Tuesday, 29 April 2003

I was never athletic as a youth. Every year we took this test for the president's physical fitness award. We took it, but we never trained for it. In phys ed we did other stuff--ten minutes of calisthenics, followed by dodge ball or softball or trampoline or tumbling. Then, out of the blue, they gave us this test. I always did poorly on it. It never occurred to me that I could do well. Looking back on it, though, I could have. If they were going to give us that test, why didn't they have us do those exercises for a few months leading up to the test? If we'd run during phys ed a couple days a week, done pull-ups and sit-ups (nobody did crunches in those days) a couple days a week, I now know that I could have easily passed that test. But it was only as an adult that I figured out that I could be fit.

I went for a run today. I hadn't run during our road trip, and then I hurt my ankle the first day we got back, so I skipped running Sunday and Monday. But today the ankle felt fine, so I went for a run. I just did one lap around the lake, so about 1.5 miles. Since I had decided I was only going to do one lap, I didn't feel like I needed to hold anything back to be sure I could finish the run, so when I felt good I went ahead and ran hard. Early in the season I have to run as slow as I possibly can, just in order to be able to finish a run, but that's not really the most comfortable pace. This time I was able to stretch out a bit. It felt great.

In her journal, Karina says that she's started running. Now we just need to get Thomas and Marissa running. Maybe we can start a whole community of f&sf writers who keep journals and run.

Clarion classmate Beth updated her news page with several new sales, including "A Secret Lexicon for the Not-Beautiful," which is a wonderful, wonderful story.

Clarion classmate Dora updated her journal page with news by turns funny, personal, and sad. She didn't update her publications page, but did mention several sales on the Clarion mailing list.

So, yay Beth and Dora!

Jamie Kress is going to Clarion and has a Clarion journal. I'm looking forward to reading it. She's the only Clarion journaler I've found so far, but I'll include links to any more that I turn up in the weeks ahead.