Today I need to run. The urge comes with the same unstoppable certainty of a face-twisting, germ-blasting sneeze.
Today I need to run. The urge comes with the same unstoppable certainty of a face-twisting, germ-blasting sneeze. One minute everything is fine, then suddenly I don’t just think, but know with an in-the-bones certainty that an involuntary action is about to take place.
All I get to control is where.
Spelunking through my closet, I find and unearth several old, yard work-bound running shoes. From these I salvage enough spare parts (laces, two soles, part of a tongue) to patch together one sturdy pair. Then it’s out the door, truck, 64 East, 195 South, onto the Downtown Expressway and then quickly off it at the Roseneath exit. When I reach Boulevard Bridge I discover there’s only enough change in the armrest for one pass through the tolls, making my little outing feel like a one way trip.
On the footbridge to my right cyclists zoom past pedestrians as I zoom past them; all of us lit by the purple and orange glow of the early morning sky. Weaving and winding I reach Riverside Drive and park at Reedy Creek. I stretch, walk and take-off westward. It’s November, and autumn is moving quickly from the trees to the ground. The same leaves that a few months ago prevented easy viewing of the river now attempt to conceal the trail, but it doesn’t matter. I pull the chilly air in through my nose, jut out my chin, and exhale a cloud the size of a volleyball.
I needed to run today, but not at the gym, bouncing along to the whiny, rubbery whir of the treadmill, forced to watch seven TV’s at once. And not again through the same old neighborhoods (house, house, house, another house.) I need to be out here on a wooded path, snaking through a riverside forest, running atop summer-fried leaves.
Every runner has a second home, and the James River Park System is mine. The steady, sandy tap of my Frankensteined shoes jabbing into the Buttermilk Trail feels like a second heart beat.
Out here I get to do more than just run. I traverse, navigate, wander and dodge. Rain slick boulders are sidestepped. Half-fallen trees are ducked. Stone-riddled creeks are hurdled (some more successfully than others.) The undulating terrain makes gravity my personal trainer, but we keep it fun. A row of tree roots appear and I touch my feet to each one like fingers walking up the keys of a piano. In the distance there’s a steeply banked turn. I accelerate, and my center of gravity unfurls like wings.
