Sunday's half marathon was surrounded by sense of importance, a sense that I needed to define my running. Exactly why Sunday, and that race, I can't tell you. Maybe it's because I have a blog and I wanted to show a picture of my mind leading up to the race but everytime I tried to get my mental state to stand still it would morph. The snapshot was impossible. Why couldn't I just sum it up? It's only running.

I kept thinking back to September when I realized I didn't want to try and pass for nothing anymore. But something else stuck with me over the weeks, and I'm a little apprehensive to say what it is... it's a quote from Without Limits one of the Pre movies (Crudup not Leto). Bowerman looks up at the team on the first day of the season and says,

Who the hell knows if Bowerman, or anyone ever said this about running in real life. But those words have been hanging around me. And today, as my car crawled across the viaduct, it clicked. That might be the most accurate reason that it's hard to sum up the importance of running or the bigness of it. It's as ridiculous as life.
 

When I was younger, my grandfather told me a story. He told me when he woke up one morning, around the time he'd turned 25, he understood life. He understood his place in it, his role and the cause and affect of things. He just simply understood. The whole mess lined up.

Maybe that happens for white men. I'm kidding. But really when he told me this story I was 22 and my whole life felt like it was blowing up in some crazy quarter life crisis. I had no idea what life was or even what I wanted it to be. And I still don't. 25 came and went without any epiphany. But once in awhile I put a couple pieces together.

I'm 28 going on 29 and I'm running again after I had finally being able to turn my back on the sport for a few years. Of course now I realize I never walked away. Although last year if you'd asked me if I'd be gunning for a sub 1:20 half I'd have laughed. 1:20 is some sort of tipping point for me. It's an arbitrary number really, but it makes me feel full of possibility now that I've cracked it. And I didn't have to go to hell and back to do it. It wasn't effortless, but I didn't dig all the way down to the pain place to find it.

So basically I haven't figured out what running will be for me, but I know I care. And maybe that's all I need to know for now.