Running Blind

I love to run. I am a lover of rising, lurching, flailing, falling and all the while breathing in a rhythm at once simple and dangerously complicated. I look for new ways and new places to run not so much to break out of a rut but to test this graceful chaos under experimental conditions. I once ran through a pitch-black November night with a headlamp, headphones, and layer upon layer of polyester and neoprene, none of which insulated me from the wet, cold air. I found myself so away from my ability to listen to all the things my body was doing that I was unable to coordinate any of them and suddenly my limbs and lungs were playing on different teams, with my equilibrium the loser. I’ve run in 8 degree February and 99 degree July and in both cases wondered quite literally if I would live to remember the event.

I am a runner. When I run, my skin is alive, within and without. The feeling of my body swimming and punching through the air makes for a most visceral sensation; my eyes, ears and nose taking a back seat and finding themselves necessary for only the most utilitarian of applications, such as when to ignore the signs and voices instructing - if not imploring – me to turn. My feet become soft, intelligent landing pads that tell my legs to absorb the shock created by my repeated attempts at flight failing over and over again.

I run indoors, I run outdoors. I run in the morning, I run in the day, I run at night. I run in snow, sunshine, rain, wind, hail and if fire came into my path, I would run through it, too.
Most of all, I remember why I run.

It is the breath and the muscle and the way that even the most initially uninspired effort is quickly and consistently rewarded with that feeling of life. It transcends question, faith, chance and all else for me. It is proof once and for all that life likes to be loved, caressed, appreciated, and experienced.
I run indoors quite often. While many see a man running in place with an ignored TV in front of him, what they miss is that which is in the man and the area immediately around him. There is his blood, then his skin, then his sweat, then and inch of pure heat and then an invisible shield of absolute joy. It’s this last part that instantly turns even the most mundane of surroundings - such as a rubber floor, a television and fluorescent lighting – into the man’s perfect world.
There’s a fellow runner I see at the gym fairly often and if it’s anything other than raining outside and I’m inside, he wags his finger and gives me a “tsk, tsk…” look, or just shrugs and gives me a “what the heck?” mostly in good fun, however partly unmistakably not. To him, it’s as if I’m giving Mother Nature the bird, or taking the beauty of the road or trail for granted. He doesn’t know that I’m in a bubble every time out (or in as it were.) He doesn’t understand that while, in the end, I will always take sunshine over fluorescent tubes, fresh air over gym mold, and tar over treadmill rubber, that such a process of decision comes so far in second place that it is rendered nearly irrelevant. Firstly, I just love to run. After all, I am a runner.