Egads, has it really been so long? Have I really not toed the start line in almost 3 months? Part of that time off was a torn/wonky hamstring that I finally couldn’t ignore… although it’s still not “healed.” Part of that time off was a general sense of ennui.
I used to travel a lot of weeks in the before times, used to grumble and grouse but mostly enjoy the airports and the murder hotels and the quest to find some random tourist trap roadside attraction. But those days seem far, far away. And I guess they kind of are. The pandemic that shut the world was March 2020. And it did a number on all of us. I kept thinking we’d emerge excited to see people in real life but the intervening years has seemingly only made us more prone to isolation and turtling, has made us all the more oblivious or ambivalent toward other people.
Each time I find myself out and about once more in the “real” world, I’m struck anew at how people behave without decorum, manners, or acknowledgment that we are all in a shared space once more. Movies and stage musicals, pubs and amusement parks — it’s astonishing to me how little people care to be kind or even appreciative that someone else is in the same area. We have all grown so much smaller in our vision for existence — the size of a phone screen, the space of a table and damn the rest who may be nearby.
I say all of this as there have been more than a few weekends when I would look for some place to go, some race to run, and I would just get so exhausted at the prospect of facing other people. I’m no angel, I’m not innocent of the charges leveled above. I know that. But I do try and be aware of the world around me at least MOST of the time. And most of the time, I dread humanity and I dread travel and I dread the time and effort.
I’ve been reading a lot about aging and the concentrated aging that apparently comes in our 40s and 60s. I’ve been feeling my age quite a bit lately. I run slower, I run lumberingly, I run with more aches and pains that don’t quite dissipate the way they did years ago.
And so it is that I’m feeling incredibly nervous about this, my first marathon in many months. I’ve got a few slotted in the coming months but the airfares and logistics are left as half-booked and mostly-ignored, the price financially and spiritually putting those events into the “questionable” category. Not so this trip to Santa Rosa. It’s a longer drive than I remembered — 6.5 to 7 hours or so each way I’m guessing per Google Maps. And my body is feeling the miles logged and dreading the miles to come.
I say the following in passing, as a throwaway, because I’m not sure why it seems important. I suppose we are creatures of base 10, albeit perhaps this is more base 5… but we tend to place an emphasis on the 0s and 5s. The ten year reunion. The 25th anniversary. The 525th marathon. And this is indeed my 525th marathon. It’s a number, like any other. If we were a base 3 culture I suppose the 525th would still be significant as being evenly divisible by 3. And yet, again, just a number. It’s momentous only because I’m making it so. And I purposefully chose a not-so-incredible venue for the number (not like at 500 which I worked a number of angles to celebrate in Boston with friends and family). Maybe it’s not supposed to be significant. Maybe it’s just one more time round the mile markers. Because maybe that’s all life is — just another foot forward, another turn at the corner, another out and back.
I’m not saying anything of import — this isn’t something to be studied or considered or even perhaps pondered or read. Maybe I’m just saying it to acknowledge that it’s a thing, a moment in time. And we should be mindful of moments, perhaps only for ourselves. Selfish seems to be in at the moment.
