spontaneity

I did not mean to end my last entry by saying I am marathon runner. It just came out this way. Sometimes the opposite comes out, and it's meaningful too.

Two weeks ago I got sick and any shred of motivation I still had at the time burnt up in fever. The illness itself (a bronchial inflammation of some kind)was not that bad - I spent three or four days in bed, and read a half dozen books. But I got completely alienated from running, a zombie kind of endeavor, senseless, and going nowhere.

Fever and all, I had to keep an appointment, so my boyfriend gave me a ride. Driving west on Alameda street I thought back at the New Mexico Plus Marathon in September. This was mile 17 or 18 or thereabouts, and at this point I was dragging myself through the heat, half stumbling, half walking, as I would for the next five or six miles, possessed by the inexplicable.

My boyfriend glanced at me. "Does it bring back memories?"

"Yeah, I was just thinking about that," I said. "Was I crazy?"

I doubted I would ever put on running shoes again.