Slow Feet Sleepy Brain

When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep... and you're never really awake. – Narrator from the movie Fight Club

After a fitful night of something I can’t really call sleep it was early this morning when I gave up the fight. The pillow wasn't any more comfortable, my eyelids weren't any heavier than they were an hour ago so I untangled myself from the covers and slipped downstairs.

There is some trick to navigating my house in the dark. Old houses are an auditory mine field with stairs that moan, doors that squeak, and hot water pipes that clank.

I’m not so well organized that my running shoes are waiting for me by the door. I found them eventually and silently bundled up in layers to run a lap around my neighborhood. I like winter mornings when the streets are quiet, the sun is slow to rise.

I’ve never been a fast runner; the slow steady method works so long as I don’t expect to win any races. I started training last week for a half-marathon in May. My run this morning was part of an eleven-week conversation where my brain tries to make the case to my body that running 13.1 miles is an acceptable proposition. The half-marathon was a goal I toyed with for about ten years before actually completing it for the first time last Spring. Sometimes my body yelps or moans to remind my brain that this effort would have been a lot easier ten years ago. My twenty-something body didn't have so many creaks or complaints. The recuperation time was substantially quicker. Ah, well, youthful bodies are wasted on the young.

Running in the winter is this strange blend of extremes. The cold red cheeks and white fingers occupying the same body as the rapid-fire of one's heartbeat and sweat glands. The intersection of extremes occurs somewhere in my chest cavity. Its affected both by the cold, dry air and the steady, deep breaths running requires.

My quiet morning ended with the clank of the hot water pipes in the shower, the hiss of the coffeepot. The sun eventually made its appearance; the rest of my family emerged from their bedsheets. Stairs moaned. Doors squeaked.