North High School

Run Time 32:53 + 1-lap kick

The first time I have repeated a run. I was here in the fall. My hotel was closer that time. Got to the hotel relatively late, so just a partial run, but I amped up the velocity, so it was good. The sun was just about to go down.

Crazy weather day. Started out in the 60s in Chicago. By the time I got to Cedar Rapids, the wind had picked up considerably, and the temps were dropping. I had to put my coat back on. I had planned on running in shorts, but even sweats and a hoodie felt a little crisp.

To the east above the track, the clouds were gathering. Maybe two raindrops on the short drive from the hotel to the school. Then I looked at my weather app, and a Tornado Watch was in effect. Not a Tornado Warning. I guess the Watch is when they all gather to watch tornadoes in Iowa.

It definitely did not feel like 62 degrees. An arctic wind was blowing in from the north. The next morning, when I carried my crap out to the car, it was like stepping into Antarctica. 16 degrees, a 20 mph wind (steady), felt like 0. What the hell, Iowa? Beautiful skies, though.

Iowa Central Community College Campus

Run Time: 42:47 + 2-minute kick

Windy but unseasonably warm. Earlier, while driving in short sleeves, I had to turn the fan on cool to stay comfortable. The sun was heating up the rental car interior like it was June, not February. It was still upper forties when I got to the hotel. 

Fort Dodge is just north of US 20, the most crossed thoroughfare of my sales territory. US 20 passes within a few blocks of where my youngest son, Christopher, lives in Corvallis, OR. It bisects Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and keeps right on going east. I first tested positive for Covid just a few miles from US 20 in May, 2022, in Waterloo, IA. Some days I cross it multiple times in my work travels.

So US 20 is more of a companion than a thoroughfare. You cannot really say that US 20 is a route of affluence. It is an old route. Old routes in the US do not (or have not yet — maybe there is time) aged into beautiful old relics like the ancient roads of the Old World. Old routes in the US have a lot of houses with peeling paint, old cars, and retired appliances outside. They have strip malls where they snake through small and medium-sized towns. They are generally segmented cement, not smooth asphalt. They are wondering what the hell you are doing there driving on them — haven’t they carried enough toil and trouble?

As I turned on the access road to the hotel, I saw a group of people playing soccer on the college campus, but when I looked at my phone map to plan my run, there was no track around the soccer field. Then I noticed, as you might if you look at the map screenshot above, that there was some kind of facility across the railroad tracks within a short walking distance. The blue dot was where I was at the time, in the hotel.

I could just hop over the tracks and see if there was a trail or sidewalk to run on there. Then I wouldn’t have to cross the busy street to get to the college campus. I could see a baseball field in this “park,” but no track. As I zoomed in for a closer look, it seemed like there might be a fence blocking my access near the water tower, which I could see from my hotel. A closer look — it was a high fence. Little chance of scaling it without harm or attracting attention.

It was only later that I took another look and clicked on the map icon, which I did not recognize, to find out what the “park” really was, which was the Fort Dodge Correctional Facility. Well, that clearly would not have panned out. I might have found some running partners, the best US 20 has to offer, but it would have been strangely embarrassing if I had gotten caught trying to scale the fence to get in.

It looked great from the aerial view.

Town Streets

Run Time: 42:47 + 2:00 minute kick

A long time since I ran on a work trip. Winter work travel is greatly reduced. Stayed home for four straight weeks over Christmas and New Year. Had one trip cancelled because Boeing can’t keep all the doors on their planes. Had another trip postponed because it was too cold and arctic. Then when I made that trip through Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, outside running conditions were inconducive.

I started carrying a journal on my work trips. The first trip had lots of funny musings and deep thoughts mixed in with work notes. This week’s was a few lines each day – who I visited where and how many catalogs I gave them. Scintillating. If I journal, when I journal, I journal to remember. I do not journal for non-practical reasons. I often hear a podcaster recommend journaling. Dude, I have written two complete books, finished a first draft on another, and started at least a dozen more. I have been journaling since third grade. I have worked it all out and through multiple times.

Litchfield was a little sketchy. I wouldn’t want to run where I ran after dark. I didn’t get to the hotel till 5, so I cut 20 minutes off my run time. But it felt great. If you travel, run or work out right when you get to the hotel. Just knock it out. You’ll feel better. Arnold agrees with me.

There will be times and later daylights that will let me stretch out and do my full runs when I go on the road. Spring will be here soon, and I will be on the lookout for the hidden trail, and hoping to revisit the good finds from the last two years. You can’t stay in the same city every time you go through the same area — it just doesn’t pencil out. I am not sure I have repeated a run in almost 3 years of doing this, except for the trail system in MD by the hotel I stay at for multiple days when I visit our corporate office. Maybe this year I can get back to that canal trail in Billings, or the trails along the Snake River in Twin Falls, or the Sag Trail in Illinois. 

Lynhurst School

Run Time: 62:27 + 2-minute kick

An unseasonably warm day in one of the least impressive large cities I have visited. It felt great to be out for a run as the sun went down. I have been running very infrequently. Cold weather, holiday activities, travel, and generally low motivation have been the primary factors.

I prefer to avoid whining. If I don’t feel like running, I might not run. I might run. Either way, it won’t be the end of the world. If it were the end of the world, would I want to be out on a run when that happened? Maybe. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in Indianapolis.

Another trade show in Indy — this one for the Racing industry, appropriately. Another industry for which I have a passionate disinterest. It was kind of fun to see all of the racing simulators, though. In this age of climate change and fossil fuelage, I can get behind all racing being simulated. Why not?

I had to hop a short fence to get on this track. Six locked gates. There was a mobile staircase inside one corner that I could grab onto to facilitate the illegal entry. About 200 SUVs drove past me as I ran, picking up surly teenagers, no doubt. No athletic practices on this beautiful early winter day to force me to the sidewalks, which is good, because my hotel was right by the airport in a borderline neighborhood. The mile trip back-and-forth crossed over I-70.

Not sure why I have felt unmotivated lately. I have the Carter malaise. I battle in my mind over my calendar and task list — too much, or at least, too much of the unimportant. I went deer hunting for two days — Michigan deer hunting is boring. The terrain just doesn’t inspire feelings of the majestic wilderness. I need peaks and canyons and steep sidehills that weed out the weak.

The malaise is partly attributable to a lifetime of unfulfilling work. I have mostly come to terms with the unfulfillment. I find my fulfillment in other ways — family, writing, reading, hunting in places other than Michigan. What gets me about work is when I get worked up about it, when I start thinking I have to fix shit that I have little control over, when I start feeling like I am blameworthy if I don’t work miracles. It’s just work. I always do my best — that is one of the Four Agreements — but I don’t always care equally about the result. It’s just work.

Work is necessary, but don’t be duped. We are here for bigger things.

North Community Park

Run Time: 62:16 + 2-minute kick

Not high-60s and sunny, but not freezing either. It had rained the night before, and part of the day, so I felt fortunate to get an hour of dryness to run in. I stayed in Fargo the night before, and there was a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. I woke up and thought, “I hope this doesn’t wake up Barb.” Then I remembered I was in Fargo. It wasn’t likely to wake up my wife in Michigan.

This was a boring run, in a boring place, on a boring sales trip. The day was gray, and so was my mood. The park was fine – wet turf but runnable for about 50% of the circuit around the park. It was a slog. I got to the hotel early, so I was running early enough to not feel like I was behind on everything else, but some days running is just a slog. The win is that I ran anyway.

I could take inventory of the reasons for my feelings of gray, but why do that? Why not take inventory of reasons why it was weird that I felt gray? I am in good health. I make decent money. I am married to a beautiful, smart, funny, interesting, unpredictable and vibrant woman. I have three beautiful, smart, funny, interesting, unpredictable and vibrant (but in completely different ways) children (they might have inherited some traits from my wife). I have a beautiful, smart, funny, interesting, very unpredictable and vibrant grandchild, with another on the way. My brain works pretty well still. I have goals and calendar items and no lack of things that I want to do. I have a great measure of personal freedom, which has extreme value.

All of these things, and many others like them, do not keep me from feeling gray on any particular Minnesota fall day, but they help me to remember that all feelings are temporary. Everything, in fact, is temporary. This is consolation when things are not so great — less so when things are great. Thank goodness, though. I want them to be temporary for as long as possible.

Mankato East Senior High School

Run Time: 62:15 + 2-minute kick

A beautiful, sunny day in South Central Minnesota. High 60s. I ran in shorts and a t-shirt, which was a pleasant surprise. The route from the hotel to the school was short but hazardous. I sometimes get the feeling that GPS mapping routes vehicles through sections of towns that were not designed to accommodate heavy traffic. The local citizenry might be thinking the same thing, although the increase was probably gradual and therefore insidiously normalized.

Various sports teams were practicing on and around the school track, so I ran on a path around the park next door instead, which was better. You know I prefer trail running to track running, if the conditions are safe. The turf alongside the asphalt path was flat and not slippery, and some of the trail was actual trail, which was ideal.

I felt fortunate to hit good weather in Minnesota this late in the year. I have had some dicey trips across Minnesota in late fall and early spring. I heard that this winter in the North Central U.S. is supposed to be mild — an effect of El Nino. I’m all for it. I do not want to drive in snow and ice for work. It is an unnecessary risk. If Tennessee and Texas have to get the freak ice storms so that I can drive care-free through South Dakota in January, so be it. Blame the Weatherman, not the Rational.

Really, it is silly to drive in frightening weather when you don’t have to. No work is that important. What we need is better planning, to get all of the driving done in clement weather. Can’t all of the chips and sodas and meat sticks be delivered to the Dollar stores before and after the snow? Can’t all the packages be delivered by drone when the roads get bad? Can’t hockey be played in the summer? Let’s all plan efficiently for 10 months of the year and then hunker for 2.

Pigtail Connector Trail

Run Time: 32:08

Another lucky find in an unlikely place for a short run in the early evening after a long drive across Idaho. I had stops in Boise and Idaho Falls, with nothing in between, so rather than take I-84/I-86, I took a more direct route on US 20, the most ubiquitous route in my territory. I had never driven this stretch, though, and I thought it might be more interesting than the interstate.

It wasn’t that interesting, unless you are interested in having to pass slower-moving vehicles on a two-lane with limited vision of the road ahead. There were some hills and some mountains in the distance, and an occasional dry streambed. A lot of scrub-brush. Not much wildlife. Not even much livestock.

So I felt fortunate to find this short trail very close to the hotel, running along I-15. Normally, a trail alongside an interstate is not ideal, but traffic on this stretch of I-15 at this time of night was only occasional. I followed the trail to a neighborhood street, then ran down sidewalks to a “downtown” area by an old railroad depot, then ran back.

My run time was short because my time is short in the evenings if I do not get to the hotel in time. I always have a fair amount of laptop work to do when I have been on the road all day. Plus, I have to eat at some point, and since I snack on the road and do not eat lunch, I am typically very hungry by 5 pm, though running usually abates my hunger till I am done running.

I do not like deciding whether or not I am going to run when I get to the hotel, or how long I am going to run if not the full time, just like I do not like deciding what I am going to wear in the morning. Decisions use up mental energy. So I came up with a plan the week before this trip: arrive at the hotel by 16:00 = full run + strength training; arrive by 16:30 = full run; arrive by 17:00 = full run -10 minutes; arrive by 17:30 = full run -20 minutes; arrive by 18:00 = full run -30 minutes; arrive by 18:30 = full walk -30 minutes; arrive after 18:30 = no run or walk.

This plan tilts toward the run and away from work. If I lose 30 minutes of time to driving, I only lose 10 minutes of running/walking. It is not a fun decision: do I sacrifice work for health, or health for work? If I am on the laptop from 7 am – 8:30 am working, then on the road making sales visit till 4 or 5 pm, then arriving at the hotel from 4 – 7 pm, am I obligated to work 2-3 more hours on the laptop at the hotel? No. If I don’t, the work of emailing back-and-forth with accounts and prospects piles up, and the work of projects piles up, and staying organized flies out the window. Health is important. The quality of work is partly determined by health.

So, a compromise. Or a partnership, however you want to look at it. For me, the important thing is to make the decision once, to set parameters, and to just live with the results. Weather is the factor that will disrupt the process. Occasionally I will decide that the weather is bad enough that it is not worth leaving the hotel room, except for food.

I do not like working that many hours when I take a work trip. I also do not like doing half-assed work, or falling behind on work tasks, or not communicating with customers and prospects in a timely manner. I like exercising and getting enough sleep. On occasion, I will get to the hotel and just take a nap, and that evening I will do the bare minimum of work to be ready for the next day. Or I will do the bare minimum and then watch West Wing for two hours. I like being able to do that on the rare occasion and not see my work schedule blow up as a result.

And besides, some of my best work gets done when I am running.

North Idaho Centennial Trail

Run Time: 62:07 + 2-minute kick

A rainy day in Northern Idaho. It was just a drizzle as I started. The further I got away from the hotel, the harder it rained. It peaked at the turn-around point and then stayed steady all the way back. I got soaked. It took two days for my running clothes to dry.

I found a good trail that ran along the Spokane River to Lake Couer d’Alene, past a Wastewater Treatment Facility and a college campus. There were signs with details about the Native American culture that had been destroyed so that industry could poison virgin land. Most of the trail was asphalt, but there was one gravel section. I ended up running in a bike lane for a half-mile or so — not sure where the trail went at that point.

The drive from Missoula to Couer d’Alene was beautiful, of course, although there were a lot of yellowish fir trees that didn’t look right. Probably beetle-infested. More driving and fewer sales visits on this trip. Some troubleshooting of distributors’ systems. Is it my job to troubleshoot a distributor’s system? My job is to do whatever it takes to help them help their customers. I will do whatever I am permitted to do, and usually just beyond that.

Outside Sales remains a viable practice in the business-to-business world. It works. One nice thing is there are almost as many ways to do it as there are people doing it. Anyone who promotes a sales program and says it works better than any other program is full of total bullshit. We have four outside sales reps, and I would bet that we have four very different approaches and methods. We are given a lot of freedom (well, I am, anyway — not sure what goes on with the other guys), which is wise.

Sometimes I feel isolated because I have very little contact with my coworkers, and most of that is email, but in actuality, I am the opposite of isolated. I have been set free to roam and to scout and to hunt. I love roaming and scouting and hunting. I put together my sales trips the same way I put together a hunting trip. I look at maps and I devise strategies and I buy cookies and potato chips for snacks. I suppose I’m technically not helping the deer and elk the way I do our distributors and their customers, but that’s just one exception to the similarities.

On Ancestry it says that 8% of my DNA is Indigenous Americas – North. If you go back four generations, my great-great grandmother was Native American. Also, her mother was Native American, and from that point backward, that line was all Native American. Somehow that ends up at 8% now with no more Native American blood into the mix. I cling to that 8%. It is the identity I hold onto. The 38% Germanic Europe I have no interest in. That 8% is running the show.

Unnamed Lake Trail

Run Time: 61:51

No trail marked on the map, but there was a new cement trail all around this lake, only a block from the hotel. Running laps is boring, of course, but convenient. The grass alongside the trail was a little uneven, and my energy was low, so I stayed on the cement mostly and kept a mild pace. A long day of driving across Nebraska and Iowa. Only two sales visits, bookending the day. Doing less is sometimes more tiring.

It was hot and windy for the run. I’m not going to complain about the heat, because bitter cold is right around the next bend in the road, and I find that much more discouraging than high heat. It’s all good — we need to be uncomfortable more than we need comfort. Comfort does not promote good health. If it did, I sure as hell wouldn’t have to run five times a week to maintain my weight and lung capacity.

When I am on the road, I try to look at my emails multiple times a day, just in case there is something that needs my urgent attention. This was one of those days when most of the work emails were for some kind of non-work shenanigans, most likely some kind of football pool. My interest in football is nil. Generally, I separate work from non-work, and I prefer to focus on one at a time.

I find it amusing, however, when you have trouble sometimes getting someone within your work organization to respond to multiple emails about some important (to the business) issue or problem that likely needs them to put forth effort of some kind, and then someone blasts out a sign-up for the chili cook-off, and 17 reply-all responses immediately populate. People are hungry for non-work when they are at work.

Not me, though. My life is full enough that I don’t need more recreational activity. I have 276 books in my library “for later” shelf. I have upwards of 3000 podcasts episodes in my queue. I have a wish list of several destinations outside of the U.S. to visit and sit in cafes and pubs and enjoy beverages of choice. My wife would like us to see a baseball game in every Major League ballpark. I think it is great to have friends at work, and to even do things with work friends after work, but I kind of see a business as a ship at sea for 8-10 hours a day. If you’re on the ship, and you’re not doing your ship duties, why are you there? I want everyone on the ship to be engaged in their ship duties. When we get to port, we can leave that all for the next day.

I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum, though. To each his own.