stuck inside of cambridge with the charles river blues again

Once again, I’m stuck at home, this time with a possible bronchial infection (my wife insists it's just a chest cold), and the entire world running but me. I’ve got to learn to take off my cold sweaty running clothes before sitting down to blog for an hour. I shudder to think about knocking myself out of commission just before the marathon. In the weeks prior, I’ve decided, I will live in a giant plastic bubble.


But today, since my lungs still feel tarred and my head stuffed with hay, I have to live through my wife’s run. Here’s her route. Chris never times herself, has no interest in racing. For her, it’s all about the act, about seeing the hawks down by the Cambridge Parkway, about the different runners and dogs she encounters, about one foot in front of the other. It’s a place to think freely and clearly, where time has no business. When both her parents died a few years ago, Chris ran and ran, tears streaming down her face.

Indeed, running is a process, one fueled by momentum. Forward motion is the life force. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis from an earlier post, if it wasn't for getting tired, one might never stop running. When I’m out there, I’m loathe to stop. Unless you’re on fire or my wife, I won’t slow down. Please don’t ask for directions. I hate having to be rude. Of course, there are times when there is no choice. Traffic. Geese crossing. A draw bridge. But I can’t bring myself to run in place as if my body's a precision instrument that can't be allowed to cool. There’s no forward movement, no progress. I will pace a few yards, then turn around, anything to keep covering ground.

But there is a dark side to momentum. The other day, I found myself running in Soldier’s Field Road because the sidewalks were so snowy. It was a stupid move. Cars were coming inches from me, and drivers surely cursing me out. But I was willing to risk danger and ire, until the slush had covered the entire shoulder and I was in the travel lane, hemmed in by the guardrail, playing chicken with the morning commuters. And a few days earlier, running across the Harvard Bridge, I selfishly crossed against a red light and came millimeters to being mowed down by a bus I didn’t see behind a truck. I felt its wind buffet my nose. But even then, the runner in me thinks, well, to go in one’s Brooks ain’t such a bad way. Either there will be more terrain to cover, and in that case, I'm ready. Or not, and then it doesn’t matter.

Torture on.

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