Unwatched

 

September 27, 2021

 Greetings from the tempo,

 I left my street and turned west, glancing down at my watch, scowled a little at the screen.

If you had witnessed me passing you might guess I was late for something. 

 In fact, my watch was not cooperating.  It refused to talk to indifferent satellites scoring the stratosphere somewhere above me.  That conversation, which I take for granted every day, was interfering with my ability to compute how far I was running across the planet and how fast.  Even as I write those words, I realize how incredible this is.

 Somehow the miracle of GPS has become ordinary, hence my scowl.  My watch was stubborn, would not behave despite my marshalling my vast technological experience, which involved turning it off and back on again. 

And so, I just ran.  This simple act, so much a part of my life, needs only a few things to happen and the watch is not really one of them.

 I watched the white line scroll under my feet, saw the rise of the pavement become a slope behind me, the shadows danced around me and then were dissolved by the ambitious sun.  Wisps of clouds turned peach and a soft color that may not have a name.  Off to my left the sky appeared in the earth, reflected in a rain pond, a momentary bit of beauty.  Startling blue and wisps of white somehow magically framed in a field of green.

 I ran a twelve-mile loop, and I know the miles well enough, and I know the metronome in my head, which keeps time in my legs.  My feet took turns reaching out, pushing the pavement behind me, propelling me into the morning.  It felt familiar, like singing a song I know all the words to.  I felt like I was running on younger legs. 

 I thought of running with Tom, loping along the sidewalk on Court Street, running a distance neither of us measured, not knowing how fast we were going, or having a strategy or a goal.  Just running, stride for stride, eating up the miles, talking about whatever high school kids talk about.

I remembered running with a pacer at a marathon out west, held with him as a dozen in our group dissolved in the miles, until somewhere in the high teens he turned and said, “And then there were two.”  And ran nearly silently for the last miles, challenging and witnessing, holding each other to the purpose we started with.

 Phil, who I ran with for years, who would push me for ten miles, my legs barely a match to his enormous stride, and then in the last quarter mile, would pour on a finish that I could not answer.  Even on this morning, as I ran alone along country roads, I remember him turning to me on Parkside and saying, “We are not going to forget this run.  We are killing it.”  And I felt him pushing me along the miles.

Running behind the couple at Boston, 2018, The Big Swim, when the rain and wind showed up to defeat us, as if the course wasn’t already providing enough reasons to quit.  Weaving through the crowd a step behind them, letting them plow the thirty mile an hour headwind, watching their shoulders rock back and forth as they churned through the rain, past the straggling racers who gave up around us.  They were courage: their steps gave me the strength to make mine possible.

 I felt those steps.  I felt them and picked up my pace, breathing a little harder, rolling the length of my feet and pressing off and lifting the leg and reaching out, and landing and repeating.  My shoes whispered on the pavement, keeping time, telling me.

 I will admit I pay attention to my watch, to the feedback it gives me as I run.  I take much of my running as serious training for different goals, and so it matters to me how I’m performing.  But I also run for the pleasure of it, for where it takes me, those fringes of my best self.

Last week I might have pushed too hard, and I felt my machine sputter, and so no matter what the watch said, or didn’t say, it was time to ease back.  Maybe the watch knew too.

 I was surprised how the miles melted away, and now I was heading east again, the sun cheering me from its place on the fringe of trees.  I floated past luscious green growth, the rain still clinging to the leaves, all of it holding summer in place so I can run in it.  

 I ran with Tom and Phil and the pacer and the couple in Boston, felt them pull me along, urge me to take a longer stride, to ease up here, to simply be the good animal I am.  The watch didn’t matter.   I ran as I always have, seeking the best in me, finding that thread of my purpose, and living it into existence on the road.

 

Hope this finds you timeless,

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith