The first mile is always the hardest. Except maybe for the 19th, but most days I don’t hit that distance, so we will stick with the first. Today the in my legs was not lead but it was not quite steel either. Somewhere between bronze and iron, maybe. As I started off, the subcutaneous matter on my back hung over the waistband of my shorts in swiss cake rolls and the indulgences of the past few months came to mind.
No doubt, I had given myself permission to slack, what with a new job and so forth. This was no time to berate myself with outrageous training goals. But something gets covered over too, in those layers of lipids, something fundamental about me. As if I have any notion of what that really, really is. Of who me is. At my age, my mother was parent to four children, resident of a brand new home, a preschool owner and more than half way through her married life. Had you asked her, I suppose she would have told you that her life was set.
And maybe that was the problem. Being set can be close to being trapped. A full life calls us to new adventures. The trails on which I ran never saw my feet in the days when I was a student. I got to know them as a young husband and father, looking to conquer them, to smash their inclines with feet connected to the pistons on my hips. They may have been laughing at my vanity, but they never moved an inch.
And today as I plodded along through the dappled light, these paths held me up. They already knew what was dawning on me: just because the qualifying time goes up with age, it is not easier to get into Boston pushing 40. The monkey community is powerful, and I am sure I will return to them, but this fall I need to take on a new adventure: Shut-In. Perhaps next winter will find me at Black Mountain. Then, perhaps, it will be time to settle down and just – “just” – do the monkey, but who knows what other adventures lie ahead.