Running Journal 9

I ran twice this week. That's a breakthrough, by the way. Up to this point in my new, life-changing practice of running, I've only run once a week, so when I got home from work before dark on Friday, it was a novel experience to change clothes and go for a slow jog to the pond off East Park St. in the warm early evening.

It took awhile to warm up the muscles and joints, regardless of the fair weather. My mantra is: Take it slow. And so I did, taking an eternity just to get to the pond, about a mile away, but then it got a little more fun on the soft footing of the trail, circling the half-frozen pond on a mixture of fine gravel, snow, ice, slush, mud, a nice boardwalk, you name it. So I took my time and got back in about 40 minutes, less mileage than usual but that's okay, since we're breaking new ground here.

I felt so good, I suggested going out for pizza instead of ordering in. We tried out a new restaurant, Carsonie's, down south on Westerville Road, and it was another new experience. According to my amateur ethnographic observations, it's an old Westerville hangout, full of DeSales graduates from the latter half of the 20th century, a too-loud sound system playing top-40 hits from that era, and an promising menu of pizza, beer, and calzones.

We ordered a medium veggie pizza and an appetizer, waited half an hour, nothing. Then they brought a pizza with the wrong toppings, promised another one with what we ordered, but forgot the appetizer. Long story short, we eventually got the pizza we asked for (in a box), a couple of Deviant Dave's IPAs, and an order of meatball sliders, all for free, plus a gift certificate to say they want us to come back.The Deviant Dave's was pretty good, the sliders not bad, and the apologies from multiple waitpersons were effusive.

Saturday morning, Gven Golly and I walked over to Church of the Master for a lecture by Otterbein professor Geoffrey Barstow on Buddhist meditation. Barstow has studied Tibetan Buddhist texts and practices for several years in Nepal and brings first-hand experience to the Western, Christian academic setting. His talk gave the local community, right there in the Fellowship Hall of the Methodist church, an even-handed and non-judgmental description of Tibetan Buddhist training that cut through its exoticism and mystery.  Of course, you can only go so far in an hour and a half, but I was glad we went.

I spent the afternoon washing the truck, cleaning out the garage, and fixing the back gate. We had (free) leftover pizza and fresh guacamole for supper, built a nice fire in the stove, and talked to my Dad on the phone.

Sunday morning seminar with the regulars at Java Central was exceptionally lively, and it's a good thing because the annual Children's Sabbath at Church of the Master was an ordeal of saccharine sweetness. I escaped to go home and do laundry, sweep the den, and bake bread. It was nice enough outside to follow through on the nice, clean garage by cleaning out the carport and reorganizing some lumber in the woodshed. Not that any real work will get done, but it feels good to have stuff in order.

With the sun sinking near the horizon and bread loaves rising, it was now or never, so I put on my running clothes and retraced my muddy steps to the pond.

It didn't go smoothly. My knees balked at the effort. A big black dog charged down a driveway on East Park St. to warn me away from his territory, but he stopped at the curb, I only flinched for a second, and I lived to tell the  tale. I repeated my mantra and focused extra attention on lifting the knees, which seems to increase the bounce from a short, toe-first stride, slow as it is. The thing is, speed does not matter. I'm just out there learning how to run again. Ask me in seven years if I'm really a runner.