arroyo ghost running

I’ve been sick a lot lately so the running has been a little crazy. I’m this close to being recovered but I just can’t quite kick it. It doesn’t even seem to be tied to anything in particular but just comes in waves of randomness. I’m still getting some good distance in and even some great timing but also every other run seems to fall flat. Alternating super fast and inspired with super slow and dragging.

Yesterday was both. It started out slow and horrible. I had a headache, I thought I was going to vomit and pass out. I had no reason to be out running. But once you start it becomes very difficult to disengage yourself from the path, the route, the rut, the ritual. You don’t even want to take one more step but you do. Your legs just want it and they’re not listening to the head. All the head can do is pour water constantly down the throat hoping to avoid a dehydrative crash.

Once you’re at the top, the turnaround, the halfway point, well then there’s nothing left to worry about because you’re out of options. You can either run home or you can lie down and die. I guess that’s an option but generally a last resort. Not one I was quite ready for. And besides by that point, my brain having given up it’s fight, having nothing left to fight for, wasn’t hassling me any more so the legs just ran and ran faster.

The mind freed from worry but still in it’s fever induced state set upon creating morbid and hallucinatory entertainments. The morbid thought being like: death – the miracle tonic – it cures what ails you – and realizing that really that’s not a bad deal – we pick up all these quirks and aches and diseases and blocks throughout our lives and we do our best to live with them even if they’re ain’t no cure – we run through them – and then one day – all of us – set free from all of it – reset…

The hallucinatory thoughts being like: when I got back to the pedestrian/equestrian underpass under the “Historic Arroyo Seco Parkway” as they’re calling it now (don’t go thinking it’s still a freeway!), the place where on the way up/out I’d nearly passed out from the ill I was feeling, now seeing my dead grandfather standing there waiting for me. Waiting for something anyway, not me maybe, just standing there, really. But it was surely him. Unmistakable. He couldn’t see me though or hear me. I just ran right by him, right through him maybe. I didn’t dare to look back. Well, the Arroyo seems like as good a place as any for him to hang around – I know it’s where I’ll be spending a lot of time when I’m gone. Not to mention while I’m here.