Thursday, March 1, 2012

In the Misty Morning

Today was one of those days (one of many, actually) where my run makes me think about just how luck I am to live in New York. I have a half-marathon this weekend and while it's not a goal race, I am planning on racing it. That means I've given myself a slight break on this week's mileage so today I had 9 miles on tap.

Usually, 9 miles is short enough that I'll do a run around home before heading for work, but it also happens to be exactly 9.1 from my apartment to my office--you see where this is going. I ran to work again today. The funny thing is, when I lived in DC I never ran to work, and there, given the lumbering bus I had to take, running would have been faster! Anyway, running to work is now something I'm trying to do at least once or twice a week as I've said in earlier posts.

Today's run, though, was special. Did I run a new route? No. Almost every inch I covered today I also ran on Tuesday. Did my legs feel refreshed and ready to run to the ends of the earth at whatever pace I told them to? No. Then why was this run special? Because of the mist.

You might call the mist fog and it did make me think of the almost-magic fog that shrouds New York Harbor in Mark Helprin's 1983 ode to New York, Winter's Tale. I'm sticking with mist, though, because that's what it felt like.

Parts of downtown faded into nothing and the Statue of Liberty looked like an unkowable Oceanid from Greek mythology. Okay, now I sound like I'm on something. The point is, New York City is always changing. Usually when people say this they're referring to the cycle of demolition and construction or the ebb and flow of immigrants. Today, I realized that it's much more basic than that. No two days offer the same city so you have to enjoy each one as it's presented to you.

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