That Old Train Keeps Blowing

The race I am planning to run on Saturday - the Cocoa 5-K - is going to be just a fun run.  We ran this race last year and quickly realized that, with its winding sidewalks and parking-lot crossovers, the course was probably not accurately measured, and I remember that there was a problem with the results, too; someone mistakenly drove off with them, not realizing that the finishers might want to know how they placed.  But if the course is short or long, it will be the same distance for everybody, and unlike some runners I know I will forgive volunteers who are simply doing the best they can to organize a small fund-raising event.  No chip timing, no likelihood of setting a record of any kind, lots of kids sprinting ahead and then suddenly stopping ahead of you.  There might even be Gatorade at the finish line, and T-shirts.  And I hope neither of us will get injured on the uneven sidewalks.

Still, I am training to do the best I can - what else can a runner do? - and have been running these "intervals" of unknown distance every week.  Today I completed four miles and included two of them (1:01 and 0:59), the last "speed" work I will do before the race.  Three days before a race all I want to do is briefly remind my legs what 5-K pace feels like.

As I was on my way to the picnic area I could hear, across the salt flats and the Sound, the moaning of a freight train, and I remember that I had heard it during the night last night, and from time to time wavering in the distance since we have been here.  There is a railroad track originating at Morehead City's port, where all those freighters we see on the horizon at night from time to time are going to and coming from, and it runs straight down the middle of Arendell Street, a surprising sight to see!

On Sunday mornings, worshipers at the two or three churches on Arendell park startlingly close to the tracks, although I have never seen a freight train run on Sunday morning, nor come to think of it at any time at all.  I just hear them in the distance, and it is somehow very reassuring to know that commerce is taking place while we sleep and while we run.

I am reminded when I hear the freight train of that beautiful song that not many are familiar with by Chrissie Hynde, a woman who has aged as gracefully as Emmy Lou Harris:  One Thing Never Changed.

That old train keeps blowing
Through the center of this town
Restores my faith
When the chips are down

It don't take no passengers
Since the streets got re-arranged
But that whistle still blows
Because one thing never changed

.   .   .

 That old train keeps blowing
I can hear it in the night
I hold onto myself
Its gonna be alright

People come and go
Like cars changing lanes
But that whistles gonna blow
Because one thing never changed.