Dauntlessly Walking

Runners are compulsive about measuring distances, I noted in a recent post.  It is satisfying to watch mileage increase day by day in a running log as we begin training for a big event, perhaps a marathon or half marathon.  As a rule, I don't add my walking mileage to my running log, but I am still tracking it meticulously on my GPS watch, mile by mile.

Friday and Saturday I walked a mile, and Sunday morning I increased that distance to two miles.  Today, one week after surgery, I felt good enough to take over some of the errands that Martha had been doing - taking the trash and recyclables to the landfill, going to the post office and the bank, going to the grocery store - and then I parked at Founders Park and started out walking on the same route on which I usually run.  I was so happy to see my friend Fred just finishing up his run, and we stood on the sidewalk and visited for some time.  Eighty years old, Fred has been through a lot of injuries, including placement of a stent in one of his arteries and hamstring injuries; he said he was now able to run 10-minute miles again.  He could well sympathize with someone starting from scratch again.  We chatted not only about the race he had run on Saturday, but also the benefits of running intervals, how some of our friends are doing, the British mystery books in which we share an interest, and the big trip Martha and I are planning for our 40th anniversary this summer.  While we were talking, Martha arrived at the park and started out on her four-mile run.

"I'll be glad when I'm running again so we can have a good long talk!" I told Fred, and I realized as I began my slow way around our running route how much I missed visiting with my running friends.  Envious of Martha's four-mile run on such a fine morning as this, I thought I might be able to complete three miles, but by the time I had reached that long sunny stretch of road in front of the school, I knew that I was not quite ready for that.  As Wallace Stevens wrote in a poem taken completely out of context, "It was not yet the hour to be dauntlessly leaping."  But I am dauntlessly walking.

Our big trip is something we have been planning for quite a while, a 23-day tour of the United Kingdom, which will begin in London and include Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.  We have only been overseas once before, in 2003, on a six-day trip to London and environs.  But this will be far more extensive than that, and we are quite excited!

We do not know if this trip will allow any time for running, although we will be staying two nights in four or five cities.  During our trip across the United States in our Mini Cooper in 2016, after all, I was able to run five times - Green Bay, Napa Valley, along the Pacific Coast Highway in San Simeon, along the crest of the Grand Canyon, and in Oklahoma City - and I will remember forever running in these five spectacular locations.  Would it be too much to hope for that we might be able to run along the White Cliffs of Dover?  Or perhaps get in a few laps around Stonehenge?   We shall see.