Lesson Learned On The Streets Of Laredo

One week later I am still challenged by the humidity and stuffiness in the morning air. Today my goal is to run 3 miles while listening to "Into The Music" and finishing the third mile as "When The Healing Has Begun" hits its soulful crescendo. The mission is accomplished as I push my totally drenched heavy locomotive of a body around my designated course. Heatwave promises that Friday the morning will be cooler. I want to believe him. Tomorrow I walk but on Friday the optimist will step out the door hoping that Laredo's version of the fall will finally be here.

Regardless, it is a jogging day. Cooler weather or not, Friday's run is about going out and adding a little more distance to the weekly total. After three months of running this is the consistency that I had been missing.

This afternoon I saw the Nixon Cross Country team running down Arkansas at about 5:00 p.m. in the torrid heat. I remember high school days of running in that type of heat. Now I run in the relatively cool dark cocoon of the early morning. This morning it didn't seem so cool, but the sight of these high school runners teaches me that I have nothing to complain about. We always think that we teach the young. Today they taught me.

The Morning's Reward

It's always the first half to one mile of the jog that challenges the mind to overcome the beginning discomfort of any run. Once the door opens, the temperature either beckons or dares me to dark streets of Laredo to do what I know needs to be done. I know the reward, I know that I will soon forget the temporary discomfort, bathed by the sweat that a humid and muggy morning brings. Today is no different. For one mile I toil and then something kicks in, that illusive "runner's high" where the circulation of blood warms the joints and muscles and where the pace, no matter how slow, sets the cadence for the day.

These are the memories that connect me to runs in 1970's Laredo and Austin and Ann Arbor in

the 1980's. I talk to that guy who lives in my head who only comes out when I run. He is a wise and patient friend. He spits a lot, but he knows to give thanks for this and every day.

Teased By September

It started out with my first ever trip to New York with my wife an son Alex for parent orientation at his destination for college. I walked all over the place but manage to take an early morning jog in Brooklyn the day before we came back to Laredo. The morning air was crisp and the sights were great. Once we came back to Laredo the beginning of September brought a joyous snap of cool weather that made the slow steady jog on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays a whole lot more fun than the complete drenching that summer runs bring in Laredo. This week the temperatures were back to the Laredo fall canicula heat that is only bearable because of the hope that cooler temperatures are around the corner.

The summer is a time when it is easy to give up on the jogging. But fortunately the psyche has a memory of other summer days when running seems like a grind. And then the days shorten and the weather becomes cooler and the pace hopefully quickens. The mind stops fretting about the temperature and flies to places that the workday has no time for. This is is the gift of hitting the pavement.

My son Armando gave me a book of reflections about philosophy and running. For a few minutes of running in the cool weather the insights discussed in that book actually filter through my mind. And that is the ultimate lesson of the summer. We run, we survive and occasionally we find some thoughts to put our hectic lives in order.