Child's Play

So, I bought "Runner's World Complete Book of Women's Running". I really enjoyed it - especially the 'training log' entries by the author - her personal stories that correspond with the subject matter of the chapter. This one moved me so strongly that I had to put it here. If I wanted to summarize my running, this would be exactly what I would say. Thank you Dagny Scott Barrios.

I ran in the rain today, a loamy smell escaping the warm spring earth. I ran at first a grown woman, slowly, slowly growing new once more.

I ran through mud puddles on the trail, the cold, thin brew of coffee-and-milk-colored water shocking my toes awake. I ran until I slipped the world of time and taxes, work and weariness that I had left at my desk just minutes before.

I ran until there wasn't an inch of dryness to be found. Drenched and dripping, giving in, a smile spread across my face. I ran until I was a child inside, who had also given in - they replied with smiles of their own. We were all children out there, running in the rain, no matter our age.

As the thunderclouds slipped down the mountainside and closed in around the trail, I turned toward home. Floating along in my child's stride. Un-tired, Un-bound. the closest thing to child's play.

I imagined myself an old woman, twenty years or so down the road. Still running. Lacing up my shoes and leaving worries and old bones at the door. Floating along in my child's stride. Slower, to be sure, but still running. Growing young again each day, if only for an hour.

Every run is a work of art, a drawing on each day's canvas. Some runs are shouts and some runs are whispers. Some runs are eulogies and others celebrations. When you're angry, a run can be a sharp slap in the face. When happy, a run is your song. And when your running progresses enough to become the chrysalis through which life is viewed, motivation is almost beside the point. Rather, it's running that motivates you for everything else the day holds.

Beautiful.