sous le vent.

I teared up during a run last night. It was the last 3 kilometers of a 12.37 km run that I ran completely without plan. I gave a knockout presentation during my last class of the semester and I was pretty excited to realize that I have one final (minimal studying) before I get to celebrate another 4.00 semester with one month off. I came home pretty excited about all of this (plus I drank a liter of Pepsi at dinner) and I felt like running.

Side note: everything about the gym right now feels BLAHHH. I think about it and my thought is BLAHHH. My upper body strength is obviously suffering from the lack of weight lifting, but I just can't get my mind to embrace being stuck in a gray box (our gym is floor-to-ceiling concrete save for a wall of windows).

I dressed, set my Nike + iPod to a 7 km distance and started running. It wasn't in any particular direction but I've been favoring a certain road lately; since most of my runs used to start post-gym, I've had to accommodate my gym-less lifestyle by changing my runs which has led to me to the most magical area of Iowa City: Camp Cardinal Boulevard.

If you head north on my street, make a left turn and follow that for about 2-3 kilometers, there's a part of the city that is COMPLETELY untouched by street lights. No traffic lights, no building lights, maybe the occasional car headlights, but at 10:00 at night it's less frequent than you'd think.

It is absolutely breathtaking to realize that there are parts of this world that are completely unlit, and it's closer to home than you even know. It's probably not the smartest idea to be running on an unlit street at ten o'clock at night, but there's a certain magic in night running that everyone should get to experience at least once. As soon as I turned the corner from the main street, the flash of the green street lights was drowned out by distance and I stood utterly humbled at the beauty of my surroundings. The clouds hung in the sky as if they were threatening to rain, and instead floated like fluffy pillows reflecting the moon light in a way that no computer could recreate. If you tried to take a picture it would be just another dark and cloudy night, but the wind danced in my hair and atmosphere glowed in a way that felt electric in my bones.

I knew right then that it was going to be a good night.

The farthest I've followed this road on foot was 4.5 kilometers, and that was only because I was limited by fear that I would reach a point of no return without a phone or an escape plan. I thought I would follow the road to 5 kilometers and then turn back to my make run a nice 10k, but when the time came to turn around I ignored my original plan. At 6km I thought to myself, "I could do 12k, I could make it home if I turn back NOW," but despite the word "NOW" ringing in my head, I trudged on.

At 7km I started to panic realizing how far away from home I actually was while being vaguely aware of how far away the end of the road was from where I stood. I tried to recall the closest business or residential area so that maybe some kind person would open up the door to me and allow me the use of a phone to call home. But I persisted.

Curiosity kept me going. A while back I had read somewhere that the UI cross country course was close on my path but I didn't know where (visually or spatially). It could have been 100 paces from where I was but I wouldn't know because I didn't even know what I was looking for. I was way beyond being able to retrace my steps back home so it was a huge relief to run into (almost literally) a gazebo with park information; I had found the Clear Creek Trailhead. I took 30 seconds to study the map at the information kiosk, plotted my way back home, and set my path to the winding paved trail to the east. There weren't any mile markers but I had a good feeling that the distance wouldn't kill me, at least not before the cold did.

The trail is... surprisingly perfect. Wide, even, new, devoid of any structural cracks or potholes, hardly any debris. There was a nice rhythm to the rolling slopes that made it actually pleasant to run up AND downhill. At one point, the trail splits into different directions and I knew to follow it to the right based on my map reading skills, but there was no way I could have been prepared for what was about to happen next.

The trail leads to a spread of land that I would equate to a well landscaped prairie. It's a geological surprise nestled in between wooded areas, beyond which is a well developed neighborhood and business district. Separated from a substantial metropolitan area by just few hundred meters, this prairie-within-a-forest hit me square in the face as the lady in my iPod said "Congratulations, you have completed ten kilometers. Press pause to end your run." I found the stars in this perfect little haven, feeling completely safe knowing that I was close to home, absolutely loving the way that nature lit my pathway with this inexplicable electric glow of silvery moonlight. I closed my eyes for a few seconds trusting that my feet would find the ground as I kept moving forward and a gust of wind lifted me to a level of happiness I hadn't experienced before.

I couldn't tell you if the moon had fallen out of the sky, or if my legs were still attached, or if there was a murderer planning my death from the hedges; all I knew in that moment was that I was happy.

With my eyes still closed, my iPod shuffled to a song that has deep and personal meaning to me and suddenly the significance of this scenario hit me and I was thankful to be alive. I cried for the first time ever during a run, it was short and quiet, and if I had chosen I could have kept it to myself and no one would have been any wiser about it.

I don't know if what I experienced was a runner's high, but I'll tell you that this run was special for many reasons. First, I can now officially say that I've transitioned into distance running. Running 3-4 miles... eh, that's just a typical running day. But running 7.686 miles is something to be proud of and I did it in bitchin' style. Secondly, I've found a way to fall back in love with my city. Instead of running for distance, I learned in a concrete way that running can take me anywhere... literally. It gives more freedom than exploring by car and it's faster than walking, and because of that I discovered the most magical running trail that I can't wait to run again. I jumped in mid-course so I only got a run a fraction of the length, but my trusty friend the Internet has hooked me up with maps and parking locations so I can make the most out of the 24 miles of awesome this town has to offer.

Thirdly, I can't imagine my life without running. I was thinking that the drivers who passed me by probably thought I was out of my damn mind, and you know what... I was. COMPLETELY OUT OF MY MIND. It was 30 degrees, pitch dark, and I followed a trail that I didn't know and where no one knew to look for me. I admit, it was reckless, but the only reason I ended up running that far was because I was thinking. Thinking! I was reflecting on how my presentation for class went, what next semester will be like, what I'm going to do after I graduate, what songs I want played at my wedding, how I'm going to find new running paths in the city I eventually live my life in, how I'm going to work my way up to running 12+ km on a random Wednesday night if/when I ever have kids. I was thinking about my Vibrams, how much I like my newest pair and what I would like from my next ones. I was thinking about what underwear I would wear on race day. I was thinking about how I'm going to carry more water with me in the future once my runs get too long for my 20 ounce bottles. My entire run, all 97 minutes of it, was an exercise in WHATEVER I FEEL LIKE DOING.

Because those quiet moments in between songs when all you can hear is the quiet pitter-patter of your feet and your slow and steady breath, those moments are all yours and you never have to answer for them.