Bloomsday

            On Sunday I ran Bloomsday with my oldest son. It is a 12K (7.46 miles) and I hadn’t run anything further than four miles in the last month (mostly because of having hernia surgery in March). I thought I would be sore, but instead my legs just feel a little heavy and sluggish. I convinced my son, Forrest, to run it with me because I didn’t feel I could possibly sustain such a distance mentally without some help. I knew I would have to walk. I also knew I didn’t want to run that far alone because I would undoubtedly walk more than I would need to.

            When the body takes so much pounding the mind says, “You’re going to be sore. Don’t you want to take it easy?”

            And the body says, “While you’re not all wrong in the head, I can handle quite a bit. What’s seven and a half miles compared to all those marathons we’ve done together.”

            And then I tell them both, “Look guys, I don’t want to get injured. I’m just coming back from hernia surgery.”

            And both my mind and body respond, “Take a friend.” So I did. I took my oldest son, Forrest, and we ran it in an hour and 18 minutes all with a compromising plan. Walk breaks.

            We decided to walk after every two miles. And we pretty much walked all of Doomsday (counting it as our walk after mile 4). When we got to mile six I didn’t feel such a need to walk so I said we could keep going. But Forrest wanted to walk. The last straight stretch before the final turn began to feel eternal. The sunshine, even though the temperature was cool, seemed relentless. Literally running stoplights seemed like some nightmare of hell. That’s when I started noticing my legs aching. That’s when I started noticing hot spots on my feet. I was ready to walk. And that’s when I heard the theme from “Chariots of Fire.” And that’s when I knew we had made it.

We ran through the finish line. We saw friends from Potlatch. We felt the mist from Spokane Falls. It was elating. Neither of us knew whether we could make it so easily. But we did. It felt good.

My body said, “That wasn’t too bad.”

My mind said “You did it. Good job!”