Run with the Living

This morning when I went for my run I was running towards downtown Goldsboro. I sometimes make that a part of my running route, and it is kind of neat to mix up the scenery and run along the city sidewalks of the thriving metropolis. As I was about 2 blocks away from "downtown," I noticed a pit bull running loose up ahead of me, and so I decided just to be on the safe side and I turned at the next street. Somehow just making that one turn that I had not planned changed things, and so I decided to just explore some different parts of Goldsboro - not necessarily the nicest parts, but it was daylight and still quite early in the morning. I soon found myself across the street from an old cemetery that I have had to be in from time to time for funerals, and I have always thought it to be a pretty cemetery, so I just decided to go for a run in there. Winding my way down the paths and from one section to the next, I began to notice more and more the names on the tombstones. I saw one person who was born on September 13, 1899, and I found that to be interesting because my youngest son was born September 13, 1999. I got to thinking about the joy that my wife and I felt when he was born, and it made me think about the joy that was felt way back in 1899. I noticed the tombstones of some who died at over 100 years old; I noticed some who died less than a year old. I couldn't read all of them because I was running MUCH too fast for that sort of thing (wink, wink), but I just got to thinking about how all of those tombstones represented lives that were lived, and some lives that continue to surround me in the great cloud of witnesses. I had planned on running somewhere between 3-4 miles. Before I knew it, I had run 5. I know that's not much, but sometimes it is really nice to be able to just get so completely "lost" in my running that I don't even realize what I've done. That's what I call a stress reliever - even if it did come about because a pit bull running loose.

All in all, it was 5 miles with negative splits (getting faster each mile).