A gritty, dirty place.

The alarm went off this morning at...5 am?  I drank too much wine last night.  Not too much for a regular night, but too much for the night before a scheduled 17 mile run.

So the alarm went off.  I hit snooze.  Max rolled over on the remote and turned on the TV.  George Lopez was on at 5 am.  That's enough to get me up, but not necessarily enough to get me moving.

I hadn't gotten anything ready last night, so I had to drag my bag out and start throwing stuff in it.  I thought for a second about hitting the road in the neighborhood, but 17 miles of circles around Jacksonville sounded like more than I could take.  I went outside to the laundry room in my underwear to get my shorts and running bra.  I was going to wear a shirt but the one I wanted was dirty.  Yeah, ok, no, that doesn't usually stop me, but there was a black tire-track looking mark on it from taking Ty's bike out the other day.  I went without a shirt.  I hate that little belly pooch but I do keep reminding myself that it keeps my water belt from riding up.

I parked at Cook's Landing and started running at 6:40.  I decided to break the run into 2-3 segments based on which direction I was heading, and started down the North Little Rock side.  There was that little hitch in my left hip/groin for the first bit, but I finally got it to pop and all was well.  It was cloudy, which turned out to be my saving grace today, though I did worry constantly about getting caught in a storm.  I needn't have.

I ran to the skate park and then turned to go up the hill at Ft. Roots.  This was the first sign of difficulty at about 3.7 miles or so.  I was huffing and puffing up that hill and did walk a little.  Some firetrucks were just finishing up putting out a small brush fire near the top.  I rounded the curve, went around the building at the top of the hill, and got a good look at the view.  Then I enjoyed the run back down.  I was feeling what I am coming to know as "first half bliss," where I think about what a great run this is even though I'm not even into it that well.

Back at Cook's Landing I went over the big dam bridge and had a bit of a mental debate about what to do now.  I was at 12 miles and only needed 5 more.  The trail seemed busy down toward Murray Park (I like busy) so I almost went that way, but then changed my mind and turned toward Two Rivers instead.  I crossed the bridge and made the loop.

It was around the time of coming back over Two Rivers bridge that I really started to feel the miles.  I fought the urge to walk up the incline and dug deep instead.  I dug for a place, told myself to dig down to the gritty dirty place where no one else is and no one else can find me, to dig down to the place where nothing else exists and just run.  I powered over the bridge and back down stream toward my finish.  I focused, tried to make a tunnel in front of me and not think, just repeat, nothing else exists, nothing else exists, nothing else exists.

With about 1.25 miles to go just after the 430 overpass I slowed to a walk for a drink.  I felt my calves start to cramp up and knew that I needed to get back to a run quickly, so I gulped some water and kept going.  One more time I walked, accidentally, when I went for a drink and pulled the whole spout of my water bottle out.  I grabbed it up and went on, glancing at my watch too many times until I crossed from 16.99 to 17 miles.  Stop.  Walk back over the Big Dam Bridge.  I averaged a pace of 10:18 (not including my stops for water fountain bathing) and I'm happy with that.

I thought some today about what people are carrying around with them that we don't know about, how we don't know their stories or where they keep their baggage or how they cope.  How I can meet people or even know people for a while and not see or even imagine that they might be a little like me, but not in the good ways.  But not in the bad ways, either.  It's actually a good thought.

My goal to pick a word every day has not taken hold.  I have made lists, though, of things that I have been putting off and just being anxious about.  I have crossed quite a few of them off, and tomorrow I'll have more chances.