I knew it was coming. Sometimes catharsis taps you on the shoulder, sometimes you run square into it, head on. Sunday we were waiting for each other.
My runs this summer have been five to seven miles, at a quick-for-me pace. It’s felt good to push and see how I respond. Sunday morning was the first group run I had done in a while. We started out slower, so I decided to run further. It was hot. I wasn’t planning to run so far, but the reckoning was there. I ran for about eight miles with someone faster than me, until I decided to drop off.
I found my quiet spot. My longest run of the year, at a pace too fast, undertrained, on a heat advisory day. I had reached a point where I knew I needed to draw spiritual blood; to push, to suffer; to get everything out; to find that place on the other side of daily life, on the other side of sweat and tired, that only running can take me.
In that place, I found a me I had let go for a bit. We stared each other down, smiled, and then got inside out of the heat. I am a glutton, not dumb.
Herb Elliott is responsible for one of my favorite quotes. I have written it in notebooks, posted it on the fridge, put it on bulletin boards. Sometimes I have to go back to it. I don’t think a race has to be a race, it can be life.
It’s time to store up. I’ve been antsy for a road trip, but this isn’t the same thing. It’s a gathering in; a collecting.
The hut at the top of the page is called Fossickers Hut, in New Zealand, I found via Cabin Porn. I don’t need to go there (though I wouldn’t argue), but need to find/make that space. To feel it, so that I remember the me that running brings me back to; that writing brings me back to. Sometimes I don’t realize I’ve stepped away, then look around. And have to find my way.
It was a long day, of early morning field hockey practice and watching Anna tough out a 7am practice when feeling like crap the whole previous day, and working through it. And being impressed by her fortitude. It was scrambling home after a late meeting, grilling dinner, and laughing with the girls over mindless dinner humor. It was walking outside after cleaning the kitchen, seeing the sun setting, and color and clouds, and reading the clouds differently.
Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher a storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. – Rabindranath Tagore, “Stray Birds”
Clouds add depth and shape. They shade us from the sun. They add color to sunsets and sunrises.
