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2:31 p.m. - Sunday, Oct. 14, 2012
Story #13
The sky was an electric blue. The kind of blue one might only expect to find in an Instagram filter. But it was real. A real sky blue. Eight miles. Through the town, down the Main Street, past the Hispanic bakeries, into the woods, along the river, by the factory . . .and home. There are three things I feel on a long-distance run. Three stages. One does not necessarily lead into the next . . .they come and go . . .like a flow rather than a progression. I call them the push, the strength, and the ease.



The push is hard. When I force my muscles to move and my breath is heavy, straining . . .I feel like I'll never make it and I can only focus on the pain in the body. I have to push through it. I experience the push in the first mile, after the fifth mile, and on long straight-aways. The push is the resistance. The separation. The shut-down. The defense. The jaw locked shut. The pressure of expected honesty. The anger. The push is the resistance.



The strength is similar to the push - but it feels good. It's when the muscles move because they can. Not because they have to. They've been trained to move this way. They are ready. I feel the strength running up hills or on speed-miles when the goal is to see how fast I can run a single mile. The strength is the power. The pleasure. The freedom. The confidence. The movement. The fucking amazing things I can finally feel in every bend and twist and painful or erotic or joyful or sorrowful experience of this body I was willing to give away just a year ago. The strength is the power.



The ease is what happens when I let it all go. When the feet are moving, but the breath is calm, the muscles are relaxed, and the mind separates from the body. The ease usually happens on the descent from a climb, or between miles two and five. Sometimes just after mile six there's another experience of ease. The ease is the acceptance. The comfort. The meditation. The relaxation. The love. The love. The love. The ease is the acceptance.



I don't like to stop when I'm running. During races, I rarely take a water break. I lose the momentum. I hate stoplights. But on this particular eight-mile run . . .I was so grateful to be alive, to have a body, to have pleasure and pain, to have change, to have resistance, to have power, to have acceptance . . .I had to stop and take a picture of this beautiful earth. This beautiful life. This beautiful experience.

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