Physical labor breeds a far different fatigue than endurance sport.

But at times I feel that certain ideals, practices and events define my understanding of Christmas.

I try my best to deviate from these traditions, to experience the new and evade the old. It works to a point, but then it falls back into the awful whirlpool of tradition.

I spent the better part of this warm winter’s day constructing an igloo. It had the purpose of becoming an ancillary holiday decoration, but slowly (as most of my projects do) grew into an Anglo-Saxon shelter from the age of feudalism.

I built it with the volunteered assistance of an 8 year old and a 12 year old. It taught me something about the creative energies of man. Nothing mandated that it become an igloo. It could very well capitulate into a mess of snow and stick and grass. But we searched the barn, searched the yard, search the garage, and we exited with a bail of hay and several wet logs.

I rode long on the trainer before this, and never thought to recover or hydrate. I’ve learned something new in the last thirty days or so. Our bodies are engineered to stand the test of a cruel and dark world. Runner’s are people too.

We aren’t merely sadistic and selfish and lonely people who prefer a solitary pursuit of happiness. We aren’t bound by our perennially tight hamstrings or a fear of a lateral movement. We are dynamic people, too.

So I worked hard at this project for the better part of the day, grossly dehydrated but determined to finish. Albeit the entire time I was envisioning a run thereafter that was never supposed to transpire.

I took the run by the horns.

While running in the darkened shadows of what in another day might hope to be a sidewalk, I listened to an old carol, made anew.

“Remember Christ our Savior…To save us all from Satan’s power when we have gone astray.”

Oh tidings of comfort of joy.





For those whom are perplexed by such archaic vernacular (such as myself), a tiding is literally “news” or “information pertaining to something”

Arguably the biggest bang of a proverbial light-bulb going off in my head occurred after these words were uttered in my ear-buds. It hit me so hard I thought I kicked a large stone in the road.

Star of wonder. Star of loyal beauty bright.

I then jumped over numerous snowbanks, opened up the larger biomechanical gears, and ran through the light mist of a 40-degree December’s night, amidst 4 foot snowbanks melting abound.

Westward leading… Still proceeding.


When I came home, I felt more learned. I felt as if someone who had just had 2,007 years of history injected into his cerebellum, which executed the lesson into a 7:00 min/mi pace in just under four miles.

Guide us to that perfect light.

I am now, in all likelihood, riding the dangerous wave of overtraining. But it is an event and an exercise that has become all too familiar in these seasons of truncated light and exaggerated feasts. This being done, I can now slumber.


God rest ye merry gentlemen.

Rest ye, indeed.