I’ve been meaning to write some “definitive history” of my life as a runner for a few years. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be: how many events or thoughts wouldn’t end up making it into the piece, and how in the end there would be an argument to it that I didn’t even know I was making at the time, or, at least, a particular emphasis I was putting on things subconsciously as I was writing. The resulting piece (above) makes me seem like a total slacker, I think because there is so much guilt involved in any occupation that you do enough and love enough, and so the mind seems always concerned that it is not doing the thing enough.

As I age, accomplishment-based running (e.g. doing a marathon or something) is less important to me. At least for right now. But there has to be some goal, something big enough to keep me doing it. But the best goal I can think of, the one that has the most emotional resonance, at least, is a rather boring one. It’s about having some experience you can’t totally predict or control. The will to act, to create an event out of nothing. To have run today.