Running for Your Life: One Month Away

Poem
An Immigrant from Krygyzstan Takes her First MTA Subway Ride on the D Train, 12:25 p.m., 3/08/12

Click, clack
Click, clack
Bump, bump
Kticketa, ticketa ticketa
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm
Whoosh
Static, giggle, hush
Too! Tune!

Click, clack
Click, clack,
Rumble, irrumble
Too! Tune!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Mutter
Static He – he – he – he
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ka-choo!
Hong! Hong!

I might be losing it. It’s been two years that I’ve either been training for a marathon or recovering from the training for a marathon. Wednesday (March 14), I ran the equivalent of a half-marathon at a race pace (in Steamtown 2010, it was 8:08 per mile). The body is holding up (with the exception, on runs of 10 miles or more, of a cranky left knee that flares up a bit after I get home, but a half-hour of ice compress seems to put it right . . . ) but the mind? Obviously, (see above poem) there’s a case to be made that it may never be the same.