katherine swims

Thursday

Jul222010

Scenes from summer

Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 10:53PM

It's a blurry cell phone photo, but it captures the scene well enough for me. This is the view of St. Charles Avenue from the expansive front porch of the Columns Hotel, as viewed late in the evening one night last week.

Smiling friends in summer dresses. Heavy glasses full of cold drinks, drowning in pools of condensation. The heavy iron growl of the streetcar as it slugs Uptown toward the Riverbend. Clouds of chatter and laughter rise from small crowds around each table.

What's not to love?

Katherine |

I'm not on any vampire "team." Maybe.

Thursday, July 15, 2010 at 7:08PM

The other day, I found myself in the middle of a conversation about vampires, namely those of Twilight, True Blood, and other shows/movies/books. While I'm not a rabid Twilight fan, I do enjoy True Blood and have been catching up on the series via Netflix. It seems like everyone's obsessed with vampires these days, as the books, shows, and movies have completely invaded our world. Otherwise rational women seem to believe that Edward or Bill Compton want to whisk them away to some dungeon and suck their blood, but I... don't get it. I just like True Blood for its storyline.

So anyway, we're in the middle of this conversation debating the relative hotness of certain vampires and whether or not one would run away with said vampire, and I'm thinking to myself about how silly it all is. Then, suddenly, I remembered: I, too, had fallen for a vampire once; in fact, it was more than 20 years ago. Even as a child, I wasn't immune to the charm of half-dead, canine-toothed zombie.

Reliable sources who like to make fun of me tell me that, as a little girl, I was absolutely crazy for The Count from Sesame Street. As in I used to say I wanted to marry The Count. Maybe it was his big nose, his OCD-like counting of everything, or perhaps it was his monocle that did me in. It was all so long ago, however, that I don't remember much about my crush, or even about The Count himself. Thank goodness for Wikipedia, which has provided me with some refreshers on my love from long ago. Who knew that The Count doesn't have a reflection in mirrors (like a real vampire!), that he doesn't sleep in a coffin (not like a real vampire), or that his affinity for numbers may stem from an old myth about vampires' fascination with counting objects? I also forgot about the bats, cobwebs, and numerous cats inside his castle. Gross. Clearly, we wouldn't have worked out in the long run.

Katherine |

Tales from the Trails: A Story of Mud, Rain, and Muscle Fatigue

Monday, July 12, 2010 at 9:48PM

This past Saturday evening, I traveled to Baton Rouge with a friend to run a 4k race. Little did I know, it was a trail run (my first!), and it was going to rain—the entire time. Little did I also know how much fun it would be.

Varsity Sports, a new running/athletic store in New Orleans, was celebrating its tenth anniversary in Baton Rouge with a 4k (2.485 mile) run at the LSU Rural Life Museum in Baton Rouge. You're probably thinking, Why the Rural Life Museum? Boring! But you're wrong.

The museum, housed on several hidden acres of quiet farmland adjacent to I-10, is quaint and beautiful. Personally, I'm kind of obsessed with living on a farm, because I'm drawn to the idea of raising baby animals and eating baby vegetables and making jam and biscuits and running through fields of tall, tall corn. You can stop laughing now.

So, back to the run. We headed out in light rain, shoes already a bit muddy, and found ourselves on a winding trail that took us through the woods on the Rural Life Museum's campus. It was incredibly fun to dodge slippery, muddy spots on the grass- and gravel-paved trail. At the finish of the race, I was greeted by a loud mooooo from a longhorn steer, which was really neat. What other races offer cows to cheer you on at the end of a run? We didn't stick around too long, since our clothes were soaked and we were covered in mud.

Are those my ankles or my wrists? Ha. Either way, these are my shoes after the race. I guess you can't really tell how dirty they are from this photo, but my relatively new shoes were pristine before Saturday's run. My Nike+ sensor in particular is covered with quite a bit of rural slop. If you're a shoe nerd, you may have also noticed that these shoes are for dudes. Whatever. I have wide feet, and it's much easier to buy a standard men's shoe than to find a women's shoe I like in a wide width. Given that piece of information, I scored a pair of men's Brooks shoes just for completing the race. They're light, cushioned, and have accents of copper, which I've never seen before on an athletic shoe. Totally worth the $35 entry fee.

After running three consecutive days last week, two of which were races, I'm enjoying a little time off my feet. Naturally, that means baking cookies, planting marigolds and other summer annuals, and catching up on True Blood. I'm looking forward to test-driving my new shoes tomorrow, rain or shine. Okay, probably just shine, because I already have a pile of muddy clothes, shoes, and accessories calling my name in the laundry room.

Katherine |

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Running,

Travel

Friday

Jul092010

Why I run

Friday, July 9, 2010 at 1:05PM

This short essay should actually be titled "Chronicles of the Calves: How I Became a Recreational Runner Despite Having Ankles the Size of My Wrists." In all seriousness, though, I found a "Why We Run" essay contest through a runner I follow on Twitter who has an interesting blog, and decided to write a brief piece on why I run. Of course, I don't like to self-promote, so there are currently no votes for my story, but I figured I would share it here.

Some background I provided with my entry: I've been living in New Orleans for nearly seven years, and while at this point I hate to bring up anything about Katrina, the challenges I faced in defining my athletic self—and my actual self—at that time mark a pivotal point in my adult life. Enduring the transition from an elite athlete to evacuee to just being another student at Tulane was incredibly difficult, perhaps an identity crisis of sorts, and running was a powerful force that came into my life at just the right time. While I'm not yet running marathons quite yet, I have goals to run a half and additional 10ks in the next year, and I'm incredibly motivated by others who have written about the way that running has changed their lives, including yours. Thank you for putting together this contest, as it's served as a chance for me to reflect on my status as an athlete/runner/happy person five years after that awful storm, and I now know that without running, I'd probably be neither of those three things.

---

Unlike many other runners, my path to discovering running began in the pool.

As a competitive swimmer, running had always been a part of my cross-training, but it was never something that I particularly enjoyed. In fact, it's fair to say that I hated it. For years, I struggled with a hip flexor injury that made running even more painful than it seemed, and although I was a decent runner, I never would've guessed the role running would play in my athletic future.

At 18, I thought I'd enjoy four full years of varsity swimming at Tulane University in New Orleans; however, Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005, and months later, in the middle of my junior year of college, I was faced with the sudden end of my competitive swimming career when my team was cut. For a total of sixteen years, I'd defined myself by my accomplishments as an elite swimmer, but who was I really without swimming in my life?

In the months following my return to a battered and bruised New Orleans, I discovered running as a way to release stress, enjoy the scenery of Audubon Park, and spend time alone with my thoughts as I had done as a swimmer. Running has since provided me with a new platform for physical challenges, accomplishing goals, and maintaining some fitness from my days as a fish.

Just as I once thought about swimming, I can't imagine my life without running as a part of it.

Katherine |

Where have I been?

Friday, July 9, 2010 at 12:54PM

I know I've largely been absent from this space over the past few weeks. I'd like to be able to offer a reason for my little hiatus, but the truth is that there isn't one. In general, I've been on exciting adventures around the city and have been in the midst of several projects, but there's something larger that has kept me from writing more.

Looking back on years that I've kept a record of my days, I notice that I tend to write more when life seems easy. The past couple months in New Orleans have been great, no question about that, but a little sad, too, as two of my best friends have moved away. Coupled with the news that a handful of work friends have moved on to new endeavors, it's been hard not to feel like there's an exodus of people in my New Orleans-based life. It's not that losing a friend to a different city or a different life path or a new opportunity is an especially sad thing; I think it's just overwhelming when it happens at a greater-than-normal rate. The resulting lingering blah feeling has left me without anything meaningful to say here. To cap it off, a sobering piece of health-related news came my way last month, which has me reevaluating my priorities. More on that later.

On the bright side, I've instead been consumed by thought: new projects to do around the house, new recipes I want to try, things I want to organize and put into monster spreadsheets, new running distances I want to try, and generally how to soak up every last drop of summer and enjoy it to the max. So, to clarify, these are good days. These are extremely happy days. I am the happiest I have been in years. But yes, there's a little bit of a shock when life swirls violently around you and the only thing you can do is help a friend pack a U-Haul while holding back tears.

I'll be back here more often, I promise, now that it feels like the rain cloud over my creativity has given way to sunshine. Here's to many more days of NOLA goodness, probably thousands of trips to Mississippi (have yet to hear about that rewards card, though), and the fine abdominal muscles of Ryan Lochte.

Katherine | Comments Off |

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I'm a nerd.