see maddie run

Tonight I went on an evening run. It might be considered nighttime, but the sun sets so late that I have a hard time classifying the hours from 7:30 to 9:30 as true nighttime. It was the perfect time of night—late enough that the sun was beginning to creep lower in the sky, but not so late that I would later receive lectures about the dangers of running alone in the dark.

There is a small pathway that connects the parking lot of my apartment complex to the sidewalk where I was going to cross the street. The pathway is lies directly underneath a tall tree and is sometimes littered with pine cones and other tree paraphernalia that deceptively blend in with the mulch that lines that path.  At the end of the path, I stepped on one of those pine cones, rolled my ankle and didn’t catch myself in time to prevent my knee from skidding across the sidewalk.

Cars whizzed by (no doubt laughing at the poor girl who was clearly incapable of transitioning from mulch to sidewalk without taking a spill), and I rotated my ankle as I waited for the light to change, gauging whether or not it was safe to run on. The pain dissipated rather quickly, so when the light changed, I took a deep breath, and I ran.

I ran with a stinging left knee that sported some dirt and two sorry drops of congealing blood.

I ran past children playing happily in their yards with mothers keeping a watchful eye from a lawn chair on the porch.

I ran behind another slimmer runner who I assumed to be in better shape than I am, and was astonished how quickly I came up behind her and passed her, luckily avoiding the awkward weaving pass that sometimes has to occur.

I ran west on Center Street, my favorite running location due to its general greenness and the massive trees that require three monkey armed friends and I joining hands to circle completely.

I ran by squatty old brick houses with vaulted windows and wrap-around porches that left me aching for a rocking chair and a porch swing.

I ran to Disney love ballads, the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack, and Michael Bublé, among others, because oddly enough that’s what motivates me.

I ran past hand-holding couples, Mexican food-eating couples, arguing couples, and couples in between. (Provo has a lot of couples.)

I paused at the building at the corner of Center and University that’s a giant chalkboard prompting “If I had one wish…” and searched for the wish I’d chalked onto the wall a few months prior on another run, only to find that it had been covered by other wishes to be Kanye West or find a cure for cancer or see China and some lovesick teen’s declaration that “I love Cole!” (It’s okay that I couldn’t find it—parts of it are coming true anyway!)

I ran and edited storefront signs with annoyingly random capital letters mid-sentence.

I ran past the restaurant where I had my first Korean food experience earlier this week (was that really only two days ago?)

I ran despite nearly being beheaded by rogue pine boughs and the shorter pieces of slippery, cowlicky hair I'd failed to pin back flopping unattractively and annoyingly in my face.

I ran by the 7-Eleven where we pretended to leave Emily once last summer after getting Slurpees (we didn’t actually leave her…don’t worry!) whose parking lot was populated with hooligans of the long-haired skateboarder variety. (Maybe they weren’t hooligans at all; maybe I just judged them.)

I ran wondering if the many jumbled thoughts running through my head a mile a minute (see what I did there?) would make sense at all when I typed them all up (I’ll let you be the judge of that.)

I ran and listened to the gentle hum of Provo settling in for the night and watched the sky change from a soft, warm cornflower blue to the deep shadowy color of night setting in.

I sprinted the last little stretch because my mother once told me that at the end of a workout it’s important to work harder than you think you can to prove to your body that you can do hard things.

And when I came back full circle to the site of the fateful pine cone incident, I slowed my legs and my mind and thanked my wobbly-thighed legs for propelling me forward long enough to get me home. And then thanked my lungs for filling with air and then expelling it again. And I thanked Provo for being beautiful and inspiring and for encouraging my non-runner self to keep going.

And most of all I thanked that stubborn corner of my brain that houses the tiny bits of willpower and motivation that I have for somehow convincing me that I can.