Day 171: Perfume & Darkness

I ran 3 miles in Central Park tonight, just before sunset. The air was hung with rich perfumes from waxy flowers dripping off soft spring branches. Waving in the breeze, the trees released their scents which all descended on me like a blanket in dizzy colors. I was enraptured.

Then the darkness started. Slow, slow, slow… Is it coming, I’d ask myself, and then there, I’d just be able to make out a shift in my seeing, and know yes, it was coming. I’d notice the bronze statue, and then I’d see the blackest flat man on his horse, where the statue had been. Park lights into pin spots. Theatre in the round and my eyelids like velum curtains, open or shut – no difference.

Runners around me made movable points of reference. The women, in huge packs, led by yellow vested teachers, brought up fears of training with a group… but then the feeling washed away with the dying of the light, as the throngs became buffering ripples on a cool, flowing current. Yes, it’s going to be OK. The men, before the last of the sun, paddled by, beefy and wet, pulling their arms through the air, fighting, groaning, feeding me cupfuls of inspiration; and then fade to dim, they pounded past, my driving protectors, ready in any moment to shield me from dangers that might emerge from the textured and curious landscape to our sides.

I know. Don’t run in the Park in the dark. But what a loss not to have been where I went tonight, and so many others out there with me; was it really so much of a risk? Into a dollhouse of sights and sounds, altered to near psychedelic expression, where the runner runs as she always does, at a similar pace, on the same path, in her place, and yet every glistening drop smells and looks like an untold fantasy.

I was slow today. 3 miles in 35:10, at an 11:43 pace. My allergies were raging. My throat was sore. I’d eaten dinner first and felt like a garlic bomb might explode up out of me any minute. But I went out there and ran because it was on the schedule to. And I ran because I wanted to feel good. I felt bad before I went out; and I felt good when I came back. Really, it’s just that simple. Even I’m starting to believe it.

Five more days until the Half Marathon. Today there is combination of fear and excitement. But mostly fear. I need to make a strategy for getting through this thing or I’m going to freak out!