Bit of quiet time in the early afternoon. Habit during one of their lulls. Except ouch! The fire alarm! Everyone leaves the building. Stands outside and nobody knows what’s going on. It’s raining and we’re crowded under awnings, staring at our feet, not sure if we should leave or wait. Sheila who owns AJ’s wasn't warned about a drill. It’s shrill and we can’t tell when it stops. We can’t tell if we’re hearing echoes or the real thing. No, I’m pretty sure it has stopped. I’m somewhere between highly agitated and exhausted. Between excited and sleep walking. Not between. I’m in the extremes. Like an electron leaping to a higher valence, then losing its energy falling back. I run hard, driven, body compelled to move, then move faster. Yesterday running my Berlin loop. 5km repeats in 16:14 / 16:07 / 16:00, the pace varied, the missing shade of blue, David Hume invoked. Warm up, intervals, plyometrics, cool down. Getting faster, breathing ragged, heart rate not coming down this time not coming down and …
Then I’m asleep on my chair. My book next to me. My light on, my clothes on. I’m chilled. Wrap my blanket tighter around me. Roll up in it until I’m mummified, punch my pillow into a craggy landscape. Head angled severely.
I’m trying not to think about it. Trying to observe, record, forget. Let the page remember. Just run, just do the job like it’s happening to someone else, just observe someone completing the workout. Me completing the workout. Someone said that. Nike said it. Just do it. Do it and let it go. So this. I’m recording it in case something comes of it. In case I break a Canadian record. I want a memory of how tired I was. How much it rained in January and how I still finished every run, and how deeply I slept and sometimes how I didn’t sleep at all because there was an electrical current running through my body and my mind, and I would lie awake as I did last night with tennis updates coming in from Melbourne, like soundless cheers, Federer just getting past Tsonga to reach the semis. I would lie awake with my mind feeling ocean cool and endless, no horizon to this mind until it blinks out.