Day 163

A hole in the sky.

I ran 5.92 km today!  I thought I was running 5 but I must have run an extra circuit by mistake.  The sky grew blacker and blacker so that every time I entered the forest road it was the dark forest, the darker forest, the darkest forest. 

Funny how we are such creatures of habit.  Like sleeping on a particular side of the bed.  For years couples sleep in the same pattern, the man on the left, the woman on the right, or the opposite.

And my babies, the twins, each chose a breast they liked, and wouldn't drink from the other side after a few months. Nick got so fat that I thought his breast was giving creamier milk than the other, so I tried to swap them, to serious refusal from both tiny people!   I think Nick just did all his growing very quickly after he was born, because the big round laidback Matthew had been lazing on top of him, crowding him in the womb!

And if you go to a conference, or a classroom, people tend to come in each day and sit in the same spot they sat in previously, it's where we feel safe.  And if the facilitator or teacher tries to move people out of that place they become very insecure.

The reason why I did not have a km planned out for such a long time was that when I began running seriously my circuit looped on the road at the point where it curved downhill and everything got very slippery and icy in the snow, so that it was dangerous to go down further.  When the snow had gone I just continued turning around and running back up the hill at that spot, because that is what I had done for some months, it had become my habit! 

Running is hard but I love it.  As I run I am sometimes aware of how the physical frame is put together, all the joints, the mind pushing the body on, the brain and the anatomy striving together to propel this body forward, the industry of the muscles, the endeavour of the will.  Sometimes I find myself arching my back to get the maximum length to my lungs, my diaphragm, the air getting pulled into my mouth, down through all the little tubes and bronchioli, my good dependable heart pumping, pumping the blood, keeping the arteries elastic, flowing through the muscles. 

My legs automatons of my brain, my elbows flying above my loose hands.  Elbows are such strange things, wrinkled and tough.  One morning long ago, cuddling in bed with the little boys, Matthew was stroking my arm and telling me his dream, when he suddenly asked, "Mom, are your elbows older than you are?"

Coming out of the wooded road into the meadow for the last circuit, I surprised and was surprised by a deer hurtling away from her perceived danger - my running figure.  I thought she had gone off towards the 3rd meadow, but after I had circled the meadow and was re-entering the forest at a fast pace (I always try to sprint the last 200m or so), I was astonished and delighted to find her suddenly to the right, just a short distance from me, running neck and neck down the home stretch for a few meters, until she without warning decided to cut across right in front of me, leaping high like the road signs, her bright white tail the last I saw of her as she disappeared into the undergrowth on the other side of the road.