The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind...

[SteveO]

This story does not really match up to the song lyrics. I am looking at it in a much more literal sense.

The regular 3:am wake-up and I hear the wind howling. I really don't like the wind. I need to go for an 8 mile run and this is not going to help.

My city is built on a sand dune. Sand is in the air when the wind is blowing. Running in the wind is very uncomfortable and it is blowing hard.

There is a race coming up. The miles are necessary. I try hard to talk myself out of this.

The shoes get laced up and out the door I go. One of my feet keeps kicking my leg because the wind is blowing it out of alignment. My teeth are instantly gritty from the sand. I decide to extend the run to 10 miles instead of 8 to knock some of this wimp shit out of my head.

Fortunately, I have the ability to disassociate from discomfort. So, off to a dream sequence....

I am training for the annual Hood to Coast relay race that is coming up in August. A recollection comes to mind of one of the past races and one of the race legs.

There are a thousand teams in this race. It is a 12 person relay and each person does around 16 miles split into 3 legs. I had already done 2 of mine and had a 7 miler coming up. This leg is along the Louis and Clark trail and was basically all on dirt road. This relay does not really allow for sleep as it is one destination to the next for 200 miles. We had been awake all night and this was my final race leg.

All the teams are in a staggered start over a 12 hour period in order to avoid too much congestion with runners and vans throughout the course. One of the games people play is that every time you pass a runner, you get a roadkill. I had 10 roadkills from the first two legs.

Anyway the 3rd leg was on. A song from Neil Young started repeating in my head. I was passing runners fairly quickly and keeping up with the counting. As people were passed, my pace picked up. I went deeper into my head and charged forward.

A few miles in, I realized that I had passed 40 people.... The pace was continuing to pick up.

I could now see the next exchange point. Excitement was building. There was over a quarter mile to go but I took off out of control. Completely exhausted and ready to collapse, I started roaring out loud as I ran. Counting the numbers 85, 86, 87... Sprinting into the exchange area, I looked for the next runner..... Not there. There are thousands of people here watching for their runners. Cars are everywhere. After a couple of minutes, my teammate ran over, grabbed the baton and took off running. 89 roadkills in one 7 mile stretch!

I met up with the rest of the team and they said that they were not expecting me for another 5 or 10 minutes.

That may have been the race of my life and it did not contribute to the overall team position. Oh well, I still had my satisfaction...

*Dream mode off*

Anyway, my run is now complete. I walk through my door and wonder why it was so difficult to get started in the first place.

 

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