Back in the Saddle

 

 

Took 10 days off. No running. A lot of eating, especially sweets. Not much of anything athletic. Did work a lot so that kind of filled up the no running spaces. Gained a little weight. And by about the 9th or 10th day I was climbing the walls, ready to lace up the sneaks, and let her rip somewhere.

Got a brisk 6 mile run in today, most of which was back on the Carolina Beach State Park trails. Legs were a bit creaky, and my left ankle felt like it wanted to roll a few times, especially in the real loose sand near the Cape Fear River.

But it was great to be back out. Hammering some miles out as the last vestiges of daylight slipped away, and darkness fell gently upon the island. I forgot how beautiful the aforementioned Cape Fear River can look, like it did today beneath a low hanging dome of whitish grey clouds which served to blur out the far shoreline some.

I saw a green light attached to a post along the water and thought back to a night run me and Natasha did out past Airlie Gardens... when we saw a solitary green light across the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway and I said it reminded me of one of the quintessential scenes in the Great Gatsby. And she shared that for her the run was like being in a Lewis Carrol book.

I hadn't thought of that since a night maybe two years ago when I was out on a run...

How the memories will come back to us suddenly and seem so tangible, the intensities of which can almost put us in a queer trance like state that we momentarily lose any semblance of time and place...

Meanwhile our bodies, so conditioned to the movements churn forward step after step after step...

I got out the woods and onto the dark, wet streets and headed home on the some of the same roads I've trod hundreds of times, but with a bit of a tingle in my bones. For I hadn't really left, yet it was good to be back.