Easter run

The statistics: 7 miles. Daytime high: 86 degrees. Post run: One hour of catching rays in my back yard, sunlight filtering through the trees. Reading a good book.

I was up early this morning anyway, so I drove to the West Orange trail, 24 miles away, where I used to train for the marathon with Team In Training. I hadn't been there since January. Each week I still get emails that my old teammates are out there running, but I've either been on long runs with my running partner or else otherwise occupied/injured.

The trail is pretty long-- I'm not sure how far it extends, but Central Florida is doing a good job trying to build lots of bike paths and running paths for people. Although the trail is paved, the scenery is incredibly beautiful -- live oaks draped with moss, orange groves, horse pastures, old shacks, lumber mills, etc. It's nice to go out of the way for a long run there.

I showed up at 7 a.m. thinking my Team In Training friends would be at the usual meeting spot. The parking lot was deserted, save for two cyclists-- I knew it was Easter, but I was thinking my comrades would be inspired by "Let Nature be your church" or similar Emersonian running sentiments. But I'd made a mistake-- they were there yesterday.

On the bathroom doors (locked), I saw a sign from the Parks department saying there had been a lot of cars broken into lately. I got creeped out again and decided to leave. I wavered, got mad at myself, and then decided to park at a church up the street. Soon it would be filled with people, and as for the trails, I decided to take my chances.

The run was beautiful. I saw a lot of cyclists and a few stumbling runners who may have been on a twenty miler-- they looked like they had been to the wars and back. Running at West Orange brought back a lot of memories from my training, especially since the conversation always drifted around to leukemia, and I can remember how I'd think of my friend Sandy while I was running, how I was convinced she was going to be fine.

I learned so much through the whole training experience; it was a pretty powerful and intense experience. I passed the parking lot where Susan and I high-fived each other after completing a twenty-miler. Today I paced myself-- slightly under ten minute miles and no hurt IT band the whole run. I was always so stubborn during the long runs, refusing to believe that over such long distances the body inevitably slows down, or that speed would make me more susceptible to injury. I learned a lot about myself-- about endurance, and the body's limitations. Several months of training for one rite of passage, gaining weight that was definitely not muscle, and I wondered what had taken over my body that I was in better shape than ever but weighed more than I ever had in my life.

In retrospect, the process of training was such a significant part of the actual marathon-- the process actually meant more to me, including raising the money for leukemia research, which wasn't as hard to do as I thought. The actual marathon, when it came, was a crazy, disjointed experience. The heat, the pain, the sun, the exhaustion, the weird herd of runners (20,000 strong) surrounding me who looked as bad as I felt, smiling Disney characters popping out at unexpected times, almost like a bizarre hallucination brought on by the ridiculous test I was subjecting myself to.

But what an amazing experience marathon training was overall. Difficult and rewarding and overwhelming like life itself is. And I still have nights where I wake up at odd times thinking about Sandy. I don't ever want to forget her.