the x and y of these maps we have formed, but it is only their yachts in the marina that will navigate the vertical axis of the rising tide. They will hold their positions long after the stinger-like tail of the island’s southern tip has disappeared beneath the waves.
I’m into the last mile and it looks like I can make it back in time if I don’t take any more walk breaks. Climbing the slight rise of the Platt Street Bridge, I tell myself to remember this pain. My lungs are burning and my legs are like sand bags, but I know that I’ll forget as soon as I can catch my breath. I dig in for the last quarter-mile, and my breathing is truly labored for the first time today. I cross Franklin Street at Brorein and make it to the van just in time to see the meter start flashing, “Expired”.

Training Pants

2005-09-11T06:15:00.000-04:00

North UTBT 3mi

Seen in the light of day, my training missteps seem almost laughable sometimes. Yesterday’s sequence was as follows:
0800 alarm clock goes off, consider going to gym for cross training
0800-1000 battle with snooze button, reset alarm, reschedule training for afternoon
1300-1500 rehearse with band for evening performance, finish in time for gym
1530 succumb to urge for nap
1730 wake from nap, cancel cross training
1900 go to club for set-up
2030-2130 perform, drink beer
2200 consume large plate of barbeque chicken with baked beans, coleslaw, garlic bread
2330 sleep
0515 wake
0545 double espresso
0615 run
0625 “I don’t feel so good”
0635 walk remainder of route, concentrate on maintaining control to avoid Greta Weitz impression.

Down The Middle

2005-09-09T09:00:00.000-04:00

Ola/YMCA 4.5mi

The run from my house to the Fort Brooke YMCA is becoming more familiar, and I can tell that my body is adjusting to the distance. What felt like a long run just a few weeks ago now truly feels like a short training run. It actually has gotten shorter because my pace is slowly improving as well.
From an aerial perspective, I like this route because it is direct. The mapped route runs due south most of the way, only taking a few jogs to the East to find the finish. The stretch along Ola is shady and traffic is sparse, allowing me to run in my favorite part of the road. Like my grandfather used to say, “Everybody is entitled to their half of the road – I like mine in the middle.”
I can feel that I’ve got a decent pace going without overdoing it. This pace would still be considered “conversational” if there were someone here for me to talk to. Thankfully, there is not.
In the last week or so the weather has begun a subtle shift away from the doldrums of summer. The temperatures haven’t really fallen any, but the humidity has broken, and suddenly I can feel that there may be an end to this heat. It’s this hope precisely that makes September the hottest month in Florida. After five months of summer, it just seems right that September should be the end, but it’s not and it never is. We could represent this cycle as “The Map of Experienced, Perceived, and Expected Temperature for Tampa, Florida.” The intersection of these three metrics defines “The Zone of Disappointment.”
Today though, the hope for new beginnings is palpable, and the feeling literally puts a little more spring in my step (and I mean ‘literally’ in the literal sense that my legs actually feel better, not in the figurative sense that the word ‘literally’ is usually used.) For the last half-mile or so, I stretch out and work on impressing the office workers on Franklin Street, checking my form in the windows as I pass.

If Less Is More Then None Is Best

2005-09-07T07:00:00.000-04:00

Davis Islands 10mi

View Interactive Map

I know, it’s been awhile. Today was supposed to be a rest day, but I blew off my long run yesterday and I had to make it up. I didn’t train over the weekend and all I have to offer for this is excuses. In the words of David Mamet (by way of Al Pacino), “Your excuses are your own.”
After a four-day hiatus, my legs feel great and I’m starting to think that maybe I had been overdoing it a bit. I start out from the downtown YMCA and follow the first ten miles of the Gasparilla Marathon course through Davis Islands and downtown.
As soon as I’m off of Davis Islands’ main drag, the morning traffic dies down and I run comfortably in the oncoming lane, avoiding the sidewalks as much as possible. Most of the western shore of the island is clogged with monstrous faux haciendas and starter castles, so the water views are hard to come by, but I’m enjoying the quiet of these empty streets and the cool air under overcast skies. At the island’s southern tip, I run past the airport towards the turnaround point at the yacht club. Here the view opens up and I watch the cranes and barges at work across the channel, their running lights still on in the cloudy morning twilight. I’m listening to the sound of my breathing, my footsteps on the asphalt, and the persistent clang of rigging against the masts of the sailboats at anchor in the harbor.
“Do you know how far it is from the yacht club to the roundabout,” an elderly woman asks me as I circle back past the airport. “I have no idea,” I tell her “I’m just running around aimlessly,” and I realize I must be feeling pretty good. I don’t know where any of the mile markers are and, for once, I don’t really care.

It's Not The Heat, It's The Stupidity

2005-09-02T06:15:00.000-04:00

North UTBT 3mi

Back to work after three days of flying and not a lot of sleeping. I wasn’t able to train yesterday, but, according to my new schedule, Wednesday’s bike ride was done on my rest day so it all sort of works out.
I run the familiar UTBT three-mile route in 34 minutes, and my legs are feeling well rested and loose. It’s nice to be back home, but I sure did like those temperatures in the fifties.

Just For The Halibut

2005-08-31T16:00:00.000-04:00

Anchorage 10mi

View Interactive Map

I took an unscheduled trip to Anchorage, Alaska to act as a medical escort on a commercial flight for a patient being returned home from Anchorage to Madison, Wisconsin. We arrived around midnight Alaska time, and we didn’t have to pick up our patient until around 7:00 pm, so we had most of the day on Wednesday to explore Anchorage.
Our hotel sits on Lake Spenard, which functions as an airstrip for most of the floatplanes in Anchorage. We watch the planes coming and going as we eat breakfast in the hotel and we talk about taking a floatplane tour of the area. After breakfast we schedule a flight for 11:00 am, leaving just enough time for a quick soak in the hotel jacuzzi. Nine miles of running followed by twelve hours of flying has my legs feeling like two balloons full of walnuts.
Soon we’re climbing into a tiny single engine Cessna for a short flight out of town and into the Chugach Mountains to the east. Somebody said that Anchorage is "only twenty minutes from Alaska", and now I see what they were talking about. As soon as we get over the mountains, civilization fades away and we watch Dall sheep grazing on the slopes between sparse patches of snow.
We’re ducking under the low ceiling of clouds (it’s been raining all morning), and the pilot threads the little plane through a narrow pass where the mountainsides seem to be just beyond our wingtips. Jayson asks our pilot Pete (a sort of twenty-something Tom Waits Of The Sky) if we are using VFR (Visual Flight Rules), which he confirms and then promptly flies into a total whiteout. Exciting!
In the afternoon we make our way into downtown where we rent bicycles from another strange Alaskan named Pete. He insists that Jayson and I will not be comfortable in our jeans and leather shoes. He comes up with two pairs of his own shorts and shoes and presses them into our hands. He will not take no for an answer. We head out in our borrowed duds on two of Pete’s functional but slightly neglected fleet of rental bikes. Mine features a rear fender that Pete has hastily constructed out of duct tape to combat the rain-soaked streets, and Jayson’s bike is changing gear spontaneously, startling him and other passers-by. “Just don’t stand on the pedals,” I tell him and we head off at a good clip along the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail.

It doesn’t take long for Jayson to figure out that I’m out for more than a relaxing bike ride, after all, today is my cross training day. Understandably, he would rather actually see some of the sights, and I let him go ahead and set the pace for the rest of the ride. We stop to read the signs about what to do when encountering a moose, and we stop in Earthquake Park to read about the devastation caused by the Good Friday earthquake of 1964. Just imagine a thirty-foot tidal wave covered in burning oil. You couldn’t make that up.

It's The Little Things

2005-08-30T07:00:00.000-04:00

Sulphur Springs 9mi

View Interactive Map

Today, for the first time, I repeated a long run route, simply adding a mile to the end of last week’s to make it the requisite 9 miles. I spent several hours the other day laying out a 9 mile route down the West Bank to Columbus and up through the Woodlawn Cemetery, but it was relatively exposed and the day was looking like it was going to be a scorcher. So I opted for the shade and the familiarity of the Sulphur Springs route as well as the asphalt and soft trails versus the sidewalks of my mapped route. The route that I mapped covers an area that I haven’t run before and I guess I feel somehow obligated to explore this side of the river. The route holds little appeal for me and I was prepared, I thought, to run it in the name of thoroughness and dedication to the cause, but now these seem like ridiculous notions. I have said before, and some of my recent readings have reinforced the notion, that the primary function of the writer or cartographer is not to compose, but to edit. To paraphrase Denis Wood, the only truly complete map is the world in front of us, and we already have that. However, in order to edit effectively, you must be familiar with those things that you choose to eliminate. And so I must run this route, but today is not the day.
I’ve been noticing lately a large number of toads smashed on the road. These toads seem to be of a variety that I am not familiar with, but they are large and extremely foul smelling when deceased. They all seem to have suffered the most violent of deaths, wherein their innards are expelled through their mouths in a lipstick-red tangle of heart/lung/intestinal tissue. I have been trying my damnedest not to slip on their carcasses as I run.
If last Tuesday I ran in the moment, reveling in the “discovery and wonder” of these new yet familiar environs, today I ran mostly in my head. I let the familiar streets pass beneath my feet, and I stayed inside myself, first feeling the tightness in my right shin and left achilles (it’s always here, despite running on the opposite side of the road, stretching, etc.), then the relief of the mulched trail through the Hobo Jungle.
I reach the railroad trestle and I’m back in the moment, concentrating on making the leap from tie to tie without slipping while listening for distant trains.
It’s these moments that last in my memories as the rest of the run fades away. This is the attention to detail that concerns Corlis Benefideo, and it is this attention that makes active pursuits fill our memories of the past. A week spent sunbathing in the Caribbean may be a great tonic for the usual stresses of work and home, but to traverse a snow field in the morning sun or to pick your way along a rocky ridge in a thick fog, these memories can be recalled minute by minute. Two years after the fact, I could write a paragraph about each one of the one hundred miles that Jan and I hiked on the Wonderland Trail.
This is not what today’s run is about. Today is one foot in front of the other. Step, step, step, breathe. Sweat. Drink. Repeat.
Except for that trestle. And the frogs.

Bringing Up The Rear

2005-08-27T06:15:00.000-04:00

North UTBT 3mi

Today I’ve recovered enough for a slow run on the UTBT before work. Another Saturday morning with packs of runners on the trail even before the sun has come up. Most of them are running a faster pace than me and I let them pass, avoiding the temptation to push any harder. About two miles in I’m passed by my old captain and we exchange greetings, but he’s running seven-minute miles so we don’t talk for long.

Forward March

2005-08-26T18:30:00.000-04:00

Lowry/Boulevard 3mi

My legs hurt. Imagine that. Maybe someday I’ll learn to practice a bit of restraint.
I went for an easy walk with Jan through Lowry Park and I tried to work out some of the kinks. I pointed out the domain of the Squirrel Whistler and watched a Man Who Looked Like Kenny Rogers practicing ROTC honor guard maneuvers with a folded umbrella.

Into The Light

2005-08-25T19:00:00.000-04:00

West Bank 3.6 mi

Once again, my legs started to feel good and I wanted to go right out and do another speed session. I settled on the familiar West Bank route because I knew where the mile markers were, and I could have a point of comparison from previous runs.
I start out from the house and I can feel that my pace is a quick one, but I feel strong and it’s nice to stretch out a little. At my first walk break I’m more than a minute ahead of my normal pace, and the first mile comes in at 8:00 including the walk break. If I can maintain this pace for a 5k, I may be within striking distance of a four-hour marathon.
I’m running down the middle of the road, trying to concentrate on my form, and my focus is becoming more and more narrow. Soon I’m down to just the most essential: step, step, step, breathe. At about 2.5 miles I come up against the proverbial wall. I stop for a walk break and then shift into an easy jog. It’s as if a light comes on. My vision opens up, I hear the sound of the street, and I feel myself moving out of this tunnel of hypoxia. I keep the pace down for the last mile or so, and I still manage to cover the 3.6 miles in 32 minutes, a new personal record.

A Pathetic Fallacy

2005-08-23T07:00:00.000-04:00

Sulphur Springs of Darkness 8mi

View Interactive Map

I had my doubts about being able to complete today’s run, but I eased into it and it turned out to be one of the best runs I’ve had to date. Eight miles is further than I’ve ever run before, so today marks the beginning of a journey into uncharted territory for me. I tried to focus my route as much as possible on the trails, sidewalks, and shortcuts that circumvent the mental roadmap that I have constructed of these neighborhoods along the river.
Jan commented on my previous post about the importance of “discovery” and “wonder” in this process, and it was these two feelings, exactly, that fueled me today. I wasn’t even bothered that I posted a personal worst pace of 12:42 min/mile, due, at least in part, to my having to run through ditches, weeds, mud, tall grass, and drainage culverts, as well as crossing a rickety bridge and a railroad trestle.
I start running slowly north on Ola, stopping to stretch the tightness in my calves at each five minute interval (in direct defiance of Jeff Galloway’s instructions), and I’m starting to loosen up as I take Hanlon east to the “troll bridge”, snapping pictures as I run through.
Following the Park Circle route, I head north at the dead end into the hobo jungle of Joel Brown’s Heart of Darkness. After a little bush whacking and ditch hopping, I find a nicely mulched road in the trees along the southern bank of the river. I’m keeping my eye out for the trail through the woods towards the railroad trestle, but the path is choked with weeds and I have to double back a few times before I find it. My shoes and socks are soaked from the tall grass and the morning dew, but soon the trail opens up again and I shoot some more pictures as I cross a little wooden bridge over a creek. Climbing up the embankment to the railroad tracks, I look cautiously in both directions before committing myself to the bridge. I’m skipping across the ties, watching the river flow beneath me, and reliving scenes of Stand By Me, when I realize the water has been replaced with the flow of morning commuters temporarily distracted by the crazy man up on the bridge.
At the foot of the trestle I stop to shoot some pictures of my favorite ill-proportioned manatee mural before heading into the beautiful Sulphur Springs Shopping District.
In describing present-day Sulphur Springs, “sleepy” is not generally a word that comes to mind, but it is surprisingly accurate at eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning. I run past the duplexes and 70’s split-level condos along the river, and I marvel at how little this area has changed in the years that I have known it. This is some of the only riverfront property in the area that has not seen a dramatic shift in demographics and property values in the last few years. The surrounding neighborhood of Sulphur Springs simply does not have the architectural “bones” of places like Seminole Heights and Tampa Heights. These streets look much the same as they did almost twenty-five years ago when I lived in a little house on the corner of Bird and Semmes with my mother and brother.
I cross Nebraska Ave. and pass the Sulphur Springs pool and gazebo, waving and saying hello to the homeless men sitting at the picnic tables by the river. I follow a path between two fences to the northern side of the “troll bridge” and find that, what looked like a trail from the aerials is actually a drainage culvert running along the interstate. I have to squeeze through a hole in the chain-link fence to follow the culvert north to the sidewalk on Bird Street. The stretch along Bird past the water tower is the first full sun that I’ve seen on this route, and I’m happy to cross Florida Ave. again, towards the shade of Lowry Park.
On the path in the park, I almost step on a squirrel that has parked himself in the middle of the right-of-way, and refuses to yield. Ahead I see an elderly man that I have encountered here on previous morning runs. He walks slowly along, whistling, and feeding the squirrels from a small plastic bag. “These guys really know who you are,” I say, commenting on the number of squirrels gathered around him. He tells me that they have even come to recognize his car and they gather around anxiously when he pulls up each morning. “They’re smarter than you think,” he says as I pass, and suddenly I’m a little offended. How does he know how smart I think they are? I’ve seen programs where squirrels learn to solve complex puzzles involving multiple feats of physical and mental dexterity, performed in an exact sequence, all for a small morsel of food. To me this says that they are at least as smart as children, who can’t even feed themselves without supervision, and they may be more astute than a few adults that I know or have met.
I continue down the trail, the old man’s whistling still in my ears, and I see squirrels from all over coming down from their trees and taking their places in the center of the path. They hold their ground and wait patiently as I pass.

"His Dreams Walk About The City Where He Persists Incognito"

2005-08-21T06:30:00.000-04:00

title excerpted from W.C. Williams' "Paterson"

North UTBT 3mi

I think that I needed the two days off to rest my legs a bit, and the weekend was pretty hectic anyhow. I’m thinking of swapping my Saturday and Sunday routines so that I run on Sunday. This makes it easier to crosstrain because the gym is always open on Saturday. I think a lot of other training programs have the day off following the long run, and I think this might be more to my liking as well.
Today I was back to work and my training schedule called for crosstraining, but I was feeling a little guilty about skipping the last few days and I felt like I should get some running in. I ran the UTBT three-mile out-and-back route at a nice 11:00 pace. My legs felt tight the whole way, but they never got truly painful.
Cardiovascularly, I am definitely improving, even if musculoskeletally I can’t keep up. My pace this morning felt very comfortable and my heart rate at the split was still only 140. I see more and more how the temperature affects my heart rate, and I would guess that for every degree increase in temperature, my heart rate increases by about two beats per minute. I’m working on developing a formula that shows improved efficiency through training. This would be a measure of heart rate as compared to running pace.
Today I read some of Denis Wood’s writing online, as well as a short story by Barry Lopez titled “The Mappist”. I was struck by the similarities between these real and fictional characters (Denis Wood and Corlis Benefideo), and I began thinking more about what it is that is driving this project of mine. I realize that I still don’t have a distinct focus. I see more and more that my runs function more as reconnaissance than as research. For me to form a truly detailed and comprehensive map, I must read the histories of this city in its books, as well as in its streets and in the mouths and imaginations of its people. As Lopez writes in “The Mappist”, Benefideo’s book is based on the idea that the city is “the living idea of its inhabitants”.
InIra Glass’s interview with Denis Wood he says that Wood’s maps “make the neighborhood seem like a living organism”, to which Wood responds, “It is a living organism!”
Carlo said to me “your aerial maps look like pictures of Hiroshima,” and I saw the brutality in these images. It was not my intent to lay this city to waste. Today I’m thinking of softer representations of this city. I’m imagining a 3-D model on the brick floor of Flight 19 made of Cuban coffee and tobacco leaves. I’m thinking of hand-drawn maps on rag paper, I’m thinking about water; where it moves, collects, rises and falls. And I’m wondering why every city calls itself the “Lightning Capital of the World”.

The Existential Cartographer

2005-08-18T07:15:00.000-04:00

West Bank 3.6mi

My shins felt good and I wanted to run today. I decided to make a short loop of the west bank and run it fast without carrying anything. A 9:43 pace doesn’t seem too brisk, but I think this is the first time I’ve broken a 10:00 pace while using the walk breaks. My legs were a little heavy the whole way, but all in all I felt pretty good, and I was able to keep my heart rate under control. The lower temperature definitely helped.
The other day while working on the house I listened again to an episode of This American Life called “Mapping”. The segment in this show about cartographer Denis Wood provided much of the impetus for my ideas about this project. Wood wrote a book called “The Power Of Maps”, and he has produced an atlas of his Raleigh, North Carolina neighborhood that includes a map of the houses displaying jack-o’-lanterns on Halloween, as well as a map of the light pools cast by the street lights. Wood is interested in the way we form our images of a place through these types of personal and poetic maps.
When we were in college, Mike Baldwin gave me some of the best driving directions I’ve ever gotten. We were going to a party in Zephyrhills and I was going to drive out by myself after work.
Mike tells me to take Highway 301 north from Fowler Avenue and to “just keep driving until you think that you’ve gone too far.” This dark stretch of two-lane highway goes past Flint Creek and Hillsborough River State Park, and soon I’m shooting out through the palmettos and scrub oaks, paralleling the river’s lazy curves, straddling the line. “After a while you’ll start looking around in the dark. The moon will be out and you’ll be watching it through the trees. It’s so beautiful. Turn off your headlights and stick your head out the window. Look up. You’ll be watching the moon and the stars and you’ll have forgotten how far you’ve driven.” I‘m following his instructions exactly. It IS beautiful. I have my head out the window, first looking down at the asphalt screaming by beneath me, then up to the moon flickering behind the thin cypress branches. If I try to focus on the trees they are just a blur. I’m listening to the wind in my ears, the hum of the tires on the road, and the sound of crickets. I can’t remember how long I have been driving. “You’ll have forgotten how far you’ve driven. When you find yourself doing this – TAKE A RIGHT!” I slam on my breaks and look to the right as the small street sign blinks into view. I have arrived.

How To Get Lost In Your Hometown

2005-08-16T08:00:00.000-04:00

Woodlawn 6.75mi

View Interactive Map

I was a little worried that this run wasn’t going to happen, but I managed to do it. I tried to get out the door a little earlier, but even at 8:00 its already too hot and running before the sun is up is a little precarious in this neighborhood. I don’t mind running out on the UTBT in the dark because there is no traffic, but here there are a lot of morning commuters that make me kind of nervous. I also have a tendency to run through some kind of sketchy areas, which is fine in the daylight, but I have this hang-up about wanting to see my attackers as they approach. I just hope that if I get chased it is in the first mile or two, when I still have a little kick left in me.
I didn’t want to aggravate my shins any further so I took things very slowly and just kind of shuffled my way along. I explored the route at the base of the MLK bridge and found that there is a footpath that goes underneath, eliminating the need for a street-level crossing.
I had planned my route to go through the Woodlawn cemetery, which is supposed to open at 8:00. As I approached from the south, just past Gram’s Place, the sign on the gate said to use the entrance off of Indiana. This is the gate that I had planned to exit from, and it would have added some distance to the route to go in that way. The route as I mapped it was 7.3 miles, and I figured if I just cut out the cemetery it would be closer to an even seven.
I brought a disposable camera with me and snapped a few pictures along the way. On the long runs, this is a nice way to slow things down as it gives you an unexpected break every now and then. Heading north on Ola I took some shots of the House of the Concrete Hand. The hand was probably six feet tall (not the ten feet I had remembered). My memory has a way of inflating my experiences. That’s what drives this project.
I try not to write about a run on the same day that I did it. I like to keep myself at least a day behind in my writing. This allows a little time for the process of forgetting, which is easily as important to good writing, I think, as remembering.
And so these maps are formed. Certain details fall away and others grow (17 percent becomes 60 and 6 feet becomes 10). There are places, I think, where my mind tends to wander as I run, and my physical experience of these places is almost non-existent. By doing something as simple as running the same route clockwise instead of counter-clockwise, the entire landscape is changed. This is something I have learned from backpacking: if you’re coming back the same way that you came, turn around periodically and have a look at your surroundings.

Relapsing

2005-08-14T11:00:00.000-04:00

The shin splint pain has returned a little, so I’m going to rest another day and hope that by Tuesday I’m ready to do a seven miler.

Recovering

2005-08-13T10:30:00.000-04:00

Carlo's 2.8mi

I felt a little better this morning and I ran to Carlo’s house to meet with him and Mike before going down to the Flight 19 space. The sun was a little intense, but I stuck to the shade wherever possible and I drank generously from the new Camelback.

Less Quick, More Dead

2005-08-12T12:00:00.000-04:00

There are so many things wrong with my training from the last couple of days. My treadmill speed session was just the first misstep in this long chain of events. Yesterday I ran at least a mile further than I should have, and I did most of it on sidewalks (concrete being the worst possible running surface). Then there was my beer-as-carb-loading theory. Needless to say, today I don’t feel so hot. My waking pulse was considerably elevated, and I’ve been feeling the first signs of shin splints developing. I’ve dealt with this before and I know that I’d better take it easy or I won’t be running at all in a week or two. Today is going to be a wash

The Quick And The Dead

2005-08-11T17:00:00.000-04:00

New World 4.75mi

I think I’m feeling the effects of my little speed session yesterday.
One of my strategies to fit running into my day is to use the run as transportation. Joel called and said that he had finished his final exams and wanted to go out for a beer. I told him I would meet him at New World in Ybor in a couple of hours.
I had just gotten my Camelback hydration pack in the mail and I was anxious to try it out. I loaded up with water, ID, and cell phone and headed out.
While checking out the aerials for this route I realized that Ola Avenue runs due south from Seminole Heights to the end of Seventh Avenue by Tampa Armature Works. Ola is a small neighborhood street with good tree cover for most of the way.
For years, the section of Ola between MLK and Columbus has been on my Tampa tour itinerary for visitors who wanted to see the historic and eccentric side of Tampa. Running south on Ola below MLK there is a house on the west side of the road with a large (maybe 10’ tall) Ferro cement sculpture of a hand in the front yard. On Indiana just west of Ola sits the original sight of the Hampton House of Jazz. Starting around 1997, Marcus Hampton (a trumpet player from the illustrious jazz family including Slide and Lionel) and his wife Rose hosted monthly concerts in their backyard featuring some of the best of local and national jazz musicians. On the last Sunday of each month a broad spectrum of people would gather to enjoy the entertainment as well as Rose’s cooking.
I always thought it was kind of ironic and maybe a little sad that the house where these aging musicians gathered was directly across the street from the Showmen’s Rest Cemetery. A part of the Woodlawn Cemetery, Showmen’s Rest is actually the resting place of many of the area’s carnival workers, most notably the famous Lobster Boy. The other cemeteries on this site, Centro Asturiano, Sha’ari Zedek, and Rodef Shalom hold the graves of many of Tampa’s Jewish and Latin residents. At the southern end of the cemetery, across Ola, is Gram’s Place, a somewhat haphazardly constructed bed and breakfast dedicated to the late singer/songwriter Gram Parsons. A Florida native, Parsons’ own body was destined for burial in New Orleans when it was stolen from the LA airport by his road manager Phil Kaufman. Aided by an accomplice, a borrowed Hearse, and a large quantity of alcohol, Kaufman transported the body to Joshua Tree National Monument where he doused the casket in gasoline and set it ablaze in accordance with Parson’s wishes. As I pass the compound I can hear the strains of Parsons’ duet with Emmy Lou Harris “We’ll Sweep Out The Ashes In The Morning”.
About 55 minutes in I arrive at New World and realize that I’ve beaten everyone else there. I read somewhere recently that immediately following a run, your body’s “tanks” are wide open and ready to be replenished. I spend the evening topping them off with pizza and beer.

Did Someone Fartlek?

2005-08-10T18:00:00.000-04:00

I’ve been feeling like my workouts could be a little more strenuous. Today I did forty minutes on the elliptical machine and I still felt strong, so I got on the treadmill. I decided to run one mile at a nice brisk (for me) pace, and I did one in 8:40. This is probably as fast as I’ve ever run a full mile.

Hobnobbing With The Goobersmoochers

2005-08-09T15:30:00.000-04:00

Ft. Brooke 6.3mi

View Interactive Map

Today’s run seemed like it was destined to fail at every turn. When I woke up about 6:30 it was raining and I decided to wait a little while before going out. By the time I decided that I would just run in the rain, it was too late to have Jan pick me up at the finish. I wanted to run about six miles along the river, and these routes don’t seem to lend themselves to loops with even numbered mileage. The bridges are spaced about a mile apart and my house is about a half mile from the river, so any loop route ends up being an odd number of miles. Besides, I had spent the time on Monday to lay out the maps on both mapcard and the Gmaps pedometer. I decided to wait until the evening, hoping that Jan would want to go to the gym and could pick me up there.
Jan came home a little earlier than I expected and wanted to go to the gym before the five o’clock crowd got there, so I ended up running in the heat again. It was fairly overcast though and I made sure to take my time.
On the path below the Hillsborough Avenue bridge I find a briefcase broken open, its contents strewn about the rocks and in the water, obviously stolen from a neighborhood car or home. This sidewalk underpass has only been here a few years, since the completion of the new bridge, but the city has done its best to return it to its former wild state. The guardrails are all broken, the weeds have grown up as tall as me, and the sidewalk is covered in thick green algae from the constant bridge runoff. The little nooks below the overpass make a pretty decent bed, and they are often pressed into service in this capacity. This is the one and only place where I have witnessed hobo sex. I think the riverfront view lends itself to romance.
Again I’m trying to follow the river as closely as possible, but I remember that the river road comes out right at the foot of the MLK bridge. This is a dangerous crossing to make in a car and I don’t think I want to try it on foot. Instead I head south on North Boulevard, cross at the light, and go west to the river. When I make it to the bridge I see what looks like a footpath underneath it, this could solve my street-crossing problem in the future.
Heading south I pass the Franciscan monastery and convent. I’m amused at the number of “No Trespassing” signs posted on their grounds. They might forgive those that trespass against them, but they certainly don’t encourage it. I’m starting to wonder why it’s important for me to stay close to this river. Most of my time is spent craning my neck over the fences and between the houses trying to get a glimpse of it. One house actually has a sign that says the premises are patrolled by trained attack dogs. Man, that’s harsh.
A few years ago, one of the homeowners next to Rivercrest Park put a privacy fence around their backyard, blocking the river view from the street. One of the neighbors across the street put a sign up in his lawn that said, “A six foot fence destroyed my happiness.” I’ll bet those two guys didn’t go out to mow their lawns at the same time anymore.
As the river heads back to the east, I follow its curve and cross North Boulevard at the foot of the bridge. Here I pass the old docks and Tampa Armature Works at the western terminus of Seventh Avenue. The streets and architecture here show their obvious connection to Ybor City. At Tampa Street I head south again, past the Oceanic market and under the interstate. Again I take Franklin Street past the succession of boarded up storefronts. Is Soul Train Shoes still in business?

Going Berzerker

2005-08-07T18:30:00.000-04:00

Alicia 3.3mi

As the gym is not open on Sundays, on these days I usually opt to walk for my crosstraining. I think I’m reaching a breaking point with the walking. In order for me to get my heart rate up to where I want it, I have to walk as fast as I possibly can. This makes for a very unnatural motion that I think may be even more stressful than running. I’m considering simply switching to a nice easy run on these days. Because Sunday is my last workout before Tuesday’s long run, it is especially important that I don’t overexert myself on these days.
The Sligh Avenue bridge is open again, so I decide to head up that way for my walk. I cross over the river and bear south along the west bank. Somewhere in this neighborhood is Joe Redner’s house, but I don’t think I can identify it from the street and for some reason he doesn’t have a “Leave Joe Alone” sign in his yard.

Hello...

2005-08-06T09:10:00.000-04:00

UTBT/Gardner 4.1mi

I ran the UTBT north via Linebaugh to Gardner Road and back. I’m a little cautious about running this route in the early morning as there is a little bit of road running involved, and at this time of year it is still very dark at six a.m.
I put on my headlamp and ran in the oncoming lane to make myself a little more visible. I got to the trailhead about 6:20 and was surprised at the number of other runners I encountered. I had forgotten that today was Saturday. I waved and said hello to everyone and, as usual, all of the men waved and said hello, and all of the women pretended not to have seen me. I don’t know if there are men who go out running at six in the morning to pick up women, but it seems unlikely to me.
I felt strong and relaxed, and the temperature wasn’t too brutal yet. I ran my usual 11:00 pace and all of the mile markers were right where I expected them to be.

Gold Washes Ashore

2005-08-04T14:30:00.000-04:00

Park Circle 4.25

It took me a little while to get out the door after I got home from work. I knew that it was going to be hot out, and I wanted to pick the route with the most possible shade. One thing that I have noticed about using aerials to lay out routes is that I tend to pick routes in the direct sun because they are easier to see in the photos. The street grids on mapcard don’t always register very well at the higher resolutions so sometimes you have to guess at the location of the street when it is under tree cover. This is even more difficult when the route is on a trail or alley that is not marked on the map. I think that I need to start toggling between google maps and mapcard because the street maps on google are much more accurate and the aerial photos are more current. I have been looking at ways to use google maps on the blog site, but what I have found so far makes it seem pretty technically involved. I would like to be able to imbed photos, routes, and text into the maps, but I think right now this is beyond my capabilities.
I ran the “Shelley’s” route from a few days ago until I reached Patterson and 12th St. Here I took Park Circle and continued to follow the river as it winds to the north. This is a somewhat newer neighborhood made up mostly of 60’s ranch style houses. There is a thick canopy of oaks along most of the route, which helped some to mediate the ninety-plus degree weather.
These river corridors are such strange, insular communities. The only access to these houses sometimes is through crack addled, decaying streets in the more neglected parts of town. Where these streets dead end at the river road, it’s as if you’ve stumbled into a sort of oasis. The foliage is lush and well manicured, the gated driveways have intercom talk boxes for security, and the only pickup trucks on the street are pulling trailers full of lawn equipment. I wonder how these people give directions to their houses. It must be embarrassing for them to think that their dinner party guests could be propositioned by a prostitute while waiting for a light to change. Or to think that they might stop at Alpine Liquor for a last –minute house warming gift and find themselves perusing the aisles of Boone’s Farm and Thunderbird while listening to the cashiers answer the phone by giving out the days lotto numbers before saying hello.
Maybe these people are above that. Maybe they don’t care what the cultural elite thinks about their choice of neighborhoods. There is not a single house in Avila or Cheval that sits on a site as beautiful as any of these houses on the river, but as with anything, there are compromises to be made.
I have worked on houses in Avila where you first have to go through security at the front gate. Here the guard calls the residence to make sure that you are expected. Upon reaching the residence, you have to call them on the intercom to have them let you through their own private gate. Then when you get up to the house you have to ring the doorbell so that they can come down and unlock the front door for you. In the middle of the day.
After this kind of production, you would expect to find large, unguarded piles of gold lying around inside, but all I ever found were tiny dogs peeing on the carpet. Some things just don’t change much.
I guess all of this security must provide some peace of mind though. I read an article in the paper the other day that said something like sixty percent of people surveyed in the Palm River area of Tampa viewed the possibility of their own murder as the number one threat to their well being. By contrast, of the respondents in Avila and Cheval, not a single one ranked murder as being among their primary concerns. (Addendum: so my figures were a little off, but you get the gist. Read the survey results for yourself here.)
Any type of waterfront property commands a higher price, but there is apparently a difference between living on a lake in Lutz, and living on a NAVIGABLE waterway in the center of town. Just imagine the possibilities for a naval assault!
I reach the northern end of Park Circle and head east to 22nd Street. North of me is a large piece of vacant land along the river that I have explored once or twice before. This property is crossed by several footpaths with small wooden bridges across creeks that flow down to the river. The paths are cluttered with old carnival equipment and the detritus from an ongoing series of homeless encampments. This is where the majority of Joel Brown’s Heart of Darkness was filmed. I’ll have to save this exploration for another day and a longer run.
I head south on 22nd in the full sun, glad that I only have another half mile to go before Jan picks me up at the finish.

View From The West Bank

2005-08-02T12:00:00.000-04:00

West/Lowry 5.8mi

View Interactive Map

My long run for the week was supposed to be five miles, but I laid out a route that turned out to be 5.8 miles and I thought that I would be able to handle it. I wanted to run along the west bank of the river, and with the bridge still closed at Sligh, this was the shortest possible route.
I ran about a 10:00 pace for the first mile and then started to bring the pace down a little.
The west bank route provided a nice change of scenery. Heading north from Hillsborough Ave., the river road runs right along the water allowing access and views for everyone, while the houses still have a river view from across the street. It would have been nice if the city planners had the foresight to lay out all of the streets this way.
I thread my way through these winding streets under the cover of oaks, keeping the river in sight if I can. I run through the construction zone at the Sligh bridge and head north into Lowry Park. This part of the route is familiar to me, and now I have some reference points for my distance from home. I’m feeling pretty strong at about four miles in and I say hello to Andrew who happens to be walking out of his shop as I pass by.
At 4.5 miles I can sense that this was the terminus of my last long run. It’s not that I hit a wall, but there was definitely an obstacle there, more of a curb perhaps. This is an encouraging feeling though, when I realize that the long run is having its desired effect – pushing my level of endurance a little farther each week. I struggle through the next half mile and then the weight suddenly lifts. I feel like I could sprint the last 8/10ths of a mile home. I know better than this though, and I relax and make it to the house at 67 minutes for an 11:30 pace. My finish heart rate is 160 and after about eight minutes of walking, my legs don’t even feel tight.

Caught In The Act

2005-07-31T09:15:00.000-04:00

North UTBT 3 mi

Sunday morning I hit the UTBT for the required forty minute walk before work. I take the old standby three-mile out and back route to Linebaugh. I know that my former captain runs this route from his station to the south and I’m hoping that I don’t run into him while I’m doing this powerwalking. About three-quarters of a mile in, I hear footsteps and a voice behind me. “Good morning Devon,” followed by “What are you doing, warming up?” I fall in with him and jog for a minute or so, explaining the training program that I’m doing. We both stop to walk for a minute at the UTBT’s two-mile marker, and he looks disappointedly at his watch. “Do you think that these mile markers are too far apart?” I always think that they are too far apart. I tell him that the next time that we are at a station together I’ll show him how to use the mapcard site to figure out the mileage of his routes.
I borrowed a pair of Jan’s socks because mine had been causing hotspots on the balls of my feet when I walked. These socks solved that problem, but they didn’t come up high enough on my achilles and the backs of my shoes had rubbed me raw there after a few miles. I ended up running the last mile or so just because it was easier on my chafed heels.

Weirdo The Dog Murderer

2005-07-30T22:00:00.001-04:00

Shelley's 3.7mi

Jan and I went out to meet some friends at a party in the neighborhood last night and I ended up drinking a little more than my share. We were drinking Hefeweizen from a keg and I think it was a little more powerful than your average keg of Budweiser. I had enough that at some point a guy that I had been talking to outside excused himself and went inside ostensibly to get another drink. While he was inside he told the present company, Jan included, that he had been talking to some “weirdo” outside who wouldn’t shut up. Jan and our other friends looked outside to see only me standing there. They thought this was the most hilarious thing they had seen all night.
I had a ten o’clock meeting in north Tampa the next morning, and I had been going on and on about how I was going to run there in the morning. After a protracted battle with the alarm clock, I got up about 9:30 and just barely managed to make it there on time by car. Running, for the time being, was completely out of the question.
In the afternoon I started to feel a little better just as the thunderclouds started rolling in to view. It only rained for a few minutes, but the sky was black and there was lightning and thunder all around. I watched on the satellite as the system moved to the north, and as soon as it seemed to have passed I headed out.
I followed the river to the north over a new route that I discovered while out driving around the other day. There is a sidewalk and an alley that connects Hollywood on the east of I-275 to Hanlon on the west. The path goes under I-275 and along the river. I had been exploring the neighborhood off of Hanlon between Florida and the interstate. This area consists of a couple blocks of riverfront property that have been kind of forgotten due to their isolation and their former proximity to a large and severely neglected public housing project. This housing project has since been demolished and rebuilt as a much more attractive apartment complex, and I have a feeling that this area will not be forgotten for long.
The thunderheads were still visible to the north and there was an almost constant undertone of thunder, but the lightning was infrequent and obviously far away. I crossed Nebraska Ave. at the foot of the bridge and watched intently for the roofs of cars cresting its rise. I ran down Hanlon to the east and into what turned out to be a dead end, so I backtracked out and headed south. I ran down Patterson past one of my favorite houses on the river. This three-story house was apparently designed by an architect as his personal residence and has since been subdivided into three units. I remember when we were looking for houses in 1997; this house was on the market for $175,000 which seemed like an astronomical amount of money to me when I was making $11 an hour. This house could probably sell for a half million dollars now. If only I’d had 175 grand when I was twenty-three.
This was about the point when the dogs started chasing me. It started with the chow. Avery rough, obviously street hardened chow came running from a driveway on my right and fell in behind me. What scared me was that the dog never made a sound. When a dog runs after you and barks ferociously, it’s obvious that he’s trying to drive you away. When a dog silently sneaks up behind you, my guess is that he’s going to bite your ass. I know that dogs can smell fear and my only hope is that this scent is overpowered by the strength of my body odor. I smell like a wino in a sauna.
Whenever I’m in one of these predicaments, my mind starts running through all sorts of wild scenarios. What do I do when (not if) this dog bites me? Should I punch it in the head? I don’t think I’ll be able to kick it because it will probably be latched onto my leg. I start thinking that I should be running with a stick for protection. Somehow though, this seems like an invitation to aggressive behavior for both dogs and humans. Then I actually consider carrying a gun. I know that you need all sorts of special permits to carry a concealed weapon, but what if I just run around with it in my hand? Would that be legal? Finally, I decide that if anything happens I’ll just rip its throat out. I’ll grab its trachea between my thumb and forefinger and pull. This seems like it will work just fine. Maybe I’m not getting enough oxygen to my brain. I slow my pace a little and the dog falls away at the next block.
About a mile later, I get chased by a large and very unhappy looking Rottweiler. Jeff Galloway says that one of the tricks to motivate yourself on a long run is to recite a mantra. I return to my mantra for the day. “Go for the throat, go for the throat”. Not that I need the motivation. Another great motivator is being chased by a bloodthirsty animal. Ahead I see another dog barking furiously behind a chain-link fence and instinctively I run towards it. The Rottweiler forgets all about me, and starts trying to get through the fence to murder the other dog. It was so easy, like getting rid of a weirdo at a party.

Crooked Legs

2005-07-28T21:15:00.000-04:00

Camino Villa 3.3mi

I can’t seem to force myself to remember to take a waking pulse every day. When I do remember, I’m always afraid that the minute that I’m sitting still watching the clock I will fall back asleep. I have been monitoring my resting pulse during the day and it seems to hover around 51-56 bpm.
This morning I started off feeling like I had plenty of energy, but my legs started cramping in the first mile and I never was able to stretch them out. Something was definitely out of whack, whether it was my body or the road I’m not sure, but the tightness was in my right shin and my left achilles. I took a lot of walk/stretch breaks and ended up running about a twelve minute pace.
I saw lightning in the distance starting out so I decided to stay close to the station. I ended up running through the subdivision off of Camino Villa, which was good for my general knowledge of the area. I think if I spend some time running in these neighborhoods I’ll be much more efficient when it comes to finding them on calls. This looked like a relatively standard subdivision, but I kept hearing roosters crowing from people’s backyards, and everyone who was leaving on their way to work was putting water in their radiator first. Everyone seemed to be eyeing me suspiciously and no one said “Hello”, but then again neither did I.

Party People

2005-07-26T12:00:00.000-04:00

Ft. Brooke 4.4mi

View Interactive Map

I’ve been reading “Tampa: Before The Civil War” by Canter Brown Jr. This text covers Tampa history from its inception at the establishment of Fort Brooke in January of 1824 until presumably 1861, when the civilian population of Tampa still numbered only 800 individuals. Based on these descriptions of Tampa’s early years, anyone with any sense would have said that this remote military outpost on the Florida frontier was destined to be a ghost town.
The site where Fort Brooke once stood sits at the eastern bank of the Hillsborough River, where it empties into Hillsborough Bay. This site is now occupied by the Tampa Convention Center and the Fort Brooke parking garage, which houses the downtown YMCA. Today I did the run to Fort Brooke, and I used Jan as my sag wagon. I like these one-way runs sometimes because I get to venture out a little further and it makes for a greater sense of accomplishment.
I started out feeling strong despite the heat, and I did a pretty good job of keeping the pace down and sticking to the shade wherever possible. I had predicted for Jan that it would take me about 50 minutes to run this route, but this time I didn’t feel obligated to live up to my estimate. Running at this kind of pace really leaves room for your mind to wander, and I enjoyed this new and somewhat unfamiliar route. Of course I’ve driven this route into downtown Tampa probably hundreds of times, but the experience on foot can be completely different. I’ve noticed before when I’m running that the general feeling that I have about Tampa is a lot closer to the feeling that I’ve gotten in other cities and it starts to make Tampa feel a little more cosmopolitan somehow. Not that the city seems more glamorous, it actually seems much dirtier, but its dirtiness seems more like the dirtiness in other more “real” cities. I realize that my sense of the city, its scale, and the richness of the experiences within it are shaped largely by my mode of transport. My experience of other large cities is shaped by a pedestrian perspective that I don’t usually have in my hometown. Tampa is almost universally viewed as a pedestrian unfriendly city, and the idea of traveling around Tampa on foot out of anything other than absolute necessity is as laughable to most of its citizens as going for a Sunday drive in Manhattan. By the same token, I’ve often commented on the similarities of other cities to Tampa when I’ve entered them by car and navigated their sprawling outskirts of billboards and parking lots.
Traffic lights are my nemesis. I like to establish a rhythm and settle into it, and sometimes these lights make it impossible. Sometimes I get impatient and cross against the light, but when you’re running you don’t quite have the lead time that you need to break the intersection safely and I can see that this behavior could result in a very unfortunate outcome. I’ll have to learn to just calm down and wait. At least when you’re taking walk breaks you can just bump up the time of your next break and not have to worry about it too much.
This preoccupation with time, efficiency, etc. is something I’m going to have to work on some more. I can see myself getting better gradually, and my sense of enjoyment on these runs has increased greatly.
One thing that I have noticed a lot more from the sidewalk is the boarding houses. Some of the buildings are so dilapidated on the exterior that I can only imagine what they must be like on the inside. The city’s code enforcement squad must cut a wide swath around these places. I think that they would prefer to spend their time in places where the property values are on the rise.
I pass by one boardinghouse at about 9:30 am and the stoop party is already in full swing. People are sitting out in the morning sun drinking forties from brown paper sacks and settling into a rhythm all their own. These people rarely acknowledge my presence other than perhaps a quick nod of the head, but I often wonder what they think of this sweaty little white boy running through their neighborhood. Generally, I think the only people who really like to talk to runners are of the corny old man variety. That’s fine with me because I’m always up for a corny old man joke. So far my favorite line is “You know if you had just left earlier you wouldn’t have to run.”
I was reading “Midnight Culmination” the other day and Rachel was writing about this same part of town. She said that when she rides her bike past the Salvation Army she is greeted with “Hey Bike Lady!” to which she responds “Hey Homeless People!” Somehow I don’t see that working out for me.
The sun is starting to beat down now as I cross south of the tree line at Palm Ave. I put on my Roy Orbison wrap-around shades and look towards downtown where I can hide in the shadows of the skyscrapers. Just past the Army Navy Surplus store I cut over one block to Franklin Street’s northern terminus and I’m on the main artery of Tampa’s historic downtown. The brick sidewalks roll nicely underfoot and I run past the landmarks of Tampa’s once vibrant downtown scene, past the faded mural for the Carriage Repository, the remains of the Kress building, Maas Brothers department store, and the old Woolworth’s where, even when I was a teenager, you could still get a grilled cheese and a malt at the soda fountain. While we waited for our food we would go to the aisle with the alarm clocks and set them all to go off at the same time. Then we would eat our sandwiches and wait for the explosion of noise from the other side of the store. The only real landmarks that remain functional are the Tampa Theater and The Hub (although The Hub’s location has changed). The Hub has long been known for mixing the strongest drinks in town. When I worked the night shift in Largo, I would race across the bridge to make it to The Hub before last call. I would have two Jack and ginger ales before closing and drive straight home. Usually the buzz would kick in right about the time my key hit the lock on the front door.
A few more blocks and I’m into the heart of corporate downtown where the few street vendors and cafes are starting to prepare for the lunch rush. I stop to read a historical marker about a 1909 auto race from Tampa to Jacksonville and I see Jan up ahead, waiting for me at the car.

Pacheco's Ybor

2005-07-25T18:00:00.000-04:00

Thomas 3.2mi

Yesterday I went for a walk with Jan in the evening before going out to dinner with the family. I tried not to push too hard, as yesterdays run had left me feeling pretty wasted. I forgot to check my waking pulse again this morning, but my resting rate was 51 so I figured I hadn’t overdone it too badly.
Today is my off day. Tomorrow will be my “long run” although at this stage my long runs are actually a little shorter than my training runs. I am at Station 35 in Westchase today so I laid out a route on mapcard for a four-mile run on the golf course, but now I think I would rather go home and run in the neighborhood. This mapping project is starting to affect my choice of running routes. I used to prefer to run out here on the UTBT, but it is much harder to vary the routes and I just can’t see much historical significance in this area.
Lately I’ve been reading some about mountaineering and rock climbing and one of the things that fascinates me about these sports is the artistic component that is involved. Climbers are very concerned with issues of “style” and “ethics”, and they often plan their routes with an eye towards the elegance of the lines created and the moves necessary to execute them. Placing protection along a route has strong aesthetic and ethical concerns because all future climbers on that route will be forced to follow your lead. If you lay out a route that is unimaginative or clumsy you are doing a disservice to yourself, your fellow climbers, and ultimately the mountain itself. Many of these climbers are accomplished visual artists in their own right and they spend a great deal of time producing exquisite maps and renderings of their routes.
Last night I downloaded all of my mapcard routes for the last two weeks. I registered the routes against an aerial photo, and I made each layer semitransparent so that they would be darker where the routes overlapped. Once I had all of the routes in place I deleted the background so that I could see the lines of the routes more clearly. I was taken with the beauty of the lines in this map, and I immediately started thinking about new routes to run in order to fill it out or add new compositional elements to the line work.
I lay in bed with the image of this map developing in my head. I thought about the “Universe Within” exhibit in San Francisco where the vasculature of the cadavers had been polymerized and the rest of the tissue had been dissolved from around it. These were like three-dimensional maps of the vasculature suspended in space.
I kept thinking about Chantel Foretich’s installation about her walk to the House of Meats. A delicate sculpture suspended in space with a miniature replica of the House of Meats and a long ribbon of sidewalk leading back to her house. A sweet little poem about love, loss, and shopping for meat.
These running maps are beginning to form a sort of vasculature. I think of covering a floor with aerial photos and suspending this vascular model in the space above it. The man/city metaphor comes to mind again and I think of reading Williams’ “Patterson” again as well as Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”.
I just finished Ferdie Pacheco’s “Ybor Chronicles” and its imagery plays through my head on these runs through town. I try to imagine this city as he describes it in the 30’s and 40’s. Running down Central Ave. I can see how the two interstates (I-275 and I-4) have broken the continuity and the spirit of this part of town. Pacheco refers to Cuscaden Park as being in Ybor city and this strikes me as odd. I had never considered it to be a part of Ybor because it is north of I-4. I think of the trolley that ran up Central Ave. to Sulphur Springs, and I can’t believe I’ve never been on Central south of Robles Park. I would like to put together a Ferdie Pacheco tour of this part of tow, maybe for one of my long runs. Points of interest would include his home in Tampa Heights on Lamar, his grandparents house and the former Spanish consulate on Columbus, the Ybor social clubs (Centro Asturiano, Centro Espanol, the Italian Club, the Cuban Club), Cuscaden Park, the Columbia Restaurant, and the downtown landmarks on Franklin Street.
Some of the most vivid imagery in Pacheco’s book is a simple list of the sensory experiences of Ybor, especially the smells. The Cuban coffee being roasted, the devil crabs cooking, Cuban bread baking, and the ever-present cigar smoke. All of these conjure up vivid memories of the Ybor that I have known growing up. Some of these experiences can still be had for those who know where to look. Naviera still roasts their own coffee on Seventh Avenue where you can get an espresso and a pound of coffee so fresh that its oils soak through it s brown paper bag. Carmines still makes the best devil crab you’ve ever had, and Mauricio’s still bakes Cuban bread twenty four hours a day so that you can get a hot loaf for $1.30 on a drunken Friday night (they don’t bake on Saturday night because all of the Cuban restaurants are closed on Sunday).

Flight 19

2005-07-23T17:30:00.000-04:00

Flight 19 4.4mi

So, my laps around the station never happened. I didn't want to go in the heat of the day and then I had dinner to prepare and food to digest. I guess I should have just done it early and gotten it out of the way.
I had a nice urban adventure run today. I ran down to the new Flight 19 Gallery located in the old baggage claim of Tampa's Union Station. This route took me through some of the most neglected parts of Tampa. I went down Central Ave. through Robles Park. I don't think I've ever been on Central south of the park, and I was surprised at how beautiful and well kept some of the homes were down there. I took Columbus east to Nebraska and went south past the Centro Asturiano towards the train station.
The heat was starting to take its toll and my pulse at the split was 180, so I increased my walk breaks to 4:1 and then 4:2 for awhile. I'm starting to get a feel for the way in which the temperature can affect your pace, but I obviously went out too hard. I had told Jan that I would meet her at the gallery 45 minutes from leaving the house and I think it was a point of pride for me to make it there on time. Now I know not to set time goals like that on training runs.

Rivercrest Trail

2005-07-21T10:00:00.000-04:00

Rivercrest 4mi

I got up about 6:30 and picked out a new route on mapcard before leaving. A large sinkhole opened up at Sligh Ave. and the river the other day and the bridge has been closed for repairs. I need to go up and take some pictures of the sinkhole before they fill it in.
I saw an article in the Seminole Heights newsletter about a trail section that opened in Rivercrest Park on Osborne, so I decided to run down there and check it out.
I felt good starting out and I tried to concentrate on a smooth, relaxed form. I like to imagine that my head is a movie camera and I am trying to make a nice smooth dolly shot with as little camera shake as possible.
I covered the first mile in less than ten minutes and I felt like I had my legs and lungs with me. The new trail section is nice and it expands the amount of riverfront running that I can do.
I put in for overtime and I got called to go to Station 17 in Ruskin. I'm working tomorrow at Station 39 so I'll have to figure out a way to get some cross training in. Maybe I'll just walk some laps around the station.

Tour Aspirations

2005-07-21T01:00:00.000-04:00

I went to the gym with Jan when I got home from work. I did forty minutes on the elliptical at a resistance of seven. My pace count stayed around 140 and the workout felt nice and easy. I'm going to miss Lance Armstrong next year if he doesn't race the Tour. When the Tour is going it's one of the few times I look forward to doing cardio at the gym. I followed the cardio with the same weight routine that I did the other day. This seems like a good workout, it only takes a few minutes and after the last time I had a good all-over soreness in my upper body that made me think I was getting a pretty good all around workout.

Egg Lakes

2005-07-19T09:20:00.000-04:00

North UTBT 3 mi

I ran the three mile circuit from Station 38 up the trail to Linebaugh and back. I didn't stretch at all and I think I paid the price a little. My calves and achilles were feeling tight the whole way. I felt like I had the lungs for it, but my legs didn't want to cooperate. My pulse stayed within range and my time was not too bad.

Bo's Meats

2005-07-17T12:00:00.000-04:00

Bo's Meats 2.8mi

I took things slowly for a couple of reasons. First, by the time I got home from work the sun was already high in the sky and the temperature was pushing ninety degrees. We didn't sleep a lot last night and I already hadn't been feeling so well yesterday.
I took the camera with me and I walked a new route past a few Seminole Heights landmarks like Bo's Ice Cream and the House Of Meats. I wanted to do a little photo documentation, but the camera batteries crapped out on my when I tried to take the first picture.
Jan and I met Eric for breakfast at Three Coins and I had a big plate of eggs, pancakes, and bacon before Eric and I set off to do some work on his house. We spent the day knocking down a cinderblock wall and framing it out for french doors. We didn't stop for lunch and I didn't drink much water. About 5:00 a drank a couple of beers and I felt like I was going to pass out.
We met the family for dinner later and by 9:30 I was at home and asleep on the couch.

Two Burritos, Three Beers, Four Miles

2005-07-16T09:20:00.000-04:00

UTBT Dump 3.9mi

We went out to Rick's On The River for a few drinks with some friends. When we got home it was about 10:30 and I was starving. We didn't have much in the fridge other than some eggs and tortillas, so I made some breakfast burritos, ate, and went straight to bed. I don't usually like to eat so close to bed time and I realized later that I should have just had a protein bar or something.
I started running from the station at around 6:20 and I was feeling a little winded by my second walk break at only 11 minutes. I kept trying to hold the pace down but I kept my walk breaks at 5:1.
I thought I could take the UTBT south from Linebaugh after looping around the dump, but I was about 29 minutes in when I got to the turnoff and I thought it might take me another 20 minutes to get back that way. I went back the way that I came which I knew to be about 8 minutes and I ran about a quarter mile past the station and back to make it an even 40 minutes. This route on mapcard.com comes out to 3.9mi and the other way would have been about 4.2. Even trying to hold back and not feeling great I ran 45 seconds per mile faster than my run the other day. No wonder my finish pulse was 180!

Five After Midnight

2005-07-14T22:45:00.000-04:00

Lowry 3.5mi

I decided not to run coming off duty this morning because the sun was already over the trees and it was well above 80 degrees. On top of that, we ran five calls after midnight and I 'm feeling a little sleep deprived.
Instead, Jan and I join some friends for a brunch of country-fried steak with mashed potatoes, gravy, and soup, and I spend the day farting around with the computer, napping and watching movies.
In the evening the storm clouds roll in and I'm watching the radar for a break. Finally about 7:45 I decide to go for it and I tell Jan the route I'm taking in case it really opens up.
There's a light rain falling and the air is cool and breezy. I haven't even broken a sweat by the first mile. Lowry Park is virtually deserted and I run the path along the river accompanied by two young boys on bicycles. Around a bend in the river I can see the white water tower looming up ahead. The creeks are swollen with rain and everything seems so lush. My feet are soaked from the puddles but I feel strong and I've settled into a nice easy pace.
At the water tower I head south across the river and run for a few blocks past the crack addled motels and boarding houses along Florida Ave. before cutting back into the neighborhood. The sun has gone down and I'm wishing I had brought my headlamp. This route is one that I picked out on mapcard.com. I'm enjoying the surprise of running an unfamiliar route, but the street signs are getting hard to read.
I can definitely tell the difference when I'm using the Galloway method. I have been spacing my walk breaks 5:1 and at the end of a run like this my legs feel great. I have been trying to do a walking cooldown as well and I think this has also aided in my recovery times.

Power Walk of Shame

2005-07-13T09:15:00.000-04:00

South UTBT 3.7mi

Wednesday morning before the start of my shift I take a brisk walk from the station south to the Upper Tampa Bay Trail. Here I head south along the canal and then loop north around the water plant and up Montague to Waters. Even after a year at this station I can't pass Montague Street without getting a Bob Dylan lyric stuck in my head "I lived with them on Montague Street in a basement down the stairs." Somehow I think the apartments around Westchase's fake little Main Street come up short on the bohemian flophouse charm.
I'm a little self conscious about this required power walking, and I hope that I don't run into anyone from my crew on their way into work. My shoe/sock combo which works great for running is creating a lot of friction on the balls of my feet and I fear that I'm developing blisters. I maintain a good 13 min/mile pace and I'm back at the station before anyone else makes it in.

Berzerkers

2005-07-08T21:00:00.000-04:00

Henry & Ola 2.6mi

I'm trying to get in a three mile run between work and the arrival of hurricane Dennis. Trying to hold the pace back, so I walk most of the route. Down to the street and west to the stop sign. Turn to the north and a block ahead a neighbor has landscaped his side yard on the outside of his privacy fence, a gift to the rest of us. These summer rains have nourished it into a dense thicket of flowers and vines. It seems like it may just cross the street and run through the neighborhood like a wildfire. Fine by me.
At the next block I usually turn left, but today I continue north one more block before cutting west towards the river. I head down the short incline past the two brothers who seem to be perpetually walking this same one block stretch of sloping, pot-holed pavement. They both walk with the same angry, stomping, arm flailing gait to the top of the small rise only to turn around and stomp back down to the bottom. They have been doing this for years now. They were both large fat men when they started. Now they are tall robust berzerkers.
I like to imagine that the damage to this stretch of road was all caused by their incessant pounding, slowly etching their route into these bricks. I wonder what their neighbors think. It makes for one hell of a neighborhood watch.
Past the berzerker brothers I turn left and down the narrow alley that leads to the river park. Down to the river and I'm back on my old circuit. Watch for dogshit here. Up a little rise and back onto the pavement. Past the old marina and its fleet of decaying and sunken houseboats. There are a few new additions to the river bottom after last years string of four hurricanes. Follow the river road to its end and turn left towards the ball fields. On summer nights you can hear the calls from the dugouts blocks away on my front porch.
I leave my old route again to go one block south and walk past the house of Steven Lorenzo who is believed to have raped and killed several young men that he picked up in gay bars around town. I'm amazed at how well kept the house is, I guess I figured it would look a little more like mine.
A light rain is starting to fall and I cut into an alley for a straight shot north to my house. The sky is starting to look threatening so I pick up the pace. It crosses my mind that running down the alley in a pouring rain is not entirley normal behavior, but as the lightning begins to strike I'm not concerned with appearances for long.