You are everything you say you are.

Today, the chains of human regeneration were finally broken.

If I honestly told you, how long I’ve waiting for a run like today, it would cause a minor stroke upon many of you. I’ve had the reputation of being a compulsive over-trainer. The familiar expression “Oh, A-Low” has more truth to it than I care to conceive. But it also has experience and truth.

Each run has gotten better. But today was a run, without any pain medication, without any planning but the decision to just run for a favorite 9 mile loop back home, here in the northshore. I didn’t feel this free at Boston. I didn’t feel this free at Disney. I didn’t even feel this free at that biblical run at the lake after coming back from my quad tear, though I know something greater than me was with me that day.

If I were to completely hypothesize, without regard for accuracy, I’d say it was at Mount Washington during pre-season 2006 that I felt this free. Albeit, that Mount Washington run was very, very hard. Hard enough to burn a memory of dehydration and cramping into my mind. But it was also a period of time that I remember with fond recollection.

After a week such as this, wherein I blew a tire on my bike for the second time in as many weeks, I worked three 12 hour days consecutively, and my car was towed away to an undisclosed location this afternoon after work, life was beginning to drown me.
For seemingly every unstoppable force in the world was going against me. But today, these forces met an immovable object: Human Tenacity.


In the total of the events of this week, in the culmination of my adventures over the last year, and all the education my friends and family have bestowed upon me, after all of these linchpins of my personal development as a runner, I was left with a single emotion today. Redemption.

Let me begin my openly admitting my mechanical handicap.

Largely, anything with moving parts, gears, screws, or a combination thereof, is rendered tantamount to the culmination of my abilities, and largely contributes to my gross ineptitude at establishing remedial action therein.

That is to say, I can’t fix $#%*

Witness my ride yesterday afternoon. Scheduled for 28 miles, I began in a quaint town called Ipswich. Ipswich became Hamilton then Wenham then North Beverly then Beverly into Salem.

Yes, the Salem you read about as a child in Social Studies classes. The Salem established in 1626. The place where John Winthrop, Tituba, and the other poor souls who were accused of practicing witch-craft, were all burned at the stake. The location of sheer madness and anarchy on Halloween, and also the place of the world’s worst infrastructural system.

With all honesty, the city of Salem’s roads were conceivably more smooth 300 years ago. Today its carbon monoxide, loud motorcycles, and drunken working class heroes. These are not the places you’re not supposed to ride a road bike. Period.

So naturally, I blew a tire. Not just a tire. But the second one in as many weeks. Moreover, I did not have my repair kit. Joy.

So I called some family for a ride back to the gym. Once arriving there around 8:30, I got on the spin bike and just finished my objective. Then I come home, and attempted to fix the flat. It was largely fixed, until it became apparent that the spare tube ALSO had a hole. Moreover, the same phenomena occurred last week. There is a large, corporate outdoor store whose name is three letters. The second and third are vowels. The first is a consonant. Don’t buy you’re bike gear here.

So now I had to forfeit my workout this morning, fix the tire after work, and ideally get in a brick workout this afternoon, which will hopefully absolve my cycling sins.

The occurrence last evening, is demonstrable evidence of a single conclusion.
I love running exponentially more than cycling.