Unplugged

I used to listen to music when running.  I ran with my I pod until it broke so I tried running with my phone strapped to my arm, but found it just to awkward to manipulate if I wanted to change songs.  So now it is just me and my head.  I have not missed the music.

Unplugging has made me more focused on the weird and wonderful.

While running a marathon that spanned Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri, I ran long stretches without seeing another runner.  Thank goodness for the volunteers that showed up every so often to point us in the right direction.  I ran past some kind of rock quarry.  No one around except for a girl in the bottom of the pit talking on her cell phone.  Weird.  Once I hit Missouri, I swear the last three miles were all up a mountain.  I took some walk breaks.  On one such break, a girl ran up behind me, slowed down, slid a look my way and said “Are you ready?”  She gave a giant smile. “Yeah.”  We ran for about a mile and eventually she pulled away.  I don’t where she came from or where she disappeared to but she helped me finish.  I love her.

Running up hills at a marathon in Dallas, I focused on a girl up ahead of me.  I pretended a rope was around her waist and she pulled me up a steep hill.  Thank you rope girl.  I eventually passed her, but she caught up with me later.  We breathlessly talked for a bit about the hills.  She said I helped her up a few of them too.

After a run in a local park, I was sitting on the grass resting and a girl who was just starting her run, looked at me and simply asked, “Good run?”  Yes it was.  She ran on.

One girl told me she just found out she was pregnant.  “Don’t tell anyone.”  She hadn’t told her husband yet.  “I won’t” I promised.

I really like my slow, unhurried runs through town.  One day on a run by my house, on a stretch where it was more country than city, I heard a clapping noise.  A squirrel was sitting on the side of the road clapping.  He might have been trying to bust acorns, but he certainly looked like a spectator cheering me on to finish.  Thank you squirrel.

Sometimes I hear the ugly.  People yell out of their car windows.  “Idiot.”  “Stupid.” ‘Bitch.”  Or they honk.  Sometimes they throw things.

I’ve never listened to music at the store or a mall and I wonder at the people who do.  Why be so tuned out all the time?

Maybe some people need music.

Yesterday at Wal-Mart, a kid pushing a cart cut me off.  I had to come to complete stop or we would have crashed.  He never saw me.  His mom looked up, whispered something to him, causing him to throw “sorry” over his shoulder at me.  Then she said “blond bimbo”.  “What?”  I yelled at her.  “Are you talking to me?”  She kept walking with her nose in the air.  The kid said “no” and rushed after his mom.  I don’t know if she was talking to me or not.  I didn’t pursue it.  She looked mean.