Running on Mars!

I was finally able to run for the first time in quite a few weeks tonight (yesterday by the time you read this).  Poor respiratory health has tried to keep me from my marathon training, I’m finally back and although my body really tried to make me think I didn’t want to run, it felt great once I did.  Boy was it NOT like riding a bike though.

You all know my issue with GEAR.  It has been so long since I ran last that I actually some entirely new gear this time and all the excitement began with me filling my Camelbak and promptly dumping it all down the front of the refrigerator.  Naturally, my response was to stand there with a limp sack in my hands babbling like an idiot until my wife told me to get a towel.

Long story short, I had to retie my shoes a few times because my new insoles felt funny, couldn’t remember how to use my watch (finished my run in 00:00:00 – not bad!) and fumbled with my headphones for at least the first ¼ mile.  At least I’m healthy enough to run again.

Now I have to backtrack a little.  For the past couple weeks, I’ve been reading/listening to Red Mars in preparation for Kim Stanley Robinson’s Hugo Winner Green Mars which is the second book in the Mars Trilogy.  It has been an AMAZING book, but juggling between the HEP books and other challenges/reading whims have me pausing and restarting and generally taking forever to read an already massive book.

I think the only reason I’ve been able to jump back and forth is because Red Mars is so good.  It doesn’t feel like someone imagined the colonization of Mars the way they’d like it to be, but the way that it inevitably must be.  The characters are compelling, convincing, terribly and realistically flawed and the dialogue (and sometimes monologues) just feels right.  And the Science.  Oh god, the Science…

So, it is taking quite a long time to get through but it is always in the forefront of my mind, even as I switch back and forth with other great books like The Lies of Locke Lamora.  So much so that when I came within 30 mins of finishing part 2 of the audiobook this weekend, I decided to finish it during my run last night.

About the time that I was half-way through my run, I had reached the climactic scene when everyone had gathered to witness the icy asteroid burn up in the Martian atmosphere.  I started to get a sensation that I was running down a darkening tunnel when Hiroko approached John Boone and called for a speech.  The tingly burst that hit my spine harder than any 2^nd wind came on right when everyone started chanting BOONE!  BOONE!  BOONE!

I was running pretty slowly since I hadn’t run in a while, so I know it wasn’t my endorphins.  But I swear if I had jumped, I would have flown.  The combination of running again and listening to Boone’s speech was a feeling unlike anything else and that same tingle kept hitting me over and over throughout his speech to the crowd of “Martians”.

Another part of the experience was John Boone’s ability to speak and inspire off-the-cuff.  I have occasion to speak publicly every-so-often and dang-it do I wish I could talk to a group of people like that.  It really was an inspiration.  Mentally, physically, I felt like I could do ANYTHING!  I could have run a marathon right then while convincing the world of anything I wanted.  Don’t question me on it!

So, to actually make a long story short, while Red Mars it isn’t for everyone by a long shot, as Emmeline likes to say “guac-a-moly-moly” (holy guacamole) do I not want it to end.