6.12 miles
It's day 201. I am not puking and nothing's broken, it's Saturday, so time to get going - weekends have become the only "daylight runs" lately.
Today's run started with a slide rather than a run... those frosty roads look "innocent", but they are slippery rascals. Once I started gliding out of the driveway... there was no way to stop... luckily no cars were incoming (I don't particularly like to run on the sidewalks). Eventually I just moved to running on the snowy grass, it was the only way to be somewhat in control; otherwise it is "ice-skating in your running shoes" all the way.
Reflecting on the past 200 days is a little bit like childbirth... when it's over, you say, wait... what just happened?!
Perhaps the genius of this entire bored running experience is its supreme lack of utility. It makes no sense in a world of SpaceX and AI supercomputers, deep learning, cutting-edge technology to run vast distances on foot in rain, cold - every single day. There is no money in it and no fame, nobody says "awesome job", frequently you don't even get the approval of your own family (mine has turned around eventually and now cheers me on :)) or friends. But as poets, apostles and philosophers have insisted from the dawn of time, there is more to life than logic and common sense. The runners know this instinctively :) As a runner. you also know something else that is lost on the sedentary. You understand, perhaps better than anyone else, that the the spirit "wakes up" and becomes alive with physical effort. In running for long, taxing durations of time or distances - you have to answer a call from the deepest parts of your own being - a call that asks who you truly are... and who do want to become. 201 days of that self-questioning.. you either give up or find out...
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