My new Garmin 610 is waiting at home for its new owner to take it out for a spin. I'm not ready to retire my good old Garmin, it's taken me through a good 15 marathons, and I'll let it get its lifetime metre up to 10,000 kilometres.
Took it out the other day for a stroll, out here in Tobago, where I'm visiting with R's family (to visit their families). Running takes a little extra break. I'm not worried about what that pause does. I just hit 1,801 miles for the year on a beach at Stonehaven Bay. That's 2,899 kilometres and plenty of distance covered.
A year ago, we spent the new year off in the Dominican Republic. It was odd to get my first miles away from winter. I'm already plotting the return.
By the way, it's the sixth anniversary for the start of A whole lot of soles... Felt today needed to be marked like I did those years ago. It all goes to zero again, the mileage, and the year looms ahead. A lot of ground to make up.
That's what I imagine that they're thinking as I make a my way towards them in full speed in the dark. It's 7 p.m. on a weekday, the mild December weather makes the sidewalks just a tad busier than those snowblown days that are coming.
On my arm is a new light strip that makes my left appendage glow in the dark, a rare source of light against my black tights, top and toque. That armband and my Garmin's glowing counter, illuminate me, gives them ample warning that I'm coming.
When 'evenings' start at 5 p.m., I struggle to convince myself that it's still early enough to go for a run. This is something I'll fight right up until the first snow lightens the sky with a tint of blue. But we haven't had much in the way of snow.
So I'm tending to avoid the trails for the city streets. There, at least, I can have some company, even if it's dodging past pedestrians or making occasional eye contact with a 'walker' who's on their way home from work, or a party, or a restaurant, or just on their way to the next engagement.
I see guilt sometimes in those eyes. The quick glance (then away) say things like 'I should be exercising, but I'm not' or 'Maybe, I need to get a run in too.'
It's been a month since I last posted here. If running some times take over my life, then I'd say that this month, life took precedent over running. A family emergency (things are okay now), work and more work put running on a little back burner.
A runner's guilt looks pretty petty compared with other types of trips. I look at the weeks where I took two days off in a row; in my mind's eye, I might as well have skipped an entire week.
I just finished a 32 mile week, running all seven days. Most of them were done in the dark, with light band on, sometimes pounding out 10K when I really had no energy for it. Every time, like the countless times I began a run under duress, I felt more alive and better for it by the end.
I looked at my blog yesterday, realizing it'd be a full month since I last posted. I've often taken blogging hiatuses in the past six years. Fear not, I have much to say, just when I have to choose between running and writing about running, my feet know to do the talking. Until about after a month, no guilt about that.
Twenty five years ago, I stood at the side of the road, waiting. Now that I can appreciate the undulating hills of the major thoroughfare that cuts through my parents' neighbourhood, I can only now marvel at what it would have been like to roll through the hills of eastern Toronto.
All those years and miles later, while the memory of those like Terry Fox harden in the Canadian consciousness as our prove that winters and toughness define us, I reflected about the daunting challenge that national heroes faced. What happened when they faded from the crowds and faced a lonely road.
I've only travelled to Thunder Bay once. It was on the way back to Toronto on an cross-country trip I was taking in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001. What pierces through my mind, among memories of listening to CBC radio and propelling as far away from the realities of war and news, was that the country was so vast, the landscape from the Rockies to the flat expanses of Alberta and Saskatchewan to the curvature of the roads leading from the northern Ontario back to civilization.
Thunder Bay, and all the roads carved out of the Canadian Shield, brought an awe of how many kilometres it was between major points on our map. Over air, a cross Canadian tour flashes beneath as you cruise by and glance down at the tiny farm plots or mountain ranges. Looking outside a front seat of a car, as you stare and endless scape, it all comes home about how far you have to go.
On foot, on a wheelchair, it must feel like infinity.
My Garmin that I activated in the fall of 2008 has racked up more than 5,000 of miles, more than enough for me to go from coast to coast. I marvel as I pull up the Total Activity that I chip away at distance day by day.
A few Saturdays ago, while I was adding 6.2 miles to the lifetime pedometer, I came across a caravan holding up traffic on a major shopping street. As I came across the scene, I was surprised to see none other than Rick Hansen on his 25th anniversary tour.
Seeing Rick transported me 25 years into the past, 13 miles away, and up the road from my parent's house. Back then, distance was logged in the five minute bicycle rides along the confines of my neighbourhood, or running was done in the school yard from the portable classroom's door to the track about 100 metres away.
Transfixed, I was back then, when Rick rolled by on Kingston Road, and we cheered. Now, I'm even more awestruck as I finally understand the miles he bore, the hills he rolled up, the endless man in motion who on this clear day 25 years later was taking his time, stopping to say hello.
I paused my Garmin, stood, and clapped as he rolled by, and looked on admiringly for a minute or two. If I had a chance to say hello, I'd tell him how I and others ran in his shadow, and how I grew up to be an endurance runner. And that as a runner I still could not understand what it would take to do what he did day in and day out. And that by no small part did he and Terry inspire me and all others as we go long distance.
As he rolled along, I ducked down a side street back home. As I finished the run and up the hill, there was a spring in my step. Perspective more than perspiration fuelled me.
It's pretty hard to impress me these days about what one can do while running a marathon. (Let alone that 26.2 miles/42.2 kilometres is still very impressive.)
Something that my buddy Lee sent me today, I would argue, kicks the ass of all of the above.
This past weekend, the New York Times' Christoph Niemann live illustrated the marathon. Not only did he draw/paint/document it, he then tweeted the pictures as he went along and came up with amazing art with the backdrop of a marathon. Truly creative.
With apologies to the artist -- show, not tell, right -- here are just two of dozens of pictures.
