With the rain at my heels

One can look at life in one of two ways: as not hav­ing sec­ond chances or as some­thing with lim­it­less sec­ond chances. Both are use­ful in its own way; no sec­ond chances means that every moment and every choice is pre­cious and can­not be reliv­ed. Unlim­it­ed sec­ond chances, though, means its nev­er too late to jump back in the race, what­ev­er that race may be.

While I cer­tain­ly believe that each moment is elu­sive and can­not be recap­tured, I’m still a fan of sec­ond chances and I endeav­or to take them when­ev­er I can. I was think­ing about sec­ond chances when I walked out the door today to go for my first run in over a month. Tomor­row (insha’Al­lah, deo volante) I’ll turn 41 and I’ve still nev­er run a marathon. I’ve com­mit­ted myself to the US Oth­er Half in the Spring as well as the US Half in the Fall, and con­sid­er­ing that I’m essen­tial­ly going from couch to 21K I should have start­ed train­ing last week. I haven’t picked a full marathon yet, but I think get­ting the half under my belt is wise before choosing.

There’s no way to start train­ing last week, so I got out on the road today. I did­n’t much feel like going for a run, but I rec­og­nized two things: that I want to want to run and, per­haps this is the same thing, I remem­ber what it was like to look for­ward to run­ning and I liked it. I’d like to have that back, but it won’t come back unless I get out on the road. Just as the first mile is always the hard­est, the first month is also hard­est. I miss run­ning and I’m going to have to do it more often if I’m going to get to the point where I enjoy it again.

I had just closed the front door behind me when I felt a rain­drop. There was a moment of hes­i­ta­tion, but being out the door meant I’d com­mit­ted. I looked back to the West and saw dark­er clouds, then start­ed run­ning East.

I nev­er felt more than those first cou­ple rain­drops, but the dark clouds con­tin­ued to gath­er behind me. When I turned around at Pac­Bell SBC AT&T Mays Field I thought I’d like­ly be run­ning back through the rain. There’s noth­ing wrong with that; I’ve always enjoyed run­ning in the rain. But either the rain went to the North of me on the way back or we’ll get it lat­er tonight.

I look for­ward to my next actu­al run in the rain, but today whether it’s true or not I’m giv­ing myself cred­it for out­run­ning the rain.