I'm sitting in the Haruki Murakami room in my place. Sitting on my Nest chair and there's warmth from my light and the orange painting on my wall. Maybe just the most brume-like reflections on the past year. Some hazy resolutions trying to define themselves. I'm through the fevered days around Christmas when I had food poisoning. Seven hours of vomiting, 40 hours in bed, and Monday December 24th became Wednesday December 26 and I hadn't left my bed, hadn't seen a human face. My hands reacted like the MS was flaring, clumsy and slow, tingling through the peripheral nerves. Night sweats. For two days my left foot was hot and the joints were painful. Now we're into 2013. Day one. Everything seems to have settled down. Energy is back. I'm ready to go about business.
Tuesday morning. Waiting for my breakfast to settle. To kill time I flip on the radio but there’s nothing interesting. A girl with a nasally voice boasting about her acute intuition. I splash cold water on my face.
I don’t really have a plan for today’s run. I’ve been feeling so dreadful that I don’t want to make a plan. I’ll head in a direction with long options, in case I’m feeling good.
I’m feeling good. Not great, not like some of my runs in the past month, but good. The early kilometers are quick. Low 3:50’s pace. Still some fatigue in my muscles but I’d awakened without the earaches and neck aches I’d been feeling most of this week. My foot has flexion. After 40 minutes it starts to rain. I’m listening to my ipod and I don’t want it to get soaked so I stand under a tree for a minute, but I don’t know when the rain will stop, or if it will stop, so I commit to getting wet. I’m in the 3:40’s now. Moving easily. Moving strongly. The inverse rows and pull ups and the push ups make me feel powerful. I’ve exited the first network of trails and entered the second, hillier, and in my t-shirt and shorts I’m starting to get chilled from the rain. My forearms and hands are cold, but I still feel light and strong running up hills. I’m half blind and under the canopy of trees where it’s darker I lose depth perception, so I land lightly and pop off the ground. It’s safest that way. Spend less time on the ground. Encounter less risk. I’ve reached the far point of my run and am on my way home. Starting to move now. Into the 3:30’s. The path has been washed out by a newly formed stream. The rain and the dirt and this fresh stream where there used to be a dirt path but I know it can’t be deep so I open up my stride and go straight through, six steps, high stepping, striking the ground hard to create a vacuum and lifting my foot out before it gets sucked in. Carrying this momentum through the last network of trails. Then I’m back on the bike path, the pavement, and I’m crossing the bridge over the highway. The sun comes out. I’m listening to a violin concerto and the sun is in my eyes, and all the trees are lit up like Christmas. With this late second wind and my pace and the sunlight sparkling off the cathedral of trees path-side it’s as close to rapture as I’ve come. I’m 1h50’ into my run and barely touching the ground, driving the pace down to 3:10 for the last kilometer.