skytrick

My life as Trick
2002-02-04 14:59:00 (UTC)

Egging me on....

The alarm went off at 3:30am.

I arrived at the Y's 1 mile track at 3:55am, and started
stretching.

The first thing that intrigued me was that at 4am - I'm
still not the only person on the track. There were at
least 4 other people out in the 50-degree weather walking,
jogging, and stretching.

Who knew?

I do a quick warm-up of a .3 mile walk and a .3 mile run.
I walk a mile, and my legs begin to itch as they warm up
and get accustomed to the chill in the air.

At the 1 mile mark, I begin to jog. The other people on
the track on only noted by their vehicles in the parking
lot, as I do not see anyone while I'm moving. My company
comes from the 6 or 7 rabbits that have taken up residence
near the aptly named Residence Inn just off of I-55.

My breath is visible, and my lungs are cold and I listen to
the clip clop of my shoes as they slap against the asphalt
track.

1.0 mile.
2.0 miles.

The rabbits alternate between ignoring me (including the
one I almost stepped on) and racing about me, as if to let
me know that I was much slower than they were, but they
would put up with my presence.

3.0 miles.
3.5 miles.

At 3 miles, more cars began to show up as the Y actually
opened, and my friends the rabbits began to slowly
disappear back into their homes. They don't mind people
they know, but they just aren't very sociable with new
footsteps.

3.75 miles.
4.0 miles.

At four miles, I realize that my legs are numb, but my
chest isn't hurting. There is no stitch in my side, and I
decide to keep running.

4.1 miles.
4.2 miles.
4.3 miles.
4.4 miles.
4.5 miles.

I thought about stopping. I really did. In fact, I
thought about giving up at that point just so I could write
another entry on how easy it was to beat 4.5 miles the next
time I ran. But I wanted to keep going. It seemed like
cheating somehow. And, to be honest, I didn't know whether
this was a fluke of my being too sleepy to realize how far
I'd gone.

4.6 miles.
4.7 miles.
4.8 miles.

I almost stopped.
And then I saw the last rabbit. He was, in fact, the one
that I had almost stepped on earlier. He had been absent
the loop before, but he was back. He seemed to have come
back to cheer me on.

4.9 miles
5.0 miles

Just Friday, I wrote about how difficult it was for me to
reach 4.1 miles. Today, less than 72 hours laters, I'm
doing 5, and stopping because the aerobics class is about
to start.

In many things in life, there is rarely slow, steady
progress. You have to struggle through the plateaus to
reach the peaks.




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