Today, I had a good run.

The passivity of “had” does little justice to the vigor with which I threw myself into the run, particularly its final third. For the sake of simplicity, though, I will stand by my original phrasing: Today, I had a good run.

Usually, I run whenever, but rarely as night falls. Today, I did not run whenever, but precisely as night fell.

It was great.

I began responsibly. Having skipped a run yesterday, I held the pent-up energy that can lead to a regrettably quick start and, in fairness, I did begin a little quicker than I should’ve. But I recovered. (Sometimes I don’t, but today I did.) I, as the cliche goes, “hit my stride”.

I remained in my stride for the middle of the run, and stayed there for the start of the end. Then, the coolness of dusk, and the necessity of arriving home while I could still see, urged me to pick it up.

Not feeling up for an argument – if you don’t remember, I was then engaged in a rather-fast run – I assented. My legs kicked with more force, my calves sprung with more bounce, my quads lifted with more height. Now, I was moving.

Then, a near brush with pseudo-calamity. As I glid along a cattails-heavy span, I glanced down to see a dark leaf on the ground. A playful thought to lightly crunch the leaf flitted through my mind, but I decided against deviating from my course.

Then, a near brush with pseudo-calamity.

Instants after the point-of-no-return would have passed, had I decided to step on the leaf, I comprehended that I was seeing not a leaf, but a frog!

I should explain here that I am no pacifist. However, I also do not kill wantonly, and I desperately dislike being directly involved in death, particularly death of the needless variety. If, for example, I spy a house centipede in my room or a silverfish in the bathtub, I prefer to move it rather than squash it. (The exception for me is spiders, due to several incredibly painful spiderbites that have not even imbued me with Spiderman-esque powers, and due to the fact that some spiders can kill in a way that, to my knowledge, silverfish and house centipedes cannot.)

Thankfully, my frog friend (or, more accurately, “the frog”, since I had little opportunity to get to know the fellow) avoided the squish and, for all I know, remains on the path, perhaps in wait for some luckless soul to perform the squish on the frog’s luckless soul – or for someone else to experience the rush of avoiding a near-squish.

Spurred on by the heart-pounding effect of having nearly squished a frog, I sped up. By now, I was not jogging at dusk; I was running at night. Headlights swung along my fuzzed-out hair, my bare chest, as I step-step-stepped forward.

Soon (sooner, in fact, than ever before, according to the tropy icon presented to me when I uploaded the run) I was home. I performed some swift but light back-and-forths along my street as a cool-down, and then returned inside to chug orange juice and guzzle milk, so as to avoid the post-run wooziness that can knock me out of commission for the rest of the evening if I’m not careful.

Postscript (Do postscripts exist in non-letters? I suppose they can.)

The ever-shifting, ever-challenging calculus of running is knowing how much pain is normal, how much pain is necessary, how much pain is desirable, how much pain is acceptable, and how much pain you should endure before you throw up your hands, sit unflinchingly still for weeks or months, and get back to it, but very very slowly.

… and how much pain you should endure before you throw up your hands, sit unflinchingly still for weeks or months, and get back to it, but very very slowly.

The calculus is, and I quote, “ever-shifting, ever-challenging”, because there is the nagging push to get better, the cautious pull to stay healthy, and the conflicting push/pull to run fast enough to have fun today but slow enough to be able to move tomorrow. On a month-to-month basis, as mileage increases (or, in the case of an injury, decreases) and goals stretch toward new dreams and contract toward new realities, training plans can appear dauntingly challenging to past you and delightfully easy to future you. An ideal plan is only perfectly ideal (with some wiggle room) for a single day.

Running – if you have an eye toward improvement – is a thinker’s sport. But, for me, that’s the fun of it!