This mileage I’m doing is paying another dividend, I’m sleeping much better at night. Still waking up, but only for an hour or so. And instead of the interminable lists, songs are decorating the nocturnal landscape. This 1970 Three Dog Night classic wafted through the neurons last night. Easy To Be Hard. Much harder to be easy sometimes.
Yesterday was one of those days when it was both.
Easy to do a Very Hard workout. 10 X a monster hill out on F St., since dubbed “Reilly’s Hill” as it goes right past his back yard. The grade increases the further up you go. I’ve run it a thousand times heading out to my favorite Scenic Sarpy/Douglas training route. I’ve got a whole different perspective of it now. After number 7 a Douglas Co. Sheriff pulled up into the middle lane by our starting point, watched us come down the hill and abruptly left as I approached his car, apparently more pressing issues at hand than a couple of skinny runners. It is that center lane that runs the length between 192nd & 204th that makes for friendly passing motorists.
Hard to be easy too. Life isn’t always the bowl of peaches we wish it would be and sometimes the fruit can all turn in a single day. Yesterday was like that for me on several different fronts. It would have been Easy to be Hard in my responses, but I’m choosing the Hard way by being Easy. Life after all is still filled with wonderful, fresh fruit. You just need to replenish the basket occasionally and enjoy it one day at a time.
Perhaps the embers of my youth no longer burn as bright, or maybe I just don’t care to be in constant battle. I’m more willing to shrug my shoulders and blow off things that would have been perceived as “challenges need be met” even a year ago.
I just want to run and have some fresh squeezed orange juice. And enjoy these quickly passing days that my dear children are still at home. Miles, now a man, soon to move. Alli soon to college. Katie too in the blink of an eye. Hard to be Easy but I think I’m getting there. Like Reilly’s Hill, I’ve got a whole different perspective on things these days.
Its Beer Week in Omaha! And certainly I can appreciate that. My buddies and Team Nebraska contributors Chef Jonathan Draper and General Manager Peter Kolb of the Upstream Brewing Co. pictured below.
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