Five Miles

Five Miles

The winter air wraps me up like a thin, old blanket that is just about to break. I feel it course through my lungs, searing my alveolar sacs as they desperately try to extract a few molecules of oxygen from the air, renewing my depleted blood and sending it whooshing back to my legs and arms traveling almost 12,000 miles in a day. And I was only doing five. I hit a hill and feel that soreness in my legs, as if they had been wrung dry like a wet towel; sore but not hurting and then hurting and then numb. Runner’s high. I can go forever, my mind says.

The hill was so long. I could feel my lungs in my throat, as if they had climbed up my trachea and into my mouth so that they could get more oxygen. I ran through plume after plume of my own breath, marking my progression as I emerged from each misty cloud only to encounter another one and the slow uphill gradient of the hill beneath my feet. All I wanted was to stop, but at the same time I couldn’t; I didn’t want to be left behind, or slow down the rest of the team, so in my mind I reminded myself of the day’s lesson from Coach: knees up, small steps, balls of your feet, push to the end of the hill, extra kick at the end, then back to rolling your feet, heels first, widen your stride, ignore the pain. Weakness is pain leaving the body. Whatever.

I crest the hill, and push onward down the path towards the road. I hear Steve’s labored breathing to my right just as another gust of cold wind blasts my face, lifting with it a plume of snow from the knee-deep drifts we are plowing through. Up ahead I see the road with cars swishing past, throwing up black slush and water. Thirty five miles an hour. I am only doing five.

I first bega...

... middle of paper ...

... condenses on the lawns and there is a new grass smell in the air, or those winter afternoons when it just finishes snowing and the ground is unmarked. I wait for those days to put on my no longer shiny, squeaky, new running shoes, put on a pair of running shorts and take off down the street with no direction in mind to wherever my legs take me. And now, I slow down from time to time just to see how the sun reflects off the bay, or the distant biker that is just coming around the bend of the trail. I set my legs to an eight minute mile pace and collect Jamie at his apartment and we continue along the trail, our legs lazily moving the earth beneath us, our mouths idly engaged in conversations about the day while breathing in that manner Coach Frerichs taught us about. After all, the blood in our bodies travels almost 12,000 miles in a day. We’re only doing five.