Posted 5/24/21
So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him. – Mark 5:24
(Ever noticed that Jesus was always busy, always surrounded…except when He could duck away for private prayer?)
(Editor’s Note: This may be a re-run for my SeniorAge friends since I posted this piece on our intranet today. However, it applies to them and to you as well! 🙂 )
I am back after a long, fun, rainy, cool week of vacation! I am sorry for the small posts, but it is good for my brain to get a break, even from a job that I love. 🙂 It rained 80% of the time, but was still worth every penny. I truly have a wonderful family!!!! Today I catch up on the many things that working 1-2 hours a day on vacation doesn’t allow time for. But thank you for extending me the grace to rest. I hope you are rewarded with some helpful and interesting posts as a result. 🙂
ALSO, a big Thank You all who have ordered my fundraiser T-Shirts!!!!! Every 4 or 5 raises us to a new level with the shirt place such that they drop the price on all of them that I pay. This=more $$.
Tomorrow at high noon is the last time to order a shirt. Here is the link:
Just a reminder: you can pay them to ship it if you want, but, if you are from the Ozarks, I will get it to you for free one way or another if you want to choose that way. Might as well save that shipping cost…they keep all of that part anyway.
If you prefer to donate, here is that link:
https://charity.gofundme.com/o/en/campaign/running-til-im-purple
Don’t feel obligated in any way. 🙂 I really appreciate it more than you know!!! We have now raised $4,000 on a goal of $5280. I hope/figure on roughly raising the $280 part from the shirts, so we are roughly a mere $1000 away from the goal and have 27 days to go. 🙂 I have some more fundraiser ideas between now and then.
Update on the running preparation: Go figure…I am still not much of an athlete. I am walking/jogging/running 4-5 times a week including a long day on Saturday rain or shine (was rain this week). I also try to get a couple of strength training/weight lifting sessions in. However, it is a long stinkin’ ways. 🙁 Saturday I ran from Bolivar to Walnut Grove on the trail. It is “only” 20 miles (compared to the 22-27 miles I had ran the previous few weeks on the streets of Bolivar). However, five interesting challenges arise on a trail:
- It is hard to keep hydrated (except when it rains, when you are all sorts of hydrated feeling). In town, I circle all over the place, but stay within a few miles of the house, the park, or the cemetery (all jokes aside here) so that I can grab some water. The trail’s water has frogs. I bought a hydration backpack (just what it sounds like…a backpack with a big bladder/hot water bottle-like contraption) that holds 2 liters of water and keeps it pretty cold. However, as I found out the last 2 long runs, this backpack is not unlike a Morphine drip that I have control of. (Maybe a Twinkie drip is a better analogy for me?) Anyway, I drained this thing quickly and had no drinking options. This week I was slower and brought 2 more bottles…but they get heavy. For next week I bought a bigger bladder. (Jokes aside again…because the human bladder thing can be a problem in the woods too, but that isn’t the toileting digit that I am worried about…but I digress). My plan is to have one of my kids bring me backpack 2 at Walnut Grove and hopefully it gets me to Willard next week.
- The trail itself is not the same as running on a street. Metaphorical crack-smoking Ultra-runners who know what they are talking about seem to think running on a nice soft trail is the cat’s meow. They say it is so gentle and it keeps you distracted. Sure enough, there is a smidge of truth…BUT. It is gooey. When it rains (like Saturday) it is wet and slick. There are rocks, railroad junk here and there (it is a retired train track), and other things to worry about. Hence #3&4.
- Snakes. I am much kore afraid of bees, wasps, murder hornets, and dolphins than I am snakes, but there seems to be quite a few ON THE TRAIL. Come on, “mother nature”, I don’t need to have to stress out about whether every single squiggly stick a biter! I saw 5 or 6 depending on how you count them Saturday. I say this because one was eating another one ON THE TRAIL. Sigh…
- Insects, Arachnids, and Creepy Crawlies, Oh My- The earlier you run on the trail, better the odds of being the trailblazer. Now, my great, great, great, great grand-uncle (is that a thing?) Charles Applegate (see this document: https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/narratives/nature-and-history-in-the-klamath-basin/inhabiting-the-land/the-applegate-trail/#.YKuYqqhKiM8 ) was a very earlier settler in Oregon and Washington. There are rivers, passes, mountains, and the like named after this long ago descendent of mine (two less greats ago was a famous Baldknobber in Douglas county who explored a little too). If you are trying to settle/map part of the country, you deal with bears, rightfully unfriendly indigenous people, and many other things that would rather you be room temperature than 98.6. However, when you are a computer nerd with a McBelly in 2021 trying to raise money to help seniors and for a cure for a disease that his momma and uncle have, you don’t normally worry a lot about things that kill (carpal tunnel and eye strain, while bad ailments, seldom kill). If you are the first idiot…I mean runner…on the trail, you get the privilege of breaking “mother nature’s” little webbed finish lines about every dozen steps. Think you want some cardio? Run through a spider’s web face first some time and try to flail at your face to find the tarantula that is obviously going to eat your face!. Then there are flying bugs and bees/wasps. They will remind you of this video: https://youtu.be/mUR14_ry1Zo
- Unknown critters. I am hoping for this guy, but expect some of the sounds I hear on the trail alone are not as friendly… Coyotes, bears, and skunks are all easily possible…
I will make it this 37.5 miles. However, I am switching to the Jeff Galloway method of running which utilized timed, intermittent walk/runs. You run exactly x# of minutes/miles and then walk 1-2 minutes. He has won many marathons using this technique, so it must work. If I had 6 more months to train before June 19th, I might be able to run 100% of the time, but if I try now, I will jog the whole way so slowly that it will be 11-12 hours. I want to finish faster….so that is the plan.
Today I did some intermittent work at Planet Fitness and did a lot of weight training (mainly on my hips and “lack of rear end”. Apparently of the 120 pounds I have lost, 50 was from each butt cheek. My hips and rear are the first to wear out running and I need to have them to be able to run fast should I finally see the Bigfoot/Chupacabra/Werewolf that I hear as I run, of the bees that obviously have a grudge against me for some reason….
Anywhooooo thank you again for supporting me and SeniorAge and the Alzheimer’s Association through my incessant fundraising efforts. My mom is a fighter. She is and was always an advocate for what she believed in…and she raised me to be that way as well. Sometimes I lead with my glass chin a little in life, but I do my best.
Thank you 🙂
-Mark
(Full-time dad/geek, part-time Herpetologist, Entomologist, Crypto-Zoologist, and runner)
Here is the coolest critter I have found so far on the trail:
Update on mom: My brother and step-dad tag-teamed with mom last week. For some reason we are still limited to 2 fifteen minute visits a week. There is only one out over a hundred counties in Missouri with a mask mandate, and ours is the one. However, it ends Thursday and hopefully the restrictions (and Shawshank subtitle on this blog) ends this week too. The word from them is she is still very sleepy/unaware and is struggling. Struggling stable-ly, if that is a word. I hate this for her. I thought about her a lot while on vacation. Caregiver guilt, even as a part-timers that life has turned me into, is huge. I just really do hate it for her… It makes me want to fight the spiders, bees(!), and rocks all the more to find a cure. I sure don’t want this disease making it to my kid’s generation!
#EndALZ
Bee magnet. 
Muskoxen in formation. See this article about this creature. 
Last note: Tomorrow is my last only virtual Alzheimer’s Caregiver Support Group. Message me, email me at mark.applegate@senioragemo.org, or call/text me at 417-955-2513 if you would like a zoom link. NEXT month the support group will be at the SeniorAge office on Fort in Springfield and will be on June 15th, the 3rd Tuesday of the month as is the norm…and the Tuesday before I run til I’m purple. I look forward to seeing some folks in person at 6pm that day. 🙂 We’ll shoot to do a Zoom from 5-6pm that day with a hard stop at 6pm to accommodate the in-person group. We may try a combined one somehow in the future…we shall see how it goes. 🙂 Keep up the fight. 🙂
