TheBanyanTree: thoughts on a really good run

[Teague, Julie Anna]

I needed my headlamp for running this morning.  Still hot here, too hot 
for midday runs, but darker every day in the early morning hours.  
There was enough light for me to see by, mostly, but I was running on 
roads, and so it was as important to be seen as to see.  Still, the 
stars were brilliant and sharply distinct while dark shapes and 
indistinct shadows clung to the corners.

This morning was one of those runs on which everything just felt right. 
  Everything felt good.  All body parts were cooperating to progress 
smoothly forward without aching or stiffness or mild regret that I 
wasn't still in bed.  It doesn't happen every time, but when it does, 
it gives me more free mind space to think my thoughts.  I don't have to 
think about my foot problem or my ragged breathing or that small pain 
in my lower lumbar.  I'm running like floating.  The usual aches and 
pains have given me some leash.

While moving through the sleeping streets, I was thinking of an article 
I read about Kenyan runners on NPR.org just yesterday.  Why one small 
area in Kenya, Iten, consistently produces the world's best distance 
runners.  One reason is that they train at eight thousand feet. For 
another, they run a lot of hills, up from the Great Rift Valley that is 
six miles down.  They run and they run and they run, first because they 
have to run--often to school and back--then because they love to run, 
and then often continue for the practical reason that it is one of the 
few ways to escape extreme poverty.

I think about what motivates me.  I am not dirt-poor, as the article 
describes the people of Iten. I don't ever hope to earn a buck from 
running (although I did earn ten once) or anything more than a shirt 
and a free beer.  But I am sometimes lacking in other lucre that 
running pays out--confidence, calm, strength to face the demands of my 
life.  Some days it's simply that my mind, my "teetering bulb of dread 
and dream", is not sitting easy in my thick skull on my scrawny neck.  
It is weighted down with first world problems, re-living messed up past 
scenes or tripping into some feared version of the future.  It is busy 
writing some story, some version of not being happy where I am.  I run 
to escape my poverty of optimism, or of fearlessness or joy.

Running is so present-moment for me.  Once I hit my stride, I don't 
consider where else I might be, need to be, should be. I don't wear a 
watch.  I don't care what time it is beyond the general idea of keeping 
my job.  I roughly estimate my distance and then mess it all up by 
adding a loop here or an extra bit there.  I'm all there when I run, 
every part of me, from the roots of my sweaty hair to the tips of my 
painful right toes and my good left toes. Inside my head, inside my 
muscles, inside the sound of my breathing, I am synchronized.  We are 
all doing the same thing in this "bag of water and chalk and slime".  
We are running.  I am running.  All of us together, knees and fingers 
and ribs and blood cells, are all running.

Julie