Don’t worry. This isn’t a running blog, or a blog even turning into a running blog. All appearances to the contrary. I just have a bit of extra time now, my foot feels better (and aren’t we all relieved of that, in the hopes that we’ll stop talking about it) and I am trying to hit an arbitrary goal for the year. So it is a high-volume month, dear reader, and you have my apologies.
Last week I announced that today I was going to run a 10K, my first since mid-March, and so we did. Plus, it had the added benefit of being a good way to welcome in a new magic number.
It was a warm-ish and sunny day. Plenty warm by here, the second mile of the course:
Even in the shade it wasn’t too bad:
Here’s a shot where you fool the processor in your pocket super computer camera. A simple overexposure looks like the end of a day at the end of times. This is the Tennessee River.
And this is the Wilson Dam, which was closed to traffic today for some reason.
Probably for wind or rains or temperature or who knows. They shut it down sometimes. Probably today word got out that we were going to run down here and they turned everyone away for us. Thanks, TVA!
They started building the dam in 1918 and completed in 1924. Two years ago we ran down here and saw a rainbow that, I artfully said, was 100 years in the making. I have four more years to think up a similarly good line to see another one.
There were no spillways open today, but there were no cars on the road either. My mother would tell you she learned to drive on this tiny dam, in the snow. I’m sure it was a blinding storm. But, the story goes, her father’s logic was that if you can drive on this dam in the snow you can do most anything.
It’s a small damn, and the logic, scary as it seems, holds up. I never liked going over the thing as a kid, and back then that was the only way between A and B. The first time I drove over it was, I’m sure, a bright, sunny day — or a perfectly clear night — and there’s little chance of me going over it in anything more treacherous than the rain. Fortunately, there’s another bridge people can take today. That’s helpful for both the nerves and closures, like today.
Look how small those two lanes are!
So really, this was one 5K, because we had to stop to take all these pictures. You don’t often get all of this space to take a shot like this, and so you better take advantage of it when you do:
Back to the run, then. On the way back to the car, on the back half, somewhere close to mile five, the sun dipped down to look in on me through the trees:
And I exceeded the limit on selfies for the week:
That was all just before I started thinking about how little I’ve eaten in the last day or so. And, look, a 10K isn’t that long. This is just 6.2 miles, or, today, a little over 6.3. But when you’re hungry and you have a long straightaway into the wind and your running partner is way up the bridge from you, and you’re thinking about where you can get a chocolate milk right away, it can seem like it takes forever.
Here’s the dam, from the other bridge:
We stopped at a Walgreens, which has a temporal anomaly inside so powerful that renders the shoppers and the clerks equally unable to complete either side of their prescribed interactions. I must have stood there for about half an hour with a giant chocolate milk in my hand that I could not drink because I was not able to purchase it.
After which, we got cleaned up and went out for Japanese with my mom, my grandfather and one of my cousins. My grandfather doesn’t eat Japanese, but he did have an ice cream while the chef prepared our food. Later, I learned you can eat ice cream with chopsticks. And if there are photos of that I’m sure they’ll never see the light of day. The key is attacking it while it is still firm.
And then we visited the giant hardware store. For parts! I have a project tomorrow. Let’s see how that turns out.
