the privilege of the run

What a privilege, I thought just today, that I can run, jogging up and down the streets of my hometown, cavorting here and there, bouncing around from one location to another on my various bouts of exercise. In case you haven’t figured it out, I am a runner. Each week, and most days, I can be found out on the roads and/or “pounding the payments.”

Given that I had knee surgery (repairing a medial meniscus, dealing with some arthritis) not too long ago (a few years), and given that I have been doing this running thing for many years, it’s pretty amazing that I can still skip around as I do, cutting, weaving, and whatever else constitutes my daily routine. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not sure if it will last forever. Maybe, one day, I’ll be forced to do something else for exercise. But for now, at least, I simply love to pop on my IPod and jog around town.

There is something liberating about running. Most of the time I run alone, which affords me a measure of solitude–time to think, to pray, to wonder, to dream . . . to avoid getting hit by cars. Running, for me, is (most of the time) an opportunity to recharge; it’s a type of renewal.

What’s more, running is also, in some strange way, a kind of passageway to my past. Like I said, I’ve been doing this exercise thing for a pretty long time. In fact just yesterday I located an old running log that I had kept many years ago . . . in my “youth.” What I noticed is that I was definitely better then, that is, faster and able to log more overall miles. But I also noticed that there were some remarkable similarities even though I’m now just “slightly” older.

The point, I think, is that there is within me a kind of kid-like quality. In a lot of ways, I’ve never left my youth (I know, that explains a lot of things! :-) ), and running is one of the ways that kid continues to rise up and emerge from my life. Or, perhaps it would be better so say that running is one of the avenues through which the real me, the me that is still youthful (though hopefully not puerile) continues to hold sway. For that, I am immensely thankful, and I can only hope and pray that the running continues, along with the inner, God-given sense of youthful energy and wonder. Anyone want to go for a run?