Finally on the Road

When I began running this morning, dawn was just breaking through.

It seemed like a long while since I had seen the sky – the way I long to see it every day – the way it makes a day start.

Almost immediately, I saw a dead squirrel and soon after a jet black cat chased a few steps towards me before it was frightened off by the sound of a dog barking in the distance. It was very much the start of a Haruki Murakami novel.

I smiled as I thought this watching the sky, thinking about the dead squirrel, thinking the usual hackneyed existential questions.

Fortunately, the run in itself took over. To be out again. To feel cautiously optimistic after this brief bout of illness.

Undoubtedly, it seems to me that I must have lost a significant portion of any fitness gains of the last few months. Is it so? I can’t tell.

But as I finished, it was simply in that moment, in the knowledge of a step at a time, a day at a time. We’ll see.