Sometimes isolation is the best inspiration.
When I first started running with UCRR, I seemed to have perfected the art of showing up as everyone was leaving. I made the turn into the Harris Teeter parking lot to see the group start to pull away. Sometimes I would just start late, and lag behind, other times I would bag completely and just run later in the day. However, I somehow eventually mastered the art of the alarm. Either set on my phone, or internally locked in my brain, I just got up because I knew I needed to get up. The run was still the thing, but the group was just as essential.
Today's run started the way it used to, by showing up late. This was a lateness born of scrambling to find enough clothes with a steady rain already falling at 7am.
I started out David Taylor around 7:15, and ran into Theoden who came out from under a tree (hoping to wait out the rain). We clipped off some quick miles heading out to the Y, he doubled back after about 3.5, and I was alone for the rest of the run. The goal was simple, try to hang around 8:15 pace (finished @ around 8:17....with a long break @ 10.5 to change clothes/bathroom), stay steady on the hills. Even though I ran into Hazel and Beach at the Y, the rest of the run definitely had a feeling of isolation. It was kinda cold....it rained....then stopped raining...then started raining again. I decided on a course of a double Y loop, so there always seemed to be a hill around every corner. I don't want this to come across as hyperbole, like I'm trying to paint myself as a character in a Jack London short story, it just felt lonely...but in a good, pensive, reflective kinda way.
The story of how Justin Vernon wrote the Bon Iver album "For Emma, Forever Ago" has been well documented. Alone....with mono....in a cabin.....in Wisconsin. He didn't go there planning to crank out breathtaking songs like this one...
It just happened. After going 0-4 in my attempts to knock out a 20 miler, I just wanted confidence coming out of this run. I didn't intend to find it by running most of the run by myself in the rain, but it just happened. Just a quiet run, that provided the self-reflection that would have never happened in a group, might not have happened without the rain. Still not sure how this will translate to the trails in 3 weeks, but it was nice, even with sore legs, to quiet the doubts in my head....and I didn't even need to get mono or go to Wisconsin to do it.
