12/18/2022: 8.64 Miles
Running with these old high school teammates on these old high school running routes feels so different and yet so similar all the same; I reminisce just as much in my own thoughts on these runs as I do in conversation with these familiar faces. A part of me is tired of being stuck in this town, in this past, but I know that my time here is very limited now, and so I continue welcoming the old memories along with the new. A kind man I have never met joined us on this run. He informed me that he lived in the building where my old preschool used to be many years ago. These memories, too, I allow to wash over me.
12/20/2022: 7.25 Miles
And again I find myself with an old friend and teammate, and so once again I find myself in all of the old memories of people and place. We agree to meet in front of the high school, and as I stand there I view that the place is now not the place it once was, and stare out onto the field that we would gather on every day of the fall season, and I accept that it is better to know the past and reflect on it through the lens of the present than to flee from it completely, without the slightest idea of what the past meant or how it shaped our present, even our future…
08/29/2014: 2.5 Miles
But I’m not going to write about the past in this complete manner. Because I’m realizing that I’m already growing tired of reliving my running career over and over in conversation and in writing and in my head most of all, because it was my life for eight years and I’m tired of it being my life, even though it feels like an easy out when I have very little other life to live while I still dwell out here in my parent’s house, plaques and medals in my room reminding me constantly of who I was and who I know so many people think I still must be. There is little to be gained from documenting it all, when the documentation exists in every ache in my muscles and every ounce of me that wants to stand up and start running right now.
So I’m just going to talk about the now and the future, and otherwise just provide you with some gentle, more fleeting glimpses of my past with this sport. There are parts of it that are too personal for even me to share; some memories must belong to the heart and only the heart. That’s what I believe.
This is the right thing for me to do. I see that now. But, don’t worry: Tim’s still running.
Thank you very much for reading my silly little blog for even this long. I hope you will keep reading whatever I decide to write about running and also everything that isn’t running next. I hope there is something or someone in your life that makes you feel warm and safe and alive every single day. I hope you love your life, and I hope your life loves you.