A Long Walk

I knew it was going to be a bad run even before I started.

As I laced up my shoes, my stomach felt queasy and when I stood up, I got a rush of blood to my head.  "No big deal. You can push through it. Just take it slow, set your stride, you'll be fine." I ran 4 miles to my turnaround point, the Starbucks on Ocean Drive at 1st street and had to stretch out my right calf. (I've never stopped on a run before!) About 3 blocks into the return, I felt severe, unrelenting nerve pain originating under my right clavical and piercing straight down my side to my hip. Time to walk.  I was able to jog slowly slowly slowly... the remaining 2.5 miles to the movie theater where I popped in for Black Swan. ---Awesome, awesome, awesome movie, btw---

When I got out of the theater, I realized that I had pulled both of my calves and my right quad so badly that I was limping.  And I had 30... blocks... to go, to get home.  So off I limped to the boardwalk, and started my 30 blocks in a creepy mist where I could hardly see the dim lamps let alone any  approaching company.  Every step hurt.  I knew that I was going to have to sit it out for at least two days.  But I was jolted into 'survival mode' as a small girl in pink shorts walking down a boardwalk at 10:45pm on a Monday night, and kept a strong pace.

30 blocks is a long time to think about things. I thought about my life, about my time in Miami, about what I'm going to do in April when I will be able to leave, why I didn't like turning 26 and where I envisioned the rest of my year to be heading.  I realized... I don't know very much about myself. I felt like I was stripped down the barest version of myself. No music, no cell phone, walking alone on this creaking boardwalk, seeing bright stars over the mist and hearing the rise and fall of the waves. I haven't stopped to think: "Katie, if you could do anything, be anybody, say anything... what would it be?" in a very long time.  It was one of the heaviest and yet one of the lightest moments of my life. I liked the quote from the trailer of Sucker Punch which I heard tonight, "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."

I did a lot of walking tonight. And in that sense, maybe it was actually one of the... best runs I've ever had.