Let the river run

It's ten weeks to M-Day and my schedule calls for me to run six miles, including one mile at (what is for me a) high speed. The alarm went off at 6:00, I struggled awake, got into my gear, and headed out... and a minute after I got out the door, it started to rain. I'll run in the rain if I have to, but an hour in sopping wet shoes isn't ideal, so I turned around and went in to wait... and wait... and wait... and wait... and wait it out.


Hour after hour, I corrected papers and planned and ate breakfast and surfed the 'net and read, checking every five minutes to see if the downpour had stopped. It hadn't. It was a strong, soft rain, coming straight down without fuss or spectacle.


By 2:30 or so it finally stopped, so I got my gear back on and headed down to Yangjae Cheon (Stream), only to find it flooded, wall to wall, a genuine river, if only for a few hours.


It's funny, metaphorically we know about rivers of blood and the river of time and the river of dreams... what's the metaphor for a river of... water?

Every minute or so, some poor soul or other would come tooling along on a bike, eager to shake off the rust of a day spent looking out at the rain... wait a minute, wouldn't there be rust from being in the rain... ah, never mind... somebody would come along, looking forward to a nice ride along the stream, and come to a skidding halt on the ramp, a big black interrobang forming overhead, and turn around and go back.

I made my way on the streets and sidewalks and through Citizens Forest Park to the rubberized surface above the water a mile from home and put in my time there, around and around, down the path and over the bridges and through the woods, to grandmoth... ah, never mind. I'll fix that in editing.

And finally, six miles and 62 minutes later, with the sun shining for the first time in years, I made it home, got my camera, and headed back down to Yangjae Cheon to take a few pictures... which may have been a tactical mistake after an hour of humid running... disheveled and bedraggled isn't a great look for me. Oh, and craggy... don't forget craggy. You do gotta love the Alfalfa cowlick, though...

Apres le deluge, moi.


(Everything to the right of that strip of grass by my head is usually the running path.)