TheBanyanTree: thoughts on a really good run

[Kitty Park]

Holy mackerel, Jules, you're truly in the zone today!!!  Spectacular piece
of writing.  Obviously from the heart.

Kitty
 <mzzkitty at gmail.com>kcp-parkplace.blogspot.com
<http://parkplaceohio.com>




On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 3:06 PM, Teague, Julie Anna <jateague at indiana.edu>wrote:

> 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
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