Born to Run

The miseducation of..... (playlist)
 
A Photo
SP of me in my happy place, doing my happy thing.
There’s no bad weather, only the wrong clothes.
 
A Muse
Oh frabjous day! Oh how I’ve missed you running!
18 months of little running due to foot pain led to surgery 6 weeks ago, today running returned to me.
Running the thing I do where my mind, my spirit, my body are most together, most fully alive – nothing much else comes close. 
 
Hill
I set off from the house, cross the road, and run up the moor, uphill for nearly 2 miles, soon the rhythm of my steps, the quickening, deepening breath….. just the breath…… just this breath….. thighs burning. Things that were unsettled in me and the overthinking that beset me falls away into place.
 
Plateau
I reach the brow, running free now, mind and body calm, no thinking, tightness inside relaxing, a mindful calm, I notice joy – “when I run I feel his pleasure”, enjoying what my body can still do, at ease with what it can’t. 
No thinking, but then thoughts come, so often the thoughts bearing solutions or understanding to my previously fruitless effortful thinking.
 
Descent
Then down the trail that brings me home. 
Speed now, almost dancing, 
running now on feel, not on sight, this is play. 
As I go downhill something in me soars.
 
Never in 10’s of thousands of miles on the road and trails have I ever returned home wishing I’d not bothered. 
Today the wind was driving the hail in my face, my feet lost sensation in the icy puddles and wet snow, but returning I felt more alive and for a while more whole.
Oh frabjous day! Oh how I’ve missed you running!

A Tune
Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen