As I moved into the yard the fog surrounded me in a wet sticky embrace. It was strange to not be able to see more than a couple of feet ahead of me and the street lights were just a faint glow in the distance.
My shoes were a little loose so I stepped into the street to tighten them. As I did I could hear foot steps coming across the neighbor’s yard toward me. My heart started beating like I was already running pretty hard and then I realized that the “footsteps” were just water condensed from the fog dripping from the trees.
I cannot stand not having all my senses functioning normally. As I started running I only had a sense of the hard ground below me but I felt as if I were running into nothing … UNO, dos, tres, CATORCE!… I'm at a place called Vertigo
I was watching really closely where I stepped. I didn’t want to twist my ankle stepping off of the sidewalk. Because I was paying so much attention to the ground at mile 2 I missed my turn on Southern Oaks by a couple of strides. I’ve run this four-mile loop for years, most of the time once a week; and I missed my turn.
I hate running in the fog. I think running is an excellent metaphor for life. And I think I live sometimes like I ran this morning. In a fog, without my senses intact, hearing things that are not there, scared of what is ahead, paying so much attention to some things that I miss what is important.
The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.
Marcel Pagnol
4 miles – 35:29
