Or, A Run Three Ways.
I completed yesterday’s warm up just as the white out conditions were blowing through, visibility no more than a couple hundred meters. Still determined to get in the meat of the workout. These country roads offer no succour, as if I would petition for it. Wide open and exposed for all to see. Geese overhead frozen in time battling the winds. The task before me a well rehearsed drill, Killer Coach Tuesdays, ah how I’ve missed you! After taking the first mile out in a too quick 6:46 I settled into goal race pace for the next five miles, truncated from eight due to weather. At the conclusion of the effort and in actual slow motion I saw a car gently and easily slide into a ditch. Of course I rendered aid.
Janet fumbled in her purse, keeping one eye on the road, the other seeking the comfort she knew resided within. Though she was in no particular hurry to get where she was going there was an urgency about her groping. Relief upon grasping the cold and uncaring bottle. No twinge of remorse as she opened the cap and took a long pull, the effect as immediate and warming and familiar as an old friend in time of need. Her only friend in deed. She saw the mailbox in time, braked too hard, overcompensated and came to rest with her nose decidedly downward in the ditch. The mailbox turned out to not be a mailbox but a runner that was now asking if she was all right.
Connie looked up from the help wanted ads and her steaming cup of hot chocolate. She had seen this country runner more frequently as the weather got worse, odd thing she thought. Sometimes seemingly trudging, others fairly flying, like today. She liked watching his diminutive figure come into view and then fade away and then come back again. Liked it because it gave her hope for her own return. She wouldn’t change a thing though, money can’t buy you love. That the deadbeat refused to pay his child support and alimony mattered not. She was happier than she’d been in twenty plus years. She gazed at the runner as the car veered first right towards him and then crawled into the opposite ditch, just outside her window. Grabbed her hat and coat and was there to help Janet out of the car and into her warm if drafty kitchen.
The runner trudged on.
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