Running on the Beach

Occasionally this blog returns to its ostensible main subject, running.  Today's run has to be my most enjoyable run since we arrived.  I started out the familiar road to Fort Macon, and after a one-mile warmup I ran a comfortably fast mile.  I felt strong and smooth and there was no pain in my troublesome knee, and I was surprised to find I had completed it in 10:44 - a full minute slower than Martha's tempo miles on Tuesday, but still good enough to make me feel that I might be ready for some races.

To return to the condo, I crossed over the dunes at Fort Macon and ran back all the way along the quietly-lapping waters of the Morehead City Channel and then the broad shimmering ocean.  It was low tide, there was a bit of a chilly wind in my face, but it was absolutely gorgeous - just me, the wide sand ahead of me, the occasional sandpiper fishing in the surf, two ladies collecting shells in net bags, and the Atlantic Ocean at my elbow.

Martha has identified a 5-K race that we have not run before in Havelock this coming Saturday.  Havelock is about 30 minutes from here and the race begins at 10:00 a.m., a comfortable time of day for a race.  It is being sponsored, according to the website, by "the local Catholic Daughters of The Americas, Court of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, along with the Knights of Columbus and Havelock Council 6648," which sounds like a lot of sponsorship for a 5-K.  But it will be a good opportunity to complete some "tempo" miles, and while Martha has a good chance of placing, I do not hold out much hope in the 60-69 age group at the age of 69 years and 11 months (it would be a miraculous medal indeed).

I've been thinking a lot about my 70th birthday, looming on the horizon toward the end of February.  I cannot avoid remembering the words of that Simon & Garfunkel song, Old Friends:

Can you imagine us years from today, 

sharing a park bench quietly;
How terribly strange to be seventy.

We are not sharing a park bench, though, and I try to put the terrible strangeness of turning 70 into perspective.  My friend Fred has just turned 80 and he is running a 10-K on the 26th, likely in a faster time than I could.  And of course there is the 112-year-old WWII veteran Richard Overton, the oldest man in America, who recently died and was buried on Sunday.  Overton reportedly ascribed his long life to "God, whiskey, and cigars;" he reportedly smoked 12 cigars a day.  (Since I don't drink whiskey or smoke cigars, nor intend to take up these habits, I will have to rely on God.)  There was an NPR story about him on Sunday morning, and they played an interview recorded before his death.  "I may give out," Overton said "But I never give up."