13 Miles

Tomorrow I run another half-marathon. Anyone who has trained for or completed an endurance event knows that the training takes so much mental and physical effort, that the actual race kind of falls of the radar, like you might as well do it in a dream because the real tough part is over.
Saturday mornings in many inches of snow and subzero wind chills made me think of the poem often. Good thing, because at times it was all I had to get through.

ATHLETE GROWING OLD*

By Grace Butcher

The caution is creeping in:

the step is hesitant

from years of pain;

a soft grunt bends the body over,

and straightens it.

The skin loosens; everything moves

nearer the ground.

To overcome the softening,

the yearning toward warmth,

she exercises,

makes her muscles hard,

runs in the snow,

asks herself when she is afraid,

“What would you do now if

you were not afraid?”

She listens for the answer

and tries to be

like that person who speaks,

who lives just outside

all her boundaries

and constantly calls her

to come over, come over.

*Thanks Michelle, for sending this to me. I will see you in a few hours for some pre-race chatter.