february 8th

     after sitting at my desk from 8am to nearly 8pm i was going stir crazy. i swear i could feel my thighs and butt growing larger and larger with every passing hour...i needed to work out today. i was originally planning on getting some gym time in but since my gym closes at 8 and i was still working at 7:45 I decided i was going to run outside, regardless of how my mind might change when i would go outside to my car.

clock out. home. change. pet frankie before he explodes from neediness. head outside.

      i went north first as all runners know to do when there's a north wind. and it hurt. the cold wind was slapping me in the face like you do to your younger brothers when they can't help it, saying "stop slapping yourself! stop slapping yourself!" i was being mocked, but the wind and i have a long hate relationship (nope, no love there at all) so i was already used to the abuse. 

  by the time i was 2 minutes in my throat was burning, my face was numb, and i already crunched through two frozen streams. cross the street away from the creepy guys in the dark.  lean into the wind from your ankles. face down so you can breathe. run around the patches of ice spotting the sidewalk. spit. snot. brrrrr.

      now i tasted it, the blood. the benchmark for any run, the passing of the line you haven't been beyond in while. its your body's prize to you for pushing further. the bursting of the capillaries in your lungs from expansion and the metallic blood taste appears....and then i remember.  its february 8th. its been 11 years since coach hogan's death, so far away but so near at heart. to be honest, i had remembered it a few times earlier in the day but hadn't really thought about it much since i was at work. but now in the midst of my run i really remembered.
      in high school there was nothing else that could make us track girls straighten up and put a bit more gut into our strides than when we heard coach's red ford truck rattling behind us just out of peripheral vision. his shouts across the track or cross country course were enough to push us beyond feeling sorry for ourselves and finishing what we started. we always wanted to be our best but it was nothing unless he recognized it. i had always wanted him to be proud of me, and that only grew after he passed. i had my best year of high school running after that and got my osu scholarship.
     i kept getting faster & faster and all the while wishing he could see me. look what i've done! and then i got kicked off the team (ha! long, funny story aside) and life drastically changed. i have since struggled with the thought of being who i am now and being a runner at the same time. (although, yes, i know, i have always been the same person and i'm just being crazy...) running was a life for me then and its hard to half-do now. its easier to not do at all. i resolve in my head "oh well, i could have been good. but now its over and i have another life. sorry folks." and when i think of coach i feel a bit of shame for my abandoned possibilities.
      but as i finish my run at our mail box and begin to walk back to our apartment i think about the past 11 years. the thousands of miles and all the places i've run. the friends and the traveling and the glory and pain. the demise of my college running career. the fading away of my "runner life."  all the years that have followed.  then i begin to realize, he would still be proud of me. i know it.
     because after an 11 hour work day at 8:30 on a february night in 28 degree weather with a north head wind i still went for a run. because 7 years after i was no longer being paid to run i still can't help the craving for a conversation with the road when it begins to rain. because i still consider myself a runner even if i haven't run in months....because i know i'll never stop.