Last run

Tonight was my last run before the Half Marathon on Saturday. I had a bad run on Monday so I figured I would run a slow two miler. Mo was walking. It was dusk and we rushed to get to the Airline Trail so we would still have some light. There was a light drizzle and leaves blanketed the trail. I started slow and felt good so I decided to speed up and stretch another mile, and I continued to feel good. I didn't have my IPod so it was my usual heavy footfall and labored breath that created the rhythm of the run. I shouldn't say I run - it's more like lumbering. After all these years, there is still no grace in my stride, which is so off I wear long socks because my heels periodically scape the inside of my legs. My breathing has always been heavy, no matter the miles I put on.

Mo went to Jean's mother's funeral, and I recently used the Five Stages of Grief in class as a tool to understand an epic character. All of this must have been on my mind, a mind partially starved for oxygen and wandering. At the run's half way point there is a canopy of trees and then a road, so you have the impression of a tunnel with light at its end, especially at edge of dusk and night. The leaves were thick and still in color as they lay on the ground. The image of the tunnel with a light at its end, the one so many near death survivors describe, came to my mind. I thought of Frost and roads taken and not taken. I thought about banking and teaching. I hoped that our tunnel is not a sterile, black and white one. I hope that God grants us a tunnel like the one I saw before me, with a cool drizzle, the rhythm of feet and breath on a wet trail, and a lifetime of leaves carpeting the way.

It continued to get darker at the end of the run, still good. I picked up the pace and came to the end, ironically the most dense, dark part of the run. Mo would be done with her walk and waiting. The tunnel came to mind again, and I kept running, and running, hoping, once more for this tunnel, and at its end, the people I love.

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What I've come to like about blogging is that I can come home and write about everyday events for me to read in the future. And the sense of a potential reader of two shapes the words I use and makes it more concrete and interesting.