Last week I had trouble letting go of little annoyances. One of the things I didn’t mention was the Presidents Day Weekend Pro-Trump 2024 rally that made me sick to my stomach.
I thought I could just ignore it, chalk it up to a locality far too close to Mar A Lago to matter to me in the big scheme of things… but then today while running, I saw this woman’s shirt and it just really bugged me
.
It bugged me all the more when another runner, an older woman walking the half marathon, clapped and told her she loved her shirt.
I don’t know what will break people from the brainwashing, from the denial of fact and truth that lies before them. Amidst all the turmoil of this week especially, with a dictator invading a sovereign democratic neighbor claiming all sorts of falsehoods as truth, the legacy of the 45th President is one of destroying freedoms and justice and ideals. I don’t know what it will take to make his acolytes see the light.
I didn’t say anything to either the woman wearing the shirt or the elderly woman who endorsed it in passing. I just felt nothing I could say would change their minds… and anything I said could be a “provocation” for these types of people to “stand their ground” and claim they were “feeling threatened” as they shot me dead. That’s apparently a thing we are okay with in this country. It’s all very depressing.
So it was that once again this weekend I was unable to let things go and just run. People often ask what do I think about over the course of 26.2 miles. Sometimes nothing at all, sometimes lots of things… and not all of them good for the soul… or soles.
I wound up with a couple of blisters as well early on in the race and the 2 AM wakeup didn’t do me any favors. But despite all of that, and despite the aforementioned inability to let things go, there were still moments of beauty along the way… and that’s what I need to remember to focus on, not just here but in the future.
So here’s some beauty before, during, and after running:
Pre-race. [Note: the first shot is better blown up — click on it to embiggen it for a shot of the dipper… I can never remember which is the big or little one. Still, I should have run this one for the dipper!].
The Start Line and Race Itself:
The Finish… and though I wanted to stay positive here, just a quick note that the line for waffles was SOOOOOO long, I couldn’t stand to wait in it. This is going to make me sound like Kevin, The Grouchy Annoying Runner Guy, but there should be a line for half marathoners and a line for marathoners… or at least a quick service line for marathoners to get a banana or something into our stomachs after 26.2 miles.
