After You Walk 500 Miles

After walking something nearly 900 kilometers across Spain this summer, I took a break from running.  One of the side effects of that journey was that I fell in love with walking.  (If you're going to walk for 40 days with blistered feet, you'd either better love it or learn to love it.)  

My training thoughts from July - November: "why run if you can walk?"

So now, I'm trying to flirt with running again and, with seasons reversed, this restart is in the warmth of the sun.  This romance is like any other:  days where I'm excited and it seems fresh, days where it is laborious and tiring and I wonder if it's going anywhere, and the days where I do it because I made a commitment to it.  (The good days have a direct correlation to temperatures less than 80 degrees.)

The terrain also meets this analogy of amor.  The sidewalk is not smooth, different obstacles pop up every day, and in order to be successful, you have to run with traffic.  It's different.

I've been honked at by buses (because there's not enough room for both of us)*, barked at by dogs, avoided jackhammers, dodged motorbikes, and melted in the hot, mid-day sun.

I've also spoken to men on carts pulled by horses, stopped to watch a man make empanadas, been overwhelmed with the sweet smell of jacarandas, and experienced the unexpected exhilaration from knowing which way to look when crossing a street.  (There are no stop signs in most intersections here - only a series of criss-crossing one-way streets for four streets, then one two-way street usually with a light, then back to the four one-way streets.)**  

So like love, I have to choose it and in the end, I'm the better for it.

*  Buses always win.
**Beware of bikers though as they occasionally often ignore these traffic rules.