I Run the B-trails, Charisa Takes the Road to Kona

This morning I ran the trails across the street behind the village for the first time this semester.
I missed a day of training this week after getting sick, and it felt good to revisit the b-trails for a few miles of quality time.
Until today, I've been training for a halfmarathon indoors at the gym on a treadmill primarily without music. I'm not sure why I've done it this way, the weather hasn't been impossible for running outside. And even though marathon rules prohibit headphones and listening devices, most participants use them anyway.
Maybe I figured that if I could conquer the monotony of pumping out 4 to 6 and more miles on a treadmill, I could do anything with that mental discipline. Well, sure, maybe. But as I circled back today on the main trail on the bottom of the dale, I remembered that I really like to run. It wasn't until then that I realized I had forgotten that valuable little fact about myself and my reasons for training.

After the b-trails and class, I got an e-mail from my Aunt Rhonda. She passed on an article about Charisa Bauer Wernick, a Southern grad and Ironman finisher. I could say many things about the article and Charisa (or rather what the article says about Charisa), but I'll maybe get to that later and let you check out the article at this link:

http://ironman.com/events/ironman/worldchampionship/matthew-dale-profiles-ironman-competitor-charisa-wernick

For now, I'll just say that it inspired me and reminded me of being with Tiffany Blazer on our day off from Camp watching Ironman competitors cross the finish line in Couer d'Alene, Idaho. Unbeknownst to us, we probably saw Charisa finish there.

Parting Comment: I'm over treadmills.

Classic Einstein

I read this earlier today and a sense of validation for studying literature and the humanities washed over me. Not that I needed it, but if anyone wants to know why I find value in my education, Albert Einstein has provided an answer.

"Somebody who reads only newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.

There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with good taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work belongs among the most precious possessions of mankind. We owe it to a few writers of antiquity that the people of the Middle Ages could slowly extricate themselves from the superstitions and ignorance that had darkened life for more than half a millenium.

Nothing is more needed to overcome the modernist's snobbishness."


[By Albert Einstein. Written for the Jungkaufmann, a monthly publication of the "Schweizerischer Kaufmaennischer Verein, Jugendbund," February 29, 1952.]