on the iPod: "right now" -- van halen
Though it's not as difficult for me as it is some of my great friends and family, trying to run this weekend definitely tested my ability to go with the flow. I'm a generally relaxed and easy-going kind of guy, sometimes to a fault. I don't necessarily need things completely planned and i'm comfortable with knowing that things somehow always seem to work. It's my nature, I suppose, and just like a running stride, a guy's nature doesn't change that much, if at all.
So when my great training friend Kim, who is also running the New York City Marathon this fall, texted to say that she needed to do our long run on Friday instead of Saturday, I shrugged it off and went on with an excellent summer day. She texted again to mention that it'd be really cool if I could meet her at the Volkswagen dealership up in Rogers beforehand. Again, no big deal. I surmised it would be a great chance to run the North Bentonville and Crystal Bridges trails again. This exchange was on Tuesday when the weather report was crystal clear and pleasantly cool. Anybody want to take a guess where this story is going next?
I pulled in to the VW dealership at precisely 6:30 as planned (okay, I was a few minutes behind schedule) and Kim was patiently waiting. She jumped in just as the first few drops of rain began to fall, and we both began to consider the possibilities. Light sprinkle? A return to overcast skies? Complete and total downpour? Only the gods knew, but we wanted to run nonetheless, so a planned 12 miler was thrown out for half that distance instead. By the time we got parked and out on the trail the rain had stopped all together and we enjoyed the first few miles dry but fighting some pretty intense humidity. Welcome to late summer in Arkansas, right? But our luck ran out around mile four when the sprinkling began again, very slowly intensifying into a light rain. It didn't become a problem until the final half-mile, and even then it seemed to be nothing more than an annoyance to what was otherwise a great training run with a great friend, highlighted by seeing four or five deer in the woods. Of course they froze upon seeing us, and we both immediately stopped running. The encounter between human and animal lasted only a few seconds, but they were so beautifully innocent and sweet to watch. By the time we were finished, both of us were soaked. I regret not getting a picture, because those are the sorts of runs where memories are made.
Because of the rain, I still had seven miles to run for week three of marathon training, which worked out perfectly when Todd suggested that we go for a run on Saturday morning. He and I haven't run much together for various and sundry reasons, but it sounded like a good enough idea and, frankly, I still needed to get in some mileage. He often runs a portion of the trail system in Rogers and i've been encouraging him to try some of the Bentonville trails for quite some time. Without saying it out loud, I realized it was the perfect "here's my chance" moment in terms of introducing new scenery to his running.
In a moment of deja vu, when we got to the Bark Park the skies looked strikingly similar to the day before -- overcast and ready to drop precipitation. He and I headed out anyway and hoped for the best, which is exactly what we got when the clouds parted and a sunny Saturday morning triumphantly emerged. As a relatively new runner, seven miles was a bit of a stretch for Todd, particularly with inclines in the early miles, but he did really well with pace and endurance. He was definitely pushing hard toward the end, which doesn't surprise me; the guy is incredibly determined and works a whole lot harder than myself. I asked if he wanted a picture standing next to the trail map after his first seven-miler, but he declined. There'll be more for him. I know it.
We spent the rest of the day taking it easy on Beaver Lake with our friends Kurt, Tony, and Patty. The lake is huge and gorgeous, with boats of all sizes out in droves on the weekends. Our favorite thing to do is to find a quiet cove, anchor the boats together, and float in the water. We've done quite a bit of it this summer and it's been so much fun.
For some bizarre reason I look irritated in that picture, but I promise I wasn't. A friend mentioned to me today that I'm a contemplative sort of guy. Sometimes I wonder if that makes me look irritated or cranky or aloof. I hope not. But I do often contemplate big ideas, and many times when i'm running down a quiet, empty trail, my thoughts are going full-throttle about life. Yesterday I was thinking about the two runs that were completely different from each other, yet they were both on the exact same trail. They were so different from each other that they seemed like two different trails, even though they weren't. The truth is they were the same run on the same trail.
How many times in life do we simply assume based on experience that two things, or people, are different? The answer is too often, I suppose. We assume that we're different because of the pigment of our skin. Or we might think that we aren't the same because we use different names and words when we pray. Or that we have nothing in common because we live in different neighborhoods, where the houses are bigger or smaller than ours. We even think that we are good or bad based on who we love. At the end of the day, we are all people. It's that simple. We are people who were born into a world that isn't perfect, but can be a really great place sometimes. The hard part is to not start with the assumption that we are all heading down different trails, but to realize that regardless of which trail we're on, they all end in the exact same place.
Run.
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