Running in Circles

After my half marathon in June, I basically sat on my ass the rest of the summer. I mean, I still biked to work and stuff, but mostly I used the unusually high temperatures as an excuse to hangout inside instead of strapping on my shoes and pounding the pavement. Plus, my gym doubled my membership fees and I quite. And frankly, if I ran around Lake Harriet one more time I was going to kill someone. So I stopped.

Band shells drive me bat shit, evidently. 

Now that we've settled in here more in Vermont, I've tried to get back into the swing of things. I was never a morning runner in Minneapolis, but I also had to be at work at 6. Now, I don't have to head out until 11 or so, and it's only a five minute commute (par vélo, bien sûr). In the mornings, I like to go to Hubbard Park. I get to take the Vermont equivalent of the Greenway! It's one mile long. It's pathetic, but it's a start. And it leads to what's basically a mountain to a girl raised in a part of the country leveled by glaciers.

Everything green behind the capital is park. Hubbard Park.

Hubbard Park is rad. I get lost all the time. There's a lot of paths and picnic stuff and I'm pretty sure there's a Park Ranger somewhere, telling people not to start forest fires, but I haven't run into him. I only saw people have sex once. (I giggled. They did not.) The only problem is that Hubbard Park is, like, wild, so there's no lights and my pathetic headlamp doesn't have the lumens for me to wander into the wilderness. So sometimes, in the evenings, I run around the neighborhood.

Hubbard Park has this famous tower, but the park is so big I still haven't found it. Or even seen it from a distance. Hence the postcard. 

This is ostensibly for fitness but it's mostly just me ogling people's gardens. Vermonters have kick ass gardens. Barre Street is lined with poor people who all grow tomatoes. Everyone has kale. Montpelier is really, really into kale. There's a house three blocks over with two kinds of kale, plus chard growing along the sidewalk from the house to the mailbox. There are two (2!) neighborhood gardens (or maybe just people snatching up open lots?) down my street. One of them has grapes growing literally fifteen feet high.

Tonight, I saw someone was growing butternut squashes! I need to make friends with them in roughly the time it takes butternuts to ripen.

The other has a basket of squash outside the fence. This either means, "Seriously, we grew too much squash, please take some," or, "I can't carry all this squash. Let me take two trips and I hope no one steals some while I'm gone." I assumed the later, took two and sauteed them up. Delicious, with a hint of danger.

Nefarious, yet satisfying.

I run by the Vermont College of Fine Arts, which has a garden adjacent to one of it's classrooms. The restaurant associated with the culinary school in town, which everyone just calls NECI (pronounced "neck-eee") has herbs growing alongside it's patio. They're labelled, in case you didn't know what sage looked like in the wild.

New England Culinary Institute, on Main Street

Vermont was rated the healthiest state in the nation last year (MN was sixth--suckers!). I've only seen a few fellow runners out, but everyone here seems to be into veggies. Me, I just like to admire the gardens as I shuffle on by.

This was the picture CNN used to symbolise Vermont. It's basically spot on, except that should be a covered bridge, not a regular one. Also, half those buildings are haunted. (http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/06/health/list-healthiest-states-2011/index.html)

Addendum: I've been listening to a lot of Chubby Jones' podcasts in her couch to 5k series. It's basically intervals with music and compliments, and it's the best thing ever. She's on iTunes and it was honestly what got me to the point last year that I kicked the ass of that all-lady 10 miler (which led to my half marathon which led to me sitting on my ass which led to me starting back at the 5k level but still). Highly, highly, recommended. Here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chubby-jones-podcast/id286596177