Fitness, Brew and Stew

One of the problems I’m starting to run into with this blog is that the more I get out and see all the neat and cool things around northeast Iowa, the less there is to actually write about. Perhaps more accurately, the harder I have to look to see what else is worth writing about out here.

Then there are the times when something practically bites you. This happened to me back in January, when a pleasant young woman at the Cresco Fitness Center told me about the “Take Your Time” Triathalon. This is a competition where you have to essentially run a cross between a marathon and a triathalon over a period of four months. By the time April 28 hits, the contestants have to run 100 miles, swim 10 miles and do 200 miles on a bicycle, stationary bike or elliptical If you manage to do this, at the end you get a t-shirt saying you completed the triathalon. It’s a good way to get yourself to push your limits, and I think the DSM IV also has it listed as a symptom under several different types of insanity. Nevertheless, I decided to sign up. I’d like to say it was because I wanted to push myself, but it was mostly because I can already swim a mile at a time in the Fitness Center’s pool, and I assumed that since I had no trouble swimming, how hard could running be? After all, if you go by the distances swimming is 10 times as hard as running. So how hard can it possibly be?

Right now it’s close to the end of March, and I really want to go back in time, grab my three-month-younger self’s head and bang it against the wall a couple times until he comes to see the idiocy in that statement. Actually, since I was sick at that time, probably not. Maybe just a long, stern talk instead. Regardless, for the past week or so I’ve been running three miles a day and biking six miles, breaking the monotony by lifting some weights. Up until this point, the aerobic exercise was a bookend, and the weight lifting was what I focused on. Still, I can say without reservation that running is just as tiring as swimming. It’s also a lot harder on the knees and the shins. At this point in the triathalon my shins feel as though they’re made of thin glass, and if I put too much pressure on my shins my tibia and fibula will snap in two like dry twigs. I don’t know how people who run regularly put up with this. They must have shins reinforced with titanium.

In the middle of this triathalon is St. Patrick’s Day, and with it comes what has come to be a Cresco tradition—the Brew and Stew. For the uninitiated, the Brew and Stew is a 5K fun run/walk, or a 15K bike ride. It goes around the south side of Cresco, and cones back to the center of town, where willing participants can then hit one of the five or six bars within walking distance until walking is no longer an option. The American Legion, also within walking distance, has some Mulligan Stew, for the people who want a bit more of an Irish experience that doesn’t have to do with drinking, scandalous as that may sound.

Much as I would like to say I participated in it this year, I have to admit I didn’t. Mostly, this was because I didn’t want to end up running in the cold, as I thought March 17 would be just starting to warm up when I first got the chance to sign up back in February. I could have signed up the day of the Brew and Stew, but as that would have been twice as much as the original, I decided against it. Besides, after running, I have come to realize there are two kinds of people—those who like to run, and those who don’t. If you like to run, you can enjoy being out in the county, feeling the breath in your lungs, the progress your body makes with each step, and the thrill of getting out and moving under your own power. If you don’t like running, you’re too busy gasping for air and forcing yourself to put that next foot forward, feeling each shockwave as your foot lands further destroy your shins, and you have to wonder if getting this far away from a comfy place to sit is a good thing or not. Ultimately, I went home and had a lovely dinner of Mulligan Stew, which was extremely filling, and some good old Irish soda bread. As I had corned beef last year and Mulligan Stew this year, I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be doing next time. Maybe seeing what I can do with potatoes. Or maybe I’ll forego the triathalon next year, and just let the American Legion take care of it.

Coffee and Running

Some Cresco restaurants I just don’t understand. Take the Dough & Joe, for instance. Under other circumstances this would be one of my all-time favorite places to eat. It is an honest-to-goodness coffee house in downtown Cresco.  It serves all the drinks a coffee shop is supposed to serve, from coffee blends with exotic names, like “East Asian Arabica Coffee With Belgian Hazelnuts” to my personal favorite, Chai tea.

If that weren’t enough, the place also has a better selection of patries and baked goods than most other places I’ve seen. I’ve walked through the door of Dough & Joe a few times, and whenever I go through the door I’m greeted with the smells of doughnuts, fresh-baked bread and the occasional cake, the smells of which are more tempting than Scarlett Johansson holding a lotus. Under almost any other circumstance, I would willingly go there after I finished work and just hang out in the restaurant until it closed. I would bring my laptop, too, and compose blog entry after blog entry of observant, yet witty, statements, to be adored by my legion of about twenty fans.

The only thing is, there are two problems standing in my way. First, the Dough & Joe doesn’t accept credit cards. So it’s cash or nothing. This isn’t too big of a problem, but during those times I think of going in for a cup of Chai and a bagel, I’m a lot less likely to go in if I have to drive over to an ATM first.

The second problem is, the place is open during business hours. By business hours, I mean it’s not open past 5 pm. This can work on Saturday, provided I’m around, but when we’re talking about doing something for an evening other than sitting around my apartment and wondering what to do between dinner and the Daily Show, I wouldn’t mind spending some time in a coffee shop. Besides, the only other place to go for coffee is one of the gas stations. I suppose if I really wanted to, I could drive to, Decorah to hang out at one of the coffee shops there. The thing is, I don’t want to drive a half-hour to hang out for a couple hours, then drive a half-hour back again. This is in many ways a crying shame.

In all fairness, I would be less testy about this if it hadn’t been for the fact that I went out for a run on Saturday, ended near the Dough & Joe about five minutes to five, and realized that while I could have really gone for something in the caffeine-based drink department, it was impossible to do so without having to go to the ATM, which was at least five minutes away. While opinions may differ, I am a firm believer that a visit to a coffee shop is something that just happens. If you have to plan a trip to a coffee shop, you should at least have some friends meet you there. Otherwise, you have to plan a single trip to a coffee shop, and if you do you may come face to face with the realization that visiting a coffee shop is an important enough event in your life that you need to plan for it, and even considering that makes me sad beyond words.