At Least They're Committed

It’s little late in the season to be dodging inchworms on the sidewalk, but I understand. It’s 76 degrees in mid October and I’m striding along the mile-plus stretch on 136th Avenue wondering to myself why anyone would want to be anywhere else, even inchworms.

“She shuts up the ashtray, I say ‘it’s a long way back now, huh?’ She just yawns.” Del Amitri sings, I whisper along so as not to disrupt nor defile the sanctity of the beautiful autumn day. Nice that the lead vocalist is still around anyway.

My left ankle is still speaking, chiding with twinges and jerks and stressing that, should I ever again get the urge to break into a dead run, I must first take a moment to stretch . . . and to not even remotely consider doing that again on this outing.

The muddy patch where the curb has broken down and the vacant field has attempted to reclaim the street is now dry, but I jump over it anyway. No rain in awhile but I’m not complaining.

When I was walking on the path on Cherry Creek last Monday I was dismayed to step over a dead rat. An 8-inch, beautiful, brown wild rat. I’d seen a live one about this spot a couple years before and I was ecstatic, being the lover of rats that I am (especially hairless ones!). My walking partners at the time seemed far less amused . . . which made me all the more jubilant. This was just sad. I did the sign of a cross. Don’t know why, I’m not usually like that. My penchant for lowly creatures, I guess.

“Flies in the  Vaseline, we are, sometimes it blows my mind. Keep getting stuck here all the tiiiiime!” David, a colleague of my husband’s, was working out at a gym in Evergreen when his curiosity got the best of him. The older dude on the free weights, like 65-ish, was wearing a Stone Temple Pilots T-shirt. David asked if he was a fan. Turns out Scott Weiland’s dad lives (or lived) near Evergreen. Unless this guy was lying, he (the dad) was a former Notre Dame football player, maybe the quarterback I don’t remember exactly. Wow. It would appear Scott not only fell far from that tree, he rolled down a hill, bounced into a river and washed up five miles away in a poppy field.

Magnificent! The Legacy High School band is practicing the Stones’ Satisfaction in the school parking lot. I can hear the percussion over STP and I delight in the trombones shining in the sun, the whir of the drum sticks, the maroon and gold uniforms marching in time and in place, and the majors and majorettes springing into splits in the air, not hitting it quite right, then leaping again. I want to stop and watch, but I don’t. There are people waiting for me at home and this particular route is more than an hour as it is.

My hip starts to ache a little so I walk straighter and faster. I don’t know whether that’ll help, but it might. Once, Brian and Daniel and I were out at the Palomino (I think it was Daniel, maybe it was someone else) and whoever it was said he couldn’t jog anymore because of his bad knees.

“I can’t run anymore because of my hips,” I added.

“I can’t run anymore because I hate it,” said Brian and I laughed hard at that and still do and I tell a lot of people that story.

Jeff can still run and he’s my age. Wonder what he thinks about to keep him going on long distances. I think of this sort of crap, but I’m just walking and only about four miles. And today I’m thinking about standing on the side of a random street in Downtown Denver about 20 years ago, squeezed between other onlookers studying the sweaty, anguished faces of joggers at mile 22. Two Marines, holding up another, shuffled by, “I can’t,” said the middle Marine, his head rolling back, his face beaded and red. “We’re almost there,” said the left Marine. “You’re fine, you’re OK,” said the one on the right. I was mortified and impressed and I still hadn’t seen who I was looking for. 

It was springtime and the Governor’s Marathon was always overcast and wet. My husband-to-be stood on his toes behind me, hands stuffed in pockets, straining to look far back into the pack. I was afraid we’d missed him, that he’d slipped past. But then there he was, looking smaller and more frail than I’d ever, ever imagined he could. His gate was swaggering and his eyes were glassy and red; for every step forward he nearly stumbled to the side. I nearly screamed or maybe I did. I maneuvered my purse up under my coat and bolted into the pack. My fiance cut through the crowd, straightening a curve to get as far ahead as he could to wait for us to catch up so he could take over. “DAD!” I jumped out in front of him. In his 50s, this was his first marathon. He reached out his right hand and put it on my shoulder, leaning his weight onto me. I ran slightly ahead, taking as much weight off him as I could, for more than a mile. We had not yet caught up with Darrell but had just completed a quarter mile downhill and he looked better. His gate was straight and his eyes had started to clear. He let go. “I’m OK, I’m OK,” he breathed. I was nearly in tears as he took off without me. Darrell would find him and run with him briefly a little ways ahead, but as I walked away from the pack, looking down at the purse wedged under my coat, it struck me how truly disturbing it must have been for those on the sidelines to watch a struggling middle-aged man stumbling past holding fast to and relying on the strength of an ‘extremely pregnant’ woman.

Yeah, I’m totally, totally impressed by Jeff as a person and an athlete, but I’m not much on marathons.

“Iiiii think that it’s a sign that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images and when we kiss they’re perfectly aligned. ” I like Postal Service. I also like Death Cab for Cutie for the most part as long as they’re not torturing me with that horrid When Soul Meets Body tripe. Sappy-ass man songs. Blech.

Some Mormon missionaries on bicycles catch up to me at the turn onto Zuni and one rides along side me for awhile explaining that “Mormon” was actually a prophet and compiled the “Book of Mormon,” which is why people erroneously call them Mormons instead of Latter-day Saints. I had not known that. Occasionally, a car honks and its occupants wave, and the young suits wave back. We compare Mormonism and Catholicism for a bit — the one never dismounting, his voice getting faint as he rolls ahead of me, then stronger when he stops and waits for me to catch up — before they continue into the subdivision and I continue straight on.

“Loved ones back home are crying cuz they’re already missing me. I pray by the grace of God that there’s somebody listening.” My son’s Avenged Sevenfold sweatshirt has been tied around my waist since the first half mile. I should have known better than to even wear it. My cell phone is clipped to my iPod otherwise I’m sure I would have long ago lost it from the pockets swaying now at my knees.

In the final stretch, a glance roadside at a twisted body of a bike, no tires, no handle bars, and I wonder if that’s what all the sirens were about early this morning. No blood, no other debris, so probably not.

Time to shower.